Olympian Nights, John Kendrick Bangs [good book club books .TXT] 📗

one corner of the room.

"Now look yourself straight in the eye," said he.

I did so, and truly it was as if I looked upon the page of a book printed in the largest and clearest type. I hesitate to say what I saw written there, since the glass was strong enough to reach not only the mind itself, but further into the very depths of my subself-consciousness. On the surface, man thinks well of himself; this continues in modified intensity to his self-consciousness, but the fool does not live who, in his subself-consciousness, the Holy of Holies of Realization, does not know that he is a fool.

"Take 'em off," I cried, for they seemed to burn into the very depths of my soul.

"That isn't necessary," said AEsculapius, kindly. "Just turn your eyes away from the glass a moment and they won't bother you. I want to cure this trouble of yours."

I stopped looking at myself in the mirror and the tense condition of my nerves was immediately relieved.

"Feel better right away, eh?" he asked.

"Yes," I admitted.

"So I thought," he said. "You've momentarily given up self-contemplation. Now lower your gaze. Look at your chest a moment."

Just what were the properties of the glass I do not know, nor do I know how one's chest should look, but, as I looked down, I found that just as I could penetrate to the depths of my mind through my eyes, so was it possible for me to inspect myself physically.

"Nothing the matter there, eh?" said AEsculapius.

"Not that I can see," said I.

"Nor I," said he. "Now, if you think there is anything the matter with you anywhere else," he added, "you are welcome to use the glasses as long as you see fit."

I took a sneaking glance at my right side and was immediately made aware of the fact that all was well with me there, and that all my trouble had come from my ill-advised "wondering" whether that Midas omelet would bother me or not.

"These glasses are wonderful," said I.

"They are a great help," said AEsculapius.

"And do you always permit your patients to put them on?" I asked.

"Not always," said he. "Sometimes people really have something the matter with them. More often, of course, they haven't. It would never do to let a really sick man see his condition. If they are ill, I can see at once what is the matter by means of these spectacles, and can, of course, prescribe. If they are not, there is no surer means of effecting a cure than putting these on the patient's nose and letting him see for himself that he is all right."

"They have all the quality of the X-ray light," I suggested, turning my gaze upon an iron safe in the corner of the room, which immediately disclosed its contents.

"They are X-ray glasses," said AEsculapius. "In a good light you can see through anything with 'em on. I have lenses of the same kind in my window, and when you came up I looked at you through the window-pane and saw at once that there was nothing the matter with you."

"I wish our earthly doctors had glasses like these," I ventured, taking them off, for truly I was beginning to fancy a strain.

"They have--or at least they have something quite as good," said AEsculapius. "They are all my disciples, and in the best instances they can see through the average patient without them. They have insight. You don't believe you deceive your physician, do you?"

"I have sometimes thought so," said I, not realizing the trap the doctor was setting.

"How foolish!" he cried. "Why should you wish to?"

I was covered with confusion.

"Never mind," said AEsculapius, smiling pleasantly. "You are only human and cannot help yourself. It is your imagination leads you astray. Half the time when you send for your physician there is nothing the matter with you."

"He always prescribes," I retorted.

"That is for your comfort, not his," said AEsculapius, firmly.

"And sometimes they operate when it isn't necessary," I put in, persistently.

"True," said AEsculapius. "Very true. Because if they didn't, the patient would die of worry."

"Humph!" said I, incredulous. "I never knew that the operation for appendicitis was a mind cure."

"It is--frequently," observed the doctor. "There are more people, my friend, who have appendicitis on their minds than there are those who have it in their vermiforms. Don't forget that."

It was a revelation, and, to tell the truth, it has been a revelation of comfort ever since.

"I fancy, doctor," said I, after a pause, "that you are a Christian Scientist. All troubles are fanciful and indicative of a perverse soul."

AEsculapius flushed.

"If one of the gods had said that," he replied, "I should have operated upon him. As a mortal, you are privileged to say unpleasant things, just as a child may say things to his elders with impunity which merit extreme punishment. Christian Science is all right when you are truly well--in good physical condition. It is a sure cure for imaginary troubles, but when you are really sick, it is not of Olympus, but of Hades."

AEsculapius spoke with all the passion of a mortal, and I was embarrassed. "I did not mean to say anything unpleasant, doctor," said I.

"That's all right, my lad," said AEsculapius, patting me on the back. "I knew that. If I hadn't known it, you'd have been on the table by this time. And now, good-bye. Curb your imagination. Think about others. Don't worry about yourself without cause, and never send for a doctor unless you know there's something wrong. If I had my way you mortals would be deprived of imagination. That is your worst disease, and if at any time you wish yours amputated, come to me and I'll fix you out."

"Thanks, doctor," I replied; "but I don't think I'll accept your offer, because I need my imagination in my business."

And then, realizing that I had received my _conge_, I prepared to depart.

"How much do I owe you, doctor?" I asked, putting my hand into the pocket of my gown, confident of finding whatever I should need.

"Nothing," said he. "The real physician can never be paid. He either restores your health or he does not. If he restores your health, he saves your life, and he is entitled to what your life is worth. If he does not restore your health--he has failed, and is entitled to nothing. All you have will never pay your doctor for what he does for you. Therefore, go in peace."

I stood abashed in the presence of this wise man, and, as I went forth from his office, I realized the truth of what he had said. In our own world we place a value upon the service of the man who carries us over the hard and the dark places. Yet who can really repay him for all that he does for us when by his skill alone we are rescued from peril?

I re-entered my sedan-chair and set the blackies off again, with something potent in my mind--how much I truly owed to the good man who has taken at times the health of my children, of my wife, of myself, in his hands and has seen us safely through to port. I have not yet been able to estimate it, but if ever he reads these lines, he will know that I pay him in gratitude that which the world with all its wealth cannot give.

"Now for the Zoo, boys," I cried. "AEsculapius has fixed me up."

And we scampered on.


VIII


At the Zoo

We had not travelled far from the office of AEsculapius when my little carriers turned from the broad and beautiful corridor into a narrow passage, through which they proceeded with some difficulty until we reached the other side of this strangely constructed home of the gods. As we emerged into the light of day, the view that presented itself was indescribably beautiful. I have looked from our own hills at home upon many a scene of grandeur. From the mountain peaks of New Hampshire, with the sun streaming down upon me, I have looked upon the valleys beneath through rifts in clouds that had not ventured so high, and were drenching the glorious green below with refreshing rains, and have stood awed in the presence of one of the simplest moods of nature. But the sight that greeted my eyes as I passed along that exterior road of Olympus, under the genial auspices of those wonderful gods, appealed to something in my soul which had never before been awakened, and which I shall never be able adequately to describe. The mere act of seeing seemed to be uplifting, and, from the moment I looked downward upon the beloved earth, I ceased to wonder that gods were godlike--indeed, my real wonder was that they were not more so. It seemed difficult to believe that there was anything earthly about earth. The world was idealized even to myself, who had never held it to be a bad sort of place. There were rich pastures, green to the most soul-satisfying degree, upon which cattle fed and lived their lives of content; here and there were the great cities of earth seen through a haze that softened all their roughness; nothing sordid appeared; only the fair side of life was visible.

And I began to see how it came about that these Olympian gods had lost control over man. If the world, with all its joys and all its miseries, presents to the controlling power merely its joyous side, what sympathy can one look for in one's deity? There was Paris and Notre Dame in the sunlight. But the Morgue at the back of Notre Dame--in the shadow of its sunlit towers--that was not visible to the eye of the casual god who drove his blackamoors along that entrancing roadway. There was London and the inspiring pile of Westminster showing up its majestic top, lit by the wondrous light of the sun--but still undiscovered of the gods there rolled on its farther side the Thames, dark as the Styx, a very grave of ambition, yet the last solace of many a despairing soul. London Bridge may tell the gods of much that may not be seen from that glorious driveway along the exterior of Olympus.

I found myself growing maudlin, and I pulled myself together.

"Magnificent view, Sammy," said I.

"Yassir," he replied, trotting along faithfully. "Dass what dey all says. _I_ 'ain't nebber seen it. 'Ain't got time to look at it."

"Well, stop a moment and look," said I. "Isn't it magnificent?"

The blackies stopped and looked.

"Putty good," said Sammy, "but I doan' care fo' views," he added. "Dey makes me dizzy."

I gave Sammy up from that moment. He was well carved, a work of art, in fact, but he was essentially modern, and I was living in the antique.

"Hustle along to the Zoo," I cried, with some impatience, and I was truly "hustled."

"Here we is," said Sammy, settling down on his haunches at the end of a five-mile trot. "Dis is it."

We had stopped before a gate not entirely unlike those the Japanese erect before popular places of amusement they frequent.

I descended from the chair and was greeted by an attendant who demanded to know what I wished to see.