Some of his colleagues
held that he foolishly restricted himself in declining to
experimentalise _in corpore vili_, whenever such experiments were
attended with pain; he was spoken of in some quarters as a
"sentimentalist," a man who might go far but for his "fads." One
great pathologist held that the whole idea of pursuing science for
mitigation of human ills was nothing but a sentimentality and a fad.
A debate between this personage and Dr. Derwent was brought to a
close by the latter's inextinguishable mirth. He was, indeed, a man
who laughed heartily, and laughter often served him where another
would have waxed choleric.
"Only a dog!" he exclaimed once to Irene, apropos of this subject,
and being in his graver mood. "Why, what assurance have I that any
given man is of more importance to the world than any given dog? How
can I know what is important and what is not, when it comes to the
ultimate mystery of life? Create me a dog--just a poor little
mongrel puppy--and you shall torture him; then, and not till then.
And in that event I reserve my opinion of the----" He checked
himself on the point of a remark which seemed of too wide bearing
for the girl's ears. Hut Irene supplied the hiatus for herself, as
she was beginning to do pretty often when listening to her father.
Dr. Derwent was, in a sense, a self-made man; in youth he had gone
through a hard struggle, and but for his academic successes he could
not have completed the course of medical training.
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