The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald. F. Scott Fitzgerald
have been all evening giving away that money?”
“My dear Dorothy, I have decidedly been all evening giving away that money.” He rose and brushed a lump of snow from his shoulder. “I really must be going now. I have two—er—friends outside waiting for me.” He walked towards the door.
“Two friends?”
“Why—a—they are the two gentlemen I had the difficulty with. They are coming home with me to spend Christmas. They are really nice fellows, though they might seem a trifle rough at first.”
Dorothy drew a quick breath. For a minute no one spoke. Then he took her in his arms.
“Dearest,” she whispered, “you did this all for me.”
A minute later he sprang down the steps, and arm in arm with his friends, walked off in the darkness.
“Good-night, Dorothy,” he called back, “and a Merry Christmas!”
— ◆ —
Pain and the Scientist.
Newman News (1913)
Walter Hamilton Bartney moved to Middleton because it was quiet and offered him an opportunity of studying law, which he should have done long ago. He chose a quiet house rather out in the suburbs of the village, for, as he reasoned to himself, “Middleton is a suburb and remarkably quiet at that. Therefore a suburb of a suburb must be the very depth of solitude, and that is what I want.” So Bartney chose a small house in the suburbs and settled down. There was a vacant lot on his left, and on his right Skiggs, the famous Christian Scientist. It is because of Skiggs that this story was written.
Bartney, like the very agreeable young man he was, decided that it would be only neighborly to pay Skiggs a visit, not that he was very much interested in the personality of Mr. Skiggs, but because he had never seen a real Christian Scientist and he felt that his life would be empty without the sight of one.
However, he chose a most unlucky time for his visit. It was one night, dark as pitch, that, feeling restless, he set off as the clock struck ten to investigate and become acquainted. He strode out of his lot and along the path that went by the name of a road, feeling his way between bushes and rocks and keeping his eye on the solitary light that burned in Mr. Skiggs’ house.
“It would be blamed unlucky for me if he should take a notion to turn out that light,” he muttered through his clenched teeth. “I’d be lost. I’d just have to sit down and wait until morning.”
He approached the house, felt around cautiously, and, reaching for what he thought was a step, uttered an exclamation of pain, for a large stone had rolled down over his leg and pinned him to the earth. He grunted, swore, and tried to move the rock, but he was held powerless by the huge stone, and his efforts were unavailing.
“Hello!” he shouted. “Mr. Skiggs!”
There was no answer.
“Help in there,” he cried again. “Help!”
A light was lit upstairs and a head, topped with a conical-shaped night-cap, poked itself out of the window like an animated jack-in-the-box.
“Who’s there?” said the night-cap in a high-pitched querulous voice. “Who’s there? Speak, or I fire.”
“Don’t fire! It’s me—Bartney, your neighbor. I’ve had an accident, a nasty ankle wrench, and there’s a stone on top of me.”
“Bartney?” queried the night-cap, nodding pensively. “Who’s Bartney?”
Bartney swore inwardly.
“I’m your neighbor. I live next door. This stone is very heavy. If you would come down here—”
“How do I know you’re Bartney, whoever he is?” demanded the night-cap. “How do I know you won’t get me out there and blackjack me?”
“For heaven’s sake,” cried Bartney, “look and see. Turn a searchlight on me, and see if I’m not pinned down.”
“I have no searchlight,” came the voice from above.
“Then you’ll have to take a chance. I can’t stay here all night.”
“Then go away. I am not stopping you,” said the night-cap with a decisive squeak in his voice.
“Mr. Skiggs,” said Bartney in desperation, “I am in mortal agony and—”
“You are not in mortal agony,” announced Mr. Skiggs.
“What? Do you still think I’m trying to entice you out here to murder you?”
“I repeat, you are not in mortal agony. I am convinced now that you really think you are hurt, but I assure you, you are not.”
“He’s crazy,” thought Bartney.
“I shall endeavor to prove to you that you are not, thus causing you more relief than I would if I lifted the stone. I am very moderate. I will treat you now at the rate of three dollars an hour.”
“An hour?” shouted Bartney fiercely. “You come down here and roll this stone off me, or I’ll skin you alive!”
“Even against your will,” went on Mr. Skiggs. “I feel called upon to treat you; for it is a duty to everyone to help the injured, or rather those who fancy themselves injured. Now, clear your mind of all sensation, and we will begin the treatment.”
“Come down here, you mean, low-browed fanatic!” yelled Bartney, forgetting his pain in a paroxysm of rage. “Come down here, and I’ll drive every bit of Christian Science out of your head.”
“To begin with,” began the shrill falsetto from the window, “there is no pain—absolutely none. Do you begin to have an inkling of that?”
“No,” shouted Bartney. “You, you—” his voice was lost in a gurgle of impotent rage.
“Now, all is mind. Mind is everything. Matter is nothing—absolutely nothing. You are well. You fancy you are hurt, but you are not.”
“You lie!” shrieked Bartney.
Unheeding, Mr. Skiggs went on.
“Thus, if there is no pain, it cannot act on your mind. A sensation is not physical. If you had no brain, there would be no pain, for what you call pain acts on the brain. You see?”
“Oh-h,” cried Bartney, “if you saw what a bottomless well of punishment you were digging for yourself, you’d cut out that monkey business.”
“Therefore, as so-called pain is a mental sensation, your ankle doesn’t hurt you. Your brain may imagine it does, but all sensation goes to the brain. You are very foolish when you complain of hurt—”
Bartney’s patience wore out. He drew in his breath, and let out a yell that echoed and re-echoed through the night air.
He repeated it again and again, and at length he heard the sound of footsteps coming up the road.
“Hello!” came a voice.
Bartney breathed a prayer of thanksgiving.
“Come here! I’ve had an accident,” he called, and a minute later the night watchman’s brawny arms had rolled the stone off him and he staggered to his feet.
“Good-night,” called the Christian Scientist sweetly. “I hope I have made some impression on you.”
“You certainly have,” called back Bartney as he limped off, his hand on the watchman’s shoulder, “one I won’t forget.”
Two days later, as Bartney sat with his foot on a pillow, he pulled an unfamiliar envelope out of his mail and opened it. It read: