Among the simple population of New Canaan the Doc was considered the most blasphemous man in America, but there seemed to be a sort of general impression in the village that his profanity was, in some way, an eccentricity of genius.

“Thank you,” Miss Margaret responded to his offer of free medical services.  “I’ll fill out the paper for you with pleasure.”

She read aloud the first question of the list. ’"Where did you attend lectures?’”

Her pen suspended over the paper, she looked at him inquiringly.  “Well?” she asked.

“Lekshures be blowed!” he exclaimed.  “I ain’t never ’tended no lekshures!”

“Oh!” said Miss Margaret, nodding conclusively.  “Well, then, let us pass on to the next question.  ’To what School of Medicine do you belong?’”

“School?” repeated the doctor; “I went to school right here in this here town—­it’s better ’n thirty years ago, a’ready.”

“No,” Miss Margaret explained, “that’s not the question.  ’To what School of medicine do you belong?’ Medicine, you know,” she repeated, as though talking to a deaf person.

“Oh,” said the doctor, “medicine, is it?  I never have went to none,” he announced defiantly.  “I studied medicine in old Doctor Johnson’s office and learnt it by practisin’ it.  That there’s the only way to learn any business.  Do you suppose you could learn a boy carpenterin’ by settin’ him down to read books on sawin’ boards and a-lekshurin’ him on drivin’ nails?  No more can you make a doctor in no such swanged-fool way like that there!”

“But,” said Margaret, “the question means do you practise allopathy, homeopathy, hydropathy, osteopathy,—­or, for instance, eclecticism?  Are you, for example, a homeopathist?”

“Gosh!” said the doctor, looking at her admiringly, “I’m blamed if you don’t know more big words than I ever seen in a spellin’-book or heard at a spellin’-bee!  Home-o-pathy?  No, sir!  When I give a dose to a patient, still, he ’most always generally finds it out, and pretty gosh-hang quick too!  When he gits a dose of my herb bitters he knows it good enough.  Be sure, I don’t give babies, and so forth, doses like them.  All such I treat, still, according to home-o-pathy, and not like that swanged fool, Doc Hess, which only last week he give a baby a dose fitten only fur a field-hand—­and he went to college!—­Oh, yes!—­and heerd lekshures too!  Natural consequence, the baby up’t and died fur ’em.  But growed folks they need allopathy.”

“Then,” said Margaret, “you might be called an eclectic?”

“A eclectic?” the doctor inquiringly repeated, rubbing his nose.  “To be sure, I know in a general way what a eclectic is, and so forth.  But what would you mean, anyhow, by a eclectic doctor, so to speak, heh?”

“An eclectic,” Margaret explained, “is one who claims to adopt whatever is good and reject whatever is bad in every system or school of medicine.”