'Calm Peace and Quiet'

‘GRANDMA and Aunt Sallie and I are planning to run up to Bear Creek for a few days,’ said the pleasant voice over the telephone, ‘and we have an extra seat and want you to come along.

I’m going to take the pup, and we can just live in the woods and do nothing but tramp around. I’m sure the rest will do us all good.’

It did sound very inviting, and as I was tired, and loved restful life in the woods, I accepted the invitation. When the time came to start, I found that our party had been increased by several other relatives, in a second automobile. The pup was in our car; he was a large and active collie who had n’t quite got his growth, and he liked to think he wars a lap dog and sit or sleep in my lap. Grandma and Aunt Sallie drove steadily from the back seat; and with much determination, and after many detours, we reached our destination.

The next day we prepared to carry out our plan to live in the woods and do nothing more arduous than train the pup. The simple life materialized for almost fifteen minutes, and then a messenger arrived and breathlessly addressed me: ‘I’m so glad we’ve found you at last! Miss Blank at the Inn is ill, and about a dozen people are looking for a doctor!’

It was too true; a very valuable and very tired woman had been taken ill suddenly, and for two days there were no more woodland rambles. The pup behaved beautifully during this lapse in his education, so he must have been just naturally good. On the evening when the patient improved and the tension was relaxed, a second excited messenger invaded our quiet.

‘Doctor, there’s a man, a guest at the Inn, lost in the hills! His wife is nearly distracted, and nobody will do a thing! Won’t you come and help start something?’

Three of us tore down to the village in a car and there in a garage, symbol of the village store, sat state troopers and other men, discoursing of crops, northern lights, the weather, and — yes, they spoke of the lost man, too, as a matter of current interest; and, as the hours went by, someone opined, ‘Ya-as, he’s lost all right, I reckon; mebbe we can find him to-morrow.’

They could not be induced to make an immediate search. Two other women tried in vain to stir the village to action, and finally one of them, commandeering an extra car, drove to the next village, went to a movingpicture show, and asked for volunteers. She brought back a carload of active men, and in the second car a band of keen Boy Scouts, and at last things began to move.

The wife of the lost man, who had been getting more and more distraught because of the delays, had finally been persuaded to return to the Inn, and about midnight we went back with the good news that search parties were out and that fires were being kept burning by the Boy Scouts. As she was exhausted from anxiety and lack of nourishment, we prevailed upon her to eat something, and I went with one of the hotel officials to make tea. As we boiled the water over the furnace fire in the basement, my companion looked up and asked with demure interest, ‘Doctor, did you come here to rest ? ’

Finally we all got to bed, but we were up early the next morning, ready to help. A telephone call from a distant point across the valley informed us that the lost tramper was safe, but utterly done up, after his harrowing experiences. He had been taken ill in the woods, had lost the trail, and had spent the night climbing down steep cliffs by the touch system, holding on to trees and bushes as he tested the footholds, or trying to keep warm in the jungle of trees and underbrush. Would we come over in our car and bring him back to the Inn? So, breakfastless, we started off, and eventually returned the worn and weary traveler to his relieved wife.

Rambles in the woods, while still alluring, seemed less important than restful inactivity for the remainder of my stay. But later in the day someone asked, ‘Doctor, won’t you give us a little talk on Tibet this evening, in the drawing-room of the Inn? We should all like to hear about your trip.’ I answered that they had chosen a place where I had never been, but that I would tell about some places I had visited near Tibet. Owing to a dull season, I had a full house at eight that evening, and in the midst of the question time after the little talk a note was brought to me. The patient whom I had seen on my arrival had had a relapse, and would the doctor come at once? The patient was better before long; and the doctor went to bed very late.

The next day was a busy one. There were plans for the welfare of the patient, and plans for the homeward trip. Decisions by certain members of the family were privately declared by other members of the family to be out of the question. Plans by the other members of the family were in turn privately termed impossible by the original planners. We did manage one brief tramp, for the pup ’s sake. Then Grandma and Aunt Sallie and the driver and the doctor and the pup were loaded in, together with plenty of gas, and presently were homeward bound, through lovely woods and beside beautiful lakes and rivers, to seek rest and calm and quiet in the busy homes and streets of a big city.