everybody knows it.
My best friends are going to be Tom Horvath and Perry Gault. Tom reminds me of my father. That’s funny, because no two people could look less alike, Tom being six feet tall, with what they call a leonine head and a big homely face. His father’s Hungarian, his mother’s Irish. “Makes me a typical American,” Tom says. He’s a little bluff and opinionated, but I feel his honesty and gentleness. It is the gentleness that is most like Pa.
Perry is the brain. He’s got a photographic memory for everything from anatomy to baseball scores. He’s small and quick, with enough energy for any three people, a hot temper and a soft heart.
They think I’m superstitious because I have “feelings” about the future. I feel that Perry and Tom and I are going to be involved in life together, perhaps even in great struggles. Ridiculous? Maybe!
* * *
Six months already fled. I’ve been trying in such free time as I have to learn something about this enormous city. I have so much to learn beside the fine print in all my fat texts. There’s so much out there in the world! Went down to the Fulton Fish Market yesterday. Shoving crowds and red faces. Piles of iridescent fish, pink and gray under a gloss of wet silver. Thought of that Flemish artist Breughel I saw at the museum one Sunday.
Then I walked over to Fifth Avenue past the library lions—there’s a place where I could lose myself—and on uptown. What a treasury! Paintings in gilded frames. A model room with tall windows and a view of gardens. Pyramids of books. Photographs of Rome—umbrella pines and marble. Freud’s
Interpretation of Dreams:
Was he right, or is the brain just chemistry, I wonder?
New York is a feast and I am so greedy, I want to know it all. After an hour of roaming I don’t want to go back to my small room and memorize the course of the brachial artery. But I do!
My second year! I’ve been watching some surgery and it’s very, very sobering. There are stars here: Jennings, Fox, Alben Riker. Saw a radical mastectomy on a woman about my mother’s age. Quiet, resigned face. Knows she will not beat this illness. Watched Riker remove a tuberculous kidney yesterday. A master, with golden hands.
Wouldn’t it be marvelous to be a surgeon? But where and how to get the training? One has to make a living. Who can afford it? I do believe, though, that the day will come when there will be more specialists than general men. Medicine is growing more and more complex, Tom disagrees. Anyway, he says he can’t wait to be finished, to open an office and marry his girl, Florence. He says I’m lucky to have my father’s practice to step into. He’s right about that, I know.
Tom worries because at the end of my second year I still don’t have a girl. The thing is, he’s happy with Florence—they’ve been going together since high school—and thinks I ought to do the same. It’s generous of him, but I don’twant a girl right now. Problem is, “nice” girls want to get married. It’s understood that if you hang around with one for six or seven months, she has a right to know what you plan to do next. Even the parents get that look on their faces, either too warm and friendly or else ever so slightly cool. In either case, you know what they’re worried about, that she’s wasting her time. To be fair about it, I can see their point.
But I’m not wasting my time, either—what little time I have! Met a nurse up from North Carolina—Harriet, red-haired and rosy-pink. A strawberry. Looked so innocent. It took me all of twenty-five minutes to find out she isn’t Luckily, she’s got an older sister with an apartment in the Village.
My time is racing so, I can’t believe it! I’m three-quarters of the way toward writing “Doctor” in front of my name. They say young people think they have all the time in the world, but it’s never been like that for me. Sometimes I feel as if I’d just been born and other times I’m
My best friends are going to be Tom Horvath and Perry Gault. Tom reminds me of my father. That’s funny, because no two people could look less alike, Tom being six feet tall, with what they call a leonine head and a big homely face. His father’s Hungarian, his mother’s Irish. “Makes me a typical American,” Tom says. He’s a little bluff and opinionated, but I feel his honesty and gentleness. It is the gentleness that is most like Pa.
Perry is the brain. He’s got a photographic memory for everything from anatomy to baseball scores. He’s small and quick, with enough energy for any three people, a hot temper and a soft heart.
They think I’m superstitious because I have “feelings” about the future. I feel that Perry and Tom and I are going to be involved in life together, perhaps even in great struggles. Ridiculous? Maybe!
* * *
Six months already fled. I’ve been trying in such free time as I have to learn something about this enormous city. I have so much to learn beside the fine print in all my fat texts. There’s so much out there in the world! Went down to the Fulton Fish Market yesterday. Shoving crowds and red faces. Piles of iridescent fish, pink and gray under a gloss of wet silver. Thought of that Flemish artist Breughel I saw at the museum one Sunday.
Then I walked over to Fifth Avenue past the library lions—there’s a place where I could lose myself—and on uptown. What a treasury! Paintings in gilded frames. A model room with tall windows and a view of gardens. Pyramids of books. Photographs of Rome—umbrella pines and marble. Freud’s
Interpretation of Dreams:
Was he right, or is the brain just chemistry, I wonder?
New York is a feast and I am so greedy, I want to know it all. After an hour of roaming I don’t want to go back to my small room and memorize the course of the brachial artery. But I do!
My second year! I’ve been watching some surgery and it’s very, very sobering. There are stars here: Jennings, Fox, Alben Riker. Saw a radical mastectomy on a woman about my mother’s age. Quiet, resigned face. Knows she will not beat this illness. Watched Riker remove a tuberculous kidney yesterday. A master, with golden hands.
Wouldn’t it be marvelous to be a surgeon? But where and how to get the training? One has to make a living. Who can afford it? I do believe, though, that the day will come when there will be more specialists than general men. Medicine is growing more and more complex, Tom disagrees. Anyway, he says he can’t wait to be finished, to open an office and marry his girl, Florence. He says I’m lucky to have my father’s practice to step into. He’s right about that, I know.
Tom worries because at the end of my second year I still don’t have a girl. The thing is, he’s happy with Florence—they’ve been going together since high school—and thinks I ought to do the same. It’s generous of him, but I don’twant a girl right now. Problem is, “nice” girls want to get married. It’s understood that if you hang around with one for six or seven months, she has a right to know what you plan to do next. Even the parents get that look on their faces, either too warm and friendly or else ever so slightly cool. In either case, you know what they’re worried about, that she’s wasting her time. To be fair about it, I can see their point.
But I’m not wasting my time, either—what little time I have! Met a nurse up from North Carolina—Harriet, red-haired and rosy-pink. A strawberry. Looked so innocent. It took me all of twenty-five minutes to find out she isn’t Luckily, she’s got an older sister with an apartment in the Village.
My time is racing so, I can’t believe it! I’m three-quarters of the way toward writing “Doctor” in front of my name. They say young people think they have all the time in the world, but it’s never been like that for me. Sometimes I feel as if I’d just been born and other times I’m
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