Sinclair Lewis: Main Street

2. CHAPTER II (continued)

"Nice? Say honestly---- Of course I may be prejudiced, but I've seen an awful lot of towns--one time I went to Atlantic City for the American Medical Association meeting, and I spent practically a week in New York! But I never saw a town that had such up-and-coming people as Gopher Prairie. Bresnahan--you know--the famous auto manufacturer--he comes from Gopher Prairie. Born and brought up there! And it's a darn pretty town. Lots of fine maples and box-elders, and there's two of the dandiest lakes you ever saw, right near town! And we've got seven miles of cement walks already, and building more every day! Course a lot of these towns still put up with plank walks, but not for us, you bet!"

"Really?"

(Why was she thinking of Stewart Snyder?)

"Gopher Prairie is going to have a great future. Some of the best dairy and wheat land in the state right near there--some of it selling right now at one-fifty an acre, and I bet it will go up to two and a quarter in ten years!"

"Is---- Do you like your profession?"

"Nothing like it. Keeps you out, and yet you have a chance to loaf in the office for a change."

"I don't mean that way. I mean--it's such an opportunity for sympathy."

Dr. Kennicott launched into a heavy, "Oh, these Dutch farmers don't want sympathy. All they need is a bath and a good dose of salts."

Carol must have flinched, for instantly he was urging, "What I mean is--I don't want you to think I'm one of these old salts-and-quinine peddlers, but I mean: so many of my patients are husky farmers that I suppose I get kind of case-hardened."

"It seems to me that a doctor could transform a whole community, if he wanted to--if he saw it. He's usually the only man in the neighborhood who has any scientific training, isn't he?"