room.

"Those boys in the medical school surely do amuse me," he laughed. "When
I tell 'em I'm to be a missionary doctor, which I do first thing to give
'em sort of a shock they don't often get, they stand off and say, 'What,
you!' as if I had told 'em I was to be a traffic cop, or a trapeze
artist in the circus. Some of 'em seem to think I'm queer in the head,
but, boys, they are the ones with rooms to let. When the others talk
about hanging out a shingle in Chicago or Saint Louis or Cleveland or
some other over-doctored place, I tell 'em to watch me, when I'm the
only doctor between Siam and sunrise! Won't I be somebody? With my own
hospital--made out o' mud, I know--and a dispensary and a few native
helpers who don't know what I'm going to do next, and all the sick
people coming from ten days' journey away to the foreign doctor!" And
then his mood changed. "That's what'll get me, though; all those
helpless, ignorant humans who don't even know what I can do for their
bodies, let alone having any suspicion of what Somebody Else can do for
their souls! But it will be wonderful; next thing to being with him in
Galilee!"

There was a pause, each boy filling it with thoughts he would not speak.

"Where do you expect to find that work, Joe?" J.W. asked him.

The answer was quick and straight: "Wherever I'm sent, J.W., boy," he
said. "Only I've told the candidate secretary what I want. I met him
last summer in Chicago, and there's nothing like getting in your bid
early. He's agreed to recommend me, when I'm ready, for the hardest,
neediest, most neglected place that's open. If I'm going into this
missionary doctor business, I want a chance to prove Christianity where