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elders and betters on the hospital staff pretended to believe that it was good practice for us young fellows; but it wasn’t. It was the worst training imaginable, tending to make a doctor cold-blooded and careless.
    One afternoon in latter August, within a few minutes of the closing hour, a young chap was shown into my cramped cubicle with his left hand bound in a dirty rag. He was about eighteen, six feet tall, lean as a bean-pole. He had a good head, thatched with a tousled mop of the reddest hair I had ever seen. His eyes were blue and edged with premature crow’s-feet which gave them a defiant hardness. If it hadn’t been for the pair of boyish dimples in his tanned cheeks, he would have looked decidedly tough. He was bareheaded and badly sunburned; wore a soiled gray suit that wasn’t big enough for his rangy frame, a blue shirt with a rumpled collar, and a pair of cheap and dusty sneakers.
    I pointed indifferently to the other chair. He sat down and began unwrapping the hand.
    “Pretty bandage,” I remarked. “What was it, originally, a shirt-tail?”
    He drew a sardonic grin, dropped the rag on the floor, and extended his injured hand. It was badly swollen and there were deep abrasions across the knuckles.
    “Looks as if it’s broken,” I guessed.
    “Yeah,” he agreed, “right there: those two metacarpals.”
    “Know your bones, eh?” I glanced up and met his eyes. “What’s that called?” I revolved a finger-tip lightly on his wrist.
    “Sesamoid.”
    “Would you say that was a bone?”
    “Umm, well, it’s partly cartilage.”
    “Want to tell me how you got hurt, and when? This hand has been neglected. It’s in bad shape.”
    “Last night. The freight was pulling out of the yards and picking up speed faster than I thought. I missed my hold, and fell on my hand.”
    “You must have had something in your hand, or you would have met the gravel with your palm down.”
    He liked my deduction and his eyes lighted a little.
    “That’s right,” he said. “Handful of chocolate bars.”
    “You swiped them,” I announced casually.
    He nodded and asked me how I knew. And I told him he must have been very hungry to have hung on to the candy when he might have broken his fall more safely with his open hand.
    “And if you had had the money to buy the chocolate bars,’” I continued, “you would have bought a hot dog or a hamburger instead.”
    “I didn’t have time to think which was the safest way to land.”
    “That’s true,” I agreed. “When you are very hungry, your stomach does your thinking for you. Are you hungry now?”
    He nodded, adding, “But if you’re going to set this hand, I’ll need a little ether, won’t I?”
    “What do you know about such things?” I inquired.
    He grinned.
    “My father was a doctor,” he said, “and I’ve read a lot of his books.” He made a self-deprecatory little gesture. “About the only books I ever did read. I hated school.”
    Having confided that much, he responded to my encouragement and told me some more. His name was Watson. His father had died when he was ten. His mother had married again. The stepfather had resented his presence in their home. After a while, his mother, unable to defend him without a constant battle, began to take sides with her husband, in the interest of peace.
    “But I don’t blame her,” the boy went on. “I wasn’t very easy to get along with. I played hooky pretty often. And once I operated on a cat. I got licked almost to death for that.”
    “How about the cat?” I couldn’t help asking.
    “He got well. I didn’t hurt him. Doped him with chloroform.”
    “You’ll have to tell me about the operation when we’ve finished with yours,” I said, rising. “Come on. I’ll fix you up. What’s your first name, Watson?”
    “Timothy. Tim.”
    “All right, Tim. Follow me. No, don’t put that rag on again. You’re in enough trouble without that.”
    As I led him into the operating chamber, he was