He had a genuine
conviction that lack of physical persistence in any task involving
money must be due to some subtle weakness of character itself, to
some profound shiftlessness or slyness. He understood typhoid fever,
pneumonia, and appendicitis--one had them, and either died or got over
them and went back to work--but when the word "nervous" appeared in a
diagnosis he became honestly suspicious: he had the feeling that there
was something contemptible about it, that there was a nigger in the
wood-pile somewhere.
"Look at me," he said. "Look at what I did at his age! Why, when
I was twenty years old, wasn't I up every morning at four o'clock
choppin' wood--yes! and out in the dark and the snow--to build a fire
in a country grocery store? And here Bibbs has to go and have a
DOCTOR because he can't--Pho! it makes me tired! If he'd gone at it
like a man he wouldn't be sick."
He paced the bedroom--the usual setting for such parental discussions
--in his nightgown, shaking his big, grizzled head and gesticulating
to his bedded spouse. "My Lord!" he said. "If a little, teeny bit
o' work like this is too much for him, why, he ain't fit for anything!
It's nine-tenths imagination, and the rest of it--well, I won't say
it's deliberate, but I WOULD like to know just how much of it's put
on!"
"Bibbs didn't want the doctor," said Mrs.
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