Reginald Wright Kauffman

“ He may acquire all the lore of the scholar, all the arts of business, but he will never thoroughly read his own mind and his own heart. He will tell his child that the attraction of gravity draws the loosened apple to the ground, but he can master nothing except the broadest principles of that inevitable law of cause and effect as it determines his own history. ”

“ The acting doctor rarely indulged the vice of personal questions, but he found it hard to understand why so well-groomed a man—well groomed even in his illness—should have chosen this manifestly disreputable tramp when, as a hundred signs gave testimony to even this fresh-water physician, he was accustomed to ocean liners. However, the urbane Mr. Hoagland had kept largely to himself, and until stricken with ptomaine poisoning, mostly confined his conversation to the tempestuous captain and the latter's malicious mate. ”

“ Johnson had entered the cabin. With a twist of "his crossed eye, he grunted an echo to his master's order.
“I never pretended to be a graduate physician” Dan quietly continued; “but I was shipped as doctor and I've been treated like a deck hand. Graduate or not, I've saved half your crew for you, and all I've got in return is curses—almost blows. Our agreement hasn't once been kept—on your part or Johnson's.”
“So that's it?” sneered the captain. “Well, what do you want?”
The mate grunted again. Dan cleared his throat; he spoke with firmness. ”

“ Hoagland, the solitary passenger, fell a victim. Dan saved himself by subsisting on pilot biscuit and coffee, yet that he saved the others was not charged to his credit. Captain Goldthwaite's habit was to regard as less than human any being that lived forward; twice already he had raised his drunken but powerful hands against the doctor.
“It's my own fault,” Dan reflected; “I ought to have known better. I did. I knew Johnson was a brute the minute I saw him, and he as good as told me what his captain was. I've only myself to blame for ever shipping on this boat ”

“ A baby needs few tumbles before he realizes that heights are best avoided. Yet, though the wasp born yesterday can to-day design and build its intricate nest, the longest life and the hardest study are not long enough or hard enough to furnish man with self-comprehension. ”

“ It was exactly the query that Dan Stone, M. D.-minus, would have liked to put to Hoagland. However, he answered it easily enough. “Because I'm not really a doctor yet.”
“No diploma?”
“Third year and working my way through. First summer I was a second-rate hotel clerk at a third-rate seaside resort. Last year I was a hospital orderly. Two weeks ago the mate of this boat got in a scrap, and I happened along when he needed some first aid. The Hawk wanted a doctor and asked no questions; I wanted a job and didn't ask any, either. So here I am.” ”

“ Dan Stone set the broken leg of a dog in Brooklyn; that act sent him southward aboard the Hawk.
“That's what she is,” he repeated, “a rum ship.”
He had, in his capacity of acting ship's doctor, just concluded the professional portion of his call on the tramp's only passenger. Seen by daylight, or by so much of it as the cabin permitted to enter. Stone presented a picture of the physically well-proportioned man ”