The clutch of circumstance Author:James Barnes Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II MISGIVINGS A VERY modest " shingle " had appeared at the entrance to a little two-story brick structure on Main Street. It announced a name, fol... more »lowed by the usual M.D. and, in numerals, the hours of consultation. It had been there just a week. In the goodly sized front office on the second floor Lawrence Kellogg sat in a big leather chair near the wide-open window. On the edge of the desk beside him was a large leather portfolio and pile of uncut magazines; a copy of a medical journal lay open on his knee. His strong fingers were clasped across his chest, and his eyes looked blankly out through the elm branches at the clock tower of the new building on the opposite corner of the square. The strident-voiced bell had struck the hour unheeded. The lengthening shadows were creeping over the grass plot about the Soldiers' Monument, trimmed with its little pyramids of shiny black cannon balls, but he still sat there, breathing deep, long breaths. The retrospect that was apparently so absorbing could hardly have been enjoyable, judging from Kel- logg's expression; and his expressions were generally truth-telling. The fact was that he was looking back at the strange mixture he had made of life. He knewthat the only reason that he had ever accomplished anything—and, by the way, he very much belittled his accomplishments—was because he had never lost belief in his dominant will. He had touched many sides of life—he frankly admitted that he possessed the germs of most human weaknesses—but born in him had been the desire to worship and to serve. The first he had satisfied by a mental obeisance to a somewhat intangible ideal, and the second, increasingly as the years, by seeing the practical results of his work in his profession. It had been here that he most frequent...« less