David Ives: A Story of St. Timothy's

The suburb in which David Ives lived and in which David’s father had most of his medical practice was by no means one of the wealthy and prosperous suburbs of the wealthy and prosperous city. It was a new and raw-looking region; many of the streets were unpaved, littered and weed-grown; and unfenced lots and two-family tenement houses were alike its characteristics; there were numerous billboards along the sidewalks; the trees were few in number and had grown half-heartedly.

But David, returning from the baseball field on a hot July afternoon, saw nothing depressing in the neighborhood. He walked with his coat flung over his shoulder and his cap in his hand. He had distinguished himself at the bat; he was thirsty and thinking of the cold ginger ale he would drink; he was hungry and thinking of the raspberries he would eat; he was pleasantly tired and thinking of an evening to be passed in comfort and interest over “David Copperfield.” A gust of wind flung dirt and dust into his face and made him wonder why the watering-carts so seldom visited Rosewood,—for such was the misleading name of the suburb,—but the next moment he turned into a more shaded and attractive street and forgot his displeasure in the satisfaction of drawing near his home. He passed the Carters’ bungalow and the Porters’ Queen Anne cottage and the Jennisons’ mansard dwelling, and then he turned up the flagstone walk that led between two narrow bits of lawn to his father’s door.

The house was square and gray and shabby; there was a room thrown out at one end of the wide front porch, and over the door that admitted to this room hung a lantern bearing the words, “Dr. Ives.” The door and the window were both open, and just before passing into the front hall David had a glimpse of his father seated at his desk in a characteristic attitude, with his gray head resting on his hand while an invisible patient recited her symptoms. That the patient was a woman David knew, because he heard the querulous drone of her voice—it was just the drone that he associated with his father’s numerous charity cases.