"Big Dan," the people of the hills had come to call him and "Big Dan"
they called him in the school. For, in the young life of the schools, as
in the country, there is a spirit that names men with names that fit.
Secretly the Doctor had hoped that Dan would choose the profession so
dear to him. What an ideal physician he would make, with that clean,
powerful, well balanced nature; and above all with that love for his
race, and his passion to serve mankind that was the dominant note in his
character. The boy would be the kind of a physician that the old Doctor
had hoped to be. So he planned and dreamed for Dan as he had planned and
dreamed for himself, thinking to see the dreams that he had failed to
live, realized in the boy.
It was a severe shock to the Doctor when that letter came telling him of
Dan's choice of a profession. For the first time the boy had disappointed
him, disappointed him bitterly.
Seizing his fishing tackle the old man fled to the nearest stream. And
there gazing into the deep, still waters, where he had cast his hook, he
came to understand. It was that same dominant note in the boy's life,
that inborn passion to serve, that fixed principle in his character that
his life must be of the greatest possible worth to the world, that had
led him to make his choice. With that instinct born in him, coming from
the influence of the old Shepherd upon his father and mother, the boy
could no more escape it than he could change the color of his brown eyes.
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