mother's nursing and Clélie's cooking and the skill of Doctor Walter
Westmoreland.

No bill ever came to the Parish House from Dr. Walter Westmoreland,
whom my poor people look upon as a direct act of Providence in their
behalf. He is an enormous man, big and ruddy and baldheaded and
clean-shaven, with the shoulders of a coal-heaver and legs like a pair
of twin oaks. He is rather absent-minded, but he never forgets the
down-and-out Guest Roomers, and he has a genius for remembering the
mill-children. These are his dear and special charge.

Westmoreland is a great doctor who chooses to live in a small town; he
says you can save as many lives in a little town as a big one, and
folks need you more. He is a socialist who looks upon rich people as
being merely poor people with money; an idealist, who will tell you
bluntly that revelations haven't ceased; they've only changed for the
better.

Westmoreland has the courage of a gambler and the heart of a little
child. He likes to lay a huge hand upon my shoulder and tell me to my
teeth that heaven is a habit of heart and hell a condition of liver. I
do not always agree with him; but along with everybody else in
Appleboro, I love him. Of all the many goodnesses that God has shown
me, I do not count it least that this good and kind man was sent in
our need, to heal and befriend the broken and friendless waifs and
strays who found for a little space a resting place in our Guest
Rooms.

And when I look back I know now that not lightly nor fortuitously was
I uprooted from my place and my people and sent hither to impinge upon