: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
: The Stark Munro Letters
: Seltzer Books
: 9781455445882
: 1
: CHF 0.10
:
: Erzählende Literatur
: English
: 658
: DRM
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
According to Wikipedia: 'The Stark Munro Letters is a novel by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle first published in 1895 by Longmans, Green& Co. in London, England. As an epistolary novel it takes the form of twelve long letters written by J. Stark Munro between March 1881 and November 1884 and sent to his friend Herbert Swanborough of Lowell, Massachusetts. Stark Munro is a recent graduate from medical school, and the letters detail his attempts to create a medical practice in partnership with the brilliant but unorthodox James Cullingworth. The novel is in fact a thinly-disguised account of Doyle's experiences with George Turnavine Budd with whom he was in partnership, before finally setting up his own practice in Plymouth in 1882.'

Well, good-bye, old chap; this is a stupid inconsequential letter, but life has been more quiet and less interesting just of late.  I may have something a little more moving for my next.

 

 IX.

 

 1 THE PARADE, BRADFIELD, 23rd April, 1882.

 

 I have some recollection, my dear Bertie, that when I wrote you a rambling disconnected sort of letter about three weeks ago, I wound up by saying that I might have something more interesting to tell you next time.  Well, so it has turned out!  The whole game is up here, and I am off upon a fresh line of rails altogether.  Cullingworth is to go one way and I another; and yet I am glad to say that there has not been any quarrel between us.  As usual, I have begun my letter at the end, but I'll work up to it more deliberately now, and let you know exactly how it came about.

 

And first of all, a thousand thanks for your two long letters, which lie before me as I write.  There is little enough personal news in them, but I can quite understand that the quiet happy routine of your life reels off very smoothly from week to week.  On the other hand, you give me plenty of proof of that inner life which is to me so very much more interesting.  After all, we may very well agree to differ.  You think some things are proved which I don't believe in.  You think some things edifying which do not appear to me to be so.  Well, I know that you are perfectly honest in your belief.  I am sure you give me credit for being the same.  The future wilt decide which of us is right.  The survival of the truest is a constant law, I fancy, though it must be acknowledged that it is very slow in action.

 

You make a mistake, however, in assuming that those who think as I do are such a miserable minority.  The whole essence of our thought is independence and individual judgment; so that we don't get welded into single bodies as the churches do, and have no opportunity of testing our own strength.  There are, no doubt, all shades of opinion among us; but if you merely include those who in their private hearts disbelieve the doctrines usually accepted, and think that sectarian churches tend to evil rather than good, I fancy that the figures would be rather surprising.  When I read your letter, I made a list of all those men with whom I ever had intimate talk upon such matters.  I got seventeen names, with four orthodox.  Cullingworth tried and got twelve names, with one orthodox.  From all sides, one hears that every church complains of the absence of men in the congregations.  The women predominate three to one.  Is it that women are more earnest than men?  I think it is quite the other way.  But the men are following their reason, and the women their emotion.  It is the women only who keep orthodoxy alive.

 

No, you mustn't be too sure of that majority of yours.  Taking the scientific, the medical, the professional classes, I question whether it ex