184 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 



Any inspector can tell you of dozens and 

 dozens of such occurrences, and it is one of the 

 "sore spots" in the service, no matter where it is. 



Here is another case. A certain inspector had 

 been at one station continually for four or five 

 years, long enough for him to assume that he 

 could look upon it as his permanent abode. He 

 bought a lot and built himself a home. The house 

 was just about completed when he was ordered to 

 report for duty at a station several hundred miles 

 away. This happened to an inspector in Iowa. 



Well, what could he do? 



He could do one of two things ; either move or 

 quit the service. 



And, after a fellow has been in the service for 

 five years, well — he sort of feels queer about 

 tackling practice; he is pretty rusty on every- 

 thing but pathology, and he thinks hard before 

 he quits. And usually, he moves. 



No wonder some of the "old timers" in the 

 service are a narrow, grouchy, sour bunch of fel- 

 lows. The service has made them so. 



Here, for instance, is a poor fellow on post- 

 mortem work in Chicago working from seven in 

 the morning to six in the evening among a mob 

 of foreigners, when his heart is really in Colorado 

 or California. He has filed a request to be 

 transferred to one of those points, and although 

 he hears of some of the boys being moved out 

 there, fellows who probably prefer Chicago, he is 

 kept plugging away here for months and months ; 

 yes, maybe years. 



Enough to make a good fellow grouchy ! 



