Arrowsmith

Sinclair Lewis

Martin was itching to get his fingers on his test-tubes. He knew, as once he had guessed, that he hated administration and Large Affairs.

As he tramped the deck, his head cleared and he was himself. Angrily he pictured the critics who would soon be pecking at whatever final report he might make. For a time he hated the criticism of his fellow laboratory-grinds as he had hated their competition; he hated the need of forever looking over his shoulder at pursuers. But on a night when he stood at the rail for hours, he admitted that he was afraid of their criticism, and afraid because his experiment had so many loopholes. He hurled overboard all the polemics with which he had protected himself: “Men who never have had the experience of trying, in the midst of an epidemic, to remain calm and keep experimental conditions, do not realize in the security of their laboratories what one has to contend with.”

Constant criticism was good, if only it was not spiteful, jealous, petty –

No, even then it might be good! Some men had to be what easy-going workers called “spiteful.” To them the joyous spite of crushing the almost-good was more natural than creation. Why should a great house-wrecker, who could clear the cumbered ground, be set at trying to lay brick?

“All right!” he rejoiced. “Let ’em come! Maybe I’ll anticipate ’em and publish a roast of my own work. I have got something, from the St. Swithin test, even if I did let things slide for a while. I’ll take my tables to a biometrician. He may rip ’em up. Good! What’s left, I’ll publish.”

He went to bed feeling that he could face the eyes of Gottlieb and Terry, and for the first time in weeks he slept without terror.

Fonte (última frase do segundo parágrafo): Garrett, L. 1995. A próxima peste. RJ, Nova Fronteira. O trecho acima foi extraído do capítulo 36 do livro Arrowsmith (1925).