Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis

January thirtieth, the birthday of the late Dr. Warburton Stonedge, founder of the medical department of Winnemac, was annually celebrated by a banquet rich in fraternalism and speeches and large lack of wine. All the faculty reserved their soundest observations for the event, and all the students were expected to be present.

This year it was held in the large hall of the University Y. M. C. A., a moral apartment with red wall paper, portraits of whiskered alumni who had gone out to be missionaries, and long thin pine boxes intended to resemble exposed oak beams. About the famous guests-Dr. Rouncefield the Chicago surgeon, a diabetes specialist from Omaha, a Pittsburgh internist-stood massed the faculty members. They tried to look festal, but they were worn and nervous after four months of school. They had wrinkles and tired eyes. They were all in business suits, mostly unpressed. They sounded scientific and interested; they used words like phlebarteriectasia and hepatocholangio-enterostomy, and they asked the guests, "So you just been in Rochester? What's, uh, what're Charley and Will doing in orthopedics?" But they were full of hunger and melancholy. It was half-past seven, and they who did not normally dine at seven, dined at six-thirty.