FROM AN AUTUMN JOURNAL
33
ment was modest but "We'll be on Park Avenue next year," our
young host, in his last year of training, assured us grinning. The
conversation around us, among the young doctors, had
L.
and me
gasping: the names of patients were bandied about with complete
disregard for professional confidence; the dominant attitude of the
group suggested not a serious calling but a merry racket. The last
straw was to discover that one of the guests, accepted like a colleague
by the other young men, was not only not a doctor but not even a
Ph.D. in psychology; yet it was he who had been most authoritatively
discussing a "case," a schizophrenic young woman whom he currently
had in treatment. . . .
November 17
As
a devoted student of the New York taxi-cab system I report
a startling new development. Our taxi drivers, so famous for their
garrulousness and their moral intensity, no longer speak to their pas–
sengers! The change dates from the increase in fares at the end of
the summer and may therefore be explained by some dark effect
this increase in revenue has had on the driver-consciousness. It may
be
they think us riders hostile because we have to pay more, or per–
haps they are reluctant to engage us in conversation lest we interpret
their friendliness as an effort to elicit tips-I understand that tipping
has fallen off considerably since the new rates went into effect. But
this
would imply a delicacy of feeling throughout a whole profession
of which there was no slightest evidence in the past-I think the
explanation must reside elsewhere. Unbelievably, I do not like the
change. I suffer a nagging sense of deprivation.
November 24
Night before last a long conversation, if you can call it that,
with C., just returned from a year in Europe. Though he left Amer–
ica a sensible citizen, mindful of the blessings he had found in this
country, he returns on the verge of hysteria because of the Eisen–
hower victory-convinced, like all his European relatives and friends,
that America is dead set to wage an atomic war and dedicated to
the proposition that, in matters of freedom, there is little to choose
between the United States and the Soviet Union. I of course know
