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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Our Nervous Friends, by Robert S. Carroll
+
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+Title: Our Nervous Friends
+       Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness
+
+Author: Robert S. Carroll
+
+Release Date: June, 2004 [EBook #5994]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on October 9, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS
+Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness
+
+BY
+
+ROBERT S. CARROLL, M.D.
+Medical Director Highland Hospital, Asheville, North Carolina
+
+Author of "The Mastery of Nervousness," "The Soul in Suffering"
+
+NEW YORK
+1919
+
+
+
+HEARTILY--TO THE HOST OF US
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+OUR FRIENDLY NERVES
+Illustrating the Capacity for Nervous Adjustment
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE NEUROTIC
+Illustrating Damaging Nervous Overactivity
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE PRICE OF NERVOUSNESS
+Illustrating Misdirected Nervous Energy
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+WRECKING A GENERATION
+Illustrating "The Enemy at the Gate"
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE NERVOUSLY DAMAGED MOTHER
+Illustrating the Child Wrongly Started
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE MESS OF POTTAGE
+Illustrating Nervous Inferiority Due to Eating-Errors
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE CRIME OF INACTIVITY
+Illustrating the Wreckage of the Pampered Body
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+LEARNING TO EAT
+Illustrating the Potency of Diet
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE MAN WITH THE HOE
+Illustrating the Therapy of Work
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE FINE ART OF PLAY
+Illustrating Re-creation Through Play
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE TANGLED SKEIN
+Illustrating a Tragedy of Thought Selection
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE TROUBLED SEA
+Illustrating Emotional Tyranny
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+WILLING ILLNESS
+Illustrating Willessness and Wilfulness
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+UNTANGLING THE SNARL
+Illustrating the Replacing of Fatalism by Truth
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+FROM FEAR TO FAITH
+Illustrating the Curative Power of Helpful Emotions
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+JUDICIOUS HARDENING
+Illustrating the Compelling of Health
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE SICK SOUL
+Illustrating the Sliding Moral Scale
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE BATTLE WITH SELFIllustrating the Recklessness that Disintegrates
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+THE SUFFERING OF SELF-PITY
+Illustrating a Moral Surrender
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE SLAVE OF CONSCIENCE
+Illustrating Discord with Self
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+CATASTROPHE CREATING CHARACTER
+Illustrating Disciplined Freedom
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+FINDING THE VICTORIOUS SELF
+Illustrating a Medical Conversion
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THE TRIUMPH OF HARMONY
+Illustrating the Power of the Spirit
+
+
+
+
+A REMARK
+
+
+Vividly as abstractions may be presented, they rarely succeed in
+revealing truths with the appealing intensity of living pictures. In
+Our Nervous Friends will be found portrayed, often with photographic
+clearness, a series of lives, with confidences protected, illustrating
+chapter for chapter the more vital principles of the author's The
+Mastery of Nervousness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+OUR FRIENDLY NERVES
+
+
+"Hop up, Dick, love! See how glorious the sun is on the new snow. Now
+isn't that more beautiful than your dreams? And see the birdies! They
+can't find any breakfast. Let's hurry and have our morning wrestle and
+dress and give them some breakie before Anne calls."
+
+The mother is Ethel Baxter Lord. She is thirty-eight, and Dick-boy is
+just five. The mother's face is striking, striking as an example of
+fine chiseling of features, each line standing for sensitiveness, and
+each change revealing refinement of thought. The eyes and hair are
+richly brown. Slender, graceful, perennially neat, she represents the
+mother beautiful, the wife inspiring, the friend beloved. Happily as
+we have seen her start a new day for Dick, did she always add some
+cheer, some fineness of touch, some joy of word, some stimulating
+helpfulness to every greeting, to every occasion.
+
+The home was not pretentious. Thoroughly cozy, with many artistic
+touches within, it snuggled on the heights near Arlington, the close
+neighbor to many of the Nation's best memories, looking out on a noble
+sweep of the fine, old Potomac, with glimpses through the trees of the
+Nation's Capitol, glimpses revealing the best of its beauties. It was
+a home from which emanated an atmosphere of peace and repose which one
+seemed to feel even as one approached. It was a home pervaded with the
+breath of happiness, a home which none entered without benefit.
+
+The husband, Martin Lord, was an expert chemist who had long been in
+the service of the Government. Capable, worthy, manly, he was blest in
+what he was, and in what he had. They had been married eight years,
+and the slipping away of the first child, Margaret, was the only
+sadness which had paused at their door. Mrs. Lord had been Ethel
+Baxter for thirty years. Her father was an intense, high-strung
+business man, an importer, who spent much time in Europe where he died
+of an American-contracted typhoid-fever, when Ethel was ten. Her
+mother was one of a large well-known Maryland family, fair, brown-eyed
+too, and frail; also, by all the rights of inheritance, training and
+development, sensitive and nervous. In her family the precedents of
+blue blood were religiously maintained with so much emphasis on the
+"blue" that no beginning was ever made in training her into a
+protective robustness. So, in spite of elaborate preparation and noted
+New York skill and the highest grade of conscientious nursing, she
+recovered poorly after Ethel's birth. Strength, even such as she
+formerly had, did not return. She didn't want to be an invalid. She
+was devoted to her husband and eager to companion and mother her
+child. The surgeons thought her recovery lay in their skill, and in
+ten years one operated twice, and two others operated once each, but
+for some reason the scalpel's edge did not reach the weakness. Then
+Mr. Baxter died, and all of her physical discomforts seemed
+intensified until, in desperation, the fifth operation was undertaken,
+which was long and severe, and from which she failed to react. So
+Ethel was an orphan at eleven, though not alone, for the good uncle,
+her mother's brother, took her to his home and never failed to respond
+to any impulse through which he felt he could fulfil the fatherhood
+and motherhood which he had assumed. Absolutely devoted, affectionate,
+emotional, he planned impulsively, he gave freely, but he knew not law
+nor order in his own high-keyed life; so neither law nor order entered
+into the training of his ward.
+
+Ethel Baxter's childhood had been remarkably well influenced,
+considering the nervous intensity of both parents. For the mother's
+sake, their winters had been spent in Florida, their summers on Long
+Island. Her mother, in face of the fact that she rarely knew a day of
+physical comfort and for years had not felt the thrill of physical
+strength, most conscientiously gave time, thought and prayer to her
+child's rearing. Hours were devoted to daily lessons, and many habits
+of consideration and refinement, many ideals of beauty, many niceties
+of domestic duty and practically all her studies, were mother-taught.
+Ethel was active, physically restless, impulsive, cheerful, fairly
+intense in her eagerness for an expression of the thrilling activities
+within. She was truly a high-type product of generations of fine
+living, and her blue blood did show from the first in the rapid
+development of keenness of mind and acuteness of feeling. Typically of
+the nervous temperament, she early showed a superb capacity for
+complex adjustments. Yet, with one damaging, and later threatening
+idea, the mother infected the child's mind; the conception of
+invalidism entered into the constructive fabric of the child-thought
+all the more deeply, because there was little of offensively selfish
+invalidism ever displayed by the mother. But many of the concessions
+and considerations instinctively demanded by the nervous sufferer were
+for years matters-of-course in the Baxter home; and these demands,
+almost unconsciously made by the mother, could but modify much of the
+natural expression of her child's young years.
+
+Another damaging attitude-reaction, intense in its expression,
+followed the unexpected death of Ethel's father. The mother, true to
+the ancient and honorable precedents of her family, went into a month
+of helplessness following the sad news. She could not attend the
+funeral, and for weeks the activities of the household were muffled by
+mourning; when she left her room, it was to wear the deepest crepe,
+while a half-inch of deadest black bordered the hundreds of responses
+which she personally sent to notes of condolence. She never spoke
+again of her husband without reference to her bereavement. Then, a
+year later, when the mother herself suddenly went, it seemed to
+devolve on the child to fulfil the mother's teachings. Her uncle's
+attitude, moreover, toward his sister's death was in many ways
+unhappy, for he did not repress expressions of bitterness toward the
+surgeons and condemned the fate which had so early robbed Ethel of
+both parents.
+
+Thus, early and intensely, a morbid attitude toward death, a
+conviction that self-pity was reasonable, normal, wholesome, a belief
+that it was her duty to publicly display intensive evidences of her
+affliction, determined a lasting and potent influence in this girl's
+life which was to alloy her young womanhood--disturbing factors, all,
+which before twelve caused much emotional disequilibrium. She now
+lived with her uncle in New York City and her summers were spent in
+Canada. The sense of fitness was so strong that during the next two
+vitally important, developing years she avoided any physical
+expression of her natural exuberance of spirits; and habits now formed
+which were, for years, to deny her any right use of her muscular self.
+She read much; she read well; she read intensely. She attended a
+private school and long before her time was an accredited young lady.
+Mentally, she matured very early, and with the exception of the
+damaging influences which have been mentioned, she represented a
+superior capacity for feeling and conceiving and accomplishing, even
+as she possessed an equally keen capacity for suffering.
+
+She was most winsome at sixteen, a bit frail and fragile, often spoken
+of as a rare piece of Sevres, beloved with a tenderness which would
+have warped the disposition of one less unselfish; emotionally
+intense, brilliancy and vivacity periodically burst through the habit
+of her reserve. A perfect pupil, and in all fine things literary,
+keenly alive, she had written several short sketches which showed
+imaginative originality and a sympathetic sensitiveness, especially
+toward human suffering. And her uncle was sure that a greater than
+George Eliot had come. There was to be a year abroad, and as the
+doctor and her teacher in English agreed on Italy, there she went. At
+seventeen, during the year in Florence, the inevitable lover came.
+Family traditions, parents, her orphanage, the protective surroundings
+of her uncle's home, her instincts--all had kept her apart. Her
+knowledge of young lovers was but literary, and this particular young
+lover presented a side which soon laid deep hold on her confidence.
+They studied Italian together. He was musical, she was poetic, and he
+gracefully fitted her sonnets to melodies. Finally, it seemed that the
+great Song of Life had brought them together to complete one of its
+harmonies. Her confidence grew to love, the love which seemed to stand
+to her for life. Then the awful suddenness, which had in the past
+marked her sorrows, burst in again. In one heart-breaking, repelling
+half-hour his other self was revealed, and a damaged love was left to
+minister to wretchedness. Here was a hurt denied even the expression
+of mourning stationery or black apparel--a hurt which must be hidden
+and ever crowded back into the bursting within. Immediate catastrophe
+would probably have followed had not, first, the fine pride of her
+fine self, then the demands of her art for expression, stepped in to
+save. She would write. She now knew human nature. She had tasted
+bitterness; and with renewed seriousness she became a severely hard-
+working student. But the wealth of her joy-life slipped away; the
+morbid made itself apparent in every chapter she wrote, while
+intensity became more and more the key-note of thought and effort.
+
+Back at her uncle's home, the uncle who was now even more convinced
+that Ethel had never outlived the shock of the loss of her parents,
+she found that honest study and devotion to her self-imposed tasks,
+and a life of much physical comfort and rarely artistic surroundings,
+were all failing to make living worth while. In fact, things were
+getting into a tangle. She was becoming noticeably restless. Repose
+was so lost that it was only with increasing effort that she could
+avoid attracting the attention of those near. Even in church it would
+seem that some demon of unrest would never be appeased and only could
+be satisfied by constant changing of position. Thoughts of father and
+mother, and the affair in Florence, intensified this spirit of unrest,
+and few conscious minutes passed that unseen stray locks were not
+being replaced. It seemed to be a relief to take off and put on, time
+and again, the ring which had been her mother's. Even her feet seemed
+to rebel at the confinement of shoes, and she became obsessed with the
+impulse to remove them, even in the theater or at the concert. A
+sighing habit developed. It had been growing for years into an air-
+hunger, and finally all physical, and much of mental, effort developed
+a sense of suffocation which demanded short periods of absolute rest.
+Associations were then formed between certain foods and disturbing
+digestive sensations. Tea alone seemed to help, and she became
+dependent upon increasingly numerous cups of this beverage. Knowing
+her history as we do, we can easily see how she had become abnormally
+acute in her responses to the discomforts which are always associated
+with painful emotions, and that emotional distress was interpreted, or
+misinterpreted, as physical disorder. Each year she became more truly
+a sensitive-plant, suffering and keenly alive to every discomfort,
+more and more easily fatigued by the conflicts between emotions, which
+craved expression, and the will, which demanded repression.
+
+Since the days in Florence there had been a growing antagonism to men,
+certainly to all who indicated any suitor-like attitude. In her heart
+she was forsworn. She had loved deeply once. Her idealism said it
+could never come again. But her antagonism, and her idealism, and her
+strength of will all failed to satisfy an inarticulate something which
+locked her in her room for hours of repressed, unexplained sobbing.
+Her writing became exhausting. Talks before her literary class were a
+nightmare of anticipation--for through all, there had never been any
+weakening of the beauty and intensity of her unselfish desire to give
+to the world her best. The dear old uncle watched her with growing
+apprehension. He persuaded her to seek health. It was first a water-
+cure; then a minor, but ineffective operation; then much scientific
+massage; and finally a rest-cure, and at the end no relief that
+lasted, but a recurrence of symptoms which, to the uncle, spoke
+ominously of a threatened mental balance. What truly was wrong? Do we
+not see that this woman's nerves were crying out for help; that, as
+her wisest friends, they were appealing for right ways of living; that
+they were pleading for development of the body that had been only
+half-trained; that they were beseeching a replacing of morbidness of
+feeling by those lost joyous happiness-days? Were they not fairly
+cursing the wrong which had robbed her of the hope and rights of her
+womanhood?
+
+A new life came when she was twenty-eight, with the saving helper who
+heard the cry of the suffering nerves, and interpreted their message.
+She had told him all. His wise kindness made it easy to tell all. He
+showed her the wrong invalidism thoughts, the unhappy, depressing,
+devitalizing attitude toward death. He revealed truths unthought by
+her of manhood and womanhood. He pointed out the poisonous trail of
+her enmity, and she put it from her. He inspired her to make friends
+with her nerves, who were so devotedly striving to save her. Simple,
+definite counsel he gave, for her body's sake. Her physical
+development could never be what early constructive care would have
+made it, but from out of her frailty grew, in less than a year of
+active building-training, a reserve of strength unknown for
+generations in the women of her line. Wholesome advice made her see
+the undermining influence of her morbid, mental habits, and resolutely
+she displaced them with the productive kind that builds character.
+Finally, new wisdom and a truly womanly conception of her duty and
+privilege replaced her antagonism to men, as understanding had
+obliterated enmity. It would seem as though Providence had been only
+waiting these changes, for they had hardly become certainties in her
+life when the real lover came--a man in every way worthy her fineness
+of instinct; one who could understand her literary ambitions and even
+helpfully criticize her work; one who brought wholesome habits of life
+and thought, and who could return cheer for cheer, and whose love
+responded in kind to that which now so wonderfully welled up within
+her.
+
+Her new adjustments were to be deeply tried and their solidity and
+worthiness tested to their center. Little Margaret came to make their
+rare home perfect, and like a choice flower, she thrived in the glow
+of its sunshine. At eighteen months, she was an ideal of babyhood.
+Then the infection from an unknown source, the treacherous scarlatina,
+the days of fierce, losing conflict, and sudden Death again smote
+Ethel Lord. But she now knew and understood. There was deep sadness of
+loss; there was greater joy in having had. There was an emptiness
+where the little life had called forth loving attention; there was a
+fulness of perfect mother-love which could never be taken. There were
+no funeral days, no mourning black, no gruesome burial. There were
+flowers, more tender love, and a beautified sorrow. Death was never
+again to stand to Ethel Lord as irreparable loss, for a great faith
+had made such loss impossible.
+
+And such is the life of this woman, filled with the spirit of beauty
+of soul--a woman who thrills husband and son with the uplift of her
+unremitting joy in living, who inspires uncle and friends as one who
+has mastered the art of a happy life, who holds the devotion of
+neighbors and servants through her unselfish radiation of cheer. Ethel
+Lord has learned truly the infinitely rich possibilities of our nerves
+when we make them our friends.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE NEUROTIC
+
+
+For four heart-breaking years, the strife of a nation at war with
+itself had spread desolation and sorrow broadcast. The fighting ceased
+in April. One mid-June day following, the town folk and those from
+countrysides far and near met on the ample grounds of a bride-to-be.
+Had it not been for the sprinkling of blue uniforms, no thought of war
+could have seemed possible that fair day. The bride's home had been
+a-bustle with weeks of preparation for this hour, and nature was
+rejoicing and the heavens smiling upon the occasion. Sam Clayton, the
+bridegroom, was certainly a "lucky dog." A quiet, unobtrusive son of a
+neighboring farmer, he and Elizabeth had been school-children
+together. Probably the war had lessened her opportunity for choice but
+the night before he left for the front, they were engaged--and her
+family was the best and wealthiest of the county. "Lucky dog" and "war
+romance," the men said. Nevertheless, six weeks ago he had returned
+with his chevrons well-earned, and fifty years of square living later
+proved his unquestioned worth. Elizabeth at twenty, on her bridal day,
+was slender, lithe, fair-skinned; of Scotch-Irish descent, her gray
+eyes bespoke her efficiency--to-day, they spoke her pride, though
+neither to-day nor in years to come were they often softened by love.
+But it was a great wedding, and the eating and dancing and merry-
+making continued late into the night with ample hospitality through
+the morrow for the many who had come far. "Perfectly suited," the
+women said of the young couple.
+
+Sam Clayton had nothing which could be discounted at the bank, but the
+bride was given fifty fertile acres, and they both had industry and
+thrift, ambition and pluck. The fifty acres blossomed--Sam was a good
+farmer, but he proved himself a better trader, and before many years
+was running a small store in town. They soon added other fifty acres--
+one-hundred-and-fifty in fifteen years, and out of debt--then a
+partner with money, and a thriving business. At forty-five it was: Mr.
+Samuel Clayton, President of the Farmers' and Merchants' Bank, rated
+at $150,000. Mrs. Clayton's ability had early been manifest. Before
+her marriage she had taken prizes at the County Fair in crocheting and
+plum-jell. In after years no one pretended to compete with her annual
+exhibit of canned fruits, and the coveted prize to the County's best
+butter-maker was awarded her many successive autumns.
+
+Our real interest in the Claytons must begin twenty-five years after
+the happy wedding. Their town, the county seat, had pushed its limits
+to the skirts of the broad Clayton acres; theirs was now the leading
+family in that section. Mr. Clayton, quiet, active, practical, was
+capable of adjusting himself without disturbance to whatever
+conditions he met. Three children had been born during the early
+years--a girl and two younger boys. The daughter was of the father's
+type--reserved, studious and truly worthy, for during the years that
+were to come, with the man she loved waiting, she remained at home a
+pillar of strength to which her mother clung. She turned from wifehood
+in response to the selfish needs of this mother. She and the older
+brother finished classical courses in the near-by "University," for
+their mother, particularly, believed in education. The brother and
+sister had much in common, were indeed much alike; he, however, soon
+married and moved into the new West and deservingly prospered. Fred,
+the youngest, was different. During his second summer he was very ill
+with cholera infantum--the days came and went--doctors came and went--
+and the wonder was how life clung to the emaciated form. The mother's
+love flamed forth with intensity and the nights without sleep
+multiplied until she, too, looked wan and ill. She did not know how to
+pray. Her parents had been Universalists--she termed herself a
+Moralist; for her, heaven held no God that can hear, no Great Heart
+that cares, no Understanding that notes a mother's agony. The doctors
+offered no hope. The child was starving; no food nor medicine had
+agreed, and the end was near. A neighboring grandmother told how her
+child had been sick the same way, and how she had given him baked
+sweet potato which was the first thing he had digested for days. As
+fate would have it, it was even so with Fred, and he recovered leaving
+his mother devoid of faith in any one calling himself doctor, and
+fanatically devoted to the child she had so nearly lost. From that
+sickness she hovered over him, protecting him from the training she
+gave her other children--the kind she herself had received. His wish
+became her law; he was humored into weakness. He never became robust
+physically, and early showed defects quite unknown in either branch of
+the family. He failed in college, for which failure his mother found
+adequate excuse. He entered the bank, but within a few months his
+peculations would have been discovered had he not confessed to his
+mother, who made the discrepancy good from her private funds. During
+the next few years she found it necessary on repeated occasions to
+draw cheeks on her personal account to save him from trouble--but
+never a word of censure for him, always excuses. He was drinking,
+those days, and gambling. In the near-by state capitol the cards went
+his way one night. Hilarious with success and drink, he started for
+his room. There was a mix-up with his companions. He was left in the
+snow, unconscious--his winnings gone. The wealth of his father and the
+devotion of his mother could not save him, and he went with pneumonia
+a few days later. It was said that this caused her breakdown--let us
+see.
+
+As a girl, Elizabeth had lived in a home of plenty, in a home of local
+aristocracy. She was perfectly trained in all household activities
+and, for that period, had an excellent education, having spent one
+year in a far-away "Female Seminary." Her mind was good, her pride in
+appearance almost excessive. She said she "loved Sam Clayton," and
+probably did, though with none of the devotion she gave her son, nor
+with sufficient trust to share her patrimony which amounted to a small
+fortune with him when it came. In fact, she ran her own business, nor
+relied upon the safety of the "Farmers' and Merchants' Bank" in making
+her deposits. She was a housewife of repute, devoted to every detail
+of housewifery and economics. There was always plenty to eat and of
+the best; perfect order and cleanliness of the immaculate type were
+her pride. Excellent advice she frequently gave her husband about
+finances and management, but otherwise she added no interest to his
+life, and there was peace between husband and wife--because Sam was a
+peaceable man. As a mother, she taught the two older children domestic
+usefulness, with every care; they were always clad in good, clean
+clothes, clad better than the neighbors' children, and education was
+made to take first rank in their minds. Her sense of duty to them was
+strong; she frequently said: "I live and save and slave for my
+children." Fred, as we have seen, was her weakness. For him she broke
+every rule and law of her life.
+
+At forty-five she was thin, her face already deeply seamed with worry
+lines, a veritable slave to her home, but an autocrat to servants,
+agents and merchants. They said her will was strong; at least,
+excepting Fred, she had never been known to give in to any one. We
+have not spoken of Mary. Poor woman! She, too, was a slave--she was
+the hired girl. Meek almost to automatism, a machine which never
+varied from one year's end to another, faithful as the proverbial dog,
+she noiselessly slipped through her unceasing round of duties for
+twenty-three years--then catastrophe. "That fool hired man has
+hoodwinked Mary." No wedding gift, no note of well-wishing, but a
+rabid bundling out of her effects. Howbeit, Central Ohio could not
+produce another Mary, and from then on a new interest was added to the
+Claytons' table-talk as one servant followed another into the Mother's
+bad graces. She was already worn to a feather-edge before Mary's
+ingratitude. But the shock of Fred's death completed the
+demoralization of wrongly lived years. For weeks she railed at a
+society which did not protect its citizens, at a church which failed
+to make men good, while she now recognized a God against whom she
+could express resentment.
+
+This woman endowed with an excellent physical and mental organization
+had allowed her ability and capacity to become perverted. Orderliness,
+at first a well planned daily routine, gradually degenerated into an
+obsession for cleanliness. Each piece of furniture went through its
+weekly polishing, rugs were swept and dusted, sponged and sunned--even
+Mary could not do the table-linen to her taste--and Tuesday afternoon
+through the years went to immaculate ironing. The obsession for
+cleanliness bred a fear of uncleanliness, and for years each dish was
+examined by reflected light, to be condemned by one least streak. The
+milk and butter especially must receive care equaled only by surgical
+asepsis. Then there were the doors. The front door was for company,
+and then only for the elect--and Fred; the side door was for the
+family, and woe to the neighbor's child or the green delivery boy who
+tracked mud through this portal. No amount of foot-wiping could render
+the hired man fit for the kitchen steps after milking time--he used a
+step-ladder to bring up the milk to the back porch. Such intensity of
+attention to detail could not long fail to make this degenerating
+neurotic take note of her own body, which gradually became more and
+more sensitive, till she was fairly distraught between her fear of
+draughts and her mania for ventilation. It was windows up and windows
+down, opening the dampers and closing the dampers, something for her
+shoulders and more fresh air. Church, lecture-halls and theaters
+gradually became impossible. Finally she was practically a prisoner in
+the semiobscurity of her home--a prisoner to bodily sensation. Then
+came the autos to curse. The Clayton home was within a hundred yards
+of the county road, and when the wind was from the west really visible
+dust from passing motors presumed to invade the sanctity of parlor and
+spare rooms, and with kindling resentment windows were closed and
+windows were opened, rooms were dusted and redusted until she hated
+the sound of an auto-horn, until the smell of burning gasoline caused
+her nausea--but each year the autos multiplied.
+
+At last the family realized that her loss of control was becoming
+serious, that she was really a sufferer; but her antagonism to
+physicians was deep-set, so the osteopath was called. Had he been
+given a fair chance, he might have helped, but her obsessions were
+such that she resented the touch of his manipulations, fearing that
+some unknown infection might exude from his palms to her undoing.
+Reason finally became helpless in the grip of her phobias. Her stomach
+lining was "destroyed," and into this "raw stomach" only the rarest of
+foods and those of her own preparation could be taken. She had fainted
+at Fred's funeral, and repeatedly became dazed, practically
+unconscious, at the mention of his name. Self-interests had held her
+attention from girlhood to her wreckage, and from this grew self-
+study, which later degenerated into self-pity. Her converse was of
+food and feelings and self. She bored all she met, for self alone was
+expressed in actions and words.
+
+Father and daughter finally, under the pretext of a trip for her
+health, placed her in a Southern sanitarium. Much was done here for
+her, in the face of her protest. Illustrative of the unreasoning
+intensity with which fear had laid hold upon her was her mortal dread
+of grape-seeds. As she was again being taught to eat rationally,
+grapes were ordered for her morning meal. The nurse noticed that with
+painful care she separated each seed from the pulp, and explained to
+her the value of grape-seeds in her case. She wisely did not argue
+with the nurse, but two mornings later she was discovered ejecting and
+secreting the seeds. The physician then kindly and earnestly appealed
+for her intelligent cooperation. She thereupon admitted that many
+years ago a neighbor's boy had died of appendicitis, which the doctor
+said was caused by a grape-seed. The fallacy of these early-day
+opinions was shown her. Then was illustrated the weakness of her faith
+and the strength of her fear. She produced a draft for one thousand
+dollars, which she said she always carried for unforeseen emergencies,
+and offered it to the doctor to use for charity or as he wished, if he
+would change the order about the grapes. Suffice it to say she learned
+to eat Concords, Catawbas, Tokays and Malagas. She returned home
+better, but was never wholesomely well, and to-day dreads the death
+for which her family wait with unconscious patience.
+
+What is the secret of this miserable old woman's failure to adjust
+herself to the richness which life offered her? A selfish self peers
+out from every act. Even her generosity to Fred was the pleasing of
+self. Given all that she had, what could she not have been!
+Physically, with the advantages of plenty and her country life and the
+promise of her fair girlhood, what attraction could not have been hers
+had kindness and generosity softened her eyes, tinted her cheeks, and
+love-wrinkles come instead of worry-wrinkles.
+
+Her mind was naturally an unusual one. She lived within driving
+distance of one of Ohio's largest colleges--only an hour by train to
+the state capital. Fortune had truly smiled and selected her for
+happiness, but from the first it was self or her family and no further
+thought or plan or consideration.
+
+Elizabeth Clayton was given a nervous system of superb quality, which
+used for the good of those she touched would have hallowed her life;
+misused, she drifts into unlovable old age, a selfish neurotic. She
+could have been a leader in her community, a blessing in her
+generation, a builder of faiths which do not die, but she failed to
+choose the good part which neither loss of servant, death of child nor
+advancing age can take away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE PRICE OF NERVOUSNESS
+
+
+The price we pay for defective nerves is one of mankind's big burdens.
+Humanity reaches its vaunted supremacy, it realizes the heights of
+manhood and womanhood through its power to meet what the day brings,
+to collect the best therefrom and to fit itself profitably to use that
+best for the good of its kind. And these possibilities are all
+dependent on the superb, complicated nervous system. The miracles of
+right and wise living are rooted deep in the nerve-centers. Man's
+nervous system is his adjusting mechanism--his indicator revealing the
+proper methods of reaction. Nothing man will ever make can rival its
+sensitiveness and capacity. But when it is out of order, trouble is
+certain. Excessive, imperfect, inadequate reactions will occur and
+disintegrating forms of response to ourselves and our surroundings
+will certainly become habitual, unless wise and resolute readjustments
+are made. The common failure of the many to find the best, even the
+good in life, is apparent to all--so common indeed, that the search
+for the perfectly adjusted man, physically, mentally, morally
+adjusted, is about as fruitful as Diogenes' daylight excursions with
+his lantern. The physical, mental and moral are intricately related
+even as the primary colors in the rainbow. Our nerves enter intimately
+into every feeling, thought, act of life, into every function of our
+bodies, into every aspiration of our souls. They determine our
+digestion and our destinies; they may even influence the destinies of
+others. Let us turn a few pages of a life and see the cost of
+defective nervous-living.
+
+The Pullman was crowded; every berth had been sold; the train was
+loaded with holiday travelers, and the ever interesting bridal couple
+had the drawing-room. The aisle was cluttered with valises and
+suitcases; the porter was feverishly making down a berth; while
+bolstered on a pile of pillows, surrounded by a number of anxious
+faces, lay the sick woman, the source of the commotion and the
+anxiety. Sobs followed groans, and exclamations followed sobs--
+apparently only an intense effort of self-control kept her from
+screaming. She held her head. Periodically, it seemed to relieve her
+to tear at her hair. She held her breath, she clutched her throat, she
+covered her eyes as though she would shut out every glimpse of life.
+She convulsively pressed her heart to keep it from bursting through;
+she clasped and wrung her hands, and now and then would crowd her
+forearm between her teeth to shut in her pent-up anguish. She would
+have thrown herself from the seat but for the unobtrusive little man
+who knelt in front to keep her from falling, and gently held her on as
+she spasmodically writhed. His plain, unromantic face showed deep
+anxiety, not unmixed with fear. He was eagerly assisted by the dear
+old lady who sat in front. Hers was mother-heart clear through; her
+satchel had been disturbed to the depths in her search for remedies
+long faithful in alleviating ministration; her camphor bottle lay on
+the floor, impulsively struck from her kind hand by the convulsed
+woman. The sweet-faced college girl who sat opposite had just finished
+a year in physiology and this was her first opportunity to use her new
+knowledge. "Loosen her collar and lower her head and let her have more
+air," she advised. "Yes," said the little man, "I'm her husband you
+see, and am a doctor. I've seen her this way before and those things
+don't help."
+
+The drummer, who had the upper berth, had retreated at the first sign
+of trouble to the safety of the smoking-room, and was apparently
+trying more completely to hide himself in clouds of obscuring cigar
+smoke. The passengers were all cowed into attentive quietude; the
+sympathetic had offered their help, while the others found
+satisfaction for their aloofness in agreement with the sophisticated
+porter, who, after he had assisted in safely depositing the writhing
+woman behind the green curtains and had been rather roughly treated by
+her protesting heels, shrewdly opined to the smoking-room refugees
+that "That woman sho has one case o' high-strikes." The berth,
+however, proved no panacea--she was "suffocating," she must get out of
+the smoke and dust, she must get away from "those people" or she would
+stifle, and to the other symptoms were added paroxysms of coughing and
+gasping which sent shivers through the whole car of her sympathizers.
+Her husband explained that she was just out of a hospital, which they
+had left unexpectedly for home, that she never could sleep in a berth,
+and if they could only get the drawing-room so he could be alone with
+her he thought he could get her to sleep, but he did not know what the
+consequences would be if she did not get quiet. The Pullman conductor
+was strong for quiet, and he and the sweet-faced college girl and the
+dear old lady formed a committee who waited on the young bride and
+groom. It was hard, mighty hard, even in the bliss of their happiness,
+to give up the drawing-room for a lower. Had not that drawing-room
+stood out as one of their precious dreams during the last year, as,
+step by step, they had planned in anticipation of that short bridal
+week! But the sacrifice was made, the transfers effected, and out of
+the quiet which followed, emerged order and the cheer normal to
+holiday travelers. A number were gratified by the sense of their well-
+doing, they had gone their limit to help; others were equally
+comfortable in their satisfied sense of shrewdness, they agreed with
+the porter--they had sized her up and not been "taken in."
+
+Mrs. Platt had been Lena Dalton. She was born in Galveston forty-five
+years before. Her father was a cattle-buyer, rough, dissipated, always
+indulgent to himself and, when mellow with drink, lavishly indulgent
+to the family. He never crossed Lena; even when sober and irritable to
+the rest, she had her way with him. The high point in his moral life
+was reached when she was seven. For three weeks she was desperately
+ill. A noted revivalist was filling a large tent twice a day; the
+father attended. He promised himself to join the church if Lena did
+not die--she got well, so there was no need. She remained his
+favorite. "Drunk man's luck" forgot him several years later when his
+pony fell and rolled on him, breaking more ribs than could be mended.
+He left some insurance, two daughters, and a very efficient widow.
+Mrs. Dalton had held her own with her husband, even when he was at his
+worst. She was strong of body and mind, practical, probably somewhat
+hard, certainly with no sympathy for folderols. Her common-school
+education, in the country, had not opened many vistas in theories and
+ideals, but she lived her narrow life well, doing as she would be done
+by--which was not asking much, nor giving much--caring for herself
+without fear or favor till she died, as she wished, at night alone,
+when she was eighty. She possessed qualities which with the help of a
+normal husband would have been a wholesome heritage to the children;
+but it was a home of double standards, certainly so in the training of
+Lena, who had never failed, when her father was home, to get the
+things her mother had denied her in his absence. She was thirteen when
+he died; at fifteen then followed her two most normal years. The
+accident occurred which, was to prove fateful for her life, and
+through hers, for others.
+
+Lena was a good roller-skater, but was upset one night, at the rink,
+by an awkward novice and fell sharply on the back of her head. She was
+taken home unconscious and was afterward delirious, not being herself
+until noon the next day, when she found beside her an anxious mother
+who for several days continued ministering to her daughter's every
+wish. Three months later she set her heart on a certain dress in a
+near-by shop window; her mother said it was too old for her, and cost
+too much. Day after day passed and the dress remained there, more to
+be desired each time she saw it. The Sunday-school picnic was only a
+week off. She made another appeal at the supper table; her sister
+unwisely interjected a sympathetic "too bad." The emphasis of the
+mother's "No" sounded like a "settler," but just then things went dark
+for Lena. She grasped her head and apparently was about to fall--her
+face twitched and her body jerked convulsively. The mother lost her
+nerve, and feeling that her harshness had brought back the "brain
+symptoms" which followed the skating accident, spent the night in
+ministrations--and hanging at the foot of Lena's bed, when she was
+herself next morning, was the coveted dress. To those who know, the
+mental processes were simple; strong desire, an implacable mother,
+save when touched by maternal fear, the association in the girl's mind
+of a relationship between her accident and her mother's compliance, a
+remoter association of her illness at seven with her father's years of
+free giving. What was to restrain her jerkings and twitchings and
+meanings? Many of these reactions were taking place in the semi-
+mysterious laboratory of her subconscious self; but it was the
+beginning of a life of periodic outbreaks through which she had
+practically never failed to secure what she desired. To the end of her
+good mother's life, Lena remained the only one who could change her
+"no" to "yes."
+
+The elder sister was a more normal girl. She studied stenography and
+soon married a promising young man. They had two children. He made a
+trip down the coast and died of yellow fever. The wife was much
+depressed and spent a bad year and most of the insurance money,
+getting adjusted. Then the Galveston storm with its harvest of death
+and miraculous escapes--the mother was taken, the two children left.
+Meanwhile Lena had finished high school, had taken a year in the
+Normal and secured a community school to teach, near Houston. She was
+now eighteen, her face was interesting, some of the features were
+fine. Her bluish-gray eyes could be particularly appealing; there was
+much mobility of expression; a wealth of slightly curling, light-
+chestnut hair was always stylishly arranged; in fact, her whole make-
+up caused the young fellows to speak of her as the "cityfied school-
+marm." Then came the merchant's son and all was going well, so well
+that they both pledged their love and plighted their troth. The
+temporary distraction of her lover's attention, deflected by the
+visiting brunette in silks, an inadvertently broken appointment (the
+train was late and he could not help it), and the first attack of the
+"jerks" among strangers is recorded. They hastily summoned old Jake
+Platt's son, just fresh from medical college, who, helpless with this
+suffering bit of femininity, supplied in attention and practical
+nursing what he lacked in medical discernment and skill, to the end
+that one engagement was broken and another formed in a fortnight. Old
+Jake had some money; the young doctor was starting in well, and needed
+a wife; she was still jealous, and young Dr. Platt got a wife, who
+molded his future as the modeler does his clay.
+
+Within the first month the bride had another attack. They had planned
+a trip to Houston to do some shopping and to attend the theater. The
+doctor-husband was delayed on a case and found his young bride in the
+throes of another nervous storm when he reached home, nor did the
+symptoms entirely abate until he had promised her that he would always
+come at once, no matter what other duties he might have, when she
+needed him. By this promise he handicapped his future success as a
+physician and did all that devoted ignorance could do to make certain
+a periodic repetition of the convulsive seizures. This was but the
+first of a series of concessions which involved his professional,
+social and financial future, which her "infirmity" exacted of him as
+the years passed. Later old Jake died and the doctor's share of his
+big farms was an opportune help. But Mrs. Platt had a certain far-
+reaching ambition; therefore, they soon moved to Houston. He would
+have done well where he started; his education, his medical equipment,
+his personality were certain to limit his progress in a city. The
+doctor's wife was superficially bright, capable of adapting herself
+with distinct charm to those she admired. She formed intense likes and
+dislikes--while often impulsively kind-hearted, she could cling to
+vindictive abuse for months. Here was a woman who proved very useful
+on church committees, in societies, in Sunday-school, who worked
+effectively in the Civic Club. She sang fairly well naturally, of
+course "adored music" and was an efficient enthusiastic worker when
+interested. But Lena Platt was never able to work when not interested.
+Periodically her "fearful nervous spells" would interfere with all
+duties. The doctor was absolutely subsidized. Had any other
+attractions appealed to him, his wife's early evidences of implacable
+jealousy would have proven a sure antidote. He was an unconscious
+slave. Her nervousness expressed itself toward him in other terms than
+convulsively. She had a tongue which from time to time blistered the
+poor man. He would never talk back, fearful as he ever was of bringing
+on one of those storms which, in his inadequate medical knowledge,
+were as mysterious and ominous as epileptic attacks.
+
+For years the absence of children in the home was a sorrow from which
+much affecting sentimentality evolved, being as well the pathetic
+cause for days of sickness, when outside interests were less
+attractive to this artful sufferer than the attentions elicited by her
+illness. Then out of the great gulf surged the heroic Galveston
+tragedy, and the two orphan children came to fill the idealized want.
+At first they received an abundance of impulsive loving, but unhappily
+one day, a few months after they came, the foster-mother overheard the
+elder girl make an unfavorable comparison between her and the real
+mother; and for years distinctions were made--the younger being always
+favored, the unfortunate, older child living half-terrorized, never
+knowing when angry, unfair words would assail her.
+
+Lena Platt had confided to several of her bosom friends the tragedy of
+her unequal marriage and that she knew she would yet find a "soul
+mate." There was a Choral Society in Houston one winter, and following
+a few gratuitous compliments from the dapper young director, she
+decided she had found it. He left in the spring and this dream faded.
+A few months later the new minister's incautious exaggeration that "he
+didn't know how he could run the church without her" came near
+resulting in trouble, for some of the good sisters unkindly questioned
+the quality of her sudden excessive devotion and religious zeal. Mrs.
+Platt was not vicious, but she craved excitement; hers was a life of
+constantly forming new plans. Attention from any source was sweet and
+from those of prominence it was nectar. Things were pretty bad in the
+doctor's home after the preacher episode, and she was finally
+persuaded to let her husband call in another physician. He was very
+nice to her, and while he never pretended to understand her case, his
+medicine and advice benefited her tremendously and she went nearly a
+year without a bad attack. Her visits to his office and her
+conscienceless use of his time were finally brought to a sudden close
+when one day he deliberately called other patients in, leaving her
+unnoticed in the waiting-room. Bad times again, then other new
+doctors, other periods of immunity from attacks, with exaggerated
+devotion to each new helper until she had made the rounds of the
+desirable, professional talent of Houston.
+
+Meanwhile, impulsive extravagance had sadly reduced the Platt
+inheritance, so when an acquaintance returned from St. Louis nervously
+recreated by a specialist there, the poor doctor had to borrow on his
+insurance to make it possible for her to have the benefit of this
+noted physician's skill. The trip North meant sacrifice for the entire
+family. Apparently she wished to be cured, and the treatment began
+most auspiciously. After careful, expert investigation, assurance had
+been given that if she would do her part, she could be made well in
+six months. Her husband told the physician that he hoped he would
+"look in on her often, for she will do anything on earth for one she
+likes." The treatment was thorough-going; it began at the beginning,
+and during the early weeks she was enthusiastically satisfied with the
+skill of her treatment and the care of her special nurse, in whom she
+found another "bosom friend," to whom she confided all. Her devotion
+for the new doctor grew by leaps. Mistaking his kindness and thinking
+perchance she might extract more beneficent sympathy by physical
+methods, she impulsively threw herself into where-his-arms-would-have-
+been had he not side-stepped. Her position physically and
+sentimentally was awkward; the doctor called the nurse and left her.
+Later he returned and did his best to appeal to her womanhood; he
+analyzed her illness and showed her some of the damage it had wrought
+both in her character and to others. He showed her the demoralization
+which had grown out of her wretched surrender to impulsive desire. He
+revealed to her the necessity for the effacement of much of her false
+self and the true spiritualizing of her mind as the only road to
+wholesome living. That same day Dr. Platt received a telegram
+peremptorily demanding that he come for her. Upon his arrival he had a
+short talk with the specialist who succinctly told him the problem as
+he saw it. For a few minutes, and for a few minutes only, was his
+faith in the helpless reality of his wife's sickness shaken; but faith
+and pity and indignation were united as she told of her mistreatment
+and how she had been outraged and her whole character questioned by
+that "brutal doctor," who talked to her as no one had ever dared
+before. She was going home on the first train and going home we found
+her, having another attack in the Pullman. A collapse, her husband
+told himself, from over-exertion and the result of her wounded
+womanhood. "A plain case o' high-strikes" was the porter's diagnosis;
+a sickness sufficiently adequate to have the sweet incense of much
+public attention poured upon her wounded spirit--and to secure the
+coveted drawing-room!
+
+On her way home! She had spurned her one chance to be scientifically
+taught the woefully needed lessons of right living-on her way to the
+home which had become more and more chaotic with the passing of the
+years and the dwindling of their means.
+
+Who can count the price this woman has paid for her nervousness? At
+fifty, with a scrawny, under-nourished body, the wrinkled remnants of
+beauty, she suffers actual weakness and distress. Quick prostration
+follows all effort, excepting when she is fired by excitement. All
+ability to reason in the face of desire is gone; she is dominated by
+emotions which become each year more unattractive; even the air-
+castles are tumbled into ruins. Her husband is a slave--used as a
+convenience. Her waning best is for those who attract her, her growing
+worst for those who offend. One child's life is maimed by indulgence,
+the other's by injustice. She has reached that moral depravity which
+fails to recognize and accept any truth which is opposed to her
+wishes. As she looks back over the vista of years, filled with many
+activities, no monument of wholesome constructiveness remains; she has
+blighted what she touched. Lena Platt, a wilful, spoiled, selfish
+hysteric!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+WRECKING A GENERATION
+
+
+The afternoon's heat was intense; it was reflecting in shimmering
+waves from everything motionless, this breathless September day in
+Donaldsville, Texas. Main Street is a half-mile long, unpainted "box-
+houses" fringe either end and cluster unkemptly to the west, forming
+the "city's" thickly populated "darky town." Near the station stands
+the new three-story brick hotel, the pride of the metropolis. Not even
+the Court House at the county seat is as imposing. Main Street is
+flanked by parallel rows of one and two story, brick store-buildings,
+from the fronts of which, and covering the wide, board-sidewalks,
+extend permanent, wooden awnings; these are bordered by long racks
+used for the ponies and mules of the Saturday crowds of "bottom
+niggers" and "post oak farmers." The higher ground east of Main Street
+is preempted by the comfortable residences of Donaldsville proper and
+culminates in Quality Hill, where the two bankers and a select group
+of wealthy bottom-planters lived in aristocratic supremacy. On this
+particular afternoon, the town's only business street was about
+deserted. On its shady side were hitched a few Texas ponies whose
+drooping heads and wilted ears bespoke the heat--so hot it was that
+the flies, even, did not molest them. Scattered groups of lounging,
+idle men indicated the enervating influence of the sizzling 108
+degrees in the shade.
+
+But Donaldsville was not dead--perspiring certainly, but still
+possessing one lively evidence of animation. From time to time peals
+of boisterous laughter, boisterous but refreshing as the breath of a
+breeze, a congenial, almost contagious laughter would roll up and down
+Main Street even to its box-house fringes. Each peal would call forth
+from some dusky denizen of the suburbs the proud recognition: "Dar's
+Doctor Jim laughin' some mo'." Doctor Jim's laughter was one of
+Donaldsville's attractive features. His friends living a mile away
+claimed they often heard it--and everybody was Doctor Jim's friend. No
+more genial, generous gentleman of the early post-bellum Texas South
+could be found. His was an unfathomed well of good nature, good humor
+and good stories. He knew all comers whether he had met them before or
+not. For him, it was never "Stranger," it was always "Friend."
+
+Let us take his proffered hand and feel the heartiness of its
+greeting, feel its friendly shake, even to our shoe-soles. His good
+humor beams from his deep-blue eyes; his shock of gray hair, which
+knows no comb but his fingers, is pushed back from a brow which might
+have been a scholar's, were it not so florid. A soft, white linen
+shirt rolls deeply open, exposing a grizzled expanse of powerful
+chest. Roomy, baggy, spotless, linen trousers do homage to the heat,
+as does his broad, palm-fiber hat, used chiefly as a fan. Doctor Jim
+McDonald, six feet in his socks, weighing 180 pounds, erect and manly
+in bearing in spite of his negligee, is a remarkable specimen of
+physical manhood at sixty-five. Even with the Saturday afternoon
+crowds of the cotton-picking season, Main Street seems deserted if his
+resounding laughter is not heard; but it takes something as serious as
+a funeral to keep him away from his accustomed bench in front of
+Doctor Will's drug-store, centrally located on the shady side of the
+street. Doctor Will is Doctor Jim's brother, and is, according to the
+negroes, a "sho-nuff" doctor.
+
+Doctor Jim's life is comfortably monotonous. He had put up the first
+windmill in the region roundabout and his was the first real bath-tub
+in the county, and long before Donaldsville thought of water-works,
+Doctor Jim's windmill was keeping the big cistern on stilts filled
+from his deep artesian well. He started each day with a stimulating
+plunge in his big tub, and never tired proclaiming that with this and
+enough good whiskey he would live to be a hundred--and then Main
+Street would stop and listen to the generous reverberations of his
+deep-chested laugh. Three good meals, the best old Aunt Sue could cook
+and Aunt Sue came from Mississippi with them after the war--were eaten
+with an unflagging relish by this man whose digestion had never
+discovered itself. Two mornings a week Doctor Jim drove leisurely out
+to his big Trinity River plantation, a two-thousand-acre plantation,
+where he was the beloved overlord of sixty negro families. This rich,
+river-bottom farm, when cotton was at a good price, brought in so much
+that Doctor Jim, with another of his big laughs, would say he was
+"mighty lucky in having those rascally twins to throw some of it
+away." One night a week he could always be found at the Lodge, and
+once a day he covered each way the half-mile separating his generous,
+rambling home on Quality Hill and Doctor Will's office. His only real
+recreation was funerals. He would desert his shady seat and drive
+miles to help lay away friend or foe--if foes he had. On such
+occasions only, would he pass the threshold of a church. He
+contributed generously to each of the town's five denominations and
+showed considerable restraint in the presence of the cloth in his
+choice of reminiscences, but it was always the occasion of a good-
+natured uproar for him to proclaim, "The Missus has enough religion
+for us both." Still the silence of his charity could have said truly
+that his donation had constructed one-fifth of each church-building in
+the town; in fact, it was his pride to double the Biblical one-tenth
+in his giving.
+
+Of his open-heartedness Doctor Jim rarely spoke but another pride was
+his, to which he allowed no day to pass without some hilariously
+expressed reference. He was proud of his whiskey-drinking. One quart
+of Kentucky's best Bourbon from sun to sun, decade after decade! "I
+have drunk enough whiskey to float a ship--and some ship too. Look at
+me! Where will you find a healthier man at sixty-five? I haven't known
+a sick minute since the war. If you drink whiskey right, with plenty
+of water and plenty of eatin', it won't hurt anybody." This was the
+law and the gospel to Doctor Jim; he never failed to proclaim it to
+pale-faced youths or ailing mankind; and the Book of Judgment, alone,
+will reveal the harvest of destruction which Time reaped through
+Doctor Jim's influence in L---County. Yet, oddly, it was Doctor Jim's
+principle and practice never to treat. He claimed he had never offered
+a living soul a social drink.
+
+"Drink whiskey right and it won't hurt anybody!" Did it hurt?
+
+Doctor Jim and his two brothers spent their early life on a plantation
+in Mississippi. The father wanted the boys to be educated. Two of them
+took medical courses in New Orleans. Doctor Jim wished to see more of
+the world, and literally did see much of it on a two-year cruise
+around the Horn to the East Indies and China. He was thirty-five years
+old in '60 when he married. Then he served as surgeon--"mighty poor
+surgeon" he used to say, for a Mississippi regiment throughout the
+four years of the Civil War. He and his two brothers passed through
+this conflict and returned home to find their father dead, the negroes
+scattered and the old plantation devastated. The three with their
+families journeyed to Texas--the then Land of Promise! At twenty-five
+cents an acre they bought river-bottom lands which are to-day
+priceless, and the losses of the past were soon forgotten in the rapid
+prosperity of the following years.
+
+Mrs. McDonald represented all that high type of character which the
+dark years of the war brought out in so many instances of Southern
+womanhood. Patient, hopeful, uncomplaining she lived through the four
+years of war-time separation, left her own people and journeyed to the
+Southwest to begin life anew. She was particularly robust of physique,
+domestic in a high sense, gentle and deeply kind. She passed through
+hardship, privation and prosperity practically not knowing sickness.
+Her children could not have had better mother-stock, and the scant
+days were in the past, so they never knew the lack of plenty. There
+were eight, from Edith, born in 1870, to Frank, in 1885, including the
+twins.
+
+Did whiskey-drinking hurt?
+
+Edith grew into a slender, retiring girl, her paleness accentuated by
+her black hair. She was quiet, read much, and took little interest in
+out-of-door activities, entering into the play-life of the other
+children but rarely. Her father insisted, later, on her riding, and
+she became a fair horsewoman. She was refined in all her relations.
+Edith went to New Orleans at seventeen. The spring after, she
+developed a hacking cough and had one or two slight hemorrhages, but
+at twenty was better and married an excellent young merchant. The
+child was born when she was twenty-two; three weeks later the mother
+died, leaving a pitiable, scrofulous baby, which medical and nursing
+skill kept lingering eighteen months.
+
+The first boy was named James, Jr., as we should expect, and, as we
+should not expect, was never called "Jim." But James was not right. He
+developed slowly, did not walk till over three, was talking poorly at
+five; he was subject to convulsions and destructive outbreaks; he was
+uncertain and clumsy in his movements, so provision was made that he
+might always have some one with him. But even in the face of this
+care, he stumbled and fell into the laundry-pot with its boiling
+family-wash, was badly scalded and seriously blinded. James mercifully
+died two years later in one of his convulsions.
+
+Mabel was the flower of the family. Through her girlhood she was
+lovable in every way, and beloved. She was blond like her father,
+though not as robust as either father or mother, and in ideals and
+character was truly the latter's daughter. She finished in a finishing
+school, had musical ability and charm, and soon married and made a
+happy home--an unusual home, until the birth of the first child. Since
+then it has been a fight for health, with the pall of her family's
+history smothering each rekindling hope. Operations and sanatoria,
+health-resorts and specialists have not restored, and she lives, a
+neurasthenic mother of two neurotic children. Happiness has long fled
+the home where it so loved to bide those early days, before the strain
+and stress of maternity had drained the mother's poor reserve of
+vitality.
+
+The history of Will and John, named for the two uncles, would prove
+racy reading through many chapters. "The Twins" were the father's text
+for spicy stories galore many years before their death. From the
+first, they were "two young sinners." They both had active minds--
+overactive in devising deviltry. Mischievous as little fellows, never
+punished, practically never corrected by their father, humored by
+sisters, house-servants, and the plantation-hands, feared and admired
+by other boys, they seemed proof against any helpful influence from
+the earnest, pained, prayerful mother. As boys of ten, they had become
+"town talk" and were held responsible for all pranks and practical
+jokes perpetrated in Donaldsville or thereabout, unless other guilty
+ones were captured red-handed. Multiply your conception of a "bad boy"
+by two and you will have Will at twelve; repeat the process and you
+will have John. They possessed one quality--dare we call it virtue?--
+which kept them dear to Doctor Jim's heart through their very worst.
+They never lied to him, no matter what their misdeeds. They could lie
+as veritable troopers, but from him the truth in its rankest boldness
+was never withheld. As the years passed, they made many and deep
+excursions into the old doctor's pocket. But he paid the bills
+cheerfully and sent his reverberating laugh chasing the speedy
+dollars, as soon as he got with some of his Main Street cronies. The
+boys planned and worked together, protecting each other most cleverly.
+Still they were expelled from every school they attended after they
+were thirteen. A military academy noted for its ability to handle hard
+cases found them quite too mature in their wild ways, and sent them
+home. They may, for reasons best known to themselves, have been
+"square with the old man," but they were a pair of thoroughgoing
+toughs by twenty, not only fast but cruel, even brutal, in their evil-
+doing.
+
+Will was the first to show the strain of the pace. When twenty-two,
+the warning cough sobered him a bit, and in John's faithful and
+congenial company, he went first to Denver, then to New Mexico.
+Doctors' orders were irksome, whiskey and cards the only available
+recreation for the boys, and so they tried to follow their father's
+example in developing a powerful physique on Kentucky Bourbon
+("best"). John suddenly quit drinking. "Acute nephritis" was on the
+shipping paster. Delirium tremens was the truth. Will was too frail to
+accompany his brother's remains home. He was pretty lonely and
+anxious, and miserable without John, but for several weeks behaved
+quite to the doctor's satisfaction. It didn't last long, and within
+the year tuberculosis and Bourbon laid him beside his brother.
+
+May was a promising girl, "almost a hoiden," the neighbors said. She
+rode the ponies bareback; she played boys' games, and at twelve looked
+as though the problem of health could never complicate her glad, young
+life. But cough and hemorrhage, twin specters, stalked in at sixteen
+and the poor child fairly melted away and was gone in a year.
+
+Annabel, the youngest girl, was a quiet child and thoughtful. Some
+called her dull, but rather, it seems, she early sensed her fate. When
+but a child she was sent to "San Antone" and operated on by a throat
+specialist. After May's death she went to the mountains each summer
+and spent two winters in South Texas. But she grew more and more thin,
+and in the end it was tuberculosis.
+
+Frank, the last child, was different from all the others. He seemed
+bright of mind and active of body. He attended school as had none of
+the other boys; he even went to Sunday-school. Physically and
+mentally, he gave promise of prolonging the family line--but he proved
+his father's only admitted regret. He lied and he stole. The money
+which his father would have given him freely he preferred to get by
+cunning. Doctor Jim could not tolerate what he called dishonesty, and
+from time to time they would have words and Frank would be gone for
+months. His cleverness made him a fairly successful gambler; that he
+played the game "crooked" is probably evidenced by his being shot in a
+gambling-joint before he was thirty.
+
+We have thus scanned the-wreckage of a generation bred in alcohol.
+Children they were of unusual physical and mental parentage, parents
+who never knowingly offended their consciences, children reared in
+most healthful surroundings with every comfort and opportunity for
+normal development. Four of them showed their physical inferiority
+through the early infection and unusually poor resistance to
+tuberculosis; one was born an imbecile; one died directly from the
+effects of drink; the only girl who survived early maturity, the best
+of them all, spent twenty years a nervous sufferer, mothering two
+nervously defective children; the physically best was the morally
+worst and died a criminal.
+
+Doctor Jim lived on with his habits unchanged, his laugh, only, losing
+something in volume and more in infectiousness. Still proud of his
+health he preached the gospel of good whiskey well drunk, never
+sensing his part in the tragedy of his own fireside. He was nearly
+eighty when the stroke came which bereft him of any possibility of
+understanding, or of knowing remorse. He had laid his wife away some
+years previously and for months he lingered on paralyzed, demented, in
+the big, empty house, cared for by an old negro couple, hardly
+recognizing Mabel when she came twice a year, but never forgetting
+that, "Whiskey won't hurt anybody."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE NERVOUSLY DAMAGED MOTHER
+
+
+His name is not Lawrence Adams Abbott. The surname really is that of
+one of America's first families. He, himself, is among the few living
+of a third generation of large wealth.
+
+It was an early-summer afternoon and Dr. Abbott--for he was a graduate
+of Cornell Medical--was standing at one of the train gates of the
+Grand Central Station in New York. As he waits apart from the small
+crowd assembled to welcome, he attracts observing attention. His face
+appears thirty; he is thirty-six. The features are finely cut, the
+chin is especially good. The eyes are blue-gray, and a slight pallor
+probably adds to his apparent distinction. His attitude is languid,
+the handling of his cane gracefully indolent, the almost habitual
+twisting of his chestnut-brown mustache attractively self-satisfied.
+His clothing is handsome, of distinctive materials, and tailored to
+the day. So much for an observing estimate. The critical observer
+would note more. He would detect a sluggishness in the responses of
+the pupils, as the eyes listlessly travel from face to face, producing
+an effect of haunting dulness. Mumbling movements of the lips, a
+slightly incoordinate swaying of the body, might speak for short
+periods of more than absent-mindedness.
+
+But the gates open and after the eager, intense meetings, and the more
+matter-of-fact assumption of babies and bundles, the red-capped
+porters, with their lucky burdens of fashionable traveling-cases,
+pilot or follow the sirs and mesdames of fortune. Among these is one
+whose handsome face is mellowed by softening, early-gray hair, and
+whose perfect attire and tenderness in greeting our doctor at once
+associate mother and son. She has just come down the Hudson on one of
+the few seriously difficult errands of her fifty-six years.
+
+Two weeks have passed. The room is stark bare, save for two
+mattresses, a heap of disheveled bed clothes, and two men. The hours
+are small and the dim, guarded light, intended to soften, probably
+intensifies the weirdness of the picture. The suspiciously plain
+woodwork is enameled in a dull monochrome. The windows are guarded
+with protecting screens. One man, an attendant, lies orderly on his
+pallet; the other, a slender figure in pajamas, crouches in a corner.
+His hair is bestraggled; his face is livid; his pupils, widely
+dilated; his dry lips part now and then as he mutters and mumbles
+inarticulately or chuckles inanely. Now starting, again abstracted, he
+is capable of responding for a moment only, as the attendant offers
+him his nourishment. A few seconds later he is groaning and twisting,
+obviously in pain, pain which is forgotten as quickly, as he reaches
+here and there for imaginary, flying, floating things. Real sleep has
+not closed his eyes for now nearly three nights. He is delirious in an
+artificial, merciful semi-stupor, which is saving him the untold
+sufferings of morphine denial. Before this unhappy Dr. Abbott stretch
+long, wearisome weeks of readjustment, weeks of physical pain and
+mental discomfort, weeks, let us hope, of soul-prodding remorse. His
+only chance for a future worth spending lies in months of physical
+reeducation, of teaching his femininely soft body the hardness which
+stands for manliness; for him must be multiplied days of mental
+reorganization to change the will of a weakling into saving
+masterfulness; nor will these suffice unless, in the white heat of a
+moral revelation, the false tinsel woven into the fabric of his
+character be consumed. For months he must deny himself the luxuries,
+even many of the comforts, his mother's wealth is eager to give. Yet
+these weeks and months of development may never be, for in a short
+time he will again be legally accountable, and probably will resent
+and refuse constructive discipline, and return to a satin-upholstered
+life--his cigarettes, his wine-dinners, his liquors, and his "rotten
+feeling" mornings after--then to his morphin and to his certain
+degradation. And why should this be? Time must turn back the hands on
+her dial thirty-three years that we may know.
+
+The fine Abbott home was surrounded by a small suburban estate near
+Philadelphia, a generation ago; we have met the then young mistress of
+the mansion, at the Grand Central Station. It was a home of richness,
+a home of discriminating wealth, a home of artistic beauty; it was a
+home of nervous tension. This neurotic intensity was not of the cheap
+helter-skelter, melodramatic sort; there was a splendid veneer of
+control. But all the mother's plans and activities depended on the
+moods, whims and impulses of little Lawrence, the only child, then
+glorying in the hey-day of his three-year-old babyhood. It was a
+household kept in dignified turmoil by this child of wealth, who
+needed a poor boy's chance to be a lovable, hearty, normal chap. It
+was overattention to his health, with its hundreds of impending
+possibilities; to his food, with the unsolvable perplexity of what the
+doctor advised and of what the young sire wanted. More of
+satisfaction, perhaps, was found in clothing the youth, as he cared
+less about these details; still, an unending variety of weights and
+materials was provided that all hygienic and social requirements might
+be adequately met. Anxious thought was daily spent that his play and
+playmates might be equally pleasing and free from danger. Almost
+prayerful investigation was made of the servants who ministered, and
+tense, sleepless hours were spent by this nervous mother striving to
+wisely decide between the dangers to her child of travel and those
+other dangers of heated summers and bleak winters at home. Frequent
+trips into the city and frequent visitations from the city were made,
+that expert advice be obtained. Consultations were followed by counter
+consultations and conferences which but added the mocking counsel of
+indecision. And the marble of her beauty began to show faint marrings
+chiseled by tension and anxiety--for was not Lawrence her only son!
+
+It was a home of double standards. The father was a wholesome,
+serious-minded, essentially reasonable, Cornell man. His ideas were
+manly and from time to time he laid down certain principles, and when
+at home, with apparently little effort, exacted and secured a ready
+and certainly not unhappy, obedience from his son. But business
+interests and responsibilities were large and the bracing tonic of his
+association with the boy was all too passing to put much blood-
+richness into the pallor of the child's developing character.
+Moreover, this intermittent helpfulness was more than counteracted by
+the mother's disloyal, though unconscious dishonesty. Hers was an
+open, if need be a furtive, overattention and overstimulation, an
+inveterate surrender to the sweet tyranny of her son's childish whims.
+There was probably nothing malicious in her many little plans which
+kept the father out of the nursery and ignorant of much of their boy's
+tutelage. The mother was only repeating fully in principle, and
+largely in detail, her own rearing; and had she not "turned out to be
+one of the favored few?"
+
+The suburban special went into a crash, and all that a fine father
+might have done through future years to neutralize the unwholesome
+training of a nervous mother was lost. In fact, her power for harm was
+now multiplied. The large properties and business were hers through
+life, and with husband gone, and so tragically, there was increased
+opportunity, and unquestionably more reason, for the intensification
+of her motherly care. So the fate of a fine man's son is left in the
+hands of a servile mother.
+
+It now became a home of restrained extravagance. The table was fairly
+smothered with rare and rich foods. Fine wines and imported liquors
+entered into sauces and seasonings. The boy's playroom was a veritable
+toy-shop, with its hundreds of useless and unused playthings. Long
+before any capacity for understanding enjoyment had come, this
+unfortunate child had lost all love for the simple. With Mrs. Abbott,
+it was always "the best that money can buy"--unwittingly, the worst
+for her child's character. It was a home of formal morality. Sunday
+morning services were religiously attended; charities of free giving,
+the giving which did not cost personal effort, were never failing. It
+was a home of selfish unselfishness. All weaknesses in the son
+throughout the passing years were winked at. Never from his mother did
+Lawrence know that sympathy, sometimes hard, often abrupt, never
+pampering, which breeds self-help.
+
+Lawrence went to the most painstakingly selected, private preparatory-
+schools, and later, as good Abbotts had done for generations, entered
+Cornell. He had no taste for business. For years he had been
+associated with gifted and agreeable doctors; he liked the dignity of
+the title; so, after two years of academic work, he entered the
+medical department and graduated with his class. These were good
+years. His was not a nature of active evil. Many of his impulses were
+quite wholesome, and college fraternity camaraderie brought out much
+that was worthy. In the face of maternal anxiety and protest, he went
+out for track, made good, stuck to his training and in his senior year
+represented the scarlet and white, getting a second in the
+intercollegiate low hurdles. Another trolley crash now, and he might
+have been saved!
+
+All through his college days a morbid fear had shortened his mother's
+sleep hours with its wretchedness. Her boy was everything that would
+attract attractive women. Away from her influence he might marry
+beneath him, so all the refinements of intrigue and diplomacy were
+utilized that a certain daughter of blood and wealth might become her
+daughter-in-law. The two women were clever, and woe it was that his
+commencement-day was soon followed by his wedding-day. No more
+sumptuous wedding-trip could have been arranged-to California, to the
+Islands of the Pacific, to India, to Egypt, then a comfortable
+meandering through Europe. A year of joy-living they planned that they
+might learn to know each other, with all the ministers of happiness in
+attendance. But the disagreements of two petted children made murky
+many a day of their prolonged festal journey, and beclouded for them
+both many days of the elaborate home-making after the home-coming. And
+the murkiness and cloudiness were not dissipated when parenthood was
+theirs. Neither had learned the first page in Life's text-book of
+happiness, and as both, could not have their way at the same time,
+rifts grew into chasms which widened and deepened. Then the wife
+sought attentions she did not get at home in social circles and the
+husband sought comforts his wife and his home did not give, in drink
+and fast living, later with cocain and morphin. The ugliness of it all
+could not be lessened by the divorce, which became inevitable. By
+mutual agreement, the rearing of the child was intrusted to the
+father's mother, who to-day shapes its destiny with the same
+unwholesome solicitude which denied to her own son the heritage of
+wholesome living.
+
+We met father and grandmother as she arrived in New York to arrange
+for the treatment, which even his beclouded brain recognized as
+urgent; and we leave him with a darkening future, unless Fate snatches
+away a great family's millions, or works the miracle of self-
+revelation, or the greater miracle of late-life reformation in the son
+of this nervously damaged mother.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE MESS OF POTTAGE
+
+
+"I know Clara puts too much butter in her fudge. It always gives me a
+splitting headache, but gee, isn't it good! I couldn't help eating it
+if I knew it was going to kill me the next day." The Pale Girl looks
+the truth of her exclamations, as she strolls down the campus-walk
+arm-in-arm with the Brown Girl, between lectures the morning after.
+
+Clara Denny had given the "Solemn Circle" another of her swell fudge-
+feasts in her room the night before, and, as usual, had wrecked sleep,
+breakfast, and morning recitations for the elect half-dozen, with the
+very richness of her hand-brewed lusciousness. They called Clara the
+Buxom Lass, and they called her well. She was, physically, a mature
+young woman at sixteen, healthy, vigorous, rose-cheeked, plump, and
+not uncomely, frolicsome and care-free, with ten dollars a week, "just
+for fun." She was a worthy leader of the Solemn Circle of sophomores
+which she had organized, each member of which was sacredly sworn to
+meet every Friday night for one superb hour of savory sumptuousness--
+in the vernacular, "swell feeds."
+
+Clara was a Floridian. Her father had shrewdly monopolized the
+transfer business in the state's metropolis, and from an humble one-
+horse start now operated two-score moving-vans and motor-trucks, and
+added substantially, each year, to his real-estate holdings. Mr. Denny
+let fall an Irish syllable from time to time, regularly took his
+little "nip o' spirits," and ate proverbially long and often. Year
+after year passed, with the hardy man a literal cheer-leader in the
+Denny household, till his gradually hardening arteries began to leak.
+Then came the change which brought Clara home from college--home,
+first to companion, then to nurse, and finally through ugly years, to
+slave for this disintegrating remnant of humanity. Slowly,
+reluctantly, this genial, old soul descended the scale of human life.
+He was dear and pathetic in the early, unaccustomed awkwardness of his
+painless weakness. "Only a few days, darlin', and we'll have a spin in
+the car and your father'll show thim upstarts how to rustle up the
+business." The rustling days did not come, but short periods of
+irritability did. He wanted his "Clara-girl" near and became impatient
+in her absence. He objected to her mother's nursing, and later became
+suspicious that she was conspiring to keep Clara from him, and often
+greeted both mother and daughter with unreasonable words. His
+interests narrowed pitiably, until they did not extend beyond the
+range of his senses, and the senses themselves dulled, even as did his
+feelings of fineness. He grew careless in his habits, and required
+increasing attention to his beard and clothing. Coarseness first
+peeped in, then became a permanent guest--a coarseness which the
+wife's presence seemed to inflame, and which could be stilled finally
+only by the actual caress of his daughter's lips. And with the slow
+melting of brain-tissue went every vestige of decency; vile thoughts
+which had never crossed the threshold of John Denny's normal mind
+seemed bred without restraint in the caldron of his diseased brain.
+His was a vital sturdiness which, for ten years, refused death, but
+during the last of these he was physically and morally repellent.
+Sentiment, that too-often fear of unkind gossip, or ignorant
+falsifying of consequences, stood between this family and the proper
+institutional and professional care, which could have given him more
+than any family's love, and protected those who had their lives to
+live from memories which are mercilessly cruel.
+
+Clara's older brother had much of his father's good cheer and less of
+his father's good sense. He, too, had money to use "just for fun," and
+Jacksonville was very wide open. So, after his father's misfortune had
+eliminated paternal restraint, the boy's "nips o' spirits" multiplied
+into full half-pints. For twelve years he drank badly, was cursed by
+his father, prayed for by his mother, and wept over by Clara. The
+wonderful power of a Christian revival saved him. He "got religion"
+and got it right, and lives a sane, sober life.
+
+The older sister had married while Clara was at school, and lived with
+her little family in Charleston. Her "duty" was in her home, but this
+duty became strikingly emphasized when things "went wrong" in
+Jacksonville, and she frankly admitted that she was entirely "too
+nervous to be of any use around sickness"; nor did she ever come to
+help, even when Clara's cup of trouble seemed running over. And this
+cup was filled with bitterness when, suddenly, the mother had a
+"stroke," and the care of two invalids and the presence of her
+periodically drunk brother made ruthless demands on her twenty years.
+The mother had been a sensible woman, for her advantages, and most
+efficient, and under her teaching Clara had become exceptionally
+capable. The two invalids now lay in adjoining rooms. "Either one may
+go at any time," the doctor said, and when alone in the house with
+them the daughter was haunted with a morbid dread which frequently
+caused her to hesitate before opening the door, with the fear that she
+might find a parent gone. As it happened, she was away, taking
+treatment, unable to return home, when grippe and pneumonia took the
+mother, and the candle of the father's life finally flickered out.
+
+Clara had handled the home situation with intermittent efficiency.
+When she entered her father's sick-room, called suddenly from the
+thoughtless hilarities of the Solemn Circle and fudge-feasts, and saw
+him so altered, and, for him, so dangerously frail, in his invalid
+chair, something went wrong with her breathing; the air could not get
+into her lungs; there was a smothering in her throat and she toppled
+over on the bed. It seemed to take smelling-salts and brandy to bring
+her back. She said afterwards that she was not unconscious, that she
+knew all that was happening, but felt a stifling sense of suffocation.
+Later after one of her father's first unnatural outbreaks, she
+suffered a series of chills and her mother thought, of course, it was
+malaria; but many big doses of quinin did not break it up, and no
+matter when the doctor came, his little thermometer revealed no fever.
+She spent three months at Old Point Comfort and the chills were never
+so bad again. Other distressing internal symptoms appeared closely
+following the shock of her mother's sudden paralysis. An operation and
+a month in a northern hospital were followed by comparative relief.
+But her nervous symptoms finally became acute and she was spending the
+spring and early summer on rest-cure in a sanitarium when her parents
+died. The Jacksonville home was then closed.
+
+Soon after, Clara was profoundly impressed at the same revival in
+which her brother was converted. While she could not leave her church
+to join this less formal denomination, she entered into Home
+Missionary activities with much zest. At this time a friendship was
+formed with a woman-physician who, as months of association passed,
+attained a reasonably clear insight into her life and encouraged her
+to enter a well-equipped, church training-school for deaconesses. The
+spell of the religious influences of the past year's revival was still
+strong; this, and the stimulation of new resolves, carried her along
+well for six months. In her studies and practical work she showed
+ability, efficiency and flashes of common sense. Then she became
+enamored of a younger woman, a class-mate--her heart was empty and
+hungry for the love which means so much to woman's life. Unhappily,
+she overheard her unfaithful loved one comment to a confidante: "It
+makes me sick to be kissed by Clara Denny." Another damaging shock,
+followed by another series of bad attacks--the old spells, chills and
+internal revolutions had returned. She rapidly became useless and a
+burden. The school-doctor sent her a thousand miles to another
+specialist.
+
+We first met Clara Denny effervescent, winning, almost charming--a
+sixteen-year-old minx. Let us scrutinize her at thirty-six. What a
+deformation! She weighs one hundred and seventy-three--she is only
+five-feet-four; her face is heavy, soggy, vapid; her eyes, abnormally
+small; her complexion is sallow, almost muddy; her chin, trembling and
+double; strongly penciled, black eye-brows are the only remnant
+apparent of the "Buxom Lass" of twenty years ago. Her hands are pudgy;
+her figure soft, mushy, sloppy; her presence is unwholesome. The
+specialist found her internally as she appeared externally. While not
+organically diseased, the vital organs were functionally inert. Every
+physical and chemical evidence pointed to the accumulation in a
+naturally robust body of the twin toxins--food poison and under
+oxidation. She was haunted by a fear of paralysis. She confused
+feelings with ideas and was certain her mind was going. The spells
+which had first started beside her invalid father were now of daily
+occurrence. She, nor any one else knew when she would topple over. She
+found another reason for her belief that her brain was affected in her
+increasingly frequent headaches. For years she had been unable to read
+or study without her glasses, because of the pain at the base of her
+brain. When these wonderful glasses were tested, they were found to
+represent one of the mildest corrections made by opticians; in fact,
+her eyes were above the average. Her precious glasses were practically
+window-glass.
+
+Much of each day had been spent in bed, and hot coffee and hot-water
+bottles were required to keep off the nerve-racking chills which
+otherwise followed each fainting spell. Her appetite never flagged.
+She had been a heavy meat eater from childhood. There never was a
+Denny meal without at least two kinds of meat, and one cup of coffee
+always, more frequently two--no namby-pamby Postum effects, but the
+genuine "black-drip." In the face of much dental work, her sweet tooth
+had never been filled. She loved food, and her appetite demanded
+quantity as well as quality. Of peculiar significance was the fact
+that throughout the years she had never had a spell when physically
+and mentally comfortable, but, as the years passed, the amount of
+discomfort which could provoke a nervous disturbance became less and
+less. She was a well-informed woman, quite interesting on many
+subjects, outside of herself, and had done much excellent reading.
+Unafflicted, she would mentally have been more than usually
+interesting. When her specialist began the investigation of her moral
+self, he found her impressed with the belief that she was a "saved
+woman," ready and only waiting health that she might take up the
+Lord's work. But as he sought her soul's deeper recesses, he uncovered
+a quagmire. Resentment rankled against the sister who had left her
+alone to meet the exhausting burdens of their parents' illness and
+brother's drinking--a sister who had taken care of herself and her own
+family, regardless. Worse than resentment smoldered against the
+father, a dull, deadening enmity, born in the hateful hours of his
+odious, but helpless, dementia. Burning deep was an unappeased protest
+that, instead of the normal life and pleasures and opportunities of
+other girls, she had been chained to his objectionable presence.
+
+Treatment was undertaken, based upon a clear conception of her moral,
+mental and physical needs. Seven months of intensive right-living were
+enjoined. The greatest difficulty was found in compelling restraint
+from food excesses. The love for good things to eat was theoretically
+shelved, but, practically, the forces of desire and habit seemed
+insurmountable. Her craving for "good eats" now and then discouraged
+her resolutions and she periodically broke over the rigid hospital
+regimen. But she was helped in every phase of her living. The skin
+cleared; a hint of the roses returned; twenty-five pounds of more than
+useless weight melted away and weeks passed with no threat of spell or
+chill. She was renewing her youth. A righteous understanding of the
+lessons which her years of sacrifice held, appealed to her judgment,
+if not to her feelings, and, as a new being, she returned to the
+church training-school.
+
+Most fully had Miss Denny been instructed in principle and in practice
+concerning the, for her, vital lessons of nutritional right-living.
+Each step of the way had been made clear, and it had proven the right
+way by the test of practical demonstration. The outlined schedule of
+habits, including some denials and some gratuitous activity, kept her
+in prime condition--in fact, in improving condition, for six highly
+satisfactory months. Never had she accomplished so much; never did
+life promise more, as the result of her own efforts. She had earned
+comforts which had apparently deposed forever her old nervous enemies.
+Victorious living seemed at her finger-tips. Then she sold her birth-
+right.
+
+She was feeling so well; why could she not be like other people?
+Certainly once in a while she could have the things she "loved." It
+was only a small mess of pottage--some chops, a cup of real coffee,
+some after-dinner mints. The doctor had proscribed them all, but "Once
+won't hurt." Her conscience did prick, but days passed; there was no
+spell, no chill, no headache. "It didn't hurt me" was her triumphant
+conclusion; and again she ventured and nothing happened--and again,
+and again. Then the coffee every day and soon sweets and meats,
+regardless; then coffee to keep her going. The message of the
+returning fainting spells was unheeded, unless answered by
+recklessness, for fear thoughts had come and old enmities and new ones
+haunted in. Routine and regimen had gone weeks before, and now a
+vacation had to be. She did not return to her work, but deluded
+herself with a series of pretenses. Before the year was gone, the imps
+of morbid toxins came into their own and she resorted to wines, later
+to alcohol in stronger forms--and alcohol usually makes short work of
+the fineness God gives woman.
+
+We leave Clara Denny at forty, leave her on the road of license which
+leads to ever-lowering levels.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE CRIME OF INACTIVITY
+
+
+A half-century ago the Stoneleighs moved West and located in Hot
+Springs. The wife had recently fallen heir to a few thousand dollars,
+which, with unusual foresight, were invested in suburban property. Mr.
+Stoneleigh was a large man, one generation removed from England,
+active, and noticeably of a nervous type. He was industrious,
+practically economical, single-minded; these qualities stood him in
+the stead of shrewdness. From their small start he became rapidly
+wealthy as a dealer in real estate. Mr. Stoneleigh was a generous
+eater; his foods were truly simple in variety but luxurious in their
+quality and richness. Prime roast-beef, fried potatoes, waffles and
+griddle-cakes supplied him with heat, energy and avoirdupois. He
+suddenly quit eating at fifty-eight--there was a cerebral hemorrhage
+one night. His remains weighed one hundred and ninety-five.
+
+The wife was a comfortable mixture of Irish and English. Her people
+were so thrifty that she had but a common-school education. She was
+the only child, her industrious mother let her go the way of least
+resistance, and were we tracing responsibility of the criminality
+behind our tragedy, Mrs. Stoneleigh's mother would probably be cited
+as the guilty one. The way of least resistance is usually pretty easy-
+going, and keeps within the valley of indulgence. Therefore, Mrs.
+Stoneleigh worked none, was a true helpmate to her husband, at the
+table, and like him, grew fat, and from mid-life waddled on, with her
+hundred and eighty pounds. She was superstitiously very religious,
+with the kind of religion that shudders at the thought of missing
+Sunday morning service or failing to be a passive attendant at the
+regular meetings of the Church Aid Society. Practically, the heathen
+were taught American civilization, and she herself was assured
+sumptuous reservations in Glory by generous donations to the various
+missionary societies.
+
+The only real ordeal which this woman ever faced was the birth of
+Henry, her first child; she was very ill and suffered severely. The
+mother instinct centered upon this boy the fulness of her devotion--a
+devotion which never swerved nor faltered, a devotion which never
+questioned, a devotion which became a self-forgetting servility. John
+arrived almost unnoticed three years later, foreordained to be this
+older brother's henchman as long as he remained at home. John
+developed. Education was not featured in the Stoneleighs' program, so
+John stopped after his first year at high school, but he was
+energetic, and through serving Henry had learned to work. At twenty he
+married, left the family roof, and starting life for himself in a
+nearby metropolis became a successful coal-merchant.
+
+Little Henry Stoneleigh would have thrilled any mother's heart with
+pride. He had every quality a perfect baby should have, and grew into
+a large handsome boy, healthy and strong; his disposition was the envy
+of neighboring mothers; nor was it the sweet goodness of inertia, for
+he was mentally and emotionally quick and responsive above the
+average. Indulged by his mother from the beginning and always
+preferred to his brother, he never recognized duty as duty. This young
+life was innocent of anything which suggested routine; order for him
+was a happen-so or an of-course result of his mother's or John's
+efforts; the details necessary for neatness were never allowed to
+ruffle his ease nor to interfere with his impulses. The Stoneleighs'
+home was a generous pile, locally magnificent, but our young scion's
+fine, front room was perennially a clutter. From his birth up, Henry
+was never taught the rudiments of responsibility. His boyhood,
+however, was not unattractive. He had inherited a large measure of
+vitality and was protected from disappointments or irritations by the
+many comforts which a mother's devotion and wealth can arrange and
+provide. His memory was superior. The boy inherited not only an
+exceptional physique, but mental ability which made his early studies
+too easy to suggest any objection on his part. In fact, he was
+actively interested in much of his school work and did well without
+the conscious expenditure of energy. Little discrimination was shown
+in the arrangements for his higher education; still he arrived at a
+popular Western Boy's Academy, rather dubious in his own mind as to
+just how large a place he would hold in the sun, with mother and John
+back home. Rather rudely assailed were some of his easy-going habits,
+and considerable ridicule from certain sources rapidly decided his
+choice of companions. It was young Stoneleigh's misfortune that at
+this epoch in his development he was situated where money could buy
+immunities and attract apparent friendships. He was of fine
+appearance, and should by all rights have made center on the Academy
+football team, being the largest, heaviest, strongest boy in school.
+But one day in football togs is the sum of his football history.
+Academy days went in good feeds, the popularity purchased by his
+freedom of purse and easy-going good fellowship, and much reading,
+which he always enjoyed and which, with his good memory, made him
+unusually well-informed. Finals even at this Academy demanded special
+effort, which, with Henry, was not forthcoming, so he returned home
+without his diploma. This incident decided him not to attempt college,
+so for a year he again basked in the indulgences of home-life. His
+father's business interests had no appeal for him, but the personal
+influence of a young doctor, with his vivid tales of medical-college
+experiences, and the struggling within of a never recognized ambition,
+with some haphazard suggestions from his mother, determined him to
+study medicine.
+
+At this time a medical degree could still be obtained in a few schools
+at the end of two years' attendance. Henry chose a Tennessee college
+which has, for reasons, long since ceased to exist, an institution
+which practically guaranteed diplomas. Here after three very
+comfortable years, he was transformed into "Doc" Stoneleigh. At
+twenty-five, "Doc" weighed two hundred and forty, and returned home
+for another period of rest. He did not open an office, nor did he ever
+begin the practice of his profession. During the next five years he
+lived at home, sleeping and reading until two in the afternoon, his
+mother carrying breakfast and lunch to his room. The late afternoons
+and evenings he spent in hotel-lobbies and pool-rooms, where he was
+always welcomed by a bunch of sports. Popular through his small
+prodigalities, he, at thirty, possessed a more than local reputation
+for the completeness of his assortment of salacious stories--his
+memory and native social instinct were herein successfully utilized.
+"Doc" now weighed two hundred and eighty-five, ate much, exercised
+none, and was the silent proprietor of a pool-room, obnoxious even in
+this wide-open town.
+
+At twelve he had begun smoking cigarettes; at twenty he smoked them
+day and night. The entire family drank beer, but, oddly, the desire
+for alcohol never developed with him. Yet at thirty he began acting
+queerly, and it was generally thought that he was drinking. Often now
+he did not go home at night and was frequently found dead asleep on
+one of his pool-tables. He had fixed up a den of a room where they
+would move him to "sleep it off." A fad for small rifles developed
+till he finally had over twenty of different makes in his den and
+spent many nights wandering around the alleys, shooting rats and stray
+cats. Eats became an obsession. They invaded his room and he would
+frequently awaken suddenly and empty the first gun he reached at their
+imaginary forms, much to the disquiet of the neighbors. One night he
+burst out of his place, began shooting wildly up and down the street
+and rushing about in a frenzy. No single guardian of the peace
+presumed to interfere with his hilarity, and two of the six who came
+in the patrol-wagon had dismissed action for deep contemplation before
+he was safely locked up as "drunk." The matter was kept quiet, as
+befitted the prominence of the Stoneleighs.
+
+To his mother's devotion now was added fear, and she freely responded
+to his demands for funds. There were no more outbreaks, but he was
+obviously becoming irresponsible, and influences finally secured his
+mother's consent to take him to a special institution in another
+state. This was quietly effected through the cooperation of the family
+physician, who successfully drugged poor "Doc" into pacific inertness.
+He was legally committed to an institution empowered to use
+constructive restraint, and for four months benefited by the only
+wholesome training his wretched life had ever known. Here it was
+discovered that he had been using quantities of codein and cocain,
+against the sale of which there were then no restrictions. Unusual had
+been his physical equipment, his indulgences unchecked by any
+sentiment or restraint, the penalty of inactivity was meting a
+horrible exaction--an exaction which could be dulled only by dope. In
+the early prime of what should have been manhood, this unfortunate's
+mind, as revealed to the institution's authorities during his days of
+enforced drugless discomfort, was a filthy cess-pool; cursings and
+imprecations, vile and vicious, were vomited forth in answer to every
+pain. His brother, his doctors, his mother were execrated for days,
+almost without ceasing. Here was a man without principle. As he became
+more comfortable, physically, he became more decent, and later his
+natural, social tendencies began to reappear attractively.
+
+At the end of four months the patient was perforce much better. He
+then succeeded in inducing his mother to have him released "on
+probation." Many fair promises were made. For months he was to have an
+attendant as a companion. His mother, believing him well, consented,
+after securing his promise in writing to return for treatment should
+there be a relapse into his old habits. As evidencing the decay of his
+character, these fair promises were made without the slightest
+intention that they would be kept. The first important city reached
+after crossing the state-line saw his demeanor change. Beyond the
+legal authority of the state in which he had been committed, he was
+free, and he knew it. With a few words he consigned his now helpless
+attendant to regions sulphurous, and alone took train in the opposite
+direction from home. For several months he went the paces. With his
+medical knowledge and warned by his recent experiences he was able to
+so adjust his doses as to avoid falling into the hands of the
+authorities. The weak mother never refused to honor his drafts. Six
+months later a serious attack of pneumonia caused her to be sent for,
+and when he was able to travel she took him back to the home he had
+forsworn.
+
+For over ten years "Doc" Stoneleigh has lived with his mother, a
+recluse, a morphin-soaked wreck. Sometimes he may be seen in a park
+near their home, sitting for hours inert, or automatically tracing
+figures in the gravel with his cane, noticing no one, unkempt, almost
+repellent. He is still sufficiently shrewd to secure morphin in
+violation of the law. Sooner or later the revenue department will cut
+off his supply. He drifts, a rotting hulk of manhood, unconsciously
+nearing the horrors of a drugless reality.
+
+The depth of this man's degradation may tempt us to feel that he was
+defective, but an accurate analysis of his life fails to reveal any
+deficiency save that reprehensible training which made possible his
+years of physical and mental indolence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+LEARNING TO EAT
+
+
+It was three in the early July afternoon. The large parlor, which had
+been turned into a bedroom, was darkened by closely-drawn shades; a
+dim, softened light coming from a half-hidden lamp deepened the dark
+rings around the worn nurse's eyes--eyes which bespoke sleepless
+nights and a heavy heart. A wan mother stood near the nurse, every
+line of her face showing the pain of lengthened anxiety. Tensely one
+hand held the other, the restraint of culture, only, keeping her from
+wringing them in her anguish. Dr. Harkins, the village physician,
+stood at the foot of the bed, his honest face set in strong lines in
+anticipation of the worst. Many scenes of suffering had rendered him
+only more sympathetic with human sorrow, sympathetic with the real,
+increasingly intolerant of the false. At the bed-side stood the
+expert, who had come so far, at so great an expense-long, rough miles
+by auto that a few hours might be saved-who had come, they all
+believed, to decide the fate of the beloved girl who lay so death-like
+before them.
+
+Ruth Rivers was the only one in the room who was not keenly alert or
+distressingly tense. Even in her waxy whiteness and unnatural
+emaciation, her face was good. The forehead was high and, with the
+symmetrical black eyebrows and long, dark lashes, suggested at a
+glance the good quality of her breeding. The aquiline nose was pinched
+by suffering, the finely curving lips were now bloodless and drawn
+tight from time to time, as though to repress the cry of pain; these
+marks of suffering could not rob her countenance of its refinement.
+Her breathing was shallow; at times it seemed irregular; and wan,
+almost inert, the fragile figure seemed nearing the eternal parting
+with its soul. The silence of the sick-room was fearsomely ominous.
+
+Three weeks before, Ruth, her mother, and ever-apprehensive Aunt
+Melissa had come from the heat of coastal Georgia to the invigorating
+coolness of the Southern Appalachians. They had come to Point View
+several weeks later than usual this year, as spring was tardy and the
+hot days at home had been few. Ruth had been most miserable for weeks
+before they left home, but had stood the trip well, and Judge Rivers
+had received an encouraging, indeed a hopeful report from the invalid.
+But a few days later a letter telling of another of Ruth's attacks was
+followed immediately by an urgent, distressed telegram which caused
+him to adjourn court and hasten to his family.
+
+For many years Dr. Harkins had driven through the mountains eight
+starving months, serving and saving the poorly housed and often
+destitute mountaineers. The tourist flood from the burning, summer
+lowlands to the mountains' refreshment gave him his living. Dr.
+Harkins was as truly a missionary as though he were on the pay-roll of
+a denominational society. He had always helped, or the mountains had
+helped, or something had helped Ruth before, but this time nothing
+helped. The doctor had already called a neighboring physician; they
+were both perplexed, and each feared to say the word which, in their
+minds, spelled her doom. For nearly three days Ruth had been
+delirious, this gentle, sensible, reserved girl, tossing and calling
+out. A few times she had even screamed, and her mother always said
+that she had been "too fine a baby to even cry out loud." For five
+nights there had been no sleep save an unnatural stupor produced by
+medicine. Mother and nurse had taxed their strength keeping her in bed
+during the paroxysms of her suffering, which, hour by hour, seemed to
+grow in intensity and to defy the ever-increasing doses of quieting
+drugs. She had recognized no one for days. Even her mother's voice
+brought back no moment of natural response. "It must be meningitis,"
+Dr. Harkins finally said, and the other doctor nodded in agreement.
+And Aunt Melissa informed the neighbors that it was "meningitis" and
+that her darling Ruth could last but a few days. The mother's anxiety
+reiterated "meningitis," and good, levelheaded Martha King, the nurse,
+knew that the three cases of meningitis which she had nursed had
+suffered the same way before they died. When Judge Rivers came, he
+spent but one minute in the sick-room. It was days before he dared
+reenter. Ruth did not know him. For the first time in her twenty-seven
+years, she had failed to respond happily to his hearty, rich-voiced
+love-greeting. The Judge's small fortune had grown slowly. Only that
+year had the mortgage been finally lifted on their comfortable Georgia
+home. But in that minute at the sufferer's bedside all he had was
+thrown into the scales. Ruth must be saved. She was the only daughter;
+she was a worthily beloved daughter. "No, she cannot be moved to Johns
+Hopkins; the trip is too rough and long; she is too weak," decided Dr.
+Harkins, and the consultant agreed. "Our only hope for her is to get
+the 'brain expert' from the next state." Five days had passed since
+the patient had retained food. For twenty-four hours the tide of her
+strength seemed only to ebb. They all counted the minutes. The summer-
+boarders in the little town, so many of whom knew the sick girl,
+counted the hours, for Ruth was much quieter--too quiet, they felt. An
+hour before, Aunt Melissa had tiptoed in to see her darling; the
+finger-tips seemed cold in her excited palm, the nails looked bluish
+to her dreading eyes, and she retreated to the back porch-steps, threw
+her apron over her head and sat weaving to and fro, inconsolate; nor
+would she look up even when the big motor panted into sight out of a
+cloud of dust, and stopped. "It is too late, too late," moaned Aunt
+Melissa. Dr. Harkins and Judge Rivers met the neurologist. The former
+reviewed the case in a few sentences. The Judge simply said: "Doctor,
+my whole savings are nothing. I would give my life for hers."
+
+In the sick-room tensity had given place to intensity, as with deft,
+skillful directness the doctor made his examination. He had finished;
+the light had again been dimmed, and in the added shadow the haggard
+face seemed ashen. Motionless, thoughtful, interminably silent, the
+expert stood, holding the sick girl's hand. The nurse first saw him
+smile. It was a serious smile; it was a strangely hopeful smile--a
+smile which was instantly reflected in her own face and which the
+mother caught and Dr. Harkins saw. Each one of them was thrilled with
+such thrills as become rare when the forties have passed, thrilled
+even before they heard his words: "It is not meningitis. Your daughter
+can get well."
+
+In the conference which followed, Dr. Harkins felt that his confidence
+had been well placed. It is surprising how much the expert had
+discovered in forty minutes,--and how carefully considered and
+relentlessly logical were his reasons for deciding that it was an
+"auto-toxic meningismus, secondary to renal and pancreatic
+insufficiency," which, translated, signifies a self-produced poison
+due to defective action of the liver and pancreas, resulting in
+circulatory disturbance in the covering of the brain. Most clearly,
+too, he revealed that several of the most alarming symptoms were the
+result of the added poison of the drugs which had been given for the
+relief of the intolerable pain. Each step of the long road to recovery
+was outlined with equal clearness, and the light of hope burst in
+strong on Dr. Harkins first, then on Martha King. The crushing load
+was lifted from off the Judge's heart. The promise seemed too good to
+be true, to the mother, who had seen her daughter go down through the
+years, step by step. It never penetrated the shadow of Aunt Melissa's
+pessimism.
+
+What forces had been at work to bring ten years of relentlessly
+increasing suffering, even impending death, to Ruth Rivers at twenty-
+seven, when she should have been in the glory of her young womanhood?
+"Her headaches have always been a mystery," her mother had said again
+and again, and this saying had been accepted by family and friends.
+Let us join hands with Understanding, step behind this mystery, and
+find its solution.
+
+Judge Rivers' father had been Judge Rivers, too. The war between the
+States had absorbed the family wealth; still, our Judge Rivers showed
+every evidence of good living: he was always well-dressed, as befitted
+his office, portly and contented, as was also befitting, fine of color
+and always well. His daughter's illness had been practically the only
+problem in the affairs of his life which he had not solved to his
+quite reasonable satisfaction. His love for Ruth held half of his
+life's sweetness.
+
+Mrs. Rivers was tall, active, almost muscular in type. Her brow, like
+her daughter's, was high. The quality of her Virginia blood had marked
+her face. She had always been unduly pale, but never ill. Controlled
+and reasonable, she had ministered to her home with efficiency and
+pride.
+
+Aunt Melissa, her sister, five years the senior, was tall and strong,
+but her paleness had long been unhealthily tinted with sallowness. For
+years she had been subject to attacks of depression when for days she
+would insist upon being let alone, even as she let others alone. Ruth
+was the only bright spot she recognized in her life, and her
+morbidness was constantly picturing disaster for this object of her
+love.
+
+Ruth's babyhood was a joy. Plump, cooing and happy, she evinced, even
+in her earliest days, evidences of her rare disposition. At eighteen
+months, however, she began having spells of indigestion. She always
+sat in her high-chair beside Aunt Melissa, at the table, and rarely
+failed to get at least a taste of anything served which her fancy
+indicated. Her wise little stomach from time to time expressed its
+disapproval of such unlawful liberties, but parents and aunts and
+grandmothers, and probably most of us, are very dull in interpreting
+the protests of stomachs. So Ruth got what she liked, and what was an
+equal misfortune, she liked what she got; and no one ever associated
+the liking and the getting with the poor sick stomach's periodic
+protests. As a girl Ruth was not very active. There was a certain
+reserve, even in her playing, quite in keeping with family traditions.
+Mother, Aunt Melissa and the servants did the work--still Ruth
+developed, happy, unselfish, kindly and sensitive. There was rigid
+discipline accompanying certain rules of conduct, and her deportment
+was carefully molded by the silent forces of family culture. They
+lived at the county-seat. The public schools which Ruth attended were
+fairly good. As she grew older, while she remained thin and never
+approached ruggedness, her digestive "spells" were much less frequent,
+and during the two years she spent away from home in the Convent, she
+was quite well, and one year played center on the second basket ball
+team. Two years away at school were all that the Judge could then
+afford. And so at eighteen she was home for good. That fall she began
+having headaches. She was reading much, so she went to Mobile and was
+carefully fitted with glasses. The correction was not a strong one,
+but the oculist felt it would relieve the "abnormal sensitiveness of
+her eyes, which is probably causing her trouble."
+
+Throughout her years of suffering, Ruth had always maintained the rare
+restraint which marks fineness of soul. No one ever heard her
+complain. Even her mother could not be sure that another attack was
+on, until she found Ruth alone in her darkened room. Acquaintances,
+even friends, never heard her mention her illness.
+
+The midsummer months in Southern Alabama drive such as are able to the
+relief of the mountains of Tennessee and the Carolinas. The Judge had
+always felt that he should send his family away during July and
+August; they often went in June when the summers were early. And these
+weeks of change proved, year after year, the most helpful influences
+that came to Ruth. She always improved and would usually remain
+stronger until after Thanksgiving. But with irregular periodicity the
+blinding, prostrating headaches would return--a week of pain, nausea
+and prostration. Yet Ruth never asked for, nor took medicine, unless
+it was ordered by the doctor, and then more in consideration of the
+desires of her family, for the unnatural sensations, produced by most
+of the remedies she was given, seemed but the substitution of one
+discomfort for another. The only exercise that counted, which this
+girl ever had, was during her weeks at Point View. The stimulation of
+the invigorating mountain air seemed to get into her blood, and after
+a few weeks with her friendly mountains she could climb the highest
+with little apparent fatigue. At home, the country was flat, the roads
+sandy, and even horseback riding uninteresting. She had never been
+taught any strengthening form of daily home-exercise, and so she
+suffered on. While the glasses brought comfort, they lessened, for but
+a short time, the number and the intensity of her attacks. Several
+physicians were consulted and several varying courses of treatment
+undertaken, but no betterment came which lasted, and the headaches
+remained a mystery, not only to her mother, but to others who
+seriously tried to help. As we are behind the scenes, we need no
+longer delay the mystery's solution. It was not eyes, they were
+accurately corrected; it was not stomach, as much stomach treatment
+proved; it was not anaemia, or the many excellent tonics that had been
+prescribed would have cured; it was not displaced vertebrae nor
+improperly acting nerves, or the manipulations and vibrations and deep
+kneadings of the specialists in mechanical treatment would have
+rescued her years before. It was, and here is the secret--her mother's
+wonderful table!
+
+The war had brought ruinous, financial losses to most Virginia
+families. As a result, Ruth's mother had been taught, in minute
+detail, the high art of the best cookery of the first families of
+Virginia. And how she could cook, or make the colored cook cook! The
+Rivers' table had, for years, been the standard of the county-seat.
+Mrs. Rivers' spiced hams, fig preserves, brandied plum-pudding,
+stuffed roast-duck, fruit salads, all made by recipes handed down
+through several generations, could not be excelled in richness and
+toothsomeness. No simple dishes were known at the Rivers' table;
+these, for those poor mortals who knew not the inner art. Double
+cream, stimulating seasonings, sauces rarely spiced, the sort that
+recreate worn-out appetites, were never lacking at a Rivers' meal.
+Ruth had been overfed, had been wrongly fed since babyhood.
+
+The expert said hope lay in taking her back to babyhood and feeding
+her for days as though she were a four months' child. He said she must
+be taught to eat; that her salvation lay in a few foods of plebeian
+simplicity, foods which almost any one could get anywhere, foods which
+did not involve long hours of preparation according to priceless
+recipes. He said also that certain other foods were vicious, such
+matter-of-course foods on the Rivers' table, foods which Mrs. Rivers
+would have felt humiliated to omit from a meal of her ordering, and he
+insisted that these must be lastingly denied this young woman with
+prematurely exhausted, digestive glands. The process of her
+reeducation, succinctly expressed as it was in a few sentences, called
+for tedious months of care, of denial and of effort. It demanded that
+which was more than taxing in many details. So for Ruth Rivers long
+weeks were spent in a hospital-bed. She was fed on the simplest of
+foods, each feeding measured with the same care as were her few
+medicines, for now truly her food was medicine, and her chief medicine
+was food. Massage seemed at last to bring help, for even in bed she
+gained in strength.
+
+It was several weeks before her mind was entirely clear, but she was
+soon being taught the science of food; this included an understanding
+outline of food chemistry, of the processes of digestion, of food
+values, of the relation of food to work, of the vital importance of
+muscular activity and the relation of muscle-use to nervous health.
+Her beloved sweets and her strong coffee, the only friends of her
+suffering days, were gradually buried even from thought in this
+accumulation of new and understood truths--most reasonable and sane
+truths. Forty pounds she gained in twelve weeks. She had never weighed
+over one hundred and twenty-five. She has never weighed less than one
+hundred and forty-five since, and, as she is five feet eight, her one
+hundred and forty-five pounds brought her a new symmetry which, with
+her high-bred face, transformed the waxen invalid into an attractive
+beauty. She learned to do manual work. She learned to use every muscle
+the Lord had given her, every day she lived. An appetite unwhipped by
+condiments or unstimulated by artifice, an appetite for wholesome
+food, has made eating a satisfaction she never knew in the old days.
+
+This was ten years ago. Many changes have come in the Rivers'
+household, the most far-reaching of which is probably the revolution
+which shook its culinary department from center to circumference. What
+saved daughter must be good for them all. Father is less portly, more
+active, less ruddy. Some of the color he lost was found by the mother.
+Aunt Melissa disappears into her gloom-days but rarely, and has
+smiling hours unthought in the past. And Ruth has proven that the
+mystery was adequately solved. She married the kind of man so
+excellent a woman should have, and went through the trying weeks of
+her motherhood and has cared for her boy through the demanding months
+of early childhood without a complication. And all this in the face of
+Aunt Melissa's reiterated forebodings!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE MAN WITH THE HOE
+
+
+In the early years of the eighteenth century, a hardy family lived
+frugally and simply on a few, fertile Norman acres. Their home was but
+a hut of stone and clay and thatch. It was surrounded by a carefully
+attended vineyard and fruit trees which, in the springtime, made the
+spot most beautiful. On this May day the passerby would have stopped
+that he might carry away this scene of perfect pastoral charm. The
+blossoming vines almost hid the house, the blooming trees perfumed the
+morning breeze, and it all spoke for simple peace and contentment. But
+at this hour neither peace nor contentment could have been found
+within. Pierre, the eldest son, was almost fiercely resenting the
+quiet counsel of his father and the tearful pleadings of his mother.
+Pierre loved Adrienne, their neighbor's daughter. The two had grown up
+side by side, each had brought to the other all that their dreams had
+wished through the years of waiting. Pierre had long worked extra
+hours and they both had saved and now, nearing thirty, there was
+enough, and they could marry. But the edict had gone forth that
+Huguenot marriages would no longer be recognized by the state; that
+the children of such a union would be without civil standing. So
+Pierre and Adrienne had decided to leave France, nor did the protests
+of their elders delay their going. It was a solemn little ceremony,
+their marriage, a ceremony practically illegal in their land. Rarely
+are weddings more solemn or bridal trips more sad, for to England they
+were starting that same day, never to see their dear France again,
+never to prune or to gather in the little vineyard, never again to
+look into the faces of their own kin.
+
+It was not a worldly-wise change. Wages in England were very low and
+there were no vineyards in that chilly land, and Pierre worked and
+died a plain English farm-hand, blessed only with health, remarkable
+strength, and a wretched, but happy home. Much of their parents'
+sturdiness and independence was passed on into the blood of their four
+children, two boys and two girls, for in 1748, after long saving, they
+all left England for America, "the promised land," and sailed for New
+Amsterdam. Husbandmen they were, and for two generations painfully,
+gravely, they tilled the semi-productive soil of their little farm,
+west of the Hudson. Land was cheap in the New World. Their vegetables
+and fruit grew, the market in the city grew, and the van der Veere
+farms grew, and peace and contentment abode there.
+
+After the War of 1812 two healthy, robust van der Veere brothers
+tramped into New York City each carrying in his bundle nearly
+$1000.00, his share of their father's recently divided farm. They
+started a green-grocery shop. One attended the customers, the other,
+through the summer months, worked their little truck garden away out
+on the country road, a road which is to-day New York's Great White
+Way. They prospered. One married, and his two boys founded the van der
+Veere firm of importers. From the East this company's ship, later its
+ships, brought rare curios, oriental tapestries and fine rugs to make
+elegant the brown-stone front drawing-rooms of aristocratic,
+residential New York of that generation. The sons of one of these
+brothers to-day constitute the honorable van der Veere firm. The other
+brother left one son, Clifford, and two daughters, Dora and Henrietta.
+It is into the life-history of Clifford van der Veere that we now
+intrude. He was a sturdy youth, with no illnesses, save occasional
+sore throats which left him when he shed his tonsils. His father was a
+reserved, kindly man, a quietly efficient man. His competitors never
+understood the sure growth of his success--he was so unpretentious in
+all that he did. Clifford's mother was a sensible woman, untouched by
+the pride of wealth and the snobbery of station. Their home, facing
+Central Park, stood for elegance and restraint. There were no other
+children for ten years after the son's birth, then came the two
+sisters, which domestic arrangement probably proved an important
+factor in deciding the rest of our story. From early boyhood Clifford
+was orderly, obedient, studious and quietly industrious. He made no
+trouble for parents or teachers--other mothers always spoke of him as
+"good." He was thirteen when his only sinful escapade happened. Some
+of the Third Avenue boys shared the playgrounds in the park with
+Clifford's crowd. They all smoked, some chewed and the more self-
+important of them swore, and thereby, one day, our Fifth Avenue young
+hopeful was contaminated. It was a savory-smelling wad of fine-cut. It
+burned, a little went the wrong way and it strangled, but the joy of
+ejecting a series of amber projectiles was Clifford's. Another
+mouthful was ready for exhibition purposes when some appreciative
+admirer enthusiastically clapped our boy between the shoulder-blades
+and most of his mouth's contents, fluid and solid, was swallowed.
+Somehow Clifford got home, but landed in a wilted heap on the big
+couch, chalk-white, and sick beyond expression. The doctor was called
+and, discovering the cause, made him helpfully sicker. The next
+morning Clifford's father gravely offered to give him $500.00, when he
+was twenty-one, if he would not taste tobacco again until that time.
+Either the memory of first-chew sensations or the doctor's ipecac, or
+the force of habit, or something, kept him from ever tasting it again.
+
+Later, Clifford went to Columbia and was quietly popular with the
+quieter fellows. It would seem that had any little devils not been
+strained out of his blood by his long line of Huguenot ancestry, they
+had followed the fate of the fine-cut, for no one who knew Clifford
+van der Veere was ever anxious about the probity of his conduct. He
+did not take to the importing business, while his cousins early showed
+a natural capacity for the work of the big firm in all its branches.
+Clifford's parents, too, seemed to feel that it was time that there be
+a professional member of their honorable family. Moreover the property
+was large, and the younger sisters would require a guardian, and the
+estate an administrator. So Clifford finished the law-course. Nor was
+it many years until the family fortune of approximately one million
+dollars in real estate, securities and mortgages was left him to
+administer for himself and the two sisters. Thus before thirty the
+responsibility of these many thousands swept down upon him. Limited in
+practical contact with the world, geographically, politically,
+socially, having learned little of the play-side of life, he was by
+inheritance, training and inclination a conservative. He had never
+practiced law. He never tried a case, but he now opened a downtown
+office where he punctually arrived at ten o'clock and methodically
+spent the morning, carefully, personally managing all the details of
+the entailed estate. He was essentially conscientious and, as the
+years passed, there was no lessening of interest in his devotion to
+each transaction, large or small. There were no losses, though his
+conservatism turned him away from many golden opportunities which
+knocked at the door of his wealth, the acceptance of which would have
+doubled the estate in any ten-year period of these days of New York's
+magnificent expansion. He was nearly forty when he married a quiet,
+good woman who added little that was new, who most conscientiously
+subtracted nothing of the old, from his now systematic life. They both
+realized that their Fifth Avenue home was rapidly growing out of date,
+so for nearly five years they spent their spare hours daily, in the,
+to Clifford, vital and seemingly unending details of modernizing the
+old house. It was during those days when the plans so carefully
+considered were being realized in granite and marble and polished
+woods, that Mrs. van der Veere felt the first distressing touch of
+anxiety. Her husband seemed unduly particular. At times he would be
+painfully uncertain about minute and minor details of construction and
+on a few occasions unprecedentedly failed to get to the office at all,
+delayed by protracted discussions of the advisability of certain
+changes, long since decided upon, discussions which shook the
+confidence of architect and contractor in both his sagacity and
+judgment. Fortunately Mrs. van der Veere proved a wholesome counselor
+and her opinions often settled details her husband, alone, apparently
+could not have decided. At last the great new house was finished; it
+was such a home as the van der Veeres should have. Indecision largely
+disappeared for three quite normal years, office details only now and
+then ruffling the smooth normality of Mr. van der Veere's life. Then
+with the early spring nights came an unexplained insomnia. He would
+waken at five, four, even three o 'clock, and, unable to get back to
+sleep, would read until morning. The doctor found little to excite his
+apprehension, but prescribed golf, so three afternoons a week all
+summer and fall two hours were reserved for the links. He was better,
+still the doctor insisted on three months, that winter, in Southern
+California where he could keep up his play. Here he did eighteen holes
+a day for weeks at a time, yet some of the nights were haunted by
+scruples about neglecting his administrative duties. They returned
+home in the spring, and a moderately comfortable year and a half
+followed. Then things went wrong rapidly and badly. Peremptorily he
+was ordered away from all "work" to Southern France, later to Italy
+for the winter and to Switzerland for the next summer. And as the Alps
+have given of their strength to other needing thousands, so they
+ministered to him. He began climbing. His wife thought it was a new
+interest. Certainly that was a factor, but he became ambitious and
+went wherever he could find guides to take him. He returned home very
+rugged the fall he was fifty. Still with reason, Mrs. van der Veere
+was anxious, an anxiety shared by the family doctor. Between them they
+planned for him a sort of model life, truly a circumscribed life, and
+for five years wife and associates protected him from any possible
+strain, and for five years it worked successfully. Then in less than a
+month, almost like a bolt from the blue, all former symptoms returned,
+aggravated in form, bringing most unwelcome new ones in their trail.
+The family doctor called in a neurologist who, after examining the
+nervous man, spoke seriously of serious possibilities, and advised
+serious measures.
+
+Mr. van der Veere was now fifty-five years old, short, almost stocky
+in build, dark-skinned, with steel-gray hair and mustache. He was
+depressed in mien though always well-bred in bearing. He was not
+excitable and outwardly showed little of his suffering. Clifford van
+der Veere had always taken life and his duties seriously. For years
+his fear of making mistakes had been a chronic source of energy
+leakage-now it was a nightmare. All he did cost an exhausting price in
+the effort of decision. Duty and fear had long made a battle-ground of
+his soul, and when he realized that he had broken down again from
+"overwork," as they all expressed it, the depression of melancholy was
+added to the weight he so quietly bore. Yet this man of many
+responsibilities and interests had never truly worked. Since he left
+college he had played at work. Effort had been expended never more
+conscientiously. He was ever ready to give added hours of attention to
+problems referred to him. His intentions were true, but he did not
+know how to work. He did not know how to separate the serious from the
+unimportant, and he had never added the leaven of humor to the day's
+duties. An unusually well-equipped man, physically and mentally, he
+should have found the responsibilities of his administratorship but
+play. Had he been living right, he could have multiplied his
+efficiency three-fold and been the better for the larger doing. His
+wife felt he must "rest," and so did the family doctor; he himself was
+practically past arguing or disagreeing.
+
+But the rest-cure which the neurologist prescribed was certainly
+unique. It may have been wrongly named. Mr. van der Veere was a man of
+unusually strong physique. Nature had equipped him with a muscular
+system better than nine-tenths of his fellowmen possess, but he had
+never utilized it. For many generations his forbears had wrung food
+and life and, unconsciously, health from the soil. He was three
+generations from touch with mother earth, and back to the soil he was
+sent. He was taught to work increasing hours of common, manual labor.
+For weeks he did his part of the necessary drudgery of the world. He
+shoveled coal, he spaded in the garden, he worked on the public roads,
+he transplanted trees, he hoed common weeds with a common hoe, he
+tramped, he toiled and he sweat. The need for physical labor was in
+his blood. He needed his share of it, as do we all. And his blood
+answered exultantly, as good blood always does, to the call of honest
+toil. Within a month he realized a keenness for the work of the day.
+His fine muscles took on hardness, they seemed to double in size, and
+strength came, and with it not only a willingness but an eagerness
+which transformed that strength into productive effort. With the
+willingness to do what his hands found to do came sleep, for his
+nerves--bred as they had been in good stock--rejoiced when they found
+him living as they had for years begged him to live. A fifteen-year-
+old appetite came to the fifty-five-year-old man, and transformation
+wrought happy changes in his face and bearing. Indecision faded,
+introspection disappeared, and a decision came which was to forever
+put indecision out of his way. A decision which brought the peace and
+contentment to the van der Veere Fifth Avenue home, which religious
+intolerance had robbed from the van der Veeres in their stone-thatched
+hut in far-away Normandy, a simple decision, not requiring brilliance
+nor a college education, nor a professional training, nor even a
+loving helpmate to accomplish: "Six days shall I labor not only with
+my brain but with my hands, and the seventh day shall I rest."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE FINE ART OF PLAY
+
+
+It was her earliest recollection, and parts of it were not clear.
+There were those big men carrying in her father, and her mother's face
+looking so strange, and her father looking so strange with the white
+cloths about his head, and the strange faces of doctors and neighbors
+she had not seen before. Then the strange stillness and the strange
+new fear when her father did not move and they all were so quiet.
+These memories were rather blurred; she was not always sure which were
+memories of the events or which had grown from what she had afterwards
+heard. But of the funeral she was very sure, for she could never
+forget those beautiful silvered handles on the shining wooden coffin,
+or her resentment toward the women dressed in black who would not let
+her touch these--the prettiest things she had ever seen. The colts had
+run away, frightened, when an empty sap-barrel fell off the sled, and
+her father had been thrown against a tree and brought home with a
+fractured skull, to live unconscious two days, and to be buried in the
+shiny coffin with the silver handles.
+
+There had been an older child who died as a baby of eight months, and
+so Widow Gilmore was left at thirty-five with her only child, Hattie,
+and a hundred-and-forty-acre farm, with the house in town. Mrs.
+Gilmore had good business sense. She lived alone with Hattie, ran the
+farm, and soon her interests degenerated into a slavery to household
+and farm details.
+
+The widow had taught school until she was nearly thirty. She was not
+handsome, and the meager sentiment of her soul easily disintegrated
+into morbidness. She wore black the rest of her days, and for the rest
+of her days church services were hours of public mourning. The Gilmore
+"parlor" was closed after the funeral, and Hattie never got a glimpse
+within its almost gruesomely sacred walls, save as she timidly peeped
+in during cleaning days or, rarely, when her mother tearfully led her
+in and they stood before the life-size crayon portrait of the
+departed. Even in her quiet play, Hattie must keep on the other side
+of the house.
+
+Hattie Gilmore was a sober child and lived a sober childhood. She was
+not strong; nothing had ever been done to make her so. Play and
+playmates were always limited. She and her mother belonged to
+Coopersville's "better class," most of the town children living below
+the bridge where the homes of the factory people crowded. Boys were
+"too rough," and the other girls were "not nice enough"; so she played
+much alone--such play as it was, with her two china dolls and the tin
+stove and tin dishes, which made up her toys. There was little to
+stimulate her imagination and nothing to develop comradeships and
+friendships. For hours of her play-time she sat inertly on the front
+stoop and watched the passersby, for there had never been any thought
+of training her in the art of play. Instead, she was warned to keep
+her dress clean and rather sharply reprimanded if, perchance, dress or
+apron was torn. So she stood and watched the school-play of the other
+children, never knowing the thrills of a game of "tag," nor the
+reckless adventures of "black man"; even "Pussy wants a corner"
+disarranged her painfully curled curls and was rarely risked. "Hop-
+scotch," when the figure was small and lady-like, was practically the
+limit of Hattie's "violent exercise." So she did not develop-how could
+she! She remained undersized. Moreover, her play-days were sadly
+shortened, for they early merged into work-days. Housekeeping cares
+were many, as her mother planned her household. According to York
+State traditions Hattie was early taught domestic details, and for
+over a generation seriously, slavishly followed the routine
+established by her mother who doggedly, to the last, knew no shadow of
+turning, and went to her honestly earned long rest within a week after
+she took to her bed. Hattie finished the town high school, and had
+taken her school-work so seriously that she was valedictorian--being
+too good to soil your dress ought to bring some reward. Her teacher
+proudly referred to her as an example of the fine work a student could
+do who was not disturbed by outside influences. Commencement night,
+the same summer she was seventeen, she was almost pretty. The natural
+flush of success and of public recognition was heightened by the
+reflected flush from the red roses she wore; and Ben Stimson, the old
+doctor's son, carried the image of this, her most beautiful self, in
+his big heart for many years. He was then twenty, a sophomore at
+college, and a wholesome fellow to look upon. He took Hattie home that
+night. It was early June, and they dallied on the way. She was so
+nearly happy that her conscience became suspicious. She felt something
+awful was going to happen!--and she almost did not care. They had
+reached the front steps of her home. Ominously, silence fell. Suddenly
+impulsive Ben crushed her to him and--must it be told?--kissed her,
+kissed Hattie Gilmore's unsullied lips. For a moment her heart leaped
+almost into wanton expression. A moment more--another kiss, and she
+might have been compromised, she might have responded to the thrilling
+love which was calling to her heart, but the goddess of her destiny
+willed otherwise. The front door opened; an angular form appeared; an
+acrid voice fairly curdled love-thoughts as it assailed the impetuous
+lover. Within a minute he was slinking away and the rescued maiden was
+safe in the indignant, resenting arms of her mother--safe, but for
+years to be tempted and troubled by remorse and wishes, to be haunted
+by unaccepted hopes. "Ben Stimson is a free lance. He can't help
+being, for his father's a free thinker and the boy never went to
+Sunday-school a dozen times in his life. Let him join the church and
+show folks he wants to live right; then, if he courts you regular, I
+won't mind, but he is too free and easy. I call that kind dangerous,"
+her mother said.
+
+Ben Stimson wrote Hattie a note the next day, which she did not
+answer, but kept for years. Two summers later he drove up to the
+house, looking mighty fine in the doctor's new runabout, driving the
+high-stepping bay, natty in a "brand-new" tan harness--the first
+Hattie had ever seen. He asked her to come with him for a drive, and
+again her mother's nipping negative influenced her decision against
+the pleadings of a yearning, lonely heart.
+
+Mrs. Gilmore finally died an exclusive, matter-of-fact, joyless death,
+even as she had lived. Ben came to the funeral. He called on Hattie
+the next day. Inconstancy was not one of his weaknesses, and the veil
+of her Commencement beauty had clung to her through these many years,
+in her old lover's eyes. He was again impetuous and offended every
+conservative propriety of Hattie's dutiful melancholy by asking her to
+marry him--and this actually in the room where her mother's funeral
+was held the day before! What could Hattie do but burst into tears and
+leave the room--and Ben, and the secretly cherished hopes of many
+years, and a real home with a cheerily happy husband and those
+children which might have been hers--to leave all these and more in
+homage to the sacredness of her mother's memory.
+
+Ten gray years dragged by. Hattie kept a few boarders so as not to be
+alone in the house. She would take no children. They were too noisy
+and kept the place in disorder. Ben's patience had finally exhausted,
+though he finished his medical course and had been practicing nearly
+ten years before he married. No other one for whom she could care even
+called.
+
+The farm did well. The lone woman had over $20,000 in the bank and the
+property was worth as much more. But the brightest days were gray. At
+forty-five she weighed ninety-four. She ate barely enough to keep
+going. Her digestion was wretched. Her pride and her will alone made
+her able to sit through meals or through the occasional neighbors'
+calls. She spent hours alone in her room, dumb, dark-minded, with an
+unrelenting heartache and pains which racked every organ. Her sleep
+was fitful and she dreamed of Ben downstairs in a casket, again and
+again, until she fairly feared the night. When she took her nerve
+medicine, she seemed tied, bound hand and foot in that parlor of
+death, held by a sleep of terror. Then Ben would move about in the
+casket and make tortured faces at her, and some horrible times he
+accused, even berated her. Finally an awful dream, two caskets, her
+mother in one, Ben in the other, each railing and both showering abuse
+upon her. She was in bed for weeks. Another doctor came and then-
+praise be! her deliverer.
+
+Jane Andrews was the old Presbyterian minister's daughter. She had
+lived in Coopersville until she was twenty-four, giving her father an
+efficient, devoted daughter's care through his long, last illness. The
+family means had always been limited, and when the earner was laid
+away, she at once responded to the practical call. There were no
+hospitals near; so she left home and went into training in a small
+institution on the Hudson. This is a hospital where sickness is
+recognized as more than infections and broken, mangled members. Here
+she learned well the saving balm of joy in making whole wretched
+bodies with their more wretched souls. For five years she had lived in
+the midst of benefits brought by the inspiration of right-feeling
+attitudes. She knew full well the healing potency of the play-spirit.
+Her insight into life was already deep, her outlook upon life high and
+heartful. Then her mother failed; she came home and for three months
+had been beautifying the final weeks, This more than wise woman now
+came to nurse poor Hattie, came to companion her back to health, came
+as a revelation to this mistaken and wearied one, of a better way.
+After forty-five years of the playless life of a serf to blighting
+seriousness, the wonder is that sourness had not entered to hopelessly
+curdle all chances for joyous living.
+
+Hattie Gilmore had to be taught to play. During the weeks of her rest-
+treatment the stronger woman took the weaker back to girlhood. She
+brought some dolls. They made clothes for them. They dressed and
+undressed them and put them to bed. They taught them to say their
+prayers and prepared their little meals, teaching them "table
+manners," and they made them play as children should play. A sunshine
+scrapbook was made. It was a gorgeous conglomeration of colors, of
+fairies and children, of birds and flowers, and of awkward, but
+telling, hand-illustrations of the joys of being nursed and,
+prophetically, of the greater joys of being well. They played
+"Authors," "Flinch," and even "Old Maid." Splendid half-hours were
+spent in reading gloriously happy lives. Stories were told--happiness
+stories, and jokes and conundrums invented. One day Hattie laughed
+aloud, for which heartlessness her morbid conscience at once wrung
+forth a stream of tears; but that wondrously artful nurse held a
+mirror before a woefully twisting face, and her tactful comments
+brought back the smiles. That laugh was the first warming beam of a
+summer of happiness which was to golden the autumn of a bleak life
+made blest. Then Hattie Gilmore learned to play a score of out-of-door
+games and to understand sports. She learned to see the beauties in the
+roadside flowers-"weeds" her mother had called most of them. She
+learned to read glorious stories in the ever-transforming clouds. The
+neighbors' children were invited, timidly they came at first, later
+they were eager to come and play at "Aunt Hattie's." Three fine,
+determining events happened that fall to complete the salvation of
+this woman who was so fast learning happiness-living.
+
+They, Jane and Hattie, friends now rather than nurse and patient, made
+the daintiest possible cap and cloak for Dr. Ben's last baby, and sent
+it with a hearty, merry greeting. This was a peace-offering to the
+past, more efficient probably than much blood which has been shed on
+sacrificial altars. Then they made a trip which came near being a
+solemn occasion, it was so portentously important. They went to the
+church-orphanage, remained several days and brought home a lusty
+three-year-old bunch of mischief, who was forever to wreck all the
+gloom-sanctity of that old home. Hereafter even the parlor of mourning
+was to be assailed with shouts of glee; some things planted in
+Hattie's flower beds were foredoomed not to come up; no longer could
+the front lawn look like a freshly swept carpet. Roy was legally
+adopted by Hattie and became her proudest possession. Finally, her
+eyes were opened to that rarely sighted, fair vista of the sacred
+play-life, the play-life so long denied this good woman. Never again
+were housekeeping worries to be mentioned. They were not recognized.
+When things went wrong, they went merrily wrong. What could not be
+cured was joked about. The whole business of home-making became a
+gladsome game.
+
+Life for Hattie Gilmore, for Roy, for the neighbors' children, and for
+some of the mothers of dull old Coopersville came to be lived as the
+Father intended His children to live, when one almost old woman found
+the Fountain of Youth revealed by the fine art of play. A blessed
+revelation it is to every life when the joy of play robs the working
+hours of their tedium and weariness. He lives as master who makes play
+of his work.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE TANGLED SKEIN
+
+
+Warm balls of comfort, a thousand sheep feed on the hillside, turning
+herb and green growing things into food and wool. After the shearing
+and the washing, ten thousand soft strands are spun into a single
+thread, and each length of thread is a promise of warmth and
+protection for years to come. Then the wool-white yarn is dyed in
+colors symbolizing the strength of the navy, the loyalty of the army
+or the honor of the alma mater. Reeled into a skein, the wool is now
+all but ready for the fingers of the knitter; it has but to be wound
+in a ball. Yet here danger lurks. An inadvertent twist or a simple
+tangle quickly knots the thread, unless thoughtful patience rescues.
+Recklessness means hopeless disarray, and the soft fluff of warming
+color becomes unkempt disorder, a confused mass from which the thread
+broken again and again is extracted. The work of careful hands has
+been reduced to lasting defect.
+
+Francis Weston was reared in one of the prosperous, middle-Western
+cities, on the northern bank of the Ohio. The family had succeeded
+well and represented large manufacturing interests. All burdens which
+money could lift were removed, from his shoulders. He finished college
+in the East and entered business, never having felt a hand's weight of
+responsibility. As vice-president and director in one of the banks
+organized largely by the family's capital, he was free to follow his
+impulses. No details demanded his attention; other minds in the bank
+cared for these.
+
+Across the river a southern town nestled in cozy comfort, having for
+generations maintained a conscious superiority to its smoking,
+northern neighbor. Several handsome daughters of Kentucky aristocracy
+gave tangible evidence of the tone of the community, and Francis
+Weston's impulses made his trips across the river increasingly
+frequent. And, as it should have been, North and South were joined
+closer by one more golden link, when an only daughter of Kentucky
+wealth became Mrs. Weston. The marriage contract held but one
+stipulation: their home was to be in the bride's village. It looked as
+though one of Love's best plans had succeeded. The husband proved
+deeply devoted to his wife and the new home. The bank continued to
+take most excellent care of itself, and his trips north, across the
+river, were but occasional. The Weston mansion and estate in every way
+befitted the combined wealth of the two families, and the wife gave
+much time to making it increasingly attractive, and to the training of
+her good servants. The husband read much, exercised little, and the
+only reason for gentle protest from the wife was his excessive
+smoking.
+
+A little daughter came, but as though Fate would say, "I am Master,"
+she lived but a few days. The shock was cruel, and the father seemed
+to suffer the more intensely. Mrs. Weston took her sorrow in a fine
+way; she seemed to realize that she, of the two, must turn away the
+threat of morbidness. But the touch of Fate was not to be denied.
+Still, three years later, it would seem that nothing but thankfulness
+and abounding joy should have filled the Weston home--a son came. They
+named him Harold. The father's solicitude for the little fellow's life
+was as pathetic as it was abnormal. The bank was now unvisited for
+months by its first vice-president. As the boy grew the father gave
+him more and more of himself. He was his companion in play, and
+personally taught him, seriously taking up study after study, until at
+sixteen Harold was well prepared for college--scholastically prepared,
+we should amend--for unconsciously the father had kept him from the
+normal comradeship with boys of his age. Much of excellent theory the
+youth had, some wisdom beyond his years, but no knowledge of denials,
+no spirit of give and take, no thought of the other fellow--his rights
+and wrongs. In spite of their long walks and rides on gaited Kentucky
+thoroughbreds, Harold was not physically robust, so it was decided to
+send him to a southern college, and he went to Vanderbilt. During his
+second year the father had a long siege of typhoid, and recovery was
+pitiably imperfect. His mentality did not return with his body
+strength--he remained a harmless, weak-minded man. Much care was
+exercised to keep the details from Harold, though both families were
+unwilling to have the broken man sent to an institution, and for four
+years professional nurses attended him at home. In spite of the
+mother's best efforts to distract and neutralize, the son could but
+feel the unnaturalness of the home atmosphere and profoundly miss the
+devotion of his father. Still from what little he did see of the
+invalid, it was a relief when, four years later, an accident took him
+away.
+
+Harold Weston's college life held true to his training. Quietly
+friendly, he mixed poorly; mentally well-equipped, he was an excellent
+student--brilliant in some classes, good in all. Athletics and
+fraternities, feeds and "femmies" dissipated none of his energies, nor
+added aught to the fulness of his living. He continued his college
+work until he had received both Bachelor's and Master's degrees. The
+spring he was twenty-three, he returned home for the summer, an
+attractive young man. A classmate had interested him in tennis, for
+which he showed some natural aptitude. The year's work had taxed him
+lightly. The skein of yarn gave promise of a perfect fabric.
+
+Mother and son had a happy summer. She saw to it that the home was
+alive with young folks, and one week-end party followed another.
+Harold had decided to study law, and nothing indicated that he would
+meet any obstacles during his course at Law School. All believed he
+was sufficiently strong to take this at Yale. There were brilliant
+minds in his classes--he was accustomed to lead. He dropped his
+tennis, he studied hard. In his second year he began losing weight
+after the holidays, and found difficulty in getting to sleep; his
+appetite became irregular, and his smoking, which had been moderate
+for some years, became a dependence. His nervous system was pretty
+well "shot up"--it had never been case-hardened. A weight of
+apprehension had become constantly present, and he let its burden
+depress him miserably. One of his professors, noting his appearance,
+talked with him earnestly, and with lay acumen decided his digestion
+was "out of fix" and told him of a "fine New York doctor." The stomach
+specialist worthily stood high in his profession. The examination was
+painstaking and exhaustive; the diagnosis seemed ominous to the morbid
+patient; the whole process was a revelation to him of organs and
+functions and laws of eating and drinking unheard in his years of
+study. "Chronic intestinal indigestion with food decomposition and
+auto-intoxication, augmented by nicotine," the doctor said. There had
+been a distinct lessening of efficiency in his law-school work. Study
+for the first time in his life required wearying effort. He did not
+feel himself, he was facing his first test, he was meeting his first
+strain. For the first time the skein was being mussed.
+
+Harold Weston began reading, indiscriminately, literature on food and
+digestion and diets. The doctor had given him a strict regimen. He
+began to note minutely the foods he ordered and to question the
+wholesomeness of their quality and preparation. Caution and over
+emphasis on details of food and habits of eating rapidly developed.
+Later not only the food in the dish, but most unhappily the foods he
+had swallowed were scrutinized by every alertness of sensation and
+imagination, and most damagingly did he become a victim of the
+unwholesome symptom-studying habit. Within two months his discerning
+physician recognized that the self-interest which had started in the
+physical damage of rapid eating of rich foods was developing into an
+obsession more detrimental than the original physical disorder, and
+thought it wise for him to discontinue study and return home to rest
+for the summer. The thread was tangled.
+
+The home-coming was not happy. From the first meal, the specialist's
+warnings were in conflict with the home diet, and resentments were not
+withheld from the good old dishes which had for a generation bedecked
+the home table. The delicacy instinctive to the family and to his
+earlier life was cast aside, and the subjects of food and its
+digestion, of food-poisoning and its consequences, made unpleasant
+every meal. Innocently and seriously the mother pointed to her good
+health and to rugged ancestors who had lived long and hale,
+unconsciously superior to food and drink. He brooked none of her
+suggestions, and finally when she honestly could not see it all his
+way, in the heat of his intensity he accused her of being to blame for
+all his trouble: she had fed him wrong from the first; she had fed his
+father wrong; the New York doctor had told him that certain mental
+diseases could be caused by food-poisoning, and his father would not
+have been a mental wreck, nor his own career cut short, had she only
+known what wives and mothers of this generation should know, and set a
+table which was not a laboratory of poison. These ideas, once
+accepted, never left him. They formed a theme which, after finding
+expression, recurred with ominously increasing frequency. A year
+before, Harold Weston was a kindly fellow, almost retiring, but with a
+peculiar lighting of his face in response which endeared him to
+feminine hearts. On a variety of subjects he was well-informed, his
+professors bespoke for him a high and honorable standing in the
+judiciary, but, from the mass of this fine mind's possibilities, a
+second wretched choice was now made. "Father's typhoid affected his
+mind, his brain must have been defective; my heredity is imperfect; my
+first illness damages my class work. I can never go on in my
+profession, there is no future for me but suffering." From this
+wrecking thought it was an easy step to condemnation of his father for
+his fatherhood, which, with his near-enmity toward his mother for her
+"criminal ignorance" in rearing him, introduced a sordidly
+demoralizing element into his mind which forever viciously tinctured
+memories and relations which should have been his sacred helpers. The
+normal mind can select well its world--miserably his mind lived with
+these dregs of his own choice. The power of normal selection will, in
+the best mind, be gradually lost through habitual surrender to the
+morbid.
+
+For the next year he lived unhappily in a home which he made unhappy.
+Naturally thoughtful, he daily took long walks, brooding over his
+wrongs--walks which brought him little benefit physically, as he
+considered himself unable to put into them sufficient effort to wring
+perspiration from his brow or toxins from his muscles. False
+interpretation of his own symptoms increased with the abnormal
+closeness of his scrutiny of them. His superficial knowledge he
+accepted as final. Ignorant of the limitations of heredity, will and
+judgment became subservient to pessimism, and the days marked a
+gradual, deepening depression. The skein was asnarl.
+
+A relative physician responded to the mother's call of distress and
+spent a week in the home, then took Harold under his personal care to
+a series of specialists--but not stomach specialists. Serious
+treatment was carried out at home with a young physician as companion.
+Two institutions offered the best help of their elaborate equipments
+and perfected methods. Three years of badly discounted usefulness
+passed. Long since had any call of responsibility ceased to elicit
+response. Toward the end of this time he seemed better, and was
+spending the summer at a health-resort, living a relatively normal
+life. Fate then seemed to smile--dainty fingers appeared from the
+nowhere, which promised gently, patiently, surely to loosen each
+tangled snarl.
+
+Eva Worth was another only child of affluence. She, too, was
+recuperating, spending the summer at the same resort as Harold.
+"Overwork at college," it was said. Petite of person, pleasing in
+manner, sweetly spoiled, with sympathies quickly born but usually
+displaced by fresher interests, she was bright and responsive in mind,
+and her attraction to Harold Weston gave promise of being the touch
+needed to complete his restoration. Providence only knows the
+possibilities latent in a union of these poor children of wealth. For
+him there was an unquestioned awakening. The somber clouds of his
+moods seemed destined to be transformed into delicate pastels by the
+promises of love. It was more than an infatuation for them both, and
+an understanding which was virtually an engagement left them happy
+even in their parting. But happiness was not a word for Harold
+Weston's conjuring. Throughout the weeks of his association with this
+fair girl, the first woman for whom he had ever cared, the thought had
+repeatedly come that he owed her a full and explicit explanation of
+his illness and of his "defective heredity." At home where the
+brooding habit had grown strong and fixed, this idea became so
+insistent, within two weeks, that he relieved the tension of its
+demands by a long letter of details, which even to the sympathetic ear
+of love were more than disquieting. The letter ended with a question
+of her willingness to indicate a final decision in her response. The
+appeal of his fine eyes was not there to help--other eyes were nearer.
+Eva Worth was but twenty-two. Home training, the reading of much fine
+literature, a college education, her own poor little heart, all failed
+to bespeak for her wisdom in this crisis. An impulsive, almost
+resentful refusal was sent. Second thoughts held more wisdom, for
+woman's pity was now wisdom, so another day saw another letter, one
+with a few saving words of hope. The first reply was handed to Harold
+after luncheon. Quietly he left the house, apparently for one of his
+afternoon walks. By morning he had not returned and a general alarm
+went out. Some days later two boys, fishing in the river from an old
+log, saw a cap in an eddy. No more has been seen or heard of Harold
+Weston. A hasty hand, a hasty touch had broken the thread.
+
+Two women were left to suffer. The elder, haunted by the re-echoings
+of an only son's condemnation, lives out her years in a loneliness
+which will not break, harrowed by questions of the wisdom of her
+mother-love, the best she had to give. Some mother's son she may yet
+help save, for she knows the vital error which shielded and guarded
+her boy till he reached his majority, never having met trial,
+hopelessly untrained in coping with adversity. The younger, sobered by
+the voice of self-accusation, ever feels the weight of the
+consciousness of a grave duty slighted; she was made more wise in a
+day of deep reality than by twenty years of conventional training.
+Tested again she would give as she has never known giving, give that
+she might protect.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE TROUBLED SEA
+
+
+A young woman, of rather striking appearance attired in her street
+clothing, is standing beside her dresser. She has just returned from
+town. She is of medium height, trim of figure, weighing about one
+hundred and forty, with skin of a soft ivory tint and cheeks showing a
+faint flush of health--or of excitement. Her dark hair waves
+gracefully and the scattering strands of gray quite belie her youth.
+The eyes are well placed, nearly black, and can sparkle on occasion.
+Her rather poorly formed hands of many restless habits, are the only
+apparent defect in this, externally attractive, young woman. She has
+just broken the seal of a heavy vellum envelope addressed in a strange
+feminine hand. It is an engraved announcement which reads:
+
+"Mrs. Pinkney Rogers announces the marriage of her daughter, Pearl
+May, to Mr. Lee Burnham"--
+
+She never read the rest. She never saw the--"on Tuesday, May thirtieth
+nineteen hundred and one. At Home, Rome, Georgia, after July fifth."
+Her sister, Addie, coming up the stairs, thought she heard a moan and
+hurried in to find Stella lying in a crumpled heap. Addie's quick eye
+noticed the announcement. She read it all, and destroyed it, and
+through the years it was never mentioned by either of them. She,
+alone, knew its relation to her sister's collapse, but with proverbial
+southern pride never voiced her opinion of the tragic cause of her
+older sister's years of nervous ill-health.
+
+Mr. Beckman, Stella's father, was at this time about fifty-five. He
+was the brunette parent from whom many of her more attractive physical
+qualities had been inherited. He was proprietor of the best men's
+furnishing store of the county's metropolis. His business was
+moderately successful, built up, he felt, entirely through years of
+his personal thought and attention, and it was practically his only
+interest. Even his interesting family was a matter of course--though
+the amount of the day's sales never became so. Mr. Beckman had a
+single diversion. The store closed at ten o'clock Saturday nights;
+between twelve and one its proprietor would reach home in an exalted
+state, and for two hours poor Mrs. Beckman would hear his plans for
+developing the biggest gent's clothing-business in the state, for
+becoming a merchant-prince, emphasized with many a hearty slap on her
+back. This weekly relaxation was always followed by a miserable Sunday
+morning, invariably referred to by every member of the family as
+"another of Papa's sick headaches." Mrs. Beckman never lisped the
+details of those unhappy Saturday nights, and the loyal deception was
+so well carried out, with such devoted attention and nursing, that by
+early afternoon, Sunday, the invalid was quite restored and any
+possible self-reproach had been melted away. Headaches of the real
+kind did come later, and, as his habits changed not, the Brights which
+first appeared at fifty-eight progressed without interruption to his
+death at sixty.
+
+Mrs. Beckman was a blonde, but for many years had been a badly faded
+one. She was as singleminded in regard to her household as her husband
+to his store. Neither had developed more than family and local
+interests. She was the same age as her husband and had, without
+question, worked faithfully, long hours, through the long years, in
+homage to her sense of housekeeping duties. The coming of the
+children, only, from time to time, kept her away from kitchen and
+parlor for a few weeks. She had been to Atlanta but once during the
+last ten years, not that Mr. Beckman willed it so--she could have had
+vacations and attractive dresses, though for some reason, possibly the
+"fading" which has been mentioned, he never urged her to go with him--
+and she needed urging, for she honestly believed there was "too much
+to do" at home. The habit of industry can become as inveterate as
+habits of pleasure.
+
+The two Beckman boys had the virtues of both father and mother. They
+finished at the city high school, and at once went to work in the
+store with such earnestness of purpose that they were quite prepared
+to conduct the business, even better than the father had done, when he
+became incapacitated.
+
+We met the sister, Addie, in Stella's room and realized from her
+discretion, manifested under stress, that she possessed elements of
+character. She was a clear-skinned, high-strung blonde--thin-skinned
+too, probably, for from childhood her hands rebelled at household
+duties. The family thrift was hers, however, and from the limited
+opportunities of the home town, she prepared herself for, and filled
+well, for years, a position with a successful law firm. She later
+married the senior member--a widower. His children and her high-strung
+thin-skinnedness and lack of domestic propensities have not made her
+as successful a home-builder as she was a stenographer.
+
+Stella Beckman's early life was deeply influenced by many of the
+surroundings which we have glimpsed. Hers was not a home of fine
+ideals. Much that was common was always present. The table-talk was
+almost competitive in nature, as, with the possible exception of the
+mother, each one used "I" almost insistently, as a text for converse,
+the three times a day they sat together. Even mutual interests were
+largely obscured, much of the time, by personal ones, barring only the
+subject of sickness. All forms of illness were themes commanding
+instant and absorbing attention. Inordinate anxiety was felt by all
+for the ills of the one; and for days the "I" would be forgotten if
+any member of the home-circle was "sick." And the concerns of the
+patient, whether suffering from a cold, sore eyes, a sprained ankle,
+or "had her tonsils out," were discussed with minuteness of detail
+worthy an International Conference. How the patient slept, what the
+doctor said, the effect of the new medicine, how the heart was
+standing the strain, what the visiting neighbors thought of the case,
+in fact the whole subject of sickness held a morbid interest for each
+member of the family. Sickness, no matter how slight, was with the
+Beckmans ever an excuse for changing any or all plans. We might speak
+of the discussion of illness as the Beckman family avocation.
+
+Stella was a bright child, who, wisely directed and influenced, would
+have taken a good education. She could have developed into a
+particularly pleasing, capable, useful, possibly forceful woman. But
+the emotional Stella was over-developed, until it obstructed the
+growth of the reasoning Stella. Still we should call her a normal
+small-town child, certainly until her last year in grammar-school. She
+had some difficulty with her studies that spring because of her eyes.
+Her lenses, fitted in Atlanta, seemed to make them worse. It was only
+after she went to a noted specialist in Charleston that she was
+relieved. It is significant that later these expensively obtained
+glasses were discarded as "too much trouble."
+
+The summer Stella was thirteen, Grandmother Beckman came to spend her
+last days in her son's home. The granddaughter had been named for her,
+and Grandmother was frail and old and needed attention. Grandmother
+also had some means. For over a year the young girl gave much of her
+time to the old lady, and for over a year she was able to lead the
+Beckman table-talk with her wealth of details about Grandma's
+sickness. Stella's care of her charge was excellent, entirely lacking
+in any selfish element. Death hesitated, when he finally called, and
+for nearly a week the dying woman lay unconscious. These "days of
+strain" and the death and funeral were, always after, mentioned by
+Stella and her people as her "first shock." For a time she was so
+nervous and restless and her sleep so disturbed that the doctor gave
+her hypnotics and advised her being sent away. She went to Atlanta for
+two months, boarding in the home of a Methodist minister, who some
+years before had been stationed in Rome. It was Stella's first
+experience in a religious home. She had never been accustomed to
+hearing the "blessing" said, and food referred to as "God-given"
+seemed, at first, quite too sacred to swallow. And the effect of
+morning worship--the seriously read Bible chapter, the earnest prayer,
+with the entire family kneeling--affected her profoundly, and gave to
+this godly home a sanctity which, at susceptible not-yet-fifteen,
+awakened emotions so powerful that for days she walked as one in a
+dream, one attracted by some wonderful vision which was drawing her,
+unresisting, into its very self. Each day was a step closer, and at
+prayer-meeting the Wednesday night before she returned home, she
+announced her conversion, with an intensity of earnestness which could
+but impress every hearer.
+
+Stella Beckman went back to Rome filled with a zeal for the new
+religious life which commanded the respect of even her religiously
+careless father. Nor was it a flash in the pan. She joined the church.
+She made her sister join the church, and to the church she gave four
+years of remarkable devotion. Church interests were first, and one
+Sunday the pastor publicly announced that for the twelve months past
+Stella Beckman had not missed a single service in any branch of the
+church's activities. She taught a Sunday-school class. She sang in the
+choir. She was president of the Epworth League, and not only attended,
+but always "testified" at mid-week prayer-meeting. Her church
+interests took all her time. The foreign-missionary cause later laid a
+gripping hold upon her, and arrangements were made, four years after
+she went into the church, for her to go to a Missionary Training-
+School.
+
+Somehow things went wrong here. She had expected an almost sanctified
+atmosphere. She was accustomed to being regarded as essentially
+devout, but there was a sense of order in the school which she felt
+was mechanical, class-room work seemed to be counted as important as
+religious services, and her fervidly expressed religious experiences
+appeared to reflect chill rather than the accustomed warmth of the
+home prayer-meetings. Moreover, real lessons were assigned which no
+amount of religious feeling or no intensity of personal praying made
+easy. She hadn't studied for years; in fact, she had never learned to
+do intellectual work studiously. And even these good religious
+teachers did not hesitate to demand accurate recitations. She had been
+accustomed for years to have preference shown, and here she was
+treated only as one of many, and, humiliatingly, as one who was
+failing to maintain the standards of the many. She fell behind in the
+two most important studies, nor was her classwork in general good.
+Whether she would have later proven capable of getting down to rock
+bottom and meeting the demands of reason on a rational basis, we
+cannot say, for the family hobby abruptly terminated her missionary
+career. "Mother dangerously sick with inflammatory rheumatism. Come at
+once," the telegram said--and she hastily returned home to be met
+with, what her history records as, "my second shock." Her mother
+WAS sick, and truly and genuinely suffering. The house was in
+disorder. Weeks followed in which Stella's best strength was needed.
+Her mother slowly mended, but never regained her old activity. The
+doctor said a heart-valve was damaged, and the family thereafter were
+never quite certain when the sudden end would come--an uncertainty
+which was proven legitimate ten years later, when she died, almost
+suddenly. Stella had met shock number two very well. The home-love and
+welcome and the warmth of feeling she experienced in the home-church
+were a never-admitted relief from the rigid exactions of the training-
+school life, and did much to neutralize, for the time, her anxiety
+about her mother and the "strain of her care." It was a family which
+ever advertised home-devotion, and so this call of home illness
+completely obscured all other plans for three years. But home
+responsibilities quite wrecked her church-going record. In fact, it
+was unkindly whispered that Stella was "backsliding." And these same
+whispers found audible expression the summer she was twenty-two, when
+attractive Lee Burnham, the judge's son, spent his summer vacation at
+home, and "took her buggy-riding every Sunday evening for over two
+months."
+
+Lee was only twenty-one, but his was a very romantic twenty-one, and
+he filled Stella's ears with so many sweet nothings that she no longer
+heeded the call of duty. And why shouldn't she be in love and have a
+lover? Had she not already given the best years of her youth to
+others? Had she not waited without a thought of rebellion for the
+coming of the right one? And Love, and Love's mysterious touch,
+wrought fantastic changes in Stella Beckman's affairs. She and Lee
+read poetry. She had never known how beautiful poetry was nor how much
+of it there was to read. He knew the good novels and sent her all that
+he himself read, and these were plenty! Then, when he was away, he
+wrote and she wrote, and now and then he wrote some verses to her.
+There was no real engagement. They never spoke much of the future; the
+present was too full. Home duties and church interests flagged badly
+during these two years, and the summer she was twenty-four, it became
+town talk that this young couple would marry. The Beckmans were very
+willing. But one day the judge called Lee into his office and wanted
+to know what these "doings" all meant, asking him if he was "going to
+marry his mother," and making some rather uncomplimentary Beckman-
+Burnham comparisons. Lee rather sheepishly told his father there was
+nothing to worry about. He had much respect, possibly awe, for the old
+gentleman. The next week Lee left for his final year in law-school.
+His letters to Stella continued, though he plead his studies as an
+excuse for their diminished frequency. He did not come home that
+spring, at Easter. "Work," he wrote Stella. Nor was he ever square to
+this poor girl, for he never mentioned his relations with Miss Pearl
+May Rogers. And "shock number three" came, as unhappy Stella read the
+announcement of his marriage, addressed in the hand of his June city-
+bride. A lastingly damaging shock it proved to be.
+
+Stella was put to bed; for days she lay in deep apathy. Feeding became
+a problem of nurses and doctors. She cared for nothing--nothing
+"agreed" with her, and she lost weight rapidly. Chills and flushes,
+sweatings and shakings came in regular disorder, and for hours she
+would be apparently speechless. Somebody--not the doctors--reported
+that Stella Beckman had typho-malaria. Abnormal sensitiveness to
+surroundings, to sounds, sights and smells, especially a dread of
+unpleasant news, were to complicate her living for years to come. For
+the remainder of her life she was to confound sensations normal to
+emotional reactions with sensations accompanying physical diseases;
+and sensations came and went in her now tense emotional nature like
+trooping clouds on a stormy day. Stella's illness was so prostrating
+that her weakened mother and busy sister could not care for her
+adequately, and an aunt came to help. Recovery was slow and imperfect;
+she remained a semi-invalid for two and a half years. Physical
+discomforts were so constant that a surgeon was finally consulted who
+did an exploratory operation and removed some unnecessary anatomy.
+This man's personality was strong, his desire to help, genuine, and he
+had considerable insight into the emotional illness of his patient.
+The influence of the operation, with the surgeon's encouragement and
+the atmosphere of confidence pervading the excellent, small surgical
+hospital, combined to make Stella very much better for the time. But
+within less than three years, her father died. She calls this "the
+fourth shock," and it resulted in another period of nervous illness.
+She cried much at the time. Work was impossible--as was all exercise
+--because of her rapid fatigue. One day she slipped on the front steps
+and, apparently, but bruised her knee. Her doctor nor the X-ray could
+discover more serious damage. Still, walking was practically
+discontinued, as she could not step without pain. At last, almost in
+desperation, her brother took her to a hospital noted for its success
+in reconstructing nervous invalids. At this time she weighed but one
+hundred and four, and the list of her symptoms seemed unending. A
+desire to be helped, however, was discerned and with rest-treatment
+she gained rapidly in weight, appetite returned, digestive
+disturbances disappeared, and massage, or a new idea, fully restored
+her walking powers. She became eager for the more important half of
+her treatment--the out-of-door work-cure. During these weeks she had
+certainly been given much physical and mental help. Expert and
+specialized counsel and nursing had been hers.
+
+At the end of five months Stella returned to Georgia--restored--a
+health enthusiast. It now became her joy, in and out of season,
+whenever she could secure hearers, to relate the details of her
+illness and the miracle of her restoration. The methods of the special
+hospital that wrought such wonders for her were reiterated in detail,
+and for years she made herself thoroughly wearisome by her talk of
+diet and exercise, special bathing, out-of-door work and prescribed
+habits. She kept herself constantly conspicuous in her efforts to
+reform others to her new ways of living. For over four years, she
+sedulously adhered to the routine outlined by the hospital, with such
+devotion to, and augmentation of, details that she had little time for
+church and practically no time for household affairs. As had been her
+habit in past experiences her enthusiasm was causing her to overdo,
+and the business of keeping well seemed now her only object in life.
+This could not go on interminably. Something had to happen, and her
+mother's rather sudden death proved the shock which was to relieve her
+from the overenthusiastic slavery to an impracticable routine.
+
+Stella Beckman at forty-five is sadly less fine and worthy than the
+Stella Beckman of eighteen. Religion, Love and Science have each
+entered her life deeply to enrich it, but all of these built upon the
+sands, the shifting sands of an emotional nature which had never laid
+the granite foundation of reason. Since the mother's death, the logic
+of her feelings has become more and more crippled by false valuations.
+She lives at home keeping house for the boys, recounting each mealtime
+the endless list of her feelings; bringing herself, her sickness, her
+hospital experiences wearisomely into the conversation with each
+caller. The emotional stability and the will to persevere even at
+considerable cost, which marked youth, are gone. At forty-five her
+life is objectlessly spasmodic, the old family-habit of talking of
+self and the family-fetish of discussing sickness have honeycombed her
+character and made her hopelessly tiresome. And her feeling-life is as
+restless as a troubled sea.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+WILLING ILLNESS
+
+
+Mr. Harrison Orr lived till he was twenty-five in Indianapolis, the
+town of his birth, excepting the years spent in Chicago pursuing his
+literary and law courses. He inherited a small fortune and, after two
+years spent in "seeing the world," located in Memphis, Tennessee.
+Here, as an attorney and later as an investor, he was professionally,
+financially and socially successful. His father had been liberal in
+the use of wines and cordials, and young Orr himself always remained a
+"good fellow," just the kind of a man to attract a vivacious, socially
+proud daughter of the South. He was thirty-five when he married--
+accounted an age of discretion. His experience with womankind was so
+ample that he should have made no mistake in his final, irrevocable
+choice, and, be it said to his honor, no one, not even the wife
+herself, ever knew by word or act of his, to the contrary. He and his
+Mississippi bride spent thirty years in apparent domestic
+tranquillity, until he died at sixty-five from a heart which refused
+longer to have its claims for purposeful living eternally answered by
+gin rickeys and nips of "straight Scotch."
+
+Mrs. Harrison Orr is unconsciously the unhappy "villain" of our tale.
+Her girlhood home was on a large sugar-plantation where she, as an
+only child, was reared to dominate her surroundings, while her parents
+made particular effort that she might shine socially. Parts of many
+years she lived in Washington in the home of a political relative, and
+attended a select girls' school. After her debut she spent the social
+winters at the Capitol where social niceties were developed with much
+attention to detail, and at home and while in Washington she was
+gratifyingly popular. "A brilliant conversationalist," she had heard
+herself called when fifteen, and the art of conversation, hitherto far
+from neglected, became by choice and practice her forte. Brilliancy in
+speech ever remained her only seriously attempted accomplishment.
+Clever of speech, from childhood, she had early learned to utilize
+this ability to attain any desired end. And talk she could, and talk
+she did, and as she grew older, by sheer talking she domineered every
+situation. It was her opinion when she married that at any time, with
+any listener, she could talk cleverly on any subject. As the years
+passed, during which she added little to her asset of knowledge, this
+art of fine speech gradually, but relentlessly, degenerated, and step
+by step she slipped down the paths of delicacy and fineness, through
+the selfishness of her insistent talkativeness. Harrison Orr never
+intimated that his evenings at home were hours of boredom, but in
+later years spent much time in the comparative quiet of his club. Few
+intellects can be so amply stored as to continue brilliant through
+decades of much speaking, and the sparkle of Mrs. Orr's conversation
+was gradually shrouded in the weariness of what a blunt neighbor
+termed her "inveterate gabble." As it must be, this woman of
+exceptional opportunities early lost true sensitiveness, and, both as
+guest and hostess, ignored the offense of inconsiderate and self-
+seeking interruptions. She broke into the speech of others with crude
+abandon. The itch to lead and preempt the conversation became
+uncontrollable. Finer natures thrown with her could but tolerate her
+"naive" discourtesy, while dependents had to dumbly endure. Mrs. Orr
+but stands as a type illustrating far too many mortally wearisome,
+social pretenders, prominent only through the tireless tiresomeness of
+their much speaking.
+
+The wreckage which may follow a single unthought crudity, in a home
+otherwise exceptional, is signally illustrated in the life of Mrs.
+Orr's only child, Hortense, born two years after their marriage. From
+the first she was sensitive and high-strung, nervously damaged
+probably in her early years by her mother's restless, unwise overcare.
+When Hortense was five she was sharply ill for several weeks with
+scarlatina. During these days she was isolated with Mrs. Place, her
+nurse, in a wing of the home. As fortune would have it, Mrs. Place was
+the daughter of a rural English clergyman. After the death of her
+husband, who left her limited in means, she came to America, where she
+trained. Her wholesome influence over Hortense, her general demeanor
+in the home, and her many excellent qualifications as nurse and woman
+attracted Mr. Orr's discerning attention, and he induced her to remain
+as governess to his daughter. Mrs. Place proved a most excellent
+addition to the Orr household. Always deferential, she was never
+servile; always reserved, she ever faced duties large and small,
+promptly, quietly and efficiently. Never, through her nearly ten years
+as daily companion of Hortense, did her speech or conduct betoken
+aught but refinement. More and more Hortense retreated to her
+wholesome companionship in face of the assaults of her mother's trying
+volubility. In many ways this most unusual nurse protected her charge
+from the greater damage of poor mothering than actually occurred. The
+differences between these two women were reflected in the sensitive
+child's life. Unconsciously at first, later in certain details,
+ultimately without reserve, she approved the standards of the one and
+repudiated those of the other. In contrast to her mother she grew into
+an abnormal reserve.
+
+Hortense never attended the public schools but was regularly taught by
+Mrs. Place until she was fifteen, when she went East and entered her
+mother's old school, in Washington. The years of her careful tutoring
+had failed to accustom her to competition of any kind, and this first
+year of school work was taxing and but indifferently successful.
+During the spring term she had measles which left her with a hacking
+cough, and she did not regain her lost weight. The school-doctor sent
+her home, "for the southern climate," where she remained for a year,
+rather frail and the object of much detailed, maternal solicitude. It
+was probably this same solicitude which finally became so wearying
+that she returned to school for relief. Hortense was now a year
+behind, but resented the rather superior airs of some of her old
+classmates so effectively that she got down to business, made up her
+back work, and graduated reasonably well up in her entrance class. Of
+light build, and always frail in appearance, she did commendable work
+in school athletics. She took private instruction in hockey, for she
+was determined "to make the team," and her success in accomplishing
+this is significant of her ability to do, when she willed. At one of
+the later inter-scholastic games she met a handsome, manly, George
+Washington University student. She was nineteen, he twenty-three, and
+on his commencement day he honored her by offering his hand. Her
+southern love was aglow. Her lover was practically making his own way,
+but his prospects were excellent, his character superior, and they
+both cared very much.
+
+Unhappily, Mrs. Place had returned to England, or Hortense would have
+confided in her and some futures might have been different. But the
+warmth of the new love seemed at the time to dissipate the chilliness
+toward her mother, which, unexpressed to herself, had through the
+years been increasing in the daughter's heart. So she wrote a long
+letter full of the beautiful story of the growing happiness, with
+pages of fervid descriptions of a certain fine young fellow, and
+importuned her mother to come East at once and to bring her blessing.
+No such filial warmth had Mrs. Orr ever before known. No such
+opportunity for a beneficent expression of the high privilege of
+motherhood had ever been entrusted to her. She responded without
+hesitation. She did not even wait to read their daughter's letter to
+her husband. When she reached Washington she summoned the young suitor
+to her hotel, and succeeded in one masterful quarter of an hour in
+arousing his violent dislike and lasting contempt. Through diplomacy
+she got Hortense on the Memphis-bound train. She was determined that
+her "darling child" should never marry beneath her station, and she
+talked and talked, drowning her daughter's protests, appeals and
+objections, in her merciless flow of words. Night after night she
+would stay with her till after twelve, leaving the poor girl tense,
+distracted and sleepless. And the habit of sleeplessness developed and
+with it a painfully abnormal sensitiveness to noises. The cruelly
+disappointed girl rapidly went to pieces. She craved a woman's
+sympathy, she longed for a mother's comprehending love, but she soon
+came to dread even her mother's presence, and formed the habit of
+burying her ears in the pillows to shut out the sound of that voice
+which could have meant the sweetest music of all, yet which to her
+distraught nerves had become an irritating, repelling, hated noise.
+Then special nurses came; the hot months were spent in the Rockies;
+several sea-trips were made; twice patient and nurse went East to
+forget it all in weeks of concerts and theaters in New York. But her
+inability to sleep was but temporarily relieved, while her antagonism
+to noises increased. She was then in Philadelphia for six months under
+the care of a noted neurologist, where she slowly gained considerably,
+physically, and was sufficiently well to spend a short, social "coming
+out season" with her parents. Yet the "at homes" and tea-parties and
+functions in which her mother reveled, never more than superficially
+interested her.
+
+Rather strangely, father and daughter had not been as close as their
+similar natures and needs would suggest. While Mrs. Orr may not have
+been jealous, she preempted her husband's home hours mercilessly; but
+in her father's death Hortense came to know that one of the few props
+of her stability had been removed. Moreover, her mother's incessant
+reiteration of her loneliness and sorrow, and the endless discussion
+of the details of her depressing widow's weeds, and of her taxing,
+exhausting widow's responsibilities, brought on a return of the old
+symptoms, with the antipathy to noises even intensified. We may think
+of Hortense Orr as inherently weak. This is not so. Save as influenced
+in her girlhood by Mrs. Place, and while stimulated during her last
+three years at school by personal ambition, she had known no duties
+nor responsibilities. There had never been any necessity for specific
+effort or sacrifice. After her great disappointment she had
+surrendered to depression of spirit, and she reacted in the same way
+after her father's death. And this surrender was early followed by
+weakness of her disused body. She also surrendered to the weakness of
+self-pity, that craven mocker of self-respect. She was not a will-less
+girl, but life had brought her small chance to develop that will which
+masters, while wilfulness, that will which demands selfishly for self,
+grew out of the soil so largely of her mother's preparing. This
+wilfulness, first asserted in small things, grew and grew.
+
+The family doctor saw more than tongue and liver and thin blood and
+bodily weakness. He realized the helplessness of Hortense in finding
+her stronger self in the home atmosphere, and advised a year in
+Europe--to get away from her sorrow, he said, to get away from her
+mother's wearying discussion of details, he knew. For nearly a year
+she was treated in Germany at different cures without benefit. It was
+always the "noise" that kept her from sleeping. It was the "noise"
+which she had learned to hate and to revile. To get away from noise
+became her fixed determination. And to this end a small mountain-
+cottage was secured, secluded from the haunts and industries of man,
+in the remoteness of the Tyrolean Alps. Here with her nurse and a
+servant she remained three years. For the first months she seemed
+happier, and took some interest in the inspiring views and rich flora
+of her surroundings. But the night did not bring the silence she
+willed. She sensed the heavy breathing of her nurse, the movements of
+the servant as she turned in her bed, and sometimes even snored, she
+knew it! She would spend hours of strained, sleepless attention, alert
+to detect another instance of the heartless repetition of this
+incriminating sound. She must be alone. She feared nothing so much as
+the hated sounds of human activity. So a one-room shack was built a
+hundred yards away from her companions, in the deeper solitude of the
+forest. Here she slept alone, month after month. But the winters, even
+in the Tyrolean foot-hills, are severe at times, and the deadly
+monotony of this useless life, and the improvement which she "knew"
+would come with the perfection of her sleeping arrangements, combined
+to decide her to return home, though still an enemy to the unbearable
+sounds of the night. Twenty-eight years she had lived with no true
+interest in life; neither home, attractions in New York or in Europe,
+nor treatment offered by competent and kind specialists had influenced
+her one thought away from her willingness to be ill. The nurse, who
+had buried herself so long with this poor girl in Europe, was quite
+appalled at Mrs. Orr's inconsideration of her daughter's "sensitive,
+nervous state." Nurse and mother soon had words; nurse and daughter
+left promptly for the East, where two hours from New York they spent
+another year in semi-isolation together.
+
+A New York broker owned the place adjoining the invalid's cottage.
+Walter Douglas, then but twenty-six, was his private secretary. Walter
+and Hortense met in the quiet, woodland paths. It is difficult to know
+just what the mutual attractions were. She had received many
+advantages which had not been his, still life was certainly a lonely
+thing for her. He was her first real interest since she had left
+Washington, and love reawakened and blew into life the embers she
+thought were gray-cold. It was never to be the flaming love-fire of
+ten years before, but it was bright enough to decide her to marry,
+which she did without writing any letter of confidence to her
+unsuspecting mother.
+
+Mr. Orr had left the property in his wife's control, and she had been
+unquestionably most generous in supplying her daughter with funds.
+When she received the brief note telling of the little wedding and
+inviting her to meet them in Washington, on their simple wedding-trip,
+she found herself for the first time in her life--speechless! There
+were no words to express this "outrage." The disability was short-
+lived, but her letter to the bridal couple was shorter. They had taken
+things into their own hands; they had ignored her who had every right
+to be at least advised, and they could take care of themselves. Hardly
+had this letter been mailed when she consulted her attorney as to ways
+and means to annul this "crazy marriage."
+
+The young couple had more pride than dollars, and bravely started
+house-keeping in a small flat. Few had been more inadequately trained
+for household duties than this self-pampered woman who pluckily at
+first, then grimly, went to the limit of her poorly developed strength
+in an effort to make homelike their few, plain rooms, and to prepare
+their unattractive meals. Still it all might have worked out had the
+noises of the street not attained an ascendancy. In less than four
+months the youthful husband, through a sense of duty, wrote the mother
+details of his bride's "precarious condition." Mrs. Orr promptly sent
+money, and the mother in her soon brought her to them in person.
+Within a few days she recognized the helpless husband's honesty and
+patience, and took them both to Memphis, providing a furnished flat
+and a good servant. The incompetent wife's short experience in
+household responsibilities, for which she was so utterly unprepared,
+made sickness a most welcome haven of refuge, and for months she did
+nothing but war with the noises of the quiet suburb. Then their baby
+came, but with it slight evidence of young mother love. She seemed
+almost indifferent to her little one. At rare times, only, would she
+respond to her first-born and to her husband. The doctor said there
+was no reason why she did not regain strength, that she could if she
+would, that it was not a question of physical frailty but it was
+decidedly a case of willing to have the easiest way. "Something has to
+be done," he said at last, and he strongly advised that she be sent to
+a hospital where she would be the object of benevolent despotism. She
+constantly complained of her oversensitive hearing, and had certainly
+developed all the arts of the invalid. She made no objection to the
+proposed plan. She did not know what was in store for her, outside of
+the mentioned "rest-cure." Full authority was given the institution
+officials to use any possible helpful means to stimulate her recovery.
+In all this the family physician counseled wisely and with
+discernment. At the hospital Hortense Douglas was told that she was to
+remain until she was well, that it was not a question of duration of
+treatment, but of her condition, which would determine the date of her
+return to her home, husband, and little one. The relationship between
+her years of illness and her unhappy disappointment, between her
+antagonism to night sounds and her intolerant impatience with her
+mother, was carefully explained. The ideal of making friends with
+these same noises which were but the voices of human progress,
+happiness, industry and personal rights, was held before her.
+Following the first clash of her will with the hospital authorities,
+she claimed that she was losing her mind, and was told that she would
+be carefully watched and would be treated at once as irresponsible
+when she proved to be so. Step by step she was forced to health, she
+was compelled to live rationally. Scientific feeding produced rapid
+improvement in her nutrition, she gained strength by the use of foods
+which she had never liked, had never taken and could "not take." In
+every way she improved in spite of herself. She often said she could
+not stand the treatment. But cooperation relentlessly proved more
+pleasant than rebellion. At the end of five months she was sleeping
+night after night the deep sleep honestly earned by thorough physical
+weariness, a sleep which nervous tire and worrying apprehension can
+never know. She could get no satisfaction as to when she would be
+allowed to return home.
+
+She had no money in her possession, but she slipped away one morning,
+pawned her watch for railway-fare, and arrived home announcing that
+she was well.
+
+Wealth, medical experts, years in Europe, society, the pleasures of
+seasons in New York, a husband's love, motherhood had failed to find
+health for this wilful woman. Not until her illness was made more
+uncomfortable than the legitimate duties of health, not until she
+recognized it was normal living at home or life in that "awful
+hospital," did she will to be well--and well she was.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+UNTANGLING THE SNARL
+
+
+You have probably passed the mansion. It stands, prominent, on the
+avenue leading from Buffalo to Niagara Falls. Three generations have
+added to its beauty and appointments. A generation ago it stood,
+imposing, and if fault could be found, it was its self-consciousness
+of architectural excellence. Every continent had contributed to its
+furnishings, and some of its servants, too, were trained importations.
+In the middle eighties, this noble pile was the home of an invalid, a
+twelve-year-old boy, a housekeeping aunt, and nurses, valets, maids,
+butlers, cooks, and coachmen. The invalid master of the house was
+forty-eight. As he leaned on the mantel looking out across the lawn,
+you felt the presence of a massive, powerful physique, but as he
+slowly turned to greet you, you fairly caught your breath from the
+intensity of the shock. The cheeks were hollow; the lips were ever
+parted to make more easy the simple act of breathing, the pallor of
+the face was more than that of mere weakness--there was a yellowish
+hue of both skin and eye-whites. The shrunken claw-like hands that
+offered greeting, the shrunken thighs, the increased girth of body
+which had so deceived your first glance, all bespoke mortal illness to
+even the untrained eye--advanced cirrhosis of the liver, to the
+professional scrutiny. And he was to be the fourth, in a line of
+financially successful Kents, to die untimely from mere eating and
+drinking. You would not have stayed long with this sick man. Only a
+large love or a large salary could have made the atmosphere of his
+presence endurable, for he was the essence of impatience, the
+quintessence of wilfulness. The sumptuousness of his surroundings, the
+punctilious devotion of his servants, the deferential respect shown
+him in high financial circles, books, people, memories, all failed
+ever to soften that drawn, hard face, for he was a miserably wretched,
+unhappy sufferer. Now and then his eyes would light up when Francis,
+his son and heir, was brought in. But Francis had a governess and an
+aunt who were respectively paid and commanded to keep him entertained
+and contented, and to see that he did not long disturb the invalid.
+That last year was one of most disorderly invalidism--not disorder of
+a boisterous, riotous kind, but an unmitigated rebellion to doctors'
+orders and advice, to the suggestions of friends, to the urgings and
+pleadings of nurses and "Aunt Emma." There were no voluble explosions;
+the impatience was not of the noisy kind--he had too much character
+for that, but the stream of thought was turgid and sulphurous. Jan,
+the valet, never argued, urged, suggested--by no little foreign shrug
+of his shoulders did he even hint that the master's way was not
+entirely right--and politic, faithful Jan stood next to Francis in his
+good graces; in fact, he was more acceptable as a companion. The only
+reason the sick man gave for his indifference to professional advice
+was that he was the third generation to go this way--and this way he
+went. A giant he was in the forest of men, felled in his prime.
+
+Francis did not know his mother. She had been beautiful, a gentle,
+lovable daughter of generations of social refinement. Her father and
+grandfather had lived "pretty high." In truth, had the doctors dared,
+"alcoholic," as an adjective, would have appeared in both their death
+certificates; and the worm must have been in the bud, for she died
+suddenly at twenty-five, following a short, apparently inadequate
+illness. Thus, three-year-old Francis was left to a busy father's
+care, a maiden aunt's theoretical incompetence, and to the
+ministrations of a series of governesses who remained so long as they
+pleased their youthful lord. The undisciplined father's idea of good
+times, for both himself and his son, was based upon having what you
+want right now, and why not?--with unlimited gold, with its seemingly
+unlimited buying power. Dear Auntie, poor thing! knew no force higher
+than "Now, Francis, I wouldn't," or "Please don't," or on very extreme
+occasions, "I shall certainly tell your father"--as utterly
+ineffective in introducing one slightest gleam of the desirability and
+potency of unselfishness into this boy's mind, as was the gracious
+servility of the servants.
+
+Francis was large for his age, unusually active and remarkably direct
+mentally, therefore little adjustment was needed as he entered that
+usually leveling community--boy-school-life. He was generous and good-
+hearted to a lovable degree and with such qualities and advantages he
+early became, and remained, leader in his crowd. After his father died,
+the boy, not unnaturally, placed him--the only one whose will he had
+ever had to respect--high in his reverence. The father had been a
+powerful young man, a boxer to be feared, oar one in the Varsity Crew;
+a man who, through the force and brilliancy of his business life, had
+won more than state-wide prominence, and had left many influential
+friends who spoke of him in highest respect. It was to be expected that
+the father's strong character would have deeply influenced his only son,
+and like father like son, only more so, he grew. But the "more so" is
+our tale.
+
+"Rare, juicy tenderloin steaks go to muscle. You don't need much
+else, and we didn't get much else at the training-table," the father
+used to say, and they unquestionably formed the bulk of the boy's
+naturally fine physique, for he developed in spite of much physical
+misuse into a two-hundred-pound six-footer. Francis began smoking at
+twelve. On his tenth birthday a small wine glass had been filled for
+him and thereafter he always had wine at dinner, and he liked it--not
+only the effects but the taste. The desire was in his blood--Before
+he was eighteen he was brought home intoxicated and unconscious. No
+law had ever entered into his training which suggested any form of
+self-control. The principles of self-mastery were unthought; they had
+been untaught. "Eat, drink and be merry" might express the sum of his
+ideals. And so, physically or mentally, no thought of restraint
+entered his youthful philosophy. There was nothing vicious, no strain
+of meanness, much generosity; naturally kindly and practically devoid
+of any spirit of contention, and peculiarly free from any touch of
+the disagreeable, he was blessed with a spirit of good fellowship. He
+never questioned the rights of his friends to do as they pleased, and
+they quite wisely avoided questioning his right to do likewise; so,
+desire was untrammeled and grew apace. It was in Francis Kent's
+failure to bridle this power that the threads were first snarled.
+
+The boy's fine body was trained in a haphazard way. Had his father
+lived, it might have been different. Mentally, he was naturally
+industrious and next to the joys of the flesh came his studies. It
+was as toastmaster at his "prep-school" commencement-banquet that he
+first drank to intoxication. The next fall he entered Yale, and there
+is no question but those days this revered university had a "fast
+set" that was emphatically rapid. But Francis Kent could go the
+paces; in fact, none of the football huskies could put in a night out
+and bring as snappy an exterior and as clear a wit to first class
+next morning as young Kent. His heredity, his beefsteaks, the gods,
+or something, certainly made it possible for him to be a "bang-up
+rounder" and at the same time an acceptable student through four
+college years.
+
+He was almost gifted in a capacity for the romance literatures, and,
+anomalous though it may seem, he majored and excelled in philosophy.
+He was truly a popular fellow when he took his degree at twenty-two.
+High living had given him high color; his eye was active and his face,
+though somewhat heavy, was mobile with the sympathy of intelligence;
+his physique was good; he dressed with a negligee art which was
+picturesque. Big of heart, he had a wealth of scholarly ideas, and not
+a few ideals; many thought he faced life a certain winner.
+
+Practically every door was open to him, and he chose--Europe. Those
+were two hectic years. Every gait was traveled; for weeks he would go
+at top-speed, go until nerve and blood could brook no more. No
+conception of the duty of self-restraint ever reached him till, at
+last, the nervous system, often slow to anger, began to express its
+objection to the abuse it was suffering. He was not rebounding as in
+the past from his excesses. For a day or so following a prolonged
+drinking bout he would be apprehensive and depressed, unable to find
+an interest to take him away from the indefinite dread which haunted
+him. Not till he could again stand a few, stiff glasses of brandy
+could he find his nerve. A friend found him thus "shot up" one day and
+suggested that he was "going the pace that kills," and hinted that
+another path might be trod with wisdom. "What's the use?" Kent flung
+back, "I'm fated to go with an alcoholic liver; it's in the family
+strong--both sides. I saw my father go out with it. I know Mendel's
+theory by heart, two black pigeons never parent a white one." And on
+he went. His creed now might well have been: "For to-morrow I die."
+
+It may have been the impulsion of an unrecognized fear--he said it was
+philosophic interest--which had attracted him to study the various
+theories of heredity. He had been particularly impressed by Mendel's
+"Principles of Inheritance," and its graphic elucidation of the
+mathematical recurrence of the dominant characteristics had grasped
+him as a fetish. With such forebears as his, there was no hope. The
+die had been cast before he was born. Why struggle against the laws of
+determinism? He was what he was because forces beyond his control had
+made him so. Scientific certainty now seemed to add its weight of
+evidence to his accepted fatalism, when, at twenty-eight, instead of
+the accustomed days of depression, a period of particularly heavy
+drinking was followed by a serious attack of delirium tremens. For
+several days he was cared for as one dangerously insane. After reason
+had been restored, the doctor, in his earnest desire to help, warned
+him that he must live differently and, knowing the father's ending,
+thought to frighten him into a change of habits by stating that his
+drinking would kill him in a few years if he kept it up. "You are
+already in the first stages of cirrhosis," he told him. As it turned
+out, no warning could have been less wise; it simply assured Kent the
+certainty of the fate which pursued, and soon he was at it again.
+Before thirty he had suffered two attacks of alcoholic delirium, had
+been a periodic drinker for fifteen years, a regular drinker for five
+years, often averaging for weeks two quarts of whiskey a day, and
+always smoking from forty to fifty cigarettes. Life had become more
+and more unlivable when he was not narcotized by alcohol or nicotine,
+and he was fast becoming a pitiful slave to his intoxicated and
+damaged nervous system.
+
+He was living at home now, nominally secretary of a strong
+corporation--practically eating, smoking, drinking, theater-going,
+lounging at the Varsity Club, and playing with his speedy motorboat.
+He enjoyed music and, when in condition, occasionally attended
+concerts. Barely he went to the Episcopal service, then only when
+special music was given. The faithful will discern the hand of
+Providence in his first seeing Martha Fullington in one of these rare
+hours at church. She was truly a fine, wholesome woman. The daughter
+of a small town Congregational minister of the best New England stock,
+she had always been healthy in body and mind. She possessed an unusual
+contralto voice, and came to Buffalo at twenty-two for special
+training. Helpful letters of introduction, with her pleasing self and
+good voice, rapidly secured her friends and a position in a
+fashionable church-choir. Here Kent heard her in a short but
+effectively rendered solo. Unsusceptible as he had been in the past,
+the sacredness of her religiously inspired face appealed to him
+strangely. Within a fortnight a new and profound element was to
+complicate his life, for he met Miss Fullington and took her out to
+dinner at the home of a classmate, whose mother was befriending the
+young singer. The spell of her charm wakened the power of his desire.
+Whether it was from the stimulation of her inherent difference to
+other women he had known, or whether deep within, and as yet
+untouched, there was a fineness which instinctively recognized and
+responded to fineness, we may not say with certainty. He was remote
+from her every standard, she thought, and her seeming indifference was
+a conscious self-defense. But she inspired him with a sincerity of
+purpose he had not known before. He was frank; he was potently
+insistent and "hopeless," he told her, "unless you save me." Thus
+unwittingly he appealed to the mother sympathy, the strongest a good
+woman can feel.
+
+They were engaged and the wedding was all that any bride could have
+desired. Then ten weeks abroad, beautiful, revealing weeks, for
+Francis Kent, sober and in love, was much of a man. Still it was only
+ten weeks before the formal social function, with its inevitable array
+of wines, turned this kindly, genial lover, in an hour, into a coarse,
+inconsiderate drunkard. Confined for a week in their state-room on the
+steamer home with her husband, now a beast in drink, this poor, pure,
+uninitiated wife realized purgatory. Dark days were those next three
+years for them both. When sober, he was self-abased by the knowledge
+of the suffering of this woman he so truly loved, or was restlessly
+striving against desires which only alcohol could sate; while she was
+alternately fearing the debauch or fighting to keep her respect and
+love intact through the debauchery. For him, the battle waged on
+between love and desire, his love for her--his one inspiration, while
+desire was constantly reenforced by the taunts of his godless fatalism
+and the dead weight of his hopelessness.
+
+Then came the day which is hallowed in the lives of even the ignorant
+and coarse, the day in which the young wife gladly suffers through the
+lengthening hours and goes down to the verge of the Dark River, that
+in her nearness to death she may find that other life, the everlasting
+seal of her marriage. In all the beauty of eagerly desired motherhood,
+Martha Kent bore her baby-boy. The father was not there. She did not
+then know all. They shielded her. He had been taken the night before
+to a private asylum, entering his third attack of delirium tremens,
+and while his wife in pain and prayer made life more sacred, he,
+struggling and uncontrolled, beast-like, was making life more
+repulsive. The pain of her motherhood never approached the agony of
+her wifehood, when she knew, while the pride of fatherhood was utterly
+submerged in the poignancy of his self-abasement, when he realized.
+
+Another physician had treated him during this attack. He, too, wished
+to help. He talked with the humiliated man most earnestly, insisting
+that he had never truly tried, that in the past he had depended on his
+weak will and the inspiration of his devotion. He had not had
+scientific help. He assured him that he did not have incurable
+hardening of the liver and expressed, as his earnest belief, that
+there were places where the help he needed could be given--that there
+was hope. Plans were made and Francis Kent gave his pledge, expressed
+in a voluntary commitment, to carry out a six months' system of
+treatment. "Not," as he assured the physician-in-charge, "that I can
+be saved from the effects of what has gone before. I know my heredity
+is too strong for that. But by every obligation of manhood I owe my
+wife and boy five years of decent living. If you can make that
+possible, I shall be satisfied." The professional help Kent received,
+physically, was deep-reaching. It accurately adjusted food to energy
+expended. Forty self-indulgent cigarettes were transformed into three
+manly cigars, and he was put to work with his hands--those patrician
+hands which had not made a brow to sweat, for serious purpose, in
+three generations. His physical response in six weeks completely
+altered his appearance. The snap of healthy living reappeared; the
+pessimism of his fatalism was displaced by much of quiet cheer. Life
+was again becoming a good thing. But the professional help he received
+mentally was what untangled the snarl. His advisor was fortunately
+able to go the whole way with him as he discussed his hereditary
+"inevitables"--the whole way and then, savingly, some steps beyond--
+and for the first time Kent's understanding, now reaching for higher
+truths than would satisfy the fatalist, was wisely, personally
+conducted through a wholesome interpretation of the distinction
+between the heritage of germinal and of somatic attributes, that vital
+distinction: that it takes but two ancestors to determine the species
+of the offspring, but that the individual's personal heritage is the
+result of, and may be influenced by, a thousand forerunners; that
+dominant characteristics, compelling though they seem, may be
+neutralized by obscure, recessive characteristics. More than this, his
+new counselor was able to convince him that the real damage he had to
+overcome was not a foreordained physical fate, for that was in a
+peculiar way largely in his own hands, now that he was properly
+started, but was the mental tangle of his unholy fatalism which
+absolutely did not represent truth; that he and all rational, normal
+men have been given wills and are as free as gods to choose, within
+certain large limitations. Francis Kent's mind had been well trained.
+Selfish desire had made of him a fatalist. A more beautiful desire led
+him into a constructive optimism. He thought deeply for a week,
+perchance he prayed, for he knew that she was praying from the depths
+of her soul. He outlined for himself a new, thoroughly wholesome mode
+of life, and in half an hour's heart-to-heart conference convinced his
+doctor-friend that more had been accomplished in two months than could
+have been promised at the end of the six months planned. So the new
+Francis Kent was told to go back and make a new home for his wife and
+the new baby. Years have passed--blessed years in the old mansion.
+There is no hint of cirrhosis of the liver. There has never been a
+drop of anything alcoholic served in that house since his return.
+There are two healthy chaps of boys; there is a wonderfully happy
+woman; there is a fine, manly man, the respected and efficient
+president of an influential bank. Patient, wise hands carefully
+untangled the knotted snarl. The thread was unbroken.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+FROM FEAR TO FAITH
+
+
+Thirty some years ago a baby girl came into a Virginia home. Her birth
+was a matter of family indifference; not specially needed, she was not
+particularly wanted. Her father, reared in a small town, having
+attained only moderate success as combination bookkeeper, cashier and
+clerk in a general store, could not enthuse over an arrival which
+would increase the burden of family expense. He was a man of good
+Virginia stock, not fired by large ambitions. An ubiquitous cud of
+fine-cut, flattening his cheek and saturating his veins, possibly
+explains his life of semicontent--for tobacco is a sedative. The
+mother was a washed-out, frail-looking reminder of youthful
+attractions, essentially of the nervous type. She was not without
+pride in her Cavalier stock and the dash of Cavalier blood it brought.
+The elder sister had none of her mother. Aspiring socially, she was
+reserved, pedantic, platitudinizing, thoroughly self-sufficient. She
+finished well up in her class in a small, woman's so-called "college"
+and lived with such prudence and exercised such foresight that, in
+spite of her Methodist rearing, she wedded the young, local, Episcopal
+rector, and, childless but still self-sufficient, "lived happy ever
+after."
+
+Our little Virginia's home surroundings gave her all material
+necessities, many comforts and occasional luxuries, but it was a home
+of narrow interests. Its own immediate affairs, including big sister's
+successes; critically, the doings of the neighborhood, and
+unquestioningly, the happenings of the church circle, comprised the
+themes of home discourse. Markedly lacking in beauty was that home--no
+music, a few perfunctory pictures, a parlor furnished to suit the
+local dealer's taste and stock, a few sets of books--the successful
+contribution of unctuous book agents. All converse was lacking in
+ideals save the haphazard ones brought home by the children from
+school. There was no pretense of unselfishness, the conception was
+foreign to that home's atmosphere. The religious teaching was of
+formalism and fear. The services of the church were regularly
+attended, and from time to time the children's discipline was
+augmented by references to the certain wrath of God. Into this home
+came Virginia to be reared under most irregular training, dependent on
+a combination of her mother's feelings and her sister's conventions--
+the father's influence was negative, his was a well-bred nicotine
+indifference. In the little girl's life, every home appeal was
+emotional. During the mother's more rare, comfortable days, she
+exacted few restrictions, but much more often fear methods marked her
+use of authority: fear of punishment, fear of the Invisible, and, from
+her sister, fear of "what folks will say" were the chief home
+influences molding this young life. Such appeals found in her
+sensitive nature a rich soil. No single consistent effort was ever
+made to substitute reason for emotional supremacy, as she developed.
+At times her feelings would run rampant--what was to keep them in
+order but disorganizing fear?--while too often her mother weakly
+rewarded Virginia's most stormy outbreaks by acceding to her erratic
+desires.
+
+In one element did this home take pride. As true Virginians, the good
+things of the table were procured at any cost. Good eating was a
+pride--and rapid eating became the child's habit. Yet with all the
+sacrifices of time and effort, the richness of their table cost, and
+in spite of the fact that eating was ever in the forefront of family
+plans and efforts, no conception of the true art of dining was ever
+theirs.
+
+At sixteen Virginia was attractive, with remarkably clear, olive skin,
+with hair, eyes and eyebrows a peculiarly soft chestnut. Fun-loving,
+thoughtless, vivacious, spasmodically aggressive, naturally athletic,
+capable of many fine intuitions, she finished the local high school
+with a good record, for she was mentally alert. Still most of her
+thinking was of the emotional type, and smiles were quick and tears
+were quick, and upon a feeling-basis rested her decisions. The tender-
+heartedness of a child never left her, and when trusted and encouraged
+she had always shown an excellent capacity for good work. She was
+essentially capable of intense friendships, under the sway of which no
+sacrifice was questioned, but her stormy nature made friendships
+precarious. Pervading her life was a large conscientiousness. Her
+fear-conscience was acute--never an unwholesome impulse but fear-
+conscience rebuked and tortured. Few bedtimes were peaceful to her,
+because at that quiet hour remorse, entirely disproportionate to the
+wrong, lashed her miserably. Her love-conscience, too, was richly
+developed, and for love's sake she would have become a martyr. Her
+duty-conscience was yet in its infancy and held weak council in her
+plans and rarely swayed her from desire.
+
+After a year of normal-school training, she secured a primary grade in
+a near town school, and at nineteen, when she became an earner, there
+were two Virginias; the beautiful Virginia was a woman of appealing
+tenderness--body, heart and soul yearned for some adequate return of
+the richness of devotion which she felt herself capable of giving.
+Sentiment and capacity for love were unconsciously reaching out for
+satisfying expression, and the beauty of this tenderness shone forth
+to make appealing even her weaknesses. The other Virginia was a
+conglomerate of unhappy and harmful emotions--impatient in the face of
+small irregularities, frequently irritable to unpleasantness, and
+dominated by the false sensitiveness of unmerited pride. Under
+provocation, anger, quick-flaming, unreasonable and unreasoning,
+burned itself out in poorly restrained explosions--a quarter-hour of
+wrath, a half-hour of tears and a half-day of almost incapacitating
+headache. She was ambitious and had rebelled at her limitations,
+especially as she grew to realize the smallness and emptiness of the
+home-life. She resented her sister's superior attitude, her officious
+poise, her college-education authority. But the damning defect was the
+remorseless grip of fear on mind, body and spirit. Through ignorant
+training, she was afraid in the dark, even afraid of the dark; a
+morbid, cringing terror possessed her when she was alone in the night.
+Even the protecting safety of her own bed could not save her from the
+jangle of false alarms with which her imagination peopled the shadows.
+A second gripping dread--one all too common with harmfully taught,
+southern girls--was fear of negroes; a horrible, indefinite, haunting
+apprehension chilled her veins, not only when associated with them,
+but even more viciously when she was alone with her thoughts. And when
+added to these was her superstitious fear of the Lord, magnifying the
+evil of her ways, threatening, pervading, bringing no hint of Divine
+love, the preparation was ample for the forthcoming emotional chaos.
+
+At twenty-eight she was a sick woman. Through devotion to the kindly
+principal of her school, a devotion not unmixed with sentiment, she
+had worked intensely; quick, interested, almost capable, she had
+worked and worried. School-discipline early loomed large as a rock
+threatening disaster, dragging into her consciousness a sinister fear
+of failure. Thirty little ones, from almost as many different homes,
+representing a motley variety of home-training, looked to her to mold
+them into an orderly, happy unit. Some of her little tots were as
+thorns in her flesh--she couldn't keep her arms from around others;
+while some afternoons the natural restlessness of them all set her
+head to throbbing wretchedly. Her own emotional life not having found
+order or calm, she from the first failed to develop either in her
+charges. Visitors became a dread. Her only solace was the short
+conferences she had with the principal after school. But to hear his
+step approaching during class-time frightened her cruelly. Her order
+was poor. He knew it. The visitors saw it. And the more she struggled
+to master the problem of school-discipline, the greater grew the
+menace of her own unorderly training. Within a few months she was
+translating her emotional exhaustion into terms of overwork. The
+penalty of unmerited food had produced an autotoxic anaemia, and she
+was pale and weepy, easily fatigued, sleeping poorly, with the boggy
+thyroid and overactive tendon reflexes so common in subacidosis. She
+had to give up her school. After six months' ineffectual resting at
+home, she entered a special hospital where, after some weeks of
+intensive treatment, her physical restoration was remarkable. The
+marriage of her sister and death of her mother closed the home, and
+she went to live with a widowed aunt, the aunt who had managed her
+household and her ministerial spouse to perfection. It was probably
+Paul's injunction alone which kept her from taking her complacent
+husband's place in the pulpit and delivering the sermons she had so
+literally inspired. Here was an atmosphere of sanctity, but still no
+hint of true, personal giving, no expression of willing sacrifice, and
+Virginia felt keenly this lack, for in the hospital she had had a
+vision. There she had seen suffering softened by gentleness, there
+empty lives were filled from generous hearts, and men and women
+inspired to make new and better starts. She had visioned the nobleness
+of giving--and the unanswered call of her mother-nature had responded.
+She was not fully well, she was not deeply living, she had never
+fulfilled the best of self, and she hungered for the hospital. Her
+aunt's conventional pride was echoed by the laws and the in-laws, and
+positive, later peremptory objections were urged against her entering
+nursing. Again the headaches returned, the physical expression of her
+emotional unhappiness, and finally, almost in recklessness, certainly
+in desperation, she cast her lot in the self-effacing demands of a
+student-nurse's life in a city hospital, far from family and friends.
+
+How shall we tell of the next three years? Training, reeducation,
+evolution?--some of all perhaps. They were years of much travail.
+Physical wholeness was won promptly through the wholesome habits of
+active, daily effort, routine, regularity and rational diet. There was
+suffering--months of suffering, under correction, for rebellion had
+long been a habit, and hospital discipline is military in character.
+But she had given her pledge, and fear-conscience and love-conscience
+were later augmented by duty-conscience, and she never seriously
+thought of deserting. Cheer expression is demanded in the nurse's
+relations with her patients, and irritability and impatience slowly
+faded through hourly touch with greater suffering; and the cheer habit
+grew into cheer feeling. The old storms of anger seemed incongruous in
+the imperturbable atmosphere of the hospital, moreover her dignity as
+a nurse could not be risked. Thus was she helped till the solidity of
+self-control made her safe. Her truly formidable battle was with fear
+--no one can know what she faced alone on night duty. Her dread of the
+dark was overcome painfully when through helpful counsel she gained an
+intelligent insight into her defect, and was inspired to apply for
+night duty in excess of her regular schedule. Later, at her own
+request, she performed alone the last duties for the dead, that she
+might put fear under her feet. Her dread of negroes gradually gave
+place to a better understanding of the race through the daily
+association of ministration on the ward, reenforced by personal
+confidence in her own strength and skill, growing out of a wholesome
+training in self-defense--a training her love for athletics and her
+growing understanding of her fear-weakness moved her to take on her
+off-duty time. She became competent; anxious to help, her fineness of
+intuition and her capacity for devotion with her vision of service
+made her in every way worthy. And finally her fear of the Lord was
+lost in a wholesome faith in His "Well-done!"
+
+To-day, hers is a life of peace. Emotional instability and
+wretchedness have been displaced by habitual right feeling.
+Stabilizing her emotions has not impoverished, but enriched her
+nature. She has mastered the art of enjoying, for self-interests have
+expanded into love for service. To-day she is a capable, efficient,
+cheerful, wholesome, self-forgetting woman, filled with a faith in an
+able, worthy self--a God-given faith.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+JUDICIOUS HARDENING
+
+
+In the softened light of a richly furnished office two physicians were
+seated. It was the elder who spoke. Drawn and sad was his cleanly
+featured, tense face; his clear skin and slightly whitened, dark hair
+belied his nearly seventy years. He was the anxious, unhappy father of
+a sick, unhappy daughter, whom the nurse was preparing in an adjoining
+room for examination by Dr. Franklin, the younger physician. "I mean
+no discourtesy, Doctor, when I say that I don't believe any one
+understands my girl's case. Her brother and sister are healthy
+youngsters and have always been so. I may have taken a few drinks too
+many now and then, but few men of my age can stand more night-work or
+do more practice than I can, and I've about rounded my three-score and
+ten. Wanda was a perfect child. She is my oldest. Her mother did pet
+and spoil her, always humored her from the first, but she was a
+cheerful, bright little thing. She finished high school at fifteen and
+did a good year's study at Monticello. All her trouble seemed to start
+that spring when she was vaccinated. She had never had worse than the
+measles before. She didn't seem to know how to take sickness, though
+the Lord knows she's had plenty of chances to learn since her sore
+arm; and the school-doctor had to lance a small place, and this kept
+her away from Commencement where they had some part for her to do. She
+didn't get well in time to spend the month in Michigan with her room-
+mate, and she always said that if she could have had this trip she
+would never have been so bad. It was a mighty hard summer with me,
+too, that year, and probably I didn't notice her enough--anyway she's
+been a half-invalid these eighteen years. It's pain and tenderness in
+this nerve and then in that one, and she hasn't walked a whole mile in
+fifteen years because of her sciatica. I have sent her to Hot Springs,
+one summer she spent at Saratoga, and she has taken two courses of
+mud-baths. When she was twenty-six, she lived for four months in Dr.
+Moore's home. He and I were college-mates and he had been mighty good
+in treating rheumatic troubles. After awhile he decided it was her
+diet and she lived a whole year in B--- Sanitarium and she gained
+weight too, there, and hasn't eaten any meat to speak of nor drunk any
+coffee since. She often complains of her eyes but the specialists say
+they are all right, that that isn't the trouble. Two of the best
+surgeons in our part of the country have refused to operate on her
+even when I begged one of them to open her and see if he couldn't find
+out what was the matter. Three of her doctors have said it was her
+nerves, but I don't think any of them know. You know I don't mean to
+say anything that will reflect on your specialty, but you never did
+see a case of only nerves put a healthy young girl in bed and keep her
+there suffering so that I've had to give her aspirin a hundred times
+and even morphin by hypodermic to get her quiet, and off and on for
+five years she's had ten, and sometimes fifteen grains of veronal at
+midnight, nights when she couldn't get to sleep. If it's only nerves,
+then I've got a mighty heap to learn about nerves. I think in forty-
+five years practicing medicine a man ought to know enough about them
+to recognize them in his own family. But something's got to be done.
+Wanda's making a hospital of our home. We daren't slam a door, or her
+sister mustn't play the piano but her headaches start; and if Rosie
+boils turnips or even brings an onion into the house, it goes to
+Wanda's stomach and it takes a hypodermic to quiet her vomiting and a
+week to get over the trouble.
+
+"That child of mine is just like a different creature from the fine
+little girl she was at twelve when my buggy turned over one night and
+broke my leg. Why, she nursed me better than her mother. She just
+couldn't do enough for me. That little thing would come down just as
+quiet as she could--sometimes every night--to see that that leg was
+all right and hadn't got twisted; while now she expects attention from
+everybody in the house and from some of the neighbors. She will even
+send for Rosie just when she is trying to get dinner started and keep
+her a half-hour telling just what she wants and how it's got to be
+fixed, then more often she'll just nibble at it just enough to spoil
+it for everybody else, after Rosie's spent an hour getting it ready
+for her. Tonics don't help her a bit. I've given her iron, arsenic and
+strychnin enough to cure a dozen weak women. She's always too weak to
+exercise, lies in bed two days out of three, reads and sometimes
+writes a letter or two. But before Christmas comes (you know she is
+mighty cunning with her fingers; she can sew and embroider and make
+all sorts of pretty, womanish things) she works so hard making
+presents that she's just clear done out for the next two months and
+won't leave her room for weeks. That's about all she does from one
+year's end to another, but complain of her sickness, and of late years
+criticize the rest of us and dictate to the whole household what they
+must do for themselves, and just out-and-out demand what she wants
+them to do for her. She really treats her stepmother like a dog, and
+often she is so disrespectful to me that I certainly would thrash her
+if she wasn't so sick. She was a fine child but her suffering has
+wrecked her disposition. She and the rest of us would be better off if
+she'd die. You see, Doctor, I haven't much faith left, but she's been
+bent so long a time on coming to you, and is willing to spend the
+little money her mother left her, to have her own way. Now, I am
+doctor enough to stand by you in what you decide if you say you can
+cure her, and if she gets well, I'll pay every cent of the bill, but
+if she don't, the Lord will just have to help us all, though I suppose
+I'll have to take care of her as long as she lives for she won't have
+a cent after she gets through with this."
+
+Wanda Fairchild lay expectant on the examination table, pale, almost
+wan; her blue eyes, fair skin and even her attractive, curling, blonde
+hair seemed lusterless, save when her face lighted with momentary
+anticipation at some sound suggesting Dr. Franklin's coming. Much
+indeed of her feeling life had grown false through the blighting touch
+of her useless years of useless sickness. But genuine was her
+greeting. "Oh, Doctor, I am so glad to be here! You remember Mrs.
+Melton. You cured her and she has been well ever since, and for over
+two years I've been begging papa to bring me here, but he hasn't any
+hope. He's tried so hard and spent so much. Now you've got to get me
+well. They all say this is my last chance. I certainly can't endure
+these awful pains much longer. I know they're going to drive me crazy
+some day if something isn't done to stop them. Just look at my arms.
+That's where I bit them last night to keep from screaming out in the
+sleeper, for I wouldn't take any medicine. I wanted you to see me
+without any of that awful stuff to make me different than I truly am.
+You will surely cure me, won't you, Doctor, so I can go back home
+soon, as strong as Mrs. Melton is, and live like other girls, and have
+company and go to parties and dance and take auto-rides and have a
+good time before I get too old--or die? Oh, Doctor, you don't know
+what a horrible life I live! Every day is just torture. I suppose they
+do as well as they know at home, but not one of them, not even papa,
+has any conception of how I suffer or they would show more
+consideration. It is terrible enough to be sick when you are
+understood and when everybody is doing the right thing to help you. I
+know my trip has made me worse, for my spine is throbbing now like a
+raw nerve. It would be a relief if some one would put burning coals on
+my back. You know there's nothing worse than nerve-pains."
+
+Dr. Franklin smiled quietly. How often he had heard poor sufferers
+hyperbolize their suffering! How keenly he could see the distinction
+between the real and the false in illness! How certainly he knew that
+such exaggerated rantings and wailings stood for illness of mind or
+soul, but not of body! The physical examination, nevertheless, was
+extremely thorough. Nothing can be guessed at in the intricate war
+with disease.
+
+"Yes, I was happy as a child. Mother understood me; no one else ever
+has. She knew when I needed petting. I did well at school and really
+loved Myrtle Covington, my room-mate at the Sem. Just think, she
+married--married a poor preacher, but I know she is happy, for she is
+well and has a home of her own and three children. I don't see how
+they make ends meet on eighteen-hundred and no parsonage. You know we
+had a smallpox scare at the Sem. that spring and all had to be
+vaccinated. I scratched mine, or something, and for weeks nearly died
+of blood-poisoning. That is where my neuritis started. They had to
+lance my arm to save my life, and when you examined me I had to grit
+my teeth to keep from screaming out when you took hold of that cut
+place. You believe I am brave, don't you, Doctor? It hurts there yet,
+but I didn't want to disturb you in the examination. Do you think
+there is any chance for me, Doctor?"
+
+At this point the physician nodded to the nurse, who left the room.
+
+"And what else happened that summer?" he asked her kindly.
+
+"Well, I was in bed over three months with my vaccination and my
+lanced arm, and I had a special nurse, and couldn't eat any solid food
+for days. They never would tell me how high my fever was; they were
+afraid of frightening me, but I wouldn't have cared. I used to wish I
+could die."
+
+"Why, child, what could have happened to make a young, happy girl of
+sixteen wish to die? Was there something really serious that you
+haven't told?"
+
+"Oh, Doctor, didn't papa tell you? No, I know he wouldn't. He probably
+don't know--he can't know what it cost me. Oh! must I tell you? Don't
+make me, Doctor! Oh, my poor head! Doctor, it will burst, please do
+something for it. Oh, my poor mamma! She loved me so much and she
+understood me, too." And tears came and sobs, and for a time neither
+spoke.
+
+"Tell me of your mother," the doctor said.
+
+Then the story, the unhappy story, whined out in that self-pitying
+voice which ever bespeaks the loss of pride--that characteristic of
+wholesome normal womanhood. Her parents had probably never been happy
+together. The spring she was in the Seminary, ill, her mother left
+home. There was a separation. That fall her father re-married, as did
+the mother later, who lived in her new home but a few months, dying
+that same winter. From the first, Wanda had hated her stepmother. "I
+despise her. I can never trust Father again. I can never trust any one
+and I loathe home, and I want to die. Please, Doctor, don't make me
+live. I have nothing to live for!"
+
+Here was the woman's sickness--the handiwork of an indulgent mother
+who had never taught her daughter the sterling ideals of unselfish
+living. This mother had gone. A better trained woman had entered the
+home, but her every effort to develop character in the stepdaughter
+was resented. Illness, that favorite retreat of thousands, became this
+undeveloped woman's refuge. Year after year, sickness proved her
+defense for all assaults of importuning duty. Sickness, weakly
+accepted at first, later grew, and as an octopus, entwined its
+incapacitating tentacles about and slowly strangled a life into
+worthlessness.
+
+"Your daughter will have to leave Alton for nine months. Six of these
+she will spend on a Western ranch; for three months she will work in
+the city slums. Miss Leighton will be her nurse and companion. Life
+was deliberately planned to develop wills. Miss Fairchild has lost the
+ability to will until, at thirty-four, she is absolutely lacking in
+the power to willingly will the effort which is essential to rational,
+healthy living. She is but a whimpering weakling, a coward who for
+years has run from misfortune. Your daughter must be turned from
+discomfort to duty, from pain to productive effort; her margin of
+resistance must be pushed beyond the suggestive power of the average
+headache, periodic discomfort, or desire for ease; she must learn to
+transform a thousand draining dislikes into a thousand constructive
+likes. Finally, we hope to teach her the hidden challenge which is
+brought us all by the inevitable. To-day she is more sensitive than a
+normal three-months-old baby. She must be judiciously hardened into
+womanhood."
+
+We cannot say that the troubled father gathered hope from this, to
+him, unique exposition of the invalid's case, but sufficient
+confidence came to induce him to promise his loyal support to the
+"experiment" for the planned period of nine months. The patient
+rebelled. She had come "to be Dr. Franklin's patient." She couldn't
+"stand the trip." She wouldn't "go a step."
+
+Yes, it seemed cruel. Three days and nights they were on the sleeper;
+forty miles they drove over increasingly poor roads to the big ranch
+in the Montana foot-hills where everybody else seemed so well, so
+coarsely well, she thought. After the first week the aspirin and the
+veronal gave out and there was no "earthly chance" of getting more.
+Then when she refused to exercise, she got nothing to eat but a glass
+of warm milk with a slice of miserably coarse bread crumbed in, and
+the mountain air did make her hungry; and when she was ugly, she was
+left alone, absolutely alone in that dreary room, and even Lee, the
+Chinese cook, wouldn't look in the window when she begged him for
+something else to eat. How she did love Rosie those "weary days of
+abuse"! Miss Leighton was always polite, though she would not stay
+with her a minute when she got "fussy," but would be gone for an hour,
+visiting and laughing and carrying on with the men-folks in the big-
+room. She had seemed so kind before they left the East and she was
+kind now, at times when she had her own way, but she was being paid to
+nurse a sick girl, and she had no right to leave her alone for hours
+simply because she whined or refused to do her bidding on the instant.
+There was a young doctor there who could have helped her if he would,
+but he had no more heart than the rest, and when the nurse called him
+in to make an examination, he was as noncommittal as a sphinx and gave
+her no speck of satisfaction, only telling her to do what the nurse
+said. Bitter letters she sent home, but somehow they all were answered
+by Dr. Franklin, who wrote her little notes in reply which made her
+angry--then ashamed. Verbal outbreaks there were, and physical ones,
+too, a few times, which the nurse calmly and humiliatingly credited to
+her exercise-account and brought her more to eat, saying that
+scrapping was as healthful as work in making strength. But somehow,
+she couldn't hate Miss Leighton long, as behind all her "cruelty"
+Wanda realized that a thoughtful friendship was ever waiting. One day
+they took a drive; when four miles from the ranch-house something
+happened, and they were asked to get out. They stood looking off over
+the ever-climbing hills to those remote, granite castles of the far
+Rockies.
+
+The team started, and as they turned, the driver waved his apparent
+regrets. They walked back--four miles. Wanda had not performed such a
+feat in nearly twenty years. She walked off her resentment, in truth
+she was a bit proud, and the nurse certainly did bring her a fine
+supper, the first square meal she had been given in Montana. This was
+the turning point.
+
+Walking, riding, working, camping in the open, sleeping in smoke and
+drafts after long hikes, carrying her own blanket and pack--all became
+matters-of-course. From 96 to l30--nearly thirty-five fine pounds--she
+put on. She even learned bare-back riding, and wove a rug from wool
+she had sheared, cleaned, dyed and spun. Long since, she had realized
+that Miss Leighton had only been carrying out Dr. Franklin's orders.
+That fall they came East to Baltimore. She worked with Miss Leighton
+in the tenement districts. She saw Dr. Franklin weekly. He now
+explained the principles underlying her ruthless, physical
+restoration. She learned to recognize her years of deficient will-
+living. The doctor revealed to her, as well, her great debt to her
+home, explained to her now cleared mind the poverty of the love she
+had borne, and wakened her to the stepmother's true excellence of
+character. Her opened eyes saw the great tragedy of defective living
+as reflected in the lives of want and evil in those to whom she was
+daily ministering. Her life had been blest in comparison.
+
+A message came that her stepmother was ill--could she come home and
+help? That day this girl put off childhood and took on womanhood. She
+returned to her family a new woman, a thoughtful, considerate woman,
+an almost silent woman--save when speech is golden; a woman who makes
+friends and who remembers them in a hundred beautiful ways, a working
+woman, a home-maker for a happier father, for an almost dependent
+stepmother; a woman who was scientifically compelled to exchange self-
+condoling weakness for strength, who, when strengthened against her
+will, chose and lives the worthy life of self-giving. We wish her
+well, this new woman, who is repaying to her home a debt of years.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE SICK SOUL
+
+
+"Oh, 'War,' you just must win! I know you will!" "Keep a stiff upper
+lip, Old Fellow, and give them the best you've got." "Watch your
+knees, Buddie dear, and don't let them shake. Just think of us before
+you start, and remember we're pulling for you."--"Yes! and praying for
+you," whispered Eva Martin, who was shaking his hand just as the
+conductor called, "All aboard." And as Warren Waring gracefully swung
+aboard the last Pullman, the entire senior class of Beloit High gave
+the school-yell, with three cheers and a tiger for "War Waring."
+
+What occasion could be more thrilling to a susceptible, imaginative
+sixteen-year-old boy than this demonstration of the aristocratic
+peerage of youth? For a half-hour he had been the center of--
+admiration and encouraging attention, the recipient of a rapid fire of
+well-wishing, of advice serious and humorous, and unquestionably the
+subject of not a few unspoken messages directed heavenward. The kindly
+eyes of the old Beloit station have looked out upon many a scene of
+enthusiastic greeting and hearty well-wishing, but rarely has it seen
+these good offices extended to one of more apparent merit than
+handsome Warren E. Waring. One of the National Temperance societies
+had been utilizing the promising declamatory powers of the high school
+students of the country, through a series of county, district and
+state competitions, to influence the public. The contest in Wisconsin
+had finally eliminated all but the select few who were to contest for
+the temperance-oratorical supremacy of the state, and for a gold
+medal, as large as a double eagle, which was to be awarded by judges
+from the University faculty. The good wishes and cheers, stimulating
+advice, and silent prayers at the Beloit station had all been inspired
+by enthusiasm and confidence and love for the unusually gifted comrade
+now leaving for the competition.
+
+For nearly a generation Squire Waring had struggled manfully, kindly,
+quietly, on his little farm up Bock River, adding a little now and
+then to the farm-income by the all-too-infrequent fees derived from
+his office as justice-of-the-peace. If the Squire had been a better
+farmer and less interested in books, especially in his yellow-backed
+law-books, the eking might not have been so continuous; and if his
+good wife had not been snatched away, at untimely thirty-five, by one
+of those accidents which we call providential, leaving a forty-year-
+old father alone with a five-year-old boy, her good sense would
+undoubtedly have made times easier with the Squire. As it was, his
+sister came to be mother in this little home. Good, steadfast Aunt
+Fannie she was, a woman without a vision, who accepted what the day
+brought with religiously unquestioning thanks. But as the only son
+grew and his charms multiplied, as the evidence of his gifts became
+manifest, the impracticable father let slip all personal ambition. The
+dreams he had dreamed for himself were to be fulfilled in his son, who
+would increase, even as he decreased. So it was that on his boy's
+tenth birthday the father turned from his ambition of years, to
+represent his county in the state legislature, and after forty-five
+doubled the time and strength devoted to his less than a hundred
+acres. "There must be money for the boy's education," he told his
+sister Fannie, "even if you and I have to skimp for the rest of our
+days. He's got the making of a state senator." The father was mistaken
+only in that he so limited his boy's possibilities.
+
+The Squire helped the little fellow in his studies, and he entered the
+second grade of the near-by Beloit High School the fall before he was
+fourteen. The train-schedule was so arranged that he could return home
+every night; though, whenever the Squire felt that the farm-work
+justified it, and there was no occasion for his honorable court, they
+would drive to town together. This was the Squire's one joy. And proud
+he was to share in acknowledging the greetings which came from all
+sides, even when they drove through the best part of town in the old
+buggy--to feel the universal popularity in which his boy was held.
+Then there was the added satisfaction of a minute's chat with some one
+of the teachers, for they all had praise, and never a word of censure.
+Enjoyment enough this dear man got from these irregular trips to town
+to lighten for weeks the, to him, unnatural farm-labor; while petty
+offenders appearing before his tribunal were dealt with almost gently
+after one of these adventures in happiness.
+
+Many a wealth-sated father would have exchanged his flesh and blood
+and thrown in his bank-balance to boot, could he have looked forward
+to so worthy an heir as promised to bless Squire Waring. The boy
+seemed to have been born to meet life successfully, whatever its
+challenge. Strong almost to sturdiness, yet agile and accurate in
+movement, he had "covered all sorts of territory around 'short,' and
+could hit the ball on the nose when it counted," and to him went the
+unprecedented glory of a forty-yard run for a touch-down and goal in a
+High School vs. Varsity Freshmen game. His were muscles which seemed
+to have been molded by a sculptor's hand. His face was manly. His
+waving dark-brown hair, deep-blue eyes, strong nose and rarely turned
+chin, his unfailing good-nature, his unquestioned nerve, his mental
+keenness and clearness, his remarkable power of expression, whether in
+recitation, school-theatricals or at young people's meetings; his
+instinctive courtesy of greeting, his apparent openness and honesty of
+dealing, his fairness to antagonist on field and platform, above all,
+his devotion to his unquestionably rural father, had made Warren
+Waring a school hero, even a model, in a church college-town.
+
+What other boy in Wisconsin was so well equipped to win the gold
+medal? Sixteen years and some months! A rather youthful lad to stand
+before a thousand strange faces, to be the object of professorial
+scrutiny, to listen to the exultant plaudits of local partisanship;
+not to be, not to seem brazen, yet to face it all without a quake of
+knee or, and what is more rare, a tremor of voice; not to forget a
+syllable; and, in ten minutes, to so cast the spell of a winning
+personality over his hearers as to evoke a spontaneous outburst of
+applause, generous from his antagonists, enthusiastic from the
+nonpartisan. And the medal!
+
+The Professor of English honored our boy by having him at his home to
+breakfast the following morning, for the double purpose of expressing
+a genuine appreciation of merit, and of making an impressive bid for
+his State University attendance next fall.
+
+Aunt Fannie's asthma, with feminine perversity, was at its worst these
+March nights, and the Squire--fine man that he was--never let his
+nonimaginative sister know what it cost not to go to Madison with his
+son--not to "hear him win the medal." "The trip would cost $10.00;
+that would get him a fine gold chain to wear his medal on," he
+ingeniously told her, and thus helped her enjoy her asthma a bit that
+night, for it was getting a chain for Warren's medal.
+
+The chain and the medal! Was it they that were fated to charm away
+manhood and nobility and the rich earnest of success? Was it they that
+were to entice, into this fine promise of fine living, crookedness of
+thought, unwholesomeness of feeling--dishonorable years?
+
+It was an exuberantly happy victor who returned from the Capitol City
+with the elaborate gold medal, his name in full conspicuously engraved
+upon its face--and the youthful society of his school-town was at his
+feet. Every door was open. So almost without fault was he that few
+mothers objected to his companionship with their daughters. Yes, here
+was to be the flaw!--he was soon to find that it was easy for him to
+have his way with a maid, a dangerous knowledge for a seventeen-year-
+old boy who had already reached higher social levels than his own home
+had known, who was much quicker of wit than his almost worshipful
+father.
+
+It was Eva Martin who had whispered the little prayer-message into his
+ear that expectant afternoon at the station, and Eva Martin's ear was
+destined to hear, in turn, whispered pledges of unending devotion, to
+hear the relentless verdict of unquestioned dishonor.
+
+High school was finished. A successful Freshman year--a Sophomore year
+that was disappointing to his professors was passed. The fire of his
+heart was heating many social irons. His earnings, so far, consisted
+of one gold medal. The savings from the denials at home were about
+exhausted. The boy had spent as much in the last two years as had been
+hoped would carry him through college. Fifteen hundred dollars could
+be raised by remortgaging the farm--it would take this to get him
+through Law-school, and he was eager to go to Chicago. So a second
+mortgage was placed. A good deal happened in Chicago which was not
+written to the Squire nor to Eva. Waring craved being a popular "Hail
+fellow," and with men, and especially with women, he knew no "No"
+which would be displeasing. He corresponded with Eva regularly; they
+would be married some day. He could not have chosen a more superior
+woman. She lived simply, with her widowed mother, and continued for
+years to conduct a private kindergarten. She was to save a thousand
+dollars and he four thousand, then the wedding!
+
+The gray-eyed girl from St. Louis came near saving Eva. Her steel-
+gray-eyed father's knowledge of human nature alone intervened. It was
+a chance introduction. She was pretty; she was wealthy. She ran up to
+Chicago often. Finally the business-like father ran up to Chicago. He
+invited young Waring to his club for dinner. There were tickets to the
+"Follies." The younger man let no feature on the stage pass unnoted;
+the elder remarked every change in the young man's face. There were
+polite farewells, and a very positive twenty minutes which left the
+daughter without a question in her mind that further relations with
+young Waring held most threatening possibilities. Her eyes were not
+gray without reason, as she proved discreet. There was a bundle of
+uncomfortably fervid letters which he refused to return.
+
+Warren was shifty with Eva about this affair, and others. He was
+crooked, too, as the years passed, about his savings. It was
+impossible to account for certain expenditures, to her. At twenty-
+eight, she had her thousand dollars in the bank; his supposed four
+thousand was a bare five hundred, most of which was spent on the
+gorgeous wedding-trip which he said they both deserved. And shortly
+after their return to the home, which, instead of being paid for in
+full, was heavily mortgaged, explanations began which could not
+explain. Clever as Waring was, his affairs were so involved that Eva
+could not avoid the suspicion and, soon after, the revelation that her
+wonderful husband's soul was without honor. It cannot be told, those
+details of her devoted efforts to "put him right." To forgive
+anything, everything, she was eager, but he never could come across
+square, and as the years passed the horror of the uncertain "What
+next?" enshrouded even her happiest days. Still the husband had
+ability, and the wife's efforts helped immensely, and there were
+profitable years. It was odd that, with his declamatory skill, he
+rarely had a case in court, but proved unusually efficient in
+developing a collection agency, and gradually represented the Bad
+Accounts Department of more and more important concerns. At thirty-
+five he was out of debt. They were living well--too well it proved,
+for his nervous health. There must have been a neurotic taint, as
+expressed in Aunt Fannie's asthma. Early that fall he had his first
+attack of hay-fever. For years he had been self-indulgent; he always
+drank when drinks were offered; he used much tobacco and rich food.
+Athletic he had been; and, advocate of exercise as he was when he gave
+talks to the boys, he took none himself. So toxins accumulated. He
+stood this illness poorly. It was the first physical discomfort he had
+ever known. The family doctor did not help much; patent medicines
+brought relief. He was pretty hard to live with, these weeks. For a
+number of years he used the threat of this disorder for a six weeks'
+trip to Mackinac Island. "Finances" made it possible for the wife and
+the little boy to spend only two of these weeks with him. During the
+last four he always managed to keep pace with the fast set. The summer
+he was forty, the combination of vacation, Mackinac, and fast set did
+not ward off, in fact did not mitigate, his attacks. Waring returned
+home "desperate," as he expressed it, and the family doctor succeeded
+in getting him to a competent Chicago specialist who did some needed
+nose and throat operations thoroughly and, in spite of careless
+living, three years of immunity passed. He had become unquestionably a
+clever handler of bad accounts, and could have made good, had he only
+been good. A dry, dusty summer, his old enemy, hay-fever-and this time
+a Chicago "specialist," the kind that advertises in the daily papers,
+proved his undoing. He gave Waring a spray, potent to relieve and
+potent to exalt him for hours beyond all touch of lurking
+apprehension. Bottle after bottle he used; he would not be without it.
+In a few weeks he realized that he could not be without it. And after
+the hay-fever days were over he kept using it, furtively now, not only
+for the exaltation it brought, but as protection from the hellish
+depression it wrought.
+
+For years Waring's office assistant had been an efficient, devoted,
+weak woman who had managed well much of the office detail. She now
+realized that things were not "going straight," that collections made
+were not being turned over to her, that she was being asked to falsify
+records. She never could resist his personality, and soon became more
+adroit than he in juggling figures. Everything went wrong fast. No one
+suspected cocain--they thought it was whiskey till Eva was forced to
+tell much to the good old doctor-details revealing her husband's
+uncouth carelessness of habits, his outbreaks of cruelty to her and
+the boy, his obvious and shameless lying, his unnatural coarseness of
+speech. This friend in need spent a bad hour, a hard hour with Waring.
+Calmness was ineffective, clear reasoning impossible. The accusation
+of drug-using was vehemently denied, and it was only the doctor's
+courageous threat to have him arrested and tried on a lunacy charge
+that broke down the false man's defiance.
+
+Two months of rigid treatment in a sanitarium did much to restore this
+broken man, and during these weeks the clever office assistant kept
+his over four-thousand dollar embezzlements from becoming known.
+Physically and mentally, Waring was restored. The moral sickness was
+only palliated. When he returned he did not clean house; he swept the
+dirt into the corners. Frank-facedly he lied to his wife. He met the
+most pressing of his creditors with a certificate of his illness, and
+they accepted his notes and promises. He almost crawled out. In so
+many ways, he was the winning, old "War" Waring again. Gradually, his
+regime of diet and routine of exercise were replaced by periodic "big
+eats," little drinks, and many smokes. Then came the warning sneezes
+and the charlatan's bottle. Irregular living grew apace; the accounts
+were again manipulated. A Chicago house, which had shown him clemency,
+became suspicious, and sent a representative who found many
+collections not reported. A warrant was sworn out, followed by a dozen
+others after his arrest.
+
+The dear old Squire, now eighty-six, sat beside the brave little wife
+at the trial. Neither of them thought of forsaking him. As the
+testimony was given, the old father bowed, mute--as one stricken. The
+verdict, "Guilty," was returned, and Judge Jefferson had evidently
+considered carefully his duty. In passing sentence he addressed the
+criminal: "Warren Waring, the law leaves it with the trial Judge to
+determine the sentence which shall be passed on you; it may be from
+five to fifteen years of hard labor in the State Penitentiary. You
+deserve the full extent of the law's punishment. I have known you from
+boyhood. Father, wife, God himself, have given you the best they have:
+an honorable name, a lifetime of devotion, the full ten talents. For
+these, you have returned dishonor, unchastity and self-indulgent
+hypocrisy. You have begged extenuation on the basis of nervous ill-
+health and temporary irresponsibility, both of which you have brought
+upon yourself by violating the laws of right-living. It is your soul
+that is sick. You are not fit to live free and equal with righteous
+men and women. You have had love and mercy-they have failed. Justice
+will now be given a chance to save you. For the sake of your wife
+whose noble heart, crushed, pleads for you, I reduce your deserved
+sentence five years. In respect for your disgraced but honorable
+father, five additional years are deducted. I pray he may live to see
+you a free man, chastened. Warren Waring, I sentence you to five years
+hard labor within the walls of the State Penitentiary."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE BATTLE WITH SELF
+
+
+The room was bare of furnishings save a cot; no dresser, table, stand,
+even chair, was there. The windows were of wire glass and guarded by
+metal screens, the lights were in shielded recesses, the floor was
+polished but without covering. No pictures, flowers, nor the dainty
+things which normal women crave were to be seen. On the cot sat a
+woman, Marie Wentworth, sullen and defiant, a worse than failure,
+locked in this protected room of a special hospital. Isolated with her
+caretaker, she was watched day and night-watched to save her from
+successfully carrying out her determination of self-destruction, a
+determination which had found expression in more than words, for only
+the day before-the day of her admission--she had swallowed some
+cleverly hidden, antiseptic tablets. The trained habits of observation
+of the skilful nurse had saved her from death. Crafty, vindictive,
+malicious, reckless, heartless! Her care demanded tireless watching--
+hence this room, void of anything by which she could possibly injure
+herself or others. Nor was she more attractive than her surroundings.
+Her skin was sallow and unwholesome; yellow-gray rings added dulness
+to her black eyes. Scrawny of figure, hard and repelling of features,
+an atmosphere of malevolence seemed to emanate from her presence. She
+took little note of what was happening, though occasional, furtive
+glances gave intimation of her knowledge of the nurse's presence. When
+stimulated to expression there were explosions of violent abuse,
+directed chiefly against her older sister, explosions punctuated by
+vicious flashes of profanity which left doubt in no mind of the hatred
+which rankled-hatred of family, hatred of order and authority, hatred
+of goodness however expressed, hatred of life and damnations of the
+hereafter. An unholy picture she was of a demoralized soul in which
+smoldered and from which flared forth a peace-destroying fire--the
+rebellion of a depraved body and mind against the moral self. She had
+been placed in this institution under legal restraint to be treated
+for morphinism, and, according to her brother, "pure cussedness."
+
+How did it happen? The Wentworths lived well, very well indeed, in a
+bluegrass county-seat of fair Kentucky. The father was an attorney by
+profession, a horse-fancier by choice, and for years before Marie's
+birth relieved the monotony of office duties and race-track pleasures
+by vivid, gentlemanly "sprees." Marie was only six when his last
+artery essential to the business of living became properly hardened,
+and Marie's mother was a widow.
+
+Mrs. Wentworth was to the manor born. She took pride in her home and
+thoroughly admired the brilliant qualities of her husband. Adorned
+with old jewels and old lace, she regularly graced her table at the
+periodic big dinners it was her pride to give. In fact, her pride
+extended to the planning of three fine meals a day. An unsentimental
+science suggests that her husband's arteries, as well as her fatal
+cancer, might have been avoided had chronic proteid intoxication not
+been the result of her menus. She also took pride in her family and
+trained the two older children as well as she knew, instilling in them
+both a loyalty to certain ideals which evolved into morality. But her
+failing health left Marie much to the care of her sister, and more to
+the tutelage of her own desires. Unhappily, there was little of beauty
+in the mother's last months which made any appeal to her child's love,
+or left much to inspire a twelve-year-old girl's devotion when but
+memory was left.
+
+When the insurance was collected and all settlements made, the
+comfortable old home and the jewels sold, each of the three children
+had five thousand dollars. The brother's success was limited. He
+invested his all, together with many notes of promise payable to his
+senior partner, in a dry-goods business, and while he carried most of
+the details of the establishment, the everlasting interest on his
+notes, and his wife's love of and demand for fine feathers, kept ends
+from ever successfully meeting.
+
+The sister, the eldest, was fine. The illness and death of her parents
+laid grave responsibilities on her young life, and she met them
+seriously, wholesomely, constructively. She early proved herself
+capable of large sacrifices. She had finished her college course
+before her mother's death, and after the home was sold she secured a
+position in the local woman's college, where she continued to teach
+and to merit a growing respect for many years. She was not perfect;
+the Wentworth temper flashed out most inopportunely, and work and pray
+and sacrifice and resolve as she would, her rule of Marie was
+unfortunate-flint and steel strike fire. Probably she "school-manned"
+rather than mothered the child.
+
+But with all environment favorable, Marie would have proven a
+"proposition." The sporting blood and Bourbon high-balls of the father
+and the mother's love of the good things of life more than neutralized
+the latter's Methodism. Marie was a healthy, well-built, lithe lassie,
+with raven-black hair and eyes which snapped equally with pleasure or
+with wrath. Impulsive, intense, wilful, tempestuous, bright and
+possessing capacity, pleasure-loving and ever impatient of restraint,
+we see in her the highly developed nervous temperament. She feared
+nothing save the "horrible nightmares" which frequently followed the
+big dinners-a child who could have been led to Parnassus, but who was
+driven nearly to Hell! She went through the public schools without
+conscious effort, but her buxom figure, the rich flush of health, her
+vivacity, her bearing, were irresistible to the youth of the
+community, and a series of escapades culminated in her dismissal from
+college; her indiscretions cost her the respect of the one man she
+loved. At twenty she had spent two thousand of the five thousand left
+her, while she and the sister failed to find harmony together. She had
+little sympathy with her sister's plodding life, but realized the need
+of preparing herself to earn, so entered a Cincinnati hospital. She
+had many qualities which made her a valuable student-nurse, with
+propensities which kept her in hot water. She had completed her second
+year of training when she was dismissed. The interns could not resist
+her, nor she them, and only so many midnight lunches on duty can be
+winked at, even in a hospital needing nurses. For nearly a year she
+was spasmodically occupied as an experienced nurse. The end of this
+year found her one thousand dollars poorer, while her heritage was
+becoming more manifest. In the place of her father's periodic
+alcoholism, it was periodic headaches. She was thoroughly impatient of
+personal suffering, or of any hygienic restraint, and so took heavy
+doses of headache-powders and, if these did not relieve, opiates. By
+falsifying her record, she succeeded in entering another training-
+school, a smaller one, in her own state. For a year she was careful-
+she was anxious to graduate-and developed real cunning in the use of
+drugs; but dependence upon these steadily undermined her reserve until
+she was almost daily using something for the "tired feeling" which was
+now so chronic. Nearly two years had passed before her drug-taking
+habit was discovered. Prompt dismissal necessarily followed. Her
+sister was informed, and insisted upon her going to an institution to
+be cured. Five hundred dollars were spent, and three months of
+treatment, directed to the withdrawal of her drug, gave no insight
+into her need for seriously altering her habits of life and feeling,
+brought no least conception of her defects of character without change
+of which there could be, for her, no safe living.
+
+During the next ten years her physical and mental deterioration
+increased apace. Other courses of treatment were taken with no lasting
+benefit. Her misfortunes seemed to culminate when she voluntarily
+entered a "drug-cure" institute which was practically a resort for
+drug-users. There are in every country unworthy places of this kind,
+where no real effort to cure patients is made. Sufferers with means
+are kept comfortable by being given drugs whenever they demand them,
+thus satisfying their consciences that they are being "treated," while
+vainly waiting till they are sufficiently strong to get entirely off
+"dope." In such a house of quackery Marie stayed two years. Her
+remaining fifteen hundred dollars and a thousand of her sister's went
+for fake treatment. She learned to smoke cigarettes with the young
+doctor; she played cards, gossiped, ate, slept and was never refused a
+comforting dose whenever she couldn't "stand it a minute longer."
+Worse than wasted years these, for even the remnants of her pride
+faded, and she lived a sordid life of the flesh. The sister, when she
+finally realized the gravity of the situation, lost all hope whatever
+for any restoration and, acting under the advice of the old family
+physician, had her committed to the State Hospital for the Insane as
+an incurable narco-maniac. Here she was rudely but promptly deprived
+of all narcotics, nor by any hook nor crook, cunning though she was,
+could she secure a quieting, solacing grain. The wise superintendent,
+believing that there was little chance for her true regeneration in
+the surroundings of even his best wards, advised that she be sent to a
+hospital where she would receive special care. The sister's funds
+alone could make this possible, and her genuine worth is shown in her
+willingness to spend a quarter of her entire savings that Marie might
+have this chance. Here, thirty-three years old, we found her the day
+after she had been transferred, the day after she had vainly tried to
+carry out her vow to end things if she were ever "forced into another
+treatment."
+
+Throughout the years the primitive self had been pitted against her
+own soul. She had always rebelled at her misfortunes, though they were
+largely of her own making. She blamed others for her hardships, and
+through the intensity of her resentment but made things harder. Not
+the least expression of her depravity was her hatred for all who had
+interfered with her wilful desires, particularly the sister, whose
+sacrifice she ignored, but whom she took a malicious delight in
+proclaiming to be the one who had forever ruined her chances in life
+by committing her to an insane asylum. But her delight was malicious,
+and all that she got out of her hate and maligning was deeper misery.
+The bitter dregs of twenty years of soulless living were all the cup
+of life now held for her--all the more bitter because of the finer
+qualities of her nature. There were possibilities in this highly
+organized girl which could have led her into an unusual wholeness of
+living.
+
+Six months passed, months of sullen, dogged resistance-resistance to
+the returning health which was again rounding her form and glowing her
+cheeks, resistance to proffered kindnesses of fellow-patients and
+nurses, resistance to any appeal to pride, honor, ambition, right.
+Sick of soul, she abjured the interest of the hospital workers, the
+love of her sister whose weekly letters she left unopened, the
+wholesome atmosphere of her surroundings, the personal appeal of those
+whose hearts were heavy with desire to help.
+
+Then the miracle!-for one came who cast out devils. She was not only a
+nurse, she was one of those divinely human beings who, with a nurse's
+knowledge and training, attain practical sainthood. She, too, had
+frequently been repelled in her hours of contact with this unhappy
+creature, but she believed that under all this unholiness there was a
+soul. She was a busy, hard-worked nurse, but in time Marie became
+aware that she was spending part of her limited off-duty hours to
+minister to her, that she had requested a special assignment of duty
+which would throw them together. Marie's four years of training made
+her recognize the rareness of this giving. Curiosity at least was
+aroused, and she began asking personal questions. An unconscious self-
+pity impelled her to discuss the grievances of the life of nursing,
+the unfairness common in training-schools, the injustices of long
+hours and inadequate appreciation, with scores of other quarrels which
+she had with life. Each of these was met squarely by her nurse-friend,
+who, free from platitudes and cant, ever saw the ideal above it all,
+who, loving her profession and loving humanity and promised to a life
+of service, gently, beautifully, firmly stood by her principles. For
+three months they were in daily contact--three thankless months for
+the nurse, three months of cunning, evil-minded, suspicious testing by
+the patient. Finally the very goodness of her friend seemed
+intolerable, and a paroxysm of rage and resentment broke loose, in
+which she cursed and abused her helper beyond sufferance. The nurse
+suddenly grasped the unhappy woman's arms to shake some sense of
+decency into her warped nature, one would have thought, but in truth
+that eye might meet eye, and in this look the rare love, which can
+persist through such provocation, awakened a soul. That look was at
+once the revelation of the worth of the one and the worthlessness of
+the other. A flood of tears drowned, it would seem forever, the evil
+which was cursing. In a day, in an hour, the change was wrought, that
+miraculous change which enters every life when the soul comes into its
+own.
+
+There were months in which the battle of self ebbed and flowed, but
+never did defeat seem again imminent, and the final victory was found
+in a high resolve which took her back home a quiet, subdued woman,
+forgetful of self in her sense of debt to the sister whose goodness
+she had never before admitted. For years they lived together, she
+keeping the simple home and keeping it well, saving, industrious,
+devoted, even loving. She has largely avoided publicity, though always
+ready to nurse in emergencies. Nobly she is expiating the past, and
+has long since worthily won the "well-done" of her moral self.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+THE SUFFERING OF SELF-PITY
+
+
+Alac MacReady was not much of an oarsman. Big and strong, and
+heretofore so successful that his large self-confidence had never been
+badly jolted, he was quite at a disadvantage, this June afternoon, as
+he attempted to row pretty Annette Neil across the head of the lake to
+where she said the fishing was good. Twice already he had splashed her
+dainty, starched frock, ironed, he knew, in the highest perfection of
+the art, by her own active, shapely, brown hands. And each awkward
+splashing had been followed by flashing glances which shriveled self-
+esteem even as they fascinated. They had planned to spend the sunset
+hour fishing, then land in time to meet the crowd and be driven on to
+Border City to a neighboring dance, and all come back to Geneva
+together.
+
+Alac's rural North-England training had developed in him many
+qualifications of worth but, among these, boating was not one. Had he
+told the truth when this little trip was planned, he would have
+admitted that he had never rowed a boat a half-mile in his life.
+Annette could do it tip-top; why not he? But things were
+unquestionably perverse. The boat wouldn't go in a straight line-in
+fact, it didn't go very fast anyway. The black eyes before him framed
+by that impudently beautiful face, so pert, so naive, so
+understandingly aware--so "damned handsome" he said to himself,
+prodded him to redoubled effort. He was swinging his two hundred
+pounds lustily, unevenly--an unusually vicious jerk, and snap went the
+old oar! Off the seat he tumbled, and, with land-lubber's luck,
+unshipped the other oar and away it floated, and a mile from land,
+they drifted.
+
+Alac MacReady was Scotch-English. The family had executed a number of
+important contracts for the British government; one of these had
+brought two of the boys to Canada. With their family backing, they had
+undertaken some constructive work in northern New York, and, at this
+time, were building a railroad which passed through Geneva. Alac had
+been in the neighborhood for two months supervising operations. He was
+striking in appearance--a florid-faced' blonde, brusque in business,
+quite jovial socially, and cracking--full of the conceit of youth,
+wealth and station. So far, life had, in practically nothing, refused
+his bidding.
+
+Annette Neil's father kept a small store, Annette did much of the
+clerking. She was unquestionably the prettiest girl in Geneva; indeed
+she was as pretty as girls are made. With all her small-town
+limitations she was bright as a pin, and as sharp; fine of instinct
+and, withal, coy as a coquette. The first time Alac addressed her it
+was as a shop-keeper. Something she said kept turning over in his
+brain and he realized next morning, as he was shaving, that her reply
+had been impertinent. Piqued, he returned the day after to make
+another purchase, and made the greater mistake of being patronizing.
+Mr. Alac MacReady discovered, without any prolonged period of
+rumination, that he had a bee in his bonnet, and left the little shop
+semispeechless and irate. He was not satisfied to leave the honors
+with this "snip of an American girl," and evolved a plan of verbal
+assault which was to bring the provincial upstart to her senses, only
+to discover that she had a dozen defenses for each attack, and to find
+himself, for two consecutive, disconcerting minutes, wondering if
+perchance he might be a "boob." With each visit--and they were almost
+daily and many of them made in the face of strong, contrary
+resolution--he felt the distinction in their stations disappearing. He
+later found himself calling on Annette's mother, and, stiffly at
+first, later humbly asking for the company of the bewitching girl,
+who, coy witch that she was, steadfastly refused to be "company" even
+when her mother said she might. This trip across the lake was the
+first real concession the little minx had made-and how "bloomingly" he
+"messed it up"! He was not used to the water, and, oarless, became
+"panicky." A pair of ridiculing eyes caused him to break off his
+second bellow for help, in its midst.
+
+The little boat drifted slowly. The June breeze was not strong. The
+sun slipped behind radiant clouds, clouds which shifted and softened,
+and tinted and toned through the pastels into the neutrals. Gently
+they were nearing the shore when the great, golden moon rose in the
+east, and soon brightening, shimmered the lake with countless, dancing
+splotches of silver. The water lapped with ceaseless, dainty caresses
+the sides of the boat. Some mother-bird nestling near the water's edge
+crooned her good-night message to her mate. A halo surrounded and
+softened the white face so near and, as part of the evening symphony,
+two dark eyes rested upon his face, deeply luminous. There are
+different stories of what he said. He admitted he was never so
+awkward. But they missed their companions, and the dance, and walked
+all the way 'round the head of the lake, home, this proud son of near-
+nobility doing obeisance to his untutored queen. So Alac and Annette
+married. They traveled far, first to Canada, then to England.
+Annette's sheer beauty and remarkable taste in the use of Alac's
+prodigal gifts of clothing and jewels carried the badly disturbed and
+certainly unfavorably prejudiced MacReady family by assault. Ten years
+they lived in the big Northumberland home. A boy and a girl came, both
+blondes like their father. The MacReady boys were not meeting the same
+success in their contracting ventures for which two former generations
+had been noted. And, after their father's death, one particularly
+disastrous contract quite reduced the family's financial standing and
+consequent importance. The three brothers could not agree as to which
+was to blame, so Alac and his family returned to America and located
+in Rochester. Their few thousands Alac invested in a small
+manufacturing concern which never prospered sufficiently to maintain
+him in his life-long habits of good living. Unhappily, too, strong as
+Alac was in many ways, his one weakness grew. Three or four times a
+year he would make trips to Toronto or New York, drink gloriously,
+spend hundreds of dollars, and return home meek and dutiful, almost
+praying Annette not to say what he knew was in her mind. Of the two
+children, little Alac multiplied his father's weaknesses by an
+unhappily large factor. He never amounted to much, developing little
+but small bombast. Charlotte was the child, dutiful, studious, rather
+serious perhaps, but very conscientious. Her features were those of
+neither father nor mother, but peculiarly delicate, strikingly
+refined. When she was fifteen her father was found dead, one morning,
+in an obscure hotel in the Middle West. He had neglected his insurance
+premiums. The resourceful little widow went to work at once. The
+products of her needle were exquisite. She sold some of the handsome
+old furniture and, during the next five years, most of her jewels went
+to keep the children in school. She had given absolutely to her
+husband and to her home, and through the years to come her cheer was
+never bedimmed save when the husband was mentioned. Charlotte became
+more attractive. She was slender, fair--the English type was apparent;
+she was a distinct contrast to her highly colored, brunette mother,
+who, however, might have been but an older sister, she had so
+preserved her youth. Charlotte was periodically morbid, a transmuted
+heritage. The financial need directed her training into practical
+lines; she studied stenography and was fortunate in securing a
+position in the office of John Evanson, the energetic senior member of
+a growing leather-manufacturing firm. There was something poetically
+appealing to this busy man in the quiet, sometimes sad-faced, fine-
+faced, competent woman, which gradually created in him a hungering
+sense of need-and he called one night. He afterwards said if he hadn't
+married Charlotte, he would have married her mother, who, to tell the
+truth, put what sparkle there was into the courtship.
+
+Charlotte's cup of happiness should have been overflowing when she
+moved into the handsome, big house. Her mother was to live with them,
+and such a mother-in-law would be a welcome asset to any home. Mr.
+Evanson gave Alac Junior the only good position he ever had--a
+position which he never filled to any one's satisfaction but his own.
+For two years Charlotte's virtues were expressed in quiet, almost
+thoughtful home-devotion, entertainment of poor relatives, and church-
+work. John Evanson was simple and rational in his tastes. In business
+he was enterprising and a keen fighter of competition. He cleverly
+managed his interests, which had grown through years of steadfast
+attention. He was nearly forty when he married, and his new home was
+to him a haven. The mother adapted herself superbly and was a real joy
+in the household through her wit and daintiness and ingenious
+thoughtfulness.
+
+Charlotte was not well for several months before the birth of the
+much-wished-for baby, which unhappily never breathed. A sharp illness
+which lingered was followed by eight miserable months, then an
+operation, and the surgeon pronounced her well-but she could not
+believe she was. Two years of rather unassuming semi-invalidism
+passed. She made few complaints; she was evidently repressing
+expression of the recurring symptoms of her discomfort. But since her
+baby's death she had recovered little ability for effort. She tired
+quickly. She was living a life of quiet, sheltered, almost luxurious
+inadequacy. Dr. Corning was puzzled. Mrs. Evanson had appealed to his
+professional pride and sympathetic nature strongly. Was there
+something obscure, a lurking condition which he had overlooked? He
+would have his work reviewed by the celebrated New York internist.
+Nothing was found which resulted helpfully. Mrs. MacReady was patient.
+Her innate good judgment withheld discussion of details with her
+unhappy daughter. She believed Charlotte to be secretly mourning for
+the little one who had not lived. She spent hours with her son-in-law
+in anxious conference. What could get her poor child out of this
+almost apathy? She looked so well; she had never weighed so much; but
+twice she had been found looking over the baby's things. Was her
+sorrow eating away at her heart? Hadn't he noticed that for months she
+left the room when her father or the baby was mentioned! And hadn't he
+noticed the marks of tears when she came back? The husband had never
+loved his wife more; he pitied her; he yearned to share the burden
+which she did not mention. He watched the change in her moods and
+brought something new each day to please, divert, to interest-books
+and flowers, periodicals, clothing, jewelry. Pets proved tiresome. She
+wearied soon on every attempted trip. Concerts and the theater, and
+music in the home, all made her "nervous."
+
+Mrs. MacReady firmly believed the trouble was a haunting spirit of
+unsatisfied mother-love, and suggested bringing a child into the home.
+This plan did arouse new interest. Months were spent in making the
+selection. Scores of points must be satisfactorily fulfilled, or the
+plan would prove but a bitter disappointment. At last, a nine-months-
+old girl-baby was discovered who promised to resemble her foster-
+mother, and who had a "respectable heritage 'way back on both sides."
+It seemed most fortunate for both the little orphan and the hungering
+woman-this adoption. Charlotte spent much time in getting the little
+one outfitted and settled. The child brought new problems, such as
+worthy nursemaids, sleep-hours and safe feeding-and Charlotte was
+better.
+
+Mrs. MacReady had not been looking well. For months she had been
+slowly losing weight, although there had been not a syllable of
+complaint. Mr. Evanson finally insisted-the examination revealed an
+incurable condition--presto! Charlotte was prostrated. The trained
+nurse, secured for the mother, spent most of her time attending the
+multiplying needs of the daughter, whose apprehension grew until she
+began sending for her husband during his office-hours, fearing that
+her mother was worse; or because she looked as if she might have one
+of the hemorrhages the doctor feared, or to discuss what they would do
+when her mother died. The months dragged on. The splendid mother
+radiated cheer to the last. Then began the reign of terror. Stimulants
+and sedatives seemed necessary to protect Charlotte from "collapse."
+For a month, Mr. Evanson did not go near the office; for years, he was
+subject to calls by day, was disturbed mercilessly at night. No nurse
+could fill his place. It seemed chiefly the sick woman's "heart." Dr.
+Corning was too frank-Charlotte insisted he did not "understand." Dr.
+Winton was "sympathetic." He was physician for many society women. He
+was an adept in providing understanding and comfort. He never advised
+"dangerous operations or nasty mixtures," and was no fanatic on diet
+and exercise.
+
+When Charlotte married, she was "lily-fair," and weighed one hundred
+and sixteen. Five years after her mother's death she was florid,
+vapid, and weighed one hundred and sixty-eight miserable pounds. She
+ran the gamut of nervous ailments: disturbances of circulation,
+digestion, breathing, eating, sleeping, antagonism to draughts and
+noises, and a special antipathy to the odor from the exhaust of motor-
+cars. This last made her faint, and of her fainting attacks pages
+might be written. The home of John Evanson was now a dreary place. It
+was a household subsidized to the whims of a self-pitying woman. Her
+loss of father, baby and mother had "wrecked her life." Husband,
+child, nurse, servants, were all under the blight of her enslaving
+self-commiseration. For years all church and social activities were
+unattempted. Relatives and friends could not be entertained, for every
+one's attention was demanded to meet the varying possible emergencies
+of symptoms and to keep her mind from dwelling on her losses and the
+wretchedness of her fate.
+
+Mr. Evanson's business interests were neglected. His devotion to his
+morbid, now thoroughly selfish wife lost him big opportunities. His
+nerves, too, suffered from the unceasing strain. Serious-minded,
+nonimaginative, honest, it never occurred to him that the illness of
+his "poor afflicted wife" was an illness of the soul only. The adopted
+daughter was surrounded by an atmosphere of unnatural repression, an
+atmosphere charged with false sympathy and unwholesome concessions to
+the selfish weaknesses of her foster-mother. Dr. Winton advised many
+comfortable and diverting variations in treatment, but life in the
+Evanson home became increasingly distorted. At last John realized he
+was losing out badly-he must have a change. Through some subconscious
+inspiration he took Dr. Winton with him. They spent two weeks hunting
+and fishing in the Maine woods. John sought to get in touch with the
+man behind the doctor. The doctor soon realized the manliness of his
+companion. They were resting after a taxing portage, both feeling the
+fine exhilaration of perfect physical relaxation after productive
+physical weariness. The two men were pretty close. Shop had not been
+mentioned during the two weeks.
+
+"Doctor, tell me about my wife, just as though she were a sister."
+
+The doctor mused several minutes. "It is not pleasant... it is not
+easy to tell... you won't want to hear it. You probably will not
+accept what I have to say... you may resent it."
+
+"Tell me straight; you know how vitally I and my household need to
+understand the truth."
+
+Gravely the physician spoke--as friend to friend: "Your wife has
+leprosy!--not the physical form, but the kind that anesthetizes,
+ulcerates, deforms the soul--the leprosy of self-pity. It began with
+her father's death. It has eaten deeper and deeper, fed by the
+unselfishness of her mother and of yourself, unchecked by the soothing
+salves applied by doctors like me. I early recognized that she would
+not pay the price of radical cure--the price of effortful living. Her
+understanding soul has degenerated--something vital to Christ-like
+living is, I believe, lost. She believes her undiseased body to be
+ill. Her reason is distorted by her disease-obsessions; her will has
+been pampered into a selfish caricature. She has accepted the false
+counsel of her selfishness so long that she is attracted by error, and
+repelled by truth. I see relief for her only through the culminating
+self-deception that disease does not exist. If this error is accepted
+by her, she will become as fanatically superior to her wretched
+sensations as she is now subservient to them. In other words, she is a
+worse than useless woman whom Christian Science may transform. She is
+emotionally sick. Christian Science appeals to the emotional life; it
+is not concerned with reason-no more is she. It negates physical
+illness and thus might replace her morbid, hopeless, selfish
+sufferings with years of applied, wholesome cheer and faith."
+
+Some details were discussed. A fine personality, a woman who devoutly
+accepted the teachings of Mrs. Eddy, who would have been an example of
+selfless living, regardless of details of religious faith, was
+interested in poor Charlotte. Progress was slow at first. Then the
+leaven began to work. One day the expressman moved a big box from the
+Evanson home to a local hospital. It contained the paraphernalia of a
+one-time invalid. One plastic nurse lost a chronic case. To-day in the
+Evanson household, all discussions of illness are under the ban. The
+home is no longer a private infirmary, but breathes a bit of the
+after-glow of cheer which should linger long after the passing of one
+so worthy and radiant as Annette--the mother beautiful in body and
+spirit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE SLAVE OF CONSCIENCE
+
+
+In the following life-story, our sympathies are strongly drawn to the
+conscientious woman who gave so many years of uncomplaining service--a
+giving which should have brought its daily reward of satisfaction; yet
+she sorrowed through her youth because she lacked the charity that
+"suffereth long and is kind," finding which, her problem was met.
+
+The never too attractive Yarnell home was in a mess. Irene, the eight-
+year-old child, seemed seriously ill. The doctor had said, the night
+before, that they might have to operate if the pain in her side didn't
+get better; and the little girl prayed that they would, and prayed
+specially that she would die while they were doing it. She didn't want
+to live. She wanted to go rather than to stay forever with the new
+mother her father had brought home last month. Big Sister wouldn't
+stay; she ran away the second week and married Tim Shelby, and had a
+good home now with Tim's people--even though her father hadn't spoken
+to the Shelbys for years. Aunt Erne had gone too, dear Aunt Erne, her
+mother's sister, who had been mother to her ever since her real mother
+died--just after she was born--that precious mother, who, Aunt Effie
+used to tell her, had died happy that her little girl might live. Aunt
+Effie had always taught her a beautiful love, and every night she said
+a beautiful prayer for the mother she had never seen. Aunt Effie tried
+to stay, too, but couldn't. She left the same day the new mother asked
+father, before them all, how he was ever going to keep up with all the
+expenses of so many and give a tenth of his salary to the church.
+
+The very night her aunt went away, the step-mother had told Irene that
+it was wicked to "do up" her hair in curl-papers, and when she begged
+her, "Just this once," because she had a "piece to speak" in school
+next day, and cried in her disappointment, her stepmother had shaken
+her so hard that something seemed to tear loose in her side. Irene had
+never hated any one before--and it was wicked to hate; and so she was
+praying her real mother to come and take her before she became a
+sinner. But in spite of her prayers, she shrank when her stepmother
+came near and chilled whenever touched by her. She couldn't eat the
+food she brought, and every time she thought of her, the pain was
+worse. Both her father and his new wife seemed so strange. She felt
+like some stray, hurt animal, not loved by any one.
+
+The new Mrs. Yarnell had been a maiden-lady many years. During her
+spinstership she had given herself without stint to the activities of
+her small church, a church belonging to an obscure denomination which
+teaches that holiness is nigh upon us; that if we but supplement
+conversion by a second act of grace, sanctification here and
+forevermore is ours. Hers was not an easy disposition to live with.
+She had ably held her own through years of bickerings and wordy
+contentions with an overworked, irritable mother. She gave little
+love. She received little. But her underdeveloped, souring heart
+instinctively craved some drops of sweetness. So, when she listened to
+the fervid exhorter, revealing the new highway to heaven, that
+glorious way where the good Lord carries all our burdens, if we will
+just cast them upon Him, a great light illumined her soul. Why a weary
+life of strife and misunderstanding? She would give herself without
+reserve, and even in the giving she could feel her burden roll away.
+In a flash it seemed, life had changed. She was now the Lord's--mind,
+soul and body. He directed; she followed. He could not lead her wrong,
+and, as all her impulses and desires were now divine, she could do no
+wrong. She could think no wrong. Having given all, she was now saved
+to the uttermost. Misunderstood she must be, of course, by those who
+knew not the holy leadings of her sanctified soul. Serenely,
+supremely, she lived. Her old biting temper was now righteous
+indignation. Her dislike for household work was only an evidence that,
+like beautiful Mary, she had chosen the better part. What her mother
+had always called obstinacy and perversity were now stead-fastness in
+the Lord. Oddly, her tart, sarcastic, even flaying tongue was not
+softened by any gentleness of divine inspiration. Incidentally, the
+Lord had given her a plump figure, and a knack of apparel which had
+long appealed to Widower Yarnell's eye. And the Lord approved; in
+truth He said "Yes!" so audibly that Miss Spinster hesitated hut one
+maidenly minute.
+
+Mrs. Yarnell's sanctification washed dishes, kept house, and nursed
+lonely, sick, little children most inefficiently. So, after Aunt Effie
+and Big Sister, both willing workers, left, the new bride found
+unforeseen difficulties in following the Lord's leadings, which seemed
+to call to real back-and-muscle taxing effort for other people--such
+was for the world of Marthas. So things in the Yarnell household got
+in a mess.
+
+It seemed hard for Irene to recover. But her returning strength found
+early tonic in the house-work which was left for her to do. The new
+mother's church activities occupied so much of her time that little
+was left for any but unavoidable essentials. Irene became a fine
+little worker, and should have had all the honors and happiness due
+the model child. Neat, rapid, effective, an excellent student, she
+developed physically strong, the possessor of that rare and attractive
+glow of health, into a thoroughly wholesome looking young woman. Deep
+within, however, she had not known peace since the day Aunt Effie
+left. For years she had fought smoldering resentment and an
+embittering sense of injustice, until at fourteen the deeper depths
+were stirred by a slow but irresistible religious awakening. Her
+stepmother's church was on the opposite side of town, too far for them
+both to attend. Her own mother's church was in the neighborhood, and
+throughout the years she had usually been able to attend Sunday-school
+there and be home again in time to get dinner. Her young understanding
+had long been in a turmoil as to what religion and right are. Aunt
+Effie had taught gentleness of conduct and charity of speech, and
+forgetfulness of self in service. Mrs. Yarnell constantly proclaimed
+that, until the Lord entered her heart to absolutely sanctify it, she
+was certain to be miserable, unless she became a hopelessly hardened
+sinner.
+
+Unhappy the child surely was. Her conscience was a sensitive one; it
+seemed ever to chide, and often to condemn. No matter how faithfully
+she followed duty, her failure to receive that wonder-working "second
+blessing" left her feeling as an unworthy one outside of the fold.
+Then, when she neglected, even for an hour, her household duties or
+school-work for church-socials or class-picnics, her conscience, and
+usually her step-mother, pounced upon her mercilessly. At early
+fourteen, she was feeling the chilling shadows of a morbid conscience.
+Her stepmother was away for two weeks attending a denominational
+conference, and it seemed to Irene that she had more time than usual;
+so she talked her perplexities over with the pastor of her mother's
+church. A good man he was, but far from being an expert physician of
+the soul. He did not seem to sense her deeper problem-the one daily
+hurting her sensitive spirit, but asked a number of questions, her
+answers to which convinced him that she was entirely ready to join the
+church, which he definitely advised her to do, believing thereby she
+would find the peace she sought. So without delay, even before her
+stepmother's return, and without consulting her, she followed the
+minister's advice. Unhappily, her business-burdened father had no
+special interest in the welfare of any one's soul. Mrs. Yarnell
+henceforth treated Irene as a religious inferior. High school brought
+more work and little play. The unsuccessful father died with bad
+arteries when Irene was eighteen. He left little beside the mortgaged
+place; so Irene took up bookkeeping, and before she was twenty had a
+bank-position which, through her ability and merit and trustworthy
+conscientiousness, she has held through the years and the
+vicissitudes, supporting herself and her stepmother. Irene's play days
+had been rare. Her conscience was a grim-visaged angel whose flaming
+sword she ever saw barring each path to pleasure.
+
+The president of her bank was also an elder in her church. His mind
+was pretty well filled with business, still he took occasional thought
+for his employees, and the summer Irene was twenty-three, he asked her
+how she would spend her two vacation weeks. "No," she was not going to
+leave Wheeling. "Yes," it was hot, but she had much sewing to do, and
+if she could save for two years more, the mortgage would be paid. The
+banker noticed, even as they talked, the slight tremor of fingers and
+lips which bespeaks tension; and that not a little of her appearance
+of reserve and strength had slipped away through the grind of the
+years.
+
+Three delegates were to be sent to the Chautauqua Assembly for a two
+weeks' special conference, and somehow it turned out that, with those
+of Mrs. Crumb, the pastor's wife, and Matthew Reynolds, a theologic
+student the church was helping educate, Irene Tarnell's name was read.
+Two weeks at Chautauqua, her railway-fare paid both ways!-a score of
+the best people of the church assuring her that it was her duty-and an
+envelope with the banker's personal check for twenty dollars, endorsed
+"for incidentals as delegate"! Thus Irene set forth on her first
+foreign mission, her first trip out into this big, busy world, about
+which she had, wrongfully, of course, wasted a few minutes now and
+then in dreaming. Who could have been more companionable than Matthew,
+or who more thoughtful and self-eliminating than Mrs. Crumb whose
+thrifty, matronly heart early sensed the promise and wisdom-and
+excitement, too, of a romance en route. And dear Mrs. Crumb was deft,
+and Matthew supremely susceptible, and Irene-she was in the clouds!
+How like a story-book, the kind that ends happily, it would have
+worked out, if alas! Matthew had not been quite so susceptible. There
+was a Pittsburgh girl who had the advantage of prior association and,
+unfortunately, the young student's pledge of eternal devotion. Still,
+Irene was a mighty good-looking girl; in fact, Matthew admitted, the
+third day of their trip, when her fine color began to flash back, that
+she was better looking than his promised, and so refreshingly free
+from worldly-mindedness. Mrs. Crumb did not know of Matthew's
+entanglements, while the devotion of his attentions, a certain
+lighting of his eyes, and gentleness of speech and demeanor convinced
+her that all she wished was going very well. So convinced was she that
+she made bold, early the second week, to express her belief in Irene's
+almost unequaled qualifications for a minister's wife, to which
+dutiful Matthew gave unreserved assent.
+
+Nothing of importance was scheduled for Wednesday afternoon, and Mrs.
+Crumb showed that she was not lacking in an understanding of young
+folks' human nature when she planned the little excursion which was to
+offer ample opportunity for the consummation she believed so
+impending. They had all taken some tramps together. She was not quite
+equal, she said, to the walk around to Mayfield, but it would make a
+fine afternoon trip for the young folks. She would go down on the
+steamer, and they could all come back and enjoy the refreshing,
+evening water-trip together.
+
+Matthew had certainly been attentive, giving an attention which Irene
+had never before received. For days she had been happy, the first joy-
+days she had known since she was eight. The very near future loomed
+large with intoxicating promise. Mrs. Crumb had talked to her, also,
+of Matthew, and of his fine record at college, and of his gentle
+nature. The early afternoon was hot; they walked slowly; they loitered
+when they came to shade. Then out of the west came booming black
+clouds, and they were caught in a mid-summer thunderstorm. He helped
+her as they ran for shelter, but, almost blinded by the pelting rain,
+she tripped and fell awkwardly, twisting her ankle cruelly. She
+probably fainted. Matthew was frightened, and in his helplessness lost
+his head. She was roused by him chafing her hands, and his importunate
+"Dear Irene," bundled stunned senses, soaked, chilling apparel and
+stabbing ankle into one unutterable confusion of unspeakable joy. And
+"devil-inspired fool" that she was, she reached up, drew his tense
+face, so near, against hers, and "hateful bliss," it stayed there a
+full minute. Then life went black, for he tore himself away, almost
+savagely putting her arm aside. "It is wrong; you have made me sin!"
+
+"It is wrong; you have made me sin!" were burned in loathsome black
+across the face of her conscience, accusing cruelly, unendingly
+accusing. Tears passed-those years that drag, and she never knew of
+the girl in Pittsburgh. She did not know other than that she had
+transgressed and tempted a fine, good man; that she had tempted him
+from the sanctity of great religious purpose-and her branded, sick
+conscience proved itself a poison to mind and body.
+
+Dazed, the hurt woman returned to the loveless home. Mechanically, for
+months, her hands made that home comfortable and toiled on at the
+bank. We wonder how the break could have been held back so long, in
+one so sensitive. The staunch body and well-trained mind must have
+carried her on through mere momentum. But it had to come. Self-
+condemnation and self-depreciation gave birth to false self-
+accusation. She began to question the worth of all she did. Repeatedly
+she must add and re-add a column of figures; even the evidence of the
+adding-machine had to be proven. She wakened at night questioning the
+correctness of her entries, and her work became slow and inaccurate.
+All she did, physically and mentally, became a dread. The very act of
+walking to and from the bank seemed to drain her waning strength. She
+refused a vacation suggested by her employer, who gradually became
+genuinely concerned about her health. He knew but little of the affair
+at Chautauqua. Mrs. Crumb was too good a woman to let drop any hint of
+what she may have surmised; she actually knew only of the storm and
+sprained ankle.
+
+One morning Mrs. Yarnell called a neighboring doctor. She couldn't
+waken Irene. It was found that her sleep had become so poor that she
+had bought some powders from the druggist. Never having taken
+medicine, she was easily influenced, and the ordinary dose left her
+confused for twenty-four hours. Two weeks' rest at home, if one could
+rest in Mrs. Yarnell's company, found the girl no stronger. The banker
+and the doctor had a conference. She must be gotten away from home.
+The banker had a doctor-friend, a man whose means made it unnecessary
+for him to give his years of strength to the unceasing demands of a
+general practice. He had long been keenly interested in the
+complicated and growing problem of nervousness. He owned a beautiful
+place down the Ohio River where, for years, he had been taking into
+his home a few deserving, nervous invalids. He had learned to enter
+into their lives with a specialist's skill-with a father's
+understanding. Thus he gave largely--to some it would seem, of his
+substance, but the true giving was his discerning, constructive
+comprehension of human problems. Into this atmosphere, God and the
+banker sent Irene.
+
+For nearly twenty years this oversensitive girl had known few hours of
+understanding and sympathy. For a week or two she merely rested; then
+one evening, it seemed precipitate, but some way it was as easy as
+anything she had ever done, she told the story we have heard. There,
+revealed, was the defect of a life, a problem to be worked out by the
+analytic student of mankind. Was it to introduce a little saving
+recklessness, the redeeming truth of honesty and justice to self, or
+the neutralizing of self-negation by the acceptance of merited worth!
+Even through our weaknesses are we sometimes healed. If any reason
+existed which could merit one self-accusing thought, the doctor found
+it when he uncovered the resentment which had never healed toward the
+usurping stepmother--"a woman who had proved her limitations and
+should be mercifully judged thereby," he told Irene.
+
+"Yes," the doctor said, "you have missed the 'second blessing'; you
+have missed a thousand blessings because the generosity of your years
+of fine doing were lacking in the gentleness of feeling which Aunt
+Effie taught you, and which made your mother so beloved. Lacking this,
+even in the fulness of your much giving, you have failed. You have
+been seeking the true religion. Your mother had it-the kind that
+lightens the dead heaviness and puts heaven's color into the dull,
+dark hours at home. Herein, only, have you fallen short."
+
+The doctor knew men, and he was able to show her how utterly innocent
+she was of the slightest hint of wrong in her relations with Matthew,
+how impossible that her spontaneous act could have wrought a second's
+harm to any good man. There was much more said helpfully, but the most
+good, unquestionably, came from the unspoken influence of the
+thoughtful personal consideration and discerning kindness of this
+scientific lover of his kind. Three months Irene spent with them, the
+doctor and his equally good wife; she returned home radiant.
+
+The years pass. During the Great War, when trained men were scarce,
+our restituted woman acted as cashier and drew almost a cashier's
+salary. The mortgage is paid. Two women live in the little house. The
+older is very religious. She still attends many church services; she
+dutifully gives her tenth to the cause, and, in and out of season,
+proclaims her way as the perfect road to the heights beyond. Old and
+practically unchangeable, she is not lovable and she never has been,
+but near-by tenderness has softened some of her self-satisfied
+asperities. Still radiant is the younger woman-the righteous woman
+whose righteousness has put unfailing cheer in service most of us
+would call "fierce," a righteousness which has learned to be
+charitably blind where most of us would see and resent, a
+righteousness which has brought abiding happiness to a life that had
+long suffered, a slave to its conscience. Cleverness and wealth-having
+not charity-have sought such happiness in vain through the ages.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+CATASTROPHE CREATING CHARACTER
+
+
+Grandfather Scott was a blacksmith. He was much more-a natural amateur
+mechanic-the only man in those early days in the little town of
+Warren, who could successfully tinker sewing-machines, repair clocks,
+or make a new casting for a broken Franklin heater. He was a hale,
+ruddy man who lived, worked and died with much peace. There were
+girls, but David was the only boy, and a lusty youth he was. The
+absence of brothers, or possibly an excess of sisters, gave him, both
+as youth and young man, much more liberty of action and right of way
+than was good for his soul. At any rate, he early developed a
+steadfastness which, throughout his life, stood for both strength of
+purpose and hard-headed, sometimes hard-hearted wilfulness. His father
+had dreamed a dream: his smithy was to grow into a shop, and later the
+shop was to become a factory where a hundred men would do his bidding
+and supply the country with products of his inventive genius. But so
+far as his own life was to realize, it remained a dream. The shop was
+never built; the genius failed to invent. But his son, David! Yes, he
+would have the schooling and advantages that the father had not known.
+And so it was: at thirty, David Scott had been well educated in
+mechanics; at forty, he had made improvements on the sewing-machine,
+which gave him valuable patents; at fifty, his factory employed ten
+times the number his father had visioned. Thus was fulfilled the dream
+of the ancestor.
+
+Business success was large for Mr. David Scott. But what of his
+success as a father? He married at twenty-eight, a handsome woman
+whose pride in appearance stood out through the years and influenced
+the training given her three children. Little David, or "Dave," as he
+was early called in distinction to his father, was petted by his
+mother and, in spite of evidences to the contrary, was his father's
+pride. The family moved to Cleveland when Dave was a little fellow.
+His father would not be cramped, so, with what proved to be rare
+foresight, bought part of an old farm on Mayfield Heights. Both here
+and at Granddad's, where Dave was sent each summer, there was ample
+out-of-doors, and the lad grew sturdy of limb. With a flaming shock of
+curling, copper hair, his eyes deepest blue, and skin as fair as a
+girl's, he was a boy for mother, teachers and later for maidens to
+spoil. But an attractive personality, an inherent fineness never left
+him while he was conscious, and seldom when he was irresponsible.
+
+Dave's mother was proud, proud of her successful husband, of the
+mansion and estate of which she was the envied mistress, proud of her
+handsome self and handsome daughters, and specially proud of Dave, the
+brightest and handsomest of them all. It is a pity that she who so
+fully enjoyed the pleasures of wealth, and of wealth-shielded
+motherhood, might not have lived to drink to her full of the joys she
+loved. Pride, insufficient clothing, wealth, inadequate exercise,
+exposure in a raw, March bluster, defective personal resistance,
+pneumonia!--and in a week, the life was gone.
+
+Dave was only fourteen, but, in face of his spoiling, was ready for
+St. Paul's, where he was sent the next fall. He was bright-even
+brilliant in his prep school work. Mathematics, the sciences and
+history seemed almost play for him, while in languages, and especially
+in English, he did an unusual amount of "not required" work.
+
+Dave made his father his hero, and for many years was instant in doing
+his will. Had the older man taken serious thought of his son's
+personality and entered into the boy's developmental needs with his
+wonted intelligence and thoroughness, the two could have grown into a
+closeness which would have made the Scott name one to be reckoned with
+in the manufacturing world.
+
+The father's business was growing even beyond his own dreams, and he
+found little time to give his boy, whom, in fact, he saw but rarely,
+save at Christmas holidays. So it happened that Dave was more deeply
+influenced by his mother's love for the beautiful than by machine-shop
+realities; and the aesthetic developed in him to the exclusion of the
+father's practical life.
+
+For many years wine had been served at the family dinners. Mr. Scott
+drank only at home, and then never more than two small glasses. He had
+no respect for the man who overindulged any weakness. He little
+thought his own blood could be different than he. This father was a
+man of exceptional energy who had wrought miracles financially, and
+was, without question, master in his thoroughly organized factory. He
+dominated his surroundings. Where he willed to lead--whether in
+business circles, in the vestry, in his own home--the strength of his
+intellect, the force of his purpose and his quiet but tangible
+assertiveness were felt. He had never been balked in any determined
+course of action.
+
+When Dave went East to school, he possessed physique and health which
+should have made athletics a desire and a joy. But on both the
+baseball and football squads were a few fellows not choice in their
+use of English. In fact, even at this excellent church-school, these
+exceptions did considerable "cussing." Dave's mother and sisters were
+fastidious, and Dave found himself, even at fourteen, resenting
+coarseness. He, therefore, chose the "nice fellows" as associates, and
+made friends to his liking in books. We must not think of him as
+"prissy" or snobbish, but he distinctly disliked crudity however
+expressed, and this dislike grew and was strengthened by his
+increasing devotion to the aesthetic. Otherwise, Dave's prep school
+years were those of an unusually fine fellow, whose mind promised both
+brilliance and strength. Sadly, during these vital years, Dave had no
+mature counselor; no strong character was sufficiently close to sense
+his needs and court his confidence. So some of the proclivities of his
+early home influence persisted and developed, which normally should
+have been displaced by others standing for oncoming manhood.
+
+College life, unfortunately, but increased his opportunities to
+indulge his weaknesses, and his three years at Yale found him a
+dependable member of a refined fast-set. With his unusual mind--giving
+no time to athletics--there were many idle hours at his disposal. He
+now discovered that he liked cigarettes which his father held in
+supreme contempt, while, from time to time, a quiet wine-supper with a
+select few, where spirits blended so finely when mellowed by
+champagne, stood for the acme of social pleasure. Dave could not carry
+much liquor and mellowed early, and rather soon slipped quietly under
+the table, to be told the next day most of the snappy toasts and
+stories the other fellows had contributed to the occasion. These
+entertainments soon forced Dave to overdraw his allowance. A business-
+like letter asking explanations came from his father, and this was
+followed by a peremptory command that he live within his already
+"ample remittance." Father and son had never been companions, and here
+the boy's devotion deserted, and a growing estrangement began. Dave,
+knowing his father's wealth, resented his lack of liberality, and he
+knew him too well to protest. For three months he heeded parental
+injunction; then a trip to New York to grand opera. Entertainment
+accepted must be returned. Another wine-supper, paid for by a draft on
+his father-and family warfare was on! The draft was paid-the family
+credit must not be questioned, but a house was divided against itself,
+and the letter David sent Dave left a trail of blue smoke. It left
+also a reckless, rebellious son.
+
+Adelaide Foster's grandfather was wealthy. Her mother had suited her
+own taste-not her parents'-when she married attractive Fred Foster.
+The grandfather dallied too often with the "bucket-shop" before he
+forgave his foolish child, and when he came to his better paternal
+self, he hadn't much to leave his little granddaughter. But Adelaide
+made much of her little, and spent two very developing years at
+Barnard.
+
+Dave and Adelaide met on terms artistic which were most satisfying to
+them both. Dave had made good junior marks in spite of his inoffensive
+sprees and conflicts with his father. He was in many ways Adelaide's
+superior, but she gave him a large companionship in things beautiful,
+and worshiped at his feet in questions profound. His father had
+ignored, or failed to notice, Dave's references to the young lady-so
+there was a little wedding-ceremony with four witnesses, an almost
+impulsive wedding. The elder Scott was not expecting this flank-
+movement, but family pride again helped Dave out, and a liberal check
+followed the stiff telegram of "best wishes."
+
+Six months the young folks spent abroad. The beautiful in nature and
+art which Europe offered blended into their honeymoon. The last
+wedding-gift dollar had been spent when they returned to East Best,
+the paternal mansion in Cleveland. Two evenings later Mr. Scott called
+his son into the library. It was time to reassert his sovereignty.
+This, too, was business; so it was curt and direct. "Well, sir, I
+trust you have sown your wild oats. You have married. It is high time
+you settled down. I shall give you and Adelaide a home with us, or, if
+you prefer to live elsewhere, one hundred dollars a month for living
+expenses. This, mark you, is my gift to her. You don't earn a cent of
+it. You will have to start in the business at the bottom. You may
+choose the shops or the office. You will be paid what you earn. I hope
+you will make good. You are capable. Good-night."
+
+Dave chose the office. The shops were "ugly." Unhappily, much of the
+good, the useful and the necessary was being classed as "ugly" in this
+young aesthete's mind, and worse, he was finding himself uncomfortable
+in the presence of an increasing number of normal, even practically
+essential conditions. This gifted and promising young man was at odds
+with reality. He refused to accept reality as real. For him in beauty
+of line and color and sound, in beauty of thought and expression,
+only, was the truth. He suffered in other surroundings. He had become
+aesthetically hypersensitive. And of all reality's ruthlessness, what
+was less tolerable than monotony? What less capable of leading a man
+to the heights than the eternal grind of the office?
+
+Even Adelaide and the baby bored him at times. Young Scott could do
+anything well to which he gave effort. And his father was considering
+giving him a raise, when at the end of six months he disappeared. The
+second day after, the distraught wife received a message from New
+York. He was all right, and would be home next week. The father,
+however, had to honor another draft before his son could square
+accounts and purchase a return ticket. This was the first of his
+retreats from the grim battle-front of reality. Six months seemed the
+limit of his capacity to face a work-a-day life. He read much, and of
+the best. He took up Italian alone and soon read it easily. When at
+home his chief excesses were books-but the Scott table was amply
+supplied, and in view of his inactive physical habits we realize that
+Dave was a high liver.
+
+Adelaide had proven a most dutiful daughter-in-law, and with the baby
+long kept the headsman's ax from descending. But even their
+restraining power had its limitations. The irk of that "godless"
+office was being more and more poorly met by Dave. Five times during
+the fourth year he took ungranted periods of relaxation. The last time
+the usual draft was not paid. He unwisely signed a check, badly
+overdrawing his private account. His father seemed waiting for such an
+opportunity, and took drastic action. Under an old law, he had his son
+apprehended as a spend thrift, and so adjudged, deprived of his rights
+and made ward of a guardian. A young physician was made deputy in
+charge of his person--a man chosen, apparently, with much care. It was
+to be his business to teach this wealthy man's son to work with his
+hands and to live on a stipulated sum. There is no question that
+immediate good followed these aggressive tactics, and in the
+personality of his companion-guardian he found much that was
+wholesome. A sturdy character was the doctor, who had fought his way
+through poverty to a liberal education, and was entering a special
+study of nervous disorders. His good theoretical training was planted
+in a rich soil of common-sense. For three months they worked on a
+farm, shoulder to shoulder. The two men became friends, a most helpful
+friendship for Dave, whose admiration for the young doctor had proven
+a path which led him, for the first time, to a realization of the
+hidden beauties in a life of overcoming, and this lies close to the
+nobility of the love of work.
+
+Dave was accepting his need for the bitter medicine which was being
+administered. He had forgiven Adelaide who sided with his father and,
+for the first time, had written, acknowledging some of his past
+failures. He wanted some books. He needed clothes. The orders given
+the doctor had been rigid as to spending-money and diversions. The
+determined father disapproved the expense account. Another man was
+sent to relieve the doctor-companion-a man who could be depended upon
+to carry out the letter of the father's law. Rebellion, fierce--and it
+seemed, righteous--flamed forth in Dave Scott's soul. He was doing his
+best. He was working as he never had worked before. He had seen his
+need--he had the vision of self-mastery. All this, and more he had
+seriously confided to the man his father, through the court, had
+placed over him. Without a word of explanation he was again to be
+turned over to the custody of a stranger. Was he a child or a chattel?
+Was he mentally irresponsible that he should be thus transferred from
+one hand to another without a hearing? He wired his protests, and
+received in return an assurance that he would accept his new custodian
+or be cut off without a cent. In that hour the real character of David
+Scott was born. He consulted an attorney and learned the limited power
+of his guardians. Outside of Ohio he was legally free. He pawned some
+of his few belongings. Adelaide and the child were financially cared
+for. Over night he left the State. He would be a man, penniless,
+rather than the chattel-son of a millionaire!
+
+The United States had just entered the Great War. The Marines were
+being recruited everywhere for "early over-seas service," and Dave
+Scott, the aesthetic, volunteered as a "buck-private." Few got over as
+fast as they wished. It was six months for Dave at Paris Island. There
+were few in the ranks of his mental ability, and physically he became
+as hard as the toughest. He was soon a corporal and later a sergeant.
+And he worked. He met the roughest of camp duties, at first with set
+jaw and revolting senses, later with a grim smile; finally, and then
+the emancipation, with a sense of the closeness of man to man in
+mankind's work. And the men began turning to him, and as he sweated
+with them he learned to discern the manliness in the crudest of them.
+He went across at the end of six months, to France. He was a
+replacement in the Sixth.
+
+The French line had been beaten thin as gold-foil. If it broke, Paris
+was at the mercy of the Hun. Then eight thousand of Uncle Sam's
+Marines were thrown in where the line was thinnest and the pressure
+heaviest. Sharp-shooters, expert marksmen, were most of them. The
+enemy was now in the open. They had not before met riflemen who boldly
+stood up and coolly killed at one thousand yards. Crested German
+helmets made superb targets, and the officers bit the dust
+disastrously. At the end of three days, six thousand of these eight
+thousand Marines were dead or casuals. But the tide of the Great War
+was turned-and Dave Scott was one of the immortals who forced the
+flood back upon the Rhine. What miracle was it that shielded that
+ever-smiling white face, crowned with its flaming shock, from the
+storm of lead and death? With the fate of nations trembling in the
+balance, who can know the part his blue eyes, now true as steel,
+played in the great decision as, hour after hour with deadly
+precision, he turned his hand to slaughter? Five times the gun he was
+using became too hot and was replaced by that of a dead comrade. After
+those three days at Chateau-Thierry, no mortal could question that
+Dave Scott had forsworn aesthetics; that he was a demon of reality.
+Later he saw service on the Champagne front, and then was invalided
+home.
+
+It was a chastened father, a magnificently proud father, who was the
+first to greet him. For the time he was unable to put into words the
+honor he had for the son whom, so few months before, he considered
+worthless. "It's all past now, Dave. That past we won't speak of
+again. I've arranged for your discharge. You'll be home to stay,
+inside of a month."
+
+Dave's answer, probably more than any act in battle, proved that his
+character had been remade: "No, Father, I have enlisted for four
+years. I belong to the Marines till my time is up. I owe it to you, to
+Adelaide, to the boy, to myself, to prove that I can be the man in
+peace that I have tried to be in training-camp and in France. I know I
+can face reality when spurred by excitement. I have yet to prove that
+I can face the monotony of two years and a half of routine service."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+FINDING THE VICTORIOUS SELF
+
+
+The victorious soul counts life as a gift which, far from growing
+darker and more dreary as the sun falls into the west, may daily
+become more rich and beautiful and worthy. To the soul victorious our
+span of years is not menaced by misfortune and misery, is not degraded
+by bitterness, discord and hatred, but hourly thrills with the
+realization that the worst which life may bring but challenges the
+divine within to masterful assertion. And the soul victorious has
+risen unscathed--glorified--above every attack of fate.
+
+Mrs. Herman Judson was a sight to make the gods weep. With features
+more than usually attractive, softened by a halo of waving, silvery
+hair, she was but a mushy bog of misery. It was three P. M.; she had
+just been carried downstairs, and in spite of the usual host of
+apprehension, with some added new ones for to-day, no slightest
+accident had marred the perilous trip from her front bedroom to the
+living-room below; still everything and everybody, save old Dr. Bond,
+was in a flutter. Tension and apprehension marked the faces and
+actions of all. Not till the last of six propping, easing, supporting
+pillows had been adjusted; till hot-water bottles were in near contact
+with two "freezing" ankles; till her shoulder-shawl had been taken
+off--a twist straightened out--and accurately replaced; till the room,
+already ventilated to a preordered nicety of temperature, had a door
+opened and both windows closed; not till the screen had been moved
+twice to modify the "glare" of the lights, and to protect from
+possible "draughts"; not until the "Sunset Scene from Venice" had been
+turned face to the wall so the reflection from its glass wouldn't make
+her "eyes run cold water"; and finally, not until ten drops from the
+bottle labeled "For spinal pain" had been taken, and five minutes
+spent by her niece, fanning so very gently, "so as not to smother my
+breath"--not till this formidable contribution to the pitiful slavery
+of petted sensations had been slavishly offered, could the invalid
+find strength to greet her childhood playmate, quiet, observing,
+charitable Dr. Willard Bond.
+
+Twice a day for many months the household held its breath while this
+moving-down, and later moving-back (and to-day's was an uncomplicated,
+unusually peaceable one), was being accomplished. "Held its breath,"
+is really not quite accurate, for Ben, the colored butler, and
+'Lissie, the colored cook, found much reason for strenuous
+respiration, as Mrs. Judson and her rocker, with pillows, blankets and
+the ever present afghan, weighed two hundred and eight pounds-one
+hundred and eighty pounds of woman, twenty-eight pounds of
+accessories! And Ben and 'Lissie were the ones who logically deserved
+fanning and attention to ventilation, especially after the seven P. M.
+trip back.
+
+And they were always so solemn, so tensifyingly solemn, these risky
+journeys up and down. The niece, Irma, carried the hot-water bottles,
+the extra blankets and the fan. The nurse had the medicine-box and a
+small tray with water-glasses--for when things went wrong, the
+cavalcade must stop and some of the "Heart-weakness drops" be given,
+or some whiffs taken from the pungent "For tightness of breath"
+bottle, before further progress was safe.
+
+Mrs. Judson knew her symptoms so well. There were eighteen of special
+importance; and Dr. Cummings, the successful young surgeon, a far-away
+relative-by-marriage, had, in all seriousness, prescribed eighteen
+lotions, elixirs, powders, pills and potions, to meet each of the
+eighteen varied symptoms. Nine months ago this progressively
+developing invalidism of twenty years had culminated in what Dr.
+Cummings suspected to be a severe gall-stone attack. A few days later,
+when his sensitive patient was measurably relieved, he had told her
+his fears and suggested a possible operation. Within two minutes Mrs.
+Judson was faint and chilling. Since then the doctor, the nurse, the
+niece, not to forget Ben and 'Lissie, had labored without ceasing to
+prevent a return of the "awful gall-stone attacks," and, with the
+Lord's help, to get Mrs. Judson "strong enough for an operation." But
+progress was dishearteningly slow. Every mention of "operation" seemed
+to make their patient worse. And now for over eight months she had not
+walked a step and had been an hourly care.
+
+For the first time since the beginning of the gall-stone trouble, Dr.
+Cummings was going to be away for two weeks, and he, with Dr. Bond,
+had witnessed the downstairs trip in anticipation of a conference. Dr.
+Bond lived but two doors away, and as he had retired from active
+practice, could always respond to a call if needed. Moreover, it had
+been discovered that he was a neighbor-playmate of Mrs. Judson during
+her girlhood. He had but recently come to Detroit from their old home
+in Charlestown, under the shadow of Bunker Hill monument, about which
+they had often played as children. Dr. Bond had lived there alone for
+many years following his wife's death, and had now come to make a home
+with his successful son. He was giving his time, and he felt the best
+year of his life, writing a series of chapters on "Our Nerves and Our
+Morals." He had never been a specialist, claiming only to be a family-
+doctor. But for over thirty years he had been ministering most wisely
+to the ills of the soul as well as of the body. A large, compelling
+sympathy he gave his patients. He saw their ills. He felt their fears.
+He sensed their sorrows. He understood their weaknesses. He looked
+beyond the manifest ailments of flesh and blood. His fine discernment
+revealed the obscure sicknesses which affect hearts and souls. And his
+rational sympathies penetrated with the deftness and beneficence of
+the surgeon's scalpel. He stood for that type of man whom God has
+raised up to help frail and needing human-kind in body, mind and
+spirit.
+
+"Sixty years is a long time to pass between meetings, isn't it?" said
+Dr. Bond after Mrs. Judson's needs had severally and successfully been
+humored, and she was able to note and recognize the old-new doctor's
+presence and offer a plump, tremulous hand in greeting.
+
+"You don't know how nearly you have missed seeing me," she replied. "I
+have been on the verge for months, but Dr. Cummings has been able to
+pull me through. You see, he knows all my dangers, and has given me
+the best medicines that medical science knows for each of them. Have
+him tell you about it, Dr. Bond. I do hope nothing will happen while
+he's gone." Dr. Bond replied that he was sure, with Dr. Cummings'
+advice and the nurse's and the niece's help and understanding, there
+would be no danger; that he was so near he would come in each
+afternoon and they could talk about the old days and the old childhood
+friends around Boston. "I hope so," Mrs. Judson replied, "but you know
+I can't talk long. But do come every day. I'll feel safer, I'm sure.
+And promise me that you won't delay a minute if I send for you for my
+gall-stones. If they get started, I die a thousand deaths."
+
+"I shall come at once, you may be sure, but tell the nurse to put
+those gall-stones to bed at ten p. m., because you and I are too old
+to be spreeing around during sleeping hours."
+
+But Mrs. Judson couldn't find a ghost of a smile for this pleasantry.
+In fact, her look of alarm caused Dr. Bond to add, "Don't fear, Mrs.
+Judson, I can still dress in five minutes and will promise faithfully
+to come at any hour."
+
+The two physicians left the room together. Thirty-five and sixty-five
+they were, both earnest, capable, honest men, one a master of modern
+medical science, the elder a thoroughly equipped physician, and a deep
+student of humanity.
+
+"I am very glad you are going to see my aunt. For months I have wished
+to call in a consultant, but she has always refused. I know much of
+her trouble is nervous, and you know how little time most of us have
+to study nervousness, and I am sure you will see clearly much which
+has been rather hazy to me. I think you were concealing a laugh when
+they gave her the 'Spinal-pain drops,' and frankly, there is very
+little that has much strength in all those pills and powders I've
+given her. I have learned that she gets along very well much of the
+time when she can anticipate her symptoms and prescribe for herself.
+In fact, it's about all that the poor old lady has to do these days. I
+am not absolutely sure, either, about those gall-stones. The symptoms
+are not classic, but she certainly does suffer, and I have had to give
+her pretty heavy doses of morphine several times, and then she's
+wretchedly sick for some days. Believe me, Doctor, I do not feel
+competent in her case. It's not my line. Find out all you can. Do
+whatever you feel is best, and you may depend upon my endorsement of
+any changes you may see fit to make. It will be a God's mercy if you
+can win her confidence and share the burden of her treatment with me.
+Of course, she's too old to get well, and I'm afraid if we ever have
+to operate, there will be a funeral."
+
+Dr. Bond thanked the younger man heartily. He felt his earnestness and
+honesty, and saw that he had done all he knew to help his patient.
+
+That evening the old doctor's mind spanned the gulf of nearly two
+generations. He was again a little fellow, and Rhoda Burrows lived
+across the street. Their mothers were friends; they were playmates.
+And through the years he had treasured her happy, sunny, beautiful
+face as an ideal of girlhood perfection. She was older than he, and
+how she had "big sistered" and "mothered" him! How his little hurts
+and sorrows had fled before her laughter and caresses! Hundreds and
+thousands had touched his inner life since Rhoda moved West with her
+parents, but that gleam of girlhood had remained etched with the
+clearness of a miniature upon his mind, undimmed by the crowding,
+jostling throng. Rhoda Burrows, the fairy-child of his boyish dreams,
+and Mrs. Herman Judson, the acme of self-pitying and self-petting
+selfishness, the same! It seemed impossible--yet--and here his big
+charity spoke--all of the choice spirit of the girl cannot have been
+swallowed up in the sordidness of a selfish, old age. And that same
+charity breathed upon the physician's soul till his helpful and
+hopeful interest for this pitiful wreck of wretchedness was aglow. He
+would give her his best, and he knew that best sometimes wrought
+wonders.
+
+Dr. Bond first had a conference with the niece, who was pure gold, and
+who accepted each of her aunt's complaints as a warning which could
+but disastrously be ignored. But, and this was good to know, he
+learned that when Aunt Rhoda was better, she was kind and good-
+hearted. From the nurse, the doctor learned other details, and what
+was of special significance, that the invalid's appetite rarely
+flagged-then he saw a reason for her one hundred and eighty pounds;
+and when he learned that rare broiled beef, or rare roast beef was
+served the physically inert patient and bountifully eaten twice each
+day, his understanding became active.
+
+Mrs. Judson's presiding fates were good to her the next week. She
+would have denied it with the sum total of her vehemence, which
+incidentally was some sum, but Dr. Bond says it is true. It was after
+eleven, one night. He was just finishing his day's writing. It was the
+nurse 'phoning. "I am truly sorry to call you, Doctor, but I've given
+three doses of the gall-stone medicine, and it always relieves unless
+a real attack is on. I am sure she is suffering." The old doctor was
+not surprised. The patient had been doing unusually well for two or
+three days and had spoken particularly of her better appetite. The
+doctor's first query, upon reaching the house, related to the details
+of the evening meal. "No, there was no steak to-night. We had chicken-
+salad. 'Lissie had tried herself; Mrs. Judson was hungry and asked for
+a second portion."
+
+Gently, carefully, thoroughly, the suffering woman was examined. There
+was no doubt that her pain was severe, but in conclusion, the old
+doctor did doubt decidedly the presence of gall-stones. He believed it
+to be duodenal colic. "I don't wish to give you a hypodermic," he told
+her. "I know it will relieve you quickly to-night, but it will set you
+back several days. I am going to ask you to be patient, and to take an
+unpleasant dose, and I think the nurse and I can relieve you
+completely within two hours, and you will be little the worse; in
+fact, you may be better, to-morrow."
+
+"She won't take it," the nurse said, as the doctor called her from the
+room. "Dr. Cummings suggested it once, and she held it against him for
+weeks. She said her mother whipped her when she was a child and then
+couldn't make her swallow it."
+
+"You will fix it as I tell you, then bring it in to me," the Doctor
+replied. Dubiously the nurse carried out the order. She thanked her
+stars that the Doctor, not she, was to give it. Yet it looked very
+nice when she brought it into the sick-room, redolent with lemon and
+peppermint.
+
+"Think of this, Mrs. Judson, as your best friend to-night in all the
+realm of medicine. Take it with my belief that it is to prove the cure
+of your gall-stones. It is not nice. It's not easy to swallow. Don't
+sip it. Take it all at a gulp."
+
+But she sipped it. And she screamed, not a scream of pain, but of
+rage, of violated dignity-insulted-outraged. "Castor oil! I'll die
+first. Why, that stuff isn't fit to give an animal. Are you trying to
+kill me I Oh, you old fogy! I knew something would happen when I let
+Dr. Cummings go. I wouldn't give such stuff to a sick cat."
+
+All symptoms of pain seemed gone for the time. Generous as he was, the
+old Doctor stiffened in the face of her tirade, yet with dignity,
+replied: "You are refusing a real help. I speak from long experience.
+I can give you nothing else till you have taken this."
+
+"Then go!" she snapped out. But the "o-o-o" was prolonged into a wail
+as a particularly pernicious jab in the midst of her duodenum-"a
+providential thrust," Dr. Bond said--doubled her up, if rotundity can
+be said to double. The Doctor was obdurate. Colic was trumps--and won!
+
+The first dose did not meet a hospitable reception, but another was
+promptly given. Then other nicer things were done and the Doctor was
+home and the patient comfortably asleep soon after one. The next day's
+conference between the two was strictly professional, nor was there
+much thawing till the third day after. Mrs. Judson's ire must have
+been of Celtic origin, for it was not long-lived.
+
+The following Sunday afternoon seemed propitious for the beneficent
+work of the soul-doctor. The whole family had told Mrs. Judson how
+much better she was looking-the Doctor had kept her on soft diet since
+her attack. "You have told me so little of yourself," said Dr. Bond.
+"I only know that sorrow came." He then told her of herself as she had
+lived in his memory. She had forgotten the beauty of her childhood.
+The Doctor brought back the picture in tones which could stand only
+for high reverence. She felt he wanted to know, and she knew she
+wanted to tell. So for two hours they sat, hand in hand, as in their
+childhood, and he heard of her father's moderate success as an
+editorial writer after he came West when she was nine, of their
+comfortable home in Detroit, how well she had done in school, of her
+early ability as a teacher, of her election as super-intendent of the
+St. Claire Academy for Girls when she was twenty-five, of her marriage
+to Herman Judson, a childless widower fifteen years her senior, before
+she was thirty, of their very happy home, of her own little girl and
+how she grew into womanhood, of her daughter's marriage, and then of
+tier little girl, and how wonderful it was to be a grandmother before
+she was fifty!
+
+Then it was "Nurse, the bottle for 'Tightness of breath'... I don't
+see how I can tell it. You can't know. Nobody can. It was never the
+same for any one else. The train went through a bridge, and they were
+all three killed, my husband, my only girl, the darling grandchild.
+God turned His face away that night they brought them home. I've never
+seen Him since. I've never looked for Him since. I don't see how I
+kept my mind. Something snapped inside. I couldn't go to the funeral,
+and while I brought my sister home to live with me, and after she
+died, have done the best I could to raise Irma, her child, and Irma's
+tried, I know, to be a daughter to me, yet I've always been so lonely,
+so wretched and miserable and sick. I haven't anything to live for-but
+I'm afraid to die."
+
+Then began the cheapening catalog of the nearly twenty years of
+illness, her weak and sensitive spine, her constant difficulty in
+breathing, and the eternal thumping of her heart. And on and on, the
+list so old to Dr. Bond's ears, so commonly heard in the experience of
+helpers of the nervous sick-as usual to the nerve-specialist as the
+inflamed appendix to the modern surgeon--yet in the mind of every
+nerve-sufferer so unique, so individual, so different. But of all the
+long, two-hour story, one short sentence stood out, eloquent in the
+doctor's mind, "I haven't anything to live for, yet I'm afraid to
+die." He gently thanked her. He had felt with her in the recital of
+her great sorrow, and she knew he had suffered in her suffering. "You
+can get well. You can find something worth living for, and you can
+lose your fear of death, if you will pay the price." For the moment
+she misunderstood.
+
+"Why, Doctor, I would gladly give thousands for health."
+
+Again, gently, "Your dollars are worthless. You are poor in the gold
+which will buy your restoration. I shall tell you about it Wednesday
+if you want to know."
+
+On both Monday and Tuesday visits her curiosity prompted her to refer
+to the great cure Dr. Bond mentioned. But it was Wednesday afternoon
+before he spoke seriously.
+
+"You were very ill last week--such illnesses have frequently proved
+fatal to life, when ignorantly managed. But as I see you to-day,
+knowing your radiant childhood, and the good fortune which was yours
+for years, and the heart-tearing shock which came so cruelly, I see a
+sickness more dire and fatal than any for which you have ever yet been
+treated. The beauty and youth and charity of your spirit are mortally
+ill. I see your soul an emaciated remnant, a skeleton of its possible
+self. It threatens to die before your body. Selfish sorrow has
+infected and permeated your once lovely, better self, and to-day you
+have no true goodness left. You are good to others that they may be
+better to you. You are generous with your means-a generosity which
+costs you no sacrifice, that you may buy back the generosity without
+which you could not live. Four useful lives are emptying the best of
+their strength, ability and love into years of service that you may
+know a poor, low-grade, selfish, physical comfort. You are taking from
+them and others consideration, self-sacrifice, loyalty, unstinted
+devotion, and giving in return only ungrateful dollars. You are rich
+in these, but poorer than Lazarus in the least of the qualities which
+make life worth living a day, which keep Death from being a haunting
+terror. You have not one physical symptom of your endless catalog
+which cannot be removed if you meet the blessings half-way which
+discomforts offer."
+
+It couldn't have been what Dr. Bond said--it must have been what he
+was himself that made those unwelcome, humiliating truths carry
+conviction, win confidence, and waken hope. Possibly his last sentence
+helped her decision--his serious confidence in his ability to remove
+those terrifying, ever impending threats of physical anguish. At any
+rate, she gave her promise-for six months she would implicitly follow
+his instruction, with the understanding that if she did not see
+herself better at the end of four months, she was to be released from
+further treatment.
+
+It would be a long story, a story of remarkable medical finesse; it
+would be describing the work of an artist--for such was Dr. Bond as he
+turned bodies from sickness to health and souls from perdition to
+salvation. But victory came! In six weeks, the invalid was walking. In
+six months she was walking three miles a day. She was eating, bathing,
+sleeping and working more like a woman under sixty than one nearing
+seventy. She spent the summer with the doctor's people in their
+bungalow on Lake Huron. She now gave of her means thoughtfully, with
+growing unselfishness, and soon after she began to look up and out
+there came the peace within, so long a stranger. And she told Dr.
+Bond, simply, one day, that God had come back to her, and he as simply
+replied: "You have come back to God."
+
+That winter, Dr. Bond spent in the East. One day the expressman
+brought a package--some books he had always loved, in remarkable
+bindings, and this note:
+
+"My best Friend:
+
+"To-day I am seventy. I haven't been so young since sorrow was sent to
+prove me, nor more happy since I nursed your hurt arm when we were
+children. I walked down town, two miles you know, and back, and a mile
+in the stores, I am sure, to find these books you love, in bindings
+worthy your better enjoyment of them. All that you have promised has
+come to me. God bless you!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THE TRIUMPH OF HARMONY
+
+
+When man "conceives his superpower, his miraculous power to meet
+disaster, and in it to find profit; to face defeat after defeat and
+therein acquire faith in his own permanence; to live for years within
+a frail, defective body, with a mind unable to respond to the
+promptings of ambition and inspiration, and thereby take on the
+greatness of gentleness-the conviction comes clear, a conviction which
+will not comfortably stay put aside, that life is intended to develop
+a noble self."
+
+What could be more beautiful to senses that thrill with love than this
+pink-cheeked, azure-eyed babe, whose golden ringlets promise the
+glorious crown, the unfading beauty of her womanhood? She was hardly a
+month old, yet she seemed to understand--Mammy Lou said she did-that
+she must look her "beau'fulest"; so when her father came and bent over
+her little crib, she smiled, then coyly ducked her wobbly head, to
+smile again at Mother, the dear mother who only to-day had been
+allowed by the doctor to sit up for an hour. Mammy Lou must have been
+right, for there Baby lay playing with her fingers and the
+disappointed pink ribbons of her booties, while, now and then, when
+the discussion was specially serious, she would look soberly at her
+earnest-faced parents till they both would notice, and laugh. Then her
+little understanding smile-and some more play. It was an important
+conference. Considerations affecting Baby's future were in the
+balance, and, as she gave such perfect attention and never
+interrupted, and insisted on every one keeping good-natured, Mammy
+Lou's assertion that "Dat lil' sweetness' stood every word her pa an'
+ma said. She knew dey's findin' her a name," cannot be successfully
+disputed.
+
+The Southards had been married twelve years. Georgia was eight, and
+Etta five. It must be a boy--one who would pass on the Southard name
+and traditions. The first Earl of Minto had contributed some nobleness
+of blood to the Southard stock, and the father had set his heart on a
+boy who should feel the double inspiration of "Minto Southard," to
+help make him fine and great.
+
+A "girl"! And business took the father away for a fortnight. It was
+rumored that he drowned his disappointment in Charleston-but not in
+the Bay. He did not fully realize that the brave wife was gravely ill,
+until his return. Then he was devoted and tender. They had made no
+plans for a little girl; so she was nearly a month old and was still
+being called "Sweetness" by Mammy Lou, and "The Baby" by others, and
+to-day, while Mother first sat up, her name was to be decided.
+
+"Why, Father, dear, no girl was ever called that. I think it would be
+all right for a boy, but she's such a dainty little thing, and I'm
+sure it will always seem odd to her."
+
+"What would you like better, Mater? I don't wish to contend or to be
+unduly insistent, but you know I have looked forward to having the
+Earl's name in the family, and, personally, I think it has the
+attraction of uniqueness, as well as the flavor of distinction. Then,
+you remember, you suggested the names for the other girls. I know you
+are thinking of her future and fear an odd name may make her unhappy,
+some time. But we can, we should, teach her to be proud of so
+distinguished an association. My personal desire is very strong, and I
+can't think of any other name which will satisfy me nearly as well."
+
+Just then Baby looked at her mother, smiled and gurgled something
+which was intelligible to mother-ears, and the wife's hand slipped
+into the husband's, and the baby was named Minta Southard.
+
+Where could a new baby have found a more perfect setting for her
+childhood and girlhood? The plantation lay on both sides of the
+Catawba River-fresh and crystal clear those days, as it sped down from
+mountains to sea-fertile, fruitful acres there were, which never
+failed to bring forth manyfold. Three times in as many generations,
+the Manor House, as the rambling southern home had always been called,
+had been enlarged, but nothing was ever done which lessened the
+dignity lent by its fine colonial portico, the artistic columns of
+which could be seen miles down the river-road. The Manor House was
+good to see in its rare setting of stately water-oaks, now in their
+full maturity.
+
+For four years little Minta thrived and gave promise of bringing many
+joys to this home which knew no shadow but the father's periodic
+"business trips" to Charleston. Mammy Lou was her slave, and even
+Georgia, who had her own way so much that she was far from unselfish,
+asked, at times, to "take care" of her dainty sister, and would let
+her play with some of her things without protest. Then the fever!
+"Typhoid," the doctor said, "affecting her brain." Father, Mother and
+Mammy Lou took turns being with her those long, hot weeks, when it
+forgot to rain and the refreshing sea-breeze was cruelly withheld.
+Doctors from Charlotte, doctors from Charleston and doctors from
+Atlanta came, to look grave, to shake their learned heads, and to
+sadly leave, offering no hopeful change in treatment. The fever was
+prolonged over five weeks, and the child seemed more lifeless each day
+as it left her drained and damaged-drained and damaged for life it
+proved. So slowly her shadowy form gained, that a single week was too
+short to evidence improvement. Six months, and she was not yet
+walking. One year, and she was still fragile. Then, in a month, normal
+childhood apparently slipped back, and she began to play and be merry.
+
+Of course "Sweetness" was spoiled--and an autocrat she was, her
+mother, only, denying herself the indulgence of being her subject.
+Mother, however, was lovingly tactful, and exercised the discipline
+she believed necessary for her child's good most wisely. And Mother's
+memory has ever remained a hallowed one. Mammy Lou did much to
+discredit all of the mother's conscientious care. For so long the poor
+child "couldn't eat no thin'," and when at last Minta's appetite
+returned, her loving black nurse would give her anything she wanted,
+and if the fever hadn't hopelessly damaged the little one's digestive
+glands, Mammy Lou's unfailing "l'il snacks for her honey-chile" would
+have completed the wreckage. At first the trouble was not noticed.
+Minta rarely spoke of suffering. She would be found lying with her
+face from the light, and would always reply that she was "tired
+playing," sometimes only, "my head hurts." The parents thought she did
+play too hard, for she was developing into an intense little miss, who
+entered into whatever she was doing with more than blue-eyed zest,
+those blue eyes which snapped blue-black when her will was crossed.
+
+The girls all had their early teaching at home, so when Minta was
+thirteen, Miss Allison came from Washington to spend a year, as tutor,
+to prepare her for school the next fall. That was the year Georgia ran
+away. She had been visiting in Savannah several weeks, when she
+disappeared, leaving a hurried note to her friends, stating that she
+would write her people from New York, and begging them not to worry
+about her. The note from New York was thoughtlessly written. She was
+probably frightened by what she had done. She was safe in New York
+with Randolph, where they would be for ten days. She was sorry. Would
+they forgive her? She knew she had done wrong. Write her at --- East
+Fourteenth Street, where they were boarding.
+
+The outraged father called the two girls and their mother into his
+office, and read them Georgia's letter, then tore it into bits. "Your
+sister's name is never to be mentioned again in this house. She has
+brought the first dishonor to the Southard name in America. She is
+disowned, and may she be swallowed up in her own disgrace."
+
+Nothing had ever so impressed Minta as her father's face that day. A
+primitive savagery spoke, intensified by the refinements of Cavalier
+blood. No one dared utter a word of protest. He was implacable as
+adamant, they all knew. Mr. Southard was never the same. Some of his
+genial tenderness was lost forever, and the family lived on with the
+unmentionable name ever before them, like a grave which was never to
+be filled. The father was away much more the following year. He never
+drank at home. And, after his death, it was found that he had gambled
+away many thousands-all of Georgia's part. Thus a father's pride of
+family met a daughter's impulse.
+
+The little mother, never strong, always patient and devoted and
+lovable, seemed unable to rise above the shame and the sorrow of it
+all, and could give less and less to Minta, who now found in Miss
+Allison and Mammy Lou her most potent influences. Miss Allison was
+worthy the responsibility and probably did much to decide the girl's
+future. She had studied art, and had hoped to spend years abroad.
+Financial disappointments had made this impossible. But her
+imaginative pupil loved the art of which she spoke so often, and
+begged to be taught to sketch. She early showed unusual skill and the
+promise of talent; still the father would not consider her going North
+with Miss Allison to school. Yet the seeds had been sown and an artist
+she was to be. But the cost!
+
+Two years she spent at Converse College. During the second summer-
+vacation her father died, and as her mother's heart was gradually
+weakening, Minta stayed at home the following year. A few weeks before
+the dear mother slipped away, she talked with Minta about the older
+sister, dutifully avoiding the mention of her name. "I have never felt
+right about the way we treated her," she said. "Some time when you are
+older, won't you try to find her and help her?"
+
+The Cavalier was in the younger daughter too. "I certainly think she
+has caused unhappiness enough. She made our home a different place,
+and she shortened Father's life. I can't forgive her."
+
+"But, Daughter, we don't know. There may have been some mistake."
+
+Minta was decided. "She no longer belongs to the Southard family.
+Father was right."
+
+The mother did not insist, and only said, "She, too, is my child. She
+is of your blood. We should forgive."
+
+Her mother was with her but a few weeks after this conversation. And,
+within two months after her funeral, an attack of pneumonia robbed
+Minta's already frail body of strength which might have come at that
+developing age. Much of the next eighteen months she spent in bed. It
+was then decided that she consult a friend of her father's, a city
+physician. Unfortunately, this ambitious surgeon had been but a
+convivial friend. His professional development had reached only the
+"operation" stage. Surgery to him was a panacea, and the operation,
+which he promised to be her saving, was to be her tragedy. She did not
+know till two years later that she had been robbed of her birthright.
+Her headaches, far from being helped, were even worse, now blinding
+and exhausting. She at last went East to a world-renowned specialist
+who undid, as far as his great skill could, the damage of the first
+operation, and who, great man that he was, had time not only to
+operate but to comprehend. His cultivated instincts led him directly
+to an intimacy with his patient's idealisms, and he was one to whom
+every right-souled sufferer could trust his deepest confidence without
+reserve.
+
+"I fear, little girl, your ambitions are only for those of
+unquestioned strength. You are but a pigmy. Certain organs, essential
+to the conversion of food into energy, were injured beyond all repair
+in your first illness. Other damage which neither time nor skill can
+make good was inflicted by your first operation. Your eyes are
+entirely inadequate for the merciless exactions of a life of art. You
+are at best but a delicate hot-house plant-beyond human power to
+develop into sufficient hardiness to be transplanted into the world of
+Bohemia, or into much of any world save a sheltered one. You can never
+be more than a semi-invalid."
+
+This sentence the great doctor pronounced only after his own opinion
+had been re-enforced by a conference of experts. And every word was
+true, as far as he and the experts had investigated.
+
+But there was the spirit of a Cavalier with which they had not
+reckoned. "I'll not have it so. Life, the life that you give me, isn't
+worth living. I shall have my two years in Europe with my art, if it
+takes all those other years you say I can have by saving myself."
+
+And she had them! One year first in New York in preparation, then two
+years in Rome. Three weeks she worked; one week she suffered. And how
+wonderfully she did suffer! She had been warned of the danger of drug-
+relief. And when doctors came and began filling their hypodermic
+syringes, her indignation blazed up. "If that's all you have for me,
+you needn't come. I could give that to myself." She learned that quiet
+and darkness, and, it seemed, fasting, dulled the edge of the pain and
+shortened its duration, and that nothing else did as much.
+
+There was another art student in Rome-a fine, poor American who, too,
+was studying art because he loved it. How they could have helped each
+other! They both knew it. It was as natural as life, after they had
+worked together a few months, for him to ask if she could wait while
+he earned, and made a name. She knew that waiting was not necessary;
+that she had plenty for them both and that she could help him, as few
+others, to more quickly win the fame which he was sure to attain. And
+she knew, too, that she could not so love another-there was never a
+doubt of that. But this time love was bitterly cruel. It came in all
+its affection and beauty only to sear and rend. She "must not marry,"
+the great surgeon had told her. So gently and fatherly he had said it,
+that she did not realize its full import till now. Husbandless,
+childless, a chronic, incurable sufferer, she must tread the wine-
+press alone!
+
+The man had gone. She could give him no reason. She could not remember
+what she said to him. The world went black, and consciousness fled.
+For weeks she lay in an Italian hospital. Etta and her husband came,
+and the only rational words they could hear were her pleadings to be
+taken back to Dr. Kingsley.
+
+Somehow the trip was made. But it was a desperately sick girl, the
+mere shell of a life, that they returned to America. It was weeks
+before she realized where she was and other weeks before she was able
+to tell Dr. Kingsley so that he could understand it all--not only of
+sorrow's final revelation, but this time, what she had not mentioned
+before, of Georgia--the family disgrace. She did not know the
+wonderful power of Christian counsel and ideals to save from the so-
+often misinterpreted sufferings of wrong spiritual adjustments. She
+had not realized the healing power of the love of God expressed in the
+lives of good men and women, and how it can sweeten the bitterness and
+dissipate even the paralyzing loneliness of an impossible human love.
+
+Dr. Kingsley's eyes had welled with tears when she told the story of
+Georgia. How impellingly gentle was his voice when he said, "You'll
+forgive her now, I know." Forgive her! What else to do, when he made
+it so noble and beautiful and right. So when she was strong enough,
+she began looking for the sister who had so complicated the years,
+and, through an old school-friend, traced her to a little flat. And it
+was even as her mother had thought. Georgia had married, "beneath the
+family," she told Minta, the Georgia who was too proud to ever write
+again. She was living in Brooklyn, the wife of Randolph, an assistant
+engineer on an ocean steamship. And Etta came to visit Georgia, and a
+great load, a load of which she had, through the years, been
+unconscious, slipped away as Minta let go her enmity. "In all things,"
+she said to Dr. Kingsley, "I am your obedient patient-all things but
+one. I will work, and I shall work."
+
+And she does work. No one understands how. Seventy-odd pounds of
+frailty, with eyes which are ever resentful of the use to which she
+puts them; with the recurrence of suffering which wrings every ounce
+of physical strength, which for days holds her mind writhing as on the
+rack, which tortures her to physical and mental surrender, but which,
+through the lengthening years, has been impotent to daunt her regal
+spirit.
+
+And she gives, gives on through the days of relative comfort, gives of
+her cheer which comes from, no one knows where; gives, spontaneously,
+kindness which has multiplied her lovers, both men and women; and
+gives of her ability which is unquestioned. There are a few publishers
+who know her skill. There is a touch of pathos in all she draws,
+pathos-never bitterness, never ugliness-always the breath of beauty.
+
+Minta Southard, hopelessly defective in what we call health, has
+triumphed through the harmony of a brave adjustment to her pitiless
+limitations-a harmony realized by few, even though rich, in resource
+of mind, powerful, in reserve of body.
+
+Can we ignore the omnipotence of the spiritual?
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Our Nervous Friends, by Robert S. Carroll
+
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