OUR NERVOUS FRIENDSIllustrating 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 YORK1919

HEARTILY--TO THE HOST OF US

CHAPTER I

OUR FRIENDLY NERVESIllustrating the Capacity for Nervous Adjustment

CHAPTER II

THE NEUROTICIllustrating Damaging Nervous Overactivity

CHAPTER III

THE PRICE OF NERVOUSNESSIllustrating Misdirected Nervous Energy

CHAPTER IV

WRECKING A GENERATIONIllustrating "The Enemy at the Gate"

CHAPTER V

THE NERVOUSLY DAMAGED MOTHERIllustrating the Child Wrongly Started

CHAPTER VI

THE MESS OF POTTAGEIllustrating Nervous Inferiority Due to Eating-Errors

CHAPTER VII

THE CRIME OF INACTIVITYIllustrating the Wreckage of the Pampered Body

CHAPTER VIII

LEARNING TO EATIllustrating the Potency of Diet

CHAPTER IX

THE MAN WITH THE HOEIllustrating the Therapy of Work

CHAPTER X

THE FINE ART OF PLAYIllustrating Re-creation Through Play

CHAPTER XI

THE TANGLED SKEINIllustrating a Tragedy of Thought Selection

CHAPTER XII

THE TROUBLED SEAIllustrating Emotional Tyranny

CHAPTER XIII

WILLING ILLNESSIllustrating Willessness and Wilfulness

CHAPTER XIV

UNTANGLING THE SNARLIllustrating the Replacing of Fatalism by Truth

CHAPTER XV

FROM FEAR TO FAITHIllustrating the Curative Power of Helpful Emotions

CHAPTER XVI

JUDICIOUS HARDENINGIllustrating the Compelling of Health

CHAPTER XVII

THE SICK SOULIllustrating the Sliding Moral Scale

CHAPTER XVIII

THE BATTLE WITH SELFIllustrating the Recklessness that Disintegrates

CHAPTER XIX

THE SUFFERING OF SELF-PITYIllustrating a Moral Surrender

CHAPTER XX

THE SLAVE OF CONSCIENCEIllustrating Discord with Self

CHAPTER XXI

CATASTROPHE CREATING CHARACTERIllustrating Disciplined Freedom

CHAPTER XXII

FINDING THE VICTORIOUS SELFIllustrating a Medical Conversion

CHAPTER XXIII

THE TRIUMPH OF HARMONYIllustrating the Power of the Spirit

A REMARK

Vividly as abstractions may be presented, they rarely succeed inrevealing truths with the appealing intensity of living pictures. InOur Nervous Friends will be found portrayed, often with photographicclearness, a series of lives, with confidences protected, illustratingchapter for chapter the more vital principles of the author's TheMastery of Nervousness. 

CHAPTER I

OUR FRIENDLY NERVES

"Hop up, Dick, love! See how glorious the sun is on the new snow. Nowisn't that more beautiful than your dreams? And see the birdies! Theycan't find any breakfast. Let's hurry and have our morning wrestle anddress and give them some breakie before Anne calls. "

The mother is Ethel Baxter Lord. She is thirty-eight, and Dick-boy isjust five. The mother's face is striking, striking as an example offine chiseling of features, each line standing for sensitiveness, andeach change revealing refinement of thought. The eyes and hair arerichly brown. Slender, graceful, perennially neat, she represents themother beautiful, the wife inspiring, the friend beloved. Happily aswe have seen her start a new day for Dick, did she always add somecheer, some fineness of touch, some joy of word, some stimulatinghelpfulness to every greeting, to every occasion. 

The home was not pretentious. Thoroughly cozy, with many artistictouches within, it snuggled on the heights near Arlington, the closeneighbor to many of the Nation's best memories, looking out on a noblesweep of the fine, old Potomac, with glimpses through the trees of theNation's Capitol, glimpses revealing the best of its beauties. It wasa home from which emanated an atmosphere of peace and repose which oneseemed to feel even as one approached. It was a home pervaded with thebreath of happiness, a home which none entered without benefit. 

The husband, Martin Lord, was an expert chemist who had long been inthe service of the Government. Capable, worthy, manly, he was blest inwhat he was, and in what he had. They had been married eight years, and the slipping away of the first child, Margaret, was the onlysadness which had paused at their door. Mrs. Lord had been EthelBaxter for thirty years. Her father was an intense, high-strungbusiness man, an importer, who spent much time in Europe where he diedof an American-contracted typhoid-fever, when Ethel was ten. Hermother was one of a large well-known Maryland family, fair, brown-eyedtoo, and frail; also, by all the rights of inheritance, training anddevelopment, sensitive and nervous. In her family the precedents ofblue blood were religiously maintained with so much emphasis on the"blue" that no beginning was ever made in training her into aprotective robustness. So, in spite of elaborate preparation and notedNew York skill and the highest grade of conscientious nursing, sherecovered poorly after Ethel's birth. Strength, even such as sheformerly had, did not return. She didn't want to be an invalid. Shewas devoted to her husband and eager to companion and mother herchild. The surgeons thought her recovery lay in their skill, and inten years one operated twice, and two others operated once each, butfor some reason the scalpel's edge did not reach the weakness. ThenMr. Baxter died, and all of her physical discomforts seemedintensified until, in desperation, the fifth operation was undertaken, which was long and severe, and from which she failed to react. SoEthel 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 respondto any impulse through which he felt he could fulfil the fatherhoodand motherhood which he had assumed. Absolutely devoted, affectionate, emotional, he planned impulsively, he gave freely, but he knew not lawnor order in his own high-keyed life; so neither law nor order enteredinto the training of his ward. 

Ethel Baxter's childhood had been remarkably well influenced, considering the nervous intensity of both parents. For the mother'ssake, their winters had been spent in Florida, their summers on LongIsland. Her mother, in face of the fact that she rarely knew a day ofphysical comfort and for years had not felt the thrill of physicalstrength, most conscientiously gave time, thought and prayer to herchild's rearing. Hours were devoted to daily lessons, and many habitsof consideration and refinement, many ideals of beauty, many nicetiesof domestic duty and practically all her studies, were mother-taught. Ethel was active, physically restless, impulsive, cheerful, fairlyintense in her eagerness for an expression of the thrilling activitieswithin. She was truly a high-type product of generations of fineliving, and her blue blood did show from the first in the rapiddevelopment of keenness of mind and acuteness of feeling. Typically ofthe nervous temperament, she early showed a superb capacity forcomplex adjustments. Yet, with one damaging, and later threateningidea, the mother infected the child's mind; the conception ofinvalidism entered into the constructive fabric of the child-thoughtall the more deeply, because there was little of offensively selfishinvalidism ever displayed by the mother. But many of the concessionsand considerations instinctively demanded by the nervous sufferer werefor years matters-of-course in the Baxter home; and these demands, almost unconsciously made by the mother, could but modify much of thenatural 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 tothe ancient and honorable precedents of her family, went into a monthof helplessness following the sad news. She could not attend thefuneral, and for weeks the activities of the household were muffled bymourning; when she left her room, it was to wear the deepest crepe, while a half-inch of deadest black bordered the hundreds of responseswhich she personally sent to notes of condolence. She never spokeagain of her husband without reference to her bereavement. Then, ayear later, when the mother herself suddenly went, it seemed todevolve on the child to fulfil the mother's teachings. Her uncle'sattitude, moreover, toward his sister's death was in many waysunhappy, for he did not repress expressions of bitterness toward thesurgeons and condemned the fate which had so early robbed Ethel ofboth parents. 

Thus, early and intensely, a morbid attitude toward death, aconviction that self-pity was reasonable, normal, wholesome, a beliefthat it was her duty to publicly display intensive evidences of heraffliction, determined a lasting and potent influence in this girl'slife which was to alloy her young womanhood--disturbing factors, all, which before twelve caused much emotional disequilibrium. She nowlived with her uncle in New York City and her summers were spent inCanada. The sense of fitness was so strong that during the next twovitally important, developing years she avoided any physicalexpression of her natural exuberance of spirits; and habits now formedwhich were, for years, to deny her any right use of her muscular self. She read much; she read well; she read intensely. She attended aprivate school and long before her time was an accredited young lady. Mentally, she matured very early, and with the exception of thedamaging influences which have been mentioned, she represented asuperior capacity for feeling and conceiving and accomplishing, evenas she possessed an equally keen capacity for suffering. 

She was most winsome at sixteen, a bit frail and fragile, often spokenof as a rare piece of Sevres, beloved with a tenderness which wouldhave warped the disposition of one less unselfish; emotionallyintense, brilliancy and vivacity periodically burst through the habitof her reserve. A perfect pupil, and in all fine things literary, keenly alive, she had written several short sketches which showedimaginative originality and a sympathetic sensitiveness, especiallytoward human suffering. And her uncle was sure that a greater thanGeorge Eliot had come. There was to be a year abroad, and as thedoctor and her teacher in English agreed on Italy, there she went. Atseventeen, during the year in Florence, the inevitable lover came. Family traditions, parents, her orphanage, the protective surroundingsof her uncle's home, her instincts--all had kept her apart. Herknowledge of young lovers was but literary, and this particular younglover presented a side which soon laid deep hold on her confidence. They studied Italian together. He was musical, she was poetic, and hegracefully fitted her sonnets to melodies. Finally, it seemed that thegreat Song of Life had brought them together to complete one of itsharmonies. Her confidence grew to love, the love which seemed to standto her for life. Then the awful suddenness, which had in the pastmarked her sorrows, burst in again. In one heart-breaking, repellinghalf-hour his other self was revealed, and a damaged love was left tominister to wretchedness. Here was a hurt denied even the expressionof mourning stationery or black apparel--a hurt which must be hiddenand ever crowded back into the bursting within. Immediate catastrophewould probably have followed had not, first, the fine pride of herfine self, then the demands of her art for expression, stepped in tosave. She would write. She now knew human nature. She had tastedbitterness; and with renewed seriousness she became a severely hard-working student. But the wealth of her joy-life slipped away; themorbid made itself apparent in every chapter she wrote, whileintensity became more and more the key-note of thought and effort. 

Back at her uncle's home, the uncle who was now even more convincedthat 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 weregetting into a tangle. She was becoming noticeably restless. Reposewas so lost that it was only with increasing effort that she couldavoid attracting the attention of those near. Even in church it wouldseem that some demon of unrest would never be appeased and only couldbe satisfied by constant changing of position. Thoughts of father andmother, and the affair in Florence, intensified this spirit of unrest, and few conscious minutes passed that unseen stray locks were notbeing replaced. It seemed to be a relief to take off and put on, timeand again, the ring which had been her mother's. Even her feet seemedto rebel at the confinement of shoes, and she became obsessed with theimpulse to remove them, even in the theater or at the concert. Asighing habit developed. It had been growing for years into an air-hunger, and finally all physical, and much of mental, effort developeda sense of suffocation which demanded short periods of absolute rest. Associations were then formed between certain foods and disturbingdigestive sensations. Tea alone seemed to help, and she becamedependent upon increasingly numerous cups of this beverage. Knowingher history as we do, we can easily see how she had become abnormallyacute in her responses to the discomforts which are always associatedwith painful emotions, and that emotional distress was interpreted, ormisinterpreted, as physical disorder. Each year she became more trulya sensitive-plant, suffering and keenly alive to every discomfort, more and more easily fatigued by the conflicts between emotions, whichcraved 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 heartshe was forsworn. She had loved deeply once. Her idealism said itcould never come again. But her antagonism, and her idealism, and herstrength of will all failed to satisfy an inarticulate something whichlocked her in her room for hours of repressed, unexplained sobbing. Her writing became exhausting. Talks before her literary class were anightmare of anticipation--for through all, there had never been anyweakening of the beauty and intensity of her unselfish desire to giveto the world her best. The dear old uncle watched her with growingapprehension. He persuaded her to seek health. It was first a water-cure; then a minor, but ineffective operation; then much scientificmassage; and finally a rest-cure, and at the end no relief thatlasted, but a recurrence of symptoms which, to the uncle, spokeominously of a threatened mental balance. What truly was wrong? Do wenot see that this woman's nerves were crying out for help; that, asher wisest friends, they were appealing for right ways of living; thatthey were pleading for development of the body that had been onlyhalf-trained; that they were beseeching a replacing of morbidness offeeling by those lost joyous happiness-days? Were they not fairlycursing the wrong which had robbed her of the hope and rights of herwomanhood?

A new life came when she was twenty-eight, with the saving helper whoheard the cry of the suffering nerves, and interpreted their message. She had told him all. His wise kindness made it easy to tell all. Heshowed her the wrong invalidism thoughts, the unhappy, depressing, devitalizing attitude toward death. He revealed truths unthought byher of manhood and womanhood. He pointed out the poisonous trail ofher enmity, and she put it from her. He inspired her to make friendswith her nerves, who were so devotedly striving to save her. Simple, definite counsel he gave, for her body's sake. Her physicaldevelopment could never be what early constructive care would havemade it, but from out of her frailty grew, in less than a year ofactive building-training, a reserve of strength unknown forgenerations in the women of her line. Wholesome advice made her seethe undermining influence of her morbid, mental habits, and resolutelyshe displaced them with the productive kind that builds character. Finally, new wisdom and a truly womanly conception of her duty andprivilege replaced her antagonism to men, as understanding hadobliterated enmity. It would seem as though Providence had been onlywaiting these changes, for they had hardly become certainties in herlife when the real lover came--a man in every way worthy her finenessof instinct; one who could understand her literary ambitions and evenhelpfully criticize her work; one who brought wholesome habits of lifeand thought, and who could return cheer for cheer, and whose loveresponded in kind to that which now so wonderfully welled up withinher. 

Her new adjustments were to be deeply tried and their solidity andworthiness tested to their center. Little Margaret came to make theirrare home perfect, and like a choice flower, she thrived in the glowof 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 smoteEthel Lord. But she now knew and understood. There was deep sadness ofloss; there was greater joy in having had. There was an emptinesswhere the little life had called forth loving attention; there was afulness of perfect mother-love which could never be taken. There wereno funeral days, no mourning black, no gruesome burial. There wereflowers, more tender love, and a beautified sorrow. Death was neveragain to stand to Ethel Lord as irreparable loss, for a great faithhad made such loss impossible. 

And such is the life of this woman, filled with the spirit of beautyof soul--a woman who thrills husband and son with the uplift of herunremitting joy in living, who inspires uncle and friends as one whohas mastered the art of a happy life, who holds the devotion ofneighbors and servants through her unselfish radiation of cheer. EthelLord has learned truly the infinitely rich possibilities of our nerveswhen we make them our friends. 

CHAPTER II

THE NEUROTIC

For four heart-breaking years, the strife of a nation at war withitself had spread desolation and sorrow broadcast. The fighting ceasedin April. One mid-June day following, the town folk and those fromcountrysides 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 warcould have seemed possible that fair day. The bride's home had beena-bustle with weeks of preparation for this hour, and nature wasrejoicing and the heavens smiling upon the occasion. Sam Clayton, thebridegroom, was certainly a "lucky dog. " A quiet, unobtrusive son of aneighboring farmer, he and Elizabeth had been school-childrentogether. Probably the war had lessened her opportunity for choice butthe night before he left for the front, they were engaged--and herfamily was the best and wealthiest of the county. "Lucky dog" and "warromance, " the men said. Nevertheless, six weeks ago he had returnedwith his chevrons well-earned, and fifty years of square living laterproved his unquestioned worth. Elizabeth at twenty, on her bridal day, was slender, lithe, fair-skinned; of Scotch-Irish descent, her grayeyes bespoke her efficiency--to-day, they spoke her pride, thoughneither 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 throughthe morrow for the many who had come far. "Perfectly suited, " thewomen said of the young couple. 

Sam Clayton had nothing which could be discounted at the bank, but thebride was given fifty fertile acres, and they both had industry andthrift, ambition and pluck. The fifty acres blossomed--Sam was a goodfarmer, but he proved himself a better trader, and before many yearswas running a small store in town. They soon added other fifty acres--one-hundred-and-fifty in fifteen years, and out of debt--then apartner with money, and a thriving business. At forty-five it was: Mr. Samuel Clayton, President of the Farmers' and Merchants' Bank, ratedat $150, 000. Mrs. Clayton's ability had early been manifest. Beforeher marriage she had taken prizes at the County Fair in crocheting andplum-jell. In after years no one pretended to compete with her annualexhibit of canned fruits, and the coveted prize to the County's bestbutter-maker was awarded her many successive autumns. 

Our real interest in the Claytons must begin twenty-five years afterthe happy wedding. Their town, the county seat, had pushed its limitsto the skirts of the broad Clayton acres; theirs was now the leadingfamily in that section. Mr. Clayton, quiet, active, practical, wascapable of adjusting himself without disturbance to whateverconditions he met. Three children had been born during the earlyyears--a girl and two younger boys. The daughter was of the father'stype--reserved, studious and truly worthy, for during the years thatwere to come, with the man she loved waiting, she remained at home apillar of strength to which her mother clung. She turned from wifehoodin response to the selfish needs of this mother. She and the olderbrother finished classical courses in the near-by "University, " fortheir mother, particularly, believed in education. The brother andsister had much in common, were indeed much alike; he, however, soonmarried and moved into the new West and deservingly prospered. Fred, the youngest, was different. During his second summer he was very illwith cholera infantum--the days came and went--doctors came and went--and the wonder was how life clung to the emaciated form. The mother'slove flamed forth with intensity and the nights without sleepmultiplied until she, too, looked wan and ill. She did not know how topray. Her parents had been Universalists--she termed herself aMoralist; for her, heaven held no God that can hear, no Great Heartthat cares, no Understanding that notes a mother's agony. The doctorsoffered no hope. The child was starving; no food nor medicine hadagreed, and the end was near. A neighboring grandmother told how herchild had been sick the same way, and how she had given him bakedsweet potato which was the first thing he had digested for days. Asfate would have it, it was even so with Fred, and he recovered leavinghis mother devoid of faith in any one calling himself doctor, andfanatically devoted to the child she had so nearly lost. From thatsickness she hovered over him, protecting him from the training shegave her other children--the kind she herself had received. His wishbecame her law; he was humored into weakness. He never became robustphysically, and early showed defects quite unknown in either branch ofthe family. He failed in college, for which failure his mother foundadequate excuse. He entered the bank, but within a few months hispeculations would have been discovered had he not confessed to hismother, who made the discrepancy good from her private funds. Duringthe next few years she found it necessary on repeated occasions todraw cheeks on her personal account to save him from trouble--butnever a word of censure for him, always excuses. He was drinking, those days, and gambling. In the near-by state capitol the cards wenthis way one night. Hilarious with success and drink, he started forhis room. There was a mix-up with his companions. He was left in thesnow, unconscious--his winnings gone. The wealth of his father and thedevotion of his mother could not save him, and he went with pneumoniaa few days later. It was said that this caused her breakdown--let ussee. 

As a girl, Elizabeth had lived in a home of plenty, in a home of localaristocracy. She was perfectly trained in all household activitiesand, for that period, had an excellent education, having spent oneyear in a far-away "Female Seminary. " Her mind was good, her pride inappearance almost excessive. She said she "loved Sam Clayton, " andprobably did, though with none of the devotion she gave her son, norwith sufficient trust to share her patrimony which amounted to a smallfortune with him when it came. In fact, she ran her own business, norrelied upon the safety of the "Farmers' and Merchants' Bank" in makingher deposits. She was a housewife of repute, devoted to every detailof housewifery and economics. There was always plenty to eat and ofthe best; perfect order and cleanliness of the immaculate type wereher pride. Excellent advice she frequently gave her husband aboutfinances and management, but otherwise she added no interest to hislife, and there was peace between husband and wife--because Sam was apeaceable man. As a mother, she taught the two older children domesticusefulness, with every care; they were always clad in good, cleanclothes, clad better than the neighbors' children, and education wasmade to take first rank in their minds. Her sense of duty to them wasstrong; she frequently said: "I live and save and slave for mychildren. " Fred, as we have seen, was her weakness. For him she brokeevery rule and law of her life. 

At forty-five she was thin, her face already deeply seamed with worrylines, 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. Wehave not spoken of Mary. Poor woman! She, too, was a slave--she wasthe hired girl. Meek almost to automatism, a machine which nevervaried from one year's end to another, faithful as the proverbial dog, she noiselessly slipped through her unceasing round of duties fortwenty-three years--then catastrophe. "That fool hired man hashoodwinked Mary. " No wedding gift, no note of well-wishing, but arabid bundling out of her effects. Howbeit, Central Ohio could notproduce another Mary, and from then on a new interest was added to theClaytons' table-talk as one servant followed another into the Mother'sbad graces. She was already worn to a feather-edge before Mary'singratitude. But the shock of Fred's death completed thedemoralization of wrongly lived years. For weeks she railed at asociety which did not protect its citizens, at a church which failedto make men good, while she now recognized a God against whom shecould express resentment. 

This woman endowed with an excellent physical and mental organizationhad allowed her ability and capacity to become perverted. Orderliness, at first a well planned daily routine, gradually degenerated into anobsession for cleanliness. Each piece of furniture went through itsweekly polishing, rugs were swept and dusted, sponged and sunned--evenMary could not do the table-linen to her taste--and Tuesday afternoonthrough the years went to immaculate ironing. The obsession forcleanliness bred a fear of uncleanliness, and for years each dish wasexamined by reflected light, to be condemned by one least streak. Themilk and butter especially must receive care equaled only by surgicalasepsis. Then there were the doors. The front door was for company, and then only for the elect--and Fred; the side door was for thefamily, and woe to the neighbor's child or the green delivery boy whotracked mud through this portal. No amount of foot-wiping could renderthe hired man fit for the kitchen steps after milking time--he used astep-ladder to bring up the milk to the back porch. Such intensity ofattention to detail could not long fail to make this degeneratingneurotic take note of her own body, which gradually became more andmore sensitive, till she was fairly distraught between her fear ofdraughts and her mania for ventilation. It was windows up and windowsdown, opening the dampers and closing the dampers, something for hershoulders and more fresh air. Church, lecture-halls and theatersgradually became impossible. Finally she was practically a prisoner inthe semiobscurity of her home--a prisoner to bodily sensation. Thencame the autos to curse. The Clayton home was within a hundred yardsof the county road, and when the wind was from the west really visibledust from passing motors presumed to invade the sanctity of parlor andspare rooms, and with kindling resentment windows were closed andwindows were opened, rooms were dusted and redusted until she hatedthe sound of an auto-horn, until the smell of burning gasoline causedher nausea--but each year the autos multiplied. 

At last the family realized that her loss of control was becomingserious, that she was really a sufferer; but her antagonism tophysicians was deep-set, so the osteopath was called. Had he beengiven a fair chance, he might have helped, but her obsessions weresuch that she resented the touch of his manipulations, fearing thatsome unknown infection might exude from his palms to her undoing. Reason finally became helpless in the grip of her phobias. Her stomachlining was "destroyed, " and into this "raw stomach" only the rarest offoods and those of her own preparation could be taken. She had faintedat Fred's funeral, and repeatedly became dazed, practicallyunconscious, at the mention of his name. Self-interests had held herattention from girlhood to her wreckage, and from this grew self-study, which later degenerated into self-pity. Her converse was offood and feelings and self. She bored all she met, for self alone wasexpressed in actions and words. 

Father and daughter finally, under the pretext of a trip for herhealth, placed her in a Southern sanitarium. Much was done here forher, in the face of her protest. Illustrative of the unreasoningintensity with which fear had laid hold upon her was her mortal dreadof grape-seeds. As she was again being taught to eat rationally, grapes were ordered for her morning meal. The nurse noticed that withpainful care she separated each seed from the pulp, and explained toher the value of grape-seeds in her case. She wisely did not arguewith the nurse, but two mornings later she was discovered ejecting andsecreting the seeds. The physician then kindly and earnestly appealedfor her intelligent cooperation. She thereupon admitted that manyyears ago a neighbor's boy had died of appendicitis, which the doctorsaid was caused by a grape-seed. The fallacy of these early-dayopinions was shown her. Then was illustrated the weakness of her faithand the strength of her fear. She produced a draft for one thousanddollars, which she said she always carried for unforeseen emergencies, and offered it to the doctor to use for charity or as he wished, if hewould change the order about the grapes. Suffice it to say she learnedto eat Concords, Catawbas, Tokays and Malagas. She returned homebetter, but was never wholesomely well, and to-day dreads the deathfor which her family wait with unconscious patience. 

What is the secret of this miserable old woman's failure to adjustherself to the richness which life offered her? A selfish self peersout from every act. Even her generosity to Fred was the pleasing ofself. Given all that she had, what could she not have been!Physically, with the advantages of plenty and her country life and thepromise of her fair girlhood, what attraction could not have been hershad kindness and generosity softened her eyes, tinted her cheeks, andlove-wrinkles come instead of worry-wrinkles. 

Her mind was naturally an unusual one. She lived within drivingdistance of one of Ohio's largest colleges--only an hour by train tothe state capital. Fortune had truly smiled and selected her forhappiness, but from the first it was self or her family and no furtherthought or plan or consideration. 

Elizabeth Clayton was given a nervous system of superb quality, whichused for the good of those she touched would have hallowed her life;misused, she drifts into unlovable old age, a selfish neurotic. Shecould have been a leader in her community, a blessing in hergeneration, a builder of faiths which do not die, but she failed tochoose the good part which neither loss of servant, death of child noradvancing 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 ofmanhood and womanhood through its power to meet what the day brings, to collect the best therefrom and to fit itself profitably to use thatbest for the good of its kind. And these possibilities are alldependent on the superb, complicated nervous system. The miracles ofright and wise living are rooted deep in the nerve-centers. Man'snervous system is his adjusting mechanism--his indicator revealing theproper methods of reaction. Nothing man will ever make can rival itssensitiveness and capacity. But when it is out of order, trouble iscertain. Excessive, imperfect, inadequate reactions will occur anddisintegrating forms of response to ourselves and our surroundingswill certainly become habitual, unless wise and resolute readjustmentsare made. The common failure of the many to find the best, even thegood in life, is apparent to all--so common indeed, that the searchfor the perfectly adjusted man, physically, mentally, morallyadjusted, is about as fruitful as Diogenes' daylight excursions withhis lantern. The physical, mental and moral are intricately relatedeven as the primary colors in the rainbow. Our nerves enter intimatelyinto every feeling, thought, act of life, into every function of ourbodies, into every aspiration of our souls. They determine ourdigestion and our destinies; they may even influence the destinies ofothers. Let us turn a few pages of a life and see the cost ofdefective nervous-living. 

The Pullman was crowded; every berth had been sold; the train wasloaded with holiday travelers, and the ever interesting bridal couplehad the drawing-room. The aisle was cluttered with valises andsuitcases; the porter was feverishly making down a berth; whilebolstered on a pile of pillows, surrounded by a number of anxiousfaces, lay the sick woman, the source of the commotion and theanxiety. Sobs followed groans, and exclamations followed sobs--apparently only an intense effort of self-control kept her fromscreaming. She held her head. Periodically, it seemed to relieve herto tear at her hair. She held her breath, she clutched her throat, shecovered 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 herforearm between her teeth to shut in her pent-up anguish. She wouldhave thrown herself from the seat but for the unobtrusive little manwho knelt in front to keep her from falling, and gently held her on asshe spasmodically writhed. His plain, unromantic face showed deepanxiety, not unmixed with fear. He was eagerly assisted by the dearold lady who sat in front. Hers was mother-heart clear through; hersatchel had been disturbed to the depths in her search for remedieslong faithful in alleviating ministration; her camphor bottle lay onthe floor, impulsively struck from her kind hand by the convulsedwoman. The sweet-faced college girl who sat opposite had just finisheda year in physiology and this was her first opportunity to use her newknowledge. "Loosen her collar and lower her head and let her have moreair, " she advised. "Yes, " said the little man, "I'm her husband yousee, and am a doctor. I've seen her this way before and those thingsdon't help. "

The drummer, who had the upper berth, had retreated at the first signof trouble to the safety of the smoking-room, and was apparentlytrying more completely to hide himself in clouds of obscuring cigarsmoke. The passengers were all cowed into attentive quietude; thesympathetic had offered their help, while the others foundsatisfaction for their aloofness in agreement with the sophisticatedporter, who, after he had assisted in safely depositing the writhingwoman behind the green curtains and had been rather roughly treated byher protesting heels, shrewdly opined to the smoking-room refugeesthat "That woman sho has one case o' high-strikes. " The berth, however, proved no panacea--she was "suffocating, " she must get out ofthe smoke and dust, she must get away from "those people" or she wouldstifle, and to the other symptoms were added paroxysms of coughing andgasping which sent shivers through the whole car of her sympathizers. Her husband explained that she was just out of a hospital, which theyhad 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 withher he thought he could get her to sleep, but he did not know what theconsequences would be if she did not get quiet. The Pullman conductorwas strong for quiet, and he and the sweet-faced college girl and thedear old lady formed a committee who waited on the young bride andgroom. 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-roomstood out as one of their precious dreams during the last year, as, step by step, they had planned in anticipation of that short bridalweek! But the sacrifice was made, the transfers effected, and out ofthe quiet which followed, emerged order and the cheer normal toholiday travelers. A number were gratified by the sense of their well-doing, they had gone their limit to help; others were equallycomfortable in their satisfied sense of shrewdness, they agreed withthe porter--they had sized her up and not been "taken in. "

Mrs. Platt had been Lena Dalton. She was born in Galveston forty-fiveyears before. Her father was a cattle-buyer, rough, dissipated, alwaysindulgent to himself and, when mellow with drink, lavishly indulgentto the family. He never crossed Lena; even when sober and irritable tothe rest, she had her way with him. The high point in his moral lifewas reached when she was seven. For three weeks she was desperatelyill. A noted revivalist was filling a large tent twice a day; thefather attended. He promised himself to join the church if Lena didnot die--she got well, so there was no need. She remained hisfavorite. "Drunk man's luck" forgot him several years later when hispony 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 hisworst. She was strong of body and mind, practical, probably somewhathard, certainly with no sympathy for folderols. Her common-schooleducation, in the country, had not opened many vistas in theories andideals, but she lived her narrow life well, doing as she would be doneby--which was not asking much, nor giving much--caring for herselfwithout fear or favor till she died, as she wished, at night alone, when she was eighty. She possessed qualities which with the help of anormal husband would have been a wholesome heritage to the children;but it was a home of double standards, certainly so in the training ofLena, who had never failed, when her father was home, to get thethings her mother had denied her in his absence. She was thirteen whenhe died; at fifteen then followed her two most normal years. Theaccident occurred which, was to prove fateful for her life, andthrough 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 wastaken home unconscious and was afterward delirious, not being herselfuntil noon the next day, when she found beside her an anxious motherwho for several days continued ministering to her daughter's everywish. Three months later she set her heart on a certain dress in anear-by shop window; her mother said it was too old for her, and costtoo much. Day after day passed and the dress remained there, more tobe desired each time she saw it. The Sunday-school picnic was only aweek off. She made another appeal at the supper table; her sisterunwisely interjected a sympathetic "too bad. " The emphasis of themother's "No" sounded like a "settler, " but just then things went darkfor Lena. She grasped her head and apparently was about to fall--herface twitched and her body jerked convulsively. The mother lost hernerve, and feeling that her harshness had brought back the "brainsymptoms" which followed the skating accident, spent the night inministrations--and hanging at the foot of Lena's bed, when she washerself next morning, was the coveted dress. To those who know, themental processes were simple; strong desire, an implacable mother, save when touched by maternal fear, the association in the girl's mindof a relationship between her accident and her mother's compliance, aremoter association of her illness at seven with her father's years offree giving. What was to restrain her jerkings and twitchings andmeanings? Many of these reactions were taking place in the semi-mysterious laboratory of her subconscious self; but it was thebeginning of a life of periodic outbreaks through which she hadpractically never failed to secure what she desired. To the end of hergood 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 andsoon married a promising young man. They had two children. He made atrip down the coast and died of yellow fever. The wife was muchdepressed and spent a bad year and most of the insurance money, getting adjusted. Then the Galveston storm with its harvest of deathand miraculous escapes--the mother was taken, the two children left. Meanwhile Lena had finished high school, had taken a year in theNormal and secured a community school to teach, near Houston. She wasnow eighteen, her face was interesting, some of the features werefine. Her bluish-gray eyes could be particularly appealing; there wasmuch 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 wellthat they both pledged their love and plighted their troth. Thetemporary distraction of her lover's attention, deflected by thevisiting brunette in silks, an inadvertently broken appointment (thetrain was late and he could not help it), and the first attack of the"jerks" among strangers is recorded. They hastily summoned old JakePlatt's son, just fresh from medical college, who, helpless with thissuffering bit of femininity, supplied in attention and practicalnursing what he lacked in medical discernment and skill, to the endthat one engagement was broken and another formed in a fortnight. OldJake had some money; the young doctor was starting in well, and neededa wife; she was still jealous, and young Dr. Platt got a wife, whomolded his future as the modeler does his clay. 

Within the first month the bride had another attack. They had planneda trip to Houston to do some shopping and to attend the theater. Thedoctor-husband was delayed on a case and found his young bride in thethroes of another nervous storm when he reached home, nor did thesymptoms entirely abate until he had promised her that he would alwayscome at once, no matter what other duties he might have, when sheneeded him. By this promise he handicapped his future success as aphysician and did all that devoted ignorance could do to make certaina periodic repetition of the convulsive seizures. This was but thefirst of a series of concessions which involved his professional, social and financial future, which her "infirmity" exacted of him asthe years passed. Later old Jake died and the doctor's share of hisbig farms was an opportune help. But Mrs. Platt had a certain far-reaching ambition; therefore, they soon moved to Houston. He wouldhave done well where he started; his education, his medical equipment, his personality were certain to limit his progress in a city. Thedoctor's wife was superficially bright, capable of adapting herselfwith distinct charm to those she admired. She formed intense likes anddislikes--while often impulsively kind-hearted, she could cling tovindictive abuse for months. Here was a woman who proved very usefulon church committees, in societies, in Sunday-school, who workedeffectively in the Civic Club. She sang fairly well naturally, ofcourse "adored music" and was an efficient enthusiastic worker wheninterested. But Lena Platt was never able to work when not interested. Periodically her "fearful nervous spells" would interfere with allduties. The doctor was absolutely subsidized. Had any otherattractions appealed to him, his wife's early evidences of implacablejealousy would have proven a sure antidote. He was an unconsciousslave. Her nervousness expressed itself toward him in other terms thanconvulsively. She had a tongue which from time to time blistered thepoor man. He would never talk back, fearful as he ever was of bringingon 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 whichmuch affecting sentimentality evolved, being as well the patheticcause for days of sickness, when outside interests were lessattractive to this artful sufferer than the attentions elicited by herillness. Then out of the great gulf surged the heroic Galvestontragedy, and the two orphan children came to fill the idealized want. At first they received an abundance of impulsive loving, but unhappilyone day, a few months after they came, the foster-mother overheard theelder girl make an unfavorable comparison between her and the realmother; and for years distinctions were made--the younger being alwaysfavored, the unfortunate, older child living half-terrorized, neverknowing when angry, unfair words would assail her. 

Lena Platt had confided to several of her bosom friends the tragedy ofher unequal marriage and that she knew she would yet find a "soulmate. " There was a Choral Society in Houston one winter, and followinga few gratuitous compliments from the dapper young director, shedecided she had found it. He left in the spring and this dream faded. A few months later the new minister's incautious exaggeration that "hedidn't know how he could run the church without her" came nearresulting in trouble, for some of the good sisters unkindly questionedthe quality of her sudden excessive devotion and religious zeal. Mrs. Platt was not vicious, but she craved excitement; hers was a life ofconstantly forming new plans. Attention from any source was sweet andfrom those of prominence it was nectar. Things were pretty bad in thedoctor's home after the preacher episode, and she was finallypersuaded to let her husband call in another physician. He was verynice to her, and while he never pretended to understand her case, hismedicine and advice benefited her tremendously and she went nearly ayear without a bad attack. Her visits to his office and herconscienceless use of his time were finally brought to a sudden closewhen one day he deliberately called other patients in, leaving herunnoticed in the waiting-room. Bad times again, then other newdoctors, other periods of immunity from attacks, with exaggerateddevotion to each new helper until she had made the rounds of thedesirable, professional talent of Houston. 

Meanwhile, impulsive extravagance had sadly reduced the Plattinheritance, so when an acquaintance returned from St. Louis nervouslyrecreated by a specialist there, the poor doctor had to borrow on hisinsurance to make it possible for her to have the benefit of thisnoted physician's skill. The trip North meant sacrifice for the entirefamily. Apparently she wished to be cured, and the treatment beganmost auspiciously. After careful, expert investigation, assurance hadbeen given that if she would do her part, she could be made well insix 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 shelikes. " The treatment was thorough-going; it began at the beginning, and during the early weeks she was enthusiastically satisfied with theskill of her treatment and the care of her special nurse, in whom shefound another "bosom friend, " to whom she confided all. Her devotionfor the new doctor grew by leaps. Mistaking his kindness and thinkingperchance she might extract more beneficent sympathy by physicalmethods, she impulsively threw herself into where-his-arms-would-have-been had he not side-stepped. Her position physically andsentimentally was awkward; the doctor called the nurse and left her. Later he returned and did his best to appeal to her womanhood; heanalyzed her illness and showed her some of the damage it had wroughtboth in her character and to others. He showed her the demoralizationwhich had grown out of her wretched surrender to impulsive desire. Herevealed to her the necessity for the effacement of much of her falseself and the true spiritualizing of her mind as the only road towholesome living. That same day Dr. Platt received a telegramperemptorily demanding that he come for her. Upon his arrival he had ashort talk with the specialist who succinctly told him the problem ashe saw it. For a few minutes, and for a few minutes only, was hisfaith in the helpless reality of his wife's sickness shaken; but faithand pity and indignation were united as she told of her mistreatmentand how she had been outraged and her whole character questioned bythat "brutal doctor, " who talked to her as no one had ever daredbefore. She was going home on the first train and going home we foundher, having another attack in the Pullman. A collapse, her husbandtold himself, from over-exertion and the result of her woundedwomanhood. "A plain case o' high-strikes" was the porter's diagnosis;a sickness sufficiently adequate to have the sweet incense of muchpublic attention poured upon her wounded spirit--and to secure thecoveted drawing-room!

On her way home! She had spurned her one chance to be scientificallytaught the woefully needed lessons of right living-on her way to thehome which had become more and more chaotic with the passing of theyears and the dwindling of their means. 

Who can count the price this woman has paid for her nervousness? Atfifty, with a scrawny, under-nourished body, the wrinkled remnants ofbeauty, she suffers actual weakness and distress. Quick prostrationfollows all effort, excepting when she is fired by excitement. Allability to reason in the face of desire is gone; she is dominated byemotions which become each year more unattractive; even the air-castles are tumbled into ruins. Her husband is a slave--used as aconvenience. Her waning best is for those who attract her, her growingworst for those who offend. One child's life is maimed by indulgence, the other's by injustice. She has reached that moral depravity whichfails to recognize and accept any truth which is opposed to herwishes. As she looks back over the vista of years, filled with manyactivities, no monument of wholesome constructiveness remains; she hasblighted what she touched. Lena Platt, a wilful, spoiled, selfishhysteric!

CHAPTER IV

WRECKING A GENERATION

The afternoon's heat was intense; it was reflecting in shimmeringwaves from everything motionless, this breathless September day inDonaldsville, Texas. Main Street is a half-mile long, unpainted "box-houses" fringe either end and cluster unkemptly to the west, formingthe "city's" thickly populated "darky town. " Near the station standsthe new three-story brick hotel, the pride of the metropolis. Not eventhe Court House at the county seat is as imposing. Main Street isflanked 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 racksused for the ponies and mules of the Saturday crowds of "bottomniggers" and "post oak farmers. " The higher ground east of Main Streetis preempted by the comfortable residences of Donaldsville proper andculminates in Quality Hill, where the two bankers and a select groupof wealthy bottom-planters lived in aristocratic supremacy. On thisparticular afternoon, the town's only business street was aboutdeserted. On its shady side were hitched a few Texas ponies whosedrooping heads and wilted ears bespoke the heat--so hot it was thatthe flies, even, did not molest them. Scattered groups of lounging, idle men indicated the enervating influence of the sizzling 108degrees in the shade. 

But Donaldsville was not dead--perspiring certainly, but stillpossessing one lively evidence of animation. From time to time pealsof boisterous laughter, boisterous but refreshing as the breath of abreeze, a congenial, almost contagious laughter would roll up and downMain Street even to its box-house fringes. Each peal would call forthfrom some dusky denizen of the suburbs the proud recognition: "Dar'sDoctor Jim laughin' some mo'. " Doctor Jim's laughter was one ofDonaldsville's attractive features. His friends living a mile awayclaimed they often heard it--and everybody was Doctor Jim's friend. Nomore genial, generous gentleman of the early post-bellum Texas Southcould be found. His was an unfathomed well of good nature, good humorand good stories. He knew all comers whether he had met them before ornot. For him, it was never "Stranger, " it was always "Friend. "

Let us take his proffered hand and feel the heartiness of itsgreeting, feel its friendly shake, even to our shoe-soles. His goodhumor beams from his deep-blue eyes; his shock of gray hair, whichknows no comb but his fingers, is pushed back from a brow which mighthave been a scholar's, were it not so florid. A soft, white linenshirt rolls deeply open, exposing a grizzled expanse of powerfulchest. Roomy, baggy, spotless, linen trousers do homage to the heat, as does his broad, palm-fiber hat, used chiefly as a fan. Doctor JimMcDonald, six feet in his socks, weighing 180 pounds, erect and manlyin bearing in spite of his negligee, is a remarkable specimen ofphysical manhood at sixty-five. Even with the Saturday afternooncrowds of the cotton-picking season, Main Street seems deserted if hisresounding laughter is not heard; but it takes something as serious asa funeral to keep him away from his accustomed bench in front ofDoctor Will's drug-store, centrally located on the shady side of thestreet. Doctor Will is Doctor Jim's brother, and is, according to thenegroes, a "sho-nuff" doctor. 

Doctor Jim's life is comfortably monotonous. He had put up the firstwindmill in the region roundabout and his was the first real bath-tubin the county, and long before Donaldsville thought of water-works, Doctor Jim's windmill was keeping the big cistern on stilts filledfrom his deep artesian well. He started each day with a stimulatingplunge in his big tub, and never tired proclaiming that with this andenough good whiskey he would live to be a hundred--and then MainStreet would stop and listen to the generous reverberations of hisdeep-chested laugh. Three good meals, the best old Aunt Sue could cookand Aunt Sue came from Mississippi with them after the war--were eatenwith an unflagging relish by this man whose digestion had neverdiscovered itself. Two mornings a week Doctor Jim drove leisurely outto 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 muchthat Doctor Jim, with another of his big laughs, would say he was"mighty lucky in having those rascally twins to throw some of itaway. " One night a week he could always be found at the Lodge, andonce a day he covered each way the half-mile separating his generous, rambling home on Quality Hill and Doctor Will's office. His only realrecreation was funerals. He would desert his shady seat and drivemiles to help lay away friend or foe--if foes he had. On suchoccasions only, would he pass the threshold of a church. Hecontributed generously to each of the town's five denominations andshowed considerable restraint in the presence of the cloth in hischoice of reminiscences, but it was always the occasion of a good-natured uproar for him to proclaim, "The Missus has enough religionfor us both. " Still the silence of his charity could have said trulythat his donation had constructed one-fifth of each church-building inthe town; in fact, it was his pride to double the Biblical one-tenthin his giving. 

Of his open-heartedness Doctor Jim rarely spoke but another pride washis, to which he allowed no day to pass without some hilariouslyexpressed reference. He was proud of his whiskey-drinking. One quartof Kentucky's best Bourbon from sun to sun, decade after decade! "Ihave drunk enough whiskey to float a ship--and some ship too. Look atme! Where will you find a healthier man at sixty-five? I haven't knowna sick minute since the war. If you drink whiskey right, with plentyof water and plenty of eatin', it won't hurt anybody. " This was thelaw and the gospel to Doctor Jim; he never failed to proclaim it topale-faced youths or ailing mankind; and the Book of Judgment, alone, will reveal the harvest of destruction which Time reaped throughDoctor Jim's influence in L---County. Yet, oddly, it was Doctor Jim'sprinciple and practice never to treat. He claimed he had never offereda 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 plantationin Mississippi. The father wanted the boys to be educated. Two of themtook medical courses in New Orleans. Doctor Jim wished to see more ofthe world, and literally did see much of it on a two-year cruisearound the Horn to the East Indies and China. He was thirty-five yearsold in '60 when he married. Then he served as surgeon--"mighty poorsurgeon" he used to say, for a Mississippi regiment throughout thefour years of the Civil War. He and his two brothers passed throughthis conflict and returned home to find their father dead, the negroesscattered and the old plantation devastated. The three with theirfamilies journeyed to Texas--the then Land of Promise! At twenty-fivecents an acre they bought river-bottom lands which are to-daypriceless, and the losses of the past were soon forgotten in the rapidprosperity of the following years. 

Mrs. McDonald represented all that high type of character which thedark years of the war brought out in so many instances of Southernwomanhood. Patient, hopeful, uncomplaining she lived through the fouryears of war-time separation, left her own people and journeyed to theSouthwest to begin life anew. She was particularly robust of physique, domestic in a high sense, gentle and deeply kind. She passed throughhardship, privation and prosperity practically not knowing sickness. Her children could not have had better mother-stock, and the scantdays were in the past, so they never knew the lack of plenty. Therewere eight, from Edith, born in 1870, to Frank, in 1885, including thetwins. 

Did whiskey-drinking hurt?

Edith grew into a slender, retiring girl, her paleness accentuated byher black hair. She was quiet, read much, and took little interest inout-of-door activities, entering into the play-life of the otherchildren but rarely. Her father insisted, later, on her riding, andshe became a fair horsewoman. She was refined in all her relations. Edith went to New Orleans at seventeen. The spring after, shedeveloped a hacking cough and had one or two slight hemorrhages, butat twenty was better and married an excellent young merchant. Thechild was born when she was twenty-two; three weeks later the motherdied, leaving a pitiable, scrofulous baby, which medical and nursingskill kept lingering eighteen months. 

The first boy was named James, Jr. , as we should expect, and, as weshould not expect, was never called "Jim. " But James was not right. Hedeveloped slowly, did not walk till over three, was talking poorly atfive; he was subject to convulsions and destructive outbreaks; he wasuncertain and clumsy in his movements, so provision was made that hemight always have some one with him. But even in the face of thiscare, he stumbled and fell into the laundry-pot with its boilingfamily-wash, was badly scalded and seriously blinded. James mercifullydied two years later in one of his convulsions. 

Mabel was the flower of the family. Through her girlhood she waslovable in every way, and beloved. She was blond like her father, though not as robust as either father or mother, and in ideals andcharacter was truly the latter's daughter. She finished in a finishingschool, had musical ability and charm, and soon married and made ahappy home--an unusual home, until the birth of the first child. Sincethen it has been a fight for health, with the pall of her family'shistory smothering each rekindling hope. Operations and sanatoria, health-resorts and specialists have not restored, and she lives, aneurasthenic mother of two neurotic children. Happiness has long fledthe home where it so loved to bide those early days, before the strainand stress of maternity had drained the mother's poor reserve ofvitality. 

The history of Will and John, named for the two uncles, would proveracy reading through many chapters. "The Twins" were the father's textfor spicy stories galore many years before their death. From thefirst, they were "two young sinners. " They both had active minds--overactive in devising deviltry. Mischievous as little fellows, neverpunished, practically never corrected by their father, humored bysisters, house-servants, and the plantation-hands, feared and admiredby other boys, they seemed proof against any helpful influence fromthe earnest, pained, prayerful mother. As boys of ten, they had become"town talk" and were held responsible for all pranks and practicaljokes perpetrated in Donaldsville or thereabout, unless other guiltyones were captured red-handed. Multiply your conception of a "bad boy"by two and you will have Will at twelve; repeat the process and youwill 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 lieas veritable troopers, but from him the truth in its rankest boldnesswas never withheld. As the years passed, they made many and deepexcursions into the old doctor's pocket. But he paid the billscheerfully and sent his reverberating laugh chasing the speedydollars, as soon as he got with some of his Main Street cronies. Theboys planned and worked together, protecting each other most cleverly. Still they were expelled from every school they attended after theywere thirteen. A military academy noted for its ability to handle hardcases found them quite too mature in their wild ways, and sent themhome. They may, for reasons best known to themselves, have been"square with the old man, " but they were a pair of thoroughgoingtoughs 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 andcongenial company, he went first to Denver, then to New Mexico. Doctors' orders were irksome, whiskey and cards the only availablerecreation for the boys, and so they tried to follow their father'sexample in developing a powerful physique on Kentucky Bourbon("best"). John suddenly quit drinking. "Acute nephritis" was on theshipping paster. Delirium tremens was the truth. Will was too frail toaccompany his brother's remains home. He was pretty lonely andanxious, and miserable without John, but for several weeks behavedquite to the doctor's satisfaction. It didn't last long, and withinthe year tuberculosis and Bourbon laid him beside his brother. 

May was a promising girl, "almost a hoiden, " the neighbors said. Sherode the ponies bareback; she played boys' games, and at twelve lookedas though the problem of health could never complicate her glad, younglife. But cough and hemorrhage, twin specters, stalked in at sixteenand the poor child fairly melted away and was gone in a year. 

Annabel, the youngest girl, was a quiet child and thoughtful. Somecalled her dull, but rather, it seems, she early sensed her fate. Whenbut a child she was sent to "San Antone" and operated on by a throatspecialist. After May's death she went to the mountains each summerand 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 seemedbright of mind and active of body. He attended school as had none ofthe other boys; he even went to Sunday-school. Physically andmentally, he gave promise of prolonging the family line--but he provedhis father's only admitted regret. He lied and he stole. The moneywhich his father would have given him freely he preferred to get bycunning. Doctor Jim could not tolerate what he called dishonesty, andfrom time to time they would have words and Frank would be gone formonths. His cleverness made him a fairly successful gambler; that heplayed the game "crooked" is probably evidenced by his being shot in agambling-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, parentswho never knowingly offended their consciences, children reared inmost healthful surroundings with every comfort and opportunity fornormal development. Four of them showed their physical inferioritythrough the early infection and unusually poor resistance totuberculosis; one was born an imbecile; one died directly from theeffects of drink; the only girl who survived early maturity, the bestof them all, spent twenty years a nervous sufferer, mothering twonervously defective children; the physically best was the morallyworst and died a criminal. 

Doctor Jim lived on with his habits unchanged, his laugh, only, losingsomething in volume and more in infectiousness. Still proud of hishealth he preached the gospel of good whiskey well drunk, neversensing his part in the tragedy of his own fireside. He was nearlyeighty when the stroke came which bereft him of any possibility ofunderstanding, or of knowing remorse. He had laid his wife away someyears previously and for months he lingered on paralyzed, demented, inthe big, empty house, cared for by an old negro couple, hardlyrecognizing Mabel when she came twice a year, but never forgettingthat, "Whiskey won't hurt anybody. "

CHAPTER V

THE NERVOUSLY DAMAGED MOTHER

His name is not Lawrence Adams Abbott. The surname really is that ofone of America's first families. He, himself, is among the few livingof a third generation of large wealth. 

It was an early-summer afternoon and Dr. Abbott--for he was a graduateof Cornell Medical--was standing at one of the train gates of theGrand Central Station in New York. As he waits apart from the smallcrowd assembled to welcome, he attracts observing attention. His faceappears thirty; he is thirty-six. The features are finely cut, thechin is especially good. The eyes are blue-gray, and a slight pallorprobably adds to his apparent distinction. His attitude is languid, the handling of his cane gracefully indolent, the almost habitualtwisting of his chestnut-brown mustache attractively self-satisfied. His clothing is handsome, of distinctive materials, and tailored tothe day. So much for an observing estimate. The critical observerwould note more. He would detect a sluggishness in the responses ofthe pupils, as the eyes listlessly travel from face to face, producingan effect of haunting dulness. Mumbling movements of the lips, aslightly incoordinate swaying of the body, might speak for shortperiods of more than absent-mindedness. 

But the gates open and after the eager, intense meetings, and the morematter-of-fact assumption of babies and bundles, the red-cappedporters, with their lucky burdens of fashionable traveling-cases, pilot or follow the sirs and mesdames of fortune. Among these is onewhose handsome face is mellowed by softening, early-gray hair, andwhose perfect attire and tenderness in greeting our doctor at onceassociate mother and son. She has just come down the Hudson on one ofthe few seriously difficult errands of her fifty-six years. 

Two weeks have passed. The room is stark bare, save for twomattresses, a heap of disheveled bed clothes, and two men. The hoursare small and the dim, guarded light, intended to soften, probablyintensifies the weirdness of the picture. The suspiciously plainwoodwork is enameled in a dull monochrome. The windows are guardedwith protecting screens. One man, an attendant, lies orderly on hispallet; the other, a slender figure in pajamas, crouches in a corner. His hair is bestraggled; his face is livid; his pupils, widelydilated; his dry lips part now and then as he mutters and mumblesinarticulately or chuckles inanely. Now starting, again abstracted, heis capable of responding for a moment only, as the attendant offershim his nourishment. A few seconds later he is groaning and twisting, obviously in pain, pain which is forgotten as quickly, as he reacheshere and there for imaginary, flying, floating things. Real sleep hasnot closed his eyes for now nearly three nights. He is delirious in anartificial, merciful semi-stupor, which is saving him the untoldsufferings of morphine denial. Before this unhappy Dr. Abbott stretchlong, wearisome weeks of readjustment, weeks of physical pain andmental discomfort, weeks, let us hope, of soul-prodding remorse. Hisonly chance for a future worth spending lies in months of physicalreeducation, of teaching his femininely soft body the hardness whichstands for manliness; for him must be multiplied days of mentalreorganization to change the will of a weakling into savingmasterfulness; nor will these suffice unless, in the white heat of amoral revelation, the false tinsel woven into the fabric of hischaracter be consumed. For months he must deny himself the luxuries, even many of the comforts, his mother's wealth is eager to give. Yetthese weeks and months of development may never be, for in a shorttime he will again be legally accountable, and probably will resentand refuse constructive discipline, and return to a satin-upholsteredlife--his cigarettes, his wine-dinners, his liquors, and his "rottenfeeling" mornings after--then to his morphin and to his certaindegradation. And why should this be? Time must turn back the hands onher dial thirty-three years that we may know. 

The fine Abbott home was surrounded by a small suburban estate nearPhiladelphia, a generation ago; we have met the then young mistress ofthe mansion, at the Grand Central Station. It was a home of richness, a home of discriminating wealth, a home of artistic beauty; it was ahome of nervous tension. This neurotic intensity was not of the cheaphelter-skelter, melodramatic sort; there was a splendid veneer ofcontrol. But all the mother's plans and activities depended on themoods, whims and impulses of little Lawrence, the only child, thenglorying in the hey-day of his three-year-old babyhood. It was ahousehold kept in dignified turmoil by this child of wealth, whoneeded a poor boy's chance to be a lovable, hearty, normal chap. Itwas overattention to his health, with its hundreds of impendingpossibilities; to his food, with the unsolvable perplexity of what thedoctor advised and of what the young sire wanted. More ofsatisfaction, perhaps, was found in clothing the youth, as he caredless about these details; still, an unending variety of weights andmaterials was provided that all hygienic and social requirements mightbe adequately met. Anxious thought was daily spent that his play andplaymates might be equally pleasing and free from danger. Almostprayerful investigation was made of the servants who ministered, andtense, sleepless hours were spent by this nervous mother striving towisely decide between the dangers to her child of travel and thoseother dangers of heated summers and bleak winters at home. Frequenttrips into the city and frequent visitations from the city were made, that expert advice be obtained. Consultations were followed by counterconsultations and conferences which but added the mocking counsel ofindecision. And the marble of her beauty began to show faint marringschiseled 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 weremanly and from time to time he laid down certain principles, and whenat home, with apparently little effort, exacted and secured a readyand certainly not unhappy, obedience from his son. But businessinterests and responsibilities were large and the bracing tonic of hisassociation 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 bythe mother's disloyal, though unconscious dishonesty. Hers was anopen, if need be a furtive, overattention and overstimulation, aninveterate surrender to the sweet tyranny of her son's childish whims. There was probably nothing malicious in her many little plans whichkept the father out of the nursery and ignorant of much of their boy'stutelage. The mother was only repeating fully in principle, andlargely in detail, her own rearing; and had she not "turned out to beone of the favored few?"

The suburban special went into a crash, and all that a fine fathermight have done through future years to neutralize the unwholesometraining of a nervous mother was lost. In fact, her power for harm wasnow multiplied. The large properties and business were hers throughlife, and with husband gone, and so tragically, there was increasedopportunity, and unquestionably more reason, for the intensificationof her motherly care. So the fate of a fine man's son is left in thehands of a servile mother. 

It now became a home of restrained extravagance. The table was fairlysmothered with rare and rich foods. Fine wines and imported liquorsentered into sauces and seasonings. The boy's playroom was a veritabletoy-shop, with its hundreds of useless and unused playthings. Longbefore any capacity for understanding enjoyment had come, thisunfortunate child had lost all love for the simple. With Mrs. Abbott, it was always "the best that money can buy"--unwittingly, the worstfor her child's character. It was a home of formal morality. Sundaymorning services were religiously attended; charities of free giving, the giving which did not cost personal effort, were never failing. Itwas a home of selfish unselfishness. All weaknesses in the sonthroughout the passing years were winked at. Never from his mother didLawrence know that sympathy, sometimes hard, often abrupt, neverpampering, which breeds self-help. 

Lawrence went to the most painstakingly selected, private preparatory-schools, and later, as good Abbotts had done for generations, enteredCornell. He had no taste for business. For years he had beenassociated with gifted and agreeable doctors; he liked the dignity ofthe title; so, after two years of academic work, he entered themedical department and graduated with his class. These were goodyears. His was not a nature of active evil. Many of his impulses werequite wholesome, and college fraternity camaraderie brought out muchthat was worthy. In the face of maternal anxiety and protest, he wentout for track, made good, stuck to his training and in his senior yearrepresented the scarlet and white, getting a second in theintercollegiate low hurdles. Another trolley crash now, and he mighthave been saved!

All through his college days a morbid fear had shortened his mother'ssleep hours with its wretchedness. Her boy was everything that wouldattract attractive women. Away from her influence he might marrybeneath him, so all the refinements of intrigue and diplomacy wereutilized that a certain daughter of blood and wealth might become herdaughter-in-law. The two women were clever, and woe it was that hiscommencement-day was soon followed by his wedding-day. No moresumptuous wedding-trip could have been arranged-to California, to theIslands of the Pacific, to India, to Egypt, then a comfortablemeandering through Europe. A year of joy-living they planned that theymight learn to know each other, with all the ministers of happiness inattendance. But the disagreements of two petted children made murkymany a day of their prolonged festal journey, and beclouded for themboth many days of the elaborate home-making after the home-coming. Andthe murkiness and cloudiness were not dissipated when parenthood wastheirs. Neither had learned the first page in Life's text-book ofhappiness, and as both, could not have their way at the same time, rifts grew into chasms which widened and deepened. Then the wifesought attentions she did not get at home in social circles and thehusband sought comforts his wife and his home did not give, in drinkand fast living, later with cocain and morphin. The ugliness of it allcould not be lessened by the divorce, which became inevitable. Bymutual agreement, the rearing of the child was intrusted to thefather's mother, who to-day shapes its destiny with the sameunwholesome solicitude which denied to her own son the heritage ofwholesome living. 

We met father and grandmother as she arrived in New York to arrangefor the treatment, which even his beclouded brain recognized asurgent; and we leave him with a darkening future, unless Fate snatchesaway a great family's millions, or works the miracle of self-revelation, or the greater miracle of late-life reformation in the sonof this nervously damaged mother. 

CHAPTER VI

THE MESS OF POTTAGE

"I know Clara puts too much butter in her fudge. It always gives me asplitting headache, but gee, isn't it good! I couldn't help eating itif I knew it was going to kill me the next day. " The Pale Girl looksthe truth of her exclamations, as she strolls down the campus-walkarm-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 thevery richness of her hand-brewed lusciousness. They called Clara theBuxom Lass, and they called her well. She was, physically, a matureyoung woman at sixteen, healthy, vigorous, rose-cheeked, plump, andnot uncomely, frolicsome and care-free, with ten dollars a week, "justfor fun. " She was a worthy leader of the Solemn Circle of sophomoreswhich she had organized, each member of which was sacredly sworn tomeet every Friday night for one superb hour of savory sumptuousness--in the vernacular, "swell feeds. "

Clara was a Floridian. Her father had shrewdly monopolized thetransfer business in the state's metropolis, and from an humble one-horse start now operated two-score moving-vans and motor-trucks, andadded substantially, each year, to his real-estate holdings. Mr. Dennylet fall an Irish syllable from time to time, regularly took hislittle "nip o' spirits, " and ate proverbially long and often. Yearafter year passed, with the hardy man a literal cheer-leader in theDenny 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, toslave 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 hispainless weakness. "Only a few days, darlin', and we'll have a spin inthe car and your father'll show thim upstarts how to rustle up thebusiness. " The rustling days did not come, but short periods ofirritability did. He wanted his "Clara-girl" near and became impatientin her absence. He objected to her mother's nursing, and later becamesuspicious that she was conspiring to keep Clara from him, and oftengreeted both mother and daughter with unreasonable words. Hisinterests narrowed pitiably, until they did not extend beyond therange of his senses, and the senses themselves dulled, even as did hisfeelings of fineness. He grew careless in his habits, and requiredincreasing attention to his beard and clothing. Coarseness firstpeeped in, then became a permanent guest--a coarseness which thewife's presence seemed to inflame, and which could be stilled finallyonly by the actual caress of his daughter's lips. And with the slowmelting of brain-tissue went every vestige of decency; vile thoughtswhich had never crossed the threshold of John Denny's normal mindseemed bred without restraint in the caldron of his diseased brain. His was a vital sturdiness which, for ten years, refused death, butduring the last of these he was physically and morally repellent. Sentiment, that too-often fear of unkind gossip, or ignorantfalsifying of consequences, stood between this family and the properinstitutional and professional care, which could have given him morethan any family's love, and protected those who had their lives tolive from memories which are mercilessly cruel. 

Clara's older brother had much of his father's good cheer and less ofhis father's good sense. He, too, had money to use "just for fun, " andJacksonville was very wide open. So, after his father's misfortune hadeliminated paternal restraint, the boy's "nips o' spirits" multipliedinto full half-pints. For twelve years he drank badly, was cursed byhis father, prayed for by his mother, and wept over by Clara. Thewonderful 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 withher little family in Charleston. Her "duty" was in her home, but thisduty became strikingly emphasized when things "went wrong" inJacksonville, and she frankly admitted that she was entirely "toonervous to be of any use around sickness"; nor did she ever come tohelp, even when Clara's cup of trouble seemed running over. And thiscup was filled with bitterness when, suddenly, the mother had a"stroke, " and the care of two invalids and the presence of herperiodically drunk brother made ruthless demands on her twenty years. The mother had been a sensible woman, for her advantages, and mostefficient, and under her teaching Clara had become exceptionallycapable. The two invalids now lay in adjoining rooms. "Either one maygo at any time, " the doctor said, and when alone in the house withthem the daughter was haunted with a morbid dread which frequentlycaused her to hesitate before opening the door, with the fear that shemight find a parent gone. As it happened, she was away, takingtreatment, unable to return home, when grippe and pneumonia took themother, 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 thethoughtless hilarities of the Solemn Circle and fudge-feasts, and sawhim so altered, and, for him, so dangerously frail, in his invalidchair, something went wrong with her breathing; the air could not getinto her lungs; there was a smothering in her throat and she toppledover on the bed. It seemed to take smelling-salts and brandy to bringher back. She said afterwards that she was not unconscious, that sheknew all that was happening, but felt a stifling sense of suffocation. Later after one of her father's first unnatural outbreaks, shesuffered a series of chills and her mother thought, of course, it wasmalaria; but many big doses of quinin did not break it up, and nomatter when the doctor came, his little thermometer revealed no fever. She spent three months at Old Point Comfort and the chills were neverso bad again. Other distressing internal symptoms appeared closelyfollowing the shock of her mother's sudden paralysis. An operation anda month in a northern hospital were followed by comparative relief. But her nervous symptoms finally became acute and she was spending thespring and early summer on rest-cure in a sanitarium when her parentsdied. The Jacksonville home was then closed. 

Soon after, Clara was profoundly impressed at the same revival inwhich her brother was converted. While she could not leave her churchto join this less formal denomination, she entered into HomeMissionary activities with much zest. At this time a friendship wasformed with a woman-physician who, as months of association passed, attained a reasonably clear insight into her life and encouraged herto enter a well-equipped, church training-school for deaconesses. Thespell of the religious influences of the past year's revival was stillstrong; this, and the stimulation of new resolves, carried her alongwell for six months. In her studies and practical work she showedability, efficiency and flashes of common sense. Then she becameenamored of a younger woman, a class-mate--her heart was empty andhungry for the love which means so much to woman's life. Unhappily, she overheard her unfaithful loved one comment to a confidante: "Itmakes me sick to be kissed by Clara Denny. " Another damaging shock, followed by another series of bad attacks--the old spells, chills andinternal revolutions had returned. She rapidly became useless and aburden. The school-doctor sent her a thousand miles to anotherspecialist. 

We first met Clara Denny effervescent, winning, almost charming--asixteen-year-old minx. Let us scrutinize her at thirty-six. What adeformation! She weighs one hundred and seventy-three--she is onlyfive-feet-four; her face is heavy, soggy, vapid; her eyes, abnormallysmall; her complexion is sallow, almost muddy; her chin, trembling anddouble; strongly penciled, black eye-brows are the only remnantapparent of the "Buxom Lass" of twenty years ago. Her hands are pudgy;her figure soft, mushy, sloppy; her presence is unwholesome. Thespecialist found her internally as she appeared externally. While notorganically diseased, the vital organs were functionally inert. Everyphysical and chemical evidence pointed to the accumulation in anaturally robust body of the twin toxins--food poison and underoxidation. She was haunted by a fear of paralysis. She confusedfeelings with ideas and was certain her mind was going. The spellswhich had first started beside her invalid father were now of dailyoccurrence. She, nor any one else knew when she would topple over. Shefound another reason for her belief that her brain was affected in herincreasingly frequent headaches. For years she had been unable to reador study without her glasses, because of the pain at the base of herbrain. When these wonderful glasses were tested, they were found torepresent one of the mildest corrections made by opticians; in fact, her eyes were above the average. Her precious glasses were practicallywindow-glass. 

Much of each day had been spent in bed, and hot coffee and hot-waterbottles were required to keep off the nerve-racking chills whichotherwise followed each fainting spell. Her appetite never flagged. She had been a heavy meat eater from childhood. There never was aDenny meal without at least two kinds of meat, and one cup of coffeealways, more frequently two--no namby-pamby Postum effects, but thegenuine "black-drip. " In the face of much dental work, her sweet toothhad never been filled. She loved food, and her appetite demandedquantity as well as quality. Of peculiar significance was the factthat throughout the years she had never had a spell when physicallyand mentally comfortable, but, as the years passed, the amount ofdiscomfort which could provoke a nervous disturbance became less andless. She was a well-informed woman, quite interesting on manysubjects, outside of herself, and had done much excellent reading. Unafflicted, she would mentally have been more than usuallyinteresting. When her specialist began the investigation of her moralself, he found her impressed with the belief that she was a "savedwoman, " ready and only waiting health that she might take up theLord's work. But as he sought her soul's deeper recesses, he uncovereda quagmire. Resentment rankled against the sister who had left heralone to meet the exhausting burdens of their parents' illness andbrother's drinking--a sister who had taken care of herself and her ownfamily, regardless. Worse than resentment smoldered against thefather, a dull, deadening enmity, born in the hateful hours of hisodious, but helpless, dementia. Burning deep was an unappeased protestthat, instead of the normal life and pleasures and opportunities ofother 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 wereenjoined. The greatest difficulty was found in compelling restraintfrom food excesses. The love for good things to eat was theoreticallyshelved, but, practically, the forces of desire and habit seemedinsurmountable. Her craving for "good eats" now and then discouragedher resolutions and she periodically broke over the rigid hospitalregimen. But she was helped in every phase of her living. The skincleared; a hint of the roses returned; twenty-five pounds of more thanuseless weight melted away and weeks passed with no threat of spell orchill. She was renewing her youth. A righteous understanding of thelessons which her years of sacrifice held, appealed to her judgment, if not to her feelings, and, as a new being, she returned to thechurch training-school. 

Most fully had Miss Denny been instructed in principle and in practiceconcerning the, for her, vital lessons of nutritional right-living. Each step of the way had been made clear, and it had proven the rightway by the test of practical demonstration. The outlined schedule ofhabits, including some denials and some gratuitous activity, kept herin prime condition--in fact, in improving condition, for six highlysatisfactory months. Never had she accomplished so much; never didlife promise more, as the result of her own efforts. She had earnedcomforts 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. " Itwas only a small mess of pottage--some chops, a cup of real coffee, some after-dinner mints. The doctor had proscribed them all, but "Oncewon't hurt. " Her conscience did prick, but days passed; there was nospell, no chill, no headache. "It didn't hurt me" was her triumphantconclusion; 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 thereturning fainting spells was unheeded, unless answered byrecklessness, for fear thoughts had come and old enmities and new oneshaunted in. Routine and regimen had gone weeks before, and now avacation had to be. She did not return to her work, but deludedherself with a series of pretenses. Before the year was gone, the impsof morbid toxins came into their own and she resorted to wines, laterto alcohol in stronger forms--and alcohol usually makes short work ofthe fineness God gives woman. 

We leave Clara Denny at forty, leave her on the road of license whichleads to ever-lowering levels. 

CHAPTER VII

THE CRIME OF INACTIVITY

A half-century ago the Stoneleighs moved West and located in HotSprings. 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 inthe stead of shrewdness. From their small start he became rapidlywealthy as a dealer in real estate. Mr. Stoneleigh was a generouseater; his foods were truly simple in variety but luxurious in theirquality and richness. Prime roast-beef, fried potatoes, waffles andgriddle-cakes supplied him with heat, energy and avoirdupois. Hesuddenly quit eating at fifty-eight--there was a cerebral hemorrhageone night. His remains weighed one hundred and ninety-five. 

The wife was a comfortable mixture of Irish and English. Her peoplewere so thrifty that she had but a common-school education. She wasthe only child, her industrious mother let her go the way of leastresistance, and were we tracing responsibility of the criminalitybehind our tragedy, Mrs. Stoneleigh's mother would probably be citedas 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 thetable, and like him, grew fat, and from mid-life waddled on, with herhundred and eighty pounds. She was superstitiously very religious, with the kind of religion that shudders at the thought of missingSunday morning service or failing to be a passive attendant at theregular meetings of the Church Aid Society. Practically, the heathenwere taught American civilization, and she herself was assuredsumptuous reservations in Glory by generous donations to the variousmissionary societies. 

The only real ordeal which this woman ever faced was the birth ofHenry, her first child; she was very ill and suffered severely. Themother instinct centered upon this boy the fulness of her devotion--adevotion which never swerved nor faltered, a devotion which neverquestioned, a devotion which became a self-forgetting servility. Johnarrived almost unnoticed three years later, foreordained to be thisolder brother's henchman as long as he remained at home. Johndeveloped. Education was not featured in the Stoneleighs' program, soJohn stopped after his first year at high school, but he wasenergetic, and through serving Henry had learned to work. At twenty hemarried, left the family roof, and starting life for himself in anearby metropolis became a successful coal-merchant. 

Little Henry Stoneleigh would have thrilled any mother's heart withpride. He had every quality a perfect baby should have, and grew intoa large handsome boy, healthy and strong; his disposition was the envyof neighboring mothers; nor was it the sweet goodness of inertia, forhe was mentally and emotionally quick and responsive above theaverage. Indulged by his mother from the beginning and alwayspreferred to his brother, he never recognized duty as duty. This younglife was innocent of anything which suggested routine; order for himwas a happen-so or an of-course result of his mother's or John'sefforts; the details necessary for neatness were never allowed toruffle his ease nor to interfere with his impulses. The Stoneleighs'home was a generous pile, locally magnificent, but our young scion'sfine, front room was perennially a clutter. From his birth up, Henrywas never taught the rudiments of responsibility. His boyhood, however, was not unattractive. He had inherited a large measure ofvitality and was protected from disappointments or irritations by themany comforts which a mother's devotion and wealth can arrange andprovide. His memory was superior. The boy inherited not only anexceptional physique, but mental ability which made his early studiestoo easy to suggest any objection on his part. In fact, he wasactively interested in much of his school work and did well withoutthe conscious expenditure of energy. Little discrimination was shownin the arrangements for his higher education; still he arrived at apopular Western Boy's Academy, rather dubious in his own mind as tojust how large a place he would hold in the sun, with mother and Johnback home. Rather rudely assailed were some of his easy-going habits, and considerable ridicule from certain sources rapidly decided hischoice of companions. It was young Stoneleigh's misfortune that atthis epoch in his development he was situated where money could buyimmunities and attract apparent friendships. He was of fineappearance, and should by all rights have made center on the Academyfootball 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 hisfreedom of purse and easy-going good fellowship, and much reading, which he always enjoyed and which, with his good memory, made himunusually well-informed. Finals even at this Academy demanded specialeffort, which, with Henry, was not forthcoming, so he returned homewithout his diploma. This incident decided him not to attempt college, so for a year he again basked in the indulgences of home-life. Hisfather's business interests had no appeal for him, but the personalinfluence of a young doctor, with his vivid tales of medical-collegeexperiences, and the struggling within of a never recognized ambition, with some haphazard suggestions from his mother, determined him tostudy medicine. 

At this time a medical degree could still be obtained in a few schoolsat the end of two years' attendance. Henry chose a Tennessee collegewhich has, for reasons, long since ceased to exist, an institutionwhich practically guaranteed diplomas. Here after three verycomfortable years, he was transformed into "Doc" Stoneleigh. Attwenty-five, "Doc" weighed two hundred and forty, and returned homefor another period of rest. He did not open an office, nor did he everbegin the practice of his profession. During the next five years helived at home, sleeping and reading until two in the afternoon, hismother carrying breakfast and lunch to his room. The late afternoonsand evenings he spent in hotel-lobbies and pool-rooms, where he wasalways welcomed by a bunch of sports. Popular through his smallprodigalities, he, at thirty, possessed a more than local reputationfor the completeness of his assortment of salacious stories--hismemory and native social instinct were herein successfully utilized. "Doc" now weighed two hundred and eighty-five, ate much, exercisednone, and was the silent proprietor of a pool-room, obnoxious even inthis wide-open town. 

At twelve he had begun smoking cigarettes; at twenty he smoked themday and night. The entire family drank beer, but, oddly, the desirefor alcohol never developed with him. Yet at thirty he began actingqueerly, and it was generally thought that he was drinking. Often nowhe did not go home at night and was frequently found dead asleep onone of his pool-tables. He had fixed up a den of a room where theywould move him to "sleep it off. " A fad for small rifles developedtill he finally had over twenty of different makes in his den andspent many nights wandering around the alleys, shooting rats and straycats. Eats became an obsession. They invaded his room and he wouldfrequently awaken suddenly and empty the first gun he reached at theirimaginary forms, much to the disquiet of the neighbors. One night heburst out of his place, began shooting wildly up and down the streetand rushing about in a frenzy. No single guardian of the peacepresumed to interfere with his hilarity, and two of the six who camein the patrol-wagon had dismissed action for deep contemplation beforehe was safely locked up as "drunk. " The matter was kept quiet, asbefitted the prominence of the Stoneleighs. 

To his mother's devotion now was added fear, and she freely respondedto his demands for funds. There were no more outbreaks, but he wasobviously becoming irresponsible, and influences finally secured hismother's consent to take him to a special institution in anotherstate. This was quietly effected through the cooperation of the familyphysician, who successfully drugged poor "Doc" into pacific inertness. He was legally committed to an institution empowered to useconstructive restraint, and for four months benefited by the onlywholesome training his wretched life had ever known. Here it wasdiscovered that he had been using quantities of codein and cocain, against the sale of which there were then no restrictions. Unusual hadbeen his physical equipment, his indulgences unchecked by anysentiment or restraint, the penalty of inactivity was meting ahorrible exaction--an exaction which could be dulled only by dope. Inthe early prime of what should have been manhood, this unfortunate'smind, as revealed to the institution's authorities during his days ofenforced drugless discomfort, was a filthy cess-pool; cursings andimprecations, vile and vicious, were vomited forth in answer to everypain. His brother, his doctors, his mother were execrated for days, almost without ceasing. Here was a man without principle. As he becamemore comfortable, physically, he became more decent, and later hisnatural, social tendencies began to reappear attractively. 

At the end of four months the patient was perforce much better. Hethen succeeded in inducing his mother to have him released "onprobation. " Many fair promises were made. For months he was to have anattendant as a companion. His mother, believing him well, consented, after securing his promise in writing to return for treatment shouldthere be a relapse into his old habits. As evidencing the decay of hischaracter, these fair promises were made without the slightestintention that they would be kept. The first important city reachedafter crossing the state-line saw his demeanor change. Beyond thelegal authority of the state in which he had been committed, he wasfree, and he knew it. With a few words he consigned his now helplessattendant to regions sulphurous, and alone took train in the oppositedirection from home. For several months he went the paces. With hismedical knowledge and warned by his recent experiences he was able toso adjust his doses as to avoid falling into the hands of theauthorities. The weak mother never refused to honor his drafts. Sixmonths 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 hadforsworn. 

For over ten years "Doc" Stoneleigh has lived with his mother, arecluse, a morphin-soaked wreck. Sometimes he may be seen in a parknear their home, sitting for hours inert, or automatically tracingfigures in the gravel with his cane, noticing no one, unkempt, almostrepellent. He is still sufficiently shrewd to secure morphin inviolation of the law. Sooner or later the revenue department will cutoff his supply. He drifts, a rotting hulk of manhood, unconsciouslynearing the horrors of a drugless reality. 

The depth of this man's degradation may tempt us to feel that he wasdefective, but an accurate analysis of his life fails to reveal anydeficiency save that reprehensible training which made possible hisyears of physical and mental indolence. 

CHAPTER VIII

LEARNING TO EAT

It was three in the early July afternoon. The large parlor, which hadbeen turned into a bedroom, was darkened by closely-drawn shades; adim, softened light coming from a half-hidden lamp deepened the darkrings around the worn nurse's eyes--eyes which bespoke sleeplessnights and a heavy heart. A wan mother stood near the nurse, everyline of her face showing the pain of lengthened anxiety. Tensely onehand held the other, the restraint of culture, only, keeping her fromwringing them in her anguish. Dr. Harkins, the village physician, stood at the foot of the bed, his honest face set in strong lines inanticipation of the worst. Many scenes of suffering had rendered himonly more sympathetic with human sorrow, sympathetic with the real, increasingly intolerant of the false. At the bed-side stood theexpert, who had come so far, at so great an expense-long, rough milesby auto that a few hours might be saved-who had come, they allbelieved, to decide the fate of the beloved girl who lay so death-likebefore them. 

Ruth Rivers was the only one in the room who was not keenly alert ordistressingly tense. Even in her waxy whiteness and unnaturalemaciation, her face was good. The forehead was high and, with thesymmetrical black eyebrows and long, dark lashes, suggested at aglance the good quality of her breeding. The aquiline nose was pinchedby suffering, the finely curving lips were now bloodless and drawntight from time to time, as though to repress the cry of pain; thesemarks 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 partingwith its soul. The silence of the sick-room was fearsomely ominous. 

Three weeks before, Ruth, her mother, and ever-apprehensive AuntMelissa had come from the heat of coastal Georgia to the invigoratingcoolness of the Southern Appalachians. They had come to Point Viewseveral weeks later than usual this year, as spring was tardy and thehot days at home had been few. Ruth had been most miserable for weeksbefore they left home, but had stood the trip well, and Judge Rivershad received an encouraging, indeed a hopeful report from the invalid. But a few days later a letter telling of another of Ruth's attacks wasfollowed immediately by an urgent, distressed telegram which causedhim to adjourn court and hasten to his family. 

For many years Dr. Harkins had driven through the mountains eightstarving months, serving and saving the poorly housed and oftendestitute mountaineers. The tourist flood from the burning, summerlowlands to the mountains' refreshment gave him his living. Dr. Harkins was as truly a missionary as though he were on the pay-roll ofa denominational society. He had always helped, or the mountains hadhelped, or something had helped Ruth before, but this time nothinghelped. The doctor had already called a neighboring physician; theywere both perplexed, and each feared to say the word which, in theirminds, spelled her doom. For nearly three days Ruth had beendelirious, this gentle, sensible, reserved girl, tossing and callingout. A few times she had even screamed, and her mother always saidthat she had been "too fine a baby to even cry out loud. " For fivenights there had been no sleep save an unnatural stupor produced bymedicine. Mother and nurse had taxed their strength keeping her in bedduring the paroxysms of her suffering, which, hour by hour, seemed togrow in intensity and to defy the ever-increasing doses of quietingdrugs. She had recognized no one for days. Even her mother's voicebrought 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" andthat her darling Ruth could last but a few days. The mother's anxietyreiterated "meningitis, " and good, levelheaded Martha King, the nurse, knew that the three cases of meningitis which she had nursed hadsuffered the same way before they died. When Judge Rivers came, hespent but one minute in the sick-room. It was days before he daredreenter. Ruth did not know him. For the first time in her twenty-sevenyears, she had failed to respond happily to his hearty, rich-voicedlove-greeting. The Judge's small fortune had grown slowly. Only thatyear had the mortgage been finally lifted on their comfortable Georgiahome. But in that minute at the sufferer's bedside all he had wasthrown into the scales. Ruth must be saved. She was the only daughter;she was a worthily beloved daughter. "No, she cannot be moved to JohnsHopkins; 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 getthe 'brain expert' from the next state. " Five days had passed sincethe patient had retained food. For twenty-four hours the tide of herstrength 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. Anhour before, Aunt Melissa had tiptoed in to see her darling; thefinger-tips seemed cold in her excited palm, the nails looked bluishto her dreading eyes, and she retreated to the back porch-steps, threwher apron over her head and sat weaving to and fro, inconsolate; norwould she look up even when the big motor panted into sight out of acloud of dust, and stopped. "It is too late, too late, " moaned AuntMelissa. Dr. Harkins and Judge Rivers met the neurologist. The formerreviewed 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 haggardface seemed ashen. Motionless, thoughtful, interminably silent, theexpert stood, holding the sick girl's hand. The nurse first saw himsmile. It was a serious smile; it was a strangely hopeful smile--asmile which was instantly reflected in her own face and which themother caught and Dr. Harkins saw. Each one of them was thrilled withsuch thrills as become rare when the forties have passed, thrilledeven before they heard his words: "It is not meningitis. Your daughtercan get well. "

In the conference which followed, Dr. Harkins felt that his confidencehad been well placed. It is surprising how much the expert haddiscovered in forty minutes, --and how carefully considered andrelentlessly logical were his reasons for deciding that it was an"auto-toxic meningismus, secondary to renal and pancreaticinsufficiency, " which, translated, signifies a self-produced poisondue to defective action of the liver and pancreas, resulting incirculatory disturbance in the covering of the brain. Most clearly, too, he revealed that several of the most alarming symptoms were theresult of the added poison of the drugs which had been given for therelief of the intolerable pain. Each step of the long road to recoverywas outlined with equal clearness, and the light of hope burst instrong on Dr. Harkins first, then on Martha King. The crushing loadwas lifted from off the Judge's heart. The promise seemed too good tobe true, to the mother, who had seen her daughter go down through theyears, step by step. It never penetrated the shadow of Aunt Melissa'spessimism. 

What forces had been at work to bring ten years of relentlesslyincreasing 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 againand again, and this saying had been accepted by family and friends. Let us join hands with Understanding, step behind this mystery, andfind its solution. 

Judge Rivers' father had been Judge Rivers, too. The war between theStates had absorbed the family wealth; still, our Judge Rivers showedevery evidence of good living: he was always well-dressed, as befittedhis office, portly and contented, as was also befitting, fine of colorand always well. His daughter's illness had been practically the onlyproblem in the affairs of his life which he had not solved to hisquite reasonable satisfaction. His love for Ruth held half of hislife's sweetness. 

Mrs. Rivers was tall, active, almost muscular in type. Her brow, likeher daughter's, was high. The quality of her Virginia blood had markedher face. She had always been unduly pale, but never ill. Controlledand reasonable, she had ministered to her home with efficiency andpride. 

Aunt Melissa, her sister, five years the senior, was tall and strong, but her paleness had long been unhealthily tinted with sallowness. Foryears she had been subject to attacks of depression when for days shewould insist upon being let alone, even as she let others alone. Ruthwas the only bright spot she recognized in her life, and hermorbidness was constantly picturing disaster for this object of herlove. 

Ruth's babyhood was a joy. Plump, cooing and happy, she evinced, evenin her earliest days, evidences of her rare disposition. At eighteenmonths, however, she began having spells of indigestion. She alwayssat in her high-chair beside Aunt Melissa, at the table, and rarelyfailed to get at least a taste of anything served which her fancyindicated. Her wise little stomach from time to time expressed itsdisapproval of such unlawful liberties, but parents and aunts andgrandmothers, and probably most of us, are very dull in interpretingthe protests of stomachs. So Ruth got what she liked, and what was anequal misfortune, she liked what she got; and no one ever associatedthe liking and the getting with the poor sick stomach's periodicprotests. As a girl Ruth was not very active. There was a certainreserve, even in her playing, quite in keeping with family traditions. Mother, Aunt Melissa and the servants did the work--still Ruthdeveloped, happy, unselfish, kindly and sensitive. There was rigiddiscipline accompanying certain rules of conduct, and her deportmentwas carefully molded by the silent forces of family culture. Theylived at the county-seat. The public schools which Ruth attended werefairly good. As she grew older, while she remained thin and neverapproached ruggedness, her digestive "spells" were much less frequent, and during the two years she spent away from home in the Convent, shewas quite well, and one year played center on the second basket ballteam. Two years away at school were all that the Judge could thenafford. And so at eighteen she was home for good. That fall she beganhaving headaches. She was reading much, so she went to Mobile and wascarefully fitted with glasses. The correction was not a strong one, but the oculist felt it would relieve the "abnormal sensitiveness ofher eyes, which is probably causing her trouble. "

Throughout her years of suffering, Ruth had always maintained the rarerestraint which marks fineness of soul. No one ever heard hercomplain. Even her mother could not be sure that another attack wason, 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 therelief of the mountains of Tennessee and the Carolinas. The Judge hadalways felt that he should send his family away during July andAugust; they often went in June when the summers were early. And theseweeks of change proved, year after year, the most helpful influencesthat came to Ruth. She always improved and would usually remainstronger until after Thanksgiving. But with irregular periodicity theblinding, prostrating headaches would return--a week of pain, nauseaand prostration. Yet Ruth never asked for, nor took medicine, unlessit was ordered by the doctor, and then more in consideration of thedesires of her family, for the unnatural sensations, produced by mostof the remedies she was given, seemed but the substitution of onediscomfort for another. The only exercise that counted, which thisgirl ever had, was during her weeks at Point View. The stimulation ofthe invigorating mountain air seemed to get into her blood, and aftera few weeks with her friendly mountains she could climb the highestwith little apparent fatigue. At home, the country was flat, the roadssandy, and even horseback riding uninteresting. She had never beentaught any strengthening form of daily home-exercise, and so shesuffered on. While the glasses brought comfort, they lessened, for buta short time, the number and the intensity of her attacks. Severalphysicians were consulted and several varying courses of treatmentundertaken, but no betterment came which lasted, and the headachesremained a mystery, not only to her mother, but to others whoseriously tried to help. As we are behind the scenes, we need nolonger delay the mystery's solution. It was not eyes, they wereaccurately corrected; it was not stomach, as much stomach treatmentproved; it was not anaemia, or the many excellent tonics that had beenprescribed would have cured; it was not displaced vertebrae norimproperly acting nerves, or the manipulations and vibrations and deepkneadings of the specialists in mechanical treatment would haverescued her years before. It was, and here is the secret--her mother'swonderful table!

The war had brought ruinous, financial losses to most Virginiafamilies. As a result, Ruth's mother had been taught, in minutedetail, the high art of the best cookery of the first families ofVirginia. And how she could cook, or make the colored cook cook! TheRivers' 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 downthrough several generations, could not be excelled in richness andtoothsomeness. No simple dishes were known at the Rivers' table;these, for those poor mortals who knew not the inner art. Doublecream, stimulating seasonings, sauces rarely spiced, the sort thatrecreate 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 feedingher for days as though she were a four months' child. He said she mustbe taught to eat; that her salvation lay in a few foods of plebeiansimplicity, foods which almost any one could get anywhere, foods whichdid not involve long hours of preparation according to pricelessrecipes. He said also that certain other foods were vicious, suchmatter-of-course foods on the Rivers' table, foods which Mrs. Riverswould have felt humiliated to omit from a meal of her ordering, and heinsisted that these must be lastingly denied this young woman withprematurely exhausted, digestive glands. The process of herreeducation, succinctly expressed as it was in a few sentences, calledfor tedious months of care, of denial and of effort. It demanded thatwhich was more than taxing in many details. So for Ruth Rivers longweeks were spent in a hospital-bed. She was fed on the simplest offoods, each feeding measured with the same care as were her fewmedicines, for now truly her food was medicine, and her chief medicinewas food. Massage seemed at last to bring help, for even in bed shegained in strength. 

It was several weeks before her mind was entirely clear, but she wassoon being taught the science of food; this included an understandingoutline of food chemistry, of the processes of digestion, of foodvalues, of the relation of food to work, of the vital importance ofmuscular activity and the relation of muscle-use to nervous health. Her beloved sweets and her strong coffee, the only friends of hersuffering days, were gradually buried even from thought in thisaccumulation of new and understood truths--most reasonable and sanetruths. Forty pounds she gained in twelve weeks. She had never weighedover one hundred and twenty-five. She has never weighed less than onehundred and forty-five since, and, as she is five feet eight, her onehundred and forty-five pounds brought her a new symmetry which, withher high-bred face, transformed the waxen invalid into an attractivebeauty. She learned to do manual work. She learned to use every musclethe Lord had given her, every day she lived. An appetite unwhipped bycondiments or unstimulated by artifice, an appetite for wholesomefood, 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 revolutionwhich shook its culinary department from center to circumference. Whatsaved daughter must be good for them all. Father is less portly, moreactive, less ruddy. Some of the color he lost was found by the mother. Aunt Melissa disappears into her gloom-days but rarely, and hassmiling hours unthought in the past. And Ruth has proven that themystery was adequately solved. She married the kind of man soexcellent a woman should have, and went through the trying weeks ofher motherhood and has cared for her boy through the demanding monthsof early childhood without a complication. And all this in the face ofAunt Melissa's reiterated forebodings!

CHAPTER IX

THE MAN WITH THE HOE

In the early years of the eighteenth century, a hardy family livedfrugally and simply on a few, fertile Norman acres. Their home was buta hut of stone and clay and thatch. It was surrounded by a carefullyattended vineyard and fruit trees which, in the springtime, made thespot most beautiful. On this May day the passerby would have stoppedthat he might carry away this scene of perfect pastoral charm. Theblossoming vines almost hid the house, the blooming trees perfumed themorning breeze, and it all spoke for simple peace and contentment. Butat this hour neither peace nor contentment could have been foundwithin. Pierre, the eldest son, was almost fiercely resenting thequiet counsel of his father and the tearful pleadings of his mother. Pierre loved Adrienne, their neighbor's daughter. The two had grown upside by side, each had brought to the other all that their dreams hadwished through the years of waiting. Pierre had long worked extrahours and they both had saved and now, nearing thirty, there wasenough, and they could marry. But the edict had gone forth thatHuguenot marriages would no longer be recognized by the state; thatthe children of such a union would be without civil standing. SoPierre and Adrienne had decided to leave France, nor did the protestsof their elders delay their going. It was a solemn little ceremony, their marriage, a ceremony practically illegal in their land. Rarelyare weddings more solemn or bridal trips more sad, for to England theywere starting that same day, never to see their dear France again, never to prune or to gather in the little vineyard, never again tolook into the faces of their own kin. 

It was not a worldly-wise change. Wages in England were very low andthere were no vineyards in that chilly land, and Pierre worked anddied a plain English farm-hand, blessed only with health, remarkablestrength, and a wretched, but happy home. Much of their parents'sturdiness and independence was passed on into the blood of their fourchildren, two boys and two girls, for in 1748, after long saving, theyall left England for America, "the promised land, " and sailed for NewAmsterdam. 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 vegetablesand fruit grew, the market in the city grew, and the van der Veerefarms grew, and peace and contentment abode there. 

After the War of 1812 two healthy, robust van der Veere brotherstramped into New York City each carrying in his bundle nearly$1000. 00, his share of their father's recently divided farm. Theystarted a green-grocery shop. One attended the customers, the other, through the summer months, worked their little truck garden away outon the country road, a road which is to-day New York's Great WhiteWay. They prospered. One married, and his two boys founded the van derVeere firm of importers. From the East this company's ship, later itsships, brought rare curios, oriental tapestries and fine rugs to makeelegant the brown-stone front drawing-rooms of aristocratic, residential New York of that generation. The sons of one of thesebrothers to-day constitute the honorable van der Veere firm. The otherbrother left one son, Clifford, and two daughters, Dora and Henrietta. It is into the life-history of Clifford van der Veere that we nowintrude. He was a sturdy youth, with no illnesses, save occasionalsore throats which left him when he shed his tonsils. His father was areserved, kindly man, a quietly efficient man. His competitors neverunderstood the sure growth of his success--he was so unpretentious inall that he did. Clifford's mother was a sensible woman, untouched bythe pride of wealth and the snobbery of station. Their home, facingCentral Park, stood for elegance and restraint. There were no otherchildren for ten years after the son's birth, then came the twosisters, which domestic arrangement probably proved an importantfactor in deciding the rest of our story. From early boyhood Cliffordwas orderly, obedient, studious and quietly industrious. He made notrouble for parents or teachers--other mothers always spoke of him as"good. " He was thirteen when his only sinful escapade happened. Someof the Third Avenue boys shared the playgrounds in the park withClifford's crowd. They all smoked, some chewed and the more self-important of them swore, and thereby, one day, our Fifth Avenue younghopeful was contaminated. It was a savory-smelling wad of fine-cut. Itburned, a little went the wrong way and it strangled, but the joy ofejecting a series of amber projectiles was Clifford's. Anothermouthful was ready for exhibition purposes when some appreciativeadmirer enthusiastically clapped our boy between the shoulder-bladesand most of his mouth's contents, fluid and solid, was swallowed. Somehow Clifford got home, but landed in a wilted heap on the bigcouch, chalk-white, and sick beyond expression. The doctor was calledand, discovering the cause, made him helpfully sicker. The nextmorning Clifford's father gravely offered to give him $500. 00, when hewas twenty-one, if he would not taste tobacco again until that time. Either the memory of first-chew sensations or the doctor's ipecac, orthe force of habit, or something, kept him from ever tasting it again. 

Later, Clifford went to Columbia and was quietly popular with thequieter fellows. It would seem that had any little devils not beenstrained out of his blood by his long line of Huguenot ancestry, theyhad followed the fate of the fine-cut, for no one who knew Cliffordvan der Veere was ever anxious about the probity of his conduct. Hedid not take to the importing business, while his cousins early showeda 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 bea professional member of their honorable family. Moreover the propertywas large, and the younger sisters would require a guardian, and theestate an administrator. So Clifford finished the law-course. Nor wasit many years until the family fortune of approximately one milliondollars in real estate, securities and mortgages was left him toadminister for himself and the two sisters. Thus before thirty theresponsibility of these many thousands swept down upon him. Limited inpractical contact with the world, geographically, politically, socially, having learned little of the play-side of life, he was byinheritance, training and inclination a conservative. He had neverpracticed law. He never tried a case, but he now opened a downtownoffice where he punctually arrived at ten o'clock and methodicallyspent the morning, carefully, personally managing all the details ofthe entailed estate. He was essentially conscientious and, as theyears passed, there was no lessening of interest in his devotion toeach transaction, large or small. There were no losses, though hisconservatism turned him away from many golden opportunities whichknocked at the door of his wealth, the acceptance of which would havedoubled the estate in any ten-year period of these days of New York'smagnificent expansion. He was nearly forty when he married a quiet, good woman who added little that was new, who most conscientiouslysubtracted nothing of the old, from his now systematic life. They bothrealized 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 theold house. It was during those days when the plans so carefullyconsidered were being realized in granite and marble and polishedwoods, that Mrs. Van der Veere felt the first distressing touch ofanxiety. Her husband seemed unduly particular. At times he would bepainfully uncertain about minute and minor details of construction andon a few occasions unprecedentedly failed to get to the office at all, delayed by protracted discussions of the advisability of certainchanges, long since decided upon, discussions which shook theconfidence of architect and contractor in both his sagacity andjudgment. Fortunately Mrs. Van der Veere proved a wholesome counselorand her opinions often settled details her husband, alone, apparentlycould not have decided. At last the great new house was finished; itwas such a home as the van der Veeres should have. Indecision largelydisappeared for three quite normal years, office details only now andthen ruffling the smooth normality of Mr. Van der Veere's life. Thenwith the early spring nights came an unexplained insomnia. He wouldwaken at five, four, even three o 'clock, and, unable to get back tosleep, would read until morning. The doctor found little to excite hisapprehension, but prescribed golf, so three afternoons a week allsummer and fall two hours were reserved for the links. He was better, still the doctor insisted on three months, that winter, in SouthernCalifornia where he could keep up his play. Here he did eighteen holesa day for weeks at a time, yet some of the nights were haunted byscruples about neglecting his administrative duties. They returnedhome in the spring, and a moderately comfortable year and a halffollowed. Then things went wrong rapidly and badly. Peremptorily hewas ordered away from all "work" to Southern France, later to Italyfor the winter and to Switzerland for the next summer. And as the Alpshave given of their strength to other needing thousands, so theyministered to him. He began climbing. His wife thought it was a newinterest. Certainly that was a factor, but he became ambitious andwent wherever he could find guides to take him. He returned home veryrugged the fall he was fifty. Still with reason, Mrs. Van der Veerewas anxious, an anxiety shared by the family doctor. Between them theyplanned for him a sort of model life, truly a circumscribed life, andfor five years wife and associates protected him from any possiblestrain, and for five years it worked successfully. Then in less than amonth, 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 thenervous man, spoke seriously of serious possibilities, and advisedserious measures. 

Mr. Van der Veere was now fifty-five years old, short, almost stockyin build, dark-skinned, with steel-gray hair and mustache. He wasdepressed in mien though always well-bred in bearing. He was notexcitable and outwardly showed little of his suffering. Clifford vander Veere had always taken life and his duties seriously. For yearshis fear of making mistakes had been a chronic source of energyleakage-now it was a nightmare. All he did cost an exhausting price inthe effort of decision. Duty and fear had long made a battle-ground ofhis soul, and when he realized that he had broken down again from"overwork, " as they all expressed it, the depression of melancholy wasadded to the weight he so quietly bore. Yet this man of manyresponsibilities and interests had never truly worked. Since he leftcollege he had played at work. Effort had been expended never moreconscientiously. He was ever ready to give added hours of attention toproblems referred to him. His intentions were true, but he did notknow how to work. He did not know how to separate the serious from theunimportant, and he had never added the leaven of humor to the day'sduties. An unusually well-equipped man, physically and mentally, heshould have found the responsibilities of his administratorship butplay. Had he been living right, he could have multiplied hisefficiency three-fold and been the better for the larger doing. Hiswife felt he must "rest, " and so did the family doctor; he himself waspractically past arguing or disagreeing. 

But the rest-cure which the neurologist prescribed was certainlyunique. It may have been wrongly named. Mr. Van der Veere was a man ofunusually strong physique. Nature had equipped him with a muscularsystem better than nine-tenths of his fellowmen possess, but he hadnever utilized it. For many generations his forbears had wrung foodand life and, unconsciously, health from the soil. He was threegenerations from touch with mother earth, and back to the soil he wassent. He was taught to work increasing hours of common, manual labor. For weeks he did his part of the necessary drudgery of the world. Heshoveled coal, he spaded in the garden, he worked on the public roads, he transplanted trees, he hoed common weeds with a common hoe, hetramped, he toiled and he sweat. The need for physical labor was inhis blood. He needed his share of it, as do we all. And his bloodanswered exultantly, as good blood always does, to the call of honesttoil. 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, andstrength came, and with it not only a willingness but an eagernesswhich transformed that strength into productive effort. With thewillingness to do what his hands found to do came sleep, for hisnerves--bred as they had been in good stock--rejoiced when they foundhim living as they had for years begged him to live. A fifteen-year-old appetite came to the fifty-five-year-old man, and transformationwrought happy changes in his face and bearing. Indecision faded, introspection disappeared, and a decision came which was to foreverput indecision out of his way. A decision which brought the peace andcontentment to the van der Veere Fifth Avenue home, which religiousintolerance had robbed from the van der Veeres in their stone-thatchedhut in far-away Normandy, a simple decision, not requiring brilliancenor a college education, nor a professional training, nor even aloving helpmate to accomplish: "Six days shall I labor not only withmy 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 facelooking so strange, and her father looking so strange with the whitecloths about his head, and the strange faces of doctors and neighborsshe had not seen before. Then the strange stillness and the strangenew fear when her father did not move and they all were so quiet. These memories were rather blurred; she was not always sure which werememories of the events or which had grown from what she had afterwardsheard. But of the funeral she was very sure, for she could neverforget those beautiful silvered handles on the shining wooden coffin, or her resentment toward the women dressed in black who would not lether touch these--the prettiest things she had ever seen. The colts hadrun away, frightened, when an empty sap-barrel fell off the sled, andher father had been thrown against a tree and brought home with afractured skull, to live unconscious two days, and to be buried in theshiny coffin with the silver handles. 

There had been an older child who died as a baby of eight months, andso 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 thefarm, and soon her interests degenerated into a slavery to householdand farm details. 

The widow had taught school until she was nearly thirty. She was nothandsome, and the meager sentiment of her soul easily disintegratedinto morbidness. She wore black the rest of her days, and for the restof her days church services were hours of public mourning. The Gilmore"parlor" was closed after the funeral, and Hattie never got a glimpsewithin its almost gruesomely sacred walls, save as she timidly peepedin during cleaning days or, rarely, when her mother tearfully led herin and they stood before the life-size crayon portrait of thedeparted. Even in her quiet play, Hattie must keep on the other sideof the house. 

Hattie Gilmore was a sober child and lived a sober childhood. She wasnot strong; nothing had ever been done to make her so. Play andplaymates were always limited. She and her mother belonged toCoopersville's "better class, " most of the town children living belowthe bridge where the homes of the factory people crowded. Boys were"too rough, " and the other girls were "not nice enough"; so she playedmuch alone--such play as it was, with her two china dolls and the tinstove and tin dishes, which made up her toys. There was little tostimulate her imagination and nothing to develop comradeships andfriendships. For hours of her play-time she sat inertly on the frontstoop and watched the passersby, for there had never been any thoughtof training her in the art of play. Instead, she was warned to keepher dress clean and rather sharply reprimanded if, perchance, dress orapron was torn. So she stood and watched the school-play of the otherchildren, never knowing the thrills of a game of "tag, " nor thereckless 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 thelimit of Hattie's "violent exercise. " So she did not develop-how couldshe! She remained undersized. Moreover, her play-days were sadlyshortened, for they early merged into work-days. Housekeeping careswere many, as her mother planned her household. According to YorkState traditions Hattie was early taught domestic details, and forover a generation seriously, slavishly followed the routineestablished by her mother who doggedly, to the last, knew no shadow ofturning, and went to her honestly earned long rest within a week aftershe took to her bed. Hattie finished the town high school, and hadtaken her school-work so seriously that she was valedictorian--beingtoo good to soil your dress ought to bring some reward. Her teacherproudly referred to her as an example of the fine work a student coulddo who was not disturbed by outside influences. Commencement night, the same summer she was seventeen, she was almost pretty. The naturalflush of success and of public recognition was heightened by thereflected flush from the red roses she wore; and Ben Stimson, the olddoctor's son, carried the image of this, her most beautiful self, inhis big heart for many years. He was then twenty, a sophomore atcollege, and a wholesome fellow to look upon. He took Hattie home thatnight. It was early June, and they dallied on the way. She was sonearly happy that her conscience became suspicious. She felt somethingawful was going to happen!--and she almost did not care. They hadreached the front steps of her home. Ominously, silence fell. Suddenlyimpulsive Ben crushed her to him and--must it be told?--kissed her, kissed Hattie Gilmore's unsullied lips. For a moment her heart leapedalmost into wanton expression. A moment more--another kiss, and shemight have been compromised, she might have responded to the thrillinglove which was calling to her heart, but the goddess of her destinywilled otherwise. The front door opened; an angular form appeared; anacrid voice fairly curdled love-thoughts as it assailed the impetuouslover. Within a minute he was slinking away and the rescued maiden wassafe in the indignant, resenting arms of her mother--safe, but foryears to be tempted and troubled by remorse and wishes, to be hauntedby unaccepted hopes. "Ben Stimson is a free lance. He can't helpbeing, for his father's a free thinker and the boy never went toSunday-school a dozen times in his life. Let him join the church andshow folks he wants to live right; then, if he courts you regular, Iwon'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 notanswer, but kept for years. Two summers later he drove up to thehouse, looking mighty fine in the doctor's new runabout, driving thehigh-stepping bay, natty in a "brand-new" tan harness--the firstHattie had ever seen. He asked her to come with him for a drive, andagain her mother's nipping negative influenced her decision againstthe 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 Hattiethe next day. Inconstancy was not one of his weaknesses, and the veilof her Commencement beauty had clung to her through these many years, in her old lover's eyes. He was again impetuous and offended everyconservative propriety of Hattie's dutiful melancholy by asking her tomarry him--and this actually in the room where her mother's funeralwas held the day before! What could Hattie do but burst into tears andleave the room--and Ben, and the secretly cherished hopes of manyyears, and a real home with a cheerily happy husband and thosechildren which might have been hers--to leave all these and more inhomage to the sacredness of her mother's memory. 

Ten gray years dragged by. Hattie kept a few boarders so as not to bealone in the house. She would take no children. They were too noisyand kept the place in disorder. Ben's patience had finally exhausted, though he finished his medical course and had been practicing nearlyten years before he married. No other one for whom she could care evencalled. 

The farm did well. The lone woman had over $20, 000 in the bank and theproperty was worth as much more. But the brightest days were gray. Atforty-five she weighed ninety-four. She ate barely enough to keepgoing. Her digestion was wretched. Her pride and her will alone madeher able to sit through meals or through the occasional neighbors'calls. She spent hours alone in her room, dumb, dark-minded, with anunrelenting heartache and pains which racked every organ. Her sleepwas fitful and she dreamed of Ben downstairs in a casket, again andagain, until she fairly feared the night. When she took her nervemedicine, she seemed tied, bound hand and foot in that parlor ofdeath, held by a sleep of terror. Then Ben would move about in thecasket and make tortured faces at her, and some horrible times heaccused, even berated her. Finally an awful dream, two caskets, hermother in one, Ben in the other, each railing and both showering abuseupon 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 hadlived in Coopersville until she was twenty-four, giving her father anefficient, devoted daughter's care through his long, last illness. Thefamily means had always been limited, and when the earner was laidaway, she at once responded to the practical call. There were nohospitals near; so she left home and went into training in a smallinstitution on the Hudson. This is a hospital where sickness isrecognized as more than infections and broken, mangled members. Hereshe learned well the saving balm of joy in making whole wretchedbodies with their more wretched souls. For five years she had lived inthe midst of benefits brought by the inspiration of right-feelingattitudes. She knew full well the healing potency of the play-spirit. Her insight into life was already deep, her outlook upon life high andheartful. Then her mother failed; she came home and for three monthshad been beautifying the final weeks, This more than wise woman nowcame to nurse poor Hattie, came to companion her back to health, cameas a revelation to this mistaken and wearied one, of a better way. After forty-five years of the playless life of a serf to blightingseriousness, the wonder is that sourness had not entered to hopelesslycurdle 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. Shebrought some dolls. They made clothes for them. They dressed andundressed them and put them to bed. They taught them to say theirprayers and prepared their little meals, teaching them "tablemanners, " and they made them play as children should play. A sunshinescrapbook was made. It was a gorgeous conglomeration of colors, offairies and children, of birds and flowers, and of awkward, buttelling, 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 werespent in reading gloriously happy lives. Stories were told--happinessstories, and jokes and conundrums invented. One day Hattie laughedaloud, for which heartlessness her morbid conscience at once wrungforth a stream of tears; but that wondrously artful nurse held amirror before a woefully twisting face, and her tactful commentsbrought back the smiles. That laugh was the first warming beam of asummer of happiness which was to golden the autumn of a bleak lifemade blest. Then Hattie Gilmore learned to play a score of out-of-doorgames and to understand sports. She learned to see the beauties in theroadside flowers-"weeds" her mother had called most of them. Shelearned to read glorious stories in the ever-transforming clouds. Theneighbors' children were invited, timidly they came at first, laterthey were eager to come and play at "Aunt Hattie's. " Three fine, determining events happened that fall to complete the salvation ofthis woman who was so fast learning happiness-living. 

They, Jane and Hattie, friends now rather than nurse and patient, madethe daintiest possible cap and cloak for Dr. Ben's last baby, and sentit with a hearty, merry greeting. This was a peace-offering to thepast, more efficient probably than much blood which has been shed onsacrificial altars. Then they made a trip which came near being asolemn occasion, it was so portentously important. They went to thechurch-orphanage, remained several days and brought home a lustythree-year-old bunch of mischief, who was forever to wreck all thegloom-sanctity of that old home. Hereafter even the parlor of mourningwas to be assailed with shouts of glee; some things planted inHattie's flower beds were foredoomed not to come up; no longer couldthe front lawn look like a freshly swept carpet. Roy was legallyadopted by Hattie and became her proudest possession. Finally, hereyes were opened to that rarely sighted, fair vista of the sacredplay-life, the play-life so long denied this good woman. Never againwere housekeeping worries to be mentioned. They were not recognized. When things went wrong, they went merrily wrong. What could not becured was joked about. The whole business of home-making became agladsome game. 

Life for Hattie Gilmore, for Roy, for the neighbors' children, and forsome of the mothers of dull old Coopersville came to be lived as theFather intended His children to live, when one almost old woman foundthe Fountain of Youth revealed by the fine art of play. A blessedrevelation it is to every life when the joy of play robs the workinghours of their tedium and weariness. He lives as master who makes playof his work. 

CHAPTER XI

THE TANGLED SKEIN

Warm balls of comfort, a thousand sheep feed on the hillside, turningherb and green growing things into food and wool. After the shearingand the washing, ten thousand soft strands are spun into a singlethread, and each length of thread is a promise of warmth andprotection for years to come. Then the wool-white yarn is dyed incolors symbolizing the strength of the navy, the loyalty of the armyor the honor of the alma mater. Reeled into a skein, the wool is nowall but ready for the fingers of the knitter; it has but to be woundin a ball. Yet here danger lurks. An inadvertent twist or a simpletangle quickly knots the thread, unless thoughtful patience rescues. Recklessness means hopeless disarray, and the soft fluff of warmingcolor becomes unkempt disorder, a confused mass from which the threadbroken again and again is extracted. The work of careful hands hasbeen reduced to lasting defect. 

Francis Weston was reared in one of the prosperous, middle-Westerncities, on the northern bank of the Ohio. The family had succeededwell and represented large manufacturing interests. All burdens whichmoney could lift were removed, from his shoulders. He finished collegein the East and entered business, never having felt a hand's weight ofresponsibility. As vice-president and director in one of the banksorganized largely by the family's capital, he was free to follow hisimpulses. No details demanded his attention; other minds in the bankcared for these. 

Across the river a southern town nestled in cozy comfort, having forgenerations maintained a conscious superiority to its smoking, northern neighbor. Several handsome daughters of Kentucky aristocracygave tangible evidence of the tone of the community, and FrancisWeston's impulses made his trips across the river increasinglyfrequent. And, as it should have been, North and South were joinedcloser by one more golden link, when an only daughter of Kentuckywealth became Mrs. Weston. The marriage contract held but onestipulation: their home was to be in the bride's village. It looked asthough one of Love's best plans had succeeded. The husband proveddeeply devoted to his wife and the new home. The bank continued totake most excellent care of itself, and his trips north, across theriver, were but occasional. The Weston mansion and estate in every waybefitted the combined wealth of the two families, and the wife gavemuch time to making it increasingly attractive, and to the training ofher good servants. The husband read much, exercised little, and theonly reason for gentle protest from the wife was his excessivesmoking. 

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 seemedto suffer the more intensely. Mrs. Weston took her sorrow in a fineway; she seemed to realize that she, of the two, must turn away thethreat of morbidness. But the touch of Fate was not to be denied. Still, three years later, it would seem that nothing but thankfulnessand abounding joy should have filled the Weston home--a son came. Theynamed him Harold. The father's solicitude for the little fellow's lifewas as pathetic as it was abnormal. The bank was now unvisited formonths by its first vice-president. As the boy grew the father gavehim more and more of himself. He was his companion in play, andpersonally taught him, seriously taking up study after study, until atsixteen Harold was well prepared for college--scholastically prepared, we should amend--for unconsciously the father had kept him from thenormal comradeship with boys of his age. Much of excellent theory theyouth had, some wisdom beyond his years, but no knowledge of denials, no spirit of give and take, no thought of the other fellow--his rightsand wrongs. In spite of their long walks and rides on gaited Kentuckythoroughbreds, Harold was not physically robust, so it was decided tosend him to a southern college, and he went to Vanderbilt. During hissecond year the father had a long siege of typhoid, and recovery waspitiably imperfect. His mentality did not return with his bodystrength--he remained a harmless, weak-minded man. Much care wasexercised to keep the details from Harold, though both families wereunwilling to have the broken man sent to an institution, and for fouryears professional nurses attended him at home. In spite of themother's best efforts to distract and neutralize, the son could butfeel the unnaturalness of the home atmosphere and profoundly miss thedevotion of his father. Still from what little he did see of theinvalid, it was a relief when, four years later, an accident took himaway. 

Harold Weston's college life held true to his training. Quietlyfriendly, he mixed poorly; mentally well-equipped, he was an excellentstudent--brilliant in some classes, good in all. Athletics andfraternities, feeds and "femmies" dissipated none of his energies, noradded aught to the fulness of his living. He continued his collegework until he had received both Bachelor's and Master's degrees. Thespring he was twenty-three, he returned home for the summer, anattractive young man. A classmate had interested him in tennis, forwhich he showed some natural aptitude. The year's work had taxed himlightly. The skein of yarn gave promise of a perfect fabric. 

Mother and son had a happy summer. She saw to it that the home wasalive with young folks, and one week-end party followed another. Harold had decided to study law, and nothing indicated that he wouldmeet any obstacles during his course at Law School. All believed hewas sufficiently strong to take this at Yale. There were brilliantminds in his classes--he was accustomed to lead. He dropped histennis, he studied hard. In his second year he began losing weightafter the holidays, and found difficulty in getting to sleep; hisappetite became irregular, and his smoking, which had been moderatefor some years, became a dependence. His nervous system was prettywell "shot up"--it had never been case-hardened. A weight ofapprehension had become constantly present, and he let its burdendepress him miserably. One of his professors, noting his appearance, talked with him earnestly, and with lay acumen decided his digestionwas "out of fix" and told him of a "fine New York doctor. " The stomachspecialist worthily stood high in his profession. The examination waspainstaking and exhaustive; the diagnosis seemed ominous to the morbidpatient; the whole process was a revelation to him of organs andfunctions and laws of eating and drinking unheard in his years ofstudy. "Chronic intestinal indigestion with food decomposition andauto-intoxication, augmented by nicotine, " the doctor said. There hadbeen a distinct lessening of efficiency in his law-school work. Studyfor the first time in his life required wearying effort. He did notfeel himself, he was facing his first test, he was meeting his firststrain. For the first time the skein was being mussed. 

Harold Weston began reading, indiscriminately, literature on food anddigestion and diets. The doctor had given him a strict regimen. Hebegan to note minutely the foods he ordered and to question thewholesomeness of their quality and preparation. Caution and overemphasis on details of food and habits of eating rapidly developed. Later not only the food in the dish, but most unhappily the foods hehad swallowed were scrutinized by every alertness of sensation andimagination, and most damagingly did he become a victim of theunwholesome symptom-studying habit. Within two months his discerningphysician recognized that the self-interest which had started in thephysical damage of rapid eating of rich foods was developing into anobsession more detrimental than the original physical disorder, andthought it wise for him to discontinue study and return home to restfor the summer. The thread was tangled. 

The home-coming was not happy. From the first meal, the specialist'swarnings were in conflict with the home diet, and resentments were notwithheld from the good old dishes which had for a generation bedeckedthe home table. The delicacy instinctive to the family and to hisearlier life was cast aside, and the subjects of food and itsdigestion, of food-poisoning and its consequences, made unpleasantevery meal. Innocently and seriously the mother pointed to her goodhealth and to rugged ancestors who had lived long and hale, unconsciously superior to food and drink. He brooked none of hersuggestions, and finally when she honestly could not see it all hisway, in the heat of his intensity he accused her of being to blame forall his trouble: she had fed him wrong from the first; she had fed hisfather wrong; the New York doctor had told him that certain mentaldiseases could be caused by food-poisoning, and his father would nothave been a mental wreck, nor his own career cut short, had she onlyknown what wives and mothers of this generation should know, and set atable which was not a laboratory of poison. These ideas, onceaccepted, never left him. They formed a theme which, after findingexpression, recurred with ominously increasing frequency. A yearbefore, Harold Weston was a kindly fellow, almost retiring, but with apeculiar lighting of his face in response which endeared him tofeminine hearts. On a variety of subjects he was well-informed, hisprofessors bespoke for him a high and honorable standing in thejudiciary, but, from the mass of this fine mind's possibilities, asecond wretched choice was now made. "Father's typhoid affected hismind, his brain must have been defective; my heredity is imperfect; myfirst illness damages my class work. I can never go on in myprofession, there is no future for me but suffering. " From thiswrecking thought it was an easy step to condemnation of his father forhis fatherhood, which, with his near-enmity toward his mother for her"criminal ignorance" in rearing him, introduced a sordidlydemoralizing element into his mind which forever viciously tincturedmemories and relations which should have been his sacred helpers. Thenormal mind can select well its world--miserably his mind lived withthese dregs of his own choice. The power of normal selection will, inthe best mind, be gradually lost through habitual surrender to themorbid. 

For the next year he lived unhappily in a home which he made unhappy. Naturally thoughtful, he daily took long walks, brooding over hiswrongs--walks which brought him little benefit physically, as heconsidered himself unable to put into them sufficient effort to wringperspiration from his brow or toxins from his muscles. Falseinterpretation of his own symptoms increased with the abnormalcloseness of his scrutiny of them. His superficial knowledge heaccepted as final. Ignorant of the limitations of heredity, will andjudgment became subservient to pessimism, and the days marked agradual, deepening depression. The skein was asnarl. 

A relative physician responded to the mother's call of distress andspent a week in the home, then took Harold under his personal care toa series of specialists--but not stomach specialists. Serioustreatment was carried out at home with a young physician as companion. Two institutions offered the best help of their elaborate equipmentsand perfected methods. Three years of badly discounted usefulnesspassed. Long since had any call of responsibility ceased to elicitresponse. Toward the end of this time he seemed better, and wasspending the summer at a health-resort, living a relatively normallife. Fate then seemed to smile--dainty fingers appeared from thenowhere, which promised gently, patiently, surely to loosen eachtangled snarl. 

Eva Worth was another only child of affluence. She, too, wasrecuperating, spending the summer at the same resort as Harold. "Overwork at college, " it was said. Petite of person, pleasing inmanner, sweetly spoiled, with sympathies quickly born but usuallydisplaced by fresher interests, she was bright and responsive in mind, and her attraction to Harold Weston gave promise of being the touchneeded to complete his restoration. Providence only knows thepossibilities latent in a union of these poor children of wealth. Forhim there was an unquestioned awakening. The somber clouds of hismoods seemed destined to be transformed into delicate pastels by thepromises of love. It was more than an infatuation for them both, andan understanding which was virtually an engagement left them happyeven in their parting. But happiness was not a word for HaroldWeston's conjuring. Throughout the weeks of his association with thisfair girl, the first woman for whom he had ever cared, the thought hadrepeatedly come that he owed her a full and explicit explanation ofhis illness and of his "defective heredity. " At home where thebrooding habit had grown strong and fixed, this idea became soinsistent, within two weeks, that he relieved the tension of itsdemands by a long letter of details, which even to the sympathetic earof love were more than disquieting. The letter ended with a questionof her willingness to indicate a final decision in her response. Theappeal 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 fineliterature, a college education, her own poor little heart, all failedto bespeak for her wisdom in this crisis. An impulsive, almostresentful refusal was sent. Second thoughts held more wisdom, forwoman's pity was now wisdom, so another day saw another letter, onewith a few saving words of hope. The first reply was handed to Haroldafter luncheon. Quietly he left the house, apparently for one of hisafternoon walks. By morning he had not returned and a general alarmwent out. Some days later two boys, fishing in the river from an oldlog, saw a cap in an eddy. No more has been seen or heard of HaroldWeston. A hasty hand, a hasty touch had broken the thread. 

Two women were left to suffer. The elder, haunted by the re-echoingsof an only son's condemnation, lives out her years in a lonelinesswhich will not break, harrowed by questions of the wisdom of hermother-love, the best she had to give. Some mother's son she may yethelp save, for she knows the vital error which shielded and guardedher boy till he reached his majority, never having met trial, hopelessly untrained in coping with adversity. The younger, sobered bythe voice of self-accusation, ever feels the weight of theconsciousness of a grave duty slighted; she was made more wise in aday of deep reality than by twenty years of conventional training. Tested again she would give as she has never known giving, give thatshe might protect. 

CHAPTER XII

THE TROUBLED SEA

A young woman, of rather striking appearance attired in her streetclothing, is standing beside her dresser. She has just returned fromtown. She is of medium height, trim of figure, weighing about onehundred and forty, with skin of a soft ivory tint and cheeks showing afaint flush of health--or of excitement. Her dark hair wavesgracefully 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 onlyapparent defect in this, externally attractive, young woman. She hasjust broken the seal of a heavy vellum envelope addressed in a strangefeminine hand. It is an engraved announcement which reads:

"Mrs. Pinkney Rogers announces the marriage of her daughter, PearlMay, to Mr. Lee Burnham"--

She never read the rest. She never saw the--"on Tuesday, May thirtiethnineteen hundred and one. At Home, Rome, Georgia, after July fifth. "Her sister, Addie, coming up the stairs, thought she heard a moan andhurried in to find Stella lying in a crumpled heap. Addie's quick eyenoticed the announcement. She read it all, and destroyed it, andthrough the years it was never mentioned by either of them. She, alone, knew its relation to her sister's collapse, but with proverbialsouthern pride never voiced her opinion of the tragic cause of herolder sister's years of nervous ill-health. 

Mr. Beckman, Stella's father, was at this time about fifty-five. Hewas the brunette parent from whom many of her more attractive physicalqualities had been inherited. He was proprietor of the best men'sfurnishing store of the county's metropolis. His business wasmoderately successful, built up, he felt, entirely through years ofhis personal thought and attention, and it was practically his onlyinterest. Even his interesting family was a matter of course--thoughthe amount of the day's sales never became so. Mr. Beckman had asingle diversion. The store closed at ten o'clock Saturday nights;between twelve and one its proprietor would reach home in an exaltedstate, and for two hours poor Mrs. Beckman would hear his plans fordeveloping the biggest gent's clothing-business in the state, forbecoming a merchant-prince, emphasized with many a hearty slap on herback. This weekly relaxation was always followed by a miserable Sundaymorning, invariably referred to by every member of the family as"another of Papa's sick headaches. " Mrs. Beckman never lisped thedetails of those unhappy Saturday nights, and the loyal deception wasso well carried out, with such devoted attention and nursing, that byearly afternoon, Sunday, the invalid was quite restored and anypossible self-reproach had been melted away. Headaches of the realkind did come later, and, as his habits changed not, the Brights whichfirst appeared at fifty-eight progressed without interruption to hisdeath at sixty. 

Mrs. Beckman was a blonde, but for many years had been a badly fadedone. She was as singleminded in regard to her household as her husbandto his store. Neither had developed more than family and localinterests. She was the same age as her husband and had, withoutquestion, worked faithfully, long hours, through the long years, inhomage to her sense of housekeeping duties. The coming of thechildren, only, from time to time, kept her away from kitchen andparlor for a few weeks. She had been to Atlanta but once during thelast ten years, not that Mr. Beckman willed it so--she could have hadvacations 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 muchto do" at home. The habit of industry can become as inveterate ashabits of pleasure. 

The two Beckman boys had the virtues of both father and mother. Theyfinished at the city high school, and at once went to work in thestore with such earnestness of purpose that they were quite preparedto conduct the business, even better than the father had done, when hebecame incapacitated. 

We met the sister, Addie, in Stella's room and realized from herdiscretion, manifested under stress, that she possessed elements ofcharacter. She was a clear-skinned, high-strung blonde--thin-skinnedtoo, probably, for from childhood her hands rebelled at householdduties. The family thrift was hers, however, and from the limitedopportunities of the home town, she prepared herself for, and filledwell, for years, a position with a successful law firm. She latermarried the senior member--a widower. His children and her high-strungthin-skinnedness and lack of domestic propensities have not made heras successful a home-builder as she was a stenographer. 

Stella Beckman's early life was deeply influenced by many of thesurroundings which we have glimpsed. Hers was not a home of fineideals. Much that was common was always present. The table-talk wasalmost competitive in nature, as, with the possible exception of themother, each one used "I" almost insistently, as a text for converse, the three times a day they sat together. Even mutual interests werelargely obscured, much of the time, by personal ones, barring only thesubject of sickness. All forms of illness were themes commandinginstant and absorbing attention. Inordinate anxiety was felt by allfor the ills of the one; and for days the "I" would be forgotten ifany member of the home-circle was "sick. " And the concerns of thepatient, whether suffering from a cold, sore eyes, a sprained ankle, or "had her tonsils out, " were discussed with minuteness of detailworthy an International Conference. How the patient slept, what thedoctor said, the effect of the new medicine, how the heart wasstanding the strain, what the visiting neighbors thought of the case, in fact the whole subject of sickness held a morbid interest for eachmember of the family. Sickness, no matter how slight, was with theBeckmans ever an excuse for changing any or all plans. We might speakof the discussion of illness as the Beckman family avocation. 

Stella was a bright child, who, wisely directed and influenced, wouldhave taken a good education. She could have developed into aparticularly pleasing, capable, useful, possibly forceful woman. Butthe emotional Stella was over-developed, until it obstructed thegrowth of the reasoning Stella. Still we should call her a normalsmall-town child, certainly until her last year in grammar-school. Shehad some difficulty with her studies that spring because of her eyes. Her lenses, fitted in Atlanta, seemed to make them worse. It was onlyafter she went to a noted specialist in Charleston that she wasrelieved. It is significant that later these expensively obtainedglasses were discarded as "too much trouble. "

The summer Stella was thirteen, Grandmother Beckman came to spend herlast days in her son's home. The granddaughter had been named for her, and Grandmother was frail and old and needed attention. Grandmotheralso had some means. For over a year the young girl gave much of hertime to the old lady, and for over a year she was able to lead theBeckman table-talk with her wealth of details about Grandma'ssickness. Stella's care of her charge was excellent, entirely lackingin any selfish element. Death hesitated, when he finally called, andfor nearly a week the dying woman lay unconscious. These "days ofstrain" and the death and funeral were, always after, mentioned byStella and her people as her "first shock. " For a time she was sonervous and restless and her sleep so disturbed that the doctor gaveher hypnotics and advised her being sent away. She went to Atlanta fortwo months, boarding in the home of a Methodist minister, who someyears before had been stationed in Rome. It was Stella's firstexperience in a religious home. She had never been accustomed tohearing the "blessing" said, and food referred to as "God-given"seemed, at first, quite too sacred to swallow. And the effect ofmorning worship--the seriously read Bible chapter, the earnest prayer, with the entire family kneeling--affected her profoundly, and gave tothis godly home a sanctity which, at susceptible not-yet-fifteen, awakened emotions so powerful that for days she walked as one in adream, one attracted by some wonderful vision which was drawing her, unresisting, into its very self. Each day was a step closer, and atprayer-meeting the Wednesday night before she returned home, sheannounced her conversion, with an intensity of earnestness which couldbut impress every hearer. 

Stella Beckman went back to Rome filled with a zeal for the newreligious life which commanded the respect of even her religiouslycareless 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 fouryears of remarkable devotion. Church interests were first, and oneSunday the pastor publicly announced that for the twelve months pastStella Beckman had not missed a single service in any branch of thechurch's activities. She taught a Sunday-school class. She sang in thechoir. She was president of the Epworth League, and not only attended, but always "testified" at mid-week prayer-meeting. Her churchinterests took all her time. The foreign-missionary cause later laid agripping hold upon her, and arrangements were made, four years aftershe went into the church, for her to go to a Missionary Training-School. 

Somehow things went wrong here. She had expected an almost sanctifiedatmosphere. She was accustomed to being regarded as essentiallydevout, but there was a sense of order in the school which she feltwas mechanical, class-room work seemed to be counted as important asreligious services, and her fervidly expressed religious experiencesappeared to reflect chill rather than the accustomed warmth of thehome prayer-meetings. Moreover, real lessons were assigned which noamount of religious feeling or no intensity of personal praying madeeasy. She hadn't studied for years; in fact, she had never learned todo intellectual work studiously. And even these good religiousteachers did not hesitate to demand accurate recitations. She had beenaccustomed for years to have preference shown, and here she wastreated only as one of many, and, humiliatingly, as one who wasfailing to maintain the standards of the many. She fell behind in thetwo most important studies, nor was her classwork in general good. Whether she would have later proven capable of getting down to rockbottom and meeting the demands of reason on a rational basis, wecannot say, for the family hobby abruptly terminated her missionarycareer. "Mother dangerously sick with inflammatory rheumatism. Come atonce, " the telegram said--and she hastily returned home to be metwith, what her history records as, "my second shock. " Her motherWAS sick, and truly and genuinely suffering. The house was indisorder. Weeks followed in which Stella's best strength was needed. Her mother slowly mended, but never regained her old activity. Thedoctor said a heart-valve was damaged, and the family thereafter werenever quite certain when the sudden end would come--an uncertaintywhich was proven legitimate ten years later, when she died, almostsuddenly. Stella had met shock number two very well. The home-love andwelcome and the warmth of feeling she experienced in the home-churchwere a never-admitted relief from the rigid exactions of the training-school life, and did much to neutralize, for the time, her anxietyabout her mother and the "strain of her care. " It was a family whichever advertised home-devotion, and so this call of home illnesscompletely obscured all other plans for three years. But homeresponsibilities quite wrecked her church-going record. In fact, itwas unkindly whispered that Stella was "backsliding. " And these samewhispers found audible expression the summer she was twenty-two, whenattractive Lee Burnham, the judge's son, spent his summer vacation athome, and "took her buggy-riding every Sunday evening for over twomonths. "

Lee was only twenty-one, but his was a very romantic twenty-one, andhe filled Stella's ears with so many sweet nothings that she no longerheeded the call of duty. And why shouldn't she be in love and have alover? Had she not already given the best years of her youth toothers? Had she not waited without a thought of rebellion for thecoming of the right one? And Love, and Love's mysterious touch, wrought fantastic changes in Stella Beckman's affairs. She and Leeread poetry. She had never known how beautiful poetry was nor how muchof it there was to read. He knew the good novels and sent her all thathe himself read, and these were plenty! Then, when he was away, hewrote 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; thepresent was too full. Home duties and church interests flagged badlyduring these two years, and the summer she was twenty-four, it becametown talk that this young couple would marry. The Beckmans were verywilling. But one day the judge called Lee into his office and wantedto know what these "doings" all meant, asking him if he was "going tomarry his mother, " and making some rather uncomplimentary Beckman-Burnham comparisons. Lee rather sheepishly told his father there wasnothing to worry about. He had much respect, possibly awe, for the oldgentleman. The next week Lee left for his final year in law-school. His letters to Stella continued, though he plead his studies as anexcuse for their diminished frequency. He did not come home thatspring, at Easter. "Work, " he wrote Stella. Nor was he ever square tothis poor girl, for he never mentioned his relations with Miss PearlMay Rogers. And "shock number three" came, as unhappy Stella read theannouncement 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 becamea 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 shewould be apparently speechless. Somebody--not the doctors--reportedthat Stella Beckman had typho-malaria. Abnormal sensitiveness tosurroundings, to sounds, sights and smells, especially a dread ofunpleasant news, were to complicate her living for years to come. Forthe remainder of her life she was to confound sensations normal toemotional reactions with sensations accompanying physical diseases;and sensations came and went in her now tense emotional nature liketrooping clouds on a stormy day. Stella's illness was so prostratingthat her weakened mother and busy sister could not care for heradequately, and an aunt came to help. Recovery was slow and imperfect;she remained a semi-invalid for two and a half years. Physicaldiscomforts were so constant that a surgeon was finally consulted whodid an exploratory operation and removed some unnecessary anatomy. This man's personality was strong, his desire to help, genuine, and hehad considerable insight into the emotional illness of his patient. The influence of the operation, with the surgeon's encouragement andthe atmosphere of confidence pervading the excellent, small surgicalhospital, combined to make Stella very much better for the time. Butwithin less than three years, her father died. She calls this "thefourth 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 stepsand, apparently, but bruised her knee. Her doctor nor the X-ray coulddiscover more serious damage. Still, walking was practicallydiscontinued, as she could not step without pain. At last, almost indesperation, her brother took her to a hospital noted for its successin reconstructing nervous invalids. At this time she weighed but onehundred and four, and the list of her symptoms seemed unending. Adesire to be helped, however, was discerned and with rest-treatmentshe gained rapidly in weight, appetite returned, digestivedisturbances disappeared, and massage, or a new idea, fully restoredher walking powers. She became eager for the more important half ofher treatment--the out-of-door work-cure. During these weeks she hadcertainly been given much physical and mental help. Expert andspecialized counsel and nursing had been hers. 

At the end of five months Stella returned to Georgia--restored--ahealth enthusiast. It now became her joy, in and out of season, whenever she could secure hearers, to relate the details of herillness and the miracle of her restoration. The methods of the specialhospital that wrought such wonders for her were reiterated in detail, and for years she made herself thoroughly wearisome by her talk ofdiet and exercise, special bathing, out-of-door work and prescribedhabits. She kept herself constantly conspicuous in her efforts toreform others to her new ways of living. For over four years, shesedulously adhered to the routine outlined by the hospital, with suchdevotion to, and augmentation of, details that she had little time forchurch and practically no time for household affairs. As had been herhabit 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 hermother's rather sudden death proved the shock which was to relieve herfrom the overenthusiastic slavery to an impracticable routine. 

Stella Beckman at forty-five is sadly less fine and worthy than theStella Beckman of eighteen. Religion, Love and Science have eachentered her life deeply to enrich it, but all of these built upon thesands, the shifting sands of an emotional nature which had never laidthe granite foundation of reason. Since the mother's death, the logicof her feelings has become more and more crippled by false valuations. She lives at home keeping house for the boys, recounting each mealtimethe endless list of her feelings; bringing herself, her sickness, herhospital experiences wearisomely into the conversation with eachcaller. The emotional stability and the will to persevere even atconsiderable cost, which marked youth, are gone. At forty-five herlife is objectlessly spasmodic, the old family-habit of talking ofself and the family-fetish of discussing sickness have honeycombed hercharacter and made her hopelessly tiresome. And her feeling-life is asrestless as a troubled sea. 

CHAPTER XIII

WILLING ILLNESS

Mr. Harrison Orr lived till he was twenty-five in Indianapolis, thetown of his birth, excepting the years spent in Chicago pursuing hisliterary and law courses. He inherited a small fortune and, after twoyears 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 inthe use of wines and cordials, and young Orr himself always remained a"good fellow, " just the kind of a man to attract a vivacious, sociallyproud daughter of the South. He was thirty-five when he married--accounted an age of discretion. His experience with womankind was soample that he should have made no mistake in his final, irrevocablechoice, and, be it said to his honor, no one, not even the wifeherself, ever knew by word or act of his, to the contrary. He and hisMississippi bride spent thirty years in apparent domestictranquillity, until he died at sixty-five from a heart which refusedlonger to have its claims for purposeful living eternally answered bygin 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 anonly child, was reared to dominate her surroundings, while her parentsmade particular effort that she might shine socially. Parts of manyyears she lived in Washington in the home of a political relative, andattended a select girls' school. After her debut she spent the socialwinters at the Capitol where social niceties were developed with muchattention to detail, and at home and while in Washington she wasgratifyingly popular. "A brilliant conversationalist, " she had heardherself called when fifteen, and the art of conversation, hitherto farfrom neglected, became by choice and practice her forte. Brilliancy inspeech ever remained her only seriously attempted accomplishment. Clever of speech, from childhood, she had early learned to utilizethis ability to attain any desired end. And talk she could, and talkshe did, and as she grew older, by sheer talking she domineered everysituation. It was her opinion when she married that at any time, withany listener, she could talk cleverly on any subject. As the yearspassed, during which she added little to her asset of knowledge, thisart of fine speech gradually, but relentlessly, degenerated, and stepby step she slipped down the paths of delicacy and fineness, throughthe selfishness of her insistent talkativeness. Harrison Orr neverintimated that his evenings at home were hours of boredom, but inlater years spent much time in the comparative quiet of his club. Fewintellects can be so amply stored as to continue brilliant throughdecades of much speaking, and the sparkle of Mrs. Orr's conversationwas gradually shrouded in the weariness of what a blunt neighbortermed her "inveterate gabble. " As it must be, this woman ofexceptional opportunities early lost true sensitiveness, and, both asguest and hostess, ignored the offense of inconsiderate and self-seeking interruptions. She broke into the speech of others with crudeabandon. The itch to lead and preempt the conversation becameuncontrollable. Finer natures thrown with her could but tolerate her"naive" discourtesy, while dependents had to dumbly endure. Mrs. Orrbut stands as a type illustrating far too many mortally wearisome, social pretenders, prominent only through the tireless tiresomeness oftheir much speaking. 

The wreckage which may follow a single unthought crudity, in a homeotherwise exceptional, is signally illustrated in the life of Mrs. Orr's only child, Hortense, born two years after their marriage. Fromthe first she was sensitive and high-strung, nervously damagedprobably in her early years by her mother's restless, unwise overcare. When Hortense was five she was sharply ill for several weeks withscarlatina. During these days she was isolated with Mrs. Place, hernurse, in a wing of the home. As fortune would have it, Mrs. Place wasthe daughter of a rural English clergyman. After the death of herhusband, who left her limited in means, she came to America, where shetrained. Her wholesome influence over Hortense, her general demeanorin the home, and her many excellent qualifications as nurse and womanattracted Mr. Orr's discerning attention, and he induced her to remainas governess to his daughter. Mrs. Place proved a most excellentaddition to the Orr household. Always deferential, she was neverservile; always reserved, she ever faced duties large and small, promptly, quietly and efficiently. Never, through her nearly ten yearsas daily companion of Hortense, did her speech or conduct betokenaught but refinement. More and more Hortense retreated to herwholesome companionship in face of the assaults of her mother's tryingvolubility. In many ways this most unusual nurse protected her chargefrom the greater damage of poor mothering than actually occurred. Thedifferences between these two women were reflected in the sensitivechild's life. Unconsciously at first, later in certain details, ultimately without reserve, she approved the standards of the one andrepudiated those of the other. In contrast to her mother she grew intoan abnormal reserve. 

Hortense never attended the public schools but was regularly taught byMrs. Place until she was fifteen, when she went East and entered hermother's old school, in Washington. The years of her careful tutoringhad failed to accustom her to competition of any kind, and this firstyear of school work was taxing and but indifferently successful. During the spring term she had measles which left her with a hackingcough, and she did not regain her lost weight. The school-doctor senther home, "for the southern climate, " where she remained for a year, rather frail and the object of much detailed, maternal solicitude. Itwas probably this same solicitude which finally became so wearyingthat she returned to school for relief. Hortense was now a yearbehind, but resented the rather superior airs of some of her oldclassmates so effectively that she got down to business, made up herback work, and graduated reasonably well up in her entrance class. Oflight build, and always frail in appearance, she did commendable workin school athletics. She took private instruction in hockey, for shewas determined "to make the team, " and her success in accomplishingthis is significant of her ability to do, when she willed. At one ofthe later inter-scholastic games she met a handsome, manly, GeorgeWashington University student. She was nineteen, he twenty-three, andon his commencement day he honored her by offering his hand. Hersouthern love was aglow. Her lover was practically making his own way, but his prospects were excellent, his character superior, and theyboth cared very much. 

Unhappily, Mrs. Place had returned to England, or Hortense would haveconfided in her and some futures might have been different. But thewarmth of the new love seemed at the time to dissipate the chillinesstoward her mother, which, unexpressed to herself, had through theyears been increasing in the daughter's heart. So she wrote a longletter full of the beautiful story of the growing happiness, withpages of fervid descriptions of a certain fine young fellow, andimportuned her mother to come East at once and to bring her blessing. No such filial warmth had Mrs. Orr ever before known. No suchopportunity for a beneficent expression of the high privilege ofmotherhood had ever been entrusted to her. She responded withouthesitation. She did not even wait to read their daughter's letter toher husband. When she reached Washington she summoned the young suitorto her hotel, and succeeded in one masterful quarter of an hour inarousing his violent dislike and lasting contempt. Through diplomacyshe got Hortense on the Memphis-bound train. She was determined thather "darling child" should never marry beneath her station, and shetalked and talked, drowning her daughter's protests, appeals andobjections, in her merciless flow of words. Night after night shewould stay with her till after twelve, leaving the poor girl tense, distracted and sleepless. And the habit of sleeplessness developed andwith it a painfully abnormal sensitiveness to noises. The cruellydisappointed girl rapidly went to pieces. She craved a woman'ssympathy, she longed for a mother's comprehending love, but she sooncame to dread even her mother's presence, and formed the habit ofburying her ears in the pillows to shut out the sound of that voicewhich could have meant the sweetest music of all, yet which to herdistraught 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 toforget it all in weeks of concerts and theaters in New York. But herinability to sleep was but temporarily relieved, while her antagonismto noises increased. She was then in Philadelphia for six months underthe care of a noted neurologist, where she slowly gained considerably, physically, and was sufficiently well to spend a short, social "comingout season" with her parents. Yet the "at homes" and tea-parties andfunctions in which her mother reveled, never more than superficiallyinterested her. 

Rather strangely, father and daughter had not been as close as theirsimilar natures and needs would suggest. While Mrs. Orr may not havebeen jealous, she preempted her husband's home hours mercilessly; butin her father's death Hortense came to know that one of the few propsof her stability had been removed. Moreover, her mother's incessantreiteration of her loneliness and sorrow, and the endless discussionof the details of her depressing widow's weeds, and of her taxing, exhausting widow's responsibilities, brought on a return of the oldsymptoms, with the antipathy to noises even intensified. We may thinkof Hortense Orr as inherently weak. This is not so. Save as influencedin her girlhood by Mrs. Place, and while stimulated during her lastthree years at school by personal ambition, she had known no dutiesnor responsibilities. There had never been any necessity for specificeffort or sacrifice. After her great disappointment she hadsurrendered to depression of spirit, and she reacted in the same wayafter her father's death. And this surrender was early followed byweakness of her disused body. She also surrendered to the weakness ofself-pity, that craven mocker of self-respect. She was not a will-lessgirl, but life had brought her small chance to develop that will whichmasters, while wilfulness, that will which demands selfishly for self, grew out of the soil so largely of her mother's preparing. Thiswilfulness, first asserted in small things, grew and grew. 

The family doctor saw more than tongue and liver and thin blood andbodily weakness. He realized the helplessness of Hortense in findingher stronger self in the home atmosphere, and advised a year inEurope--to get away from her sorrow, he said, to get away from hermother's wearying discussion of details, he knew. For nearly a yearshe was treated in Germany at different cures without benefit. It wasalways the "noise" that kept her from sleeping. It was the "noise"which she had learned to hate and to revile. To get away from noisebecame 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 aservant she remained three years. For the first months she seemedhappier, and took some interest in the inspiring views and rich floraof her surroundings. But the night did not bring the silence shewilled. She sensed the heavy breathing of her nurse, the movements ofthe servant as she turned in her bed, and sometimes even snored, sheknew it! She would spend hours of strained, sleepless attention, alertto detect another instance of the heartless repetition of thisincriminating sound. She must be alone. She feared nothing so much asthe hated sounds of human activity. So a one-room shack was built ahundred yards away from her companions, in the deeper solitude of theforest. Here she slept alone, month after month. But the winters, evenin the Tyrolean foot-hills, are severe at times, and the deadlymonotony of this useless life, and the improvement which she "knew"would come with the perfection of her sleeping arrangements, combinedto decide her to return home, though still an enemy to the unbearablesounds of the night. Twenty-eight years she had lived with no trueinterest in life; neither home, attractions in New York or in Europe, nor treatment offered by competent and kind specialists had influencedher one thought away from her willingness to be ill. The nurse, whohad buried herself so long with this poor girl in Europe, was quiteappalled at Mrs. Orr's inconsideration of her daughter's "sensitive, nervous state. " Nurse and mother soon had words; nurse and daughterleft promptly for the East, where two hours from New York they spentanother 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. Walterand Hortense met in the quiet, woodland paths. It is difficult to knowjust what the mutual attractions were. She had received manyadvantages which had not been his, still life was certainly a lonelything for her. He was her first real interest since she had leftWashington, and love reawakened and blew into life the embers shethought were gray-cold. It was never to be the flaming love-fire often years before, but it was bright enough to decide her to marry, which she did without writing any letter of confidence to herunsuspecting mother. 

Mr. Orr had left the property in his wife's control, and she had beenunquestionably most generous in supplying her daughter with funds. When she received the brief note telling of the little wedding andinviting her to meet them in Washington, on their simple wedding-trip, she found herself for the first time in her life--speechless! Therewere no words to express this "outrage. " The disability was short-lived, but her letter to the bridal couple was shorter. They had takenthings into their own hands; they had ignored her who had every rightto be at least advised, and they could take care of themselves. Hardlyhad this letter been mailed when she consulted her attorney as to waysand means to annul this "crazy marriage. "

The young couple had more pride than dollars, and bravely startedhouse-keeping in a small flat. Few had been more inadequately trainedfor household duties than this self-pampered woman who pluckily atfirst, then grimly, went to the limit of her poorly developed strengthin an effort to make homelike their few, plain rooms, and to preparetheir unattractive meals. Still it all might have worked out had thenoises of the street not attained an ascendancy. In less than fourmonths the youthful husband, through a sense of duty, wrote the motherdetails of his bride's "precarious condition. " Mrs. Orr promptly sentmoney, and the mother in her soon brought her to them in person. Within a few days she recognized the helpless husband's honesty andpatience, and took them both to Memphis, providing a furnished flatand a good servant. The incompetent wife's short experience inhousehold responsibilities, for which she was so utterly unprepared, made sickness a most welcome haven of refuge, and for months she didnothing but war with the noises of the quiet suburb. Then their babycame, but with it slight evidence of young mother love. She seemedalmost indifferent to her little one. At rare times, only, would sherespond to her first-born and to her husband. The doctor said therewas no reason why she did not regain strength, that she could if shewould, that it was not a question of physical frailty but it wasdecidedly a case of willing to have the easiest way. "Something has tobe done, " he said at last, and he strongly advised that she be sent toa hospital where she would be the object of benevolent despotism. Sheconstantly complained of her oversensitive hearing, and had certainlydeveloped all the arts of the invalid. She made no objection to theproposed plan. She did not know what was in store for her, outside ofthe mentioned "rest-cure. " Full authority was given the institutionofficials to use any possible helpful means to stimulate her recovery. In all this the family physician counseled wisely and withdiscernment. At the hospital Hortense Douglas was told that she was toremain until she was well, that it was not a question of duration oftreatment, but of her condition, which would determine the date of herreturn to her home, husband, and little one. The relationship betweenher years of illness and her unhappy disappointment, between herantagonism to night sounds and her intolerant impatience with hermother, was carefully explained. The ideal of making friends withthese 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 wouldbe carefully watched and would be treated at once as irresponsiblewhen she proved to be so. Step by step she was forced to health, shewas compelled to live rationally. Scientific feeding produced rapidimprovement in her nutrition, she gained strength by the use of foodswhich she had never liked, had never taken and could "not take. " Inevery way she improved in spite of herself. She often said she couldnot stand the treatment. But cooperation relentlessly proved morepleasant than rebellion. At the end of five months she was sleepingnight after night the deep sleep honestly earned by thorough physicalweariness, a sleep which nervous tire and worrying apprehension cannever know. She could get no satisfaction as to when she would beallowed 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 thatshe was well. 

Wealth, medical experts, years in Europe, society, the pleasures ofseasons in New York, a husband's love, motherhood had failed to findhealth for this wilful woman. Not until her illness was made moreuncomfortable than the legitimate duties of health, not until sherecognized it was normal living at home or life in that "awfulhospital, " 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 theavenue leading from Buffalo to Niagara Falls. Three generations haveadded to its beauty and appointments. A generation ago it stood, imposing, and if fault could be found, it was its self-consciousnessof architectural excellence. Every continent had contributed to itsfurnishings, and some of its servants, too, were trained importations. In the middle eighties, this noble pile was the home of an invalid, atwelve-year-old boy, a housekeeping aunt, and nurses, valets, maids, butlers, cooks, and coachmen. The invalid master of the house wasforty-eight. As he leaned on the mantel looking out across the lawn, you felt the presence of a massive, powerful physique, but as heslowly turned to greet you, you fairly caught your breath from theintensity of the shock. The cheeks were hollow; the lips were everparted to make more easy the simple act of breathing, the pallor ofthe face was more than that of mere weakness--there was a yellowishhue of both skin and eye-whites. The shrunken claw-like hands thatoffered greeting, the shrunken thighs, the increased girth of bodywhich had so deceived your first glance, all bespoke mortal illness toeven the untrained eye--advanced cirrhosis of the liver, to theprofessional scrutiny. And he was to be the fourth, in a line offinancially successful Kents, to die untimely from mere eating anddrinking. You would not have stayed long with this sick man. Only alarge love or a large salary could have made the atmosphere of hispresence endurable, for he was the essence of impatience, thequintessence of wilfulness. The sumptuousness of his surroundings, thepunctilious devotion of his servants, the deferential respect shownhim in high financial circles, books, people, memories, all failedever 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 anaunt who were respectively paid and commanded to keep him entertainedand contented, and to see that he did not long disturb the invalid. That last year was one of most disorderly invalidism--not disorder ofa boisterous, riotous kind, but an unmitigated rebellion to doctors'orders and advice, to the suggestions of friends, to the urgings andpleadings of nurses and "Aunt Emma. " There were no voluble explosions;the impatience was not of the noisy kind--he had too much characterfor that, but the stream of thought was turgid and sulphurous. Jan, the valet, never argued, urged, suggested--by no little foreign shrugof his shoulders did he even hint that the master's way was notentirely right--and politic, faithful Jan stood next to Francis in hisgood graces; in fact, he was more acceptable as a companion. The onlyreason the sick man gave for his indifference to professional advicewas that he was the third generation to go this way--and this way hewent. 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 andgrandfather had lived "pretty high. " In truth, had the doctors dared, "alcoholic, " as an adjective, would have appeared in both their deathcertificates; and the worm must have been in the bud, for she diedsuddenly at twenty-five, following a short, apparently inadequateillness. Thus, three-year-old Francis was left to a busy father'scare, a maiden aunt's theoretical incompetence, and to theministrations of a series of governesses who remained so long as theypleased their youthful lord. The undisciplined father's idea of goodtimes, for both himself and his son, was based upon having what youwant right now, and why not?--with unlimited gold, with its seeminglyunlimited buying power. Dear Auntie, poor thing! knew no force higherthan "Now, Francis, I wouldn't, " or "Please don't, " or on very extremeoccasions, "I shall certainly tell your father"--as utterlyineffective in introducing one slightest gleam of the desirability andpotency of unselfishness into this boy's mind, as was the graciousservility of the servants. 

Francis was large for his age, unusually active and remarkably directmentally, therefore little adjustment was needed as he entered thatusually leveling community--boy-school-life. He was generous and good-hearted to a lovable degree and with such qualities and advantages heearly became, and remained, leader in his crowd. After his father died, the boy, not unnaturally, placed him--the only one whose will he hadever had to respect--high in his reverence. The father had been apowerful 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, hadwon more than state-wide prominence, and had left many influentialfriends who spoke of him in highest respect. It was to be expected thatthe 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" isour tale. 

"Rare, juicy tenderloin steaks go to muscle. You don't need muchelse, and we didn't get much else at the training-table, " the fatherused to say, and they unquestionably formed the bulk of the boy'snaturally fine physique, for he developed in spite of much physicalmisuse into a two-hundred-pound six-footer. Francis began smoking attwelve. On his tenth birthday a small wine glass had been filled forhim and thereafter he always had wine at dinner, and he liked it--notonly the effects but the taste. The desire was in his blood--Beforehe was eighteen he was brought home intoxicated and unconscious. Nolaw had ever entered into his training which suggested any form ofself-control. The principles of self-mastery were unthought; they hadbeen untaught. "Eat, drink and be merry" might express the sum of hisideals. And so, physically or mentally, no thought of restraintentered his youthful philosophy. There was nothing vicious, no strainof meanness, much generosity; naturally kindly and practically devoidof any spirit of contention, and peculiarly free from any touch ofthe disagreeable, he was blessed with a spirit of good fellowship. Henever questioned the rights of his friends to do as they pleased, andthey quite wisely avoided questioning his right to do likewise; so, desire was untrammeled and grew apace. It was in Francis Kent'sfailure to bridle this power that the threads were first snarled. 

The boy's fine body was trained in a haphazard way. Had his fatherlived, it might have been different. Mentally, he was naturallyindustrious and next to the joys of the flesh came his studies. Itwas as toastmaster at his "prep-school" commencement-banquet that hefirst drank to intoxication. The next fall he entered Yale, and thereis no question but those days this revered university had a "fastset" that was emphatically rapid. But Francis Kent could go thepaces; in fact, none of the football huskies could put in a night outand bring as snappy an exterior and as clear a wit to first classnext morning as young Kent. His heredity, his beefsteaks, the gods, or something, certainly made it possible for him to be a "bang-uprounder" and at the same time an acceptable student through fourcollege 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 waspicturesque. Big of heart, he had a wealth of scholarly ideas, and nota few ideals; many thought he faced life a certain winner. 

Practically every door was open to him, and he chose--Europe. Thosewere two hectic years. Every gait was traveled; for weeks he would goat top-speed, go until nerve and blood could brook no more. Noconception of the duty of self-restraint ever reached him till, atlast, the nervous system, often slow to anger, began to express itsobjection to the abuse it was suffering. He was not rebounding as inthe past from his excesses. For a day or so following a prolongeddrinking bout he would be apprehensive and depressed, unable to findan interest to take him away from the indefinite dread which hauntedhim. Not till he could again stand a few, stiff glasses of brandycould he find his nerve. A friend found him thus "shot up" one day andsuggested that he was "going the pace that kills, " and hinted thatanother path might be trod with wisdom. "What's the use?" Kent flungback, "I'm fated to go with an alcoholic liver; it's in the familystrong--both sides. I saw my father go out with it. I know Mendel'stheory by heart, two black pigeons never parent a white one. " And onhe 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 wasphilosophic interest--which had attracted him to study the varioustheories of heredity. He had been particularly impressed by Mendel's"Principles of Inheritance, " and its graphic elucidation of themathematical recurrence of the dominant characteristics had graspedhim as a fetish. With such forebears as his, there was no hope. Thedie had been cast before he was born. Why struggle against the laws ofdeterminism? He was what he was because forces beyond his control hadmade him so. Scientific certainty now seemed to add its weight ofevidence to his accepted fatalism, when, at twenty-eight, instead ofthe accustomed days of depression, a period of particularly heavydrinking was followed by a serious attack of delirium tremens. Forseveral days he was cared for as one dangerously insane. After reasonhad been restored, the doctor, in his earnest desire to help, warnedhim that he must live differently and, knowing the father's ending, thought to frighten him into a change of habits by stating that hisdrinking would kill him in a few years if he kept it up. "You arealready in the first stages of cirrhosis, " he told him. As it turnedout, no warning could have been less wise; it simply assured Kent thecertainty of the fate which pursued, and soon he was at it again. Before thirty he had suffered two attacks of alcoholic delirium, hadbeen a periodic drinker for fifteen years, a regular drinker for fiveyears, often averaging for weeks two quarts of whiskey a day, andalways smoking from forty to fifty cigarettes. Life had become moreand more unlivable when he was not narcotized by alcohol or nicotine, and he was fast becoming a pitiful slave to his intoxicated anddamaged nervous system. 

He was living at home now, nominally secretary of a strongcorporation--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 attendedconcerts. Barely he went to the Episcopal service, then only whenspecial music was given. The faithful will discern the hand ofProvidence in his first seeing Martha Fullington in one of these rarehours at church. She was truly a fine, wholesome woman. The daughterof a small town Congregational minister of the best New England stock, she had always been healthy in body and mind. She possessed an unusualcontralto voice, and came to Buffalo at twenty-two for specialtraining. Helpful letters of introduction, with her pleasing self andgood voice, rapidly secured her friends and a position in afashionable church-choir. Here Kent heard her in a short buteffectively rendered solo. Unsusceptible as he had been in the past, the sacredness of her religiously inspired face appealed to himstrangely. Within a fortnight a new and profound element was tocomplicate his life, for he met Miss Fullington and took her out todinner at the home of a classmate, whose mother was befriending theyoung singer. The spell of her charm wakened the power of his desire. Whether it was from the stimulation of her inherent difference toother women he had known, or whether deep within, and as yetuntouched, there was a fineness which instinctively recognized andresponded to fineness, we may not say with certainty. He was remotefrom her every standard, she thought, and her seeming indifference wasa conscious self-defense. But she inspired him with a sincerity ofpurpose he had not known before. He was frank; he was potentlyinsistent and "hopeless, " he told her, "unless you save me. " Thusunwittingly he appealed to the mother sympathy, the strongest a goodwoman can feel. 

They were engaged and the wedding was all that any bride could havedesired. Then ten weeks abroad, beautiful, revealing weeks, forFrancis Kent, sober and in love, was much of a man. Still it was onlyten weeks before the formal social function, with its inevitable arrayof wines, turned this kindly, genial lover, in an hour, into a coarse, inconsiderate drunkard. Confined for a week in their state-room on thesteamer home with her husband, now a beast in drink, this poor, pure, uninitiated wife realized purgatory. Dark days were those next threeyears for them both. When sober, he was self-abased by the knowledgeof the suffering of this woman he so truly loved, or was restlesslystriving against desires which only alcohol could sate; while she wasalternately fearing the debauch or fighting to keep her respect andlove intact through the debauchery. For him, the battle waged onbetween love and desire, his love for her--his one inspiration, whiledesire was constantly reenforced by the taunts of his godless fatalismand the dead weight of his hopelessness. 

Then came the day which is hallowed in the lives of even the ignorantand coarse, the day in which the young wife gladly suffers through thelengthening hours and goes down to the verge of the Dark River, thatin her nearness to death she may find that other life, the everlastingseal of her marriage. In all the beauty of eagerly desired motherhood, Martha Kent bore her baby-boy. The father was not there. She did notthen know all. They shielded her. He had been taken the night beforeto 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 morerepulsive. The pain of her motherhood never approached the agony ofher wifehood, when she knew, while the pride of fatherhood was utterlysubmerged in the poignancy of his self-abasement, when he realized. 

Another physician had treated him during this attack. He, too, wishedto help. He talked with the humiliated man most earnestly, insistingthat he had never truly tried, that in the past he had depended on hisweak will and the inspiration of his devotion. He had not hadscientific help. He assured him that he did not have incurablehardening of the liver and expressed, as his earnest belief, thatthere were places where the help he needed could be given--that therewas hope. Plans were made and Francis Kent gave his pledge, expressedin a voluntary commitment, to carry out a six months' system oftreatment. "Not, " as he assured the physician-in-charge, "that I canbe saved from the effects of what has gone before. I know my heredityis too strong for that. But by every obligation of manhood I owe mywife and boy five years of decent living. If you can make thatpossible, I shall be satisfied. " The professional help Kent received, physically, was deep-reaching. It accurately adjusted food to energyexpended. Forty self-indulgent cigarettes were transformed into threemanly cigars, and he was put to work with his hands--those patricianhands which had not made a brow to sweat, for serious purpose, inthree generations. His physical response in six weeks completelyaltered his appearance. The snap of healthy living reappeared; thepessimism of his fatalism was displaced by much of quiet cheer. Lifewas again becoming a good thing. But the professional help he receivedmentally was what untangled the snarl. His advisor was fortunatelyable 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 highertruths than would satisfy the fatalist, was wisely, personallyconducted through a wholesome interpretation of the distinctionbetween the heritage of germinal and of somatic attributes, that vitaldistinction: that it takes but two ancestors to determine the speciesof the offspring, but that the individual's personal heritage is theresult of, and may be influenced by, a thousand forerunners; thatdominant characteristics, compelling though they seem, may beneutralized by obscure, recessive characteristics. More than this, hisnew counselor was able to convince him that the real damage he had toovercome was not a foreordained physical fate, for that was in apeculiar way largely in his own hands, now that he was properlystarted, but was the mental tangle of his unholy fatalism whichabsolutely did not represent truth; that he and all rational, normalmen have been given wills and are as free as gods to choose, withincertain large limitations. Francis Kent's mind had been well trained. Selfish desire had made of him a fatalist. A more beautiful desire ledhim into a constructive optimism. He thought deeply for a week, perchance he prayed, for he knew that she was praying from the depthsof her soul. He outlined for himself a new, thoroughly wholesome modeof life, and in half an hour's heart-to-heart conference convinced hisdoctor-friend that more had been accomplished in two months than couldhave been promised at the end of the six months planned. So the newFrancis Kent was told to go back and make a new home for his wife andthe new baby. Years have passed--blessed years in the old mansion. There is no hint of cirrhosis of the liver. There has never been adrop of anything alcoholic served in that house since his return. There are two healthy chaps of boys; there is a wonderfully happywoman; there is a fine, manly man, the respected and efficientpresident of an influential bank. Patient, wise hands carefullyuntangled 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 birthwas a matter of family indifference; not specially needed, she was notparticularly wanted. Her father, reared in a small town, havingattained only moderate success as combination bookkeeper, cashier andclerk in a general store, could not enthuse over an arrival whichwould increase the burden of family expense. He was a man of goodVirginia stock, not fired by large ambitions. An ubiquitous cud offine-cut, flattening his cheek and saturating his veins, possiblyexplains his life of semicontent--for tobacco is a sedative. Themother was a washed-out, frail-looking reminder of youthfulattractions, essentially of the nervous type. She was not withoutpride in her Cavalier stock and the dash of Cavalier blood it brought. The elder sister had none of her mother. Aspiring socially, she wasreserved, pedantic, platitudinizing, thoroughly self-sufficient. Shefinished well up in her class in a small, woman's so-called "college"and lived with such prudence and exercised such foresight that, inspite of her Methodist rearing, she wedded the young, local, Episcopalrector, and, childless but still self-sufficient, "lived happy everafter. "

Our little Virginia's home surroundings gave her all materialnecessities, many comforts and occasional luxuries, but it was a homeof narrow interests. Its own immediate affairs, including big sister'ssuccesses; critically, the doings of the neighborhood, andunquestioningly, the happenings of the church circle, comprised thethemes of home discourse. Markedly lacking in beauty was that home--nomusic, a few perfunctory pictures, a parlor furnished to suit thelocal dealer's taste and stock, a few sets of books--the successfulcontribution of unctuous book agents. All converse was lacking inideals save the haphazard ones brought home by the children fromschool. There was no pretense of unselfishness, the conception wasforeign to that home's atmosphere. The religious teaching was offormalism and fear. The services of the church were regularlyattended, and from time to time the children's discipline wasaugmented by references to the certain wrath of God. Into this homecame Virginia to be reared under most irregular training, dependent ona combination of her mother's feelings and her sister's conventions--the father's influence was negative, his was a well-bred nicotineindifference. In the little girl's life, every home appeal wasemotional. During the mother's more rare, comfortable days, sheexacted few restrictions, but much more often fear methods marked heruse of authority: fear of punishment, fear of the Invisible, and, fromher sister, fear of "what folks will say" were the chief homeinfluences molding this young life. Such appeals found in hersensitive nature a rich soil. No single consistent effort was evermade to substitute reason for emotional supremacy, as she developed. At times her feelings would run rampant--what was to keep them inorder but disorganizing fear?--while too often her mother weaklyrewarded Virginia's most stormy outbreaks by acceding to her erraticdesires. 

In one element did this home take pride. As true Virginians, the goodthings of the table were procured at any cost. Good eating was apride--and rapid eating became the child's habit. Yet with all thesacrifices of time and effort, the richness of their table cost, andin spite of the fact that eating was ever in the forefront of familyplans and efforts, no conception of the true art of dining was evertheirs. 

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 schoolwith a good record, for she was mentally alert. Still most of herthinking was of the emotional type, and smiles were quick and tearswere quick, and upon a feeling-basis rested her decisions. The tender-heartedness of a child never left her, and when trusted and encouragedshe had always shown an excellent capacity for good work. She wasessentially capable of intense friendships, under the sway of which nosacrifice was questioned, but her stormy nature made friendshipsprecarious. Pervading her life was a large conscientiousness. Herfear-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 thewrong, lashed her miserably. Her love-conscience, too, was richlydeveloped, and for love's sake she would have become a martyr. Herduty-conscience was yet in its infancy and held weak council in herplans and rarely swayed her from desire. 

After a year of normal-school training, she secured a primary grade ina near town school, and at nineteen, when she became an earner, therewere two Virginias; the beautiful Virginia was a woman of appealingtenderness--body, heart and soul yearned for some adequate return ofthe richness of devotion which she felt herself capable of giving. Sentiment and capacity for love were unconsciously reaching out forsatisfying expression, and the beauty of this tenderness shone forthto make appealing even her weaknesses. The other Virginia was aconglomerate of unhappy and harmful emotions--impatient in the face ofsmall irregularities, frequently irritable to unpleasantness, anddominated by the false sensitiveness of unmerited pride. Underprovocation, anger, quick-flaming, unreasonable and unreasoning, burned itself out in poorly restrained explosions--a quarter-hour ofwrath, a half-hour of tears and a half-day of almost incapacitatingheadache. She was ambitious and had rebelled at her limitations, especially as she grew to realize the smallness and emptiness of thehome-life. She resented her sister's superior attitude, her officiouspoise, her college-education authority. But the damning defect was theremorseless grip of fear on mind, body and spirit. Through ignoranttraining, she was afraid in the dark, even afraid of the dark; amorbid, cringing terror possessed her when she was alone in the night. Even the protecting safety of her own bed could not save her from thejangle 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, hauntingapprehension chilled her veins, not only when associated with them, but even more viciously when she was alone with her thoughts. And whenadded to these was her superstitious fear of the Lord, magnifying theevil of her ways, threatening, pervading, bringing no hint of Divinelove, the preparation was ample for the forthcoming emotional chaos. 

At twenty-eight she was a sick woman. Through devotion to the kindlyprincipal of her school, a devotion not unmixed with sentiment, shehad worked intensely; quick, interested, almost capable, she hadworked and worried. School-discipline early loomed large as a rockthreatening disaster, dragging into her consciousness a sinister fearof failure. Thirty little ones, from almost as many different homes, representing a motley variety of home-training, looked to her to moldthem into an orderly, happy unit. Some of her little tots were asthorns in her flesh--she couldn't keep her arms from around others;while some afternoons the natural restlessness of them all set herhead to throbbing wretchedly. Her own emotional life not having foundorder or calm, she from the first failed to develop either in hercharges. Visitors became a dread. Her only solace was the shortconferences she had with the principal after school. But to hear hisstep approaching during class-time frightened her cruelly. Her orderwas poor. He knew it. The visitors saw it. And the more she struggledto master the problem of school-discipline, the greater grew themenace of her own unorderly training. Within a few months she wastranslating her emotional exhaustion into terms of overwork. Thepenalty of unmerited food had produced an autotoxic anaemia, and shewas pale and weepy, easily fatigued, sleeping poorly, with the boggythyroid and overactive tendon reflexes so common in subacidosis. Shehad to give up her school. After six months' ineffectual resting athome, she entered a special hospital where, after some weeks ofintensive treatment, her physical restoration was remarkable. Themarriage of her sister and death of her mother closed the home, andshe went to live with a widowed aunt, the aunt who had managed herhousehold and her ministerial spouse to perfection. It was probablyPaul's injunction alone which kept her from taking her complacenthusband's place in the pulpit and delivering the sermons she had soliterally inspired. Here was an atmosphere of sanctity, but still nohint of true, personal giving, no expression of willing sacrifice, andVirginia felt keenly this lack, for in the hospital she had had avision. There she had seen suffering softened by gentleness, thereempty lives were filled from generous hearts, and men and womeninspired to make new and better starts. She had visioned the noblenessof giving--and the unanswered call of her mother-nature had responded. She was not fully well, she was not deeply living, she had neverfulfilled the best of self, and she hungered for the hospital. Heraunt's conventional pride was echoed by the laws and the in-laws, andpositive, later peremptory objections were urged against her enteringnursing. Again the headaches returned, the physical expression of heremotional unhappiness, and finally, almost in recklessness, certainlyin desperation, she cast her lot in the self-effacing demands of astudent-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 ofactive, daily effort, routine, regularity and rational diet. There wassuffering--months of suffering, under correction, for rebellion hadlong been a habit, and hospital discipline is military in character. But she had given her pledge, and fear-conscience and love-consciencewere later augmented by duty-conscience, and she never seriouslythought of deserting. Cheer expression is demanded in the nurse'srelations with her patients, and irritability and impatience slowlyfaded through hourly touch with greater suffering; and the cheer habitgrew into cheer feeling. The old storms of anger seemed incongruous inthe imperturbable atmosphere of the hospital, moreover her dignity asa nurse could not be risked. Thus was she helped till the solidity ofself-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 thedark was overcome painfully when through helpful counsel she gained anintelligent insight into her defect, and was inspired to apply fornight duty in excess of her regular schedule. Later, at her ownrequest, she performed alone the last duties for the dead, that shemight put fear under her feet. Her dread of negroes gradually gaveplace to a better understanding of the race through the dailyassociation of ministration on the ward, reenforced by personalconfidence in her own strength and skill, growing out of a wholesometraining in self-defense--a training her love for athletics and hergrowing understanding of her fear-weakness moved her to take on heroff-duty time. She became competent; anxious to help, her fineness ofintuition and her capacity for devotion with her vision of servicemade her in every way worthy. And finally her fear of the Lord waslost in a wholesome faith in His "Well-done!"

To-day, hers is a life of peace. Emotional instability andwretchedness have been displaced by habitual right feeling. Stabilizing her emotions has not impoverished, but enriched hernature. She has mastered the art of enjoying, for self-interests haveexpanded into love for service. To-day she is a capable, efficient, cheerful, wholesome, self-forgetting woman, filled with a faith in anable, worthy self--a God-given faith. 

CHAPTER XVI

JUDICIOUS HARDENING

In the softened light of a richly furnished office two physicians wereseated. It was the elder who spoke. Drawn and sad was his cleanlyfeatured, tense face; his clear skin and slightly whitened, dark hairbelied his nearly seventy years. He was the anxious, unhappy father ofa sick, unhappy daughter, whom the nurse was preparing in an adjoiningroom for examination by Dr. Franklin, the younger physician. "I meanno discourtesy, Doctor, when I say that I don't believe any oneunderstands my girl's case. Her brother and sister are healthyyoungsters and have always been so. I may have taken a few drinks toomany now and then, but few men of my age can stand more night-work ordo more practice than I can, and I've about rounded my three-score andten. Wanda was a perfect child. She is my oldest. Her mother did petand spoil her, always humored her from the first, but she was acheerful, bright little thing. She finished high school at fifteen anddid a good year's study at Monticello. All her trouble seemed to startthat spring when she was vaccinated. She had never had worse than themeasles before. She didn't seem to know how to take sickness, thoughthe Lord knows she's had plenty of chances to learn since her sorearm; and the school-doctor had to lance a small place, and this kepther away from Commencement where they had some part for her to do. Shedidn'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 shewould 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'sbeen a half-invalid these eighteen years. It's pain and tenderness inthis nerve and then in that one, and she hasn't walked a whole mile infifteen years because of her sciatica. I have sent her to Hot Springs, one summer she spent at Saratoga, and she has taken two courses ofmud-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 goodin treating rheumatic troubles. After awhile he decided it was herdiet and she lived a whole year in B--- Sanitarium and she gainedweight too, there, and hasn't eaten any meat to speak of nor drunk anycoffee since. She often complains of her eyes but the specialists saythey are all right, that that isn't the trouble. Two of the bestsurgeons in our part of the country have refused to operate on hereven when I begged one of them to open her and see if he couldn't findout what was the matter. Three of her doctors have said it was hernerves, but I don't think any of them know. You know I don't mean tosay anything that will reflect on your specialty, but you never didsee a case of only nerves put a healthy young girl in bed and keep herthere suffering so that I've had to give her aspirin a hundred timesand even morphin by hypodermic to get her quiet, and off and on forfive years she's had ten, and sometimes fifteen grains of veronal atmidnight, 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 themto 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 hersister mustn't play the piano but her headaches start; and if Rosieboils turnips or even brings an onion into the house, it goes toWanda's stomach and it takes a hypodermic to quiet her vomiting and aweek to get over the trouble. 

"That child of mine is just like a different creature from the finelittle girl she was at twelve when my buggy turned over one night andbroke my leg. Why, she nursed me better than her mother. She justcouldn't do enough for me. That little thing would come down just asquiet as she could--sometimes every night--to see that that leg wasall right and hadn't got twisted; while now she expects attention fromeverybody in the house and from some of the neighbors. She will evensend for Rosie just when she is trying to get dinner started and keepher a half-hour telling just what she wants and how it's got to befixed, then more often she'll just nibble at it just enough to spoilit for everybody else, after Rosie's spent an hour getting it readyfor her. Tonics don't help her a bit. I've given her iron, arsenic andstrychnin enough to cure a dozen weak women. She's always too weak toexercise, lies in bed two days out of three, reads and sometimeswrites a letter or two. But before Christmas comes (you know she ismighty cunning with her fingers; she can sew and embroider and makeall sorts of pretty, womanish things) she works so hard makingpresents that she's just clear done out for the next two months andwon't leave her room for weeks. That's about all she does from oneyear's end to another, but complain of her sickness, and of late yearscriticize the rest of us and dictate to the whole household what theymust do for themselves, and just out-and-out demand what she wantsthem to do for her. She really treats her stepmother like a dog, andoften she is so disrespectful to me that I certainly would thrash herif she wasn't so sick. She was a fine child but her suffering haswrecked her disposition. She and the rest of us would be better off ifshe'd die. You see, Doctor, I haven't much faith left, but she's beenbent so long a time on coming to you, and is willing to spend thelittle money her mother left her, to have her own way. Now, I amdoctor enough to stand by you in what you decide if you say you cancure her, and if she gets well, I'll pay every cent of the bill, butif she don't, the Lord will just have to help us all, though I supposeI'll have to take care of her as long as she lives for she won't havea cent after she gets through with this. "

Wanda Fairchild lay expectant on the examination table, pale, almostwan; her blue eyes, fair skin and even her attractive, curling, blondehair seemed lusterless, save when her face lighted with momentaryanticipation at some sound suggesting Dr. Franklin's coming. Muchindeed of her feeling life had grown false through the blighting touchof her useless years of useless sickness. But genuine was hergreeting. "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 overtwo years I've been begging papa to bring me here, but he hasn't anyhope. He's tried so hard and spent so much. Now you've got to get mewell. They all say this is my last chance. I certainly can't endurethese awful pains much longer. I know they're going to drive me crazysome 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 thesleeper, for I wouldn't take any medicine. I wanted you to see mewithout 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 homesoon, as strong as Mrs. Melton is, and live like other girls, and havecompany and go to parties and dance and take auto-rides and have agood time before I get too old--or die? Oh, Doctor, you don't knowwhat a horrible life I live! Every day is just torture. I suppose theydo 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 moreconsideration. It is terrible enough to be sick when you areunderstood and when everybody is doing the right thing to help you. Iknow my trip has made me worse, for my spine is throbbing now like araw nerve. It would be a relief if some one would put burning coals onmy back. You know there's nothing worse than nerve-pains. "

Dr. Franklin smiled quietly. How often he had heard poor sufferershyperbolize their suffering! How keenly he could see the distinctionbetween the real and the false in illness! How certainly he knew thatsuch exaggerated rantings and wailings stood for illness of mind orsoul, but not of body! The physical examination, nevertheless, wasextremely thorough. Nothing can be guessed at in the intricate warwith disease. 

"Yes, I was happy as a child. Mother understood me; no one else everhas. She knew when I needed petting. I did well at school and reallyloved Myrtle Covington, my room-mate at the Sem. Just think, shemarried--married a poor preacher, but I know she is happy, for she iswell and has a home of her own and three children. I don't see howthey make ends meet on eighteen-hundred and no parsonage. You know wehad a smallpox scare at the Sem. That spring and all had to bevaccinated. I scratched mine, or something, and for weeks nearly diedof blood-poisoning. That is where my neuritis started. They had tolance my arm to save my life, and when you examined me I had to gritmy teeth to keep from screaming out when you took hold of that cutplace. 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 thinkthere 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 mylanced arm, and I had a special nurse, and couldn't eat any solid foodfor days. They never would tell me how high my fever was; they wereafraid of frightening me, but I wouldn't have cared. I used to wish Icould die. "

"Why, child, what could have happened to make a young, happy girl ofsixteen wish to die? Was there something really serious that youhaven't told?"

"Oh, Doctor, didn't papa tell you? No, I know he wouldn't. He probablydon't know--he can't know what it cost me. Oh! must I tell you? Don'tmake me, Doctor! Oh, my poor head! Doctor, it will burst, please dosomething for it. Oh, my poor mamma! She loved me so much and sheunderstood me, too. " And tears came and sobs, and for a time neitherspoke. 

"Tell me of your mother, " the doctor said. 

Then the story, the unhappy story, whined out in that self-pityingvoice which ever bespeaks the loss of pride--that characteristic ofwholesome normal womanhood. Her parents had probably never been happytogether. The spring she was in the Seminary, ill, her mother lefthome. There was a separation. That fall her father re-married, as didthe mother later, who lived in her new home but a few months, dyingthat same winter. From the first, Wanda had hated her stepmother. "Idespise her. I can never trust Father again. I can never trust any oneand I loathe home, and I want to die. Please, Doctor, don't make melive. I have nothing to live for!"

Here was the woman's sickness--the handiwork of an indulgent motherwho had never taught her daughter the sterling ideals of unselfishliving. This mother had gone. A better trained woman had entered thehome, but her every effort to develop character in the stepdaughterwas resented. Illness, that favorite retreat of thousands, became thisundeveloped woman's refuge. Year after year, sickness proved herdefense for all assaults of importuning duty. Sickness, weaklyaccepted at first, later grew, and as an octopus, entwined itsincapacitating tentacles about and slowly strangled a life intoworthlessness. 

"Your daughter will have to leave Alton for nine months. Six of theseshe will spend on a Western ranch; for three months she will work inthe city slums. Miss Leighton will be her nurse and companion. Lifewas deliberately planned to develop wills. Miss Fairchild has lost theability to will until, at thirty-four, she is absolutely lacking inthe power to willingly will the effort which is essential to rational, healthy living. She is but a whimpering weakling, a coward who foryears has run from misfortune. Your daughter must be turned fromdiscomfort to duty, from pain to productive effort; her margin ofresistance must be pushed beyond the suggestive power of the averageheadache, periodic discomfort, or desire for ease; she must learn totransform a thousand draining dislikes into a thousand constructivelikes. Finally, we hope to teach her the hidden challenge which isbrought us all by the inevitable. To-day she is more sensitive than anormal three-months-old baby. She must be judiciously hardened intowomanhood. "

We cannot say that the troubled father gathered hope from this, tohim, unique exposition of the invalid's case, but sufficientconfidence came to induce him to promise his loyal support to the"experiment" for the planned period of nine months. The patientrebelled. 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 ranchin the Montana foot-hills where everybody else seemed so well, socoarsely well, she thought. After the first week the aspirin and theveronal gave out and there was no "earthly chance" of getting more. Then when she refused to exercise, she got nothing to eat but a glassof warm milk with a slice of miserably coarse bread crumbed in, andthe mountain air did make her hungry; and when she was ugly, she wasleft alone, absolutely alone in that dreary room, and even Lee, theChinese cook, wouldn't look in the window when she begged him forsomething else to eat. How she did love Rosie those "weary days ofabuse"! Miss Leighton was always polite, though she would not staywith 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 waskind now, at times when she had her own way, but she was being paid tonurse a sick girl, and she had no right to leave her alone for hourssimply 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 himin to make an examination, he was as noncommittal as a sphinx and gaveher no speck of satisfaction, only telling her to do what the nursesaid. Bitter letters she sent home, but somehow they all were answeredby Dr. Franklin, who wrote her little notes in reply which made herangry--then ashamed. Verbal outbreaks there were, and physical ones, too, a few times, which the nurse calmly and humiliatingly credited toher exercise-account and brought her more to eat, saying thatscrapping 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 daythey took a drive; when four miles from the ranch-house somethinghappened, and they were asked to get out. They stood looking off overthe ever-climbing hills to those remote, granite castles of the farRockies. 

The team started, and as they turned, the driver waved his apparentregrets. They walked back--four miles. Wanda had not performed such afeat in nearly twenty years. She walked off her resentment, in truthshe was a bit proud, and the nurse certainly did bring her a finesupper, the first square meal she had been given in Montana. This wasthe turning point. 

Walking, riding, working, camping in the open, sleeping in smoke anddrafts after long hikes, carrying her own blanket and pack--all becamematters-of-course. From 96 to l30--nearly thirty-five fine pounds--sheput on. She even learned bare-back riding, and wove a rug from woolshe had sheared, cleaned, dyed and spun. Long since, she had realizedthat Miss Leighton had only been carrying out Dr. Franklin's orders. That fall they came East to Baltimore. She worked with Miss Leightonin the tenement districts. She saw Dr. Franklin weekly. He nowexplained the principles underlying her ruthless, physicalrestoration. She learned to recognize her years of deficient will-living. The doctor revealed to her, as well, her great debt to herhome, explained to her now cleared mind the poverty of the love shehad borne, and wakened her to the stepmother's true excellence ofcharacter. Her opened eyes saw the great tragedy of defective livingas reflected in the lives of want and evil in those to whom she wasdaily ministering. Her life had been blest in comparison. 

A message came that her stepmother was ill--could she come home andhelp? That day this girl put off childhood and took on womanhood. Shereturned to her family a new woman, a thoughtful, considerate woman, an almost silent woman--save when speech is golden; a woman who makesfriends and who remembers them in a hundred beautiful ways, a workingwoman, a home-maker for a happier father, for an almost dependentstepmother; a woman who was scientifically compelled to exchange self-condoling weakness for strength, who, when strengthened against herwill, chose and lives the worthy life of self-giving. We wish herwell, 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 upperlip, Old Fellow, and give them the best you've got. " "Watch yourknees, Buddie dear, and don't let them shake. Just think of us beforeyou start, and remember we're pulling for you. "--"Yes! and praying foryou, " whispered Eva Martin, who was shaking his hand just as theconductor called, "All aboard. " And as Warren Waring gracefully swungaboard the last Pullman, the entire senior class of Beloit High gavethe school-yell, with three cheers and a tiger for "War Waring. "

What occasion could be more thrilling to a susceptible, imaginativesixteen-year-old boy than this demonstration of the aristocraticpeerage of youth? For a half-hour he had been the center of--admiration and encouraging attention, the recipient of a rapid fire ofwell-wishing, of advice serious and humorous, and unquestionably thesubject of not a few unspoken messages directed heavenward. The kindlyeyes of the old Beloit station have looked out upon many a scene ofenthusiastic greeting and hearty well-wishing, but rarely has it seenthese good offices extended to one of more apparent merit thanhandsome Warren E. Waring. One of the National Temperance societieshad been utilizing the promising declamatory powers of the high schoolstudents of the country, through a series of county, district andstate competitions, to influence the public. The contest in Wisconsinhad finally eliminated all but the select few who were to contest forthe temperance-oratorical supremacy of the state, and for a goldmedal, as large as a double eagle, which was to be awarded by judgesfrom the University faculty. The good wishes and cheers, stimulatingadvice, and silent prayers at the Beloit station had all been inspiredby enthusiasm and confidence and love for the unusually gifted comradenow 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 andthen to the farm-income by the all-too-infrequent fees derived fromhis office as justice-of-the-peace. If the Squire had been a betterfarmer and less interested in books, especially in his yellow-backedlaw-books, the eking might not have been so continuous; and if hisgood wife had not been snatched away, at untimely thirty-five, by oneof those accidents which we call providential, leaving a forty-year-old father alone with a five-year-old boy, her good sense wouldundoubtedly have made times easier with the Squire. As it was, hissister came to be mother in this little home. Good, steadfast AuntFannie she was, a woman without a vision, who accepted what the daybrought with religiously unquestioning thanks. But as the only songrew and his charms multiplied, as the evidence of his gifts becamemanifest, the impracticable father let slip all personal ambition. Thedreams he had dreamed for himself were to be fulfilled in his son, whowould increase, even as he decreased. So it was that on his boy'stenth birthday the father turned from his ambition of years, torepresent his county in the state legislature, and after forty-fivedoubled the time and strength devoted to his less than a hundredacres. "There must be money for the boy's education, " he told hissister Fannie, "even if you and I have to skimp for the rest of ourdays. He's got the making of a state senator. " The father was mistakenonly in that he so limited his boy's possibilities. 

The Squire helped the little fellow in his studies, and he entered thesecond grade of the near-by Beloit High School the fall before he wasfourteen. The train-schedule was so arranged that he could return homeevery night; though, whenever the Squire felt that the farm-workjustified it, and there was no occasion for his honorable court, theywould drive to town together. This was the Squire's one joy. And proudhe was to share in acknowledging the greetings which came from allsides, even when they drove through the best part of town in the oldbuggy--to feel the universal popularity in which his boy was held. Then there was the added satisfaction of a minute's chat with some oneof the teachers, for they all had praise, and never a word of censure. Enjoyment enough this dear man got from these irregular trips to townto lighten for weeks the, to him, unnatural farm-labor; while pettyoffenders appearing before his tribunal were dealt with almost gentlyafter one of these adventures in happiness. 

Many a wealth-sated father would have exchanged his flesh and bloodand thrown in his bank-balance to boot, could he have looked forwardto so worthy an heir as promised to bless Squire Waring. The boyseemed to have been born to meet life successfully, whatever itschallenge. Strong almost to sturdiness, yet agile and accurate inmovement, he had "covered all sorts of territory around 'short, ' andcould hit the ball on the nose when it counted, " and to him went theunprecedented glory of a forty-yard run for a touch-down and goal in aHigh School vs. Varsity Freshmen game. His were muscles which seemedto have been molded by a sculptor's hand. His face was manly. Hiswaving dark-brown hair, deep-blue eyes, strong nose and rarely turnedchin, his unfailing good-nature, his unquestioned nerve, his mentalkeenness and clearness, his remarkable power of expression, whether inrecitation, school-theatricals or at young people's meetings; hisinstinctive courtesy of greeting, his apparent openness and honesty ofdealing, his fairness to antagonist on field and platform, above all, his devotion to his unquestionably rural father, had made WarrenWaring a school hero, even a model, in a church college-town. 

What other boy in Wisconsin was so well equipped to win the goldmedal? Sixteen years and some months! A rather youthful lad to standbefore a thousand strange faces, to be the object of professorialscrutiny, to listen to the exultant plaudits of local partisanship;not to be, not to seem brazen, yet to face it all without a quake ofknee or, and what is more rare, a tremor of voice; not to forget asyllable; and, in ten minutes, to so cast the spell of a winningpersonality over his hearers as to evoke a spontaneous outburst ofapplause, generous from his antagonists, enthusiastic from thenonpartisan. And the medal!

The Professor of English honored our boy by having him at his home tobreakfast the following morning, for the double purpose of expressinga genuine appreciation of merit, and of making an impressive bid forhis State University attendance next fall. 

Aunt Fannie's asthma, with feminine perversity, was at its worst theseMarch nights, and the Squire--fine man that he was--never let hisnonimaginative sister know what it cost not to go to Madison with hisson--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, " heingeniously told her, and thus helped her enjoy her asthma a bit thatnight, for it was getting a chain for Warren's medal. 

The chain and the medal! Was it they that were fated to charm awaymanhood and nobility and the rich earnest of success? Was it they thatwere to entice, into this fine promise of fine living, crookedness ofthought, unwholesomeness of feeling--dishonorable years?

It was an exuberantly happy victor who returned from the Capitol Citywith the elaborate gold medal, his name in full conspicuously engravedupon its face--and the youthful society of his school-town was at hisfeet. Every door was open. So almost without fault was he that fewmothers objected to his companionship with their daughters. Yes, herewas to be the flaw!--he was soon to find that it was easy for him tohave his way with a maid, a dangerous knowledge for a seventeen-year-old boy who had already reached higher social levels than his own homehad known, who was much quicker of wit than his almost worshipfulfather. 

It was Eva Martin who had whispered the little prayer-message into hisear that expectant afternoon at the station, and Eva Martin's ear wasdestined to hear, in turn, whispered pledges of unending devotion, tohear the relentless verdict of unquestioned dishonor. 

High school was finished. A successful Freshman year--a Sophomore yearthat was disappointing to his professors was passed. The fire of hisheart was heating many social irons. His earnings, so far, consistedof one gold medal. The savings from the denials at home were aboutexhausted. The boy had spent as much in the last two years as had beenhoped would carry him through college. Fifteen hundred dollars couldbe raised by remortgaging the farm--it would take this to get himthrough Law-school, and he was eager to go to Chicago. So a secondmortgage was placed. A good deal happened in Chicago which was notwritten to the Squire nor to Eva. Waring craved being a popular "Hailfellow, " and with men, and especially with women, he knew no "No"which would be displeasing. He corresponded with Eva regularly; theywould be married some day. He could not have chosen a more superiorwoman. She lived simply, with her widowed mother, and continued foryears to conduct a private kindergarten. She was to save a thousanddollars 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 wasa chance introduction. She was pretty; she was wealthy. She ran up toChicago often. Finally the business-like father ran up to Chicago. Heinvited 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 werepolite farewells, and a very positive twenty minutes which left thedaughter without a question in her mind that further relations withyoung Waring held most threatening possibilities. Her eyes were notgray without reason, as she proved discreet. There was a bundle ofuncomfortably fervid letters which he refused to return. 

Warren was shifty with Eva about this affair, and others. He wascrooked, too, as the years passed, about his savings. It wasimpossible to account for certain expenditures, to her. At twenty-eight, she had her thousand dollars in the bank; his supposed fourthousand was a bare five hundred, most of which was spent on thegorgeous wedding-trip which he said they both deserved. And shortlyafter their return to the home, which, instead of being paid for infull, was heavily mortgaged, explanations began which could notexplain. Clever as Waring was, his affairs were so involved that Evacould not avoid the suspicion and, soon after, the revelation that herwonderful husband's soul was without honor. It cannot be told, thosedetails of her devoted efforts to "put him right. " To forgiveanything, everything, she was eager, but he never could come acrosssquare, and as the years passed the horror of the uncertain "Whatnext?" enshrouded even her happiest days. Still the husband hadability, and the wife's efforts helped immensely, and there wereprofitable years. It was odd that, with his declamatory skill, herarely had a case in court, but proved unusually efficient indeveloping a collection agency, and gradually represented the BadAccounts 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, asexpressed in Aunt Fannie's asthma. Early that fall he had his firstattack of hay-fever. For years he had been self-indulgent; he alwaysdrank when drinks were offered; he used much tobacco and rich food. Athletic he had been; and, advocate of exercise as he was when he gavetalks to the boys, he took none himself. So toxins accumulated. Hestood this illness poorly. It was the first physical discomfort he hadever known. The family doctor did not help much; patent medicinesbrought relief. He was pretty hard to live with, these weeks. For anumber of years he used the threat of this disorder for a six weeks'trip to Mackinac Island. "Finances" made it possible for the wife andthe little boy to spend only two of these weeks with him. During thelast four he always managed to keep pace with the fast set. The summerhe was forty, the combination of vacation, Mackinac, and fast set didnot ward off, in fact did not mitigate, his attacks. Waring returnedhome "desperate, " as he expressed it, and the family doctor succeededin getting him to a competent Chicago specialist who did some needednose and throat operations thoroughly and, in spite of carelessliving, three years of immunity passed. He had become unquestionably aclever handler of bad accounts, and could have made good, had he onlybeen good. A dry, dusty summer, his old enemy, hay-fever-and this timea Chicago "specialist, " the kind that advertises in the daily papers, proved his undoing. He gave Waring a spray, potent to relieve andpotent to exalt him for hours beyond all touch of lurkingapprehension. 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 afterthe hay-fever days were over he kept using it, furtively now, not onlyfor the exaltation it brought, but as protection from the hellishdepression 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 nowrealized that things were not "going straight, " that collections madewere not being turned over to her, that she was being asked to falsifyrecords. She never could resist his personality, and soon became moreadroit than he in juggling figures. Everything went wrong fast. No onesuspected cocain--they thought it was whiskey till Eva was forced totell much to the good old doctor-details revealing her husband'suncouth carelessness of habits, his outbreaks of cruelty to her andthe boy, his obvious and shameless lying, his unnatural coarseness ofspeech. This friend in need spent a bad hour, a hard hour with Waring. Calmness was ineffective, clear reasoning impossible. The accusationof drug-using was vehemently denied, and it was only the doctor'scourageous threat to have him arrested and tried on a lunacy chargethat broke down the false man's defiance. 

Two months of rigid treatment in a sanitarium did much to restore thisbroken man, and during these weeks the clever office assistant kepthis over four-thousand dollar embezzlements from becoming known. Physically and mentally, Waring was restored. The moral sickness wasonly palliated. When he returned he did not clean house; he swept thedirt into the corners. Frank-facedly he lied to his wife. He met themost pressing of his creditors with a certificate of his illness, andthey accepted his notes and promises. He almost crawled out. In somany ways, he was the winning, old "War" Waring again. Gradually, hisregime of diet and routine of exercise were replaced by periodic "bigeats, " little drinks, and many smokes. Then came the warning sneezesand the charlatan's bottle. Irregular living grew apace; the accountswere again manipulated. A Chicago house, which had shown him clemency, became suspicious, and sent a representative who found manycollections not reported. A warrant was sworn out, followed by a dozenothers after his arrest. 

The dear old Squire, now eighty-six, sat beside the brave little wifeat the trial. Neither of them thought of forsaking him. As thetestimony was given, the old father bowed, mute--as one stricken. Theverdict, "Guilty, " was returned, and Judge Jefferson had evidentlyconsidered carefully his duty. In passing sentence he addressed thecriminal: "Warren Waring, the law leaves it with the trial Judge todetermine the sentence which shall be passed on you; it may be fromfive to fifteen years of hard labor in the State Penitentiary. Youdeserve the full extent of the law's punishment. I have known you fromboyhood. Father, wife, God himself, have given you the best they have:an honorable name, a lifetime of devotion, the full ten talents. Forthese, you have returned dishonor, unchastity and self-indulgenthypocrisy. You have begged extenuation on the basis of nervous ill-health and temporary irresponsibility, both of which you have broughtupon yourself by violating the laws of right-living. It is your soulthat is sick. You are not fit to live free and equal with righteousmen and women. You have had love and mercy-they have failed. Justicewill now be given a chance to save you. For the sake of your wifewhose noble heart, crushed, pleads for you, I reduce your deservedsentence five years. In respect for your disgraced but honorablefather, five additional years are deducted. I pray he may live to seeyou a free man, chastened. Warren Waring, I sentence you to five yearshard 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 bymetal screens, the lights were in shielded recesses, the floor waspolished but without covering. No pictures, flowers, nor the daintythings which normal women crave were to be seen. On the cot sat awoman, Marie Wentworth, sullen and defiant, a worse than failure, locked in this protected room of a special hospital. Isolated with hercaretaker, she was watched day and night-watched to save her fromsuccessfully carrying out her determination of self-destruction, adetermination which had found expression in more than words, for onlythe day before-the day of her admission--she had swallowed somecleverly hidden, antiseptic tablets. The trained habits of observationof 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 injureherself or others. Nor was she more attractive than her surroundings. Her skin was sallow and unwholesome; yellow-gray rings added dulnessto her black eyes. Scrawny of figure, hard and repelling of features, an atmosphere of malevolence seemed to emanate from her presence. Shetook little note of what was happening, though occasional, furtiveglances gave intimation of her knowledge of the nurse's presence. Whenstimulated to expression there were explosions of violent abuse, directed chiefly against her older sister, explosions punctuated byvicious flashes of profanity which left doubt in no mind of the hatredwhich rankled-hatred of family, hatred of order and authority, hatredof goodness however expressed, hatred of life and damnations of thehereafter. An unholy picture she was of a demoralized soul in whichsmoldered and from which flared forth a peace-destroying fire--therebellion of a depraved body and mind against the moral self. She hadbeen placed in this institution under legal restraint to be treatedfor morphinism, and, according to her brother, "pure cussedness. "

How did it happen? The Wentworths lived well, very well indeed, in abluegrass county-seat of fair Kentucky. The father was an attorney byprofession, a horse-fancier by choice, and for years before Marie'sbirth relieved the monotony of office duties and race-track pleasuresby vivid, gentlemanly "sprees. " Marie was only six when his lastartery 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 andthoroughly admired the brilliant qualities of her husband. Adornedwith old jewels and old lace, she regularly graced her table at theperiodic big dinners it was her pride to give. In fact, her prideextended to the planning of three fine meals a day. An unsentimentalscience suggests that her husband's arteries, as well as her fatalcancer, might have been avoided had chronic proteid intoxication notbeen the result of her menus. She also took pride in her family andtrained the two older children as well as she knew, instilling in themboth a loyalty to certain ideals which evolved into morality. But herfailing health left Marie much to the care of her sister, and more tothe tutelage of her own desires. Unhappily, there was little of beautyin 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 butmemory was left. 

When the insurance was collected and all settlements made, thecomfortable old home and the jewels sold, each of the three childrenhad five thousand dollars. The brother's success was limited. Heinvested his all, together with many notes of promise payable to hissenior partner, in a dry-goods business, and while he carried most ofthe details of the establishment, the everlasting interest on hisnotes, and his wife's love of and demand for fine feathers, kept endsfrom ever successfully meeting. 

The sister, the eldest, was fine. The illness and death of her parentslaid grave responsibilities on her young life, and she met themseriously, wholesomely, constructively. She early proved herselfcapable of large sacrifices. She had finished her college coursebefore her mother's death, and after the home was sold she secured aposition in the local woman's college, where she continued to teachand to merit a growing respect for many years. She was not perfect;the Wentworth temper flashed out most inopportunely, and work and prayand sacrifice and resolve as she would, her rule of Marie wasunfortunate-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 fatherand the mother's love of the good things of life more than neutralizedthe latter's Methodism. Marie was a healthy, well-built, lithe lassie, with raven-black hair and eyes which snapped equally with pleasure orwith wrath. Impulsive, intense, wilful, tempestuous, bright andpossessing capacity, pleasure-loving and ever impatient of restraint, we see in her the highly developed nervous temperament. She fearednothing save the "horrible nightmares" which frequently followed thebig dinners-a child who could have been led to Parnassus, but who wasdriven nearly to Hell! She went through the public schools withoutconscious effort, but her buxom figure, the rich flush of health, hervivacity, her bearing, were irresistible to the youth of thecommunity, and a series of escapades culminated in her dismissal fromcollege; her indiscretions cost her the respect of the one man sheloved. At twenty she had spent two thousand of the five thousand lefther, while she and the sister failed to find harmony together. She hadlittle sympathy with her sister's plodding life, but realized the needof preparing herself to earn, so entered a Cincinnati hospital. Shehad many qualities which made her a valuable student-nurse, withpropensities which kept her in hot water. She had completed her secondyear of training when she was dismissed. The interns could not resisther, nor she them, and only so many midnight lunches on duty can bewinked at, even in a hospital needing nurses. For nearly a year shewas spasmodically occupied as an experienced nurse. The end of thisyear found her one thousand dollars poorer, while her heritage wasbecoming more manifest. In the place of her father's periodicalcoholism, it was periodic headaches. She was thoroughly impatient ofpersonal suffering, or of any hygienic restraint, and so took heavydoses of headache-powders and, if these did not relieve, opiates. Byfalsifying 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 ofdrugs; but dependence upon these steadily undermined her reserve untilshe was almost daily using something for the "tired feeling" which wasnow so chronic. Nearly two years had passed before her drug-takinghabit was discovered. Prompt dismissal necessarily followed. Hersister was informed, and insisted upon her going to an institution tobe cured. Five hundred dollars were spent, and three months oftreatment, directed to the withdrawal of her drug, gave no insightinto her need for seriously altering her habits of life and feeling, brought no least conception of her defects of character without changeof which there could be, for her, no safe living. 

During the next ten years her physical and mental deteriorationincreased apace. Other courses of treatment were taken with no lastingbenefit. Her misfortunes seemed to culminate when she voluntarilyentered a "drug-cure" institute which was practically a resort fordrug-users. There are in every country unworthy places of this kind, where no real effort to cure patients is made. Sufferers with meansare kept comfortable by being given drugs whenever they demand them, thus satisfying their consciences that they are being "treated, " whilevainly waiting till they are sufficiently strong to get entirely off"dope. " In such a house of quackery Marie stayed two years. Herremaining fifteen hundred dollars and a thousand of her sister's wentfor fake treatment. She learned to smoke cigarettes with the youngdoctor; she played cards, gossiped, ate, slept and was never refused acomforting dose whenever she couldn't "stand it a minute longer. "Worse than wasted years these, for even the remnants of her pridefaded, and she lived a sordid life of the flesh. The sister, when shefinally realized the gravity of the situation, lost all hope whateverfor any restoration and, acting under the advice of the old familyphysician, had her committed to the State Hospital for the Insane asan incurable narco-maniac. Here she was rudely but promptly deprivedof 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 inthe surroundings of even his best wards, advised that she be sent to ahospital where she would receive special care. The sister's fundsalone could make this possible, and her genuine worth is shown in herwillingness to spend a quarter of her entire savings that Marie mighthave this chance. Here, thirty-three years old, we found her the dayafter she had been transferred, the day after she had vainly tried tocarry out her vow to end things if she were ever "forced into anothertreatment. "

Throughout the years the primitive self had been pitted against herown soul. She had always rebelled at her misfortunes, though they werelargely of her own making. She blamed others for her hardships, andthrough the intensity of her resentment but made things harder. Notthe least expression of her depravity was her hatred for all who hadinterfered with her wilful desires, particularly the sister, whosesacrifice she ignored, but whom she took a malicious delight inproclaiming to be the one who had forever ruined her chances in lifeby 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 cupof life now held for her--all the more bitter because of the finerqualities of her nature. There were possibilities in this highlyorganized girl which could have led her into an unusual wholeness ofliving. 

Six months passed, months of sullen, dogged resistance-resistance tothe returning health which was again rounding her form and glowing hercheeks, resistance to proffered kindnesses of fellow-patients andnurses, resistance to any appeal to pride, honor, ambition, right. Sick of soul, she abjured the interest of the hospital workers, thelove of her sister whose weekly letters she left unopened, thewholesome atmosphere of her surroundings, the personal appeal of thosewhose hearts were heavy with desire to help. 

Then the miracle!-for one came who cast out devils. She was not only anurse, she was one of those divinely human beings who, with a nurse'sknowledge and training, attain practical sainthood. She, too, hadfrequently been repelled in her hours of contact with this unhappycreature, but she believed that under all this unholiness there was asoul. She was a busy, hard-worked nurse, but in time Marie becameaware that she was spending part of her limited off-duty hours tominister to her, that she had requested a special assignment of dutywhich would throw them together. Marie's four years of training madeher recognize the rareness of this giving. Curiosity at least wasaroused, 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 longhours and inadequate appreciation, with scores of other quarrels whichshe 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 lifeof service, gently, beautifully, firmly stood by her principles. Forthree months they were in daily contact--three thankless months forthe nurse, three months of cunning, evil-minded, suspicious testing bythe patient. Finally the very goodness of her friend seemedintolerable, and a paroxysm of rage and resentment broke loose, inwhich she cursed and abused her helper beyond sufferance. The nursesuddenly grasped the unhappy woman's arms to shake some sense ofdecency into her warped nature, one would have thought, but in truththat eye might meet eye, and in this look the rare love, which canpersist through such provocation, awakened a soul. That look was atonce the revelation of the worth of the one and the worthlessness ofthe other. A flood of tears drowned, it would seem forever, the evilwhich was cursing. In a day, in an hour, the change was wrought, thatmiraculous change which enters every life when the soul comes into itsown. 

There were months in which the battle of self ebbed and flowed, butnever did defeat seem again imminent, and the final victory was foundin a high resolve which took her back home a quiet, subdued woman, forgetful of self in her sense of debt to the sister whose goodnessshe had never before admitted. For years they lived together, shekeeping the simple home and keeping it well, saving, industrious, devoted, even loving. She has largely avoided publicity, though alwaysready to nurse in emergencies. Nobly she is expiating the past, andhas 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, andheretofore so successful that his large self-confidence had never beenbadly jolted, he was quite at a disadvantage, this June afternoon, ashe attempted to row pretty Annette Neil across the head of the lake towhere she said the fishing was good. Twice already he had splashed herdainty, starched frock, ironed, he knew, in the highest perfection ofthe art, by her own active, shapely, brown hands. And each awkwardsplashing had been followed by flashing glances which shriveled self-esteem even as they fascinated. They had planned to spend the sunsethour fishing, then land in time to meet the crowd and be driven on toBorder City to a neighboring dance, and all come back to Genevatogether. 

Alac's rural North-England training had developed in him manyqualifications of worth but, among these, boating was not one. Had hetold the truth when this little trip was planned, he would haveadmitted that he had never rowed a boat a half-mile in his life. Annette could do it tip-top; why not he? But things wereunquestionably perverse. The boat wouldn't go in a straight line-infact, it didn't go very fast anyway. The black eyes before him framedby that impudently beautiful face, so pert, so naive, sounderstandingly aware--so "damned handsome" he said to himself, prodded him to redoubled effort. He was swinging his two hundredpounds lustily, unevenly--an unusually vicious jerk, and snap went theold 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 ofimportant contracts for the British government; one of these hadbrought two of the boys to Canada. With their family backing, they hadundertaken some constructive work in northern New York, and, at thistime, were building a railroad which passed through Geneva. Alac hadbeen in the neighborhood for two months supervising operations. He wasstriking 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, refusedhis bidding. 

Annette Neil's father kept a small store, Annette did much of theclerking. She was unquestionably the prettiest girl in Geneva; indeedshe was as pretty as girls are made. With all her small-townlimitations she was bright as a pin, and as sharp; fine of instinctand, withal, coy as a coquette. The first time Alac addressed her itwas as a shop-keeper. Something she said kept turning over in hisbrain and he realized next morning, as he was shaving, that her replyhad been impertinent. Piqued, he returned the day after to makeanother purchase, and made the greater mistake of being patronizing. Mr. Alac MacReady discovered, without any prolonged period ofrumination, that he had a bee in his bonnet, and left the little shopsemispeechless and irate. He was not satisfied to leave the honorswith this "snip of an American girl, " and evolved a plan of verbalassault which was to bring the provincial upstart to her senses, onlyto discover that she had a dozen defenses for each attack, and to findhimself, for two consecutive, disconcerting minutes, wondering ifperchance he might be a "boob. " With each visit--and they were almostdaily and many of them made in the face of strong, contraryresolution--he felt the distinction in their stations disappearing. Helater found himself calling on Annette's mother, and, stiffly atfirst, later humbly asking for the company of the bewitching girl, who, coy witch that she was, steadfastly refused to be "company" evenwhen her mother said she might. This trip across the lake was thefirst 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 hissecond bellow for help, in its midst. 

The little boat drifted slowly. The June breeze was not strong. Thesun slipped behind radiant clouds, clouds which shifted and softened, and tinted and toned through the pastels into the neutrals. Gentlythey were nearing the shore when the great, golden moon rose in theeast, and soon brightening, shimmered the lake with countless, dancingsplotches of silver. The water lapped with ceaseless, dainty caressesthe sides of the boat. Some mother-bird nestling near the water's edgecrooned her good-night message to her mate. A halo surrounded andsoftened the white face so near and, as part of the evening symphony, two dark eyes rested upon his face, deeply luminous. There aredifferent stories of what he said. He admitted he was never soawkward. But they missed their companions, and the dance, and walkedall the way 'round the head of the lake, home, this proud son of near-nobility doing obeisance to his untutored queen. So Alac and Annettemarried. They traveled far, first to Canada, then to England. Annette's sheer beauty and remarkable taste in the use of Alac'sprodigal gifts of clothing and jewels carried the badly disturbed andcertainly unfavorably prejudiced MacReady family by assault. Ten yearsthey lived in the big Northumberland home. A boy and a girl came, bothblondes like their father. The MacReady boys were not meeting the samesuccess in their contracting ventures for which two former generationshad been noted. And, after their father's death, one particularlydisastrous contract quite reduced the family's financial standing andconsequent importance. The three brothers could not agree as to whichwas to blame, so Alac and his family returned to America and locatedin Rochester. Their few thousands Alac invested in a smallmanufacturing concern which never prospered sufficiently to maintainhim in his life-long habits of good living. Unhappily, too, strong asAlac was in many ways, his one weakness grew. Three or four times ayear he would make trips to Toronto or New York, drink gloriously, spend hundreds of dollars, and return home meek and dutiful, almostpraying Annette not to say what he knew was in her mind. Of the twochildren, little Alac multiplied his father's weaknesses by anunhappily large factor. He never amounted to much, developing littlebut small bombast. Charlotte was the child, dutiful, studious, ratherserious perhaps, but very conscientious. Her features were those ofneither father nor mother, but peculiarly delicate, strikinglyrefined. When she was fifteen her father was found dead, one morning, in an obscure hotel in the Middle West. He had neglected his insurancepremiums. The resourceful little widow went to work at once. Theproducts of her needle were exquisite. She sold some of the handsomeold furniture and, during the next five years, most of her jewels wentto keep the children in school. She had given absolutely to herhusband and to her home, and through the years to come her cheer wasnever bedimmed save when the husband was mentioned. Charlotte becamemore 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 sopreserved her youth. Charlotte was periodically morbid, a transmutedheritage. The financial need directed her training into practicallines; she studied stenography and was fortunate in securing aposition in the office of John Evanson, the energetic senior member ofa growing leather-manufacturing firm. There was something poeticallyappealing to this busy man in the quiet, sometimes sad-faced, fine-faced, competent woman, which gradually created in him a hungeringsense of need-and he called one night. He afterwards said if he hadn'tmarried Charlotte, he would have married her mother, who, to tell thetruth, put what sparkle there was into the courtship. 

Charlotte's cup of happiness should have been overflowing when shemoved 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--aposition which he never filled to any one's satisfaction but his own. For two years Charlotte's virtues were expressed in quiet, almostthoughtful home-devotion, entertainment of poor relatives, and church-work. John Evanson was simple and rational in his tastes. In businesshe was enterprising and a keen fighter of competition. He cleverlymanaged his interests, which had grown through years of steadfastattention. He was nearly forty when he married, and his new home wasto him a haven. The mother adapted herself superbly and was a real joyin the household through her wit and daintiness and ingeniousthoughtfulness. 

Charlotte was not well for several months before the birth of themuch-wished-for baby, which unhappily never breathed. A sharp illnesswhich lingered was followed by eight miserable months, then anoperation, and the surgeon pronounced her well-but she could notbelieve she was. Two years of rather unassuming semi-invalidismpassed. She made few complaints; she was evidently repressingexpression of the recurring symptoms of her discomfort. But since herbaby's death she had recovered little ability for effort. She tiredquickly. She was living a life of quiet, sheltered, almost luxuriousinadequacy. Dr. Corning was puzzled. Mrs. Evanson had appealed to hisprofessional pride and sympathetic nature strongly. Was theresomething obscure, a lurking condition which he had overlooked? Hewould 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 herunhappy daughter. She believed Charlotte to be secretly mourning forthe little one who had not lived. She spent hours with her son-in-lawin anxious conference. What could get her poor child out of thisalmost apathy? She looked so well; she had never weighed so much; buttwice she had been found looking over the baby's things. Was hersorrow eating away at her heart? Hadn't he noticed that for months sheleft the room when her father or the baby was mentioned! And hadn't henoticed the marks of tears when she came back? The husband had neverloved his wife more; he pitied her; he yearned to share the burdenwhich she did not mention. He watched the change in her moods andbrought something new each day to please, divert, to interest-booksand flowers, periodicals, clothing, jewelry. Pets proved tiresome. Shewearied soon on every attempted trip. Concerts and the theater, andmusic in the home, all made her "nervous. "

Mrs. MacReady firmly believed the trouble was a haunting spirit ofunsatisfied mother-love, and suggested bringing a child into the home. This plan did arouse new interest. Months were spent in making theselection. Scores of points must be satisfactorily fulfilled, or theplan 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 hungeringwoman-this adoption. Charlotte spent much time in getting the littleone outfitted and settled. The child brought new problems, such asworthy nursemaids, sleep-hours and safe feeding-and Charlotte wasbetter. 

Mrs. MacReady had not been looking well. For months she had beenslowly losing weight, although there had been not a syllable ofcomplaint. Mr. Evanson finally insisted-the examination revealed anincurable condition--presto! Charlotte was prostrated. The trainednurse, secured for the mother, spent most of her time attending themultiplying needs of the daughter, whose apprehension grew until shebegan sending for her husband during his office-hours, fearing thather mother was worse; or because she looked as if she might have oneof the hemorrhages the doctor feared, or to discuss what they would dowhen her mother died. The months dragged on. The splendid motherradiated cheer to the last. Then began the reign of terror. Stimulantsand sedatives seemed necessary to protect Charlotte from "collapse. "For a month, Mr. Evanson did not go near the office; for years, he wassubject to calls by day, was disturbed mercilessly at night. No nursecould 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. Hewas an adept in providing understanding and comfort. He never advised"dangerous operations or nasty mixtures, " and was no fanatic on dietand exercise. 

When Charlotte married, she was "lily-fair, " and weighed one hundredand sixteen. Five years after her mother's death she was florid, vapid, and weighed one hundred and sixty-eight miserable pounds. Sheran the gamut of nervous ailments: disturbances of circulation, digestion, breathing, eating, sleeping, antagonism to draughts andnoises, and a special antipathy to the odor from the exhaust of motor-cars. This last made her faint, and of her fainting attacks pagesmight be written. The home of John Evanson was now a dreary place. Itwas a household subsidized to the whims of a self-pitying woman. Herloss of father, baby and mother had "wrecked her life. " Husband, child, nurse, servants, were all under the blight of her enslavingself-commiseration. For years all church and social activities wereunattempted. Relatives and friends could not be entertained, for everyone's attention was demanded to meet the varying possible emergenciesof symptoms and to keep her mind from dwelling on her losses and thewretchedness of her fate. 

Mr. Evanson's business interests were neglected. His devotion to hismorbid, now thoroughly selfish wife lost him big opportunities. Hisnerves, too, suffered from the unceasing strain. Serious-minded, nonimaginative, honest, it never occurred to him that the illness ofhis "poor afflicted wife" was an illness of the soul only. The adopteddaughter was surrounded by an atmosphere of unnatural repression, anatmosphere charged with false sympathy and unwholesome concessions tothe selfish weaknesses of her foster-mother. Dr. Winton advised manycomfortable and diverting variations in treatment, but life in theEvanson home became increasingly distorted. At last John realized hewas losing out badly-he must have a change. Through some subconsciousinspiration he took Dr. Winton with him. They spent two weeks huntingand fishing in the Maine woods. John sought to get in touch with theman behind the doctor. The doctor soon realized the manliness of hiscompanion. They were resting after a taxing portage, both feeling thefine exhilaration of perfect physical relaxation after productivephysical weariness. The two men were pretty close. Shop had not beenmentioned 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 noteasy to tell. . . You won't want to hear it. You probably will notaccept what I have to say. . . You may resent it. "

"Tell me straight; you know how vitally I and my household need tounderstand the truth. "

Gravely the physician spoke--as friend to friend: "Your wife hasleprosy!--not the physical form, but the kind that anesthetizes, ulcerates, deforms the soul--the leprosy of self-pity. It began withher father's death. It has eaten deeper and deeper, fed by theunselfishness of her mother and of yourself, unchecked by the soothingsalves applied by doctors like me. I early recognized that she wouldnot pay the price of radical cure--the price of effortful living. Herunderstanding soul has degenerated--something vital to Christ-likeliving is, I believe, lost. She believes her undiseased body to beill. Her reason is distorted by her disease-obsessions; her will hasbeen pampered into a selfish caricature. She has accepted the falsecounsel of her selfishness so long that she is attracted by error, andrepelled by truth. I see relief for her only through the culminatingself-deception that disease does not exist. If this error is acceptedby her, she will become as fanatically superior to her wretchedsensations as she is now subservient to them. In other words, she is aworse than useless woman whom Christian Science may transform. She isemotionally sick. Christian Science appeals to the emotional life; itis not concerned with reason-no more is she. It negates physicalillness and thus might replace her morbid, hopeless, selfishsufferings with years of applied, wholesome cheer and faith. "

Some details were discussed. A fine personality, a woman who devoutlyaccepted the teachings of Mrs. Eddy, who would have been an example ofselfless living, regardless of details of religious faith, wasinterested in poor Charlotte. Progress was slow at first. Then theleaven began to work. One day the expressman moved a big box from theEvanson home to a local hospital. It contained the paraphernalia of aone-time invalid. One plastic nurse lost a chronic case. To-day in theEvanson household, all discussions of illness are under the ban. Thehome is no longer a private infirmary, but breathes a bit of theafter-glow of cheer which should linger long after the passing of oneso worthy and radiant as Annette--the mother beautiful in body andspirit. 

CHAPTER XX

THE SLAVE OF CONSCIENCE

In the following life-story, our sympathies are strongly drawn to theconscientious woman who gave so many years of uncomplaining service--agiving which should have brought its daily reward of satisfaction; yetshe 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 nightbefore, that they might have to operate if the pain in her side didn'tget better; and the little girl prayed that they would, and prayedspecially that she would die while they were doing it. She didn't wantto live. She wanted to go rather than to stay forever with the newmother her father had brought home last month. Big Sister wouldn'tstay; she ran away the second week and married Tim Shelby, and had agood home now with Tim's people--even though her father hadn't spokento the Shelbys for years. Aunt Erne had gone too, dear Aunt Erne, hermother's sister, who had been mother to her ever since her real motherdied--just after she was born--that precious mother, who, Aunt Effieused to tell her, had died happy that her little girl might live. AuntEffie had always taught her a beautiful love, and every night she saida beautiful prayer for the mother she had never seen. Aunt Effie triedto stay, too, but couldn't. She left the same day the new mother askedfather, before them all, how he was ever going to keep up with all theexpenses 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 thatit was wicked to "do up" her hair in curl-papers, and when she beggedher, "Just this once, " because she had a "piece to speak" in schoolnext day, and cried in her disappointment, her stepmother had shakenher so hard that something seemed to tear loose in her side. Irene hadnever hated any one before--and it was wicked to hate; and so she waspraying her real mother to come and take her before she became asinner. But in spite of her prayers, she shrank when her stepmothercame near and chilled whenever touched by her. She couldn't eat thefood she brought, and every time she thought of her, the pain wasworse. Both her father and his new wife seemed so strange. She feltlike some stray, hurt animal, not loved by any one. 

The new Mrs. Yarnell had been a maiden-lady many years. During herspinstership she had given herself without stint to the activities ofher small church, a church belonging to an obscure denomination whichteaches that holiness is nigh upon us; that if we but supplementconversion by a second act of grace, sanctification here andforevermore is ours. Hers was not an easy disposition to live with. She had ably held her own through years of bickerings and wordycontentions with an overworked, irritable mother. She gave littlelove. She received little. But her underdeveloped, souring heartinstinctively craved some drops of sweetness. So, when she listened tothe fervid exhorter, revealing the new highway to heaven, thatglorious way where the good Lord carries all our burdens, if we willjust cast them upon Him, a great light illumined her soul. Why a wearylife of strife and misunderstanding? She would give herself withoutreserve, 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 nowrong. She could think no wrong. Having given all, she was now savedto the uttermost. Misunderstood she must be, of course, by those whoknew not the holy leadings of her sanctified soul. Serenely, supremely, she lived. Her old biting temper was now righteousindignation. Her dislike for household work was only an evidence that, like beautiful Mary, she had chosen the better part. What her motherhad always called obstinacy and perversity were now stead-fastness inthe Lord. Oddly, her tart, sarcastic, even flaying tongue was notsoftened by any gentleness of divine inspiration. Incidentally, theLord had given her a plump figure, and a knack of apparel which hadlong appealed to Widower Yarnell's eye. And the Lord approved; intruth He said "Yes!" so audibly that Miss Spinster hesitated hut onemaidenly minute. 

Mrs. Yarnell's sanctification washed dishes, kept house, and nursedlonely, sick, little children most inefficiently. So, after Aunt Effieand Big Sister, both willing workers, left, the new bride foundunforeseen difficulties in following the Lord's leadings, which seemedto call to real back-and-muscle taxing effort for other people--suchwas for the world of Marthas. So things in the Yarnell household gotin a mess. 

It seemed hard for Irene to recover. But her returning strength foundearly tonic in the house-work which was left for her to do. The newmother's church activities occupied so much of her time that littlewas left for any but unavoidable essentials. Irene became a finelittle worker, and should have had all the honors and happiness duethe model child. Neat, rapid, effective, an excellent student, shedeveloped physically strong, the possessor of that rare and attractiveglow of health, into a thoroughly wholesome looking young woman. Deepwithin, however, she had not known peace since the day Aunt Effieleft. For years she had fought smoldering resentment and anembittering sense of injustice, until at fourteen the deeper depthswere stirred by a slow but irresistible religious awakening. Herstepmother's church was on the opposite side of town, too far for themboth to attend. Her own mother's church was in the neighborhood, andthroughout the years she had usually been able to attend Sunday-schoolthere and be home again in time to get dinner. Her young understandinghad long been in a turmoil as to what religion and right are. AuntEffie had taught gentleness of conduct and charity of speech, andforgetfulness of self in service. Mrs. Yarnell constantly proclaimedthat, until the Lord entered her heart to absolutely sanctify it, shewas certain to be miserable, unless she became a hopelessly hardenedsinner. 

Unhappy the child surely was. Her conscience was a sensitive one; itseemed ever to chide, and often to condemn. No matter how faithfullyshe followed duty, her failure to receive that wonder-working "secondblessing" left her feeling as an unworthy one outside of the fold. Then, when she neglected, even for an hour, her household duties orschool-work for church-socials or class-picnics, her conscience, andusually her step-mother, pounced upon her mercilessly. At earlyfourteen, she was feeling the chilling shadows of a morbid conscience. Her stepmother was away for two weeks attending a denominationalconference, and it seemed to Irene that she had more time than usual;so she talked her perplexities over with the pastor of her mother'schurch. A good man he was, but far from being an expert physician ofthe soul. He did not seem to sense her deeper problem-the one dailyhurting her sensitive spirit, but asked a number of questions, heranswers to which convinced him that she was entirely ready to join thechurch, which he definitely advised her to do, believing thereby shewould find the peace she sought. So without delay, even before herstepmother's return, and without consulting her, she followed theminister's advice. Unhappily, her business-burdened father had nospecial interest in the welfare of any one's soul. Mrs. Yarnellhenceforth treated Irene as a religious inferior. High school broughtmore work and little play. The unsuccessful father died with badarteries when Irene was eighteen. He left little beside the mortgagedplace; so Irene took up bookkeeping, and before she was twenty had abank-position which, through her ability and merit and trustworthyconscientiousness, she has held through the years and thevicissitudes, supporting herself and her stepmother. Irene's play dayshad been rare. Her conscience was a grim-visaged angel whose flamingsword she ever saw barring each path to pleasure. 

The president of her bank was also an elder in her church. His mindwas pretty well filled with business, still he took occasional thoughtfor his employees, and the summer Irene was twenty-three, he asked herhow she would spend her two vacation weeks. "No, " she was not going toleave Wheeling. "Yes, " it was hot, but she had much sewing to do, andif she could save for two years more, the mortgage would be paid. Thebanker noticed, even as they talked, the slight tremor of fingers andlips which bespeaks tension; and that not a little of her appearanceof reserve and strength had slipped away through the grind of theyears. 

Three delegates were to be sent to the Chautauqua Assembly for a twoweeks' special conference, and somehow it turned out that, with thoseof Mrs. Crumb, the pastor's wife, and Matthew Reynolds, a theologicstudent the church was helping educate, Irene Tarnell's name was read. Two weeks at Chautauqua, her railway-fare paid both ways!-a score ofthe best people of the church assuring her that it was her duty-and anenvelope with the banker's personal check for twenty dollars, endorsed"for incidentals as delegate"! Thus Irene set forth on her firstforeign mission, her first trip out into this big, busy world, aboutwhich she had, wrongfully, of course, wasted a few minutes now andthen in dreaming. Who could have been more companionable than Matthew, or who more thoughtful and self-eliminating than Mrs. Crumb whosethrifty, matronly heart early sensed the promise and wisdom-andexcitement, 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 haveworked out, if alas! Matthew had not been quite so susceptible. Therewas 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, thethird day of their trip, when her fine color began to flash back, thatshe was better looking than his promised, and so refreshingly freefrom worldly-mindedness. Mrs. Crumb did not know of Matthew'sentanglements, while the devotion of his attentions, a certainlighting of his eyes, and gentleness of speech and demeanor convincedher that all she wished was going very well. So convinced was she thatshe made bold, early the second week, to express her belief in Irene'salmost unequaled qualifications for a minister's wife, to whichdutiful 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 youngfolks' human nature when she planned the little excursion which was tooffer ample opportunity for the consummation she believed soimpending. They had all taken some tramps together. She was not quiteequal, she said, to the walk around to Mayfield, but it would make afine afternoon trip for the young folks. She would go down on thesteamer, and they could all come back and enjoy the refreshing, evening water-trip together. 

Matthew had certainly been attentive, giving an attention which Irenehad never before received. For days she had been happy, the first joy-days she had known since she was eight. The very near future loomedlarge with intoxicating promise. Mrs. Crumb had talked to her, also, of Matthew, and of his fine record at college, and of his gentlenature. The early afternoon was hot; they walked slowly; they loiteredwhen they came to shade. Then out of the west came booming blackclouds, and they were caught in a mid-summer thunderstorm. He helpedher as they ran for shelter, but, almost blinded by the pelting rain, she tripped and fell awkwardly, twisting her ankle cruelly. Sheprobably fainted. Matthew was frightened, and in his helplessness losthis head. She was roused by him chafing her hands, and his importunate"Dear Irene, " bundled stunned senses, soaked, chilling apparel andstabbing ankle into one unutterable confusion of unspeakable joy. And"devil-inspired fool" that she was, she reached up, drew his tenseface, so near, against hers, and "hateful bliss, " it stayed there afull minute. Then life went black, for he tore himself away, almostsavagely putting her arm aside. "It is wrong; you have made me sin!"

"It is wrong; you have made me sin!" were burned in loathsome blackacross the face of her conscience, accusing cruelly, unendinglyaccusing. Tears passed-those years that drag, and she never knew ofthe girl in Pittsburgh. She did not know other than that she hadtransgressed and tempted a fine, good man; that she had tempted himfrom the sanctity of great religious purpose-and her branded, sickconscience proved itself a poison to mind and body. 

Dazed, the hurt woman returned to the loveless home. Mechanically, formonths, her hands made that home comfortable and toiled on at thebank. We wonder how the break could have been held back so long, inone so sensitive. The staunch body and well-trained mind must havecarried 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. Repeatedlyshe must add and re-add a column of figures; even the evidence of theadding-machine had to be proven. She wakened at night questioning thecorrectness of her entries, and her work became slow and inaccurate. All she did, physically and mentally, became a dread. The very act ofwalking to and from the bank seemed to drain her waning strength. Sherefused a vacation suggested by her employer, who gradually becamegenuinely concerned about her health. He knew but little of the affairat Chautauqua. Mrs. Crumb was too good a woman to let drop any hint ofwhat she may have surmised; she actually knew only of the storm andsprained ankle. 

One morning Mrs. Yarnell called a neighboring doctor. She couldn'twaken Irene. It was found that her sleep had become so poor that shehad bought some powders from the druggist. Never having takenmedicine, she was easily influenced, and the ordinary dose left herconfused for twenty-four hours. Two weeks' rest at home, if one couldrest in Mrs. Yarnell's company, found the girl no stronger. The bankerand the doctor had a conference. She must be gotten away from home. The banker had a doctor-friend, a man whose means made it unnecessaryfor him to give his years of strength to the unceasing demands of ageneral practice. He had long been keenly interested in thecomplicated and growing problem of nervousness. He owned a beautifulplace down the Ohio River where, for years, he had been taking intohis home a few deserving, nervous invalids. He had learned to enterinto their lives with a specialist's skill-with a father'sunderstanding. Thus he gave largely--to some it would seem, of hissubstance, but the true giving was his discerning, constructivecomprehension of human problems. Into this atmosphere, God and thebanker sent Irene. 

For nearly twenty years this oversensitive girl had known few hours ofunderstanding and sympathy. For a week or two she merely rested; thenone evening, it seemed precipitate, but some way it was as easy asanything 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 theanalytic student of mankind. Was it to introduce a little savingrecklessness, the redeeming truth of honesty and justice to self, orthe neutralizing of self-negation by the acceptance of merited worth!Even through our weaknesses are we sometimes healed. If any reasonexisted which could merit one self-accusing thought, the doctor foundit when he uncovered the resentment which had never healed toward theusurping stepmother--"a woman who had proved her limitations andshould be mercifully judged thereby, " he told Irene. 

"Yes, " the doctor said, "you have missed the 'second blessing'; youhave missed a thousand blessings because the generosity of your yearsof fine doing were lacking in the gentleness of feeling which AuntEffie taught you, and which made your mother so beloved. Lacking this, even in the fulness of your much giving, you have failed. You havebeen seeking the true religion. Your mother had it-the kind thatlightens 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 innocentshe was of the slightest hint of wrong in her relations with Matthew, how impossible that her spontaneous act could have wrought a second'sharm to any good man. There was much more said helpfully, but the mostgood, unquestionably, came from the unspoken influence of thethoughtful personal consideration and discerning kindness of thisscientific lover of his kind. Three months Irene spent with them, thedoctor 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'ssalary. The mortgage is paid. Two women live in the little house. Theolder is very religious. She still attends many church services; shedutifully gives her tenth to the cause, and, in and out of season, proclaims her way as the perfect road to the heights beyond. Old andpractically unchangeable, she is not lovable and she never has been, but near-by tenderness has softened some of her self-satisfiedasperities. Still radiant is the younger woman-the righteous womanwhose righteousness has put unfailing cheer in service most of uswould call "fierce, " a righteousness which has learned to becharitably blind where most of us would see and resent, arighteousness which has brought abiding happiness to a life that hadlong suffered, a slave to its conscience. Cleverness and wealth-havingnot 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 amateurmechanic-the only man in those early days in the little town ofWarren, 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 weregirls, but David was the only boy, and a lusty youth he was. Theabsence of brothers, or possibly an excess of sisters, gave him, bothas youth and young man, much more liberty of action and right of waythan was good for his soul. At any rate, he early developed asteadfastness which, throughout his life, stood for both strength ofpurpose and hard-headed, sometimes hard-hearted wilfulness. His fatherhad dreamed a dream: his smithy was to grow into a shop, and later theshop was to become a factory where a hundred men would do his biddingand supply the country with products of his inventive genius. But sofar as his own life was to realize, it remained a dream. The shop wasnever built; the genius failed to invent. But his son, David! Yes, hewould have the schooling and advantages that the father had not known. And so it was: at thirty, David Scott had been well educated inmechanics; at forty, he had made improvements on the sewing-machine, which gave him valuable patents; at fifty, his factory employed tentimes the number his father had visioned. Thus was fulfilled the dreamof the ancestor. 

Business success was large for Mr. David Scott. But what of hissuccess as a father? He married at twenty-eight, a handsome womanwhose pride in appearance stood out through the years and influencedthe training given her three children. Little David, or "Dave, " as hewas early called in distinction to his father, was petted by hismother and, in spite of evidences to the contrary, was his father'spride. The family moved to Cleveland when Dave was a little fellow. His father would not be cramped, so, with what proved to be rareforesight, bought part of an old farm on Mayfield Heights. Both hereand at Granddad's, where Dave was sent each summer, there was ampleout-of-doors, and the lad grew sturdy of limb. With a flaming shock ofcurling, copper hair, his eyes deepest blue, and skin as fair as agirl's, he was a boy for mother, teachers and later for maidens tospoil. But an attractive personality, an inherent fineness never lefthim while he was conscious, and seldom when he was irresponsible. 

Dave's mother was proud, proud of her successful husband, of themansion and estate of which she was the envied mistress, proud of herhandsome self and handsome daughters, and specially proud of Dave, thebrightest and handsomest of them all. It is a pity that she who sofully enjoyed the pleasures of wealth, and of wealth-shieldedmotherhood, might not have lived to drink to her full of the joys sheloved. 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 forSt. Paul's, where he was sent the next fall. He was bright-evenbrilliant in his prep school work. Mathematics, the sciences andhistory seemed almost play for him, while in languages, and especiallyin English, he did an unusual amount of "not required" work. 

Dave made his father his hero, and for many years was instant in doinghis will. Had the older man taken serious thought of his son'spersonality and entered into the boy's developmental needs with hiswonted intelligence and thoroughness, the two could have grown into acloseness which would have made the Scott name one to be reckoned within the manufacturing world. 

The father's business was growing even beyond his own dreams, and hefound little time to give his boy, whom, in fact, he saw but rarely, save at Christmas holidays. So it happened that Dave was more deeplyinfluenced by his mother's love for the beautiful than by machine-shoprealities; and the aesthetic developed in him to the exclusion of thefather's practical life. 

For many years wine had been served at the family dinners. Mr. Scottdrank only at home, and then never more than two small glasses. He hadno respect for the man who overindulged any weakness. He littlethought his own blood could be different than he. This father was aman of exceptional energy who had wrought miracles financially, andwas, without question, master in his thoroughly organized factory. Hedominated his surroundings. Where he willed to lead--whether inbusiness circles, in the vestry, in his own home--the strength of hisintellect, the force of his purpose and his quiet but tangibleassertiveness were felt. He had never been balked in any determinedcourse of action. 

When Dave went East to school, he possessed physique and health whichshould have made athletics a desire and a joy. But on both thebaseball and football squads were a few fellows not choice in theiruse of English. In fact, even at this excellent church-school, theseexceptions did considerable "cussing. " Dave's mother and sisters werefastidious, and Dave found himself, even at fourteen, resentingcoarseness. He, therefore, chose the "nice fellows" as associates, andmade friends to his liking in books. We must not think of him as"prissy" or snobbish, but he distinctly disliked crudity howeverexpressed, and this dislike grew and was strengthened by hisincreasing devotion to the aesthetic. Otherwise, Dave's prep schoolyears were those of an unusually fine fellow, whose mind promised bothbrilliance and strength. Sadly, during these vital years, Dave had nomature counselor; no strong character was sufficiently close to sensehis needs and court his confidence. So some of the proclivities of hisearly home influence persisted and developed, which normally shouldhave been displaced by others standing for oncoming manhood. 

College life, unfortunately, but increased his opportunities toindulge his weaknesses, and his three years at Yale found him adependable member of a refined fast-set. With his unusual mind--givingno time to athletics--there were many idle hours at his disposal. Henow discovered that he liked cigarettes which his father held insupreme contempt, while, from time to time, a quiet wine-supper with aselect few, where spirits blended so finely when mellowed bychampagne, stood for the acme of social pleasure. Dave could not carrymuch liquor and mellowed early, and rather soon slipped quietly underthe table, to be told the next day most of the snappy toasts andstories the other fellows had contributed to the occasion. Theseentertainments soon forced Dave to overdraw his allowance. A business-like letter asking explanations came from his father, and this wasfollowed by a peremptory command that he live within his already"ample remittance. " Father and son had never been companions, and herethe boy's devotion deserted, and a growing estrangement began. Dave, knowing his father's wealth, resented his lack of liberality, and heknew him too well to protest. For three months he heeded parentalinjunction; then a trip to New York to grand opera. Entertainmentaccepted must be returned. Another wine-supper, paid for by a draft onhis father-and family warfare was on! The draft was paid-the familycredit must not be questioned, but a house was divided against itself, and the letter David sent Dave left a trail of blue smoke. It leftalso a reckless, rebellious son. 

Adelaide Foster's grandfather was wealthy. Her mother had suited herown taste-not her parents'-when she married attractive Fred Foster. The grandfather dallied too often with the "bucket-shop" before heforgave his foolish child, and when he came to his better paternalself, he hadn't much to leave his little granddaughter. But Adelaidemade much of her little, and spent two very developing years atBarnard. 

Dave and Adelaide met on terms artistic which were most satisfying tothem both. Dave had made good junior marks in spite of his inoffensivesprees and conflicts with his father. He was in many ways Adelaide'ssuperior, but she gave him a large companionship in things beautiful, and worshiped at his feet in questions profound. His father hadignored, or failed to notice, Dave's references to the young lady-sothere was a little wedding-ceremony with four witnesses, an almostimpulsive wedding. The elder Scott was not expecting this flank-movement, but family pride again helped Dave out, and a liberal checkfollowed the stiff telegram of "best wishes. "

Six months the young folks spent abroad. The beautiful in nature andart which Europe offered blended into their honeymoon. The lastwedding-gift dollar had been spent when they returned to East Best, the paternal mansion in Cleveland. Two evenings later Mr. Scott calledhis son into the library. It was time to reassert his sovereignty. This, too, was business; so it was curt and direct. "Well, sir, Itrust you have sown your wild oats. You have married. It is high timeyou settled down. I shall give you and Adelaide a home with us, or, ifyou prefer to live elsewhere, one hundred dollars a month for livingexpenses. This, mark you, is my gift to her. You don't earn a cent ofit. You will have to start in the business at the bottom. You maychoose the shops or the office. You will be paid what you earn. I hopeyou will make good. You are capable. Good-night. "

Dave chose the office. The shops were "ugly. " Unhappily, much of thegood, the useful and the necessary was being classed as "ugly" in thisyoung aesthete's mind, and worse, he was finding himself uncomfortablein the presence of an increasing number of normal, even practicallyessential conditions. This gifted and promising young man was at oddswith reality. He refused to accept reality as real. For him in beautyof line and color and sound, in beauty of thought and expression, only, was the truth. He suffered in other surroundings. He had becomeaesthetically hypersensitive. And of all reality's ruthlessness, whatwas less tolerable than monotony? What less capable of leading a manto the heights than the eternal grind of the office?

Even Adelaide and the baby bored him at times. Young Scott could doanything well to which he gave effort. And his father was consideringgiving him a raise, when at the end of six months he disappeared. Thesecond day after, the distraught wife received a message from NewYork. He was all right, and would be home next week. The father, however, had to honor another draft before his son could squareaccounts and purchase a return ticket. This was the first of hisretreats from the grim battle-front of reality. Six months seemed thelimit of his capacity to face a work-a-day life. He read much, and ofthe best. He took up Italian alone and soon read it easily. When athome his chief excesses were books-but the Scott table was amplysupplied, and in view of his inactive physical habits we realize thatDave was a high liver. 

Adelaide had proven a most dutiful daughter-in-law, and with the babylong kept the headsman's ax from descending. But even theirrestraining power had its limitations. The irk of that "godless"office was being more and more poorly met by Dave. Five times duringthe fourth year he took ungranted periods of relaxation. The last timethe usual draft was not paid. He unwisely signed a check, badlyoverdrawing his private account. His father seemed waiting for such anopportunity, and took drastic action. Under an old law, he had his sonapprehended as a spend thrift, and so adjudged, deprived of his rightsand made ward of a guardian. A young physician was made deputy incharge of his person--a man chosen, apparently, with much care. It wasto be his business to teach this wealthy man's son to work with hishands and to live on a stipulated sum. There is no question thatimmediate good followed these aggressive tactics, and in thepersonality of his companion-guardian he found much that waswholesome. A sturdy character was the doctor, who had fought his waythrough poverty to a liberal education, and was entering a specialstudy of nervous disorders. His good theoretical training was plantedin a rich soil of common-sense. For three months they worked on afarm, shoulder to shoulder. The two men became friends, a most helpfulfriendship for Dave, whose admiration for the young doctor had provena path which led him, for the first time, to a realization of thehidden beauties in a life of overcoming, and this lies close to thenobility of the love of work. 

Dave was accepting his need for the bitter medicine which was beingadministered. He had forgiven Adelaide who sided with his father and, for the first time, had written, acknowledging some of his pastfailures. He wanted some books. He needed clothes. The orders giventhe doctor had been rigid as to spending-money and diversions. Thedetermined father disapproved the expense account. Another man wassent to relieve the doctor-companion-a man who could be depended uponto carry out the letter of the father's law. Rebellion, fierce--and itseemed, righteous--flamed forth in Dave Scott's soul. He was doing hisbest. He was working as he never had worked before. He had seen hisneed--he had the vision of self-mastery. All this, and more he hadseriously confided to the man his father, through the court, hadplaced over him. Without a word of explanation he was again to beturned over to the custody of a stranger. Was he a child or a chattel?Was he mentally irresponsible that he should be thus transferred fromone hand to another without a hearing? He wired his protests, andreceived in return an assurance that he would accept his new custodianor be cut off without a cent. In that hour the real character of DavidScott was born. He consulted an attorney and learned the limited powerof his guardians. Outside of Ohio he was legally free. He pawned someof his few belongings. Adelaide and the child were financially caredfor. 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 werebeing recruited everywhere for "early over-seas service, " and DaveScott, the aesthetic, volunteered as a "buck-private. " Few got over asfast as they wished. It was six months for Dave at Paris Island. Therewere few in the ranks of his mental ability, and physically he becameas 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 setjaw and revolting senses, later with a grim smile; finally, and thenthe emancipation, with a sense of the closeness of man to man inmankind's work. And the men began turning to him, and as he sweatedwith 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 areplacement in the Sixth. 

The French line had been beaten thin as gold-foil. If it broke, Pariswas at the mercy of the Hun. Then eight thousand of Uncle Sam'sMarines were thrown in where the line was thinnest and the pressureheaviest. Sharp-shooters, expert marksmen, were most of them. Theenemy was now in the open. They had not before met riflemen who boldlystood up and coolly killed at one thousand yards. Crested Germanhelmets made superb targets, and the officers bit the dustdisastrously. At the end of three days, six thousand of these eightthousand Marines were dead or casuals. But the tide of the Great Warwas turned-and Dave Scott was one of the immortals who forced theflood back upon the Rhine. What miracle was it that shielded thatever-smiling white face, crowned with its flaming shock, from thestorm of lead and death? With the fate of nations trembling in thebalance, who can know the part his blue eyes, now true as steel, played in the great decision as, hour after hour with deadlyprecision, he turned his hand to slaughter? Five times the gun he wasusing became too hot and was replaced by that of a dead comrade. Afterthose three days at Chateau-Thierry, no mortal could question thatDave Scott had forsworn aesthetics; that he was a demon of reality. Later he saw service on the Champagne front, and then was invalidedhome. 

It was a chastened father, a magnificently proud father, who was thefirst to greet him. For the time he was unable to put into words thehonor he had for the son whom, so few months before, he consideredworthless. "It's all past now, Dave. That past we won't speak ofagain. 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 hischaracter had been remade: "No, Father, I have enlisted for fouryears. I belong to the Marines till my time is up. I owe it to you, toAdelaide, to the boy, to myself, to prove that I can be the man inpeace that I have tried to be in training-camp and in France. I know Ican face reality when spurred by excitement. I have yet to prove thatI 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 growingdarker and more dreary as the sun falls into the west, may dailybecome more rich and beautiful and worthy. To the soul victorious ourspan of years is not menaced by misfortune and misery, is not degradedby bitterness, discord and hatred, but hourly thrills with therealization that the worst which life may bring but challenges thedivine within to masterful assertion. And the soul victorious hasrisen unscathed--glorified--above every attack of fate. 

Mrs. Herman Judson was a sight to make the gods weep. With featuresmore than usually attractive, softened by a halo of waving, silveryhair, she was but a mushy bog of misery. It was three P. M. ; she hadjust been carried downstairs, and in spite of the usual host ofapprehension, with some added new ones for to-day, no slightestaccident had marred the perilous trip from her front bedroom to theliving-room below; still everything and everybody, save old Dr. Bond, was in a flutter. Tension and apprehension marked the faces andactions of all. Not till the last of six propping, easing, supportingpillows had been adjusted; till hot-water bottles were in near contactwith two "freezing" ankles; till her shoulder-shawl had been takenoff--a twist straightened out--and accurately replaced; till the room, already ventilated to a preordered nicety of temperature, had a dooropened and both windows closed; not till the screen had been movedtwice to modify the "glare" of the lights, and to protect frompossible "draughts"; not until the "Sunset Scene from Venice" had beenturned face to the wall so the reflection from its glass wouldn't makeher "eyes run cold water"; and finally, not until ten drops from thebottle labeled "For spinal pain" had been taken, and five minutesspent by her niece, fanning so very gently, "so as not to smother mybreath"--not till this formidable contribution to the pitiful slaveryof petted sensations had been slavishly offered, could the invalidfind strength to greet her childhood playmate, quiet, observing, charitable Dr. Willard Bond. 

Twice a day for many months the household held its breath while thismoving-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 strenuousrespiration, as Mrs. Judson and her rocker, with pillows, blankets andthe ever present afghan, weighed two hundred and eight pounds-onehundred and eighty pounds of woman, twenty-eight pounds ofaccessories! And Ben and 'Lissie were the ones who logically deservedfanning and attention to ventilation, especially after the seven P. M. Trip back. 

And they were always so solemn, so tensifyingly solemn, these riskyjourneys up and down. The niece, Irma, carried the hot-water bottles, the extra blankets and the fan. The nurse had the medicine-box and asmall tray with water-glasses--for when things went wrong, thecavalcade 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 specialimportance; and Dr. Cummings, the successful young surgeon, a far-awayrelative-by-marriage, had, in all seriousness, prescribed eighteenlotions, elixirs, powders, pills and potions, to meet each of theeighteen varied symptoms. Nine months ago this progressivelydeveloping 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 herhis fears and suggested a possible operation. Within two minutes Mrs. Judson was faint and chilling. Since then the doctor, the nurse, theniece, not to forget Ben and 'Lissie, had labored without ceasing toprevent a return of the "awful gall-stone attacks, " and, with theLord's help, to get Mrs. Judson "strong enough for an operation. " Butprogress was dishearteningly slow. Every mention of "operation" seemedto make their patient worse. And now for over eight months she had notwalked 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 activepractice, could always respond to a call if needed. Moreover, it hadbeen discovered that he was a neighbor-playmate of Mrs. Judson duringher girlhood. He had but recently come to Detroit from their old homein Charlestown, under the shadow of Bunker Hill monument, about whichthey had often played as children. Dr. Bond had lived there alone formany years following his wife's death, and had now come to make a homewith his successful son. He was giving his time, and he felt the bestyear of his life, writing a series of chapters on "Our Nerves and OurMorals. " He had never been a specialist, claiming only to be a family-doctor. But for over thirty years he had been ministering most wiselyto the ills of the soul as well as of the body. A large, compellingsympathy he gave his patients. He saw their ills. He felt their fears. He sensed their sorrows. He understood their weaknesses. He lookedbeyond the manifest ailments of flesh and blood. His fine discernmentrevealed the obscure sicknesses which affect hearts and souls. And hisrational sympathies penetrated with the deftness and beneficence ofthe surgeon's scalpel. He stood for that type of man whom God hasraised up to help frail and needing human-kind in body, mind andspirit. 

"Sixty years is a long time to pass between meetings, isn't it?" saidDr. Bond after Mrs. Judson's needs had severally and successfully beenhumored, and she was able to note and recognize the old-new doctor'spresence and offer a plump, tremulous hand in greeting. 

"You don't know how nearly you have missed seeing me, " she replied. "Ihave been on the verge for months, but Dr. Cummings has been able topull me through. You see, he knows all my dangers, and has given methe best medicines that medical science knows for each of them. Havehim tell you about it, Dr. Bond. I do hope nothing will happen whilehe's gone. " Dr. Bond replied that he was sure, with Dr. Cummings'advice and the nurse's and the niece's help and understanding, therewould be no danger; that he was so near he would come in eachafternoon and they could talk about the old days and the old childhoodfriends around Boston. "I hope so, " Mrs. Judson replied, "but you knowI 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 mygall-stones. If they get started, I die a thousand deaths. "

"I shall come at once, you may be sure, but tell the nurse to putthose gall-stones to bed at ten p. M. , because you and I are too oldto 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 faithfullyto come at any hour. "

The two physicians left the room together. Thirty-five and sixty-fivethey were, both earnest, capable, honest men, one a master of modernmedical science, the elder a thoroughly equipped physician, and a deepstudent of humanity. 

"I am very glad you are going to see my aunt. For months I have wishedto call in a consultant, but she has always refused. I know much ofher trouble is nervous, and you know how little time most of us haveto study nervousness, and I am sure you will see clearly much whichhas been rather hazy to me. I think you were concealing a laugh whenthey gave her the 'Spinal-pain drops, ' and frankly, there is verylittle that has much strength in all those pills and powders I'vegiven her. I have learned that she gets along very well much of thetime 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. Iam not absolutely sure, either, about those gall-stones. The symptomsare not classic, but she certainly does suffer, and I have had to giveher pretty heavy doses of morphine several times, and then she'swretchedly sick for some days. Believe me, Doctor, I do not feelcompetent in her case. It's not my line. Find out all you can. Dowhatever you feel is best, and you may depend upon my endorsement ofany changes you may see fit to make. It will be a God's mercy if youcan 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 haveto operate, there will be a funeral. "

Dr. Bond thanked the younger man heartily. He felt his earnestness andhonesty, 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 twogenerations. He was again a little fellow, and Rhoda Burrows livedacross the street. Their mothers were friends; they were playmates. And through the years he had treasured her happy, sunny, beautifulface as an ideal of girlhood perfection. She was older than he, andhow she had "big sistered" and "mothered" him! How his little hurtsand sorrows had fled before her laughter and caresses! Hundreds andthousands had touched his inner life since Rhoda moved West with herparents, but that gleam of girlhood had remained etched with theclearness 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-pettingselfishness, the same! It seemed impossible--yet--and here his bigcharity spoke--all of the choice spirit of the girl cannot have beenswallowed up in the sordidness of a selfish, old age. And that samecharity breathed upon the physician's soul till his helpful andhopeful interest for this pitiful wreck of wretchedness was aglow. Hewould give her his best, and he knew that best sometimes wroughtwonders. 

Dr. Bond first had a conference with the niece, who was pure gold, andwho accepted each of her aunt's complaints as a warning which couldbut disastrously be ignored. But, and this was good to know, helearned that when Aunt Rhoda was better, she was kind and good-hearted. From the nurse, the doctor learned other details, and whatwas of special significance, that the invalid's appetite rarelyflagged-then he saw a reason for her one hundred and eighty pounds;and when he learned that rare broiled beef, or rare roast beef wasserved the physically inert patient and bountifully eaten twice eachday, his understanding became active. 

Mrs. Judson's presiding fates were good to her the next week. Shewould have denied it with the sum total of her vehemence, whichincidentally was some sum, but Dr. Bond says it is true. It was aftereleven, one night. He was just finishing his day's writing. It was thenurse 'phoning. "I am truly sorry to call you, Doctor, but I've giventhree doses of the gall-stone medicine, and it always relieves unlessa real attack is on. I am sure she is suffering. " The old doctor wasnot surprised. The patient had been doing unusually well for two orthree days and had spoken particularly of her better appetite. Thedoctor's first query, upon reaching the house, related to the detailsof the evening meal. "No, there was no steak to-night. We had chicken-salad. 'Lissie had tried herself; Mrs. Judson was hungry and asked fora second portion. "

Gently, carefully, thoroughly, the suffering woman was examined. Therewas no doubt that her pain was severe, but in conclusion, the olddoctor did doubt decidedly the presence of gall-stones. He believed itto be duodenal colic. "I don't wish to give you a hypodermic, " he toldher. "I know it will relieve you quickly to-night, but it will set youback several days. I am going to ask you to be patient, and to take anunpleasant dose, and I think the nurse and I can relieve youcompletely within two hours, and you will be little the worse; infact, you may be better, to-morrow. "

"She won't take it, " the nurse said, as the doctor called her from theroom. "Dr. Cummings suggested it once, and she held it against him forweeks. She said her mother whipped her when she was a child and thencouldn't make her swallow it. "

"You will fix it as I tell you, then bring it in to me, " the Doctorreplied. Dubiously the nurse carried out the order. She thanked herstars that the Doctor, not she, was to give it. Yet it looked verynice when she brought it into the sick-room, redolent with lemon andpeppermint. 

"Think of this, Mrs. Judson, as your best friend to-night in all therealm of medicine. Take it with my belief that it is to prove the cureof your gall-stones. It is not nice. It's not easy to swallow. Don'tsip it. Take it all at a gulp. "

But she sipped it. And she screamed, not a scream of pain, but ofrage, of violated dignity-insulted-outraged. "Castor oil! I'll diefirst. Why, that stuff isn't fit to give an animal. Are you trying tokill me I Oh, you old fogy! I knew something would happen when I letDr. 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, theold 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 wailas a particularly pernicious jab in the midst of her duodenum-"aprovidential thrust, " Dr. Bond said--doubled her up, if rotundity canbe said to double. The Doctor was obdurate. Colic was trumps--and won!

The first dose did not meet a hospitable reception, but another waspromptly given. Then other nicer things were done and the Doctor washome and the patient comfortably asleep soon after one. The next day'sconference between the two was strictly professional, nor was theremuch thawing till the third day after. Mrs. Judson's ire must havebeen of Celtic origin, for it was not long-lived. 

The following Sunday afternoon seemed propitious for the beneficentwork of the soul-doctor. The whole family had told Mrs. Judson howmuch better she was looking-the Doctor had kept her on soft diet sinceher 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 hadlived in his memory. She had forgotten the beauty of her childhood. The Doctor brought back the picture in tones which could stand onlyfor high reverence. She felt he wanted to know, and she knew shewanted to tell. So for two hours they sat, hand in hand, as in theirchildhood, and he heard of her father's moderate success as aneditorial writer after he came West when she was nine, of theircomfortable home in Detroit, how well she had done in school, of herearly ability as a teacher, of her election as super-intendent of theSt. Claire Academy for Girls when she was twenty-five, of her marriageto Herman Judson, a childless widower fifteen years her senior, beforeshe was thirty, of their very happy home, of her own little girl andhow she grew into womanhood, of her daughter's marriage, and then oftier little girl, and how wonderful it was to be a grandmother beforeshe was fifty!

Then it was "Nurse, the bottle for 'Tightness of breath'. . . I don'tsee how I can tell it. You can't know. Nobody can. It was never thesame for any one else. The train went through a bridge, and they wereall three killed, my husband, my only girl, the darling grandchild. God turned His face away that night they brought them home. I've neverseen Him since. I've never looked for Him since. I don't see how Ikept 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 shedied, have done the best I could to raise Irma, her child, and Irma'stried, 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-butI'm afraid to die. "

Then began the cheapening catalog of the nearly twenty years ofillness, her weak and sensitive spine, her constant difficulty inbreathing, and the eternal thumping of her heart. And on and on, thelist so old to Dr. Bond's ears, so commonly heard in the experience ofhelpers of the nervous sick-as usual to the nerve-specialist as theinflamed appendix to the modern surgeon--yet in the mind of everynerve-sufferer so unique, so individual, so different. But of all thelong, two-hour story, one short sentence stood out, eloquent in thedoctor's mind, "I haven't anything to live for, yet I'm afraid todie. " He gently thanked her. He had felt with her in the recital ofher great sorrow, and she knew he had suffered in her suffering. "Youcan get well. You can find something worth living for, and you canlose your fear of death, if you will pay the price. " For the momentshe misunderstood. 

"Why, Doctor, I would gladly give thousands for health. "

Again, gently, "Your dollars are worthless. You are poor in the goldwhich will buy your restoration. I shall tell you about it Wednesdayif you want to know. "

On both Monday and Tuesday visits her curiosity prompted her to referto the great cure Dr. Bond mentioned. But it was Wednesday afternoonbefore he spoke seriously. 

"You were very ill last week--such illnesses have frequently provedfatal to life, when ignorantly managed. But as I see you to-day, knowing your radiant childhood, and the good fortune which was yoursfor years, and the heart-tearing shock which came so cruelly, I see asickness more dire and fatal than any for which you have ever yet beentreated. The beauty and youth and charity of your spirit are mortallyill. I see your soul an emaciated remnant, a skeleton of its possibleself. It threatens to die before your body. Selfish sorrow hasinfected and permeated your once lovely, better self, and to-day youhave no true goodness left. You are good to others that they may bebetter to you. You are generous with your means-a generosity whichcosts you no sacrifice, that you may buy back the generosity withoutwhich you could not live. Four useful lives are emptying the best oftheir strength, ability and love into years of service that you mayknow a poor, low-grade, selfish, physical comfort. You are taking fromthem and others consideration, self-sacrifice, loyalty, unstinteddevotion, and giving in return only ungrateful dollars. You are richin these, but poorer than Lazarus in the least of the qualities whichmake life worth living a day, which keep Death from being a hauntingterror. You have not one physical symptom of your endless catalogwhich cannot be removed if you meet the blessings half-way whichdiscomforts offer. "

It couldn't have been what Dr. Bond said--it must have been what hewas himself that made those unwelcome, humiliating truths carryconviction, win confidence, and waken hope. Possibly his last sentencehelped her decision--his serious confidence in his ability to removethose terrifying, ever impending threats of physical anguish. At anyrate, she gave her promise-for six months she would implicitly followhis instruction, with the understanding that if she did not seeherself better at the end of four months, she was to be released fromfurther treatment. 

It would be a long story, a story of remarkable medical finesse; itwould be describing the work of an artist--for such was Dr. Bond as heturned bodies from sickness to health and souls from perdition tosalvation. But victory came! In six weeks, the invalid was walking. Insix months she was walking three miles a day. She was eating, bathing, sleeping and working more like a woman under sixty than one nearingseventy. She spent the summer with the doctor's people in theirbungalow on Lake Huron. She now gave of her means thoughtfully, withgrowing unselfishness, and soon after she began to look up and outthere 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 simplyreplied: "You have come back to God. "

That winter, Dr. Bond spent in the East. One day the expressmanbrought a package--some books he had always loved, in remarkablebindings, and this note:

"My best Friend:

"To-day I am seventy. I haven't been so young since sorrow was sent toprove me, nor more happy since I nursed your hurt arm when we werechildren. I walked down town, two miles you know, and back, and a milein the stores, I am sure, to find these books you love, in bindingsworthy your better enjoyment of them. All that you have promised hascome to me. God bless you!"

CHAPTER XXIII

THE TRIUMPH OF HARMONY

When man "conceives his superpower, his miraculous power to meetdisaster, and in it to find profit; to face defeat after defeat andtherein acquire faith in his own permanence; to live for years withina frail, defective body, with a mind unable to respond to thepromptings of ambition and inspiration, and thereby take on thegreatness of gentleness-the conviction comes clear, a conviction whichwill not comfortably stay put aside, that life is intended to developa noble self. "

What could be more beautiful to senses that thrill with love than thispink-cheeked, azure-eyed babe, whose golden ringlets promise theglorious crown, the unfading beauty of her womanhood? She was hardly amonth old, yet she seemed to understand--Mammy Lou said she did-thatshe must look her "beau'fulest"; so when her father came and bent overher little crib, she smiled, then coyly ducked her wobbly head, tosmile again at Mother, the dear mother who only to-day had beenallowed by the doctor to sit up for an hour. Mammy Lou must have beenright, for there Baby lay playing with her fingers and thedisappointed pink ribbons of her booties, while, now and then, whenthe discussion was specially serious, she would look soberly at herearnest-faced parents till they both would notice, and laugh. Then herlittle understanding smile-and some more play. It was an importantconference. Considerations affecting Baby's future were in thebalance, and, as she gave such perfect attention and neverinterrupted, and insisted on every one keeping good-natured, MammyLou's assertion that "Dat lil' sweetness' stood every word her pa an'ma said. She knew dey's findin' her a name, " cannot be successfullydisputed. 

The Southards had been married twelve years. Georgia was eight, andEtta five. It must be a boy--one who would pass on the Southard nameand traditions. The first Earl of Minto had contributed some noblenessof blood to the Southard stock, and the father had set his heart on aboy who should feel the double inspiration of "Minto Southard, " tohelp make him fine and great. 

A "girl"! And business took the father away for a fortnight. It wasrumored that he drowned his disappointment in Charleston-but not inthe 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 noplans for a little girl; so she was nearly a month old and was stillbeing called "Sweetness" by Mammy Lou, and "The Baby" by others, andto-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 beall right for a boy, but she's such a dainty little thing, and I'msure it will always seem odd to her. "

"What would you like better, Mater? I don't wish to contend or to beunduly insistent, but you know I have looked forward to having theEarl's name in the family, and, personally, I think it has theattraction of uniqueness, as well as the flavor of distinction. Then, you remember, you suggested the names for the other girls. I know youare 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 sodistinguished an association. My personal desire is very strong, and Ican't think of any other name which will satisfy me nearly as well. "

Just then Baby looked at her mother, smiled and gurgled somethingwhich was intelligible to mother-ears, and the wife's hand slippedinto the husband's, and the baby was named Minta Southard. 

Where could a new baby have found a more perfect setting for herchildhood and girlhood? The plantation lay on both sides of theCatawba River-fresh and crystal clear those days, as it sped down frommountains to sea-fertile, fruitful acres there were, which neverfailed 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 thedignity lent by its fine colonial portico, the artistic columns ofwhich could be seen miles down the river-road. The Manor House wasgood to see in its rare setting of stately water-oaks, now in theirfull maturity. 

For four years little Minta thrived and gave promise of bringing manyjoys to this home which knew no shadow but the father's periodic"business trips" to Charleston. Mammy Lou was her slave, and evenGeorgia, 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 lether play with some of her things without protest. Then the fever!"Typhoid, " the doctor said, "affecting her brain. " Father, Mother andMammy Lou took turns being with her those long, hot weeks, when itforgot to rain and the refreshing sea-breeze was cruelly withheld. Doctors from Charlotte, doctors from Charleston and doctors fromAtlanta came, to look grave, to shake their learned heads, and tosadly leave, offering no hopeful change in treatment. The fever wasprolonged over five weeks, and the child seemed more lifeless each dayas it left her drained and damaged-drained and damaged for life itproved. So slowly her shadowy form gained, that a single week was tooshort to evidence improvement. Six months, and she was not yetwalking. One year, and she was still fragile. Then, in a month, normalchildhood apparently slipped back, and she began to play and be merry. 

Of course "Sweetness" was spoiled--and an autocrat she was, hermother, only, denying herself the indulgence of being her subject. Mother, however, was lovingly tactful, and exercised the disciplineshe believed necessary for her child's good most wisely. And Mother'smemory has ever remained a hallowed one. Mammy Lou did much todiscredit all of the mother's conscientious care. For so long the poorchild "couldn't eat no thin', " and when at last Minta's appetitereturned, her loving black nurse would give her anything she wanted, and if the fever hadn't hopelessly damaged the little one's digestiveglands, Mammy Lou's unfailing "l'il snacks for her honey-chile" wouldhave completed the wreckage. At first the trouble was not noticed. Minta rarely spoke of suffering. She would be found lying with herface from the light, and would always reply that she was "tiredplaying, " sometimes only, "my head hurts. " The parents thought she didplay too hard, for she was developing into an intense little miss, whoentered 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 wasthirteen, Miss Allison came from Washington to spend a year, as tutor, to prepare her for school the next fall. That was the year Georgia ranaway. She had been visiting in Savannah several weeks, when shedisappeared, leaving a hurried note to her friends, stating that shewould write her people from New York, and begging them not to worryabout her. The note from New York was thoughtlessly written. She wasprobably frightened by what she had done. She was safe in New Yorkwith Randolph, where they would be for ten days. She was sorry. Wouldthey forgive her? She knew she had done wrong. Write her at --- EastFourteenth Street, where they were boarding. 

The outraged father called the two girls and their mother into hisoffice, and read them Georgia's letter, then tore it into bits. "Yoursister's name is never to be mentioned again in this house. She hasbrought the first dishonor to the Southard name in America. She isdisowned, and may she be swallowed up in her own disgrace. "

Nothing had ever so impressed Minta as her father's face that day. Aprimitive savagery spoke, intensified by the refinements of Cavalierblood. No one dared utter a word of protest. He was implacable asadamant, they all knew. Mr. Southard was never the same. Some of hisgenial tenderness was lost forever, and the family lived on with theunmentionable name ever before them, like a grave which was never tobe filled. The father was away much more the following year. He neverdrank at home. And, after his death, it was found that he had gambledaway many thousands-all of Georgia's part. Thus a father's pride offamily met a daughter's impulse. 

The little mother, never strong, always patient and devoted andlovable, seemed unable to rise above the shame and the sorrow of itall, and could give less and less to Minta, who now found in MissAllison and Mammy Lou her most potent influences. Miss Allison wasworthy the responsibility and probably did much to decide the girl'sfuture. She had studied art, and had hoped to spend years abroad. Financial disappointments had made this impossible. But herimaginative pupil loved the art of which she spoke so often, andbegged to be taught to sketch. She early showed unusual skill and thepromise of talent; still the father would not consider her going Northwith Miss Allison to school. Yet the seeds had been sown and an artistshe 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 graduallyweakening, Minta stayed at home the following year. A few weeks beforethe dear mother slipped away, she talked with Minta about the oldersister, dutifully avoiding the mention of her name. "I have never feltright about the way we treated her, " she said. "Some time when you areolder, won't you try to find her and help her?"

The Cavalier was in the younger daughter too. "I certainly think shehas 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. Sheis 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 robbedMinta's already frail body of strength which might have come at thatdeveloping age. Much of the next eighteen months she spent in bed. Itwas then decided that she consult a friend of her father's, a cityphysician. Unfortunately, this ambitious surgeon had been but aconvivial 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 notknow till two years later that she had been robbed of her birthright. Her headaches, far from being helped, were even worse, now blindingand exhausting. She at last went East to a world-renowned specialistwho undid, as far as his great skill could, the damage of the firstoperation, and who, great man that he was, had time not only tooperate but to comprehend. His cultivated instincts led him directlyto an intimacy with his patient's idealisms, and he was one to whomevery right-souled sufferer could trust his deepest confidence withoutreserve. 

"I fear, little girl, your ambitions are only for those ofunquestioned strength. You are but a pigmy. Certain organs, essentialto the conversion of food into energy, were injured beyond all repairin your first illness. Other damage which neither time nor skill canmake good was inflicted by your first operation. Your eyes areentirely inadequate for the merciless exactions of a life of art. Youare at best but a delicate hot-house plant-beyond human power todevelop into sufficient hardiness to be transplanted into the world ofBohemia, or into much of any world save a sheltered one. You can neverbe more than a semi-invalid. "

This sentence the great doctor pronounced only after his own opinionhad been re-enforced by a conference of experts. And every word wastrue, as far as he and the experts had investigated. 

But there was the spirit of a Cavalier with which they had notreckoned. "I'll not have it so. Life, the life that you give me, isn'tworth living. I shall have my two years in Europe with my art, if ittakes 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 twoyears in Rome. Three weeks she worked; one week she suffered. And howwonderfully she did suffer! She had been warned of the danger of drug-relief. And when doctors came and began filling their hypodermicsyringes, 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 quietand darkness, and, it seemed, fasting, dulled the edge of the pain andshortened 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 eachother! They both knew it. It was as natural as life, after they hadworked together a few months, for him to ask if she could wait whilehe 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 fewothers, to more quickly win the fame which he was sure to attain. Andshe knew, too, that she could not so love another-there was never adoubt of that. But this time love was bitterly cruel. It came in allits 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 rememberwhat 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 betaken back to Dr. Kingsley. 

Somehow the trip was made. But it was a desperately sick girl, themere shell of a life, that they returned to America. It was weeksbefore she realized where she was and other weeks before she was ableto tell Dr. Kingsley so that he could understand it all--not only ofsorrow's final revelation, but this time, what she had not mentionedbefore, of Georgia--the family disgrace. She did not know thewonderful power of Christian counsel and ideals to save from the so-often misinterpreted sufferings of wrong spiritual adjustments. Shehad not realized the healing power of the love of God expressed in thelives of good men and women, and how it can sweeten the bitterness anddissipate even the paralyzing loneliness of an impossible human love. 

Dr. Kingsley's eyes had welled with tears when she told the story ofGeorgia. How impellingly gentle was his voice when he said, "You'llforgive her now, I know. " Forgive her! What else to do, when he madeit 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 itwas even as her mother had thought. Georgia had married, "beneath thefamily, " she told Minta, the Georgia who was too proud to ever writeagain. She was living in Brooklyn, the wife of Randolph, an assistantengineer on an ocean steamship. And Etta came to visit Georgia, and agreat load, a load of which she had, through the years, beenunconscious, slipped away as Minta let go her enmity. "In all things, "she said to Dr. Kingsley, "I am your obedient patient-all things butone. I will work, and I shall work. "

And she does work. No one understands how. Seventy-odd pounds offrailty, with eyes which are ever resentful of the use to which sheputs them; with the recurrence of suffering which wrings every ounceof physical strength, which for days holds her mind writhing as on therack, which tortures her to physical and mental surrender, but which, through the lengthening years, has been impotent to daunt her regalspirit. 

And she gives, gives on through the days of relative comfort, gives ofher cheer which comes from, no one knows where; gives, spontaneously, kindness which has multiplied her lovers, both men and women; andgives of her ability which is unquestioned. There are a few publisherswho 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, hastriumphed through the harmony of a brave adjustment to her pitilesslimitations-a harmony realized by few, even though rich, in resourceof mind, powerful, in reserve of body. 

Can we ignore the omnipotence of the spiritual?