_April 18, 1908. Chicago, Illinois._
“Doctor Lynn, you are in the incipient stage of tuberculosis. You should
return to California immediately.”
That is what Dr. Graves said to me to-day and he is in a position to
know what he is talking about. But I can’t believe it! Why, I can do the
work of two women. Haven’t I supported myself since I was fifteen years
old, worked my way through Medical College and built up a city practice
by my own, unaided efforts? Besides, every one says I am the picture of
health. My five feet eight of energised muscle, my high colour, my
breadth of shoulder, all seem to give such a diagnosis the lie.
Yet a still voice whispers in my heart, “It is true.” Since that last
severe attack of grippe the buoyancy has vanished from my step. Life has
become a drag.
But then, why not? The last two years have been strenuous. Just two
years ago to-day San Francisco went down in earthquake and flames,
scattering my growing practice to the winds. And of course Dan’s
position went too. But we celebrated with an earthquake wedding, and it
was not long until my husband had worked out his great invention, and we
came here; he to gain financial backing for his project, and I to profit
by the abundance of clinical material in a great city.
And then the panic of 1907 struck us. Why, the earthquake was nothing to
that. Poor Dan was crushed. How can I tell him of this new calamity? And
what will it profit to add to his burden, helpless as he is? For months
now, he has walked the streets looking for any kind of employment at any
wage, but none is to be had. This hopeless seeking, added to the
stunning blow of the collapse of his company and the deadening pressure
of debt incurred last fall when we borrowed to the utmost limit of all
our friends’ capacity in a frantic endeavour to save the invention, only
to lose money, company, invention—all in one universal crash—has
completely unnerved him. To see his wife forced into the depths through
his failure, even though that failure was no fault of his, has been gall
and wormwood to him. Those days when we pledged every pawnable article
in a dogged desire to hang on for just one week longer in the hope that
the tide would turn; when we moved from lodgings to lodgings, each
meaner and more squalid than the last, until the fathomless pit of hell
itself seemed reached in this slum; when I gave up my work in the
college where the wonderful experience gained was ample compensation
except to those driven by grim necessity to seek for any work that would
keep this vile tenement over our heads and put food in our mouths;—all
these things have left him a broken-hearted man.
And there are many such. Months of idleness, a diet of bread and coffee,
all the horrors of shivering nights in the open or in vermin-infested
flop houses, the morning rush for the “help wanted” pages of the daily
papers, the standing in line for hours waiting to apply for a job—a
hundred men for a single position—would these things not take the heart,
nay, the very soul itself, out of a man?
When I was discharged last month, losing my position because of a
general retrenchment, never shall I forget the scenes at the Public
Library when with scores of others I sought the protection of its
sheltering walls at early morning to thaw the night’s coldness out of my
half-frozen body, and search the papers for a possible chance of
employment.
One young man in the huddled group interested me immensely. When the
doors swung open, he bounded up the stairs like an athlete, well in the
lead of the rushing horde who refused to wait for the elevator in their
frenzied scramble for the first chance at a paper and possible
employment. Well-dressed, palpably clean living and efficient, he was an
excellent type of the successful young business man. I could picture him
as a broker, in an insurance office or bank, or filling some responsible
position in a business house. But in the fall of many such houses, his
had evidently gone down to ruin and now the lad was beginning to feel
the pinch that comes from weeks of idleness.
Morning after morning he appeared. His well-tailored suit gave way to a
misfit piece of shoddy; his hat was replaced by a cap which failed to
conceal his need of a hair-cut; his face became lean and haggard; no
longer was his expression one of energy and confidence. A three days’
growth of beard on his jowls will take some of the confidence out of any
man when looking for employment.
Then for days he disappeared.
Came a day when I saw him. It was blizzard weather; a sleety rain was
carried on a high wind which swept through the city streets and wailed
and whistled round the entrance to the Library building. A gaunt figure
dragged its feeble way up the front steps to the semi-shelter of the
pillars; from a face, piteously thin, hollow eyes looked out, their
glance filled with a deep, an utter despair; a short coat pinned
together at the throat revealed the absence of a shirt or underwear;
through the cracks in the run-over shoes the bare flesh peered; wet to
the skin as he was, he shook in the icy blast like a dog in a wet sack.
As the doors swung wide at nine o’clock he did not lead the upward dash,
but half way up the stairs sank down, overcome by a choking fit of
coughing.