TRIES A NEW BUSINESS; ALSO TRAVELS SOME FOR HIS HEALTH.
As the reader may have already surmised, the play mentioned in the
preceding chapter was never finished. No; after I was once more domiciled
in my city home, I began to think that if I really was a literary genius I
ought to commercialize my ideas right, instead of using them in fiction or
drama simply to tickle the fancy of people who would forget it all in a
moment's time. The idea of teaching things by mail occurred to me as being
a field of great possibilities.
While it is a difficult matter to give tangible lessons by correspondence
methods on some subjects--swimming, for example--yet on nearly everything
there may be presented a working knowledge which the student can enlarge
upon for himself. I employed some auburn-haired typewriters and began
advertising to teach several different subjects by mail courses. Among
these were journalism, poultry-raising, bee-culture, market-gardening,
surveying, engineering, architecture, and several different things. We
gave our graduates a nice diploma with some blue ribbon and cheap tinsel
on it. These diplomas cost about twenty cents apiece to get them up, which
seemed like a reckless waste of money, but it helped to advertise the
business. Business came and we hadn't much to do except to deposit the
money and, incidentally, send out the "stock letters," which the girls
always jokingly called the "lessons."
One day one of the typewriters called my attention to the fact that for
originality I had been outdone by a fellow at Peoria, Illinois, who
advertised in the leading magazines to teach ventriloquism by mail. This
was certainly an innovation in the way of mail instruction. I thought a
little while about something entirely new that I could introduce. I soon
had it! I got up a correspondence course in courting for the purpose of
straightening out the crooked course of true love. I argued that nearly
everything else had been simplified save courting, which went on in the
old laborious manner with lovers' quarrels, heartaches, and ofttimes
life-time estrangements. The course was a success and many wrote for
"individual" instruction.
Things were going well and I had a lucrative business. I had been so busy
for several months that all my symptoms had sunk into desuetude. I had
almost forgotten that I was an invalid and that I should take care of my
precious health, what little I had left, when the thought occurred to me,
as it had several years before, that I was working too hard. Then, too, I
became a little conscience-stricken. My conscience had never before
troubled me, probably from the fact that I had never worked it overtime. I
began to think that in these correspondence courses I might not be giving
my patrons value received for their money. A pretty record for me to leave
behind me, I thought. So as I had a competency anyway, I paid off my
helpers and went out of business.
As I now thought I was again on the very edge of a nervous breakdown, I
concluded to travel for my health. Where to go was the next question! A
medical friend suggested a sea-voyage, but advised me to first take a sail
for a day or so on Lake Michigan. I did so and became so seasick that
death would have been joyously welcomed. I did not take the proposed
voyage, as I had had enough.
But the germ that prompted me to travel for my health had a firm grip on
me. Colorado was my first objective point, and on the first day of my
arrival there I went to the top of one of their snow-capped mountains. I
had not taken into account the effects of altitude upon a person not
accustomed to it, and in consequence of my sudden ascent I had a slight
expectoration of blood. This seemed to be cause for genuine alarm, and I
now realized that I was to be a victim of "the great white plague,"
vulgarly known as consumption. Consumptives were as thick as English
sparrows in Colorado and I saw ample evidences of the disease in all its
horrible details. It seemed that there was a sort of caste among the
"lungers," depending mainly upon their amount of ready cash. Some had
plain "consumption," while others had only "tuberculosis." Many had "lung
trouble," "catarrh," "bronchitis," and--"neurasthenia."
The patients in the sanitariums were graded. The most advanced cases were
called the "B. L. B's."--"The Busted Lung Brigade." It seems that there
is no condition too grim for joke and jest. On all sides there were
coughing and expectorating and suffering and dying, sufficient to dismay
the stoutest heart--and I a victim myself, I thought.
I heard that the torrid southwest was the ideal climate for tuberculosis
and thither I went. I visited a few places in this hot southwestern
country where it is alleged that consumptives in all stages soon recover
and grow fat. I soon learned that these alluring reports should be taken
with the usual quantity of saline matter. This boosting of climate for
invalids, I found, was mainly the work of land sharks, railroads, hotel
and sanitarium people, and a few medical men who were crafty or misguided.
This climate may be ideal in being germ-free, but where it is so hot and
dry that even germs can't eke out an existence, it is also a trifle trying
on the tender-foot consumptive. I found that the bad water and sand-storms
in many localities, coupled with his homesickness, more than off-set all
the good results the climate could otherwise bring to the sufferer.
In nearly every room I occupied while in this Mecca for consumptives, the
place had been rendered vacant by my predecessor having moved out--in a
box. I did not stay in one locality very long, but visited a number of
places that were exploited as being the land of promise for all afflicted
with this agonizing disease. Everywhere I went I saw hundreds of victims
being shorn of their money and deriving meager, if any, benefits. The
native consumptives went elsewhere in search of health, it being another
case of "green hills _far away_." Many went so far as the State of Maine.
Every State in the Union has at some time been lauded as the favored spot
for the cure of consumption, but, after all, it seems as mythical as the
pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Some climates may be better than
others for those ill with this disease, but if you are a poor, homesick
sufferer--a stranger in a strange land--I doubt whether the best climate
on earth can vie with the comforts of home, surrounded by those nearest
and dearest to you, and whose kindly administrations are not to be
regarded as a case of "love's labor lost."
I returned home "much improved in health." Don't think I've had a
tuberculous symptom since.