JUDICIOUS HARDENING
In the softened light of a richly furnished office two physicians were
seated. It was the elder who spoke. Drawn and sad was his cleanly
featured, tense face; his clear skin and slightly whitened, dark hair
belied his nearly seventy years. He was the anxious, unhappy father of
a sick, unhappy daughter, whom the nurse was preparing in an adjoining
room for examination by Dr. Franklin, the younger physician. "I mean
no discourtesy, Doctor, when I say that I don't believe any one
understands my girl's case. Her brother and sister are healthy
youngsters and have always been so. I may have taken a few drinks too
many now and then, but few men of my age can stand more night-work or
do more practice than I can, and I've about rounded my three-score and
ten. Wanda was a perfect child. She is my oldest. Her mother did pet
and spoil her, always humored her from the first, but she was a
cheerful, bright little thing. She finished high school at fifteen and
did a good year's study at Monticello. All her trouble seemed to start
that spring when she was vaccinated. She had never had worse than the
measles before. She didn't seem to know how to take sickness, though
the Lord knows she's had plenty of chances to learn since her sore
arm; and the school-doctor had to lance a small place, and this kept
her away from Commencement where they had some part for her to do. She
didn't get well in time to spend the month in Michigan with her room-
mate, and she always said that if she could have had this trip she
would never have been so bad. It was a mighty hard summer with me,
too, that year, and probably I didn't notice her enough--anyway she's
been a half-invalid these eighteen years. It's pain and tenderness in
this nerve and then in that one, and she hasn't walked a whole mile in
fifteen years because of her sciatica. I have sent her to Hot Springs,
one summer she spent at Saratoga, and she has taken two courses of
mud-baths. When she was twenty-six, she lived for four months in Dr.
Moore's home. He and I were college-mates and he had been mighty good
in treating rheumatic troubles. After awhile he decided it was her
diet and she lived a whole year in B--- Sanitarium and she gained
weight too, there, and hasn't eaten any meat to speak of nor drunk any
coffee since. She often complains of her eyes but the specialists say
they are all right, that that isn't the trouble. Two of the best
surgeons in our part of the country have refused to operate on her
even when I begged one of them to open her and see if he couldn't find
out what was the matter. Three of her doctors have said it was her
nerves, but I don't think any of them know. You know I don't mean to
say anything that will reflect on your specialty, but you never did
see a case of only nerves put a healthy young girl in bed and keep her
there suffering so that I've had to give her aspirin a hundred times
and even morphin by hypodermic to get her quiet, and off and on for
five years she's had ten, and sometimes fifteen grains of veronal at
midnight, nights when she couldn't get to sleep. If it's only nerves,
then I've got a mighty heap to learn about nerves. I think in forty-
five years practicing medicine a man ought to know enough about them
to recognize them in his own family. But something's got to be done.
Wanda's making a hospital of our home. We daren't slam a door, or her
sister mustn't play the piano but her headaches start; and if Rosie
boils turnips or even brings an onion into the house, it goes to
Wanda's stomach and it takes a hypodermic to quiet her vomiting and a
week to get over the trouble.
"That child of mine is just like a different creature from the fine
little girl she was at twelve when my buggy turned over one night and
broke my leg. Why, she nursed me better than her mother. She just
couldn't do enough for me. That little thing would come down just as
quiet as she could--sometimes every night--to see that that leg was
all right and hadn't got twisted; while now she expects attention from
everybody in the house and from some of the neighbors. She will even
send for Rosie just when she is trying to get dinner started and keep
her a half-hour telling just what she wants and how it's got to be
fixed, then more often she'll just nibble at it just enough to spoil
it for everybody else, after Rosie's spent an hour getting it ready
for her. Tonics don't help her a bit. I've given her iron, arsenic and
strychnin enough to cure a dozen weak women. She's always too weak to
exercise, lies in bed two days out of three, reads and sometimes
writes a letter or two. But before Christmas comes (you know she is
mighty cunning with her fingers; she can sew and embroider and make
all sorts of pretty, womanish things) she works so hard making
presents that she's just clear done out for the next two months and
won't leave her room for weeks. That's about all she does from one
year's end to another, but complain of her sickness, and of late years
criticize the rest of us and dictate to the whole household what they
must do for themselves, and just out-and-out demand what she wants
them to do for her. She really treats her stepmother like a dog, and
often she is so disrespectful to me that I certainly would thrash her
if she wasn't so sick. She was a fine child but her suffering has
wrecked her disposition. She and the rest of us would be better off if
she'd die. You see, Doctor, I haven't much faith left, but she's been
bent so long a time on coming to you, and is willing to spend the
little money her mother left her, to have her own way. Now, I am
doctor enough to stand by you in what you decide if you say you can
cure her, and if she gets well, I'll pay every cent of the bill, but
if she don't, the Lord will just have to help us all, though I suppose
I'll have to take care of her as long as she lives for she won't have
a cent after she gets through with this."
Wanda Fairchild lay expectant on the examination table, pale, almost
wan; her blue eyes, fair skin and even her attractive, curling, blonde
hair seemed lusterless, save when her face lighted with momentary
anticipation at some sound suggesting Dr. Franklin's coming. Much
indeed of her feeling life had grown false through the blighting touch
of her useless years of useless sickness. But genuine was her
greeting. "Oh, Doctor, I am so glad to be here! You remember Mrs.
Melton. You cured her and she has been well ever since, and for over
two years I've been begging papa to bring me here, but he hasn't any
hope. He's tried so hard and spent so much. Now you've got to get me
well. They all say this is my last chance. I certainly can't endure
these awful pains much longer. I know they're going to drive me crazy
some day if something isn't done to stop them. Just look at my arms.
That's where I bit them last night to keep from screaming out in the
sleeper, for I wouldn't take any medicine. I wanted you to see me
without any of that awful stuff to make me different than I truly am.
You will surely cure me, won't you, Doctor, so I can go back home
soon, as strong as Mrs. Melton is, and live like other girls, and have
company and go to parties and dance and take auto-rides and have a
good time before I get too old--or die? Oh, Doctor, you don't know
what a horrible life I live! Every day is just torture. I suppose they
do as well as they know at home, but not one of them, not even papa,
has any conception of how I suffer or they would show more
consideration. It is terrible enough to be sick when you are
understood and when everybody is doing the right thing to help you. I
know my trip has made me worse, for my spine is throbbing now like a
raw nerve. It would be a relief if some one would put burning coals on
my back. You know there's nothing worse than nerve-pains."
Dr. Franklin smiled quietly. How often he had heard poor sufferers
hyperbolize their suffering! How keenly he could see the distinction
between the real and the false in illness! How certainly he knew that
such exaggerated rantings and wailings stood for illness of mind or
soul, but not of body! The physical examination, nevertheless, was
extremely thorough. Nothing can be guessed at in the intricate war
with disease.
"Yes, I was happy as a child. Mother understood me; no one else ever
has. She knew when I needed petting. I did well at school and really
loved Myrtle Covington, my room-mate at the Sem. Just think, she
married--married a poor preacher, but I know she is happy, for she is
well and has a home of her own and three children. I don't see how
they make ends meet on eighteen-hundred and no parsonage. You know we
had a smallpox scare at the Sem. that spring and all had to be
vaccinated. I scratched mine, or something, and for weeks nearly died
of blood-poisoning. That is where my neuritis started. They had to
lance my arm to save my life, and when you examined me I had to grit
my teeth to keep from screaming out when you took hold of that cut
place. You believe I am brave, don't you, Doctor? It hurts there yet,
but I didn't want to disturb you in the examination. Do you think
there is any chance for me, Doctor?"
At this point the physician nodded to the nurse, who left the room.
"And what else happened that summer?" he asked her kindly.
"Well, I was in bed over three months with my vaccination and my
lanced arm, and I had a special nurse, and couldn't eat any solid food
for days. They never would tell me how high my fever was; they were
afraid of frightening me, but I wouldn't have cared. I used to wish I
could die."
"Why, child, what could have happened to make a young, happy girl of
sixteen wish to die? Was there something really serious that you
haven't told?"
"Oh, Doctor, didn't papa tell you? No, I know he wouldn't. He probably
don't know--he can't know what it cost me. Oh! must I tell you? Don't
make me, Doctor! Oh, my poor head! Doctor, it will burst, please do
something for it. Oh, my poor mamma! She loved me so much and she
understood me, too." And tears came and sobs, and for a time neither
spoke.
"Tell me of your mother," the doctor said.
Then the story, the unhappy story, whined out in that self-pitying
voice which ever bespeaks the loss of pride--that characteristic of
wholesome normal womanhood. Her parents had probably never been happy
together. The spring she was in the Seminary, ill, her mother left
home. There was a separation. That fall her father re-married, as did
the mother later, who lived in her new home but a few months, dying
that same winter. From the first, Wanda had hated her stepmother. "I
despise her. I can never trust Father again. I can never trust any one
and I loathe home, and I want to die. Please, Doctor, don't make me
live. I have nothing to live for!"
Here was the woman's sickness--the handiwork of an indulgent mother
who had never taught her daughter the sterling ideals of unselfish
living. This mother had gone. A better trained woman had entered the
home, but her every effort to develop character in the stepdaughter
was resented. Illness, that favorite retreat of thousands, became this
undeveloped woman's refuge. Year after year, sickness proved her
defense for all assaults of importuning duty. Sickness, weakly
accepted at first, later grew, and as an octopus, entwined its
incapacitating tentacles about and slowly strangled a life into
worthlessness.
"Your daughter will have to leave Alton for nine months. Six of these
she will spend on a Western ranch; for three months she will work in
the city slums. Miss Leighton will be her nurse and companion. Life
was deliberately planned to develop wills. Miss Fairchild has lost the
ability to will until, at thirty-four, she is absolutely lacking in
the power to willingly will the effort which is essential to rational,
healthy living. She is but a whimpering weakling, a coward who for
years has run from misfortune. Your daughter must be turned from
discomfort to duty, from pain to productive effort; her margin of
resistance must be pushed beyond the suggestive power of the average
headache, periodic discomfort, or desire for ease; she must learn to
transform a thousand draining dislikes into a thousand constructive
likes. Finally, we hope to teach her the hidden challenge which is
brought us all by the inevitable. To-day she is more sensitive than a
normal three-months-old baby. She must be judiciously hardened into
womanhood."
We cannot say that the troubled father gathered hope from this, to
him, unique exposition of the invalid's case, but sufficient
confidence came to induce him to promise his loyal support to the
"experiment" for the planned period of nine months. The patient
rebelled. She had come "to be Dr. Franklin's patient." She couldn't
"stand the trip." She wouldn't "go a step."
Yes, it seemed cruel. Three days and nights they were on the sleeper;
forty miles they drove over increasingly poor roads to the big ranch
in the Montana foot-hills where everybody else seemed so well, so
coarsely well, she thought. After the first week the aspirin and the
veronal gave out and there was no "earthly chance" of getting more.
Then when she refused to exercise, she got nothing to eat but a glass
of warm milk with a slice of miserably coarse bread crumbed in, and
the mountain air did make her hungry; and when she was ugly, she was
left alone, absolutely alone in that dreary room, and even Lee, the
Chinese cook, wouldn't look in the window when she begged him for
something else to eat. How she did love Rosie those "weary days of
abuse"! Miss Leighton was always polite, though she would not stay
with her a minute when she got "fussy," but would be gone for an hour,
visiting and laughing and carrying on with the men-folks in the big-
room. She had seemed so kind before they left the East and she was
kind now, at times when she had her own way, but she was being paid to
nurse a sick girl, and she had no right to leave her alone for hours
simply because she whined or refused to do her bidding on the instant.
There was a young doctor there who could have helped her if he would,
but he had no more heart than the rest, and when the nurse called him
in to make an examination, he was as noncommittal as a sphinx and gave
her no speck of satisfaction, only telling her to do what the nurse
said. Bitter letters she sent home, but somehow they all were answered
by Dr. Franklin, who wrote her little notes in reply which made her
angry--then ashamed. Verbal outbreaks there were, and physical ones,
too, a few times, which the nurse calmly and humiliatingly credited to
her exercise-account and brought her more to eat, saying that
scrapping was as healthful as work in making strength. But somehow,
she couldn't hate Miss Leighton long, as behind all her "cruelty"
Wanda realized that a thoughtful friendship was ever waiting. One day
they took a drive; when four miles from the ranch-house something
happened, and they were asked to get out. They stood looking off over
the ever-climbing hills to those remote, granite castles of the far
Rockies.
The team started, and as they turned, the driver waved his apparent
regrets. They walked back--four miles. Wanda had not performed such a
feat in nearly twenty years. She walked off her resentment, in truth
she was a bit proud, and the nurse certainly did bring her a fine
supper, the first square meal she had been given in Montana. This was
the turning point.
Walking, riding, working, camping in the open, sleeping in smoke and
drafts after long hikes, carrying her own blanket and pack--all became
matters-of-course. From 96 to l30--nearly thirty-five fine pounds--she
put on. She even learned bare-back riding, and wove a rug from wool
she had sheared, cleaned, dyed and spun. Long since, she had realized
that Miss Leighton had only been carrying out Dr. Franklin's orders.
That fall they came East to Baltimore. She worked with Miss Leighton
in the tenement districts. She saw Dr. Franklin weekly. He now
explained the principles underlying her ruthless, physical
restoration. She learned to recognize her years of deficient will-
living. The doctor revealed to her, as well, her great debt to her
home, explained to her now cleared mind the poverty of the love she
had borne, and wakened her to the stepmother's true excellence of
character. Her opened eyes saw the great tragedy of defective living
as reflected in the lives of want and evil in those to whom she was
daily ministering. Her life had been blest in comparison.
A message came that her stepmother was ill--could she come home and
help? That day this girl put off childhood and took on womanhood. She
returned to her family a new woman, a thoughtful, considerate woman,
an almost silent woman--save when speech is golden; a woman who makes
friends and who remembers them in a hundred beautiful ways, a working
woman, a home-maker for a happier father, for an almost dependent
stepmother; a woman who was scientifically compelled to exchange self-
condoling weakness for strength, who, when strengthened against her
will, chose and lives the worthy life of self-giving. We wish her
well, this new woman, who is repaying to her home a debt of years.