CHAPTER V
THE NERVOUSLY DAMAGED MOTHER
His name is not Lawrence Adams Abbott. The surname really is that of one of America's first families. He, himself, is among the few living of a third generation of large wealth.
It was an early-summer afternoon and Dr. Abbott—for he was a graduate of Cornell Medical—was standing at one of the train gates of the Grand Central Station in New York. As he waits apart from the small crowd assembled to welcome, he attracts observing attention. His face appears thirty; he is thirty-six. The features are finely cut, the chin is especially good. The eyes are blue-gray, and a slight pallor probably adds to his apparent distinction. His attitude is languid, the handling of his cane gracefully indolent, the almost habitual twisting of his chestnut-brown mustache attractively self-satisfied. His clothing is handsome, of distinctive materials, and tailored to the day. So much for an observing estimate. The critical observer would note more. He would detect a sluggishness in the responses of the pupils, as the eyes listlessly travel from face to face, producing an effect of haunting dulness. Mumbling movements of the lips, a slightly incoordinate swaying of the body, might speak for short periods of more than absent-mindedness.
But the gates open and after the eager, intense meetings, and the more matter-of-fact assumption of babies and bundles, the red-capped porters, with their lucky burdens of fashionable traveling-cases, pilot or follow the sirs and mesdames of fortune. Among these is one whose handsome face is mellowed by softening, early-gray hair, and whose perfect attire and tenderness in greeting our doctor at once associate mother and son. She has just come down the Hudson on one of the few seriously difficult errands of her fifty-six years.
Two weeks have passed. The room is stark bare, save for two mattresses, a heap of disheveled bed clothes, and two men. The hours are small and the dim, guarded light, intended to soften, probably intensifies the weirdness of the picture. The suspiciously plain woodwork is enameled in a dull monochrome. The windows are guarded with protecting screens. One man, an attendant, lies orderly on his pallet; the other, a slender figure in pajamas, crouches in a corner. His hair is bestraggled; his face is livid; his pupils, widely dilated; his dry lips part now and then as he mutters and mumbles inarticulately or chuckles inanely. Now starting, again abstracted, he is capable of responding for a moment only, as the attendant offers him his nourishment. A few seconds later he is groaning and twisting, obviously in pain, pain which is forgotten as quickly, as he reaches here and there for imaginary, flying, floating things. Real sleep has not closed his eyes for now nearly three nights. He is delirious in an artificial, merciful semi-stupor, which is saving him the untold sufferings of morphine denial. Before this unhappy Dr. Abbott stretch long, wearisome weeks of readjustment, weeks of physical pain and mental discomfort, weeks, let us hope, of soul-prodding remorse. His only chance for a future worth spending lies in months of physical reeducation, of teaching his femininely soft body the hardness which stands for manliness; for him must be multiplied days of mental reorganization to change the will of a weakling into saving masterfulness; nor will these suffice unless, in the white heat of a moral revelation, the false tinsel woven into the fabric of his character be consumed. For months he must deny himself the luxuries, even many of the comforts, his mother's wealth is eager to give. Yet these weeks and months of development may never be, for in a short time he will again be legally accountable, and probably will resent and refuse constructive discipline, and return to a satin-upholstered life—his cigarettes, his wine-dinners, his liquors, and his "rotten feeling" mornings after—then to his morphin and to his certain degradation. And why should this be? Time must turn back the hands on her dial thirty-three years that we may know.
The fine Abbott home was surrounded by a small suburban estate near Philadelphia, a generation ago; we have met the then young mistress of the mansion, at the Grand Central Station. It was a home of richness, a home of discriminating wealth, a home of artistic beauty; it was a home of nervous tension. This neurotic intensity was not of the cheap helter-skelter, melodramatic sort; there was a splendid veneer of control. But all the mother's plans and activities depended on the moods, whims and impulses of little Lawrence, the only child, then glorying in the hey-day of his three-year-old babyhood. It was a household kept in dignified turmoil by this child of wealth, who needed a poor boy's chance to be a lovable, hearty, normal chap. It was overattention to his health, with its hundreds of impending possibilities; to his food, with the unsolvable perplexity of what the doctor advised and of what the young sire wanted. More of satisfaction, perhaps, was found in clothing the youth, as he cared less about these details; still, an unending variety of weights and materials was provided that all hygienic and social requirements might be adequately met. Anxious thought was daily spent that his play and playmates might be equally pleasing and free from danger. Almost prayerful investigation was made of the servants who ministered, and tense, sleepless hours were spent by this nervous mother striving to wisely decide between the dangers to her child of travel and those other dangers of heated summers and bleak winters at home. Frequent trips into the city and frequent visitations from the city were made, that expert advice be obtained. Consultations were followed by counter consultations and conferences which but added the mocking counsel of indecision. And the marble of her beauty began to show faint marrings chiseled by tension and anxiety—for was not Lawrence her only son!
It was a home of double standards. The father was a wholesome, serious-minded, essentially reasonable, Cornell man. His ideas were manly and from time to time he laid down certain principles, and when at home, with apparently little effort, exacted and secured a ready and certainly not unhappy, obedience from his son. But business interests and responsibilities were large and the bracing tonic of his association with the boy was all too passing to put much blood- richness into the pallor of the child's developing character. Moreover, this intermittent helpfulness was more than counteracted by the mother's disloyal, though unconscious dishonesty. Hers was an open, if need be a furtive, overattention and overstimulation, an inveterate surrender to the sweet tyranny of her son's childish whims. There was probably nothing malicious in her many little plans which kept the father out of the nursery and ignorant of much of their boy's tutelage. The mother was only repeating fully in principle, and largely in detail, her own rearing; and had she not "turned out to be one of the favored few?"
The suburban special went into a crash, and all that a fine father might have done through future years to neutralize the unwholesome training of a nervous mother was lost. In fact, her power for harm was now multiplied. The large properties and business were hers through life, and with husband gone, and so tragically, there was increased opportunity, and unquestionably more reason, for the intensification of her motherly care. So the fate of a fine man's son is left in the hands of a servile mother.
It now became a home of restrained extravagance. The table was fairly smothered with rare and rich foods. Fine wines and imported liquors entered into sauces and seasonings. The boy's playroom was a veritable toy-shop, with its hundreds of useless and unused playthings. Long before any capacity for understanding enjoyment had come, this unfortunate child had lost all love for the simple. With Mrs. Abbott, it was always "the best that money can buy"—unwittingly, the worst for her child's character. It was a home of formal morality. Sunday morning services were religiously attended; charities of free giving, the giving which did not cost personal effort, were never failing. It was a home of selfish unselfishness. All weaknesses in the son throughout the passing years were winked at. Never from his mother did Lawrence know that sympathy, sometimes hard, often abrupt, never pampering, which breeds self-help.
Lawrence went to the most painstakingly selected, private preparatory- schools, and later, as good Abbotts had done for generations, entered Cornell. He had no taste for business. For years he had been associated with gifted and agreeable doctors; he liked the dignity of the title; so, after two years of academic work, he entered the medical department and graduated with his class. These were good years. His was not a nature of active evil. Many of his impulses were quite wholesome, and college fraternity camaraderie brought out much that was worthy. In the face of maternal anxiety and protest, he went out for track, made good, stuck to his training and in his senior year represented the scarlet and white, getting a second in the intercollegiate low hurdles. Another trolley crash now, and he might have been saved!
All through his college days a morbid fear had shortened his mother's sleep hours with its wretchedness. Her boy was everything that would attract attractive women. Away from her influence he might marry beneath him, so all the refinements of intrigue and diplomacy were utilized that a certain daughter of blood and wealth might become her daughter-in-law. The two women were clever, and woe it was that his commencement-day was soon followed by his wedding-day. No more sumptuous wedding-trip could have been arranged-to California, to the Islands of the Pacific, to India, to Egypt, then a comfortable meandering through Europe. A year of joy-living they planned that they might learn to know each other, with all the ministers of happiness in attendance. But the disagreements of two petted children made murky many a day of their prolonged festal journey, and beclouded for them both many days of the elaborate home-making after the home-coming. And the murkiness and cloudiness were not dissipated when parenthood was theirs. Neither had learned the first page in Life's text-book of happiness, and as both, could not have their way at the same time, rifts grew into chasms which widened and deepened. Then the wife sought attentions she did not get at home in social circles and the husband sought comforts his wife and his home did not give, in drink and fast living, later with cocain and morphin. The ugliness of it all could not be lessened by the divorce, which became inevitable. By mutual agreement, the rearing of the child was intrusted to the father's mother, who to-day shapes its destiny with the same unwholesome solicitude which denied to her own son the heritage of wholesome living.
We met father and grandmother as she arrived in New York to arrange for the treatment, which even his beclouded brain recognized as urgent; and we leave him with a darkening future, unless Fate snatches away a great family's millions, or works the miracle of self- revelation, or the greater miracle of late-life reformation in the son of this nervously damaged mother.
CHAPTER VI
THE MESS OF POTTAGE
"I know Clara puts too much butter in her fudge. It always gives me a splitting headache, but gee, isn't it good! I couldn't help eating it if I knew it was going to kill me the next day." The Pale Girl looks the truth of her exclamations, as she strolls down the campus-walk arm-in-arm with the Brown Girl, between lectures the morning after.
Clara Denny had given the "Solemn Circle" another of her swell fudge- feasts in her room the night before, and, as usual, had wrecked sleep, breakfast, and morning recitations for the elect half-dozen, with the very richness of her hand-brewed lusciousness. They called Clara the Buxom Lass, and they called her well. She was, physically, a mature young woman at sixteen, healthy, vigorous, rose-cheeked, plump, and not uncomely, frolicsome and care-free, with ten dollars a week, "just for fun." She was a worthy leader of the Solemn Circle of sophomores which she had organized, each member of which was sacredly sworn to meet every Friday night for one superb hour of savory sumptuousness— in the vernacular, "swell feeds."
Clara was a Floridian. Her father had shrewdly monopolized the transfer business in the state's metropolis, and from an humble one- horse start now operated two-score moving-vans and motor-trucks, and added substantially, each year, to his real-estate holdings. Mr. Denny let fall an Irish syllable from time to time, regularly took his little "nip o' spirits," and ate proverbially long and often. Year after year passed, with the hardy man a literal cheer-leader in the Denny household, till his gradually hardening arteries began to leak. Then came the change which brought Clara home from college—home, first to companion, then to nurse, and finally through ugly years, to slave for this disintegrating remnant of humanity. Slowly, reluctantly, this genial, old soul descended the scale of human life. He was dear and pathetic in the early, unaccustomed awkwardness of his painless weakness. "Only a few days, darlin', and we'll have a spin in the car and your father'll show thim upstarts how to rustle up the business." The rustling days did not come, but short periods of irritability did. He wanted his "Clara-girl" near and became impatient in her absence. He objected to her mother's nursing, and later became suspicious that she was conspiring to keep Clara from him, and often greeted both mother and daughter with unreasonable words. His interests narrowed pitiably, until they did not extend beyond the range of his senses, and the senses themselves dulled, even as did his feelings of fineness. He grew careless in his habits, and required increasing attention to his beard and clothing. Coarseness first peeped in, then became a permanent guest—a coarseness which the wife's presence seemed to inflame, and which could be stilled finally only by the actual caress of his daughter's lips. And with the slow melting of brain-tissue went every vestige of decency; vile thoughts which had never crossed the threshold of John Denny's normal mind seemed bred without restraint in the caldron of his diseased brain. His was a vital sturdiness which, for ten years, refused death, but during the last of these he was physically and morally repellent. Sentiment, that too-often fear of unkind gossip, or ignorant falsifying of consequences, stood between this family and the proper institutional and professional care, which could have given him more than any family's love, and protected those who had their lives to live from memories which are mercilessly cruel.
Clara's older brother had much of his father's good cheer and less of his father's good sense. He, too, had money to use "just for fun," and Jacksonville was very wide open. So, after his father's misfortune had eliminated paternal restraint, the boy's "nips o' spirits" multiplied into full half-pints. For twelve years he drank badly, was cursed by his father, prayed for by his mother, and wept over by Clara. The wonderful power of a Christian revival saved him. He "got religion" and got it right, and lives a sane, sober life.
The older sister had married while Clara was at school, and lived with her little family in Charleston. Her "duty" was in her home, but this duty became strikingly emphasized when things "went wrong" in Jacksonville, and she frankly admitted that she was entirely "too nervous to be of any use around sickness"; nor did she ever come to help, even when Clara's cup of trouble seemed running over. And this cup was filled with bitterness when, suddenly, the mother had a "stroke," and the care of two invalids and the presence of her periodically drunk brother made ruthless demands on her twenty years. The mother had been a sensible woman, for her advantages, and most efficient, and under her teaching Clara had become exceptionally capable. The two invalids now lay in adjoining rooms. "Either one may go at any time," the doctor said, and when alone in the house with them the daughter was haunted with a morbid dread which frequently caused her to hesitate before opening the door, with the fear that she might find a parent gone. As it happened, she was away, taking treatment, unable to return home, when grippe and pneumonia took the mother, and the candle of the father's life finally flickered out.
Clara had handled the home situation with intermittent efficiency. When she entered her father's sick-room, called suddenly from the thoughtless hilarities of the Solemn Circle and fudge-feasts, and saw him so altered, and, for him, so dangerously frail, in his invalid chair, something went wrong with her breathing; the air could not get into her lungs; there was a smothering in her throat and she toppled over on the bed. It seemed to take smelling-salts and brandy to bring her back. She said afterwards that she was not unconscious, that she knew all that was happening, but felt a stifling sense of suffocation. Later after one of her father's first unnatural outbreaks, she suffered a series of chills and her mother thought, of course, it was malaria; but many big doses of quinin did not break it up, and no matter when the doctor came, his little thermometer revealed no fever. She spent three months at Old Point Comfort and the chills were never so bad again. Other distressing internal symptoms appeared closely following the shock of her mother's sudden paralysis. An operation and a month in a northern hospital were followed by comparative relief. But her nervous symptoms finally became acute and she was spending the spring and early summer on rest-cure in a sanitarium when her parents died. The Jacksonville home was then closed.
Soon after, Clara was profoundly impressed at the same revival in which her brother was converted. While she could not leave her church to join this less formal denomination, she entered into Home Missionary activities with much zest. At this time a friendship was formed with a woman-physician who, as months of association passed, attained a reasonably clear insight into her life and encouraged her to enter a well-equipped, church training-school for deaconesses. The spell of the religious influences of the past year's revival was still strong; this, and the stimulation of new resolves, carried her along well for six months. In her studies and practical work she showed ability, efficiency and flashes of common sense. Then she became enamored of a younger woman, a class-mate—her heart was empty and hungry for the love which means so much to woman's life. Unhappily, she overheard her unfaithful loved one comment to a confidante: "It makes me sick to be kissed by Clara Denny." Another damaging shock, followed by another series of bad attacks—the old spells, chills and internal revolutions had returned. She rapidly became useless and a burden. The school-doctor sent her a thousand miles to another specialist.
We first met Clara Denny effervescent, winning, almost charming—a sixteen-year-old minx. Let us scrutinize her at thirty-six. What a deformation! She weighs one hundred and seventy-three—she is only five-feet-four; her face is heavy, soggy, vapid; her eyes, abnormally small; her complexion is sallow, almost muddy; her chin, trembling and double; strongly penciled, black eye-brows are the only remnant apparent of the "Buxom Lass" of twenty years ago. Her hands are pudgy; her figure soft, mushy, sloppy; her presence is unwholesome. The specialist found her internally as she appeared externally. While not organically diseased, the vital organs were functionally inert. Every physical and chemical evidence pointed to the accumulation in a naturally robust body of the twin toxins—food poison and under oxidation. She was haunted by a fear of paralysis. She confused feelings with ideas and was certain her mind was going. The spells which had first started beside her invalid father were now of daily occurrence. She, nor any one else knew when she would topple over. She found another reason for her belief that her brain was affected in her increasingly frequent headaches. For years she had been unable to read or study without her glasses, because of the pain at the base of her brain. When these wonderful glasses were tested, they were found to represent one of the mildest corrections made by opticians; in fact, her eyes were above the average. Her precious glasses were practically window-glass.
Much of each day had been spent in bed, and hot coffee and hot-water bottles were required to keep off the nerve-racking chills which otherwise followed each fainting spell. Her appetite never flagged. She had been a heavy meat eater from childhood. There never was a Denny meal without at least two kinds of meat, and one cup of coffee always, more frequently two—no namby-pamby Postum effects, but the genuine "black-drip." In the face of much dental work, her sweet tooth had never been filled. She loved food, and her appetite demanded quantity as well as quality. Of peculiar significance was the fact that throughout the years she had never had a spell when physically and mentally comfortable, but, as the years passed, the amount of discomfort which could provoke a nervous disturbance became less and less. She was a well-informed woman, quite interesting on many subjects, outside of herself, and had done much excellent reading. Unafflicted, she would mentally have been more than usually interesting. When her specialist began the investigation of her moral self, he found her impressed with the belief that she was a "saved woman," ready and only waiting health that she might take up the Lord's work. But as he sought her soul's deeper recesses, he uncovered a quagmire. Resentment rankled against the sister who had left her alone to meet the exhausting burdens of their parents' illness and brother's drinking—a sister who had taken care of herself and her own family, regardless. Worse than resentment smoldered against the father, a dull, deadening enmity, born in the hateful hours of his odious, but helpless, dementia. Burning deep was an unappeased protest that, instead of the normal life and pleasures and opportunities of other girls, she had been chained to his objectionable presence.
Treatment was undertaken, based upon a clear conception of her moral, mental and physical needs. Seven months of intensive right-living were enjoined. The greatest difficulty was found in compelling restraint from food excesses. The love for good things to eat was theoretically shelved, but, practically, the forces of desire and habit seemed insurmountable. Her craving for "good eats" now and then discouraged her resolutions and she periodically broke over the rigid hospital regimen. But she was helped in every phase of her living. The skin cleared; a hint of the roses returned; twenty-five pounds of more than useless weight melted away and weeks passed with no threat of spell or chill. She was renewing her youth. A righteous understanding of the lessons which her years of sacrifice held, appealed to her judgment, if not to her feelings, and, as a new being, she returned to the church training-school.
Most fully had Miss Denny been instructed in principle and in practice concerning the, for her, vital lessons of nutritional right-living. Each step of the way had been made clear, and it had proven the right way by the test of practical demonstration. The outlined schedule of habits, including some denials and some gratuitous activity, kept her in prime condition—in fact, in improving condition, for six highly satisfactory months. Never had she accomplished so much; never did life promise more, as the result of her own efforts. She had earned comforts which had apparently deposed forever her old nervous enemies. Victorious living seemed at her finger-tips. Then she sold her birth- right.
She was feeling so well; why could she not be like other people? Certainly once in a while she could have the things she "loved." It was only a small mess of pottage—some chops, a cup of real coffee, some after-dinner mints. The doctor had proscribed them all, but "Once won't hurt." Her conscience did prick, but days passed; there was no spell, no chill, no headache. "It didn't hurt me" was her triumphant conclusion; and again she ventured and nothing happened—and again, and again. Then the coffee every day and soon sweets and meats, regardless; then coffee to keep her going. The message of the returning fainting spells was unheeded, unless answered by recklessness, for fear thoughts had come and old enmities and new ones haunted in. Routine and regimen had gone weeks before, and now a vacation had to be. She did not return to her work, but deluded herself with a series of pretenses. Before the year was gone, the imps of morbid toxins came into their own and she resorted to wines, later to alcohol in stronger forms—and alcohol usually makes short work of the fineness God gives woman.
We leave Clara Denny at forty, leave her on the road of license which leads to ever-lowering levels.
CHAPTER VII
THE CRIME OF INACTIVITY
A half-century ago the Stoneleighs moved West and located in Hot Springs. The wife had recently fallen heir to a few thousand dollars, which, with unusual foresight, were invested in suburban property. Mr. Stoneleigh was a large man, one generation removed from England, active, and noticeably of a nervous type. He was industrious, practically economical, single-minded; these qualities stood him in the stead of shrewdness. From their small start he became rapidly wealthy as a dealer in real estate. Mr. Stoneleigh was a generous eater; his foods were truly simple in variety but luxurious in their quality and richness. Prime roast-beef, fried potatoes, waffles and griddle-cakes supplied him with heat, energy and avoirdupois. He suddenly quit eating at fifty-eight—there was a cerebral hemorrhage one night. His remains weighed one hundred and ninety-five.
The wife was a comfortable mixture of Irish and English. Her people were so thrifty that she had but a common-school education. She was the only child, her industrious mother let her go the way of least resistance, and were we tracing responsibility of the criminality behind our tragedy, Mrs. Stoneleigh's mother would probably be cited as the guilty one. The way of least resistance is usually pretty easy- going, and keeps within the valley of indulgence. Therefore, Mrs. Stoneleigh worked none, was a true helpmate to her husband, at the table, and like him, grew fat, and from mid-life waddled on, with her hundred and eighty pounds. She was superstitiously very religious, with the kind of religion that shudders at the thought of missing Sunday morning service or failing to be a passive attendant at the regular meetings of the Church Aid Society. Practically, the heathen were taught American civilization, and she herself was assured sumptuous reservations in Glory by generous donations to the various missionary societies.
The only real ordeal which this woman ever faced was the birth of Henry, her first child; she was very ill and suffered severely. The mother instinct centered upon this boy the fulness of her devotion—a devotion which never swerved nor faltered, a devotion which never questioned, a devotion which became a self-forgetting servility. John arrived almost unnoticed three years later, foreordained to be this older brother's henchman as long as he remained at home. John developed. Education was not featured in the Stoneleighs' program, so John stopped after his first year at high school, but he was energetic, and through serving Henry had learned to work. At twenty he married, left the family roof, and starting life for himself in a nearby metropolis became a successful coal-merchant.
Little Henry Stoneleigh would have thrilled any mother's heart with pride. He had every quality a perfect baby should have, and grew into a large handsome boy, healthy and strong; his disposition was the envy of neighboring mothers; nor was it the sweet goodness of inertia, for he was mentally and emotionally quick and responsive above the average. Indulged by his mother from the beginning and always preferred to his brother, he never recognized duty as duty. This young life was innocent of anything which suggested routine; order for him was a happen-so or an of-course result of his mother's or John's efforts; the details necessary for neatness were never allowed to ruffle his ease nor to interfere with his impulses. The Stoneleighs' home was a generous pile, locally magnificent, but our young scion's fine, front room was perennially a clutter. From his birth up, Henry was never taught the rudiments of responsibility. His boyhood, however, was not unattractive. He had inherited a large measure of vitality and was protected from disappointments or irritations by the many comforts which a mother's devotion and wealth can arrange and provide. His memory was superior. The boy inherited not only an exceptional physique, but mental ability which made his early studies too easy to suggest any objection on his part. In fact, he was actively interested in much of his school work and did well without the conscious expenditure of energy. Little discrimination was shown in the arrangements for his higher education; still he arrived at a popular Western Boy's Academy, rather dubious in his own mind as to just how large a place he would hold in the sun, with mother and John back home. Rather rudely assailed were some of his easy-going habits, and considerable ridicule from certain sources rapidly decided his choice of companions. It was young Stoneleigh's misfortune that at this epoch in his development he was situated where money could buy immunities and attract apparent friendships. He was of fine appearance, and should by all rights have made center on the Academy football team, being the largest, heaviest, strongest boy in school. But one day in football togs is the sum of his football history. Academy days went in good feeds, the popularity purchased by his freedom of purse and easy-going good fellowship, and much reading, which he always enjoyed and which, with his good memory, made him unusually well-informed. Finals even at this Academy demanded special effort, which, with Henry, was not forthcoming, so he returned home without his diploma. This incident decided him not to attempt college, so for a year he again basked in the indulgences of home-life. His father's business interests had no appeal for him, but the personal influence of a young doctor, with his vivid tales of medical-college experiences, and the struggling within of a never recognized ambition, with some haphazard suggestions from his mother, determined him to study medicine.
At this time a medical degree could still be obtained in a few schools at the end of two years' attendance. Henry chose a Tennessee college which has, for reasons, long since ceased to exist, an institution which practically guaranteed diplomas. Here after three very comfortable years, he was transformed into "Doc" Stoneleigh. At twenty-five, "Doc" weighed two hundred and forty, and returned home for another period of rest. He did not open an office, nor did he ever begin the practice of his profession. During the next five years he lived at home, sleeping and reading until two in the afternoon, his mother carrying breakfast and lunch to his room. The late afternoons and evenings he spent in hotel-lobbies and pool-rooms, where he was always welcomed by a bunch of sports. Popular through his small prodigalities, he, at thirty, possessed a more than local reputation for the completeness of his assortment of salacious stories—his memory and native social instinct were herein successfully utilized. "Doc" now weighed two hundred and eighty-five, ate much, exercised none, and was the silent proprietor of a pool-room, obnoxious even in this wide-open town.
At twelve he had begun smoking cigarettes; at twenty he smoked them day and night. The entire family drank beer, but, oddly, the desire for alcohol never developed with him. Yet at thirty he began acting queerly, and it was generally thought that he was drinking. Often now he did not go home at night and was frequently found dead asleep on one of his pool-tables. He had fixed up a den of a room where they would move him to "sleep it off." A fad for small rifles developed till he finally had over twenty of different makes in his den and spent many nights wandering around the alleys, shooting rats and stray cats. Eats became an obsession. They invaded his room and he would frequently awaken suddenly and empty the first gun he reached at their imaginary forms, much to the disquiet of the neighbors. One night he burst out of his place, began shooting wildly up and down the street and rushing about in a frenzy. No single guardian of the peace presumed to interfere with his hilarity, and two of the six who came in the patrol-wagon had dismissed action for deep contemplation before he was safely locked up as "drunk." The matter was kept quiet, as befitted the prominence of the Stoneleighs.
To his mother's devotion now was added fear, and she freely responded to his demands for funds. There were no more outbreaks, but he was obviously becoming irresponsible, and influences finally secured his mother's consent to take him to a special institution in another state. This was quietly effected through the cooperation of the family physician, who successfully drugged poor "Doc" into pacific inertness. He was legally committed to an institution empowered to use constructive restraint, and for four months benefited by the only wholesome training his wretched life had ever known. Here it was discovered that he had been using quantities of codein and cocain, against the sale of which there were then no restrictions. Unusual had been his physical equipment, his indulgences unchecked by any sentiment or restraint, the penalty of inactivity was meting a horrible exaction—an exaction which could be dulled only by dope. In the early prime of what should have been manhood, this unfortunate's mind, as revealed to the institution's authorities during his days of enforced drugless discomfort, was a filthy cess-pool; cursings and imprecations, vile and vicious, were vomited forth in answer to every pain. His brother, his doctors, his mother were execrated for days, almost without ceasing. Here was a man without principle. As he became more comfortable, physically, he became more decent, and later his natural, social tendencies began to reappear attractively.
At the end of four months the patient was perforce much better. He then succeeded in inducing his mother to have him released "on probation." Many fair promises were made. For months he was to have an attendant as a companion. His mother, believing him well, consented, after securing his promise in writing to return for treatment should there be a relapse into his old habits. As evidencing the decay of his character, these fair promises were made without the slightest intention that they would be kept. The first important city reached after crossing the state-line saw his demeanor change. Beyond the legal authority of the state in which he had been committed, he was free, and he knew it. With a few words he consigned his now helpless attendant to regions sulphurous, and alone took train in the opposite direction from home. For several months he went the paces. With his medical knowledge and warned by his recent experiences he was able to so adjust his doses as to avoid falling into the hands of the authorities. The weak mother never refused to honor his drafts. Six months later a serious attack of pneumonia caused her to be sent for, and when he was able to travel she took him back to the home he had forsworn.
For over ten years "Doc" Stoneleigh has lived with his mother, a recluse, a morphin-soaked wreck. Sometimes he may be seen in a park near their home, sitting for hours inert, or automatically tracing figures in the gravel with his cane, noticing no one, unkempt, almost repellent. He is still sufficiently shrewd to secure morphin in violation of the law. Sooner or later the revenue department will cut off his supply. He drifts, a rotting hulk of manhood, unconsciously nearing the horrors of a drugless reality.
The depth of this man's degradation may tempt us to feel that he was defective, but an accurate analysis of his life fails to reveal any deficiency save that reprehensible training which made possible his years of physical and mental indolence.
CHAPTER VIII
LEARNING TO EAT
It was three in the early July afternoon. The large parlor, which had been turned into a bedroom, was darkened by closely-drawn shades; a dim, softened light coming from a half-hidden lamp deepened the dark rings around the worn nurse's eyes—eyes which bespoke sleepless nights and a heavy heart. A wan mother stood near the nurse, every line of her face showing the pain of lengthened anxiety. Tensely one hand held the other, the restraint of culture, only, keeping her from wringing them in her anguish. Dr. Harkins, the village physician, stood at the foot of the bed, his honest face set in strong lines in anticipation of the worst. Many scenes of suffering had rendered him only more sympathetic with human sorrow, sympathetic with the real, increasingly intolerant of the false. At the bed-side stood the expert, who had come so far, at so great an expense-long, rough miles by auto that a few hours might be saved-who had come, they all believed, to decide the fate of the beloved girl who lay so death-like before them.
Ruth Rivers was the only one in the room who was not keenly alert or distressingly tense. Even in her waxy whiteness and unnatural emaciation, her face was good. The forehead was high and, with the symmetrical black eyebrows and long, dark lashes, suggested at a glance the good quality of her breeding. The aquiline nose was pinched by suffering, the finely curving lips were now bloodless and drawn tight from time to time, as though to repress the cry of pain; these marks of suffering could not rob her countenance of its refinement. Her breathing was shallow; at times it seemed irregular; and wan, almost inert, the fragile figure seemed nearing the eternal parting with its soul. The silence of the sick-room was fearsomely ominous.
Three weeks before, Ruth, her mother, and ever-apprehensive Aunt Melissa had come from the heat of coastal Georgia to the invigorating coolness of the Southern Appalachians. They had come to Point View several weeks later than usual this year, as spring was tardy and the hot days at home had been few. Ruth had been most miserable for weeks before they left home, but had stood the trip well, and Judge Rivers had received an encouraging, indeed a hopeful report from the invalid. But a few days later a letter telling of another of Ruth's attacks was followed immediately by an urgent, distressed telegram which caused him to adjourn court and hasten to his family.
For many years Dr. Harkins had driven through the mountains eight starving months, serving and saving the poorly housed and often destitute mountaineers. The tourist flood from the burning, summer lowlands to the mountains' refreshment gave him his living. Dr. Harkins was as truly a missionary as though he were on the pay-roll of a denominational society. He had always helped, or the mountains had helped, or something had helped Ruth before, but this time nothing helped. The doctor had already called a neighboring physician; they were both perplexed, and each feared to say the word which, in their minds, spelled her doom. For nearly three days Ruth had been delirious, this gentle, sensible, reserved girl, tossing and calling out. A few times she had even screamed, and her mother always said that she had been "too fine a baby to even cry out loud." For five nights there had been no sleep save an unnatural stupor produced by medicine. Mother and nurse had taxed their strength keeping her in bed during the paroxysms of her suffering, which, hour by hour, seemed to grow in intensity and to defy the ever-increasing doses of quieting drugs. She had recognized no one for days. Even her mother's voice brought back no moment of natural response. "It must be meningitis," Dr. Harkins finally said, and the other doctor nodded in agreement. And Aunt Melissa informed the neighbors that it was "meningitis" and that her darling Ruth could last but a few days. The mother's anxiety reiterated "meningitis," and good, levelheaded Martha King, the nurse, knew that the three cases of meningitis which she had nursed had suffered the same way before they died. When Judge Rivers came, he spent but one minute in the sick-room. It was days before he dared reenter. Ruth did not know him. For the first time in her twenty-seven years, she had failed to respond happily to his hearty, rich-voiced love-greeting. The Judge's small fortune had grown slowly. Only that year had the mortgage been finally lifted on their comfortable Georgia home. But in that minute at the sufferer's bedside all he had was thrown into the scales. Ruth must be saved. She was the only daughter; she was a worthily beloved daughter. "No, she cannot be moved to Johns Hopkins; the trip is too rough and long; she is too weak," decided Dr. Harkins, and the consultant agreed. "Our only hope for her is to get the 'brain expert' from the next state." Five days had passed since the patient had retained food. For twenty-four hours the tide of her strength seemed only to ebb. They all counted the minutes. The summer- boarders in the little town, so many of whom knew the sick girl, counted the hours, for Ruth was much quieter—too quiet, they felt. An hour before, Aunt Melissa had tiptoed in to see her darling; the finger-tips seemed cold in her excited palm, the nails looked bluish to her dreading eyes, and she retreated to the back porch-steps, threw her apron over her head and sat weaving to and fro, inconsolate; nor would she look up even when the big motor panted into sight out of a cloud of dust, and stopped. "It is too late, too late," moaned Aunt Melissa. Dr. Harkins and Judge Rivers met the neurologist. The former reviewed the case in a few sentences. The Judge simply said: "Doctor, my whole savings are nothing. I would give my life for hers."
In the sick-room tensity had given place to intensity, as with deft, skillful directness the doctor made his examination. He had finished; the light had again been dimmed, and in the added shadow the haggard face seemed ashen. Motionless, thoughtful, interminably silent, the expert stood, holding the sick girl's hand. The nurse first saw him smile. It was a serious smile; it was a strangely hopeful smile—a smile which was instantly reflected in her own face and which the mother caught and Dr. Harkins saw. Each one of them was thrilled with such thrills as become rare when the forties have passed, thrilled even before they heard his words: "It is not meningitis. Your daughter can get well."
In the conference which followed, Dr. Harkins felt that his confidence had been well placed. It is surprising how much the expert had discovered in forty minutes,—and how carefully considered and relentlessly logical were his reasons for deciding that it was an "auto-toxic meningismus, secondary to renal and pancreatic insufficiency," which, translated, signifies a self-produced poison due to defective action of the liver and pancreas, resulting in circulatory disturbance in the covering of the brain. Most clearly, too, he revealed that several of the most alarming symptoms were the result of the added poison of the drugs which had been given for the relief of the intolerable pain. Each step of the long road to recovery was outlined with equal clearness, and the light of hope burst in strong on Dr. Harkins first, then on Martha King. The crushing load was lifted from off the Judge's heart. The promise seemed too good to be true, to the mother, who had seen her daughter go down through the years, step by step. It never penetrated the shadow of Aunt Melissa's pessimism.
What forces had been at work to bring ten years of relentlessly increasing suffering, even impending death, to Ruth Rivers at twenty- seven, when she should have been in the glory of her young womanhood? "Her headaches have always been a mystery," her mother had said again and again, and this saying had been accepted by family and friends. Let us join hands with Understanding, step behind this mystery, and find its solution.
Judge Rivers' father had been Judge Rivers, too. The war between the States had absorbed the family wealth; still, our Judge Rivers showed every evidence of good living: he was always well-dressed, as befitted his office, portly and contented, as was also befitting, fine of color and always well. His daughter's illness had been practically the only problem in the affairs of his life which he had not solved to his quite reasonable satisfaction. His love for Ruth held half of his life's sweetness.
Mrs. Rivers was tall, active, almost muscular in type. Her brow, like her daughter's, was high. The quality of her Virginia blood had marked her face. She had always been unduly pale, but never ill. Controlled and reasonable, she had ministered to her home with efficiency and pride.
Aunt Melissa, her sister, five years the senior, was tall and strong, but her paleness had long been unhealthily tinted with sallowness. For years she had been subject to attacks of depression when for days she would insist upon being let alone, even as she let others alone. Ruth was the only bright spot she recognized in her life, and her morbidness was constantly picturing disaster for this object of her love.
Ruth's babyhood was a joy. Plump, cooing and happy, she evinced, even in her earliest days, evidences of her rare disposition. At eighteen months, however, she began having spells of indigestion. She always sat in her high-chair beside Aunt Melissa, at the table, and rarely failed to get at least a taste of anything served which her fancy indicated. Her wise little stomach from time to time expressed its disapproval of such unlawful liberties, but parents and aunts and grandmothers, and probably most of us, are very dull in interpreting the protests of stomachs. So Ruth got what she liked, and what was an equal misfortune, she liked what she got; and no one ever associated the liking and the getting with the poor sick stomach's periodic protests. As a girl Ruth was not very active. There was a certain reserve, even in her playing, quite in keeping with family traditions. Mother, Aunt Melissa and the servants did the work—still Ruth developed, happy, unselfish, kindly and sensitive. There was rigid discipline accompanying certain rules of conduct, and her deportment was carefully molded by the silent forces of family culture. They lived at the county-seat. The public schools which Ruth attended were fairly good. As she grew older, while she remained thin and never approached ruggedness, her digestive "spells" were much less frequent, and during the two years she spent away from home in the Convent, she was quite well, and one year played center on the second basket ball team. Two years away at school were all that the Judge could then afford. And so at eighteen she was home for good. That fall she began having headaches. She was reading much, so she went to Mobile and was carefully fitted with glasses. The correction was not a strong one, but the oculist felt it would relieve the "abnormal sensitiveness of her eyes, which is probably causing her trouble."
Throughout her years of suffering, Ruth had always maintained the rare restraint which marks fineness of soul. No one ever heard her complain. Even her mother could not be sure that another attack was on, until she found Ruth alone in her darkened room. Acquaintances, even friends, never heard her mention her illness.
The midsummer months in Southern Alabama drive such as are able to the relief of the mountains of Tennessee and the Carolinas. The Judge had always felt that he should send his family away during July and August; they often went in June when the summers were early. And these weeks of change proved, year after year, the most helpful influences that came to Ruth. She always improved and would usually remain stronger until after Thanksgiving. But with irregular periodicity the blinding, prostrating headaches would return—a week of pain, nausea and prostration. Yet Ruth never asked for, nor took medicine, unless it was ordered by the doctor, and then more in consideration of the desires of her family, for the unnatural sensations, produced by most of the remedies she was given, seemed but the substitution of one discomfort for another. The only exercise that counted, which this girl ever had, was during her weeks at Point View. The stimulation of the invigorating mountain air seemed to get into her blood, and after a few weeks with her friendly mountains she could climb the highest with little apparent fatigue. At home, the country was flat, the roads sandy, and even horseback riding uninteresting. She had never been taught any strengthening form of daily home-exercise, and so she suffered on. While the glasses brought comfort, they lessened, for but a short time, the number and the intensity of her attacks. Several physicians were consulted and several varying courses of treatment undertaken, but no betterment came which lasted, and the headaches remained a mystery, not only to her mother, but to others who seriously tried to help. As we are behind the scenes, we need no longer delay the mystery's solution. It was not eyes, they were accurately corrected; it was not stomach, as much stomach treatment proved; it was not anaemia, or the many excellent tonics that had been prescribed would have cured; it was not displaced vertebrae nor improperly acting nerves, or the manipulations and vibrations and deep kneadings of the specialists in mechanical treatment would have rescued her years before. It was, and here is the secret—her mother's wonderful table!
The war had brought ruinous, financial losses to most Virginia families. As a result, Ruth's mother had been taught, in minute detail, the high art of the best cookery of the first families of Virginia. And how she could cook, or make the colored cook cook! The Rivers' table had, for years, been the standard of the county-seat. Mrs. Rivers' spiced hams, fig preserves, brandied plum-pudding, stuffed roast-duck, fruit salads, all made by recipes handed down through several generations, could not be excelled in richness and toothsomeness. No simple dishes were known at the Rivers' table; these, for those poor mortals who knew not the inner art. Double cream, stimulating seasonings, sauces rarely spiced, the sort that recreate worn-out appetites, were never lacking at a Rivers' meal. Ruth had been overfed, had been wrongly fed since babyhood.
The expert said hope lay in taking her back to babyhood and feeding her for days as though she were a four months' child. He said she must be taught to eat; that her salvation lay in a few foods of plebeian simplicity, foods which almost any one could get anywhere, foods which did not involve long hours of preparation according to priceless recipes. He said also that certain other foods were vicious, such matter-of-course foods on the Rivers' table, foods which Mrs. Rivers would have felt humiliated to omit from a meal of her ordering, and he insisted that these must be lastingly denied this young woman with prematurely exhausted, digestive glands. The process of her reeducation, succinctly expressed as it was in a few sentences, called for tedious months of care, of denial and of effort. It demanded that which was more than taxing in many details. So for Ruth Rivers long weeks were spent in a hospital-bed. She was fed on the simplest of foods, each feeding measured with the same care as were her few medicines, for now truly her food was medicine, and her chief medicine was food. Massage seemed at last to bring help, for even in bed she gained in strength.
It was several weeks before her mind was entirely clear, but she was soon being taught the science of food; this included an understanding outline of food chemistry, of the processes of digestion, of food values, of the relation of food to work, of the vital importance of muscular activity and the relation of muscle-use to nervous health. Her beloved sweets and her strong coffee, the only friends of her suffering days, were gradually buried even from thought in this accumulation of new and understood truths—most reasonable and sane truths. Forty pounds she gained in twelve weeks. She had never weighed over one hundred and twenty-five. She has never weighed less than one hundred and forty-five since, and, as she is five feet eight, her one hundred and forty-five pounds brought her a new symmetry which, with her high-bred face, transformed the waxen invalid into an attractive beauty. She learned to do manual work. She learned to use every muscle the Lord had given her, every day she lived. An appetite unwhipped by condiments or unstimulated by artifice, an appetite for wholesome food, has made eating a satisfaction she never knew in the old days.
This was ten years ago. Many changes have come in the Rivers' household, the most far-reaching of which is probably the revolution which shook its culinary department from center to circumference. What saved daughter must be good for them all. Father is less portly, more active, less ruddy. Some of the color he lost was found by the mother. Aunt Melissa disappears into her gloom-days but rarely, and has smiling hours unthought in the past. And Ruth has proven that the mystery was adequately solved. She married the kind of man so excellent a woman should have, and went through the trying weeks of her motherhood and has cared for her boy through the demanding months of early childhood without a complication. And all this in the face of Aunt Melissa's reiterated forebodings!
CHAPTER IX
THE MAN WITH THE HOE
In the early years of the eighteenth century, a hardy family lived frugally and simply on a few, fertile Norman acres. Their home was but a hut of stone and clay and thatch. It was surrounded by a carefully attended vineyard and fruit trees which, in the springtime, made the spot most beautiful. On this May day the passerby would have stopped that he might carry away this scene of perfect pastoral charm. The blossoming vines almost hid the house, the blooming trees perfumed the morning breeze, and it all spoke for simple peace and contentment. But at this hour neither peace nor contentment could have been found within. Pierre, the eldest son, was almost fiercely resenting the quiet counsel of his father and the tearful pleadings of his mother. Pierre loved Adrienne, their neighbor's daughter. The two had grown up side by side, each had brought to the other all that their dreams had wished through the years of waiting. Pierre had long worked extra hours and they both had saved and now, nearing thirty, there was enough, and they could marry. But the edict had gone forth that Huguenot marriages would no longer be recognized by the state; that the children of such a union would be without civil standing. So Pierre and Adrienne had decided to leave France, nor did the protests of their elders delay their going. It was a solemn little ceremony, their marriage, a ceremony practically illegal in their land. Rarely are weddings more solemn or bridal trips more sad, for to England they were starting that same day, never to see their dear France again, never to prune or to gather in the little vineyard, never again to look into the faces of their own kin.
It was not a worldly-wise change. Wages in England were very low and there were no vineyards in that chilly land, and Pierre worked and died a plain English farm-hand, blessed only with health, remarkable strength, and a wretched, but happy home. Much of their parents' sturdiness and independence was passed on into the blood of their four children, two boys and two girls, for in 1748, after long saving, they all left England for America, "the promised land," and sailed for New Amsterdam. Husbandmen they were, and for two generations painfully, gravely, they tilled the semi-productive soil of their little farm, west of the Hudson. Land was cheap in the New World. Their vegetables and fruit grew, the market in the city grew, and the van der Veere farms grew, and peace and contentment abode there.
After the War of 1812 two healthy, robust van der Veere brothers tramped into New York City each carrying in his bundle nearly $1000.00, his share of their father's recently divided farm. They started a green-grocery shop. One attended the customers, the other, through the summer months, worked their little truck garden away out on the country road, a road which is to-day New York's Great White Way. They prospered. One married, and his two boys founded the van der Veere firm of importers. From the East this company's ship, later its ships, brought rare curios, oriental tapestries and fine rugs to make elegant the brown-stone front drawing-rooms of aristocratic, residential New York of that generation. The sons of one of these brothers to-day constitute the honorable van der Veere firm. The other brother left one son, Clifford, and two daughters, Dora and Henrietta. It is into the life-history of Clifford van der Veere that we now intrude. He was a sturdy youth, with no illnesses, save occasional sore throats which left him when he shed his tonsils. His father was a reserved, kindly man, a quietly efficient man. His competitors never understood the sure growth of his success—he was so unpretentious in all that he did. Clifford's mother was a sensible woman, untouched by the pride of wealth and the snobbery of station. Their home, facing Central Park, stood for elegance and restraint. There were no other children for ten years after the son's birth, then came the two sisters, which domestic arrangement probably proved an important factor in deciding the rest of our story. From early boyhood Clifford was orderly, obedient, studious and quietly industrious. He made no trouble for parents or teachers—other mothers always spoke of him as "good." He was thirteen when his only sinful escapade happened. Some of the Third Avenue boys shared the playgrounds in the park with Clifford's crowd. They all smoked, some chewed and the more self- important of them swore, and thereby, one day, our Fifth Avenue young hopeful was contaminated. It was a savory-smelling wad of fine-cut. It burned, a little went the wrong way and it strangled, but the joy of ejecting a series of amber projectiles was Clifford's. Another mouthful was ready for exhibition purposes when some appreciative admirer enthusiastically clapped our boy between the shoulder-blades and most of his mouth's contents, fluid and solid, was swallowed. Somehow Clifford got home, but landed in a wilted heap on the big couch, chalk-white, and sick beyond expression. The doctor was called and, discovering the cause, made him helpfully sicker. The next morning Clifford's father gravely offered to give him $500.00, when he was twenty-one, if he would not taste tobacco again until that time. Either the memory of first-chew sensations or the doctor's ipecac, or the force of habit, or something, kept him from ever tasting it again.
Later, Clifford went to Columbia and was quietly popular with the quieter fellows. It would seem that had any little devils not been strained out of his blood by his long line of Huguenot ancestry, they had followed the fate of the fine-cut, for no one who knew Clifford van der Veere was ever anxious about the probity of his conduct. He did not take to the importing business, while his cousins early showed a natural capacity for the work of the big firm in all its branches. Clifford's parents, too, seemed to feel that it was time that there be a professional member of their honorable family. Moreover the property was large, and the younger sisters would require a guardian, and the estate an administrator. So Clifford finished the law-course. Nor was it many years until the family fortune of approximately one million dollars in real estate, securities and mortgages was left him to administer for himself and the two sisters. Thus before thirty the responsibility of these many thousands swept down upon him. Limited in practical contact with the world, geographically, politically, socially, having learned little of the play-side of life, he was by inheritance, training and inclination a conservative. He had never practiced law. He never tried a case, but he now opened a downtown office where he punctually arrived at ten o'clock and methodically spent the morning, carefully, personally managing all the details of the entailed estate. He was essentially conscientious and, as the years passed, there was no lessening of interest in his devotion to each transaction, large or small. There were no losses, though his conservatism turned him away from many golden opportunities which knocked at the door of his wealth, the acceptance of which would have doubled the estate in any ten-year period of these days of New York's magnificent expansion. He was nearly forty when he married a quiet, good woman who added little that was new, who most conscientiously subtracted nothing of the old, from his now systematic life. They both realized that their Fifth Avenue home was rapidly growing out of date, so for nearly five years they spent their spare hours daily, in the, to Clifford, vital and seemingly unending details of modernizing the old house. It was during those days when the plans so carefully considered were being realized in granite and marble and polished woods, that Mrs. van der Veere felt the first distressing touch of anxiety. Her husband seemed unduly particular. At times he would be painfully uncertain about minute and minor details of construction and on a few occasions unprecedentedly failed to get to the office at all, delayed by protracted discussions of the advisability of certain changes, long since decided upon, discussions which shook the confidence of architect and contractor in both his sagacity and judgment. Fortunately Mrs. van der Veere proved a wholesome counselor and her opinions often settled details her husband, alone, apparently could not have decided. At last the great new house was finished; it was such a home as the van der Veeres should have. Indecision largely disappeared for three quite normal years, office details only now and then ruffling the smooth normality of Mr. van der Veere's life. Then with the early spring nights came an unexplained insomnia. He would waken at five, four, even three o 'clock, and, unable to get back to sleep, would read until morning. The doctor found little to excite his apprehension, but prescribed golf, so three afternoons a week all summer and fall two hours were reserved for the links. He was better, still the doctor insisted on three months, that winter, in Southern California where he could keep up his play. Here he did eighteen holes a day for weeks at a time, yet some of the nights were haunted by scruples about neglecting his administrative duties. They returned home in the spring, and a moderately comfortable year and a half followed. Then things went wrong rapidly and badly. Peremptorily he was ordered away from all "work" to Southern France, later to Italy for the winter and to Switzerland for the next summer. And as the Alps have given of their strength to other needing thousands, so they ministered to him. He began climbing. His wife thought it was a new interest. Certainly that was a factor, but he became ambitious and went wherever he could find guides to take him. He returned home very rugged the fall he was fifty. Still with reason, Mrs. van der Veere was anxious, an anxiety shared by the family doctor. Between them they planned for him a sort of model life, truly a circumscribed life, and for five years wife and associates protected him from any possible strain, and for five years it worked successfully. Then in less than a month, almost like a bolt from the blue, all former symptoms returned, aggravated in form, bringing most unwelcome new ones in their trail. The family doctor called in a neurologist who, after examining the nervous man, spoke seriously of serious possibilities, and advised serious measures.
Mr. van der Veere was now fifty-five years old, short, almost stocky in build, dark-skinned, with steel-gray hair and mustache. He was depressed in mien though always well-bred in bearing. He was not excitable and outwardly showed little of his suffering. Clifford van der Veere had always taken life and his duties seriously. For years his fear of making mistakes had been a chronic source of energy leakage-now it was a nightmare. All he did cost an exhausting price in the effort of decision. Duty and fear had long made a battle-ground of his soul, and when he realized that he had broken down again from "overwork," as they all expressed it, the depression of melancholy was added to the weight he so quietly bore. Yet this man of many responsibilities and interests had never truly worked. Since he left college he had played at work. Effort had been expended never more conscientiously. He was ever ready to give added hours of attention to problems referred to him. His intentions were true, but he did not know how to work. He did not know how to separate the serious from the unimportant, and he had never added the leaven of humor to the day's duties. An unusually well-equipped man, physically and mentally, he should have found the responsibilities of his administratorship but play. Had he been living right, he could have multiplied his efficiency three-fold and been the better for the larger doing. His wife felt he must "rest," and so did the family doctor; he himself was practically past arguing or disagreeing.
But the rest-cure which the neurologist prescribed was certainly unique. It may have been wrongly named. Mr. van der Veere was a man of unusually strong physique. Nature had equipped him with a muscular system better than nine-tenths of his fellowmen possess, but he had never utilized it. For many generations his forbears had wrung food and life and, unconsciously, health from the soil. He was three generations from touch with mother earth, and back to the soil he was sent. He was taught to work increasing hours of common, manual labor. For weeks he did his part of the necessary drudgery of the world. He shoveled coal, he spaded in the garden, he worked on the public roads, he transplanted trees, he hoed common weeds with a common hoe, he tramped, he toiled and he sweat. The need for physical labor was in his blood. He needed his share of it, as do we all. And his blood answered exultantly, as good blood always does, to the call of honest toil. Within a month he realized a keenness for the work of the day. His fine muscles took on hardness, they seemed to double in size, and strength came, and with it not only a willingness but an eagerness which transformed that strength into productive effort. With the willingness to do what his hands found to do came sleep, for his nerves—bred as they had been in good stock—rejoiced when they found him living as they had for years begged him to live. A fifteen-year- old appetite came to the fifty-five-year-old man, and transformation wrought happy changes in his face and bearing. Indecision faded, introspection disappeared, and a decision came which was to forever put indecision out of his way. A decision which brought the peace and contentment to the van der Veere Fifth Avenue home, which religious intolerance had robbed from the van der Veeres in their stone-thatched hut in far-away Normandy, a simple decision, not requiring brilliance nor a college education, nor a professional training, nor even a loving helpmate to accomplish: "Six days shall I labor not only with my brain but with my hands, and the seventh day shall I rest."