Bythis time I was beginning to get tolerably well acquainted with myself. The reader may perhaps think—if he cares enough to think—that I did not enjoy life; but I did in my evanescent, changeful way. I was always wavering between optimism and pessimism. Some days one of these qualities would predominate and some days the other would be in evidence. I never knew one day what the next would bring forth. I came to understand myself so well that I never started anything with the determination to carry it to a finish.
I thought about entering politics, but did not know with what party to cast my affiliations. The Democrats and the Republicans both claimed to favor a judicious revision of the tariff as well as a yearning to bridle the trusts and money power. So did the Populists. Each of them had plenty of plans for solving the vexed and ever-present problem of capital andlabor. Each party espoused the cause of the masses who toil, and each likewise favored laws which would enable one to get the highest price if he had labor or products to sell; or if one happened to be in the market as a buyer he would, of course, get these things cheap. Their rules seemed to effect a compromise by working both ways. Out of all these conflicting and chaotic ideas I knew that I would be unable to decide upon any set of issues and stay with them a fortnight. So, as I view the matter now, I think I displayed unusual strength of character in staying out of politics.
The same puzzling situation confronted me in regard to matters of the church. There were those who were very firm in the conviction that immersion was the only true way of being introduced into the church; others thought pouring was good enough; while still others considered sprinkling all that was essential to pass the portals. Some believed in infantile baptism, while a few good, religious people that I chanced to know did not deem any kind of water-rite at any time in life absolutely necessary. A certain few clung tofore-ordination which, if true, would preclude the need of most people making any efforts along that line. Some of the churches denounced dancing and card-playing in no unmeaning terms, while others gave holy sanction to card-parties and charity balls. Some churches were bound down by certain rigid rules which they called creeds; others were very much opposed to these. For every belief there was an “anti.”
Under such conditions as these it was a big undertaking to try to sift the wheat from a mountain of chaff and become enthusiastic in one’s devotion to State and Church. Why should there be such a state of chaos on matters of the most vital importance? Is human nature not sincere? Or is it simply erratic?
For the present I tried to content myself with the study of subjects that would in a small way muddle the world in return for the muddling the world had given me. I pursued the investigation of such things as neoplatonism, psychic phenomena, platonic friendship, and so forth. After coaching myself up a little on such topics as these, I could appear in the most erudite company and pose as anauthority on the same. Ah! authority, how many errors are committed in thy name!
For several months I busied myself in one way and another, and my infirmities seemed to have given me a respite. Every symptom had for a while been in abeyance, but now they began to assert themselves with renewed activity. The reader will perhaps wonder what new restorative agencies I could now summon to my aid. I was always quite resourceful and could usually think of something untried.
I remembered that I had never consulted a homeopathic physician. This must have been on my part an oversight, for I have the greatest esteem for this class of medical men, mainly on account of their benign remedies. The one I consulted told me that homeopaths did not treat a diseasename, but directed the remedy toward the symptoms at hand. This impressed me that he would treat my case on its merits and without any guess-work. My relief would depend upon correct statements in answer to all the doctor’s questions. He was very painstaking in this matter, and the questions asked were many and diversified. One was: “Do you ever imagine that you see a big spidercrawling up the wall?” Another was: “Do you at times imagine that you are falling from a high precipice?”
At the time I had a slight tonsillitis, and the doctor was careful to note that it was the right tonsil involved. He told me that if it had been the left one, the treatment would be entirely different. Up to this time I had, in my ignorance of the human frame, supposed that the two halves were the same in function and symmetrical in anatomy.
The doctor gave me a vial of little red pills about the size of beet seeds, with explicit directions as to how to take them. If I exceeded the dosage prescribed I endangered my life, for these pellets were of a high potency. They were little two-edged swords which might cut both ways.
I took this medicine for perhaps a week; that was longer than I usually confined myself to one remedy. One day, when in an extremely despondent mood, I was seized with an impulse to kill myself. Neurasthenics, like hysterical women, sometimes talk of suicide, but these threats are usually made to attract attention and gain sympathy. Neither very often makeany well-directed efforts to get their threats into execution. But for me to plan was to act; so I attempted the “rash act,” as the newspapers invariably call it, by swallowing the contents of that little vial. I then performed a few ante-mortem details, such as writing good-byes to friends. About the time I had all my arrangements made and was wondering if it was not time for the medicine to exert its deadly effect, I changed my mind about dying. The stuff had been so slow in its action that it had enabled me to look at life from a different viewpoint. Life now seemed sweet to me and it was so soon to pass from me! Oh! why had I not used some deliberation before thus consummating the desperate deed?
To the telephone I rushed. I soon had the doctor, and this was our conversation:—
Myself—“Doctor, come at once; by mistake I swallowed all the medicine you gave me. Do hurry, doctor.”
Doctor—“Did you take the entire contents of the bottle?”
Myself—“Every one—over a hundred—do hurry, doctor.”
Doctor—“No alarm, then. You have swallowed so many that they will neutralize one another and act as an antidote. Calm yourself and you will be all right!”
I thought more than ever that this was surely a mysterious remedy.
A few weeks later I chanced to remember that in my ceaseless rounds of trying to regain my health and retain such as I had, no osteopathic doctor had ever been favored by a call from me. I went to consult with one post-haste. The osteopath wanted to pull my limbs both literally and metaphorically. He discovered that I had a rib depressed and digging into my lungs; also a dislocation of my atlas, which is a bone at the top of my spinal column. He was not sure but that one of my cranial bones was pressing upon one of the large nerve centers in my brain. My symptoms were all reflex from these troubles.
I did not decide upon an immediate course of osteopathic treatment, as I had been struck by something new. I will tell about it another chapter; it makes me so tired to write so much at one time. That accounts for these short chapters all along.
Yes,I had thought of something entirely new. I would take a medical course and would then know for myself whether I suffered from a complication of diseases or whether it was true, as many had tried to convince me, that there was nothing the matter with me. A medical education, too, would be an embellishment that every one could not boast of. I had the necessary time and means to take a course in medicine, having no one dependent upon me. If there had been family cares on my hands, the case would have been different. So I matriculated in a St. Louis medical college during the middle of a term and began the study of the healing art.
Now, reader, please do not be shocked too badly if, in this connection, I mention a few slightly uncanny things. I have always noticed, however, that most people do not raise much of a fuss over a diminutive shocking semi-occasionally, provided the act comes about as a natural course of events. Therewere many things about the college and clinic rooms that were, to me, gruesome and repulsive. The dissecting-room, with its stench and debris from dead bodies, was the crucial test for me. I wonder now that I stayed with it as long as I did.
For my dissecting partner I had an uncouth cow-puncher from southern Texas. There were in the college a number of these broad-hatted and rather illiterate fellows from the southwest trying to get themselves metamorphosed into doctors. (I would often feel for their prospective patients.) This man who assisted me on the “stiff,” as they call the dissecting material, did the cutting and I looked up the points of anatomy. I preferred to do the literary rather than the sanguinary part of the work. One evening—we did this work at night—we were to dissect and expose all the muscles of the head, so as to make them look as nearly as possible like the colored plates in the anatomy. We were expected to learn the names of all these structures. The memorizing of these terms was no small task, for I remember that one little muscle even bore this outlandish name:levator labii superiorisalaquae nasi. Anglicized, this would mean that the function of the muscle was to raise the upper lip and dilate the nostril. My companion said that he “didn’t see no sense in being so durned scientific.” Accordingly he went to work and cut all the flesh off the head and stacked it up on the slab. When the demonstrator of anatomy came by to test our knowledge and to see our work, he asked: “What have you here?” My friend very promptly answered: “A pile of lean meat.” This student went by the not very euphonious name of “Lean Meat” from that date.
A trick of the students was to place fingers and toes in pockets of unsuspecting visitors to the dissecting-room. There was no end to these ghoulish acts. A student while in a hilarious mood one night did a decapitating operation on one of the bodies. His loot was the head of an old man with patriarchal beard and he carried it around from one place of debauchery to another, exhibiting it to gaping crowds of a rather unenviable class of citizenship.
I mention these things merely that the reader may imagine the morbid effect they might haveupon one of my temperament. Being a freshman, I was to get in the way of lectures only anatomy, physiology, microscopy and osteology. This interpreted meant body, bugs, and bones. But I wanted to acquire medical lore rapidly, so I listened to every lecture that I could, whether it came in my schedule or not.Soon I began to manifest symptoms of every disease I heard discussed.I would one day have all the signs of pancreatic disease; perhaps the next I would display unmistakable evidences of ascending myelitis; next, my liver would be the storm center, and so on. My shifting of symptoms was gauged by the lecturers to whom I listened.
At my room one evening I was walking the floor wrapped in deepest gloom. No deep-dyed pessimist ever felt as I did at that moment, for I had just discovered that I had an incurable heart disease. I had often feared as much, but now I had it from a scientific source that my heart was going wrong. I could tell by the way I felt. My room-mate noticed me. He was another Western bovine-chaser, a good fellow in his way, but accordingto my standard, devoid of all the finer qualities that go to make a gentleman.
“What in thunder’s the matter with you, feller?” he blurted out. I told him of the latest affliction that had beset me. What this fellow said would not look well in print. My exasperation at his conduct, together with thoughts of my new disease, caused me to lash the pillow sleeplessly that night. I decided to go early in the morning and see Dr. Cardack, professor of chest diseases, and at least have him concur in my self-diagnosis.
The doctor had not yet arrived at his office. I must have been very early, for it seemed to me that he would never come. When he did arrive I was given a very affable greeting but only a superficial examination. I felt a little hurt to think that he did not seem to regard my case with the significance which I thought it deserved. The afflicted are always close observers in whatever concerns themselves. Professor Cardack had a peculiar smile on his big, kind face when he asked:—
“Have you been listening to my lectures on diseases of the heart?”
“Yes, sir;” was my response.
“Did you hear my lecture on mitral murmurs yesterday?” he asked.
“I did,” I had to admit.
“And did you read up on the subject?” was further interrogated.
“Y-yes,” and my tones implied a little guilt, although I could not tell why.
“I thought so,” continued the doctor; “some of the boys from our college were in last night to have their hearts examined, and I am expecting quite a number in again this evening. Every year when I begin my course of lectures on the heart the boys call singly and in droves to see me and have my assurance that they have no cardiac lesions. I have never yet found one of them to have a crippled heart. Like you, they all have a slight neurosis, coupled with a self-consciousness, that makes them think the world revolves around them and their little imaginary ailments.”
I felt somewhat ashamed, but with it came a sense of relief. “Misery loves company,” and I was glad in my mortification to think that I had not been the only one to make a fool of myself.
The old doctor gave me the usual advice about exercise. He said: “Go home when this term has closed and go to work at something during your vacation. Work hard and for a purpose, if possible, but don’t forget to work. If you can’t do any better, dig ditches and fill them up again. Forget yourself! Forget that you have a heart, a stomach, a liver, or a sympathetic nervous system. Live right, and those organs will take care of themselves all right. That’s why the Creator tried to bury them away beyond our control.”
This little talk, coming as it did from an acknowledged authority, made a strong impression upon me. I resolved to act upon the suggestions given me. By the way, it is scarcely necessary for me to state that I never went back to the medical college again.
NextI decided to turn cow-boy, so I at once went toward the setting sun. I would go out West and go galloping over the mesa and acquire the color of a brick-house, with the appetite and vigor that are its concomitants. I had frequently read of Yale and Harvard graduates going out and getting a touch of life on the plains; so, as such a life did not seem to be beneath the dignity of cultured people, I would give it a trial.
I had never had any experience in “roughing it,” but from what I had read I knew that it was just the thing to make me healthy and vigorous and also cause me to look at life from a few different angles. In addition to my unceasing concern about my health, I also had a yearning to experience every phase and condition of life known to anybody else.
Broncho-busting and Western life in general satisfied me about as quickly as any of my numerous ventures. In a very few days I was heartsick and homesick—a strong combination.I will draw a curtain over some of my experiences, as I don’t care to talk about them; one of these being my feelings after my first day in the saddle. When I worked for that mean old farmer, years before, I thought I was physically broken up if not entirely bankrupt, but that experience pales into significance as compared with the present case. Then we got out on an alkali desert, forty miles from water, and I nearly choked, to death. However, I survived it all and in due time got back to civilization.
On my arrival home my den looked more cozy and inviting than it ever had before. My old friends gave me a hearty greeting and their smiles and handshakes seemed good to me on dropping back to earth after a brief sojourn in the Land of Nowhere. I was truly glad for once that I was alive, for I believe there is no keener pleasure than, after an absence, to have the privilege of mingling with old, time-tried friends that you know are sincere and true. My friends seemed just as glad to see me as I did them. We laughed as heartily at each other’s jokes as if they had been really funny. Old friends are the best, because they learnwhere our tenderest corns are and try to walk as lightly as possible over them. I thought the hardships I had endured for a while were fully compensated for by once more being surrounded by familiar faces and scenes.
But in a few weeks life again became monotonous. Everybody bored me. It seemed to me that both men and women talked, as they thought, in a circle of very small circumference. I found only an occasional person who could interest me for even a short time; I felt that I must have some mental excitement of a legitimate kind or I would go crazy. What should it be?
Not having anything better at hand, I turned my attention to society and the club. I had never given these matters quite the earnest consideration even for the accustomed length of time which I devoted to so many other things. I conceived the idea of inaugurating a campaign of education, socially speaking, for the purpose of getting men and women on a higher plane of thinking. I tried to get everybody interested in Browning and Shakespeare, from whom they could get mental pabulum worth while; I would have everybody lookafter his diction and not give vent to such expressions as: “I seen him when he done it.” I would get as many people as I could to think and talk of something above commonplaces. But in a little while I saw that most people did not want to be bored by such things as mind cultivation, but were rather bent on what they chose to think was a good time. So I went to the opposite extreme and tried to perfect myself in the small talk and frivolities that interest the majority of society people. I was soon able to ape the vapid dictates of those who called themselves theéliteand thebon ton. If the reader will pardon me for using these words, I promise as a gentleman not to inflict them on him again.
Of course, I did not pursue my last strain for very long. I worried somewhat about my health, but not so much as of old. I had had about all the disease symptoms worth having and now could complain only on general principles. My character was as vacillating and unsettled as ever. I would pick up one thing today only to discard it to-morrow. I had tried so many different callings, fads, and diversions that now only something in the wayof an innovation appealed to me even momentarily. Truth to tell, I had about got to the bottom of my resources, and felt somewhat like old Alexander the Great when he conquered his last world and wept because he was out of a job.
I had become very discriminating in regard to trying remedial measures and agencies. Any new thing in order to gain my favor had to bear the brand: “Made in Germany.”
Reader,you have perhaps wondered all along how I could ever hold myself down to write a little sketch of my life. I wonder myself that I have thus been able to jot down twenty thousand words without once going in for repairs. I did not realize until this very moment what a lot of work I was piling up—an effort that is appalling for me to contemplate. Indeed, I have suddenly grown so tired of it that I have decided, here and now, to give it up, as I have all my other undertakings. And I had this little volume only about half compiled! Perhaps, some day, in a spasm of industry I may be able to write the other half.
At any rate, I have written enough to convince even the most skeptical that the neurasthenic is no ordinary individual. We want the world to know that our little brotherhood is ever entitled to respect—more so than many other cults that become fashionable for a day and then depart from the “earth, earthy.” It is true, we think much about our health andthose measures calculated to retain or regain it, as well as misdirecting energy in our pursuits and pastimes; but, after all,that’s our business! The world should not look on us as being cold and selfish; if it does, the case is another one wherein “things are not what they seem.” We have big, warm hearts that beat for others’ woes and are ever responsive to the “touch of nature that makes the whole world kin.”
We neurasthenics have slumbering within our bosoms ambitions and possibilities that, if set in motion, would move mountains and revert the course of rivers. But we can’t work up enough energy to consummate our aims and carry things to a finish. Perhaps we may be able to do so some day. Oh, Some Day, you are a mirage on the desert of life that ever lures us on to things that can only be attained in the land where dreams come true!
I am now wound up for quite a bit of pretty writing like this, but as I have promised to say good-night and good-bye, I will put my flights of fancy back in the box and go to bed.
Transcriber’s Notes:
Images have been moved from the middle of a paragraph to the closest paragraph break.
Other than the corrections noted by hover information in the text, printer’s inconsistencies have been retained.