.

VII

Choice of a sanatorium by people of limited means is, unfortunately,
very restricted. Though my relatives believed the one in which I was
placed was at least fairly well conducted, events proved otherwise.
From a modest beginning made not many years previously, it had enjoyed
a mushroom growth. About two hundred and fifty patients were harbored
in a dozen or more small frame buildings, suggestive of a mill
settlement. Outside the limits of a city and in a state where there was
lax official supervision, owing in part to faulty laws, the owner of
this little settlement of woe had erected a nest of veritable
fire-traps in which helpless sick people were forced to risk their
lives. This was a necessary procedure if the owner was to grind out an
exorbitant income on his investment.

The same spirit of economy and commercialism pervaded the entire
institution. Its worst manifestation was in the employment of the
meanest type of attendant--men willing to work for the paltry wage of
eighteen dollars a month. Very seldom did competent attendants consent
to work there, and then usually because of a scarcity of profitable
employment elsewhere. Providentially for me, such an attendant came
upon the scene. This young man, so long as he remained in the good
graces of the owner-superintendent, was admittedly one of the best
attendants he had ever had. Yet aside from a five-dollar bill which a
relative had sent me at Christmas and which I had refused to accept
because of my belief that it, like my relatives, was counterfeit--aside
from that bill, which was turned over to the attendant by my brother,
he received no additional pecuniary rewards. His chief reward lay in
his consciousness of the fact that he was protecting me against
injustices which surely would have been visited upon me had he quitted
his position and left me to the mercies of the owner and his ignorant
assistants. To-day, with deep appreciation, I contrast the treatment I
received at his hands with that which I suffered during the three weeks
preceding his appearance on the scene. During that period, no fewer
than seven attendants contributed to my misery. Though some of them
were perhaps decent enough fellows outside a sickroom, not one had the
right to minister to a patient in my condition.

The two who were first put in charge of me did not strike me with their
fists or even threaten to do so; but their unconscious lack of
consideration for my co