As the reader may have already surmised, the play mentioned in the preceding chapter was never finished. No; after I was once more domiciled in my city home, I began to think that if I really was a literary genius I ought to commercialize my ideas right, instead of using them in fiction or drama simply to tickle the fancy of people who would forget it all in a moment’s time. The idea of teaching things by mail occurred to me as being a field of great possibilities.

While it is a difficult matter to give tangible lessons by correspondence methods on some subjects—swimming, for example—yet on nearly everything there may be presented a working knowledge which the student can enlarge upon for himself. I employed some auburn-haired typewriters and began advertising to teach several different subjects by mail courses. Among these were journalism, poultry-raising, bee-culture, market-gardening, surveying, engineering, architecture, and several different things. We gave our graduates a nice diploma with some blue ribbon and cheap tinsel on it. These diplomas cost about twenty cents apiece to get them up, which seemed like a reckless waste of money, but it helped to advertise the business. Business came and we hadn’t much to do except to deposit the money and, incidentally, send out the “stock letters,” which the girls always jokingly called the “lessons.”

One day one of the typewriters called my attention to the fact that for originality I had been outdone by a fellow at Peoria, Illinois, who advertised in the leading magazines to teach ventriloquism by mail. This was certainly an innovation in the way of mail instruction. I thought a little while about something entirely new that I could introduce. I soon had it! I got up a correspondence course in courting for the purpose of straightening out the crooked course of true love. I argued that nearly everything else had been simplified save courting, which went on in the old laborious manner with lovers’ quarrels, heartaches, and ofttimes life-time estrangements. The course was a success and many wrote for “individual” instruction.

Things were going well and I had a lucrative business. I had been so busy for several months that all my symptoms had sunk into desuetude. I had almost forgotten that I was an invalid and that I should take care of my precious health, what little I had left, when the thought occurred to me, as it had several years before, that I was working too hard. Then, too, I became a little conscience-stricken. My conscience had never before troubled me, probably from the fact that I had never worked it overtime. I began to think that in these correspondence courses I might not be giving my patrons value received for their money. A pretty record for me to leave behind me, I thought. So as I had a competency anyway, I paid off my helpers and went out of business.

As I now thought I was again on the very edge of a nervous breakdown, I concluded to travel for my health. Where to go was the next question! A medical friend suggested a sea-voyage, but advised me to first take a sail for a day or so on Lake Michigan. I did so and became so seasick that death would have been joyously welcomed. I did not take the proposed voyage, as I had had enough.

But the germ that prompted me to travel for my health had a firm grip on me. Colorado was my first objective point, and on the first day of my arrival there I went to the top of one of their snow-capped mountains. I had not taken into account the effects of altitude upon a person not accustomed to it, and in consequence of my sudden ascent I had a slight expectoration of blood. This seemed to be cause for genuine alarm, and I now realized that I was to be a victim of “the great white plague,” vulgarly known as consumption. Consumptives were as thick as English sparrows in Colorado and I saw ample evidences of the disease in all its horrible details. It seemed that there was a sort of caste among the “lungers,” depending mainly upon their amount of ready cash. Some had plain “consumption,” while others had only “tuberculosis.” Many had “lung trouble,” “catarrh,” “bronchitis,” and—“neurasthenia.”

The patients in the sanitariums were graded. The most advanced cases were called the “B. L. B’s.”—“The Busted Lung Brigade.” It seems that there is no condition too grim for joke and jest. On all sides there were coughing and expectorating and suffering and dying, sufficient to dismay the stoutest heart—and I a victim myself, I thought.

I heard that the torrid southwest was the ideal climate for tuberculosis and thither I went. I visited a few places in this hot southwestern country where it is alleged that consumptives in all stages soon recover and grow fat. I soon learned that these alluring reports should be taken with the usual quantity of saline matter. This boosting of climate for invalids, I found, was mainly the work of land sharks, railroads, hotel and sanitarium people, and a few medical men who were crafty or misguided. This climate may be ideal in being germ-free, but where it is so hot and dry that even germs can’t eke out an existence, it is also a trifle trying on the tender-foot consumptive. I found that the bad water and sand-storms in many localities, coupled with his homesickness, more than off-set all the good results the climate could otherwise bring to the sufferer.In nearly every room I occupied while in this Mecca for consumptives, the place had been rendered vacant by my predecessor having moved out—in a box. I did not stay in one locality very long, but visited a number of places that were exploited as being the land of promise for all afflicted with this agonizing disease. Everywhere I went I saw hundreds of victims being shorn of their money and deriving meager, if any, benefits. The native consumptives went elsewhere in search of health, it being another case of “green hills far away.” Many went so far as the State of Maine.

Every State in the Union has at some time been lauded as the favored spot for the cure of consumption, but, after all, it seems as mythical as the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Some climates may be better than others for those ill with this disease, but if you are a poor, homesick sufferer—a stranger in a strange land—I doubt whether the best climate on earth can vie with the comforts of home, surrounded by those nearest and dearest to you, and whose kindly administrations are not to be regarded as a case of “love’s labor lost.”

I returned home “much improved in health.” Don’t think I’ve had a tuberculous symptom since.