; returning, however,
sufficiently improved to resume my labors. Breaking down again from this
only partial recovery, I made the experiment now of Minnesota; and
submitting myself, on returning, to a very rigid examination by a
physician who did not know at all what verdict had been passed by other
physicians before, he said, in accordance with their opinions, 'You have
had a difficulty in your right lung, but it is healed.' I had suspected
from my symptoms that it might be so, and the fact appears to be
confirmed by the further fact, that I have been slowly, though
regularly, gaining all summer.

"This improvement, or partial recovery, I attribute to the climate of
Minnesota. But not to this alone, other things have concurred.

"First, I had a naturally firm, enduring constitution, which had only
given way under excessive burdens of labor, and had no vestige of
hereditary disease upon it.

"Secondly, I had all my burdens thrown off, and a state of complete,
uncaring rest.

"Thirdly, I was in such vigor as to be out in the open air, on horseback
and otherwise, a good part of the time. It does not follow, by any
means, that one who is dying of hereditary consumption, or one who is
too far gone to have any powers of endurance, or spring of recuperative
energy left, will be recovered in the same way. A great many go there to
die, and some to be partially recovered and then die; for I knew two
young men, so far recovered as to think themselves well, or nearly so,
who by over-violent exertion brought on a recurrence of bleeding, and
died. * * * The general opinion seemed to be that the result was
attributable, in part, to the over tonic property of the atmosphere. And
I have known of very many remarkable cases of recovery there which had
seemed to be hopeless. One, of a gentleman who was carried there on a
litter, and became a hearty, robust man. Another, who told me that he
coughed up bits of his lungs of the size of a walnut, was there seven or
eight months after, a perfectly sound-looking, well-set man, with no
cough at all. I fell in with somebody every few days who had come there
and been restored; and with multitudes of others, whose disease had been
arrested so as to allow the prosecution of business, and whose lease of
life, as they had no doubt, was much lengthened by their migration to
that region of the country. Of course it will be understood that a great
many are sadly disappointed in going thither. * * *