an, sick unto death. My informant soon
engaged him in conversation. What did he learn? First, that the uncouth
stranger had never before so much as crossed the threshold of a
hospital. His last job had been as a member of a section-gang on a
railroad. From the roadbed of a railway to the bedside of a man about
to die was indeed a change which might have taxed the adaptability of a
more versatile being. But coarse as he was, this unkempt novice did not
abuse his charge--except in so far as his inability to interpret or
anticipate wants contributed to the sick man's distress. My own
attendant, realizing that the patient was suffering for the want of
skilled attention, spent a part of his time in this unhappy room, which
was but across the hall from my own. The end soon came.

My attendant, who had had training as a nurse, detected the
unmistakable signs of impending death. He forthwith informed the owner
of the sanatorium that the patient was in a dying condition, and urged
him (a doctor) to go at once to the bedside. The doctor refused to
comply with the request on the plea that he was at the time "too busy."
When at last he did visit the room, the patient was dead. Then came the
supervisor, who took charge of the body. As it was being carried from
the room the supervisor, the "handy man" of the owner, said: "There
goes the best paying patient the institution had; the doctor" (meaning
the owner) "was getting eighty-five dollars a week out of him." Of this
sum not more than twenty dollars at most, at the time this happened,
could be considered as "cost of maintenance." The remaining sixty-five
dollars went into the pocket of the owner. Had the man lived for one
year, the owner might have pocketed (so far as this one case was
concerned) the neat but wicked profit of thirty-three hundred and
eighty dollars. And what would the patient have received? The same
privilege of living in neglect and dying neglected.

VIII

For the first few weeks after my arrival at the sanatorium, I was cared
for by two attendants, one by day and one by night. I was still
helpless, being unable to put my feet out of bed, much less upon the
floor, and it was necessary that I be continually watched lest an
impulse to walk should seize me. After a month or six weeks, however, I
grew stronger, and from that time only one person was assigned to care
for me. He was with me all day, and slept at night in the same room.

The earliest possible