ALTH.

Indecision marked my life and character and I had no confidence in myself.
Yet I realized that I had an active brain, only that it was misdirected
and running riot. To correct years of improper thinking and living may
seem easy as a theoretical problem, but if one should find it necessary to
put the matter to a practical test on himself, he discovers that it is
like diverting the course of a small river.

I was sensitive and thought a great deal about myself. Often I entertained
the effeminate notion that people were talking about me, when I ought to
have known that they could easily find some more interesting topic of
conversation. I always went to extremes. I was up on a mountain of
enthusiasm or down in the slough of despondency; always elated or
depressed; optimistic beyond reason or submerged in pessimism; always the
extremes--no happy medium for me. I never met anything on half-way
grounds.

Being now of mature years, I realized the necessity of settling down to
something, if for no other reason than that I might gain a little more
stability of character. Accordingly, I accepted a position as bookkeeper
in a flour-mill. I remained at it longer than I ever had at anything.
After a few months, however, it seemed that the close confinement indoors
did not agree with me. Sitting in a stooped position over books produced a
soreness in the muscles of my back and I imagined that I had incipient
Bright's disease. I have since learned that the kidneys are not very
sensitive organs and seldom give rise to much pain even in the gravest
disease. _I read up on kidney affections in the almanacs--oh! what
authority!_--and as I had about all the symptoms, I thought it best to put
myself on the appropriate regimen. I began drinking buttermilk, taking it
regularly and in place of water and coffee. I had read that sour milk was
also conducive to longevity, and that if one would drink it faithfully he
might live to be a hundred years old. A friend to whom I had confided this
information said that between swilling down buttermilk a hundred years
and being dead, he preferred the latter.

[Illustration: I read up in the almanacs.]

There was a decided improvement in my case in some respects, but I began
to acquire new and different symptoms, mainly from reading medicine
advertisements. My name had been seized, as I learned later, by agencies,
and was being hawked around to charlatans and medicine-venders. Yes, some
one