had put me on the "invalid list," and when once your name is there it
goes on, like the brook, "forever." The medicine-grafters barter in these
names. I have been told that for first-class invalids they pay the
munificent sum of fifty cents per thousand! I think that a thousand of my
class ought to be worth more--say, six bits! It seemed that I was on
several different lists, among them being "catarrh," "neurasthenia,"
"rheumatism," "incipient tuberculosis," "heart disease," "kidney and liver
affections," "chronic invalidism," and numerous others. I was fairly
deluged with letters begging me to be cured of these awful diseases before
it was forever too late.

One of the symptoms common to all these grave troubles was "indisposition
to work." I knew that I had always suffered from it to the very limit, but
I did not know that it was dignified by being classed as such a common
disease symptom. I also had a number of other abnormal feelings that were
common to most of the ailments described. For example, at times I had
"singing in my ears," "distress after eating too much,"
"self-consciousness," and "forebodings of impending danger." I always
experienced great fear lest one of these "forebodings" overtake me
unawares.

These letters were always "personal," although the type-written name at
the top did not look exactly like the body of the letter. Possibly they
may have been, in advertising parlance, "stock letters." They purported to
be from kind-hearted philanthropists who were in the business of curing
people simply because they loved humanity. Some of them were from persons
who had been cured of something and who now, in a spirit of generosity,
were trying to let others similarly afflicted know what the great remedy
was.

While I realized that these advertisements were base lies, gotten up to
deceive the sick, or those who think they are sick, and to take their
money in exchange for dope that was worse than useless, yet the diabolical
wording of those sentences affected me in a queer and inexplicable way.
The psychologist would, perhaps, call this a subconscious influence. When
a person gets the disease _idea_ rooted deeply in his mind, as I had it,
he is kept busy watching for new symptoms. It is no trouble at all to get
some new disease on the very shortest notice.

As a more active occupation seemed necessary for me, I was trying to study
up something new to tackle. Doctors had told me that I needed to be out in