Our Nervous Friends — Illustrating the Mastery of NervousnessCarroll, Robert S. (Robert Sproul)
Science
Our Nervous Friends — Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness
Carroll, Robert S. (Robert Sproul)
Nervous system -- Hygiene
were thirteen. A military academy noted for its ability to handle hard
cases found them quite too mature in their wild ways, and sent them
home. They may, for reasons best known to themselves, have been
"square with the old man," but they were a pair of thoroughgoing
toughs by twenty, not only fast but cruel, even brutal, in their evil-
doing.
Will was the first to show the strain of the pace. When twenty-two,
the warning cough sobered him a bit, and in John's faithful and
congenial company, he went first to Denver, then to New Mexico.
Doctors' orders were irksome, whiskey and cards the only available
recreation for the boys, and so they tried to follow their father's
example in developing a powerful physique on Kentucky Bourbon
("best"). John suddenly quit drinking. "Acute nephritis" was on the
shipping paster. Delirium tremens was the truth. Will was too frail to
accompany his brother's remains home. He was pretty lonely and
anxious, and miserable without John, but for several weeks behaved
quite to the doctor's satisfaction. It didn't last long, and within
the year tuberculosis and Bourbon laid him beside his brother.
May was a promising girl, "almost a hoiden," the neighbors said. She
rode the ponies bareback; she played boys' games, and at twelve looked
as though the problem of health could never complicate her glad, young
life. But cough and hemorrhage, twin specters, stalked in at sixteen
and the poor child fairly melted away and was gone in a year.
Annabel, the youngest girl, was a quiet child and thoughtful. Some
called her dull, but rather, it seems, she early sensed her fate. When
but a child she was sent to "San Antone" and operated on by a throat
specialist. After May's death she went to the mountains each summer
and spent two winters in South Texas. But she grew more and more thin,
and in the end it was tuberculosis.
Frank, the last child, was different from all the others. He seemed
bright of mind and active of body. He attended school as had none of
the other boys; he even went to Sunday-school. Physically and
mentally, he gave promise of prolonging the family line--but he proved
his father's only admitted regret. He lied and he stole. The money
which his father would have given him freely he preferred to get by
cunning. Doctor Jim could not tolerate what he called dishonesty, and
from time to time they would have words and Frank would be gone for
months. His cleverness made him a fairly successful gambler; that he
played the game "crooked" is probably evidenced by his being shot in a
gambling-joint before he was thirty.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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