I am now approaching the half-century mark. I can look ahead a few years and see the fiftieth mile post. In all the years that have past and gone I can recall none where my conditions and prospects are so alarming, serious and discouraging as at the present time. I have a peculiar ailment in my left side that has baffled the medical fraternity and caused extreme anxiety to myself. I have endeavored with courage and determination to exterminate it. I have tried assiduously physical culture, osteopathy, dietics, Christian science and medicine. I have consulted freely and often the great physician and all so far have failed. With treatment at Hot Springs thrown in as good measure. The surgeons say an operation is the only hope through which they can discover the cause and eliminate it. I dread operations like I do “Good Wills” and “Bonuses.” My wife had one and the doctor in charge said she would be a well woman in three weeks, but those three weeks were worse than that two weeks’ loan. They stretched into six long, bitter years and were the direct cause of an outlay of money in excess of three thousand dollars. Glad again of the early use of that harrow, for there was surely a gross violation of the truth on the part of the surgeon. On account of dearie’s precarious health I was forced to try a lower altitude, and this not being sufficient it was necessary to try the balmy, sunny air of California and sojourn there among the orange blossoms and the singing birds for seven long months. This caused me to give up my position of clerk that netted me in my four years’ labor the tidy sum of ten thousand dollars. Today as I stand looking at that fiftieth mile post I realize in the vernacular of the day “I am up against it.” My money is gone, my ailment bothers me, I have a family to provide for, and the wolf stands on the threshold with his mouth open and his long, gaunt body in readiness to make the jump. In some way I must appease five empty stomachs from consuming five back bones. My investments were bad. I tied up thirty-five hundred dollars in a partnership lumber business, fifteen hundred dollars in a home to shelter my loved ones, and the rest went for food and clothing. I struck a highly modern town with all the up-to-date conveniences, property depreciated fifty per cent, business was stagnant, interest kept gnawing, and taxes went skyward. The two sad mistakes I made was: first, to visit the office of the County Treasurer and learn about the taxes; and the second was to stay out of business unless we had enough money to pay for it and keep to the leeward of that ten per cent interest, but I didn’t and so much more for experience, the grandma of teachers.