I became more indifferent to my eventual fate; and, invariably, before a drop of that precious reward had dripped from the saucer, I had eaten enough of the dinner to prove my title to the seductive dessert.  Moreover, during its enjoyment, I no longer cared a whit for charges or convictions of all the crimes in the calendar.  This fact is less trifling than it seems; for it proves the value of strategy as opposed to brute and sometimes brutal force, of which I shall presently give some illuminating examples.

VII

Choice of a sanatorium by people of limited means is, unfortunately, very restricted.  Though my relatives believed the one in which I was placed was at least fairly well conducted, events proved otherwise.  From a modest beginning made not many years previously, it had enjoyed a mushroom growth.  About two hundred and fifty patients were harbored in a dozen or more small frame buildings, suggestive of a mill settlement.  Outside the limits of a city and in a state where there was lax official supervision, owing in part to faulty laws, the owner of this little settlement of woe had erected a nest of veritable fire-traps in which helpless sick people were forced to risk their lives.  This was a necessary procedure if the owner was to grind out an exorbitant income on his investment.

The same spirit of economy and commercialism pervaded the entire institution.  Its worst manifestation was in the employment of the meanest type of attendant—­men willing to work for the paltry wage of eighteen dollars a month.  Very seldom did competent attendants consent to work there, and then usually because of a scarcity of profitable employment elsewhere.  Providentially for me, such an attendant came upon the scene.  This young man, so long as he remained in the good graces of the owner-superintendent, was admittedly one of the best attendants he had ever had.  Yet aside from a five-dollar bill which a relative had sent me at Christmas and which I had refused to accept because of my belief that it, like my relatives, was counterfeit—­aside from that bill, which was turned over to the attendant by my brother, he received no additional pecuniary rewards.  His chief reward lay in his consciousness of the fact that he was protecting me against injustices which surely would have been visited upon me had he quitted his position and left me to the mercies of the owner and his ignorant assistants.  To-day, with deep appreciation, I contrast the treatment I received at his hands with that which I suffered during the three weeks preceding his appearance on the scene.  During that period, no fewer than seven attendants contributed to my misery.  Though some of them were perhaps decent enough fellows outside a sickroom, not one had the right to minister to a patient in my condition.