Our Nervous Friends | Page 7

man fit for the kitchen steps after milking time--he
used a step-ladder to bring up the milk to the back porch. Such intensity
of attention to detail could not long fail to make this degenerating
neurotic take note of her own body, which gradually became more and
more sensitive, till she was fairly distraught between her fear of
draughts and her mania for ventilation. It was windows up and
windows down, opening the dampers and closing the dampers,
something for her shoulders and more fresh air. Church, lecture-halls
and theaters gradually became impossible. Finally she was practically a
prisoner in the semiobscurity of her home--a prisoner to bodily
sensation. Then came the autos to curse. The Clayton home was within
a hundred yards of the county road, and when the wind was from the
west really visible dust from passing motors presumed to invade the

sanctity of parlor and spare rooms, and with kindling resentment
windows were closed and windows were opened, rooms were dusted
and redusted until she hated the sound of an auto-horn, until the smell
of burning gasoline caused her nausea--but each year the autos
multiplied.
At last the family realized that her loss of control was becoming serious,
that she was really a sufferer; but her antagonism to physicians was
deep-set, so the osteopath was called. Had he been given a fair chance,
he might have helped, but her obsessions were such that she resented
the touch of his manipulations, fearing that some unknown infection
might exude from his palms to her undoing. Reason finally became
helpless in the grip of her phobias. Her stomach lining was "destroyed,"
and into this "raw stomach" only the rarest of foods and those of her
own preparation could be taken. She had fainted at Fred's funeral, and
repeatedly became dazed, practically unconscious, at the mention of his
name. Self-interests had held her attention from girlhood to her
wreckage, and from this grew self- study, which later degenerated into
self-pity. Her converse was of food and feelings and self. She bored all
she met, for self alone was expressed in actions and words.
Father and daughter finally, under the pretext of a trip for her health,
placed her in a Southern sanitarium. Much was done here for her, in the
face of her protest. Illustrative of the unreasoning intensity with which
fear had laid hold upon her was her mortal dread of grape-seeds. As she
was again being taught to eat rationally, grapes were ordered for her
morning meal. The nurse noticed that with painful care she separated
each seed from the pulp, and explained to her the value of grape-seeds
in her case. She wisely did not argue with the nurse, but two mornings
later she was discovered ejecting and secreting the seeds. The physician
then kindly and earnestly appealed for her intelligent cooperation. She
thereupon admitted that many years ago a neighbor's boy had died of
appendicitis, which the doctor said was caused by a grape-seed. The
fallacy of these early-day opinions was shown her. Then was illustrated
the weakness of her faith and the strength of her fear. She produced a
draft for one thousand dollars, which she said she always carried for
unforeseen emergencies, and offered it to the doctor to use for charity

or as he wished, if he would change the order about the grapes. Suffice
it to say she learned to eat Concords, Catawbas, Tokays and Malagas.
She returned home better, but was never wholesomely well, and to-day
dreads the death for which her family wait with unconscious patience.
What is the secret of this miserable old woman's failure to adjust
herself to the richness which life offered her? A selfish self peers out
from every act. Even her generosity to Fred was the pleasing of self.
Given all that she had, what could she not have been! Physically, with
the advantages of plenty and her country life and the promise of her fair
girlhood, what attraction could not have been hers had kindness and
generosity softened her eyes, tinted her cheeks, and love-wrinkles come
instead of worry-wrinkles.
Her mind was naturally an unusual one. She lived within driving
distance of one of Ohio's largest colleges--only an hour by train to the
state capital. Fortune had truly smiled and selected her for happiness,
but from the first it was self or her family and no further thought or
plan or consideration.
Elizabeth Clayton was given a nervous system of superb quality, which
used for the good of those she touched would have hallowed her life;
misused, she drifts into unlovable old age, a selfish neurotic. She could
have been a leader in her community, a blessing in her generation, a
builder of faiths which do not die, but she failed to choose the good
part