I had another trifling interval of sleep, and then got up, by request,
and constructed a flax-seed poultice. This was placed upon the child’s
breast and left there to do its healing work.
A wood-fire is not a permanent thing. I got up every twenty minutes and
renewed ours, and this gave Mrs. McWilliams the opportunity to shorten
the times of giving the medicines by ten minutes, which was a great
satisfaction to her. Now and then, between times, I reorganized the
flax-seed poultices, and applied sinapisms and other sorts of blisters
where unoccupied places could be found upon the child. Well, toward
morning the wood gave out and my wife wanted me to go down cellar and get
some more. I said:
“My dear, it is a laborious job, and the child must be nearly warm
enough, with her extra clothing. Now mightn’t we put on another layer of
poultices and–”
I did not finish, because I was interrupted. I lugged wood up from below
for some little time, and then turned in and fell to snoring as only a
man can whose strength is all gone and whose soul is worn out. Just at
broad daylight I felt a grip on my shoulder that brought me to my senses
suddenly. My wife was glaring down upon me and gasping. As soon as she
could command her tongue she said:
“It is all over! All over! The child’s perspiring! What shall we do?”
“Mercy, how you terrify me! I don’t know what we ought to do. Maybe if
we scraped her and put her in the draft again–”
“Oh, idiot! There is not a moment to lose! Go for the doctor.
Go yourself. Tell him he must come, dead or alive.”
I dragged that poor sick man from his bed and brought him. He looked at
the child and said she was not dying. This was joy unspeakable to me,
but it made my wife as mad as if he had offered her a personal affront.
Then he said the child’s cough was only caused by some trifling
irritation or other in the throat. At this I thought my wife had a mind
to show him the door. Now the doctor said he would make the child cough
harder and dislodge the trouble. So he gave her something that sent her
into a spasm of coughing, and presently up came a little wood splinter or
so.
“This child has no membranous croup,” said he. “She has been chewing a
bit of pine shingle or something of the kind, and got some little slivers
in her throat. They won’t do her any hurt.”
“No,” said I, “I can well believe that. Indeed, the turpentine that is
in them is very good for certain sorts of diseases that are peculiar to
children. My wife will tell you so.”
But she did not. She turned away in disdain and left the room; and since
that time there is one episode in our life which we never refer to.
Hence the tide of our days flows by in deep and untroubled serenity.
[Very few married men have such an experience as McWilliams’s, and so the
author of this book thought that maybe the novelty of it would give it a
passing interest to the reader.]
MY FIRST LITERARY VENTURE
I was a very smart child at the age of thirteen–an unusually smart
child, I thought at the time. It was then that I did my first newspaper
scribbling, and most unexpectedly to me it stirred up a fine sensation in
the community. It did, indeed, and I was very proud of it, too. I was a
printer’s “devil,” and a progressive and aspiring one. My uncle had me
on his paper (the Weekly Hannibal journal, two dollars a year in advance
–five hundred subscribers, and they paid in cordwood, cabbages, and
unmarketable turnips), and on a lucky summer’s day he left town to be
gone a week, and asked me if I thought I could edit one issue of the
paper judiciously. Ah! didn’t I want to try! Higgins was the editor on
the rival paper. He had lately been jilted, and one night a friend found