St. Tammany farmer. [volume] (Covington, La.) 1874-current, 1902-11-15
GETTING WE'LL AGAIN

Bill Arp Says It Pays to Be Sick
Occasionally.
Good Nursing of Wife and Daughters
and Sympathy of Friends the
COmpens ntlnS Features-A Few
Words About Roosevelt.
Good health is the best of earthly
blessings, but if we were not sick
sometimes we would not appreciate
it. And there is a good side to al
most every misfortune. Ola age has
its privileges and sickness its COM
pensations. l knew that my family
loved me, but L did not realize how
much until this lingering attack re-
quired nursing and night watching,
and they had to sit up with me and
comfort me as | sat in chair and
struggled for breath. Breath, more
breath, was what l wanted and l
could not get it lying down. l
thought of the last verse that David
ever wrote: Let everything that
hath breath praise the Lord
: All during my long illness l have
had three trained nurses-my wife
and two daughters, and two married
daughters and granddaughter be-
sides on the relief corps, and they
have been so watchful, SO willing and
SO good. The oldest of the nurses
has been in training for so years
and has spent all her married life
in nursing and training others and
knows just what to do and how and
when to do it. What would a large
family do without good old moth
err? But at last the girls had to
force her to 60 up stairs where she
could sleep without hearing my
cough that was wearing out the
bronchial tubes and the larynx and
the epiglottis and the Scylla and
Charybdis and other mysterious or
gans. And l had good doctors, too,
who diagnosed me twice a day and
sounded my heart with their tele-
phone tubes and thumped my chest
and beat my stomach and looked at
my tongue and ran the handle OF
spoon down my throat and gagged
me and pried open my eyelids and
timed my pulse and then wrote
long list of prescriptions that broke
q drug store and made up menu
of what l should eat and what l
should drink, and then confded me
to the trained nurses to carry out
the programme.
I was as humble as q wet dog, for
the truth is l was alarmed and SO
was my wife and children l didn't
see how they could get along with
out me, but l am better now, and for
three nights have slept in my bed
and recovered my breath and only
lack strength, and am gaining that.
1t is worth being sick to have such
nursing and find SO many friends
who sympathize and wish me to get
we'll. 1t pleases me to have them
call and cheer me with their pres
ence, but my doctors say: Don't
you talk much. Lat them do the
talking. You have no breath to
spare" And every mail brings such
good, kind, loving letters from all
over the sunny south and some from
Ohio and Illinois and Iowa. They
humble me and cause me to wonder
what I have done to my people all
these years that brings me such
benedictions. Yes, 1 call them my
people, for now I am patriarch,
and even children write to me and
call me grandpa. I have been too
sick to answer all those letters and
could only reply by proxy, but l
viii answer them when l get we'll.
l am writing this to thank them all
and to say that l believe my Heaven
~ Father has given me another lease
and I shall continue for awhile
longer to make a weekly visit to the
homes and hearts of our people.
There is another good thing about
protracted illness. 1t gives a man
such good opportunity to look back,
to ponder and ruminate. His helpless
ness makes him humble and humility
makes him kind. Right now 1 love
everybody, except some. I believe
l could love Teddy if he would re-
tract and apologize. He ought to do
that if he expects any peace OF mind.
A letter from Blue Mountain college,
Mississippi, begs me to write him
and ask him not to visit that state
until he does retract, and says the
bears have had convention and re-
solved to keep in their dens when he
comes. I thought he was pretty
fair speaker, but friend of mine
heard him at Asheville the other day
and says he acts like a bull in
breeches and cavorts all round and
threshes his arms and shakes his legs
and twists up his nose and mouth
and slobbers out his words, but he
don't retract.
But this is enough about Teddy.
Let us turn him over to the tender
mercy of DR.. Wharton, who told us
why he was shy of his mothers state
and people.
BILL ARP.
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