The Ocala evening star., 1915-02-05

now stands, Hot Springs water appli-
ed inside and outside has drowned
more billions of bacilli than the lab
oratories of the world have labeled.
In fact, in the eighty years of govern
ment ownership people have been cur
ed here of everything except gallop-
ing consumption, malignant cancer,
fatty degeneration of the grey stuff
and elephantiassis of the ego-these
are known to be incurable.
Nevertheless, it is not considered
good form in Hot Springs to ask a
man what's the matter with him.
Also it is bad policy to brag about
the seriousness of your own particu-
lar complaint-you are dead sure to
run up against a fellow in fix that
will make yours look cheap and ordi-
nary. The plan pursued by the best
practitioners of the trouble-telling art
is the one of watchful waiting recent
ly invented by a learned professor
now occupying the chair of political
economy in the worlds greatest Uni
versity of Applied Democracy for the
pacification of Mexico and the subju-
CATION of Congress. You watch the
victims as they gather on the Hotel
Piazza, wait for the daily airing of
the hard luck stories and join the
group you know you can beat. In
this way you'll always be the bell
cow and will soon gain a reputation
for wretchedness that gives you
corner on the morning output of sym
pathy and the first look at the Mutt
and Jeff cartoon in the Memphis
paper.
Another thing you must be careful
about in Hot Springs is the way you
try to get a line on the doctors. If
you go about this in any of the old
fashioned ways, such as asking the
hotel clerk or the news stand man, or
the chairman of the chamber of COM
merce, to recommend you to a kind
and gentle physician warranted not to
scare you to death with his diagnosis
or his bill, all you get is a cold and
fshy stare that makes you suspect
yourself of harboring a plot to poison
the springs and set fire to the orphan
age. Not having felt more criminal
than usual that morning, you wonder
at this harsh reception and this harsh
cc.2sorship of information that you've
had to run away from at home, until
'-3u read in one of the decorated book
lots, catered around everywhere,
that the United States government
amon@ it's millions of pamphlets en-
b~ac'~g every subject of human con-
coln. has issued one on Hot Springs,
certifying the curative integrity of the
waters and of the doctors authorized
quite plain to you that every doctor
on that certified list is just as good
as every other doctor on it, and for
man to say he thought that any
other doctors was to express him.
self agin the government, which would
never, never do in place where the
government holds, in esse ct in per-
petuo, the one and only drawing card
for visitors, without which there'd be
a money moratorium in the Ozarks.
! 1t may take you a little while tc
get this-it did me. The point is like
Pixies Peak-hazy and difficult of at
tainment but once achieved highly ex-
! hilarating and never-to-be-forgotte
] AS an aid to assimilation let Us harl
back to the time of comparatively re-
cent memory when doctors worked the
incoming trains like the baggage
transfer men do, and if you escaped
!, the solicitous impetuosity of these ad
, vanced scouts of the stethoscope, you
were liable to lose an arm or leg
in getting through the main army Of
main chance prospectors lined up a
) the station determined to man thai
/ his particular pathological pirate
should have the best pickings. Dis
5 turbed by the cries of the wounded
the government woke up to its con
, stitutional duty to protect its citizen!
: in life, liberty and the pursuit of hot
water, and established the certified
list. Now there are no quacks il
Hot Springs-the water does no
) agree with them. So salubrious wa:
the change that everybody in tow1
| put up the mo thoroughfare" sign OF
the doctor talk, except to approve o1
: your choice. If a Hot Springer talk!
in his sleep, he won't mention hi!
doctors name.
} Charles Edward Russell, AlleI
Benson, Jack London and Stewart Ed
: ward White have never been to Ho
: Springs. I am sure of this because
4 have not seen it before writer
4 that Hot Springs furnishes as fin
t an example of the benefits accruint
! to poor folks under government own
S ership of a natural resource as w