Sentence:  Then he commenced to talk, really talk. and inside of two flaps of a herring's fin he had me mesmerized, like Eben Holt's boy at the town hall show. He talked about the <WSD>ills</WSD> of humanity, and the glories of health and Nature and service and land knows what all. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  Trouble; distress; misfortune; adversity.