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ter, these excursions, with their strain and heavy responsibility, usually drove me back to my home much exhausted. Here I spent a few weeks in rest before resuming my work in the school at a distant town.

This past summer my party disbanded about the first of August, and I went home as usual. For the first time I failed to take cheer with me. I was parched with fever daily; I ached in every limb; I was annoyed by blisters on my lips and swollen glands in my throat. The usual remedies for biliousness had no effect, and I was forced to go to a physician-friend for relief. From the day I consulted him until now I have felt myself to be accursed.

He examined me carefully, asked a number of questions, and then told me the awful truth: I had contracted syphilis.

At first it was unbelievable. I knew of the disease only through newspaper advertisements. I had understood that it was the result of sin and that it originated and was contracted only in the underworld of the city. I felt sure that my friend was mistaken in his diagnosis. When he sadly exclaimed, "Another tragedy of the public drinking cup!" I eagerly met his remark with the assurance that I did not use public drinking cups, that I had used my own cup for years. He led me to review my summer. After recalling a number of times when the extremity of my thirst had found me unprepared and had forced me to go to public fountains, I came at last to realize that what he had told me was true.

I shall never forget his goodness to me. He gently stroked my hand and told me that I was not the only innocent person who had suffered in this way, that no suspicion could be attached to one whose life had been lived so worthily, that the awful trial that had come to me was God's own test, and that out of it would doubtless come the sweetest blessings of my life. As he talked I gradually rallied from the shock, the madness that he read in my eyes left me, and I began to feel that with him to help me I could fight my way back to health. Had I been able then to see the path my feet had to tread for the next six months, I really think I should have lost my reason. God was good indeed when He hid from me a future so unendurable.

When my friend told me that I should have to put myself under the direction of a physician in my school town, I refused. I could not tell my story to another, I told him. I would follow his instructions and would let him treat me from afar. Much against his will he consented and supplied me with medicines enough to last some time.

In less than two weeks I was salivated until my sufferings were intense. In response to my telegram for instructions, my physician wired me to consult a local physician. I was forced to tell my story, so I went to a stranger. God guided me aright, for that physician is every inch a man. From that time he has helped me to bear it. It has not been easy for him and has been worse for me. I find I cannot tell the story of these months so as to give an adequate idea of their awfulness. My physical sufferings were severe, but my mental pain greater by far. As a child I was impressed by one line from Hood's Haunted House—“ O'er all there hung a shadow and a fear." I often thought of this, for I walked in shadow-the shadow of terrible dread.

On my lip was a sore, to me a badge of shame, which I bore for many months. I did not forget it at any time. I walked down the streets with a terror too wild for words. Surely everyone knew! They could see it, I felt sure, and when they saw it they knew it as the symbol of a life of degradation. They condemned me unheard. They did not think of public drinking cups. Every day I expected to be accused of unspeakable things and turned adrift. This haunting fear never left my waking hours.

At night I wandered in troubled dreams from one person to another, turning down each underlip to find one, two, and even three or four sores of this peculiar kind. At times my dreams would be of discovery and disgrace, of my pleading for recognition of my innocence or of my wordless acceptance of my unmerited fate.

Even though I was not discovered, I had perhaps a more direful possibility to face. Daily, hourly, momentarily, I was haunted by the dread of passing on the disease to another. At first I would not even shake hands with anyone; I did not use

a single article that anyone else might use; I had my meals served in my room in order that I might wash the dishes myself; I could not drink with others; the baby across the hall could not be kissed, though he toddled unsteadily up to me many times a day, lifting rosy lips for the caresses never before denied; I avoided the use of the telephone; I washed my hands frequently lest I had by accident put them to my lips and infected them. Every act of my life was carefully weighed under the influence of that feverish fear.

I had the sensation always that I could not foresee what new ordeal the day had in store for me, but that each day one would come. Before I recovered from the shock of one trial,

another was upon me. I was strained, tense-afraid, afraid. Night and day, day and night I bore my burden of fear.

At one time I had reached a state of comparative happiness. The treatment had at last proved to be effective. The disease was slowly giving way. I was successful in keeping the girls out of my room and keeping myself to myself except in a business way. I felt that even for one so cursed as I there was a future. At this juncture came the most severe trial of the months.

It was

In the room across the hall a professor, his wife, and baby boy lived. She was a sweet, pure young woman, my especial friend. One night she passed me in the corridor with the remark that she had a blister on her lip "as big as a mountain." I was paralyzed with the certainty of the calamity. scarcely night, but I went to bed and lay there staring into the dark in wordless horror. It had come at last, and had come to the one dearest to me. I shook with cold in a nervous chill which lasted for hours and sleep was far from me. The next day I sought my physician and asked him for guidance and help. I could not see my way. If I told, I knew that it would end my work, my very life. If I did not, she might pass on the disease before it was discovered. Her caresses would infect both husband and child.

After much discussion we hit on the expedient of taking her physician into our confidence and getting his help. Again the story was told. Again a man showed his God-like spirit.

In two days he had contrived to be called into the house, had found that my fears were groundless, had helped me in many ways to safeguard those around me and had gone into the background of my life with many assurances of his readiness to serve me further.

After some months the treatment greatly injured my gums, and I was forced to consult a dentist. To protect him I had to put the situation before him, and to-day I am waiting his verdict as to the best line of treatment.

What I have written is but a meagre outline of what I have undergone. All could not be told. They assure me that the worst is over as to pain and danger of transmission, but that months and even years of daily treatment lie before me. I am now less unhappy, less afraid, but I am still moved by a restless, feverish desire to save others from my fate.

The question that I often ask my physician is, “If this is so common as you say, if it is so highly contagious, why is not something done to protect the uninfected?" I have watched soda fountains being operated by boys who gave the glasses a hasty dip into a tub of cold water. I have noted at boardinghouses that tumblers are merely wiped out if they have been used for water only, and then this filthy goblet is put back on the table for use at the next meal. I have seen many people use a common drinking cup. I have observed that dentists are careless in regard to their tools. There must be menace in

all this.

I believe that the work of suppressing this evil should come from the infected person. If each State would pass and enforce stringent laws causing persons so diseased to be isolated, just as lepers are, there would be more hope of repressing the evil. If physicians were required to swear that no patient so infected would be allowed to mingle with uninfected persons, the danger would be reduced. After months of a life that has been hell itself, I send this out to the public asking that something be done to save others from my experience.

A

A NEW PROPHETESS OF FEMINISM

Dora Marsden

FRANCES MAULE BJÖRKMAN

FEW weeks ago the English newspapers were greatly excited over the report that the suffrage book-shops of

London were offering for sale "literature of an abnormal, immoral and dangerous character." The publication mentioned most prominently in this connection, and, obviously, the objective of the whole attack, was a weekly review, less than a year old, called The Freewoman. It was charged that this paper stood for "free love," anarchy, and all the other dark and dangerous doctrines to which the mind of the frightened bourgeois public reverts when it sees existing standards challenged. All of which seems to point to The Freewoman as a social symptom of unusual interest.

It cannot be dismissed as a mere "crank " publication, for it has already won respectful recognition from such persons as John Galsworthy, H. G. Wells, Charles Granville, Francis Grierson, Mr. and Mrs. Walter M. Gallichan, and Mr. and Mrs. Havelock Ellis-all but the last two of whom have contributed to its pages. Furthermore, it is backed and issued by a publishing house which is distinguished for the high literary quality and the serious purpose of its publications. That it is radical, with a radicalism beyond that of any of the advanced publications of purely masculine manufacture, cannot be denied. It is the last thing we should wish to deny, for it is this very quality of radicalism that makes it so significant and compelling a sign of new developments taking place within the woman movement.

Viewed merely from the standpoint of general journalism, The Freewoman is so novel as to arrest attention; and when it is considered in the light of a woman's propagandist organ, it is seen to have a meaning which may quite legitimately be regarded as sinister by the upholders of the existing order.

The charge that it is put forth under the ægis of the suffrage movement, while quite natural, is altogether unjust to the suffra

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