Saturday Musings
Spectator July 18, 1919.
THE
MOUNTAIN SANATORIUM
Some twelve or fifteen years ago, the Hamilton Health association began a great work for afflicted humanity, and as the years have slipped by, the generous men and women have happily discovered that they who endowed the great blessing built wiser than they knew. It began in a few tents on the brow of the mountain; it has grown to a settlement of large and small homes for the accommodation of scores of men, women and children who might otherwise be slowly ending their days suffering from the white plague in the crowded city. The suggestion of the sanatorium came from a few who were suffering from tuberculosis, or who had members of their family slowing passing away. We have before told the story of the founding of the sanatorium, but it is one that will bear occasional repeating, especially when so much good is being accomplished. There was a time, and that not many years ago, when a person afflicted with tuberculosis was given over by doctors and turned over to be entered upon the undertaker’s record book, but that day is passed, for men of science have discovered that there is a balm in Gilead and a hope when the patients are treated in time. The writer of these musings was refused admission to local lodges of Oddfellows in Hamilton sixty-five years ago, by Drs. O’Reilly and Ridley, who were examining surgeons of the lodges, for the reason that he was supposed to have the primary stages of consumption, because his father had died of that disease away back in the year 1842. We drank quarts of cod liver oil, which in those days was supposed to be the only relief, but was not considered a cure. Here we are eighty-five years old, and no signs of tuberculosis. It is with joy we tell this as an encouragement to those who have tuberculosis tendencies. Probably Drs. O’Reilly and Ridley, two of Hamilton’s best physicians in those days, were right in their diagnosis sixty-five years ago, but science has come to the rescue and has opened a way and a hope for the victims of the white plague. The daily and weekly reports of Dr. Holbrook, the accomplished and scientific surgeon in charge of the mountain sanatorium, are certainly beacons of light and hope for those who take time by the forelock and put themselves in charge of capable physicians before the disease becomes chronic. Study those reports as they officially appear in the daily papers of Hamilton and take courage, ye afficted ones.
“Last Wednesday, the managers of the sanatorium invited Hamilton to visit the institution and see for themselves how the soldier boys who are patients there employ their weary hours while waiting for Dr. Holbrook to hand them their discharge. It is astonishing the skill these afflicted boys exhibit in making many useful and ornamental articles. We will not attempt to enumerate them, for the number and variety is so large, and the writer’s knowledge so limited, that an attempt to describe the list would end in failure. However, we can say that the lady visitors on Wednesday were in ecstasies over the beautiful things, and many of the ladies left the sanatorium with almost empty pocketbooks. They had the extra inducement in the in the knowledge that the money they paid for the bric-a-brac was given to the men who made the articles for the benefit of their families. You can always trust a woman to be generous to the afflicted.
“There was another department which the
visitors were invited to enter. It is called the wood workshop. Here were about
a dozen men at work, under the direction of C. Robinson, a Toronto printer, who
came home from the war to be an inmate of the sanatorium. Thanks to the skill
of Dr. Holbrook, the undertaker did not get him. He looks as bright and
cheerful as though there was never such a thing as getting gassed in the army.
Indeed, all the men engaged in the wood workshop would pass any mustering
officer – they look so cheerful and bright. They are anxiously looking forward
to the day when Dr. Holbrook will hand them their discharge and send them home
to dear and children who have been praying and waiting for their hero. Those
men employ their time making bits of furniture, which they are privileged to
send to their homes, the only cost to them being the price of the lumber. Every
bit of furniture is finished in the highest style of the cabinet art.
“Superintendent Robinson is planning to get
from the government an allowance to add a printing office to the industries of
the sanatorium. The boys are publishing a monthly paper of their own, the
mechanical part being done in one of the city printing offices. He desires to
have the material that the work can be done in the institution, so that the
printing trade can be taught to those who desire to fit themselves for that
class of work when they leave the sanatorium. It is said that some outside
printers are throwing cold water on the idea, claiming that work in a printing
office is unhealthy, especially for those with weak lungs. The writer of these
musings had weak lungs when he began work in the Montreal Herald office
seventy-three years ago, and he is not dead yet.
“The sanatorium has not only brought hope to
hundreds of men, women and children in civil life since it was instituted about
fifteen years ago, but it has given new life to hundreds of brave boys who came
back from overseas expecting that the last post would sound for them. There is hope in pure air and scientific
treatment, and every week men are discharged comparatively well. They are a
cheerful bunch of patients, and so long there is life, there is hope. The staff
of the sanatorium is devoted to the work they have given themselves to, and the
cheerful and bright faces of the lady nurses are an encouragement to even the
most afflicted patients. One will meet and talk with soldier boys who have a
history. A large number of the men have families, and the sight of a woman’s or
a child’s face passing through the wards brightens the brave boys and makes
them think of their own dear wives and children. One man told the writer that
the greatest pleasure he has every day is to stand on the brow of the mountain
and look down into the valley to the home where his dear wife and children are
patiently waiting for ‘daddy’ to come home. He is an Irishman by birth, born in
Tipperary, educated in his youth for the Catholic priesthood till he was 18
years of age. Born among the fighting Tips, the religious life of the priesthood,
so at the age of 18, he left college, enlisted in the British army, and served
21 years. Then he came to Canada with his wife and children, and made a home in
Hamilton. When the war drums beat in 1914, the fighting blood of the Tips was
aroused in him, and he was among the first recruits to join the colors. Too
much German gas seized his lungs, and he is now a patient in the San. He is a
hopeful soul, and while he is bordering on 50 years, he looks to be a husky boy
of about half that age.
“Are you grumpy or dyspeptic, dear reader of
these musings? Take a half day off and visit the sanatorium. It will do you
good to see how hopeful are the brave boys who fought their country’s battles
during the past four years. And if you will take with you an extra dollar or
two to invest in the handiwork of the soldier boys, you will come back cured of
your grumpiness, and with the knowledge that what you spent will add to the
comfort of the wives and children of the inmates of the sanatorium .
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MAN’S
INHUMANITY TO WOMAN
“It is no wonder that women desire to have
the right to vote as a protection against the inhumanity of some of the lords
of the manor who look upon the marriage relation as a means of acquiring a
home, with someone to keep house for him and look after his bodily comfort. Men
are not all built that way, yet every now and then one across a fellow who consoles
himself with the idea that everything in the household economy belongs to him,
and that if his obedient wife wants a dollar to spend on some necessary bit of
wearing apparel or to brighten up the home, she must
almost go down on her knees to beg her lord and master for it. Down at Wesley
church, Dr. Dougall is keeping his congregation awake these warm July Sunday
evenings by picturing to them the beauties of a real home life. But there are
questions that are never discoursed from the pulpit, for it is only newspaper
reporters and Saturday Musers that get on them.
“Here is a bit of meanness perpetrated on an
affectionate wife of many long years, which, we hope, no reader of the
Spectator will be guilty of when he is about to shuffle off this mortal soil.
Many years ago, a man got it into his head that he was deeply in love with a
dear Hamilton girl, and somehow he persuaded her to reciprocate his imaginary
affection. Now the sequel of his courtship was purely mercenary, for the girl
had the foundation of a small fortune left her by her parents when the
attending physician told them that their last hours in this beautiful world
were drawing nigh, and the assumed lover coveted this bit of money as well as
the girl, and concluded that one without the other would not fill his cup of
happiness. To make a long story short, he got the girl’s consent and control of
the money, and being somewhat of a financial manager, he added to the bank
account with her fortune as the foundation, and it made life very pleasant for
him, because he was free from financial care and hard work. The couple lived
many happy years together, till finally sickness called at the home and the
husband was ordered by his physician to a ward in the city hospital for special
treatment. One day the doctor quietly suggested to his patient that life was
uncertain even to the most rugged and healthy, and as it would not shorten his
days a moment, it would be advisable for everybody to settle their affairs in
this world so as to leave their property without having the lawyers squabble
over it. The sick man took the hint and called to his bedside in the hospital a
legal friend who had managed his business affairs very satisfactorily for many
years.
“The man had really nothing of his own to
leave, for it it had not been for the bit of money his wife brought into the
matrimonial partnership, there would not have been anything to dispose of.
There was no real estate, as a short time before the man took sick, he disposed
of their home at a good price. A few hours before his death, he made his will,
and so carefully was every point guarded by the skillful lawyer, that when the
paper was completed, duly signed and witnessed, there was nothing more to be
done, but for the husband to bid
farewell to this world and hand in his passports as he crossed the river of
death.
“Just fancy how that supposed-to-be-loving
husband disposed of the money the confiding wife brought into the family
partnership in the long ago? It was all in cash or mortgages, so that it was easily
divided. To the church he had attended, he gave a generous sum for missions and
to help pay off the mortgage debt. A few benevolences more moderately remembered,
as well as the trained nurses who had kindly waited upon him during his last
illness. To his surviving relatives, who had never helped him make a penny, he
was more than generous. After figuring how much was left after everything else
had been provided for, even to the expenses of his funeral, and the cost of a
monument to tell where he could be found on the judgment day, there was only
THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS to be disposed of, and this the generous soul left to
his faithful wife who had cared for him in sickness and health during the long
years they had lived together!
“More than three times that sum had the young
bride brought into the matrimonial partnership in the long ago. Had she
invested in her own name, the small forune her industrious father and careful
mother had left her when she began married life, she would now, that old age
has come upon her, have been able to live in affluence. Instead, she will only
have the interest on three thousand dollars to stand between her and the Aged
Women’s home, or as a boarder in Mrs. Rae’s hotel, down on the Bayfront.
____________________________________
“ ‘Man’s inhumanity to man makes countless
thousands mourn.’ But how much worse when man’s inhumanity to woman is
considered, especially to the wife he promised at the marriage altar to endow
with all worldly goods. We have told this story once before in these musings. A
prosperous business man in Hamilton who departed this life a few years ago, had
made quite a small fortune – not what could be considered much of a fortune in
these day – say between sixty and seventy thousand dollars. The writer of these
musings was acquainted with him away back 65 years ago when he worked on the
bench as a journeyman; and he was an industrious young fellow, never spending
ten cents if five cents would answer just as well. He married a bright Hamilton
girl, who made for him a charming home and a loving wife. They lived happily
together, and he, being of a saving disposition, always laid by for the future
part of his weekly pay envelope. In time he entered into business for himself,
and opportunity kept persistently knocking at his door, and he always bid him
enter. They had no children. While he worked at the shop, the good wife saved
every penny possible in the home expenses. No wonder they got comfortably rich!
He invested in Hamilton’s industrial bonds when they were selling low, and
waited patiently for the increase that he felt was sure to come. We will cut
the story short. The time came when he went to his store no more, and his
doctor delicately suggested to him that it was always safe to make one’s will
while their mind was clear. The family and business lawyer was sent for, and
one entire afternoon was spent in disposing the man’s accumulated wealth. It is
a pity to tell this story, and the only excuse for doing so is that it may call
a halt to some dying man who is about to do a terrible injustice to the wife of
his youth. In common decency, he could not ignore her claims on his estate, the
law protecting her in a small way. To the wife whom he spent fifty or more
happy years, he left two or three houses and a small sum of money, probably ten
or twelve thousand dollars altogether, and to brothers and sisters, who had
never helped him to make a penny, he left the balance of his estate.
“By the time the lawyer had completed his
will, the dying man was so exhausted that he had not the necessary strength to
sign his name to the paper. The lawyer suggested that he would come back the
next morning, when his client would be stronger after a night’s rest, and
complete the business. About nine o’clock the next morning, the lawyer
returned, and to his great joy, he found that the undertakers had been at the
house before him, for the lawyer is a humane man, and felt the injustice that
was being done to the faithful wife. There was no will, and the estate was
divided as the law directs, half going to the bereaved wife and half to the
brothers and sisters. Rather unjust after all, for why should brothers and
sisters come in for a share of the estate they did not help create? When the
women help make the laws, there will be some changes along those lines.
_________________________________
HE
READS THE SATURDAY MUSINGS
“B.F. Churchill, who lives at Kilbride, Ont.,
writes us a pleasant letter. It is not often that we publish compliments, but
now and then a word of cheer makes one’s heart throb with pleasure. Mr.
Churchill is an old subscriber to the Spectator, and he enjoys the word
pictures that occasionally brighten up the musings “
‘May
a hundred years of twilight and dew,
Descend on your head and your musings anew;
And the last scene of all, when we pass in the
blue,
We can strum our old harps to songs that are
new.’
“There is more to it, but the lines above
will suffice for the present.
