I was at this time unable to walk a block without feeling the most inexpressible sensations of fatigue. I would waken in the morning, always being able to sleep all right—a sort of heavy, dead sleep—and could not stand on my feet unless I immediately had something to eat. At last I decided if I could but get into a hospital, anywhere, where I would not be allowed to get out of bed for weeks, and where I would be waited upon hand and foot, I might regain some of my lost strength. There was a minor operation which I had contemplated having for some time, and I thought I would go ahead and have it and thus get into a hospital. I consulted doctors about it and was headed definitely in that direction. I wrote to Mr. Harding. He sent me $450 for my expenses. He sent this of course in a plain envelope, as usual, enclosing it several times in smaller envelopes.
Elizabeth, however, who had tried all along to persuade me not to go to a hospital, finally did influence me to see her friend and family doctor, Dr. Frederic L. Barbour, a physician whom Scott had known for several years and who had skilfully treated Scott early in January of 1920, when the latter was seriously ill. Dr. Barbour had two offices; one on the South Side and one in the Marshall Field Building downtown. It was to the latter office that Elizabeth took me one noon. I shall never forget how I looked those days. My eyes were weak as a direct result of my general run-down condition and I wore tortoise-shell glasses most of the time. I was extremely thin, and I had no smile except certain times when I had been lying down for awhile and felt comparatively rested.
Dr. Barbour was young and cheerful. I think it did me good to look at him. He examined me thoroughly, took an X-Ray of my chest, and in the end told me I was in a very excellent condition to pass on under any anesthetic, refusing to treat me at all if I even so much as considered an operation of any kind. I
