In November, 1895, while one of our girls, then ten years of age, was very ill, as the doctors said, of consumption of the lungs, my wife, then in the best of health and weighing one hundred and eighty-six pounds, was suddenly stricken down with pleuro-pneumonia. For seven months she was under the doctor's care, having every attention money could provide. Five months of this time she was confined to the bed, and two months of the five the doctor called from two to five times each day; not only giving us no encouragement, but frequently telling me that there was no hope for either mother or daughter. However, as warm weather came, they rallied a little. The doctors advised me to try a change of climate, and as warm weather seemed to benefit them I decided to take them to Florida, and started for there with the assurance from one of the doctors that it was very doubtful if my wife lived to reach our destination.
We reached Florida, however, and dragged out a miserable existence there for a little over one year. The daughter appeared to improve a little and the mother was up and down. In September, 1897, the family returned to Chicago. I had gone on about five months before. At that time I had been unable to work for thirteen months, having rheumatism of the nerves, blood poison, southern malaria, and catarrh of the head of about thirty years' standing.
The following November, when the weather began to get cool, my wife and daughter failed so rapidly that our friends became frightened and we began to look about for ways and means to send them back to Florida, as all our friends and ourselves had become firmly convinced that it was the only place they could live, while it was thought that I would be much better off in Chicago.
