affidavit embodying certain facts which, of course, I could not have
known at the time of their occurrence. The gist of this sworn statement
is as follows: One day a man--seemingly a tramp--approached the main
building of the sanatorium and inquired for the owner. He soon found
him, talked with him a few minutes, and an hour or so later he was
sitting at the bedside of an old and infirm man. This aged patient had
recently been committed to the institution by relatives who had labored
under the common delusion that the payment of a considerable sum of
money each week would insure kindly treatment. When this
tramp-attendant first appeared, all his visible worldly possessions
were contained in a small bundle which he carried under his arm. So
filthy were his person and his clothes that he received a compulsory
bath and another suit before being assigned to duty. He then began to
earn his four dollars and fifty cents a week by sitting several hours a
day in the room with the aged man, sick unto death. My informant soon
engaged him in conversation. What did he learn? First, that the uncouth
stranger had never before so much as crossed the threshold of a
hospital. His last job had been as a member of a section-gang on a
railroad. From the roadbed of a railway to the bedside of a man about
to die was indeed a change which might have taxed the adaptability of a
more versatile being. But coarse as he was, this unkempt novice did not
abuse his charge--except in so far as his inability to interpret or
anticipate wants contributed to the sick man's distress. My own
attendant, realizing that the patient was suffering for the want of
skilled attention, spent a part of his time in this unhappy room, which
was but across the hall from my own. The end soon came.

My attendant, who had had training as a nurse, detected the
unmistakable signs of impending death. He forthwith informed the owner
of the sanatorium that the patient was in a dying condition, and urged