My health had not been good for the past seven months. But was I to expect to be full of life and motion while I bore the responsi-bility of a family—a double respon-sibility indeed, since I have been mother and father both to four children since my divorce in 1938?

I calmly ignored the threatening signs of illness, and found myself in need of rest, for I would grow angry over trifling things, and a constant anxiety had settled upon me.

I am convinced that medical care is necessary. But the idea of cancer is not one we can accept easily, so I persuaded myself that what ailed me was an upset of the gall bladder or the liver. My surface thinking refused the existence of cancer; nevertheless I awaited the dreadful verdict with all my natural strength.

The doctor was the kindest a human being can be when he told me the news. Had he been less weary, he could have disclosed the illness better; and I went out with a gleam of hope in my eyes.

Cancer. I walked like a blind woman under the rays of the sun, finding rest whenever Sharon stopped to gaze, smiling, before one of the shops, as though her warm hand were the most precious thing in the world. We went into the drugstore, which was like a cavern, and I took a spoonful of the sticky white-and-red confection; and there I discovered that the distress was not in my mind alone but in all my members, in my body slowed by the shock. I could not swallow, and I chewed the stuff, wondering how a human being can be so sluggish and dulled on the one side and, on the other, quiveringly sensitive to the most trifling things—the sound of a leaf, the smell of strawberries, or the taste of death in the mouth.

I roused myself on that hard day, telephoned my brother in Columbus, Ohio, and told the chil-dren that we would leave Denver in a few days.

The next morning the situation invited despair. The children went off to school and no one was left in the house but me. I went out into the street, walking under the staring heat of the sun, until I reached the lake that reminds me of the countryside. There I found no boat, and no strolling parties as is usual; the surface of the water was calm and clear, as though nature were sharing my grief.

I was overcome, not so much by the strength of the disease as by my bodily weakness. We had no family and no friends in Denver, and I would not confess my weakness before I had sent the children to a safe place. I knew that in Ohio, in our home, they would find those who would care for them—I mean my own people, who love them as I do.

I have committed no sin in my life; why then, I wondered, had the fates descended on me so, and forced me to leave life? And sud-denly I shivered, in that spot under the heat of the sun, and felt that I was walking over my own grave; and on my way to the house I saw nothing, for I was blind of heart.

I made ready everything required of me for the move to Ohio, and awaited Dorothy's coming. I worked like mad, preferring any labor to sitting still. Then the car carried us off on our way to Ohio.

I still remember some of the sights of that night: I saw the stars hung in the sky, and I felt in those moments my own nothingness and weakness before this great world.

There were small fertile farms

among the woods and the hills. And in that stretch I saw that the children were very happy. Little Dick's head was propped against the window, and I thought how his father's gaze had passed down to him. Jerry was the handsomest of them; Dean was a dreamer; and little Sharon delighted us all. They are a sweet, lovely bouquet that I shall leave behind me, to be my excuse, so that no one may say: why did you take up a patch of earth and give us nothing!

The memories came back to me as soon as we drew near the house, and fear took hold of me, and my eyes brimmed with tears; and I turned to the children, and there they were, playing happily.

I entered the house—the parlor had been decked with flowers—and my two sisters surrounded me with affection and tenderness, so that I felt an inward ease; and the children gathered to acquaint themselves with everything new.

The next morning I went to visit the specialist in cancer, who is called Scott. He said: "The cancer has gone very far, but we shall treat it with all the rays and all the knowledge we have been given." I asked him: "Is that enough?" And he promised me he would not be slow in using every means of cure with me. I felt some measure of reassurance, and went into the X-ray room, and marveled at the machine which I was seeing for the first time in my life, and which later became an ordinary thing.

"If there is a way of cure, I shall cure you." So said the doctor;

A Notice to Smokers

The Tobacco Monopoly Administration offers smokers the Khanum cigarette in two kinds:

a cigarette with a red mouthpiece, in a pack bearing a red band;

a plain cigarette without mouthpiece, in a pack bearing a red band and a blue stamp, A.H.T.