Page:The Art of Helping People Out of Trouble (1924).pdf/47

 the sick person must make to his illness is that which is often involved for the other members of the household. Certainly, this was true of the problem with which Mrs. Slater was confronted. Following an attack of influenza, her husband had found it difficult to recover his strength. He could not summon his energies in the way that for the past few years had made him a valuable and trusted workman. He left a steady job and began wandering about the country. Sometimes he sent money to his family. Sometimes he did not. Sometimes he wrote home and sometimes he forgot to do so. Finally he consulted a physician who returned paresis as the diagnosis. The prognosis was a slow mental deterioration that would finally leave him wholly irresponsible.

Mrs. Slater could not accept this fact. She would not believe that her husband's illness was serious or that he was not a competent human being. She continued to expect him to be the person he had been and to play his usual part in the family life. When he failed to do so, she showed a resentment that occasionally expressed itself in a sharp and exacting attitude toward Mr. Slater as guilty of desertion and non-support, but more often in a bitterness toward other