Page:The Art of Helping People Out of Trouble (1924).pdf/71

 He had not spent a day in school. At nine years he went to the factory that his parents might profit by his wages, and there he worked long hours until he was sixteen. Then he grew weary of the drudgery and hardship of his life and the regularity with which his father appropriated his pay envelope. He ran away from home and came to the city. There he knocked about from one job to another. He had barely passed his twenty-first birthday when he met the girl whoa few months later became his wife. Whatever his difficulties in living had been before, they were soon accentuated by the responsibilities of a family, and life became more and more miserable for him and for the household.

Underlying all his experiences were two great emotional facts. He had not gone far past boyhood when he began to suffer from attacks of epilepsy. They were not frequent, but they were always imminent. Sometimes they seized him at work, sometimes on the street. He could never tell where or how they would develop. When he was in the throes of one, his wife seemed better able to take care of him than anybody else, and aside from the fear which he had of them at any time, he dreaded a visitation in her absence. They