"The doctor said I had tuberculosis and wouldn't live three weeks"~Aunt kate

CALIFORNIA SCHOOL 1870

Chapter 17
What a blessing is work and what a comfort it has been to me. Monday morning I resumed my school duties and there was plenty to keep both myself and the pupils busy. But the work seemed to tire me more than formerly. For some reason the walk uphill to the school house wasn't as easy as it had been and my breath became shorter. But I was never one to pay attention to such minor afflictions so I kept right on without doing anything about it and it seemed to pass on its way. 

When school was out in June, I went to Stockton for a rest and a change. During the summer I felt far from well, and suffered for weeks with neuralgia. At the end of vacation I went back to Eureka to open school. It would be my fifteenth year.

When I returned in August, as far as I knew I was feeling all right, just a little shortness of breath, but not anything serious so I paid no attention. In September however I developed a cough, something I had not been troubled with since girlhood. After a very severe attack of fever in my nineteenth year, I was left with a bad cough. My father called a doctor who frightened him very badly by saying that I had tuberculosis and wouldn't live three weeks. Since that time I had been free from coughs and it was hard to understand why this was so persistent. In October, Institute was held in Sacramento and while attending I consulted a physician who said I would have to be very careful as my heart was in a dangerous way. He prescribed treatment for me which I followed very carefully, but without any good results. I bought many kinds of cough remedies but nothing seemed to help me, and so many drugs were hurting me in other ways. All of this time I taught everyday, and often locking my school house at four o'clock in the evening I wondered if I would be there to unlock it the next morning. At last I realized I was not getting better but worse, and I quit all medicine and recovered without it. It was a strenuous battle and I would not like to have to fight it again. 

When school closed in June, as far as health was concerned, I was better, but I knew it would not be fair to myself to return to the old surroundings. I had spent too many lonely and pain racked hours alone at night in that cabin, fighting sorrow to ever want to return to the scene. I realized a complete change was what I should and must have. 
(to be continued)

"It Was All Over" ~ Aunt Kate

Chapter 16

Well, it was all over. Jim had passed on. The farm was placed in the hands of a real estate dealer for sale by the boys, the car disposed of, and the time had come for me to return to my school. It wasn't easy to go back to the cabin at Railroad Flat where I had lived. It held too many memories.


I arrived at my hometown on Saturday and once again I stood alone before my empty cabin. Everything all around looked so desolate that it was depressing. I unlocked the door which was chilled by the cold of weeks, made a fire in the stove, put on the tea kettle and rubbed off the steam that was now dimming the windows. 


I took the broom and gave the house a vigorous sweeping. I did everything I could to keep from thinking. The long lonely evening was coming and I dreaded it. I prepare something to eat and planned to bake the next day. "Maybe I'll bake a pie. I know little Charlie will like a piece Monday when school opens. It is lovely that I have cords and cords of nice dry wood and that everything for my meal is ready. I'll not set the table that would make it too lonesome. I'll just sit here by the fire in the big chair and eat out of the kettle. I don't think I'm very hungry, though, but I'll drink the tea. No I don't think I want any tea. I'll just sit here and watch the fire, and maybe take little catnaps. I'll not think of those dark days just passed. I am glad that he is at rest, he suffered so. Never again will he be wracked with that awful cough, nor suffer such pain. I'll not think of him as dead. He is just away."


And so my thoughts wondered on and on. At twelve o'clock I was prepared for bed but hour after hour I lay there awake until night brightened into day, and I arose and began another day. 

Love,
Grammy T.