Arthur Somers Roche

“ If you don’t—Sid, psycho-neurosis is as real a disease as any ailment doctors know of. You’ve got it. Not so bad as some, but worse than others. It’s the disease of fear. It grows on the victim. By and by, in sheer fear of living, you’ll—well, you’ll hurt yourself. You’ll keep on imagining terrors that don’t exist until you can’t stand it any longer. Unless you go away.
“You must go where there are some people—loneliness would prove as bad as a crowded city. ”

“ I poured myself a second drink. I swallowed it. Not being much of a drinker, the liquor had swift effect. I addressed some mental remarks to myself.
“Now, look here, Sid Wrenham, this simply must stop! You’re a grown man, thirty-two years of age, five-feet-ten, weight, a hundred and sixty-eight, not a sickly infant or an hysterical woman. Now, then, the Star has made you a bully offer. You’d be insane not to go right down there and take it up. It’s a snowy, blowy day; the subway is the only proper method for getting down-town. You aren’t a bit afraid of riding in the subway. ”

“ You aren’t crazy! Go on down-town!”
I BUTTONED my great-coat tightly about me, paid my check at the cashier’s desk and darted up the stairs. I entered the subway and bought my ticket. I advanced across the platform. A train came in; I took one look at the crowd already aboard it and another at the snow-dusted throng waiting to pile aboard. I turned abruptly away.
Not for the annual royalties of Rudyard Kipling would I have boarded that train! And with the shame and fear that possessed me came another thought to harass me: not even the potency of liquor would longer avail to banish my fear. ”

“ There happened to be no patients ahead of me, and I was admitted at once to Billy’s presence.
“Well, how’s the famous author, Sid?” he greeted me. “Look as husky as ever, don’t you? No use looking for business from you. Some of the cranks that inveigh against the deadly fourth mile ought to take a look at you. You’re a living example of the fact that a man can sit in three varsity crews without ill after-effects. Smoke?” ”

“ Sid, you’re leaving for Maine tonight.”
“Oh, come off, Billy,” I protested. “I’m just a little nervous.”
“You have psycho-neurosis,” he said. “If you don’t leave town—and work—you’ll end by being afraid of everything. You’ll fear your own shadow.”
He smiled gravely at my incredulity.
“Sid, you’ve made Weatherbee Jones the realest character in detective fiction. That’s because you put yourself into his creation—too much of yourself for your own good. You’ve made money and fame at nervous cost. You’ve got to forget Weatherbee Jones. You’ve got to forget your work ”

“ I want you to go down there, leaving your typewriter behind you, and forgetting that Weatherbee Jones ever existed in your fertile imagination.
“You’re not to take a drink and you’re to smoke not over three times a day. You’re to go to bed at nine and stay there until seven. You’re to walk at least five miles a day at first and ten or fifteen later on. Now, then, go home and pack a suit-case or two and catch that eight-o’clock train for Portland tonight.”
“But look here, Billy,” I protested. “It’s absurd. I’m just nervous.” ”

“ Where there is absolutely no excitement. Not even the excitement of cards, automobiling, any of the sort of thing you’d find down South or abroad. Where there’s plenty of fresh air, a chance for long walks, maybe some fishing through the ice, and long evenings built for sleep. ”