Emma Speed Sampson

“ Harper, who is running the sanitarium, has a place he calls his Guest House, and when folks come to see their nutty relations he sees to it that they stop there. There is never a nickel that gets by that old gouger. I mean Uncle Sam's hospital that is yonder just over the hill. It's a place for nuts, too, the men that got done up during the war. Poor fellows! They make me feel right bad, but I am glad they have built the hospital near me, s'long as they have to have one."
"That is sad—as sad as anything in the world," sighed Josie. "Do the inmates of that hospital have to be confined?" ”

“ He seems to be healthy and sane but just can't remember who he is or where he came from. He has a kind of job at the hospital because he is so trustworthy. They send him to the station to meet people who are arriving and they tell me he reads to the patients a lot. There's nothing like eddication. It will stick to you when everything else is gone. He has the saddest face you ever saw. That man gives me the willies."
"How about the sanitarium run by this Dr. Harper?" asked Josie. "Does it have a good reputation?".
"About as good as Judas Iscariot!" exclaimed the hotel keeper with violence. ”

“ He's always advertising for nurses and servants. I saw an ad only yesterday in a Chicago paper."
"Is that so? Are the nurses trained nurses?"
"Trained nothing! He doesn't give them as much wages as I give old Black Annie who scrubs the halls and porches at my hotel. He just picks up any woman or man who is willing to work for him and puts them in to nurse. He calls himself running a training school for nurses. Don't talk to me about that old Harper!"
As Josie was not talking to him but encouraging him to talk to her she could but smile and continue her questions. ”

“ Old Harper has it in for her because she uses her wits, but old Harper is a terrible old person to boss."
Josie noticed that nobody had any respect for the head of the institution. He was always spoken of as "Old Harper," or "The Old One," and one attendant who was a reader of Shakespeare always called him "Grey Beard Loon." The morale of the place was low in consequence of the lack of respect the employees felt for the head. Only the lowest and most brutal types of nurses and servants were willing to remain for any length of time at the sanitarium. ”

“ We were so close, so in sympathy, that nothing could happen to one without the other divining it. There was and is a bond between us that is in a way supernatural. I know and feel at all times that he is unhappy, miserable and in trouble, but he is not dead. ”