August 18 Tuesday – In Marienbad:

I didn’t come here to take baths, I only came to look around. But first one person, then another began to throw out hints, and pretty soon I was a good deal concerned about myself. One of these goutees here said I had a gouty look about the eye; next a person who has catarrh of the intestines asked me if I didn’t notice a dim sort of stomach ache when I sneezed. I hadn’t before, but I did seem to notice it then. A man that’s here for heart disease said he wouldn’t come downstairs so fast if he had my build and aspect. A person with an old gold complexion said a man died here in the mud bath last week that had a petrified liver — good deal such a looking man as I am, and the same initials, and so on, and so on.

Of course, there was nothing to be uneasy about, and I wasn’t what you may call really uneasy; but I was not feeling very well — that is, not brisk — and I went to bed. I suppose that that was not a good idea, because then they had me. I started in at the upper end of the mill and went through. I am said to be all right now, and free from disease, but this does not surprise me. What I have been through in these two weeks would free a person of pretty much everything in him that wasn’t nailed there — any loose thing, any unattached fragment of bone, or meat or morals, or disease or propensities or accomplishments, or what not. And I don’t say but that I feel well enough, I feel better than I would if I was dead, I reckon. And, besides, they say I am going to build up now and come right along and be all right. I am not saying anything, but I wish I had enough of my diseases back to make me aware of myself, and enough of my habits to make it worth while to live. To have nothing the matter with you and no habits is pretty tame, pretty colorless. It is just the way a saint feels, I reckon; it is at least the way he looks. I never could stand a saint. That reminds me that you see very few priests around here, and yet, as I have already said, this whole big enterprise is owned and managed by a convent. The few priests one does see here are dressed like human beings, and so there may be more of them than I imagine. Fifteen priests dressed like these could not attract as much of your attention as would one priest at Aix-les-Bains. You cannot pull your eye loose from the French priest as long as he is in sight, his dress is so fascinatingly ugly [“Marienbad — A Health Factory”].

William O. McDowell for Pan-Republican Congress sent flyers and a form letter soliciting Sam to help organize the Human Freedom League, in a meeting at Independence Hall, Phila. Oct. 12-13 [MTP].