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After eight long years the narrow and vicious circle of my life widened and I was allowed to again glimpse the far-flung horizon of my youthful dreams. It all came about like this:

Back in the fall of 1916 I was caught in the dreadful scourge of that arch crippler, Infantile Paralysis. Thousands of my fellow creatures were brought low. Wherever his gnarled fingers hitched, there had remained the blight of an arrested and crippled life. Sitting one evening in December by an open hearth fire, my father from across the library table asked if I had ever heard of the place, Warm Springs, Georgia? I told him I had not, just turning my head wearily on the back of my wheel chair. He turned back a page and proceeded to read to me one of the most beautiful stories I have ever heard. I have since learned that it was as true as it was beautiful, and vital to me, and such as I, beyond the computation of mere words.

Since no one knows how long this marvelous spring has bubbled, it is no wild fancy if we guess and say "it has always been." Discharging 1,800 gallons per minute, holding an even temperature of 89 degrees Fahrenheit the year round, retaining a secret formula of certain rare minerals wisely compounded and health-giving to old, and young, is it any wonder that I marked well my father's reading? He read of how the Indians, a hundred years before --- Cherokees, Seminoles, Blackfeet and various other tribes, had at certain seasons of the year put aside their war paint and down the "Valleys of Hall," and "Out of the Hills of Habersham," wended their silent ways toward this spot. Here was established "neutral ground," and here they lingered for weeks. They drank of the water and they bathed in it, and infirmities were lightened while disease disappeared. The foothills of Pine Mountain still hold in happy abeyance the very atmosphere of tepee, camp-fire and "wampum;" in the rolling lowlands the joyful whoop of Hiawatha still echoes as the speeding arrow ends its flight in the heart of the leaping deer.

Continuing on my father soon brought me upright in my chair when he read, "And now Warm Springs has been rediscovered. The Hon. Franklin D. Roosevelt is now convinced that the water holds true merit, and that very soon science will heartily endorse hydro-therapy as invaluable in the treatment and cure of infantile paralysis." He read of how Louis Joseph, a young engineer, stricken with infantile in the wilds of South America, had been carried by natives 20 miles back to civilisation and had, through friends and relatives, found his way to Warm Springs, and when lowered into the pool "just to pass the time," had felt renewed stimulation and added strength from day to day. "That's the thing!" I had cried, "swim your way back to health and strength!" Straightway my father and I fell into a discussion and plans were made and a decision reached whereby I should visit this place at the earliest convenience.

Came the time on April 7th, 1925, when I bid my family and friends goodbye at the little old station, back in the little old town, in the good state, Pennsylvania. And so, apropos the sorry business of saying goodbye, a little levity was not out of order. Many of my fellow "lame-steppers" have remembered a joke, or looked for the ridiculous and grotesque in the otherwise solemn rites of final farewells, and found it not remiss to force a laugh to hide a tear. I had a strange feeling that morning. Torn between the yes and no of things I realized a strange complex bestride my worthy ambitions. There stood my "best girl" spilling tears over the edge of a black-bordered handkerchief, wild that I was leaving, wilder if I'd stay. From the depths of dank despair I would then lift myself and visualize the land where a probable cure awaited my complaint --- a land of pleasant climate, a land of romance and told in song and story and called, "Dixie." Then I was conscious that my feet were cold, and ---- I wanted something to happen. It did.

I was admiring the cluster of frost-diamonds on the station platform as the first rays of the rising sun struck the place where my trunk sat, all ready tagged for the trip. When the approach of the train sounded a mighty important looking clerk bustled out and began in rude fashion to jiggle the trunk down the incline. All was fast action as the train stopped. Of a sudden (and it served him right, since her photograph in the silver frame will never again be the same) this presumptuous clerk slipped on a frosted cluster, and down came trunk and man in a slithering and skiing fashion to lie at my foot, the trunk atop the man. How it was to laugh, and I did it with a vengeance. My plan had been to ride in my wheel chair in the baggage car through to Washington, consequently I followed in after my trunk and found my way to the rear of the car via three sacks of mall, three chicken crates, one very expensive-looking casket and various other and sundry things not worthy of mention. Thus it was that I had taken my farewell.