AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF
RALPH JOHN WESLEY HOWARD

(Page 40)

nothing at this time that resembled relief, family allowance or free hospitalization and it seemed everybody’s business to relieve you of your money, for fear you might waste it on booze.

My wife’s condition did not improve, after she had been bedfast for a week or more, the doctor ordered her to the hospital for an operation for appendicitis. I asked him if there were any chance she would survive the operation. He said he had operated on ninety-seven patients and never lost one. A few hours after the operation, my wife died.

COMMENT:

It seems that this was indeed an appropriate place to end this story although I know the writer intended to add a good deal more. However it was only a few weeks after this much was done that he fell ill very suddenly and died almost before we realized that he was ill.

NOTICE:

A most unique description of a courtship and marriage. At first may strike the reader as odd… But when the whole character of the writer is assessed, we see that this was absolutely the highest form of comparison he was capable of drawing, and was, in no way uncomplimentary to his bride. Hunting and trapping were both vitally necessary to life in those early days; and were also the source of deep satisfaction and enjoyment. Nothing, BUT NOTHING! Could bring so much security, satisfaction, protection and pride as the possession of a really good gun! Thus the highest honor that his heart could bestow, after long years of loneliness was the beautiful (when you understand it) description of the wife he most certainly loved and adored.

QUOTE ADDED:

By author’s niece, Joyce Naylor.

I was only a small girl, at the time of her death and am now a grandmother. But I have never in all my life seen a strong silent man so terribly broken as he was, when my mother, Ruby, and I met him on the road and he told us of her death. He laid his