"I'm afraid," said he gloomily, "that you have ended your writing for all time."
"You're wrong, doctor," declared Edwards; "I'm not going to be removed until I've done something better than pot-boilers."
"I want to call a specialist into consultation," was the reply.
The specialist was called and Edwards was stripped and his body marked off into sections—mapped out with one medical eye on the "undiscovered country" and the other on this lowly but altogether lovely "vale of tears." When the examination was finished, the preponderance of testimony was all in favor of the Promised Land.
"I should say, Mr. Edwards," said the specialist, in a tone professionally sympathetic, "that you have one chance in three to get well. Your other chance is for possibly seven or eight years of life. The third chance allows you barely time to settle your affairs."
Settle his affairs! What affairs had Edwards to settle? There was the next library to be written and "Won by Love" to finish, but these would have netted Mrs. Edwards no more than $340. And the smallest chance would not suffer Edwards to leave his wife even this pittance. Since his disastrous Arizona experience Edwards had not been able to save any money. He was only just beginning to look ahead to a little garnering when the doctors pronounced their verdict. He had not a dollar of property, real or personal, if his library was not taken into account, and not a cent of life insurance. After turning this deplorable situation over in his mind, he decided that it was impossible for him to die.
"I'm going to take the first chance," said he, "and make the most of it."
He did. The young physician gave up more of his time and worked like a galley slave to see his patient through. Now, thirteen years after the specialist spoke the last word, Edwards is in robust health—the monument of his own determination and the young doctor's skill. Nothing succeeds—sometimes—like the logic of nil desperandum.
To regain a foothold with his publishers, following the disastrous year of 1897, had cost Edwards so much persistent work that he would not cancel a single order. He hired a stenographer and for two weeks dictated his stories, then again resumed the writing of them himself, in bed and with the use of the improvised table. Success awaited all his fiction, even when turned out in such adverse circumstances. This, perhaps, was the best tonic he could have. He improved slowly but surely and was able, in addition to his regular work, to write a hundred-thousand word novel embracing his Arizona experiences. This novel he called "He Was a Stranger."
The title was awkward, but it had been clipped from the quotation, "he was a stranger, and they took him in." The story was submitted to Harte & Perkins, but they were not in the mood for taking in strangers of that sort. But the year following the novel secured the friendly consideration of Mr. Matthew White, Jr., and introduced Edwards into the Munsey publications.