Notebook Leaflets from the Elmshaven Library, vol. 1

Perseverance Under Affliction

Even affliction has not caused me to cease writing. Not long after going to Australia, I was stricken with disease. Because of the dampness of the houses, I suffered an attack of inflammatory rheumatism, which prostrated me for eleven months. At times I was in intense agony. I could sleep in one position for only about two hours, then I had to be moved so that I could lie in another position. My rubber air mattress gave me very little relief, and I passed through periods of great suffering. 1NL 72.1

But in spite of this I did not cease my work. My right arm, from the elbow to the finger tips, was free from pain; the rest of the arm, the whole of the left arm, and both shoulders, could not be moved voluntarily. A framework was devised, and by the aid of this, I could write. During these eleven months, I wrote twenty-five hundred pages of letter paper, to send across the broad waters of the Pacific for publication in America. 1NL 72.2