695 Page – American State Trials 1918 Volume X Leo Frank Document

Here is the translated text as follows:

MRS. HERMAN H. HIRSCH, 663

I told him during my visits that my doctor had advised me to give up all charitable work and to go into the hospital. I was in a very serious condition and nearing the verge of a nervous breakdown. He suggested that I give up this kind of work, but I said I couldn’t because I was involved with an automobile that hadn’t been raffled yet.

I went again to his office to see him about allowing a banner to float across the street. On that day, I was so ill in his office that he suggested I take a taxicab home because I was so weak. He asked me how soon I was going to the hospital, and I said as soon as I could dispose of the Red Cross. He said, “Will you let me hear from you? I can't call you up because everyone will know it,” and I promised him I would, but I never did. I went home and went to bed, staying there for three weeks before going to the hospital. Two weeks after I went to bed, Mrs. Atkinson and Mr. Cook disposed of the automobile by raffle in the Ansley lobby.

I went to the hospital and was in St. Joseph’s for six weeks. I was then carried to Davis-Fischer, where I stayed for three weeks before being operated on. They were building up my constitution at St. Joseph's and at Davis-Fischer in anticipation of this operation. I was able to go around a great deal of the time, had my clothes on, and was sitting about in the yard at St. Joseph’s, just, in fact, taking what is called a rest cure. Mr. Cook called to see me almost every day when his mother couldn’t come; he came by himself when his sister couldn’t come with him. He came there with Mr. Hirsch once or twice, and several times he came there either when Mr. Hirsch was there or Mr. Hirsch would come in when he was there.

About a week after I had gone to bed, Billy Sunday’s campaign was on, and I was very much interested and read all of his sermons in the papers. I was very much worried because I wouldn't get to hear Billy Sunday, as they told me I would have to stay in the hospital for at least three months. Mrs. Cook, the mother of Mr. Cook, was talking to me over the phone at St. Joseph's one day and she said, “Mrs. Hirsch, will you ask Will”—as she called her son—“to go and hear Billy Sunday. We can't get him to go, but you have had such good influence over him that I wish you would ask him to go.”

During the automobile raffle, Mr. Cook had told me that he was what he called “a rounder” in his life and that he had lived a very, very bad life. One day at the Ansley Hotel, while waiting on a committee meeting, Mr. Cook and I were sitting up in what they call the mezzanine. He told me a great deal about his life, how he had worked on the railroads, how rough he had been, and that he had been considered bad. He had gambled and drunk whiskey and was very, very bad. I told Mr. Cook that I thought that was a very horrible way for a man to live; that there was nothing in life to live like that, and why couldn’t he, instead of gambling and drinking and doing all those kinds of things, turn his attention to better work. He was very much interested in this Red Cross work at the time, and his mother was very much delighted that he had interest in it.

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