[3] We lived for a time among the wild Bukidnons and Negritos of the Negros mountains.
After my companion had gone to Borneo I had the misfortune to contract typhoid fever when alone in Busuanga, and being ignorant of the nature of the malady from which I was suffering, kept on my feet until I could no longer stand, with the natural result that I came uncommonly near paying for my foolishness with my life, and have ever since suffered from resulting physical disabilities.

When able to travel, I left the islands upon the urgent recommendation of my physician, feeling that the task which had led me to return there was almost accomplished and sure that my wanderings in the Far East were over.
Shortly after my return to the United States I was offered a position as a member of the zooelogical staff of the University of Michigan, accepted it, received speedy promotion, and hoped and expected to end my days as a college professor.
In 1898 the prospect of war with Spain awakened old memories.

I fancy that the knowledge then possessed by the average American citizen relative to the Philippines was fairly well typified by that of a good old lady at my Vermont birthplace who had spanked me when I was a small boy, and who, after my first return from the Philippine Islands, said to me, "Deanie, are them Philippians you have been a visitin' the people that Paul wrote the Epistle to ?" I endeavoured to do my part toward dispelling this ignorance.

My knowledge of Philippine affairs led me strongly to favour armed intervention in Cuba, where similar political conditions seemed to prevail to a considerable extent, and I fear that I was considered by many of my university colleagues something of a "jingo." Indeed, a member of the University Board of Regents said that I ought to be compelled to enlist.

As a matter of fact, compulsion would have been quite unnecessary had it not been for physical disability.
My life-long friend and former travelling companion, Doctor Bourns, was not similarly hampered.