Antique presentation cane handle with presentation to Hon. George Legare Christmas 1908. Indentation to top. Measures 4.25" wide.Congressman George Legare arrived at Fort Bayard in late November 1908 exhausted and frightened. He had just turned thirty-nine, had a wife and family, a thriving law practice, a busy life commuting between Charleston and Washington, DC, and had recently won a fourth term as a U.S. Representativefrom South Carolina. But he was also facing death. He had struggled with tuberculosis for six years, visiting several specialists and sanatoriums in the Carolinas for help, and generally held the disease at bay. But the stress of the 1908 campaign brought him to a crisis, and he became so ill that Secretary of War William Howard Taft, who had just been elected president, arranged for the congressman’s admission to Fort Bayard. So after celebrating his reelection, and bearing a grim prognosis from his doctors, Legare said goodbye to his family and took the train west.After a five-day journey he arrived at Fort Bayard on 25 November. He would stay at the hospital for more than seven months, until July 1909, during which time he wrote to his wife, Mary Frances Izlar Legare every day,sometimes twice a day