A LUMINOUS WIPE AND A PHOSPHORESCENT BABY.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3251, 2 December 1881, Page 4

A LUMINOUS WIPE AND A PHOSPHORESCENT BABY.

I live tip-country, and I own a wife and child and a share of a civil surgeon, a collector, a judge, a police superintendent, various subalterns, and a clergyman. My wife lately presented me with an offspring—her first —and since then her health has not been such as I ought to expect. ' My clear John,' said ray wife to me at breakfast one morning, ' I am not feeling strong at all, and dear baby looks pale. Don't you think, dear, it would do me good to take some of those non-alcoholic drinks ?' When my •wife says ' don't you think ' she means that she thinks, and I am to agree, with her. ' Well,' I answered, ' please yourself, my dear,' and I thought no more about the matter. After a few days a large case arrived containing champagne bottles with labels on them bearing a name ending in ' one,' and suggesting that their contents were ' tonic,' and ' refreshing,' and above all non-alcoholic. I hinted to my wife that if she and the baby were going to drink all that, they had better spread it over some considerable time, and not try to become tonic, and refreshing, and non-alcoholic with indecent haste. ' I know what is good for me and baby,' answered she, impressively. Some few days after this —and here the dreadful part of my story begins—l observed an unnatural hilarity both in my wife and the baby. She was much better evidently, for she was always laughing and singing, and the baby was almost impossible to hold, so energetic was that clear child. One clay, as I entered the compound after mj morning ■walk, I was alarmed at hearing my wife's voice, apparently up in the air, singing a popular song, which was acknowledged by the baby with inarticulate noises of delight. It was some seconds before I discovered her on the roof of the house, dancing about the tiles with tho baby in her arms. ' My dear!' I said alarmed, 'what are you doing ? ' ' Enjoying my —tralala—self— tooraloo'—answered she, with an unusual air of levity. ' For goodness gracious sake, come down !' shouted I; ' whatever is the matter with you ? ' Her answer was, ' Oh, dear ! what can the matter bo, Johnny'sso longatthe fair ? ' —running the words into one another in the most extraordinary way. No remonstrances or persuasions could induce her to descend, and I had to go up on the roof of my own house, and let her and the baby down by tying them into a chair with ropes—a machine contrived by the executive engineer of the district, who, in company with the doctor and a miscellaneous collection of subalterns, &c., had arrived on hearing from the servants of the affair. All thia time my wife had gone on singing and dancing the baby, till with difficulty the doctor got her to take an opiate and to go to bed. None of us could account for thi3 extraordinary behaviour. The doctor questioned me as delicately as he could. I proved to him that it could not bo liquor, As to her antecedents,

none of her family had been insane. The doctor said foolishly, ' Mother-in-law ?' but I pointed out with fine irony that my mother could be no blood relation. My wife and baby were sleeping peacefully under the influence of an opiate. I sat with, my head on my hands at the |table till dark, while my wife slept quietly under the influence of the opiate. I then went to her room. The servants had not yet lit the lamp 3, but I could distinguish a faint light on my wife's pillow. I went close to see if she was asleep, and to my horror, her face was—alight! I rushed to the basin, emptied the water over her in desperation. I yelled ' Fire,' and she woke up and shrieked. I poured on more water till she choked and spluttered, but still the ghastly flame was burning. 'Lie still and let me put you out,' I yelled. The more J shouted the more she shrieked, till I felt my hands pinioned, and I fainted away. When I came to myself I was in bed; the doctor was feeling my pulse and looking at his watch. ' How is she ?' I asked feebly. The ayah came in just then with the baby in her arms to call the doctor. She was hushing it and it was nearly asleep. I looked at it, and saw, to my horror, that it was on fire too ! ' All right,' said the doctor, holding me down, ' there is no danger ; I have found it all out; keep quiet and let me tell you.' As I lay feebly listening to him, he proceeded to tell me how he had discovered the causes of theso awful symptoms. 'It was that new drink,' said he, ' and all this business is owing to excessive indulgence in the powerful tonics it is composed of.' ' I hope there is no danger,' said I. cNo immediate danger; but ali depends on the next development. At present beyond the inconvenience of having a luminous wife and a phosphoesreent baby in the house, there is nothing to be greatly alarmed about.' 'You say at present, doctor, I trust you don't mean that there is anything worse in the future!' " Not for thfc baby,' he sairJ, ' but I must not conceal from you that the next stage in your wifs's symptoms may be very serious indeed. Your poor wife! ' ' Well, doctor, well ?' 'Itis my duty to tell you—calm yourself, my dear fellow, bear it bravely— she may blow up at any moment.' 'Blow up!' I shouted. ' You don't mean to tell me that I am married to a torpedo do you ?' The doctor succeeded, however, in calming me, and bringing me to a more rational view of the situation. He had analysed the drink —it was called ' Dynamone ' —and found that it was composed of tripple phosphates of dynamite, 15 parts ; nitro-glycerine, 75 parts j guncotton, 10 parts ; total, 100. The first results, he told me, are merely exhilaration, turning to powerful involuntary muscular action, and to visible phosphorescence, eventuating in a state of saturation which may lead to exudation and subsequent explosion at any moment from friction, or even vibration! No one can imagine the life I have been leading. My wife is in such a state of unstable equilibrium that a wink may explode her. Everyone moves on tiptoe for fear of vibration. All firing of guns, and every uncorking of the most distant soda-water, is stopped for the same reason. My neighbours have put cotton bales at their doors and windows to deaden the force of a possible explosion. The clergyman has gone on a pastoral visit to a hill sanitorium, as he considers it is ' tempting Providence to remain." As for me, lam callous now. I don't seem to care if my wife does go off and blow me up. I can be in no worse case. I look sadly at my phosphorescent baby, and wonder whether it will ever live to set the Thames on fire.—Times of India.