HOW A LADY WAS INDUCED TO BREAK SILENCE.

Evening Post, Volume XXII, Issue 32, 6 August 1881, Page 4

HOW A LADY WAS INDUCED TO BREAK SILENCE.

Dr. Tanner's triumphs have led to the circulation of a story which is told with due gravity by one of our veracious Transatlantic contempories. From Carson City, Nevada, it is reported that, some short time ago, a lady resident there undertook to preserve absolute silence for forty consecutive days and nights. In vain her family and friends besought her to forgo so desperate a resolve. She was not to be moved by their entreaties. At 9 o'clock of the 20th ultimo, being then in robust health, she began to hold her tongue. By half -past ten her pulse had become so weak that the family doctor, upon diagnosing her condition, expressed grave fears for her life. At eleven, the action of her heart had slackened to 26 beats in the minute, and her breathing was soaroely perceptible ; in fact, she was rapidly sinking. As, however, she still persisted in a taciturnity that imminently threatened to prove fatal to her existence, the doctor had recourse to an extreme measure. He instructed one of her near relatives to whisper in her ear a thrilling Ecandal, by which the reputations of several of her most intimate female friends were compromised. The effect of this nostrum was miraculous. She sprang from the couch upon which sho had hitherto been reclining all but lifeless, hurried out of the house without waiting to put on her bonnet, and ran acrosß the street to the dwelling of a neighboring acquaintance, to whom she imparted the story in question, with a gush of eloquence that could not be staunched until half-past six pm. She has been perfeotly well ever since, and is, we are told, deepljr thankful for her timely rescue from a situation of mortal danger.