PRECAUTIONARY MEASURES.

Evening Star, Issue 16911, 7 December 1918, Page 2

PRECAUTIONARY MEASURES.

Influenza bacilli first lodge in the passages of the nose and throat. As the mucous membrane of these passages is sensitive and delicate, powerful irritants like Formalin should on no account be used. NAZOL, one of the speediest and most effective of antiseptics and germicides, is a safe inhalant. A few drops on the handkerchief, renewed everv few liours, will enable you to carry everywhere you go a pleasant and convenient protection ’against infection. Being highly volatile, NAZOL is able to penetrate the innermost nose and throat passages, and, used constantly, is assuredly one of the most reliable safeguards against the present epidemic. Sold everywhere, Is 6d a bottle.— [Advt/J

In ono of his most famous novels Alphonse Daudet draws the picTold to Cheer, ture of a Parisian

girl whoso life was a long monotony of labor and trouble, lit up at length by one brief gleam of hope, and then ending in gloom. Her name was Desiree. Her father was a good-natured, useless man. She and her mother had to earn the living for all three. Their work was to mount little gleaming insects and stuffed birds on wires for the milliners, who trimmed Indies’ hats with them. Wages were low, and the little family were poor. They lived in a flat, high up in a tenement building in one of the crowded districts of Paris. All day long they toiled at their trivial task, with never any break or any change, managing little more than to keep and soul together. It was a dreary, existence for the girl. To make it worse, she was lame, and so so-'eitivo about her lameness that she never went out of doors. The outside world for her consisted of the street below her window and the roofs and chimney pots of the houses opposite. ’Those little birds and insects with which she worked came to her in the boxes in which they had been packed months before in their native tropical lands. To preserve them they were dried. They were also dusted with arsenic The poor girl was constantly breathing minute quantities of the poison, and her health was impaired.

There she was. then, an invalid, lame, chained to the house, bending over her task from dawn to dark, day after day, withoutj relaxation, without recreation, without hcix> of change. Suddenly there burst upon her the hope of a great and happy change. There is mo need to tell her story in detail. Conceive of horns being filled at once with joy, hope, expectation. It was a- change which would take her away from her dull homo and mean street, free her from the drudgery of her daily work, open up to her the beauty and sweetness of the country with its trees and flowers, its green meadows and running streams • a change which, though it might not restore her crippled limbs, would give her health and strength and buoyancy of spirit. For a time she lived in anticipation of tide now life that was dawning for her. Her heart sang for joy, her nimble fingers danced over her work, her cheek took on a livelier hue. Already almost health and beauty coursed through her veins. And then the hope vanished—vanished as suddenly as it came. The curtain fell on her dreams. Tire pleasant country faded out of her vinous, leaving but the roofs and chimney pots again. The sense of her lameness came back with redoubled keenness, and the burden of her daily toil fell with fourfold weight upon her shoulders. Formerly, when sho was sorely troubled, her work had been a recompense to her. She prided herself in her skill. But this time she soon learned that it had lost its power to help her. Her inert arms failed of their strength, her weary hands parted in indolence —tho result of her intense discouragement. She had no one to turn to. Her father, her mother—neither could understand or care. fihe was without friend to whom she could turn or on whom sire could lean. “What.” asked Baudot, “what indeed could have sustained poor little Desiree in presence of so great a disaster?” “ God,” he suggests. It was the poor girl’s tragedy that sho never even thought of God. * * * V- * -Vr *

When Thomas Carlyle was writing his wonderful ‘History of the French Revolution ’ he was still, if not a young, yet a struggling author. IT© had but lately gone up to London, with little money in his pocket, and no means ot earning more till Lis great book was finished.' His wife was in poor health, often ailing. So was he himself; and the strain of the work racked him till his nerves were all of a jangle. Poverty, anxiety, pain—these were his portion, and the grim uncertainty whether this book would after all succeed, though (as he said) it had gone near to choking tho life out of him in the writing of it. Well, when he was in tho middle of troubles, weary, struggling, burdened with care, there came to him a letter from his old mother down in Dumfriesshire, She had mastered the art of writing lato in life that slul might be able to write to him. And this is what her letter said i Dear son, —I am glad to hear you are getting on with your book, in spite of all tho difficulties you have had to struggle with, which have been many. I need not say, for you know already, I wish it a happy and a long life. Keep a good heart. May God give ns all grace to stay our hearts on Him, who has said in His Word He will keep them in perfect peace whose minds are stayed on Him, because they trust in Him.. Wait on the Lord, and he thou strong, And He shall strength afford Unto thy heart; yea, do thou wait, I say, upon tho Lord. What time my heart is overwhelmed And in perplexity, Do Thou mo lead unto tho Rock That higher' is than I. You will say: “I know all those things; but they aro sooner said than done.” Bo of good courage, my son, and seek God for your guide.—Your affectionate mother, Margaret A. Carlyle. ******* One of the most romantic episodes in Scottish history is the story of Alexander Peden, tho Covenanter. Ho was tho son of an Ayrshire laird, and should have been laird himself in his turn. If for many of his 60 years he was homeless and outcast, his life might have boon passed among those who want for nothing. It was of his own accord, and for conscience’ sake, that he chose tho comradeship of poverty. By birth a gentleman, by education a scholar, he became minister of the parish of Now Luce, in Galloway. Loss than four years was his stay there. Afterwards his parish was the moors and hillsides whore the Covenanterms met, and ho was tho prophet of the , Covenant. Tho caves and hollows of the glens wore his hiding places. For tlmee-anu-twenty years ho was a fugitive ip Scotland and Ireland, over hunted, ever homeless. What adventures ho had! Once ho actually showed a party of the enemies’ horse tho way to a ford. “You might have sent the lad,” a friend expostulated. “No,” replied Pedon; “they might have asked questions of the lad, and he might have fainted and discovered us.” Once, in the spring-time, when tho rivers wore big with melting snow, the troopers pursued him fast and close. Into a flood where the current wag strong he plunged his horso. The troopers chow bridle and watched; they dared not follow. Ho guided his horso skilfully to the other side, then, turning in his saddle, he saluted his baffled pursuers, crying : “ Lads, ya want my boat for crossing waters!” Sometimes ho was saved from canturo by the coming down of a mist on the mountains. He had quaint ways of praying. “Cast the lap of Thy doak, Lord, over puir auld .Sandy,” lie would say; and God answered him, and covered him with His pinions.

On a certain morning, after he lad slept with some others in a sheopcAe. he took a walk along the bank of a stream that rippled through the eioor. When ha

came back to bis friends be greeted them with the verse of a Psalm : Thou art my hiding place. Thou fihalt From trouble keep me free; Thou with songs of deliver.race About shaft compass mo. “ Those are sweet lines,” he said to them “I got them at the burnsido this morning. I will get more to-morrow; and so we shall have our daily portion and go on in His strength.” He did not always escape. Ho was caught at last, and sent to the terrible prison on the Bass Rock. More than four years he lay there. Ho describes his captivity. “Wo are close shut up in our chambers; not permitted to converse or diet or worship together; conducted out by two at once in the day to breathe in the open air, envying with reverence the birds their f ■'edom. Again we are close shut up day and night to hear only the sight and groans of our But his faith never fails, “He knows,” . ho says, “ wherefore we are, and what is for us. When darkest, it will bo light. 0 for grace to credit Him.” Ho was released only to bo taken again. This time he was sentenced to banishment, and put on board a ship to be taken to America, and there sold to labor in the plantations. But his courago stood out. Ho assured those who were with him that the ship was not built that would bear them over the sea to any of the plantations. And, sure enough, his word came true. They sailed from Leith to London, and somehow were liberated there.

Pcdon made his way back to Scotland, and again for more than seven years of conflict and hardship and peril he ministered to the outlawed Covenanters. His message was ever at the heart of it a message of hope. Amid all the troubles of that troublous time he trusted in God, and. was not dismayed. There is one saying of his, remembered to this day in his own land, which well explains his courage and endurance ; “ He was never behind with any that put their* trust in Him.”