"GOOD ADVICE AND A WOODEN LEG."

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1152, 30 March 1894, Page 16

"GOOD ADVICE AND A WOODEN LEG."

If I hadn't given my friend Jim Smalloy the best piece of advice one young fellow could give another we should bo friends still—that is, if Jim could have lived without the advice. This may sound rather strange and mixed to you, but it's all right when you take it by the handle. You see it was this way. Jim was a handsome chap, 25 years old, foppish and dressy, fond of society, had plenty of money, but with the seeds of consumption in him. Got 'em from his mother, who died of it.

Well, Jim began to cough, and run down hill fast. The doctors couldn't help him, and told him so. One day he was talking to me about it, and acUially broke down and cried. " Jim," says I, '* there's just one chance for you, and I want you to jump for it right away. That's to go out West in America and live on the slopes of the Rocky Mountains, in the pine woods, in a hut or a tent, and stay there till you are dead or well. Don't write to me for a year, then como back or let me hear from you."

Bidding a sad farewell to the young girl ho was engaged to be married to, Jim went. Two years afterwards I met him in town ; he was as hearty as a buck, but walked with a limp. Ho had lost his right leg below the knee, in a fight with a grizzly bear, and now hobbled around on a wooden one. " And its all your fatilt," he said, "If it hadn't been for your adyice I'd never gone there. Now Edith won't marry mo. Says she don't want a husband with a wooden leg, and I don't want a friend who gave me the wooden leg."

Well, there ! I was never so taken aback. My advice had saved Jim's life and restored his health, yet because he couldn't haze two sound legs and a wife besides, he threw me overboard. I vowed I'd never give anybody a bit of good advice again. I'd let 'em die first. But that's where I was hasty and wrong. It is a man's duty to keep on doing good, whether people are grateful or not. Here is Mr Frank Stanley Langman. His wife gave him a piece of good advice, and ho was sensible enough to act on it. In June, 1882, it was that he fell ill. He felt weak, tired and weary, without any outside reason for ifc. His appetite was poor, there was a bitter taste in his mouth, and a bad pain in the chest and stomach after eating. Sometimes he would break out into a sweat and feel so prostrated he'd have to lie down. It was feared he had some kind of internal tumour. Once he had an attack at the railway station, and people crowded round him, thinking he was dying.

During another attack he kissed his child, believing his time had come. A doctor examined him for heart disease, but couldn't find any. He advised Langman to take only milk and brandy, milk and water, and such slops. Still he had those frightful periodic attacks. After attending him some time, tho doctor said: " I can't find out what is the matter with you; you had better see a West End physician." Mr Langman did so, and the West End doctor said the patient's liver made too much bile, and ordered medicine and a milk diet.

Two more doctors were consulted, with no better result, and the unhappy man remained in that miserable form for seven, years. In February, 1889, he read in a newspaper of a case like his own having been cured by Mother Seigel's Curative Syrup, but inasmuch as the best medical advice in London was of no use, what could be expected from an advertised medicine ? " Nothing, of course," said Mr Langman. His wife thought differently. " You try Seigel's Syrup," she said. " Evertjbody speaks well of it." He did try it, and in three months he was well, and has been well ever since. In a letter dated December 17th, 1891, he -says, " Mother Seigel's Curative Syrup saved my life," and signs his name to what he says—" Frank Stanley Lang man, 44, Comberford Road, Broekley." His malady was not heart disease or tumours, but indigestion and dyspepsia, the cause of almost all pangs and pains, call tliem what you will. Mr Langman was saved by.good advice and a good medicine, for which he is grateful. So I take notice that everybody isn't j like Jim Smalley, with his grizzly bear 1 and his wooden leg. I London, February, 1892. G.W.C.