AT THE FALL OF THE LEAF.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 11113, 14 May 1898, Page 3

AT THE FALL OF THE LEAF.

» Why do the leaves fall ? " Bless me, I don't l know," yon answer. "I suppose because it is iono of Nature's arrangements." j Precisely; but why did Nature so arrange ? j Why not have summer time always with perpe- > tual foliage ? What is the meaning of denuded I branches, withered flowers, daylight fading ia mid-afternooa, and winter's cold and desoiation ? When y&n have found oat why the leaves fall you will have discovered OHe of .Nature's deepest secrets— why men die. Suppose we try an easier problem. Why should Mr William Steel have written such a sentence as this.-—" At the fall of tht leafeoery year I gat into such a state that 1 took ho pleaswri n a to/thing i " No doubt there are minds so highly strung as to feel keenly the influeaca of outward conditions, changes of the weather and of the seasons, and so on. But they- are rare, and for practical purposes they ought to be rare. Our friend Mr Steel, happily for him, was not one of them. .Ail the same he was a miserable man every time the leaves began to rattle to the ground. Here's the way he puts it; "At the fall ol the leaf every year I felt languid, tired, and weary, and took no pleasure in anything. My appetits was poor, and after everything I ate I had pains and fulness at the chest and sides. Then there was a horrible pain at the pit of the stomach, which nothing relieved." Now this sort of thing would spoil a man's pleasure any time of the year, but the eddity in Mr Steel's case is that it always coincided with what you may call Nature's bedtiiEU. "After a few months," he says, "thepain j and distress would be easier for a while, but as autumn approached I became as bad as ever. In September 1890 I had &n unusually bad ' time of it. I couldn't touch a morsel of food, and presently got so .weak I was unable to stand oh my legs. Every few hours I had to be poultice!, the pain was so bad. I went to bed and. stayed there for a week, with a doctor attending me. He relieved me a little, but somehow he didn't succeed in getting to tha bofetom of my ailment." I That may be, but it doesn't quite follow tha.fi fee doctor was in the dark as to Mr Steel's si!ment. He might have understood it right enough, yet failed to care it because he had do remedy for it among his drugs. That happens all the while. Still, the reader may ask, j What's the good of knowing the nature of a •complaint if wa possess no medicine to cure it? _ There yon have us: no use at all to be sure. , Weli Mr Sfceci goea on to 'say: " For some time I continued very, feeble, and was hardly able to walk across the floor. If I took a short walk I felt co tired and done np I didn'& know whore to put myself. Tbi* was yenr-after yea* for six years. "Finally, I read about the popular medicine: called Mother Siegei'a Curative Syrup, raid made'np ray mind to try it. So I beg*r. aad kept on with it for some tame. The result -vna that the pain left me. Mid my appetite waked op, and my food tasted good and digested well, and presently I waa strong and hearty «»*rer. That was three years ago, and the tenable has never returned. — (Signed) William Steel, Hambleton, near Oakham, Rntlandghirs, December 5, 1893." Mr Steel is grocer and postinaeser at Hambletoc, and his case is well known there. Efis complaint isn't hard to sec through,; i& tow indigestion and dyspepsia. But why did 6 . come on only in the aatumn? What bad tha fall of the leaf to do with it? Let th* saador study on that point. Meanwhile it is a comfort to know that) Mather SiegePs Syrup will care it, m> matter when it comes on.

— More than a third of tibe Frencfi CJro.TJtiS jewels have been bought by Americana.