OPTIMISM.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19102, 22 February 1924, Page 5

OPTIMISM.

MANY-FRACTURED YOUTH. (From Or® Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, February 14. William King, 26 years of age, and a patient, in Sj’dney Hospital, has sustained no fewer than 28 fractures in that brief span. He is now in bed with a fractured thigh. He has had four ribs broken, also his collarbone, both legs, both arms, and most of the other bones in his body. But he is not down-hearted abut it. ne feels that under a benevolent and allpowerfnl Providence, he has been lucky, if anything. He has not yet ha'd his neck broken. And 'there is. of course, much comfort and consolation in that. His left kneft is capped with a silver plate. It was a schoolmate who started him when a youngster on the. road to fractures, 'the schoolmate hit him with a cricket bat, and then, to make quite sure of things, knocked him down and broke his leg. Since then King has never looked back. It is as easy for him to fracture some part of his anatomy as it is for another person to get a headache. King is keenly interested in the struggle between himself and a boy in the country for the record number of fractures. Up till a month ago the rival youth bad sustained 2( fractures. The two were thus dead level. But King is happy row. The vehicle thatknocked him down a few days ago and gave him a fractured thigh has given him the lead. Probably the boy in the country, not to be outdone, will new find it convenient to slip down a rabbit burrow or fall over a bugle pumpkin or impale himself on the horns of the bull on the farm, or something.