NOBODY WANTS THAT GOLD RING.

Otago Witness, Issue 1959, 10 September 1891, Page 16

NOBODY WANTS THAT GOLD RING.

For nearly 100 years a certain family of working people living in Paris have tnded their lives by suicide. From father to eon, from mother to daughter, has descended a plain gold ring, and on the finger of every one of these suicides, c? they lay in death, this ring has been found. Only last year the body of a young man who had killed himself was brought to tbd morgue, and on his finger was the fatal golden circlet. He was the last of his race. The ring was buried with the corpse, from which no one acquwnttd with its history will have the courage to remove it.

The mental taint in this family came from some remote ancestor, and was intensified by their recognition of it until it became a controlling force : and the ring was accepted as imposing upon its possessor the obligation to commit suicide, after the example of the person who last wore it. This form of mania usually originates in a disorder of the nervous system, which in its turn arises from acsemia, or poverty of the blood, one of the results of imperfect nutrition.

A recent letter from a gentleman living in Norfolk contains the following assertion: "I LONGED FOB DEATH; I WAS APBAID OP THB NIGHT ; I WAS AFHAID TO BH ALONE, YET I HATED SOCIETY, I WAS AFBAID THAT IN SOMB ONE OF THOSE HOT7JBS OP DEEP QIOOM AND DEPEESSION I SHOULD LIFT MY HAND AGAINST MY OWN LIFfl, FOB I KNEW THAT MANY HAD DONE so fbom the same cause" The dark hours became a time of terror to him, so he says. He tossed and tumbled on his bed, wondering if morning would ever dawn again. In this case it was not an accusing conscience, as he had committed no offence; the cause was purely a physical one — yet, all too common in England — indigestion and dyspepsia, with the long chain of consequences dragging after it, nervous collapse among them. He relates that his skin and eyes had been more or less discoloured for years, often of a ghastly and repulsive yellow. This was due to the presence of bile in the blood and tissues, where it had no business to be. But as the weak and torpid liver could not remove it, no other result was possible than the one our friend experienced. His head frequently ached as though fiends had turned it into a workshop and pains chased one another through his body as though he had at least half the maladies catalogued in the popular books on disease. Yet one thitig, and one only, was responsible for ail the mischief —namely, the poison introduced into the blood from the decaying food in the stomach and intestines. The cold feet, the loss of appetite and ambition, the mental despondency, the sense of weariness and fatigue, the bad taste in the mouth, dry cough, giddiness, palpitation, chills, weakness, &c. are a brood of foul birds hatched in one nest, and the mother is always indigestion and dyspepsia.' Time passed somehow^ as it always does, whether we laugh or cry, and this man grew heartily tired of a life thus burdened and spoiled. He longed to see the end of it, and no wonder. But the last page of his letter is pitohed in a higher key. He says, •' When I think of what I was, and what I am now, I can hardly realise the change. For the past six months I have been using a preparation known as Mother Seigel's Curative Syrup, and it has actually revolutionised my whole system. One of my tenants recommended it to me, and I tried it just to please him. Now I praise it for myself, and thank the men who make and advertise it. My troubles are over, and I feel (at 57) as light, elastic, and gay as a boy on his summer vacation. I tell my doctors they are beaten at their own trade by an old German nurse, and so far as lam concerned they can't deny it. I have no more horrible thoughts of self-destruction, for I find too much enjoyment in living. My thanks are too deep for words." The author of this letter consents to the publication of so much of it as is here printed, but deolinea to allow the use of his name, at least for the present, for reasons we are bound to respect. But the evident sincerity of bis story will carry conviction to every candid mind.

Captain Logan, of the steamer Manapouri, has tendered his resignation, but the directors of the Union Company have deferred dealing with the matter until the report of the Melbourne Marino Board has been received.

The Hon Mr Bryce in his address to the electors of Waikato, says :-» Gentlemen,— I have felt it right to make the strongest protest in my power against the cruel indignity and injustice to which I have been subjected, and tor which it would appear I have been specially singled out. That such insuU. to me must reflect upon you through your member would be sufficient of itself to impel me to resign hermit me to assure you that I can find no adequate words to convey my sense of the most generous treatment I have received from you uuring our political connection. I trust you will understand the thanks I am unable to express.