JACK KNOWLES'S FORTY FRIENDS.

Otago Witness, 14 December 1893, Page 47

JACK KNOWLES'S FORTY FRIENDS.

A friend in need is a friend indeed, says the old saw. Quite so. Fair weather friends are plentiful enough, goodness knows ; the kind that drop in on you, talk to you, bother you, and borrow things from you ; the kind that never bring back that Jive shillings, but ask for five more "just to make it ten" — that breed of friends, I say, are as thick as flies over a sugar bowl. But the sort who stick by you when you are down on your luck, who put their shoulders against your cart wheels at a nasty spot in the road — why, you want to hunt for them with and a lantern. Yet, after all, such friends do exist, and forty of them turned up, without any hunting, when Mr Enowles needed them badly. How it happened he tells us in the following statement. I, Jonathan Knowles, of Lotton Fen, near Ramsey, Hunts, do solemnly and sincerely declure as follows :— I was always a strong, healthy man up to April 1889, when I began to feel ill. At first I felt dull, low-spirited, and bad no energy. I had a poor appetite, and for days and days could cat nothing. What I did eat laid like lead on my chest. ~I had a gnawing, sinking feeling at the pit of the stomach, and was constantly sick, vomiting up a green fluid. At times the heaving and straining was so great that blood came up. My hands and feet were always cold, and clammy sweats used to break out all over me. I never felt warm, even when I Bat before the fire. Next, a hacking dry cough, with severe pains at my chest and lungs, began to trouble me, and my breathing became short and hurried. I soon got so weak that I had to give up my work, for I could only walk a few yards without stopping to take my breath. The cough and shortness of breath got gradually worse and worse, and I began to lose flesh rapidly. At first a doctor from Ramsey came to see me ; he gave me medicines and cod liver oil, but held out no hope of my getting better, and after attending ms three months he recommended me to go to the hospital. I got a recommendation from my master, Mr David Corney, Wellington House, St. Mary's, and went to the Peterborough Infirmary. I had to be taken in a trap to the railway station, such was my weak state. The doctors at the infirmary had me stripped and sounded my lungs, and said one of my lungs was almost gone, and that I was in a consumption. They gave me medicines, also cod liver oil, but nothing did me any good. After being under their care and treatment for three months I was discharged as incurable. My wife and relations now lost all hope of my ever getting well again, and everyone who saw me looked upon me as being fn a decline. My cheeks had sunk, and I had wasted away until I was only a shadow of my former self ; you could even see the sinews through my flesh. I was nothing but skin and bone, having lost 3at in weight. I got up every day, but had to sib in an armchair all day long. I could only move a few yards, and that with the aid of a stick. In this half-dead, half-alive state I continued for nearly two years, and was looked upon as doomed. During the latter part my wife did not think I should live from one week to another, and friends who came to see me used to say, "Poor Jack will never come out alive again." In December 1890, when I was at my worst, a neighbour of mine, Mrs King, True Briton Inn, told me of a medicine called Mother Seigel's Curative Syrup, and gave me half a bottle of it. I had no faith in anything doing me any good, but I took it. Having been so long out of work I could not get money for more of the Syrup. So strongly were my friends convinced that the medicine would do me good that a subscription was started and over forty people subscribed to enable me to get a further supply. Mrs King got the Syrup from Mr J. Freeman, chemist, Ramsey, and kept me supplied with it. After I had taken three bottles of the Syrup I felt benefited. I kept on with the medicine and gradually got stronger and stronger, and got back to my work. Of course it took a long time before I properly got up my strength. I can now do any kind of work, and feel so strong that I often walk 14- miles a day, for which I thank God and Mother Siegel's Syrup. Everyone in the district is astonished at my recovery. 1 tell them all that Seigel's Syrup has brought me back to life. I wish others to know of what has done so much for me, and I give permission to the proprietors of the medicine to make what use they think ft of this statement ; and I make this solemn declaration conscientiously believing the same to be true. By virtue of the "Statutory Declaration Act 1835" (Will. IV, c. 62). Subscribed and declared ") at Peterboro', in the County of Northampton, this 29th day of January, 1892, before r«w<rnmtt sioner to administer oaths in the Supreme Court of Judicature in England. j You take notice of course that Mr Kuowlcs makes a solemn legal declaration to the truth of his remarkable Btory. It is so full of suggestive facts that I could write a book about it. But there is no time nor room now to do that. The points to remember are these : — If the doctors thought "Poor Jack" had consumption they were mistaken. The fact that he got well shows he had no consumption. A man who can now walk 14 miles a day has got two good lungs. Doctors have no business to make such blunders and scare patients out of all courage and hope. But there ! Ignorance is ignorance, no matter wbere you run across it. What ailed Mr Knowle3 was indigestion and dyspepsia — nothing else. , The cough and loss of flesh were symptoms of that, not of the destruction of lung substance. Next, keep bearing iv mind that all our common maladies signify that our machinery for digesting food is out of order. It is so when it doesn't look so, the same as when it does. That is tho secret of the success of Mother Seigel's Syrup. Ib cleanses the cistern and the pipes, and then the water of life runs clear and sweet. Those forty sensible friends believed in that. Mr J. Knowles is a very reepectablo hardworking man. He is a farm labourer and has a small allotment of land, which he cultivates. The persona who subscribed to get him tho Syrup are principally farm labourers, and farmers residing in the district of Ramsey. Tho case is well known to all the peonle round about where Knowles lives. Mrs Knowles, in speaking of her husband's long illness, stated that she never for one moment expected his recovery. She could see him gradually dwindling away, and herself and children could not take their meals for tears when they saw the dreadful condition Mr Knowles was iv, for they expected losing him every week.

— Alter some few words in a railway carriage as to whether one man should put hi 3 feet on the seat or not, the offender said : " I shall put them on the rack if I like." "You shouldn't do that either," paid the other man—" the rack i<3 intended for small articles only,"

■ — This is the season of tbe year in v/hich you can gat what you do not want really cheap. — A musician in giving notice of an intended concert thus expressed it: — "During the evening a number of soegs will be given too lecliociß to mention,"