A RECORD OF MERIT, SUCH PROOF As No Imitations Can Show The Cats of Mrs. A. CHURCHILL

Otago Witness, Issue 2650, 28 December 1904, Page 77

A RECORD OF MERIT, SUCH PROOF As No Imitations Can Show The Cats of Mrs. A. CHURCHILL

j (by a special reporter.) However modest our means, we can all holp someone do something if we will but consider how. To perform a laudable act, great wealth is not always imperative, though, of course, it is sometimes useful ; but in matters similar to those referred to by Mrs. Annie Churchill, of KensingtonBtreet, South Dunedin, it is only a considerate disposition that is needed to enable us to place before the general reader something that should prove both interesting and profitable. At the commencement of her narra- ; tive, Mrs. Churchill said :—: — ! "Two years come April I was in very | direutraits with my kidneys, and had been so for about three years previously. It was i a dreadful feeling that always affected me- • as if I wanted to do nothing else but sleep. I was living in Christchurch when I wa« taken ill, and people there could tell you i how dreadful my sufferings were. I could [ not eat, I could not sleep— even though I was | continually in such a drowsy and depressed condition— for it happened that when I retired to bed the inclination to sleep went* way, | owing to my brain becoming active with the : most unhappy thoughts, and I could only I turn about in -a state of restlessness till I morning. Never without a bitter taste in i my mouth in the mornings, the .desire for ! food was entirely absent, so I had to make myself eat a litte ; but how did I have to suffer for it afterwards'? Goodness ihe~! if ,1 ' only took a cup of .tea I was .nearly out of my- mind with pains, and any fo«L I had seemed to turn aour, and cause me to be inflated with wind. I was then persecuted -with what people call windy spasms; and oh; dear ! how terribly severe they were ! " ~ " What were you Caking to check your Bufferings ? " inquired a special reporter. " What was I taking? Why, pretty well everything in the medicine line that a person could take ; but as much cold water would have done the same good, for 1 was not benefited at all. My head often turned so giddy that I used to think I was going to tumble down in the Btreet, and my loins ached so badiy that it was really painful to stand. I dared not move any more than I could help for the violent pains that wer* fixed between my shoulders, but I think my chest troubles were as bad as any. {phe heavy pain 3 there almost had a' suffocating effect. It seemed tome that something had got blocked in my .chest, with the result that as I drew my breath I had to lift a weight that caused me pain in the operation. My limbs ached again simply from sheer weakness, aud to show you how thin I got 1 may as well tell you that I went from tea stone odd down to eight stone seVen." " A loss of nearly two stoney' intereuj.ted the writer. *• . <* " Yeß. Wasn't that awful. And 1 got so utterly nervous that I became excited and timid at the least noise, and could not bear to be in the house by myself at nights. Now that I have told you so much, can you wonder at my great appreciation of Clement* Tonic for' sending away f rom * my ' life all those physical persecutions? Several people advised me to try it, but I thought it was a lot of nonsense doing so, because I had taken so many medicines before for nothing. Then some German friends wrote and advised me to take Clements Tonic, and between them, all I was at length persuaded. Thank God I was * as I got such wonderful ease from my agonie3 after taking two or three bottles of Clements Tonic that the world was brighter to me than it had been for nearly thr«« years. Before long the rains about my back and chest had., vanished. I started eating well, and the effect of Clements Tonic on my digestiou was marvellous. So with my nervous system, and I was so delighted to find that giddiness was not troubling me, and that my strength had all come back. There was such a pacifying influence about Clements 'j onic that I could always sleep well, and to that medicine alone I owe mi thanks for quite curing me of my terrible ailments." " Have I your permission to use these remarks ? " You are at liberty to publish them in any form you want."

"1 he unparalleled scamp !" Such were the respective exclamations of Leslie, Spenser, and Meredith. "And this precious friend of yours ; what is he now — a bishop, or a prime minister, or a missionary amongst the heathen?" asked Meredith, after a long pause. "Well, no," iej>lied Dennysou. "All that now remains of him on earth is the quaint parable which I have just recited for your entertainment. In his early manhood he went exploring in New Guinei, where he was killed and eaten by the natives, who found : him so digestible that, for a whole generation, they devoted every other A\hite man who went their way to the same purpose — all in compliment to his memory." "Evidently, then, his flesh was more 1 agreaabie to them than his fable is to us," said Meredith. "That comes of your sorry digestions," retorted Dennyson. "Your capacity in that respect is as limited as that of woman herself, who is as incapable of appreciating Milton as she is of relishing Chaucer. She reads even the Bible merely because she is superstitious, not because it expresses in its poetical sections the noblest thoughts and feelings in the noblest language, and is, in other divisions, a delightfully true reflex of the -primary aspects of human nature. Yet I am no woman-hater. Woman, in -fact, is my chief entertainment in this drabcoloured world ; out of her, as a mere study and spectacle, I get more pleasure than I can drain from all the oomsdies of Shakespeare, Moliere, and Congreve. Get any woman of your acquaintance to go for a walk with you up tha nearest hills ; sit down on a slope or under a tree, and there read her a favourite poem, play, or stoiy, or tell what you feel concerning herself. Well, what do you think she will think about most of the time? Of course, how would she look in a certain hat or dress, and how so dressed ?he would affect the fancy of a certain man — not you, nor anyone in the least like you. Nor while the other man stands undisI posed of in the distance, and you dangle at ! her side or sit at her feet, will she willingly 1 many you any more than she will willingly wear an unfashionable hat. Yet she may marry you, nevertheless ; in which ease she will always think i more a-bout the other man than about you ; but should she many the other man, she will probably spend some of her mental lei&ure in thinking voicelessly of an 'deal which may have some of your most 1 distinctive features and qualities blent in a kind of myriorama of those of other men who may have somehow somewhere touched the skirts of her fancy." "Why blame women for this," snapped Spenser. "Men do the same thing under similar conditions. But woman never do<es it when drcnrAstance enables her to fulfil [ the law of "her being by giving herself to the man she loves. You; are like a man who, instead of enjoying the light and warmth of the sunshine, spends his time in trying to find how many motes it has to the square inch. Have you ever read Ibsen's 'Peer Gynt'? Study the songs of Solveig in that great dramatic allegory ; and then, perhaps-, you will get nearer to a right understanding of the- divinity in woman's nature. In the same connection, sympathetically study the character, the feelings, and the conduct of George Meredith's 'Lucy Faverel,' that most humanly perfect and perfectly human of modern female creations,- and full sister to Shakespeare's 'Cordelia.' " [ "Yes," said Dennyson; "Lucy Favei-el is i perfectly human and yet perfectly divine, I because entirely true to woman's nature at i its best. I admire also the fascinating natu- | ralness of the delightful Clara Middleton in ! the same great woman-maker's masterpiece, I ' The Egoist,' and likewise the delicious I 1 ealism of the girl heroine of his ' Love in j ihe Valley.' But, with respect to the general subject, permit me, before 3'ou finally make up your mind, to refer you to Alexander Pope's 'Characters of Woman.' 1 You _ fellows — at least in your thoughts — ! idealise to such an extent that you constrain me, in the interest of what I know to be a I dramatic conception, and knowledge of life, I to dwell more than 1 otherwise might upon the secondary saliencies of woman. You I take the exceptional as representing the I whole, while, out of love' for the whole, I, as a matter of measure in social ethics, insist on what lies outside the exceptional, yet well-nigh everywhere throughout the whole ; that is, in tnis case, amongst women in general. Besides, I have no sour feelings with respect to women : my knowledge is humourous, and merely gives piquancy to my enjoyment of the sex as an object of observation. The other night, at a public hall, I said to my partner after we had passed another couple: 'What an extraordinary train that lady h?s to her dress ; why does she wear it?' 'Why, of course, to divert attention from her face,' said the interrogated ansrel. ' Then she is clever, I suppose.' 'Yes, I suppose so. But if \ she were only as pretty as she is clever, or as clever as she is plain, how very much prettier and how very clever she would be, poor dear !' That was the silken soft reply ; soft, yet cruel as a tiger's paw. You are welcome to work it into youir cyclopediac collection, which will indeed be a poor barren lop-sided thing unless it includes the best specimens of the lovely things said ' about women by women. From these you will learn — mot, perhaps, what woman is objectively, but assuredly what some women are, as described by themselves in their descriptions of other women Had I been as idealistic as you fellows, I would never have said anything to lead up to the discovery of my partner's illliiiture, which, nevertheless, was in her all the time. Personally, I have no desire to know the bad or unpleasant ; but I prefer knowledge tinctured with bitterness to sheer ignorance in a fool's paradise." "I suppose,"' said Spenser, "that the unsurpassable Greek was right ; measure is all. And yet, in estimating human qualities in reference te one's own permanent relation to one's kind, I personally feel that it is better to have an over-belief with respect to goodness than with respect to its opposite. You remember the brothers in 'Comus' ; my sympathy is with the one who say&— >

Yet, where an equal poise of hops and fear Does arbitrate the event, my nature is That I incline to hope rather than fear. I tliink, too, that we gain by exercising this disposition in our eslimates of human nature." "The very thing 1 stand for," exclaimed Dennyson, "provided you lecognise the existence of shade as well as light. But I am so ordinarily human that insistence on light, and nothing but light, in man or woman provokes mo. Besides, it is out of keeping with the wholesome truth of Nature, and even opposed to Nature's betterme.it. Perhaps I kno.v as well as any of j'ou that, ps a regenerator and revealer, sympathy surpasses all else within the scope of humanity. Christ gives it to Mary Magdalene, and she, base to the common ej r e, discloses -in her spirit an endless avenue of beauty, and follows Him with divine devotion to the end. Sympathy : that is the thing to charm the best out of the worst, especially at a crisis or throughout a long course of conduct — nay, to destroy the worst altogether, in fact. But if you keep looking at human nature from this spiritual alp you are apt to see only its high places, ani will most certainly' remain unaware of much in the intervening valleys ; very likely to the prejudice of what goes on there, and perhaps your own mental wholesomeness — certainly wholeness.- You three walk into the city, where you see many well-dressed, pleasant -looking women, and you think of nothing except what- is pleasant in their appearanes — in >fact, of nothing but their j appearance. Whereas I, lightly touched with a far-off sense- of humour, and somewhat in sympathy with the potentialities of the coming millennium, wonder in what state of mess or muddle they have left their dressing rooms, or whether, peradventure, they might not be better employed ! in helping to nurse the children or do the j work of their overworked sisters ; all to the end that women, in -producing effects intended for the public gaze, should produce none unfit for that gaze, which— rwhen they do — shows their pence of art to be a very hollo v, lop-sided thing ; and to the end, further, that all women, being sisters, should share and share alike jn work and recreation. Perhaps your thoughts do not travel on these lines ; but xnine do, and so I take account of details which mar harmony in character and bar happiness in the race. Take no notice of these things, or regard them platonically through the medium of a transcendental sympathy, and they will go on reproducing themselves till { Doomsday amongst the rack .of mankind." j "I yearn for a dramatic creation," sighed Spenser; "and you give me a homily or a philippic." "A homily or a. philippic? Where is the homily? Where is the philippic? What I da," continued Dennyscn, "is to direct attention to salient qualities and aspects of woman's nature not recognised by you, and j these, surely, are the very materials which are indispensable to a dramatic creation." "Dennyson, you are a mere satirist,'' observed Meredith ; "and no one can create from a collection of exaggerated or even unexaggerated defects. That spells caricature, not character." "Caricature! Yon are the fellows who produce that ; yet not caricature that leads to laughter, but- to a piebald melancholy surcharged with the potentiality of suicide. In your moony poetism you hanker after the kind of women that no God would create and no man could put up with — a limp, long-nailed, squeamish, sighing, dying, dissatisfied, dyspepsical, nebulositynursing, yeasty-minded baggage, peevishly trying to reach the summit of Nowhere, or lying about like a derelict duck amongst the fumaroles of hysteria. For individual sufferers of this type one's heart must for ever be full of the truest pity ; but the type itself is detestable, and mainly due, j perhaps, to the unwisdom and morbid pre- S dilections of men like yourselves. It is at least certain that men help to bring socially into existence women of the types they desire or tolerate ; which shows, on the one hand, what women are, and on the other how it is ihat men make them what they are in their social types, modes, and relations. Now, look at "my fiancee." "Your' fiancee ?" "Yes ; you are welcome to ; and she is worth it." "Good heavens ! What woman, knowing your sentiments, would have you for a lover"? "The remark shows how little you know I about women ; 110 woman cares a straw ■ about a man's sentiments, provided the man liimself is to her fancy." "And, pray, Avho is the lady?" asked Spenser. "Go and inquire of your cousin ; she is in the drawing room." "My cousin Kate?" "The same ; and if she is as tip -top as a cousin as she is as sweetheart, you have much for which to thank the gods. There is a girl for you ! No lounging, lackadaisical, creepy creature, limp as a wet rag, a, wilted flower, or a, wounded worm ; but a well-knit, upstanding lass, with a digestion ]ike that of an ostrich ; an eye as bright as au eagle's, yet as soft as a dove's ; a gaiety that runs through her life like a sunny brook through a meadow ; as true as steel and as sweet as summer in every fibre and muscle of her body, with lovingkindness for all that need it, pity for all the limitations of mortality, yet, withal, a wholesome scorn for the whole brood I of those feminine affectations which reduce so many women to mere slag in the workshops of life. Yet for all this— and, of couise, all the. more becatise of all this — Kate is a downright woman ; and when Leslie here visits us after we are married I shall not be surprised if she keeps the poor boy up singing his lovely Scottish songs, or even discussing the circumference of Nothingness or the limits of the Infinite, long after I have retired, and then — •with the most angelic unconsciousness on her part of the possibility of any kind of consciousness on mme — comes softly to bed and proceeds to warm her ice-coid feet at my inoffensive calves Some men would make a tinpot tragedy of this or anything akin, to it ; in my case it would merely

arid the pleasure of comedy to die other pleasures of a. happy married iife. In fact, make reasonable allowance for the unexpected and the unsuspected in woman, and meet her manifestations in both categories in the humour of Ulysses and his comrades, who welcomed alike the thunder and the sunshine, and we shall find her as Milton's Adam found £ve — Heaven's last, best gift." "Paradoxical to the last, ' growled Meredith ; "and whit a face -about this is from your friend's fable (I believe you wrote it yourself), according to which woman is the handiwork of th-^ devil liimseltV "Well," laughed Dennyson, "if thafe genesis is insi&ted on 1 move — 'That this meeting do unanimously ]ws« a vote of thanks to Satan for his services to man in making woman ; and that Arthur Spenser, Allan Meredith, and Dim can Leslie be appointed to deliver the resolution forthwith in person.' WMI3 my right worthy and most worshipful fv.ends are preparing to set out on their embassy I myself will join the ladies." ''Irrepressible villain !" exclaimed the three outpaced colloquists, as they followed Dennyson to the drawing room.