REMINDED OF HIS DEAD MOTHER

Taranaki Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 9684, 28 April 1893, Page 4

REMINDED OF HIS DEAD MOTHER

[HXTBACT FBOM A PHJ.VATB L'-TTEH.]

It wna the latter part of Au . nat 1891. A friend and I had come down from Bnmßs:ate to Minster, to B^e the vtnerab'e church thtre, which ia a thousand ytars old. I entered tho churchyard uud seated myself opon a nameless grav° whi'e he went in eeurch of somebody to unlock the decs of tho eclifico and show i wonders. In ft few m»nut' s ho returned in c-mpipy with nn tlderly lftdy, Io whom ha intioduccd mo, sajing she woa the custodian and gai'e of tho place. I guzed »t her face fcr some moments without a word. If my own rnothor, dead and «one 15 years, had come back to speak to her enly 00, I should scarcely have been more aßtonißhod. For this woman wan a'most my mother's double ; the same size, the Bftine face, and the same way of parting the hair and combing it in smooth bands from tho forehead. 1 told her bo, and wo were frienJe before either fairly knew the other's name. What a queer worM it ; is. She then conducted ne through the ancient fane, and ppoke of the long vanished past, of the monks and nuns who once sang and prayed within its walls, of the quaint ctrvings on the hard oak Beats in the chancel, of that preoioua relic, the Cranmer Bible, which reposes ia a glass box against a pillar, and of many matters besidep, drawn from tho apparently exhaostless well of her detailed and accurate inforaia' ion . Finally tho talk veered aronni to the wholesomei ess of tho vicinity, tho bracing nature of its sea breezes and so on. Then our guile, Mrs Sarah Herd, said :—"I: — "I Lave lived here in Minster 50 years, end seen many nps and downe. One of my sons ia now in America, where he is doing well, lie wants me to leave England and niako my homo with him, buy I doubt if I ever shall. I am Borne what like that old yew tree out ia the yard, deeply rooted to this soil, and mi. lit be the worse for pullint; up. Then I am getting on in life, and ilia grow opaco with age. In the spring of 1878 I had a Bfiious atlnck. At first 1 scarcely knew what to make of it. There was no disease that I recognised in particnl ,r. I felt tired in body and weary in mind. There wae much pain at my c! eat and back, and a kind of tightness at the eHes, as thongh physical fores were applied there to restrain mo from moving. My appetite, which was usually good, fell away ; and whatever I ate or drank gave me pain, And I lived atruOEt entirely on bread and water. I was always in pain and couldn't sleep so as to feel refreshed by it. After a time I grew so weak ob to be unabla to go about my work. A bitter and sicken- : ing fluid aroee into my mouth, and I perspired to such an extent that the sweat sometimes rolled off my face to the! flooi." I (the writer) break in aeon Mrs Herd's story at this point merely to say tlmf this tendency <io sweat without ''the' provocation of labour or of exercise is always a sign of a debilitated condition of the system. It moans that the blood is impure and impoverished, this kidneys working badly, and tnat tlip body lacks nourishment and is living feebly on what was previously stored in it In other words, tbe stomach has refused its duty and the other organs nre in sympathy with it. Now we will let Ilis Judy proceed, begging pardon for tbo nterrnption. She went on to say : — For a time I tried to cure 013 self with vurioue domestic remedies which sonutirres answer. But they failed, and i consulted a physician. With all respect to the doctors, they occasionally failed too. This one did. You koow there comes a time ia all long illnesses when ne get in some way used to pain and misery, and inuke bo further effoit to get rid of it. In fact, we don't know how, and so don't try. For übout three years I remained wretched and ailing, and dull nnbappy years they were My sufferings were beyond all I had cv r koowu before, yet there seemed nothing to do but to bear them as patiently ns J could. At this date, 1881, certain friends of mine (-poke to me of the great benefit they had roccived from tho uso of Mother Sai^el'B Syrup, for indigestion and djspejisia. This threw lit; lit on my mind although J cannot say it made me at once a believer in Sjigol's Syrup. At length, however, in July 1881, 1 began to take it. In all I uaed six bottlep, and fonnd my health fully restored. Ten years have elaaped, and I have had m attick since. But if Ido in future I shall know where to put my hnnd on he remedy." Our visit 1 o : ng virtually over, we called for a few moments at Mrs. UtrJ's home, 2, High Street, Minster, Kent, and then wended our way back to Rampgate. C. M. R. New York, October, 1861.