WAS IT PROVIDENCE OR ACCIDENT.

Observer, Volume X, Issue 622, 29 November 1890, Page 18

WAS IT PROVIDENCE OR ACCIDENT.

Did the finding of this article save the man's life ? That is the question. Is there a divinity that shapes our ends? or are events a mere series of accidents, which may happen to one person as well as another ? Are the experiences that compose onr lives links in a chain, or loose grains ot sand ? As you answer these questions, as you take the one side or the other, so is your faith ; you are a materialist or a believer in Providence. We now propose to relate a story in illustration of this problem which may have some effect in arousing those who have always thought themselves the subjects of blind chance. The following facts ara fully vouched for, and resemble occurrences in the lives of multitudes. Several years ago Griffith Jones was a policeman at Holyhead, Wales. He had a family consisting of a wife and five young children to take care of. Holyhead is on St. George's (or the Irish) Channel, and is open to the terrific gales that so often gather upon the coast. Jones's ' post ' or ' beat ' extended back into the country, over bleak, wind-swept hills. He had to walk through this region in all weathers, day or night. He was often out in winter nights, in cold and darkness, exposed to the storms that drive in from the sea. At such times the wife listened to the rattling windows, and prayed that the husband and father might take no harm in the wild tempest. This was hard lines, but in the family (though they were poor enough) there was still health and comparative comfort. But in a bad storm the policeman caught a heavy cold. Home remedies failed to cure it, and the officer sent to his old physician at Aberffraw for medicine. It did no good. Jones's right side grew ' queer ' and painful. The doctor said it waa the liver, and he was right; but correct opinions don't cure disease. His head troubled him too, and he was often so giddy he could hardly walk. 'lam so tired and weary,' he would say. ' I don't know what makes me. I try to rest and sleep, but get np just as dead tired as when I go to bed.' Then worse came. He sat down to his table, but revolted from his food ; appetite was gone. There was a curious feeling at the stomach ; it was cold, dull and miserable, like a furnace which contains nothing but ashes and cinders. A nasty and nauseous kind of gas or wind came up into his throat, like the effluvia from a tomb. His wife called his attention to the ghastly yellow colour of his eyes and skin, and once in a while he would have a spell of palpitation of the heart that made him afraid of falling dead — perhaps in some lonely place. In spite of it all, however, Policeman Jones k-pt on duty as much as ever he could. Of course. So would any honest, plucky man. But he slept fitfully, with bad dreams. He cried out sometimes with the terror of them, and the frighteued children said, 'la papa going to die ?' He was, and is, one of the most patient and loving of men, yet now he was cross ahd surly to his family. Then something new developed. There came a pain under his i eft shoulder blade: his wrists and kneea grew swollen, and painful ; this was rheumatism, caused, the doctors said, by the undigested and fermented food having poisoned the blood. Kidney and bladder complaint followed— for they also are

merely symptoms of indigestion and dyspepsia. The policeman now felt that he must give up, and, if he did, then what? He could foresee nothing but destitution. Now we come to the event which' suggested the question with which thisshort story begins:— Was it an accident or was it a link in a saving chain ? Entering the Hohrhead station-house one day, ill, depressed) weak, and miserable, he saw a pamphlet ujton the table. He picked ifr up and begaai to read it. In a few momenta his • mind was riveted upon its pages. In clear 5 plain language he found', his own CB.se fully described, just as though the book had been written for him and him alone. It named a cure forall his ailments, a medicine called Mother Seigel's Curative Syrup. The plain honesty of the statements won his confidence. He procured half-a-dozen bottle* through Mr Henry Wilson, of the Drug Hall, Holyhead. Taking it he began to improve, and all his aches and pains vanished in a few weeks. This was August, 1879. Ten years have passed, but not a eign or symptom of his ailment has returned. Mr Jones entered upon a more lucrative business, and wherever he goes he spreads the fame of Seiorel's Syrup,, and insists that the glimpse of the book on the table, settled the point as towhether he should go uuder the sod or ba the strong new man he has bee a ever since.