THE " DYING PROPHET."

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXIV, Issue 1869, 10 February 1892, Page 5

THE " DYING PROPHET."

In a humble cottage situated in the picturesque suburbs of Tifiis, the correspondent of the London ' Daily Telegraph ' states, there lives and dies one of the most eccentric human beings whose shadows have ever darkened the terrestrial sod. He is a bedridden young man of ordinary education, who, for years unable to leave his house or his room, has lately taken to dying regularly every Saturday of his life and returning to this vale of tears on the following Monday morning, a wiser and a sadder man. The sources of his increased wisdom are the sights and sounds of "the other world," in which he passes two days out of his seven in mysterious occupations, the nature of which he has not yet thought proper to divulge ; and the foundation of his sadness is the fatal Book of the Recording Angel, in which he reads the names of the sins committed by all his friends and acquaintances. This latter allegation (says the correspondent of the • Telegraph ') is of course capable of being verified, and, unfortunately for the young man's friends and acquaintances, has been verified often enough to establish his reputation, and to blast theirs, for there is no subject on which he is more communicative or talks with greater unction than that of the sins and peccadilloes of his neighbors. The most curious part of the story is that, accused as some of them have been, not so much of grievous sins as of heinous crimes which may send them to Siberia, they all fearfully plead guilty to the charges, and beseech him to pray for forgiveness for them. Nor is this all. To persons whom he sees for the first time in his life he also makes known the long catalogue of their sins and iniquities, ancient and recent, without ever seeming to make the slightest mistake. Nothing like it has been seen in the Caucasus since the remote days of St. Nina. The house of M. Tagarelli (so this "dying prophet" is called) has become a sort of Christian Mecca, to which tens, nay, scores of thousands are wending their way from all corners of the Caucasus — Armenians, Georgians, Ossetinians, Lerghians — all curious and many repentant. The local authorities, whom no miracle would surprise, look rather favorably on the young man, but visit him only one by one after his weekly return from the shades. Even a Russian newspaper correspondent who visited him lately in a cynical mood came back with the cold perspiration standing in large beads on his brow, a firm believer in the hebdomadal death and resurrection of the dying prophet of the Caucasus.

A NEW WAY OF PACIFYING CHINA.

A Chinese Christian preacher at Canton suggests that all the ministers of the Western and European countries at Fekin should request the Emperor of China to send one of his most intimate, greatest, and most faithful officers in person to the Western countries to examine fully the Roman Catholic and Protestant Churches as to their rites, teachings, and books. On his return he should report faithfully all his views to the Emperor. " Then," adds the preacher, " let the Emperor send forth his Imperial decree explaining the Roman Catholic and Protestant teachings and the meaning of the missionaries, and declaring it to all the people in the eighteen provinces. Let this Imperial decree be engraved on stones, and placed throughout all the provinces, one in every yamen, college, private school, public hall, in every village, market town, and city, and one in every great ancestral hall. If this be done we believe the rebelß will have no power to use their cunning, for the foolish people will not give them a chance to deceive them, Thia plan is one that means least work and least expense, and is the most peaceable way to cause China and the West to be at peace for a long time to come. No other plan can be found better than this."

" Doctor," said a fashionable belle, "what do you think of tight lacing ? " The doctor solemnly replied : " Madam, all I can say is that the more a woman's waist is shaped like an hour-glass the sooner will the sands of life run out."