That Masterful Yankee.

Woodville Examiner, Volume XV, Issue 2736, 19 November 1897, Page 4

That Masterful Yankee.

The writings of Mark Twain are full , ?;;of instruction ob well as humour. Possibly you have read that wonderful story of -his called “ A Yankee at King Arthur’s Court." The hero is a skilled mechanic, the foreman of a great factory in America. He is accidentally killed, as wo would say; but, instead of getting his body deposited in the grave, as happens to the most of us, he comes to life again and finds himself at the Court of ■ King Arthur in England in the sixth century, 1800 years before he was born. That was a time of deep ignorance and superstition; people were but children then. So with his knowledge and his nineteenth century training he soon becomes master of everybody and everything. He controls the Qovernment and rnns the whole country—exactly as a college professor would be superior to all the children if he should take it into his head to joina class at a parish school. Now let us sse what this idea may mean to you or to me. In the autumn of 1878 Mr James Murphy, of 49, Townsend Street, Dublin, (present address 5, Synnott Bow, Synnott'Tlace, Lower Dorset street) bad a severe attack of rheumatic fever and was under treatment at the Sir Patrick Dunn’s Hospital for three months. Then he left the hospital, but not the man he was before the disease fell upon him. Afterwards he was never free from it. For a while he would bo comparatively well, then down on his back again. It would depend on the weather and other circumstances, you see. Of his worst times he speaks in this way; “My ankles and feet were hot and painful, and would often swell to three or four times their natural ; ixe. Occasionally the pain extended to the hips, and I had to be swathed in wadding from the thighs down to the ankles. In this way —now able to get about and now confined to my bed—l suffered for over seventeen years. The joints of my fingers and toes became displaced, or seemed to be so.” We don’t need to point out what a cripple this sort of thing makes of a man. If he were wounded and tom in battle or by machinery, he couldn’t be worse off. Yet the number of people thus disabled is immense, and while rheumatism is peculiarly the disease of adults and old persons, the young (even children) do not escape it. If the disease were only understood —but let us not get ahead of our story. “ At Christmas, 1890," continues Mr Murphy, “ I bad a dreadful attack, and was confined to bed for seventeen weeTts .” This took him clear through the rest of the winter and one month of spring up to the first of May. What a dreary miserable season it must have been I There is no merry Christmas or jolly coming of the buds on the trees for a man in that situation. Still, it might have been prevented if he had known then what he found ont later. “ All this time,” he goes on, " I was in the greatest agony. I couldn’t move myself in bed, and finally got so bad I couldn't lift my hand to my mouth, and had to be fed like a baby. Night after night I got no sleep, and often wished myself dead. As for work, I thought I should never do a stroke again. The doctor who attended me gave me medicines, but I seemed none the better for them. 1 bad long since lost all faith in rubbing oils and embrocations; I had spent pounds for them without benefit. “ One day, whilst still suffering great pain, I came upon a book telling how cases like mine had been cared by Mother Seigel’s Curative Syrup. Not knowing what else to do I bought a bottle of Mr Mannin, the chemist in Brunswick Street. After taking this medicine a day or two I had less pain and I was able to leave my bed, and fourteen days later I bad not an ache or a pain of any kind, aud got book to my work. Since that time—now two and a half years ago—l have had no return of my old complaint. I never felt better in my life than I do now, and I thank God that I sver beard of Mother Seigel’s Byrnp. You are at liberty to publish my statement. I have been in the employment of Mr Bobinson, coal merchant, for the past ten years. Yours truly (Signed), James Murphy, Dublin, June 28rd, 1898." The mysterious American at King Arthur’s Court was powerful because of his knowing what nobody else knew. Had Mr Murphy known years before that rheumatism is caused by imparity tf the blood, and that Mother Seigel’s Curative Syrup cures it, he could have defied and banished that agonising ailment. We print these fasts in order that his present knowledge may also be everybody’s knowledge. 902d2