Old Grumble on Microbes

Feilding Star, Volume X, Issue 38, 6 September 1888, Page 3

Old Grumble on Microbes

3 " There is nothing new under the sun,' sayeth the preacher. Well! Grumbh will not argue with the preacher upoi ■ I that matter, previous to the date of his j making this assertion, which was aboui J the time of Solomon-: the earth was I younger then by three thousand years tc 1 what it is now ; but, when Grumble " looks at that dress of yours, Mrs G ; * bearing, as it does, the very stamp and * impress of novelty upon it, he does dare ;. . to affirm that there have been maoj a things, both new and expensive, in vogue t ; since that period. Certainly the man 9 | may have been a philosopher : one thor« [ oughly acquainted with the economy ol I Nature; for Nature is a perfect econoi ! mist, turning and returning her elements, 3 j and altering the shape and density of hei * ; atoms with such nicety that they come • ! out again quite fresh. What an example f she is to modern housewives ! The preacher may, I say, have taken this philosophic view of things ; but then he was wrong. One might as well, if he saw a man with a bucket of tar on his head, exclaim : '* What a pretty picture!" from the reason that colors are procured from coal tar. Then, again, we know that ever since the earth got encased in her first jacket of cinders, iron has formed part of her composition ; but, because that is so, no one ever expects to find a natural deposit of watch springs. Here a fresh surmise, for the reason of the preacher's saying, occurs to Grumble, and, in solemn conviction, says : " Mrs Grumble, I have it; that preacher was in similar straits to Mr Furlong's French priest — reduced to mendicancy. Some one gave him some clothes, and, when on examination, he found they were very old. in the bitterness of disappointment, he was led to make that ejaculation: "There is nothing new under the sun." However, whether there is, or is not, anything new under the suu, the micron scope is. continually revealing to us fresh wonders, and unfolding to us a world of life, the existence of which we must have remained in ignorance of but for its aid. Dreadful creatures ; dreadful through their infinitesimal size ; all powerful through their insignificance. How fully has M. Pasteur demonstrated that "It is the small destroys the great" ; and Death is never so busy as when he whets his scythe with a microbe. . What has that basin of soup a wire netting over it for — to keep the flies off? That, Mrs G., is an imprisoned eonta* uion, a caged pestilence; that basin of soup is a seething living poison, which 1 mean. for the neighbor's cats. I'll stop their " mow-rowing." That in the jam tin, my dear? That is the delirous fever microbe, and that, in the cup, is the deadly and rapid cholera microbe ; while those, in the physic bottle, are the slow rotting leprosy microbes which decompose their victim, while he is yet iilive, and so cheat the worms of half their prey. I have alarmed you! Tour face is blanched, and your hand trembles upon my shoulder. Ah ! I have given you the the creeps. A short sharp cry is Mra Grumble's answer, and she screams : "Oh, Gi'umble, one of those dreadful things, has escaped, and is crawling up my neck. I can feel it." " Don't, movel don't move !" and Grumble says this with all the delighted excitement of an enthusiast, "It may be some new, or .rare, and malignant form of organic life ; 1 must observe how it attacks the human system." Grumble here disappears for his microscope; but the cry has been heard by another, and Nicholas Grumble comes rushing in from a game of rounds ers, his face aglow with exercise, while bis hands, hid behind him, hold some' thing he has secreted beneath his jacket. It was Grumble's truncheon, which had of. yore been manfully borne by him when a " special/ and which his son had surreptitiously been converting into a rounder stick. "Oh! Nick! Nick! do knock this dreadful thing from off my head before it makes its fatal bite," Mrs Grumble imploringly begs of her son. The boy instantly responds to the call : he mcunts a chair, looks keenly at his mother's head for half a minute, then exclaims : " I see it ! hold still !" Then he draws his staff from beneath his jacket, waves it lightly to ensure his aim, and he says, " One, two " Then he brings it down sharply, and effects three things at one time : the intruder is knocked down ; so is his mother ; and a monument is raised on Mrs Grumble's head, in the shape of an oval lump, to mark the spot where the offender was killed. He was a brave boy, and modest with ail. He did not call hi* father to witness his prowess, nor mnke a noisy declaration of what he bad dour ; but he quietly, and unobserved, hung the staff up in its accustomed place, and left the premises just as Old Grumble entered full of solicitous regard lor his wife ; but Mrs Grumble, who was recovering from the stunning blow, waved him sternly back as she asks, in a veice full of reproach : " Grumble, do you mean to be the death of meP" Grumble casts hi* eyes upon the grouad, and conjecturing, , by the wood- bug he sees smashed, that she had been hit, ventures : " Mrs G., I— l did not hit you !" "No I but you let your miscrofecope, as you call it, which is only another name for a galvanic battery, off at me, and knocked me down." Then her voice rises with her wrath, and she continues : " But if, in the future, I was to see thousands of microbes as big as elephants crawling all over you, I would not raise so much as a little finger to brush one of them off. No ! not even if, by doing so, I should save the life of Old Gbumble."