That Masterful Yankee.

Manawatu Herald, 28 September 1897, Page 3

That Masterful Yankee.

The writing of Mark Twain are fall of instruction as well as humour. Possibly .you have read that wonderful story of bis called "A Yankee at King Arthur's Court." j The hero is a skilled mechanic, the fore- i man of a great factory in Amerioa. He is accidentally killed, as we would cay ; but, instead of getting his body deposited in the grave, as happen^ to the most of us, he oomes to life again, and finds himself at the Court of King Arthur in England in the sixth century, 1,300 years before he was born. That was a time of deep ignorance and superstition ; people were but children then, to with his knowledge and his nineteenth century training he 8)on becomes master of everybody and everything. He controls the Government and runs the whole country— exactly as a calif ge professor would be superior to all the children if he should take it into his head to join a class at a parish school. Now let us see what this idea may mean to you or to me. In the autumn of 1873 Mr. James Murphy, of 49, Townsend Street, Dublin (prerent address 6, Synnolt Row, Synnott place, Lower Dorset Street) had 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 (he disease fell upon him. Afterwards he tfaj. never free from it. For a while he would be comparatively well then.down on his back again. It would depend on the weather and other circumstances, yon 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 Hz,;. Occasionally the pain extended to The hips, and I had to be swa hed in wadding from the thighs down to the ankles. In this way — now able to get about and now co: fined to my bed— l suffered for over seventeen years. The joints of ray 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 torn in battle or by j machinery he ttO^n't °c worse off. Yet the number of people thus disabled is *£' mense, aikt while riiedrriatisrtl is peonliary the disrate 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," tioniinriee Mr Murphy, " I had a dreadful attack, and was confined to bed for seventeen weeks." 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 1 There is no merry Christmas or jolly coming of the buds on the trees for a man in that sittiation. Still, it might have been prevented if he had known then what he found out later. " All tfvs time," he goes on, " I was in the greatest agony. I couldn't move my-, self in bed, and finally got so bad I couldn't lift my hand to my mouth, and had to be fed like a baby. Might 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 nono the better for them. I had long since lost all faith in rubbiog oils and embrocations ; I had spent pounds for them without benefit." "One day, whilst still suffering great painv I came upon a book telling how cases like mine had been cured by Mother SVgel's Curative Syrup. Not knowing what else to do I bought a bottle off Mr Mannin, tha chernht in Brunswick Street. After taking this medicine a day or two I bad less pain, and I was able to leave my bed, andfourteen doys later 1 had not an ache or a pain of any kind, and got back 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 belter in my life than I do now, and I thank God that I ever heard of Mother Seigel's Syrup. You are at liberty to pbblish my statement. I have been in the employment of Mr Robinson, coal merchant, for the past ten years. Yours truly (Signed), James Murphy, Dublin, June 23rd, 1893." The mysterious American at King Arthur's Court wa3 powerful because of his knowing what nobody else knew. Had Mr Murphy known years before that rheumatism is oaused by impurity of the blood, and that Mother Seigel's Curative Syrup cures it, he could have defied and banished that agonising ailment. We print these facts in order that his present knowledge may also be everybody's knowledge.