That Masterful Yankee.

Manawatu Herald, 12 October 1897, Page 3

That Masterful Yankee.

The' writing of Mark Twain are full of instruction as well as humour. Possibly | you have read that wonderful story of his 'called "A Yankee at King Arthur's Court." The hero 13 a skilled mechanic, the foreman of a great factory in America. He is accidentally killed, as we would say ;■ but, instead oi getting his body deposited m the grave, as happens to the most of us, he comes to life agaip, and finds himself at the Court of King Arthur in England in the sixth century, 1,300 years before ho 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 Government and runs the whole .country — exactly as a college 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 moan to you or to me. In the autumn of 1873 Mr. James Murphy, of 49, Townsend Street, Dublin (present address 5, Synnott 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 the disease fell upon him. Afterwards he was 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, you see. Of his worst times he speaks in this way : " My ankles and feet were hot apd painful, and would often swell to three or four times Yieir natural size. Occasionally the pain extended to the hips, and I had to be swathed in wadding from the thighs down t j the ankles. In this way — now able to get abont and now confined to my bed— l Buffered for over seventeen years. The joints of my lingers 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 machinery he couldn't be worse off. Yet the number of people thus disabled is immense, and while rheumatism is pecu- , liary the disease of adults and old persons, tin young {even children) do not escape it. If the disease were only understood — bat let us not get ahead of our story. 41 At Christmas, 1890," continues Mr Murphy, " I had a dreadful attack, and waa confined to bed for seventeen zaeeks." This took him clear through the rest of the winter and one month of spring up to tin first of May. What a dreary, miserable seison it must have been ! There is no merry Christmas or jolly coming of the bills on the trees for a man in that situation. Still, it might have been prevented if he had known then what he found out later. " All tlvs time," he goes on, " I was in the greatest agoLy. I couldn't move myself in bed, and finally got so bad I couldn't lift ray hand to my mouth, and had to be fed like a -baby. Night after nighi I got no Bleep, and often wished myself dead. As for work, I thought I should never do a Btroke again. The doctor who attended me gave me medicines, but I seemed none the bettor for them. I had long sine? 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 uko mine had been cured by Mother Seigel's Curative Syrup. Not knowing what else to do I bought a bottle off Mr Maonin, 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, tmA fourteen doys later J had not an

ache or a pain of any hind, and got bach to my wori. 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 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 was powerful because of his knowing what nobody else knew. Had Mr Murphy known years before that rheumatism is caused 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.