At the Fall of the Leaf.

Manawatu Herald, 28 December 1897, Page 3

At the Fall of the Leaf.

Way do the leaves fall? "Bless me, I don't know," you answer: "I suppose because it is one of nature's arrangements." Precisely ; but why did nature so arrange? Why not have summer time always, wifh perpetual foliage? What is the meaning of denuded branches, withered flowers, daylight fading in mid-afternoon, and winter's cold and desolation? When you find out why the leaves fa 1 you will have discovert one of nature's daepest secrets— why nun die. Suppose we try an easier problem. Why should Mr Wi liam Steet have written suoh a sentence as this? -".4* the fall of the leaf every year 1 got into $ eh a state that I took no pleasure in anything." No doubt thi-re are minds so highlj strung as to feel keenly the influence of outward eondnioni. changes of the weather and o( the seasons, and so >n. Bat they are rare and for prao ical purposes they ought to be rare. Our friend Mr Steel, happily for him, was not one of them. All the same be was a miserable man every time the leaves began to rattle to the ground. Here's the way he puts it ; "At the fall of the leaf every year I felt languid, tired and weary, and took no pleasure in anything. My appetite was poor, and after everything I ate I had pain and fulness at the cheat and sides. Then there was a horrible pain at the pit of the stomach, which nothing relieved." Mow this sort of thing would spoil a man's pleasure any time of year, but the oddity in Mr steel's case is that it always coincided with what you may call nature's bedtime. <• After a few months," he says, rt the pain and distress would be 'easier for a while, but as autumn approached I became as bad as ever. In September 1890, I had an unusually bad time of it. I couldn't touoh a morsel of food, and presently got so weak I was unable to stand on my legs. Every few hours I had to be poulticed, the pain was so bad. I went to bed and staged there for a week, with a doctor attending me. He relieved me a little, but somehow he didn't succeed in getting to the bottom of my ailment " That may be, but it doesn't quite follow that the doctor was in the dark as to Mr Steel's ailment. He might have understood it right enough, yet failed to cure it because he had no remedy for it among his drug*. That happens all the while. Sill, the read r may ask, What's "the good of knowing the nature of a complaint if we possess no medicine to cure it ? There you have us ; no use at all, to be sore. Well, Mr teel goes on to say: "For some time I continued very feeble, and was hardly able to walk across the floor. If I took a short walk I felt sfl tired and done up I didn't know where to put myself. This was year after year for six years. '* Finally I read about the popular medicine called Mother Siegel's Ooratiye Syrup, and' made up my mind to try it So I f belfto and kept on with it for some time. The result was that the pain left me, and my appetite waked op» and my food tested good *nd digested well ; and presenty I was as strong and hearty as ever. That was three yean ago, and the troubln has nev< r returned. (Bgntd) Wihiam Bte<l, Hambleton.'near Oakham, Butlandshire, Dae. sth, 1893." Mr Steel is grocer and postmaster at Hambletoa, and his case is well known there. Hia oofliplaiot inn't hard to Me

through ; it was indigestion and dyspepsia. Bat Why did it come on only m the autnrtfri ? What had the fall of the leal to do with it? Let the reader study on that point. Meanwhile it is a comfort O know that Mother Hegel's Syrnp will cure it no taa'tf er when it comes on.