At the Fall of the Leaf.

Manawatu Herald, 4 January 1898, Page 3

At the Fall of the Leaf.

— ; » Wny 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, with 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'l you will have discovered one of nature's daepest secrets— why men die. Suppose we try an easier problem. Why should Mr' William Steel have written such a sent§nce as this?— "At the fall of the lea/every year I (jot into sack a stale that I took no pleasure in anything." No doubt there are minds so highly strung &3 to feel keenly the influence of outward conditions, changes of the weather and of the seasons, and so en. But they are rare, and for praoiical purposes they ought to be rare. Our friend Mr Steel, happily for him, was not one of them. All the same he 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 appelite was poor, and after everything I ate I had pain and fulness at the chest and sides. Then there was a horrible pain at tho pit of the stomach, which nothing relieved." Now 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, •' 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 touch a morsel of food, and presently got bo 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 andstajed there for a week, with a doctor attending ' me. He relieved me a little, but somehow 1 he didn't succeed in getting to the bottom of my .ailment" That may be, but it doesn't quite follow that the dootor was in the dark as to Mr Steel's ailment. He might have understood it right enough, yet failed to oure it because he had no remedy for it among , his drug*. That happens all the while. Still, the reader 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 sure. Well, Mr f 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 ehort walk I felt so tired and done up I didn't know where to put mj'9elf. This was year after year for six years. " Finally I read about the popular medicine called Mother Siegel's Curative Syrup, and made up my mind to try it. So I began and kept on with it for some time. The result was that the pain left me, and my appetite waked up, and my food tasted good und digested well ; and presenty I was as strong and hearty as ever; That was three years ago, and the trouble has never returned; (S gned) William Steel, Hambleton, near Oakham, Rutlandshire, Dec. sth, 1893." Mr Steel is grocer and postmaster at i Hambletoi, and his case is well known there. His complaint isn't hard to see through ; it was indigestion and dyspepsia. But why did it come on only in the autumn ? What had the fall of the leaf to do with it ? Let the reader study on that point. Meanwhile it is a comfort to know that Mother Siegel's Syrup will cure it no matter when it comes on.