Helpless on the Shoals.

Manawatu Herald, 5 January 1899, Page 3

Helpless on the Shoals.

I A great steamship, feeling her way in a > fog, ran upon a low mud bank and stuck I fast, about twenty miles from her port* She had on board a valuable cargo and nearly three hundred passengers, most of 1 whom were almost within sight of their I homes. The tugs came and tried vainly to I pull her into deep water. The officers were as good navigators as there had ever been. \ But she was helpless, and it waa dead low water. Only one thing could be done — to i wait. A few hoars later the Oaptain said , to his passengers, " Tite tide is rising ; we I shaU be off presently ;" Sixty minutes I more and the ship floated. It was now 1 noon. At two o'olocj. sharp the impatient 1 voyagers stepped ashore. They might . have been delayed longer save for one fact I which the captain had announced in four words. 1 Perhaps this simple and not uncommon incident may contain a lesson for you and . me Suppose we draw a little comparison ! and see. The man who learns nothing from things at his elbow will only waste his time going to college. Mr William Jordan is grocer and postmaster at Bright Waltham, Wantage, Berks, where everybody knows him and believes in him. On December 7th, 1893, he wrote a letter to a friend, and by consent of both parties we print a part of it. "Inthe autumn of 1890," he says, "I had an attack of influenza. The effects of it lingered with me. I had no heart for anything. I was tired, languid, and weary. My appetite fell away, and what I did eat gave me a sense of tightness and fullness at the chest ; my bowels were very costive, and I suffered much from sick headache. Sharp pains often caught me between the shoulders, and my breathing was very bad. I kept on with my work, but, on account of my weakness, the task was doubly hard. For about four months I was like this, when one day the thought came to try a medicine that so many of my customers bought of me and spoke highly of. I carried out this idea, and after I had taken one bottle of it I noticed this first of all — My appetite was better. I could eat ; I relished my food ; I got stronger. I took another bottle, and was as well as ever. That is three years ago, and I haven't had a touch of illness since. (Signed) William Jordan." One more letter — short and right straight to the point. Mr William S. Saunders writes it. He is a newsagent, and lives at 0!d Town, Wottonunder-Edge, Gloucestershire. His letter is dated November 7th, 1893, just one month to a day earlier than Mr Jordan's. That merely happens so, the two gentlemen having no knowledge of each other. "In the spring of 1891," says Mr Saunders, " I found myself out of sorts all unexpectedly. I couldn't fancy what had come over me. I was low, weak, and tired. I could eat hardly anything, and what I did eat gave me so much pain and distress thut I came to dread sitting down to a m. al. There were pains in my ohest, sides and back, between the shoulder blades. Tben I got so weak and my work was a sort of drag on my hands ; and even when walking I was so short of breath I had to stop and rest ' here and there. I took medicines the doctor gave me, and pills, &c, that my friends recommended me; but it was no use, they didn't help me. And all the time, month after month, I was getting weaker and weaker. At last I got a bottle of medicine from Bristol tbat was right. That one bottle had this effect at first. My appetite came back, and when I got through with the second bottle I was completely cured. (Signed) William S. Saunders." Now for the lesson. You see what it is of course, but let's have it in words. When the ship was fast on the shoal only one thing helped her— the rising tide. When these two men were fast on the shoal of illness only one thing helped them — the rising appetite: With eating and digestion came strength and health, for the I trouble was that universal destroyer and deceiver, indigestion and dyspepsia. The tide ro ~e to tlie pull of the moon. The languid appetite is roused by medicine finally resorted to by both our correspondents—Mother Seigel's Curative Syrup.

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