"OH, DON'T TOUCH ME! DON'T COME NEAR ME!"

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XV, Issue 4327, 26 January 1893, Page 3

"OH, DON'T TOUCH ME! DON'T COME NEAR ME!"

Those words were uttered with a howl—almost a jell. Yet the boy to whom they were addressed wasn't within ten feet of the howler, and wouldn't havo come closer for his life, Tho scene was a big business office in Now York, and the howler was the chief man in it. He owned the concern, and was very rich, and a decent fellow enough. But sometimes he would break out like that, and howl as though ho had just discovered a lire in a powder mill. You could hear him from tho basement to tho roof. What was the matter with him? Temporary insanity? Not quite, but something nearly as bad. He had an acute attack of gout in his toe, and at those solemn crises he couldn't bear the the sight of oven a shadow moving in his direction, Ask somebody who has the gout how it feels, Fancy a blacksmith twisting your too with hot pincers while a shoemaker is thrusting a bradawl through your knee-joint, That's a little like it. Well, there are things not so bad as gout, yet they make us touchy enough, Here

comes a man, tor instance, who says, " Everything jioiu was a trouble to me." What should ho talk that way tor? Why should everything have been a trouble to him ? There is an old saying that while wc can't keep tho crows from dying, wo needn't let them make nests in our hair, That's good sense. But it's easy to give advice and to quote proverbs. How does a person act who suffers from boils?

Now, tho fountain of all feeling and pain is tho nerves. An hour or two of toothache is a lesson on the norvous system, But there are diseases (or one discaso anyhow) in which all the nerves in the body seem to tingle to every sight and sound, The mind is on tho look-out for evil—tho man is depressed and afraid. Every word means mischief, and every bush hides an enemy. So he thinks, Ho knows what Solomon meant when ho said, " The grasshopper is a bur den."

Mr Michael McComack is a railway messenger and lives in Mulliogar, County Westmcatb, Irleand. In June, 1890, he was taken ill. His mouth tasted foul and coppery, bis stomach was sour and dead, and when he forced down a little food he felt so much distress and pain after it that he was sorry he hadn't let it alono and gone hungry, Besides this thero were pains wandorj ing through his chest, tack, and sides, hurt ing him, biting him here and there like ugly dogs loose in a town, His head swam with dizziness, and he couldn't go to his work. All his ambition and energy wore gono out of him, and be would scarcely have exerted himself even if ho had been suddenly promoted from the position of messccgev to that