| 255GREAT HARM IS INFLIGTED
--------------
Christian Science as Practiced
Results in Very Serious
Things.
---------------
Mrs. Peattie Writes of a Belief and Practice
Which is Obsrading it-self Upon Notice.
-----------------
She Says Despite its Evil Results There is
a Germ of Immoral Truth in the
" Science."
-------------------
There has come into the religious life of Christendom, during the last few years, the peculiar demonstration known as Christian science. It is a philosophy which claim a unity for mind and matter, and for mind and spirt, and for spirit and God Sickness of the body is the indication of the sin of the spirt.
By cleansing one the other is cured. Heat, cold--all external affections--matter not to him whose spirit is fixed in its [dr?] unrecognizance of matter---who looks always of God.
Metaphysics are quite difficult enough to make comperhensible even when they deal with the simple and understood phenomena of the mind ; but when they deal with that. Whcih for convenience, may be termed supernatural, it is dfficult indeed, to understand them. The involutions and complexities of the Christain science metaphysics may well dismay even the most studious mind
But briefly, as the simple understand the laws of this teaching, spirit and matter are one--aprit is God---all is God. The Christian scientists refuss to recognize matter.
As the philosphy reads, It is pleasant, serene and pure. Whatever its points of differenatiation may be from the orthordox Christain teaching, it seems to be in general harmony, and to be rather an attempt to make practical the most absturse teaching of Christ. It also attempts to modernize the miracles. It believes in the casting out of devis, figuratively speaking and the making whole of the dissased body.
That is the theory. As to the practice----but what religion would like to be ludged by the practice of those who profess it? Making, then, all allowance for human weakness. and for the inability of common mortals to attain to their own ideals, the fact remains that by the insitence of believers in this Christ healing, upon those who do not believe, great harm is inflicted.
A few weeks ago a little girl in this city was stricken with diphtbera. Her mother was a Christain scientist and would call no physician. The poor little one grew worse. She begged to be allowed to remain in bed. She wanted care. She wept and said she was not able to play. The mother, infaturated with these amazing metaphysics, would listen to no reason. She told the child not to metion her illness, and assured her that pain was a delusion.
She drive the little one out of the house to play in the yard It was not that she was hard-hearted or that she did not love her little girl
It was merely that she compelted her-self to have the faith which would more mountains. But no mountain, so far as known, has ever been moved by faith.
And the little girl, who might have been saved if the mother had called medical assiatance, died, because that mother insited on persevering to the end in her belief. The poor child is dead. No faith of the mother's can restore her to life. And one wonders if she " refused to recognize" that pathetic bit of matter, the little cold body that had held the spirit of her child. No one knows where that spirit has gone. No one can be sure that there ever was a sprit.
We may believe it---most of us affirm it. But it is certain, The only thing about the child that as certain was the body, with its delicate functions--its movement, thought and beauty.
As one thinks of that helpless little thing, bound body and soul to obedience to its parent, in the pathctic way that childern are, depending on that parent's judgment for its very life, being denied what common humanity would have accorded to it, one is almost impelled to pronounce the whole belief as fraudulent, frantic and insane.
Yet, within all the folly and frenzy of this belief dwells a germ of immortal truth.
It is the simple truth that body reacts upon mind and mind upon body. It is the fact that aliments are frequently imaginary, and that a return of health to the mind means the recovery of the body. Whole nations have been afflicted with hysteria before now. Committees are the prey of a mental disturbance. Individuals frequently imaginary, and that a return of health to the mind means the recovery of the body. Whole nations have been afflicted with hysteria before now. Committes are occasionally the prey pf a mental distrubance. Indivduals frequently suffer from imaginay maladiest. The regular practing physicians are not a little to blame for this. Certain physicains, especially specialists, are given to the encouragement of disceases. Take, for example, the gynecologists. They, undoubtedly, encourage many a woman in the belief that she is alling. and so impregnnte her mind with the idea, that she subjects to the most distressing local treatment year i and year out. Whereas, all that she really need is to keep free from the irritation of local treatment, stop thinking about herself and go to work. There are whole neighborhoods of women who give themselves up to discussions of their complants, and whose weaknesses acquire a similarity from being much talked of. The state, unfortunately, cannot afford an asylum for all such feeble-minded persona.
But these imainary diseases have nothing to do whatever with the bonafide disease. Is it not folly to supose that the perfectly healthy, happy person, going about his work, with no thought of self, who is suddenly stricken dow with a virulent germ disease, is to balne for the suffering, or that he imagines it?
I never but once had any personal experience with Christain science, I had been suddenly afficted with a contageous disease in the midest of perfect health. Indeed, so good was my general health that I laid my illness to fatigue, rather than to the real cause, and not until I could no longer sit up would I believe that I was really to be ill, and even then I refused to credit the seriousness of it till I saw the tranformation taking place in my flash.
It was rating late at night when I made this discovery, and not wishing to disturb any physician I decided to wait till morning. It happened that there wass a social gathering of some sort in the house next door, and among the guests was a practing Christain scentist of wide reputaion.
She heard of my illness, and in a spirit of kindness. begged to be allowed to cure me. She said she would sit up for the night and concentrate herself on me.
I appreciated the kindness, and while I deprecated the inconverniece she would
put herself to, I was assured that I need feel no concern, for she did not need sleep. I honorably promised to subject my mind as far as possible to hers. I did so. I offered not the slightest opposition to her wishes I said to myself that I would awake in the morning, cured. I determined to believe this, and I think I did, unreservedly. My kind neigbor sat up till morning, and I feel sure she used all the power she had to cure me.
But morning found me unrecongizble as to face, almost delrious, and in the very excess of disease. I sent for an alopatic physician and recovered quickly. I am oblged to confess that if I had continued my experiment with my kindly Christain scientis I believe I should have been where the wicked cease from troubling I don't know just waht flaw the enthusiatic Christain scientists will point out in this ex-perience They willl probably say I did not believe. But I think I can assure them that I did---at least. I did not disbelieve Why should I, when I did not know?
There is nothing like trying things before you make up your mind about them I have tried a good many supernatural things. I have always been credsious U have not known but I might touch the skirts of the intinaite at any moment.
But I have found, thus far, only disappointment, fraud, delusion and insanity.
These are, in very truth, the repliant forms that I have found lurking behind the fair masks of suernaturalism.
For supernaturalism, in itself, is a comforting conception. If only God would speak straghit to us now, in visitble acts, showing direct correspondence with us, life's miseries would be greatly mitigated.
It is no arugment, of course, for any of these things, to say that amny people are happy in believing them. I have been a man perfectly triumphant in the idea that he was Christ of Nazerth, and that he was riding into Jerusalem, amid the warning palms of the multutude But he wasn't. He was only a thin little old man with a wisp of straw in his hair, sitting cross-legged on a stool in an insane asylum.
Becouse a person sincerely believes a thing is no evidence that such a thing is true. A person may be perfecly sane, and yet be absolutely misken. A belief may make a man or woman better, purer, happeir and braver, and yet not be based on truth. The beatiful is not always the true, nor the true always the beautiful. Even an empiracle belief may easily be erroneous, because the cause of an effect may be mistken.
Indeed, the theorshpisis, the Christain scientists, the spriitualists and the materialists differ as to the cause of certain phenomena, which all agree as to the existence of.
The Countess Wachmeister, the talented and graceful theosophist who was in Omaha two months ago, had an entirely differnt hypothesis by which to account for rapid cures by mental agency, from that which the Christian scientists employ.
There are a great many things in this world which we are not able to account for. And we have not right to dissaprove of some one, who inspired by " divine curiosty," endeavors to find a reason for their existence. We should rather respect him. The power of mind over mind is a vast and wonderful subject, but those who have looked deepest into it, are apt to discredit the very things that most arouse the respect of the sincere novice. For example. Charcot, the great French physican, who has interested the whole world in hypnotism, protests now that he considers it almost useless as an aid to science, and more than dangerous in the hands of most men. Elliot Coues, who stood at the head of theospophy in America, confessed in the end that it was only a mental diversion with him, and that it wisdom seemed to him to be greatly overshowed by its non-sense. Some of the most ardent spirituslists I have ever known have suffered broken hearts because of the disppoinments, the chicanery and the in-adequacy of their faith.
We ar not impelled to rush into new beliefs because we see things which we cannot understand. It will do us no hurt to remain in ignorance as to their real cause.
For example, when I was a little girl I used to make mud pies with a small freckled boy who had warts on his hands. They were hideous warts, at which I never look if I could help it. One day a Baptist precher came to visit this boy's father He was from the back woods of Michigan, and in appearance was something like the tough while oaks that grew there. He talked as if he were addressing the farm hands at the far end of a forty acre lot. Well, he came out where we two young ones were making mud pies with our usual enibusisam. He looked at the warty hands And the he spat in the clay, robbed the dampended earth on the warts, ropeated a little verse of mysterious syllables three times and said. " Tomorow your warts will be gone!"
We looked at him awe. We believed. Next day the warts were gone !
In the back districts of Maryland is a class of people who profese, among their other supersitions. to be able to cure burns by blowing on them. Let any one suffer a severe burn. and these fire-blowers are summoned They blow on the burn in a rapt sort of way, and the sting ceases It is even said that in some cases the flesh heals immediately. But it is noticed that when they blow on the burns of an inteligent and educated person the burns do not improve. The reason is obvious.
One could go on filling coloums with stories of this sort. But, what need of that, with Emile Zola's ' Lourdes" fresh one the book shelves ? There one may read of the process of the modern mirale to his heart's content. But shall these things impel us to an extravagance of action, in which we invoive those dependant upon us ?
Let the truth be what it may, and the false what it may, this much is sure ; anything is wrong which inficts suffering on another.
Anything which endangers the life of another, or indirectly deprives another of life is next in deherate murder in wrongfulness.
There have been in this city, on several occasions deaths resulting from inatention, and the inattention was the result of a belief in the faith known as Christain science.
Ought not these people, who profess to be so conscientious, and, who, no doubt, are so, to consider well before they involve the helpless in their belief? Let them "refuse to recognize matter" all they like.
They may even forego food and drink, if they please, neglect to put coal in their bins or ice in their refrigerstors---go without sleep, and incur any danger. But let them, in fairness and humanity, conflct these experiments to themselves. Let them not imperil the lives of others. For each living creature has a right to his own life, and none should take it from him. He has a right to provide himself, or to be provided with, every means possible for pre serving that life. To withhold it from him is a crime--not one punshiable by law--but certainly a moral crime.
I am not among those who think poorly of people who do not agree with
me, Indeed, it has been an accident in my life to be most profoundly attached to those who disagree with me most.
The people whose ideas have coincided with mine, have often not been among my acquainatnces. I have longed to meet them but have not done so I do not understand it I have never been able to thorougly understand any religion. I have never met anyone who could thoroughly explin a religion. But I maintain that the Christain scientist do wrong---a terrible wrong--to be involve others in the penalties that may attach to their belief.
Their aim is high---no doubt about that. But their works must be in keeping. And the dead, whose sufferings were not aleviated, who were forbidden even to ask for sympathy, make a sorry showing--- a shameful and sorry showing for this faith. ELLA W. PEATTLE
-------------------------------------------
GOVERNOR POINDEX AND LIMIT.
An Intereasting Ganie of Poker
which Beated three Gamblers
Indlanapolis Journal : A game long talked about on the river was that played by Governor George Poindexter of Mississipi. At one time he as fund commissioner, or someting of that : kind, for Mississpi. He had business in New York to negotiate money on bonds, ostensibly for internal improvemnts in Mississppi. He was returning from that city, and had a large aum of money with him. He left Louisville on a small stern hen boat and three gamblers took passge on the same boat. They knew Polinderie's foundness' for cards, that he would play high, and they made up a plot to clean him put. In those days they played poker with twenty cards. the ace, king, queen , jack and ten of each suit. The boat the several days in getting from Lousiville to Cario, and Poindezter and three sharks were busy at play.
Then they usaully played without limit, and the result as the gamblers, having played their fish long enough, were about to take him in. They had all their money on the table. Two of the gambelers dropped out. and the other, making a heavy bet, pilled up his last dollar The governor said he didn't have money enough there to call him, but he thought he might be able to borrow.
' Very well, " said the gambler, " I'll give you just ten mintes to raise the money"
Poindexter went to his state room. where he had an old carpet sack, with a trusty servant guarding it, and returned to the gaming table, followed by the darkey with the carpet sack on his shoulder.
" Now," thundered Poindexter, as he threw open the sack, which was stuffed full of bank notes, " I will see you and go you $ 3000,000 better ! And I'll give you an hour instead of ten minutes to raise it!"
The faces of those gamblers would have been a picture for a painter. They got off the boat at the first landing place wiser and much sadder men. There was about $10,000 on the table.
------------------------------------
AN UNLUCKY SWORD.
It Brought Mashal Ney to Grief and Traitor's Death.
When Napoleon the First entered Cario, on the 22d of July, 1793, he was presnted ith three swords of honor. richhly inlaid with precious stones. He brought them back to Europe, and in 1802 he gave one to Marshal Ney and another to Murat, Keeping the third for himself.
Ney recived his at an imperial reception ; the sword passed from one to another of those present. among whom was a young subalern of the Auvergne regiment.
When Napoleon escaped from Elba, Ney left the king and took sides with his former chief. After the allies entered Paris the place become too hot for him and he made preparation to get out of the counrty with a pass procured for him under a false name, but his wife and a friend persuaded him that there was really no danger, and he decieded to stay in France
| 255GREAT HARM IS INFLIGTED
--------------
Christian Science as Practiced
Results in Very Serious
Things.
---------------
Mrs. Peattie Writes of a Belief and Practice
Which is Obsrading it-self Upon Notice.
-----------------
She Says Despite its Evil Results There is
a Germ of Immoral Truth in the
" Science."
-------------------
There has come into the religious life of Christendom, during the last few years, the peculiar demonstration known as Christian science. It is a philosophy which claim a unity for mind and matter, and for mind and spirt, and for spirit and God Sickness of the body is the indication of the sin of the spirt.
By cleansing one the other is cured. Heat, cold--all external affections--matter not to him whose spirit is fixed in its [dr?] unrecognizance of matter---who looks always of God.
Metaphysics are quite difficult enough to make comperhensible even when they deal with the simple and understood phenomena of the mind ; but when they deal with that. Whcih for convenience, may be termed supernatural, it is dfficult indeed, to understand them. The involutions and complexities of the Christain science metaphysics may well dismay even the most studious mind
But briefly, as the simple understand the laws of this teaching, spirit and matter are one--aprit is God---all is God. The Christian scientists refuss to recognize matter.
As the philosphy reads, It is pleasant, serene and pure. Whatever its points of differenatiation may be from the orthordox Christain teaching, it seems to be in general harmony, and to be rather an attempt to make practical the most absturse teaching of Christ. It also attempts to modernize the miracles. It believes in the casting out of devis, figuratively speaking and the making whole of the dissased body.
That is the theory. As to the practice----but what religion would like to be ludged by the practice of those who profess it? Making, then, all allowance for human weakness. and for the inability of common mortals to attain to their own ideals, the fact remains that by the insitence of believers in this Christ healing, upon those who do not believe, great harm is inflicted.
A few weeks ago a little girl in this city was stricken with diphtbera. Her mother was a Christain scientist and would call no physician. The poor little one grew worse. She begged to be allowed to remain in bed. She wanted care. She wept and said she was not able to play. The mother, infaturated with these amazing metaphysics, would listen to no reason. She told the child not to metion her illness, and assured her that pain was a delusion.
She drive the little one out of the house to play in the yard It was not that she was hard-hearted or that she did not love her little girl
It was merely that she compelted her-self to have the faith which would more mountains. But no mountain, so far as known, has ever been moved by faith.
And the little girl, who might have been saved if the mother had called medical assiatance, died, because that mother insited on persevering to the end in her belief. The poor child is dead. No faith of the mother's can restore her to life. And one wonders if she " refused to recognize" that pathetic bit of matter, the little cold body that had held the spirit of her child. No one knows where that spirit has gone. No one can be sure that there ever was a sprit.
We may believe it---most of us affirm it. But it is certain, The only thing about the child that as certain was the body, with its delicate functions--its movement, thought and beauty.
As one thinks of that helpless little thing, bound body and soul to obedience to its parent, in the pathctic way that childern are, depending on that parent's judgment for its very life, being denied what common humanity would have accorded to it, one is almost impelled to pronounce the whole belief as fraudulent, frantic and insane.
Yet, within all the folly and frenzy of this belief dwells a germ of immortal truth.
It is the simple truth that body reacts upon mind and mind upon body. It is the fact that aliments are frequently imaginary, and that a return of health to the mind means the recovery of the body. Whole nations have been afflicted with hysteria before now. Committees are the prey of a mental disturbance. Individuals frequently imaginary, and that a return of health to the mind means the recovery of the body. Whole nations have been afflicted with hysteria before now. Committes are occasionally the prey pf a mental distrubance. Indivduals frequently suffer from imaginay maladiest. The regular practing physicians are not a little to blame for this. Certain physicains, especially specialists, are given to the encouragement of disceases. Take, for example, the gynecologists. They, undoubtedly, encourage many a woman in the belief that she is alling. and so impregnnte her mind with the idea, that she subjects to the most distressing local treatment year i and year out. Whereas, all that she really need is to keep free from the irritation of local treatment, stop thinking about herself and go to work. There are whole neighborhoods of women who give themselves up to discussions of their complants, and whose weaknesses acquire a similarity from being much talked of. The state, unfortunately, cannot afford an asylum for all such feeble-minded persona.
But these imainary diseases have nothing to do whatever with the bonafide disease. Is it not folly to supose that the perfectly healthy, happy person, going about his work, with no thought of self, who is suddenly stricken dow with a virulent germ disease, is to balne for the suffering, or that he imagines it?
I never but once had any personal experience with Christain science, I had been suddenly afficted with a contageous disease in the midest of perfect health. Indeed, so good was my general health that I laid my illness to fatigue, rather than to the real cause, and not until I could no longer sit up would I believe that I was really to be ill, and even then I refused to credit the seriousness of it till I saw the tranformation taking place in my flash.
It was rating late at night when I made this discovery, and not wishing to disturb any physician I decided to wait till morning. It happened that there wass a social gathering of some sort in the house next door, and among the guests was a practing Christain scentist of wide reputaion.
She heard of my illness, and in a spirit of kindness. begged to be allowed to cure me. She said she would sit up for the night and concentrate herself on me.
I appreciated the kindness, and while I deprecated the inconverniece she would
put herself to, I was assured that I need feel no concern, for she did not need sleep. I honorably promised to subject my mind as far as possible to hers. I did so. I offered not the slightest opposition to her wishes I said to myself that I would awake in the morning, cured. I determined to believe this, and I think I did, unreservedly. My kind neigbor sat up till morning, and I feel sure she used all the power she had to cure me.
But morning found me unrecongizble as to face, almost delrious, and in the very excess of disease. I sent for an alopatic physician and recovered quickly. I am oblged to confess that if I had continued my experiment with my kindly Christain scientis I believe I should have been where the wicked cease from troubling I don't know just waht flaw the enthusiatic Christain scientists will point out in this ex-perience They willl probably say I did not believe. But I think I can assure them that I did---at least. I did not disbelieve Why should I, when I did not know?
There is nothing like trying things before you make up your mind about them I have tried a good many supernatural things. I have always been credsious U have not known but I might touch the skirts of the intinaite at any moment.
But I have found, thus far, only disappointment, fraud, delusion and insanity.
These are, in very truth, the repliant forms that I have found lurking behind the fair masks of suernaturalism.
For supernaturalism, in itself, is a comforting conception. If only God would speak straghit to us now, in visitble acts, showing direct correspondence with us, life's miseries would be greatly mitigated.
It is no arugment, of course, for any of these things, to say that amny people are happy in believing them. I have been a man perfectly triumphant in the idea that he was Christ of Nazerth, and that he was riding into Jerusalem, amid the warning palms of the multutude But he wasn't. He was only a thin little old man with a wisp of straw in his hair, sitting cross-legged on a stool in an insane asylum.
Becouse a person sincerely believes a thing is no evidence that such a thing is true. A person may be perfecly sane, and yet be absolutely misken. A belief may make a man or woman better, purer, happeir and braver, and yet not be based on truth. The beatiful is not always the true, nor the true always the beautiful. Even an empiracle belief may easily be erroneous, because the cause of an effect may be mistken.
Indeed, the theorshpisis, the Christain scientists, the spriitualists and the materialists differ as to the cause of certain phenomena, which all agree as to the existence of.
The Countess Wachmeister, the talented and graceful theosophist who was in Omaha two months ago, had an entirely differnt hypothesis by which to account for rapid cures by mental agency, from that which the Christian scientists employ.
There are a great many things in this world which we are not able to account for. And we have not right to dissaprove of some one, who inspired by " divine curiosty," endeavors to find a reason for their existence. We should rather respect him. The power of mind over mind is a vast and wonderful subject, but those who have looked deepest into it, are apt to discredit the very things that most arouse the respect of the sincere novice. For example. Charcot, the great French physican, who has interested the whole world in hypnotism, protests now that he considers it almost useless as an aid to science, and more than dangerous in the hands of most men. Elliot Coues, who stood at the head of theospophy in America, confessed in the end that it was only a mental diversion with him, and that it wisdom seemed to him to be greatly overshowed by its non-sense. Some of the most ardent spirituslists I have ever known have suffered broken hearts because of the disppoinments, the chicanery and the in-adequacy of their faith.
We ar not impelled to rush into new beliefs because we see things which we cannot understand. It will do us no hurt to remain in ignorance as to their real cause.
For example, when I was a little girl I used to make mud pies with a small freckled boy who had warts on his hands. They were hideous warts, at which I never look if I could help it. One day a Baptist precher came to visit this boy's father He was from the back woods of Michigan, and in appearance was something like the tough while oaks that grew there. He talked as if he were addressing the farm hands at the far end of a forty acre lot. Well, he came out where we two young ones were making mud pies with our usual enibusisam. He looked at the warty hands And the he spat in the clay, robbed the dampended earth on the warts, ropeated a little verse of mysterious syllables three times and said. " Tomorow your warts will be gone!"
We looked at him awe. We believed. Next day the warts were gone !
In the back districts of Maryland is a class of people who profese, among their other supersitions. to be able to cure burns by blowing on them. Let any one suffer a severe burn. and these fire-blowers are summoned They blow on the burn in a rapt sort of way, and the sting ceases It is even said that in some cases the flesh heals immediately. But it is noticed that when they blow on the burns of an inteligent and educated person the burns do not improve. The reason is obvious.
One could go on filling coloums with stories of this sort. But, what need of that, with Emile Zola's ' Lourdes" fresh one the book shelves ? There one may read of the process of the modern mirale to his heart's content. But shall these things impel us to an extravagance of action, in which we invoive those dependant upon us ?
Let the truth be what it may, and the false what it may, this much is sure ; anything is wrong which inficts suffering on another.
Anything which endangers the life of another, or indirectly deprives another of life is next in deherate murder in wrongfulness.
There have been in this city, on several occasions deaths resulting from inatention, and the inattention was the result of a belief in the faith known as Christain science.
Ought not these people, who profess to be so conscientious, and, who, no doubt, are so, to consider well before they involve the helpless in their belief? Let them "refuse to recognize matter" all they like.
They may even forego food and drink, if they please, neglect to put coal in their bins or ice in their refrigerstors---go without sleep, and incur any danger. But let them, in fairness and humanity, conflct these experiments to themselves. Let them not imperil the lives of others. For each living creature has a right to his own life, and none should take it from him. He has a right to provide himself, or to be provided with, every means possible for pre serving that life. To withhold it from him is a crime--not one punshiable by law--but certainly a moral crime.
I am not among those who think poorly of people who do not agree with
me, Indeed, it has been an accident in my life to be most profoundly attached to those who disagree with me most.
The people whose ideas have coincided with mine, have often not been among my acquainatnces. I have longed to meet them but have not done so I do not understand it I have never been able to thorougly understand any religion. I have never met anyone who could thoroughly explin a religion. But I maintain that the Christain scientist do wrong---a terrible wrong--to be involve others in the penalties that may attach to their belief.
Their aim is high---no doubt about that. But their works must be in keeping. And the dead, whose sufferings were not aleviated, who were forbidden even to ask for sympathy, make a sorry showing--- a shameful and sorry showing for this faith. ELLA W. PEATTLE
-------------------------------------------
GOVERNOR POINDEX AND LIMIT.
An Intereasting Ganie of Poker
which Beated three Gamblers
Indlanapolis Journal : A game long talked about on the river was that played by Governor George Poindexter of Mississipi. At one time he as fund commissioner, or someting of that : kind, for Mississpi. He had business in New York to negotiate money on bonds, ostensibly for internal improvemnts in Mississppi. He was returning from that city, and had a large aum of money with him. He left Louisville on a small stern hen boat and three gamblers took passge on the same boat. They knew Polinderie's foundness' for cards, that he would play high, and they made up a plot to clean him put. In those days they played poker with twenty cards. the ace, king, queen , jack and ten of each suit. The boat the several days in getting from Lousiville to Cario, and Poindezter and three sharks were busy at play.
Then they usaully played without limit, and the result as the gamblers, having played their fish long enough, were about to take him in. They had all their money on the table. Two of the gambelers dropped out. and the other, making a heavy bet, pilled up his last dollar The governor said he didn't have money enough there to call him, but he thought he might be able to borrow.
' Very well, " said the gambler, " I'll give you just ten mintes to raise the money"
Poindexter went to his state room. where he had an old carpet sack, with a trusty servant guarding it, and returned to the gaming table, followed by the darkey with the carpet sack on his shoulder.
" Now," thundered Poindexter, as he threw open the sack, which was stuffed full of bank notes, " I will see you and go you $ 3000,000 better ! And I'll give you an hour instead of ten minutes to raise it!"
The faces of those gamblers would have been a picture for a painter. They got off the boat at the first landing place wiser and much sadder men. There was about $10,000 on the table.
------------------------------------
AN UNLUCKY SWORD.
It Brought Mashal Ney to Grief and Traitor's Death.
When Napoleon the First entered Cario, on the 22d of July, 1793, he was presnted ith three swords of honor. richhly inlaid with precious stones. He brought them back to Europe, and in 1802 he gave one to Marshal Ney and another to Murat, Keeping the third for himself.
Ney recived his at an imperial reception ; the sword passed from one to another of those present. among whom was a young subalern of the Auvergne regiment.
When Napoleon escaped from Elba, Ney left the king and took sides with his former chief. After the allies entered Paris the place become too hot for him and he made preparation to get out of the counrty with a pass procured for him under a false name, but his wife and a friend persuaded him that there was really no danger, and he decieded to stay in France
|
