A Case
Came Under My Notice Quite Recently When A Person Had Been Helpless From
Paralysis For Several Years.
Chance compelled removal to another house,
and very soon the paralysis began to disappear.
The first house may have
been damp, or there may have been some minute conditions besides. It
certainly is a marked fact that in the country, at all events, one house
is noted for its healthiness and another close by for its unhealthiness,
and the cause is not traceable to the usual and obvious reason of
drainage or water. Any one who has noticed the remarkable influence of
locality in the more evident vegetation - such, for instance, as
lichens - will be able to suppose the possibility of minute
organisms - microbe, bacteria, whatever you like to call them - being more
persistent in one spot than in another. I have often thought of the
half-magical art of the Chinese, Feng-shui, by which they discover if a
place be fortunate and fit for a house. It seems to suggest something of
this kind, and I think there is a great deal yet to be discovered by the
diligent observation of localities. The experience of the rudest country
rustic is not to be despised; an observation is an observation, whoever
makes it; there has been an air of too much science in the affected
derision of our forefathers' wisdom.
COUNTRY PLACES.
I.
High up and facing every one who enters a village there still remains an
old notice-board with the following inscription: - 'All persons found
wandering abroad, lying, lodging, or being in any barn, outhouse, or in
the open air, and not giving a good account of themselves, will be
apprehended as rogues and vagabonds, and be either publicly whipt or sent
to the house of correction, and afterwards disposed of according to law,
by order of the magistrates. Any person who shall apprehend any rogue or
vagabond will be entitled to a reward of ten shillings.' It very often
happens that we cannot see the times in which we actually live. A thing
must be gone by before you can see it, just as it must be printed before
it is read. This little bit of weather-stained board may serve, perhaps,
to throw up the present into a picture so that it may be visible. For
this inhuman law still holds good, and is not obsolete or a mere relic of
barbarism. The whipping, indeed, is abrogated for very shame's sake; so
is the reward to the informer; but the magistrate and the imprisonment
and the offence remain. You must not sleep in the open, either in a barn
or a cart-house or in a shed, in the country, or on a door-step in a
town, or in a boat on the beach; and if you have no coin in your pocket
you are still more diabolically wicked - you are a vagrom man, and the
cold cell is your proper place. This is the Jubilee year, too, of the
mildest and best reign of the Christian era.
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