inters, the unfortunate spectators are
convulsed with horror, and find a text for pessimistic views about the
Providence which allows such things to be. And yet, it is very doubtful
whether the deceased, could his tongue be loosened, would remember
anything at all about the matter. We know, as students of medicine,
that though pain is usually associated with cancers and with abdominal
complaints; still, in the various fevers, in apoplexy, in blood
poisonings, in lung diseases, and, in short, in the greater proportion
of serious maladies, there is little suffering.

I remember how struck I was when first I saw the actual cautery applied
in a case of spinal disease. The white hot iron was pressed firmly into
the patient's back, without the use of any anaesthetic, and what with
the sight and the nauseating smell of burned flesh I felt faint and ill.
Yet, to my astonishment, the patient never flinched nor moved a muscle
of his face, and on my inquiring afterwards, he assured me that the
proceeding was absolutely painless, a remark which was corroborated
by the surgeon. "The nerves are so completely and instantaneously
destroyed," he explained, "that they have no time to convey a painful
impression." But then if this be so, what becomes of all the martyrs
at the stake, and the victims of Red Indians, and other poor folk
over whose sufferings and constancy we have wondered? It may be that
Providence is not only not cruel itself, but will not allow man to be
cruel either. Do your worst, and it will step in with a "No, I won't
allow this poor child of mine to be hurt"; and then comes the dulling
of the nerve and the lethargy which takes the victim out of the reach of
the tormentor. David Livingstone under the claws of the lion must have
looked like an object lesson of the evil side of things, and yet he has
left it upon record that his own sensations were pleasurable rather than
otherwise. I am well convinced that if the newly-born infant and the man
who had just died could compare their experiences, the former would have
proved to be the sufferer. It is not for nothing that the first thing
the newcomer into this planet does is to open its toothless mouth and
protest energetically against fate.

Cullingworth has written a parable which makes a paragraph for our
wonderful new weekly paper.

"The little cheese mites held debate," he says, "as to who made the
cheese. Some thought that they had no data to go upon, and some that i