Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/126

4, 1860.] those wretched hours had presented itself—and I resolved at once to profit by it.

Without a moment’s delay the horse was cast loose from the shafts, and Annie was tied securely to his back, then with a few words of encouragement and hope to the poor young girl, doomed to so many hardships and dangers, I took the halter in my hand, and sending the horse into the water, leaped in myself, and then commenced swimming to the shore.

But the struggle was a long and arduous one, for we were more than a mile from the land, and both the horse and I were cramped and stiffened with cold. Many a time I thought the effort was in vain, and that neither the horse nor I would ever reach the shore, that to my weariness seemed to recede as we advanced. Moreover, the current pressed strongly against us, striving to sweep us down beyond our goal, against the steep rocky barrier that lined the water. Fortunately the hot springs had raised the temperature of the water, for poor Annie’s girlish form was almost hidden in it, as the waves gurgled and surged around her, sometimes even sweeping above her head. But the young girl’s courage rose with the occasion, and she bore unmurmuringly this new phase of suffering.

But they strive hard whose prize is life, and after more than an hour of hope, and doubt, and fear, we reached the land we had never hoped to tread again. As we emerged from the water the wintry wind pierced through our saturated clothing, with an icy chill that threatened to freeze them on us. Providentially, in our need, we found a settler’s house near at hand, where we obtained dry clothes, refreshment, and the loan of a horse and sleigh, in which we were soon speeding along the road to Tircouaga. As we proceeded, fresh fears for her father’s and sister’s fate assailed poor Annie, which were only set at rest when she found herself in their arms.

Since then, the chances of a soldier’s life have brought me through many adventures, but none have left so deep an impression on my mind, as that long and terrible night upon the ice; nor shall I ever cease to remember with deep affection and esteem the young girl who was my gentle and heroic companion in its suffering and danger. 2em

person reckons among his acquaintances individuals who are peculiarly “touchy” upon certain points. In an ordinary way it is plain-sailing enough with them; but just venture upon certain topics and they are “nowhere” in a moment. Pressure upon some hidden mental spring makes all sorts of secret drawers of the mind shoot out suddenly, to the amazement of the unconscious operator, and he will go away with a firm conviction that there is some screw loose in that particular quarter at least. Familiar as we are with mental peculiarities of this kind, there is a parallel range of physical ones, which are generally very little known. The physician who sounds the depths of our bodies, and knows how oddly the mucous membrane of one individual behaves, and what eccentricities are shown by the epidermis of another, is aware that this “too, too solid flesh” can have fads and fancies, tastes and dislikes, and show them, too, in a manner as decided and demonstrative as though the mental instead of the grosser organs were implicated. These physical idiosyncracies sometimes put on such extraordinary features, that we fear, in relating some of them, the reader will think we are romancing. For instance, he will readily assent to the old saying, that “what is one man’s meat is another man’s poison;” nevertheless, he will doubt our good faith when we tell him of a man being poisoned by a mutton chop. Dr. Prout, in his valuable work on the Stomach, however, relates just such a case. This individual, with a contumacious stomach, could not touch mutton in any form. It was at first supposed that this dislike arose from caprice; the meat was therefore disguised, and given to him in some unknown form, but with the invariable result of producing violent vomiting and diarrhœa: and from the severity of the effects, which were those of a virulent poison, there can be little doubt that if the use of mutton had been persisted in, his life would soon have been destroyed. Strange and irrational as this behaviour may appear to be, yet it is only a rather exaggerated example of stomachic capriciousness. Some persons cannot touch veal, others are prostrated by a few grains of rice. We happen to know an individual that is immediately seized with all the symptoms of English cholera if he takes as much as a single grain of rice. Such is his susceptibility to the presence of this article of food, that the most infinitesimal portions are instantly detected. Thus, for instance, having been seized with illness immediately after drinking beer, it was discovered that a grain or two had been introduced into the bottle for the purpose of giving it a head. Eggs are equally obnoxious to some individuals. Mr. Erasmus Wilson relates the case of a patient who was seized with a violent bowel complaint suddenly, without any apparent cause. Knowing, however, his proclivity to violent gastric irritation from touching eggs, he at once declared that he must have partaken of the obnoxious food. It could not be traced, however, until the cook acknowledged that she had glazed a pasty, of which he had partaken, with the white of an egg.

Shell-fish is well known to disarrange the digestive organs of some people. We happen to be acquainted with a lady who unfortunately partook of a lobster-salad for supper at a ball with the inconvenient result of almost immediately breaking-out into a rash over the face, neck, and arms. For this reason mussels, shrimps, and cockles cannot be touched by many individuals. In order to understand the immediate and extraordinary effect thus produced upon the skin in consequence of partaking of food irritating to the stomach, we must inform our reader that the lining of the whole digestive apparatus is only a continuation of the epidermis. Let us imagine a double night-cap, one end of which is thrust into the other, and we have at once the true idea of the relation the epidermis, or outside