A friend in need is a friend indeed, says the old saw. Quiteso, Fair weather friends are plentiful enough, goodness knows: the kind that drop in on you, talk to you, and borrow things from you: the kind that never bring that five shillings, but ask for five more just to make it ten," that breed of friends, I say, are as thick as flies over a sugar bow!, But the sort who stick by you when you are down on your luck, who put their shoulders against your cart wheels at a nasty spot in the road—why, you want to hunt for ¢hem with spectacles and lantern, Yet, after all, such friends do exist, and forty of them turned
needed them badly. How it happened he up, without any hunting, when Mr. Knowles tells us in the following statement, T, Jonathan Knowles, of Lotten Fen, near Ramsey, Hunts, do solemnly and sincerely declare as follo was always a stron man up to April, 1889, when I began to fee ill, At first I felt dull, low-spirited and had no energy. I had a poor appetite and for days and days could eat nothing. What I did eat Inid like lead on my chest. I had a gnawing, sinking feeling at the pit of the stomach, and was constantly sick, vomiting upo green fluid. At times the heaving an straining was so great the blood came up. My hands and feet were always cold, and clammy sweats used to break out all over me, I never felt warm even when I sat before the fire. Next a hacking dry cough, with severe ins at my chest and lungs, began to trouble ind my breathing became short and hue-ried.
Toon got so weak that I had to give up my work, for I could only walk a few The cough and shortness of breath got grad-ards without stopping to take my breath, ually worse and worse, and I began to lose flesh rapidly. At first a doctor from Ramsey came to see me, he gave me medicines and cod liver oil, but held out no hope of my getting better, and after attending me three months he recommended me to go to the hospital, I got x recommendation from my mas-for, Mr. David Carney, Wellington House, St.' Mary's, and went to Peterborough Infirm ary. I had to be taken in a trap to the railway station, such was my weak state, The doctors at the Infirmary had me stripped and sounded my lungs, and said one of my lungs was almost gone, and that I was ina consumption. They gave me medicines, also cod liver oil, but nothing did me any good. After being under their care and treatment for three months I was discharged as incurable. My wife and relations now lost all hope of my ever getting well again, and everyone who saw me looked upon me as being in a decline. My cheeks had sunk and I had wasted away until I was only a shadow of my former self, vou could even seen the sinews through my flesh. I was nothing but skin and bone, having lost three stone in weight. I got up every day but had to sit in an arm. chair all day Yonge T could only move w few yards and that with the aid of stick. In this half-dead, half-alive state I continued for nearly two years, and was looked upon as doomed. During the latter part my wife did not think I should live from one week to another, and friends who came to see me used to Poor Jack will never come out gain." In December, 1890, when I was at my worst, a neighbour of mine, Mrs. King, True Briton Inn, told me of a medicine called
half a bottle of it. I had no faith in anything Mother Seigel's Curative Syrup and gave me doing me any good but I took it. Having been so long out. of work I could not get money for more of the Syrup. So strongly were my friends convinced that the medicine would do me good that a subscription was started and over 40 people subscribed to enable me to get a further supply. Mrs. King got the Syrup from Mr. J. Freeman, Chemist, Ramsey, and kept me supplied with it. After Thad taken three bottles of the Syrup I felt Denefit. I kept on with the medicine and
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.