Why do the leaves fall? "Bless me, I don't know," you answer conte it is one of nature's arrangements.'
Precisely; but why did nature ¢o arrange? ime always, with meaning of ithered flowers, daylight fading in mid-afternoon, and winters cold ynd desolation? When you find out why the Teaves fall you will have discovered one of nature's deepest secreta—why men die, should Str, Willitn Steel have weitven such Suppose we try an easier problem, Why sentence as this?—"'A¢ the fall of the leaf every. year I got into such a siate that I took no pleasure in anything."
fo doubt there are minds so highly struc; 0 feel'keenly the influence of out wai conditions, changes of the weather and of the and so on. But they are rare, and ical purposes they ought to be rare, Our friend Mr. Steel, happily for him, was not one of them.. All the same he was a miserable man "very time the leaves began to rattle to the ground.
Here's the way he puts it: At the fall of the Iraf every year I felt Ianguid, tired avd wears, and took no plenture in anything Tate. Ihud pain and fulness att he chest aint tides. Then there was a horrible pain at the pit of the stomach, which nothing relieved."
Now this sort of thing would spoil a man's Plsssure any time of year, but the oddity in tr, Steel's case is thut it always coincided with what you may call nature's bedtime.—y After a few months," he say, the pain and' distress would be easier for a while, but autumn approached I became as bud as ever. In September 1890, Thad an unusually bad time of it. I couldn't touch morsel of food, and presently got so weak I was unable to be poulticed, the pain was so bad. I went fo staid on my lege. Every few baure T bad to bed and stayed there for a week, with doctor attending me. He relieved me a Tittle, but somehow the didn't succeed in getting to, the bottom of my ailment,"
That may bey but 1 does at quite follow that the doctor was in, the dark as to Mr. Steel's ailment. He might have understood it right enough, yet failed to cure it because had no remedy for it amon That happens li the while Still, may ask, What's the good of knowing the nature of a complaint if we possess no medicine to.cure it? There you ba us; no use all, io he sure.
Well, Mr. Steel goes on to sa} I continued very feeble, and was hardiy"able te walk across the floor. Hf I the 7th of December, 1897, inion Chapel, Chefoo, by the Rev. E.
the Rev. Canvix Wionr, of the American Presbyterian Church, to Mi Sax Exeenics, of the China Inland
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.