Are you aware that a nerve, called the optic nerve, passes from the back of the eye to the brain, and at once conveys to it what affects the organ of vision? I daresay you are not aware of that, and yet that is known to every medical student, I may say, to every educated individual. Strange to relate, this has been universally known; and yet, entangled in erroneous traditions, the Faculty have failed to act on their knowledge. Here it is that my system comes in to overturn all exploded doctrines of medicine. I do not give baths, poultices, embrocations, powders, pills, elixirs, draughts. I go direct to the brain through the eye. I warrant you, my medicine and my treatment are infallible." The farmer was greatly im pressed. "Dang it!" said he, "I wish you would throw your dust into my eyes. I don't mind paying you for it. What is your charge?" “Five-and-six for such as you,' I said. "The quality—a guinea.' He drew forth his purse at once and handed me the money. "There now," said he, "blow away." I sent a puff of dust into his hand for the old lady; and if she is better, dang it! in a day or two we'll have you throw your dust in our eyes again.” Ten minutes after I had deserted the paths of Tommy, I had half a guinea in my pocket. After I had puffed dust into the eyes of the farmer's wife, and promised to call again, I hastened to the office of the principal local newspaper and inserted an advertisement: "DR ROBERT FLOPJOHN, "DM.C.S., Salamanca; D.P.L., Mantua; Professor of Experimental Chemistry, Leyden, is visiting this town for a few days only. He is in possession of a panacea for all maladies, having arrived by a concatenation of evidence at a conclusion which has escaped all empirics. Dr R. F. has practised for a number of years in the principal towns of the Continent, and tried his specific on a number of complicated cases, and has never known it to fail. In offering this new-yet world-oldremedy to the public, it is not like bringing out an untried article. For over twenty-five years it has been put to the severest test of experience. Fully understanding its ingredients, Dr R. F. is prepared to say that not only will no injurious results follow, but that absolute success must ensue. He has never known it fail to either relieve or cure the disease for which it was taken. He has letters Ireland, Germany, France, Belgium, from all parts of Great Britain and Holland, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Russia, Turkey, and Greece, from those that have been cured of different complaints, which he will be proud to show to any one who desires to see them. Consultation from 10 A.M. to 5 P.M., and again from 6 P.M. to 9 the eyes of my patients all day and till late at night. 10 P.M. was too late to receive; 9 P.M. too late to knock off work. Patients of all classes came to me. Some paid guineas, some half-guineas, most five-and-sixpence. I was now easy as to my future: it was secured. It was secured a week after I had trampled on Tommy. As time passed, and I found that I had more patients than I could attend to, I extended my operations. I advertised in every country paper I could hear of. I spent hundreds of pounds in advertisements, and every hundred I spent thus, brought me in ten per cent that is, a thousand pounds. Of course I could not attend to all who sought an interview. I therefore did up little parcels of dust in blue, red, and gold paper. I had them stamped as quack medicines, and sold them at 2s. 1d. per packet. The injector I sold sepa rate at 5s. But even this did not satisfy me. I announced that I would give away a packet to every one who would apply to me gratis. I put this advertisement in something like three hundred newspapers, and the result was that applications poured in to me from every quarter. I am afraid to say how many thousand packets of common road-dust I thus distributed free of charge. With each packet I enclosed a printed form, to the effect that though the powder was given gratis, yet the necessary apparatus for its injection into the eyes could not be given away without a small charge of five shillings to cover the outlay of its manufacture. These little squirts of glass and india-rubber cost me three-halfpence each, of the manufacturer. I knew that I sold 3600 of them, which alone brought in £900, less their cost, Sale of squirts, That made £877 10 0 1912 10 0 1300 0 0 £4090 0 0 I have not deducted the cost of advertising and printing, nor of the red, blue, and gold paper in which I wrapped up the dust, nor of the sealing-wax impressed with my seal (without which none was genuine). Roughly calculated, throwing dust in folk's eyes brought me in an annual income of £3500. But the most extraordinary feature of the case was, that I received testimonials as to the efficacy of my remedy from all quarters, without any solicitation. I subjoin a few-a very few-as samples : Case 3.-Henry Walker of Bristol says: "The eye-powders have completely cured my chilblains. I have been a martyr to this distressing complaint every winter since I was a child. The chilblains form on hands, feet, ears, and, most distressing of all, on the point of my nose. Since I have used your eye-dust, my chilblains have entirely disappeared.' Case 4.-A lady from Liverpool writes: "My child was suffering from the thrush. I administered a few of your powders with such an unpronounceable name, and a wonderful cure has been effected. I would not be without them in the house for worlds." These will suffice; they are taken at random from a vast pile of similar letters. Indeed every post brings me in recognitions of the wonderful results that have followed on the throwing of dust into people's eyes. You might suppose that those who had once tried my remedy and found it to fail, would have given it up in disgust. No such thing. They went on with it with unshaken credulity, till laid hold of by some other quack. I was not, however, quite easy in mind that the nature of my specific would not be found out and my method "blown." I there fore cast about for a more durable foundation than common road-dust on which to rear the fabric of my fortunes. At There was an ugly lady who was still an old maid, very rich, who suffered from a complication of imaginary disorders. I attended her for some time, and blew a great amount of dust into her eyes. last I proposed to her, and she became my wife, and made me absolute master of her fortune. I have no love for her; indeed her presence inspires me with disgust. This, however, I do not let her see. I still blow dust into her eyes, as I do into the eyes of all the world; and I find that the secret of success in this world consists in maintaining the outward demeanour and expressing the sentiments of Tommy, but modelling the conduct upon the principles of Harry. BERLIN IN 1884.-CONCLUSION. IV. she has always been particularly happy in the choice of her friends and servants, who are, as a rule, sincerely devoted to her. Emperors and empresses, kings and queens, princes and princesses and educated on the social summits-may lay claim to a wider horizon than the humbler people who move below them and have to elbow their way through the crowd; but they cannot see and know human nature in its details like those who are in familiar contact with humanity, and to whom the majority of men and women are really fellow-creatures. Therefore I have, as a rule, my doubts as to the knowledge of human nature possessed by kings or queens. They may, by natural THE Emperor William stands alone at the head of the German nation. Nobody is on the same level. Even those most nearly connected with him occupy places far below his throne. His wife, the Empress-Queen Augus--all those, in fact, who are born ta, cannot be said, and does not claim, to have any influence on the Government of Germany. She is surrounded by a small circle of devoted friends and servants, with whom she has led for some years past a quiet and almost retired life. The Empress is very gracious to strangers who are presented to her, and has that liking for foreigners which, up to 1871, was pretty general all over Germany, but has gradually disappeared since the Germans have grown proud of their own nationality. But the Empress's feelings do not seem to have changed with those of her people. The Emperor, too, has remained unaltered; but then he was always thoroughly German, or rather Prussian, and never shared those cosmopolitan ideas which were the fashion in Germany up to the time of the French war. Germans have learned to like this in him; and in certain circles the fondness of the Empress for foreign literature, foreign arts, and foreigners in general, is not seen with pleasure. However, if this predilection is a weakness, as many assert, it is at all events an amiable one, and foreigners, at any rate, have no reason to complain of it. It is said that the Empress shows rare discernment in her appreciation of men and women, and that gift or careful study, succeed in guessing a great deal of what is going on in the hearts of ordinary mortals, but they cannot have any personal experience to be compared with that of other men and women. Kings and queens have very few fellow-creatures: they have subjects, and that is quite another thing. When they were children and misbehaved, they were repri manded with mildness; they never had to fear the wrath of an irascible teacher; they never had to fight for their position at school; old men approached them respectfully; even the children who were allowed to play with them knew how to keep a proper distance between the princes and themselves, and to leave them, so to speak, alone. Young princes, however rational and liberal their education may be, do not grow up like other children. You may always notice in them a premature seriousness, which, later on, develops into dignity, but into a peculiar kind of dignity, a natural majesty, which no other man, be he ever so dignified, acquires. Great familiarity, such as may be sometimes seen between princes and their present or future subjects, proves, in most cases, a want of tact on the part of the latter, and is generally put an end to one day by the prince, who bears it for a time while it amuses him, but in the long-run becomes tired and impatient of it. When Falstaff approaches King Henry V., who, as Prince Hal, has allowed him every familiarity, he is disdainfully repulsed: "I know thee not, old man fall to thy prayers; Make less thy body hence, and more thy grace." Most of the familiar friends of princes are more or less of the Falstaff type. Those who fre ap quently have occasion to proach princes, if they are careful of their own dignity, will also be careful of the dignity of the prince, and will always speak respectfully to him. A gentleman of great tact and of high position, who is brought often into personal contact with great personages, once told me that he made it a rule always to speak to a sovereign or a prince of the royal house as if he had just been presented to him: "I never presume on past kindness; one cannot shake hands with a sovereign; if he offers me his hand, I respectfully seize it and bend over it." This is quite correct, and I doubt whether any other fashion would always meet with the prince's approval. But this shows how difficult it must be for a king or a queen to get a clear insight into character. The Empress of Germany possesses in the highest degree the native dignity of a princess who has never been approached otherwise than with the deepest respect. She has a placid, benignant countenance, in which the large deep blue eyes still shine with singularly youthful kindness. Some time ago she met with a serious accident. She fell while walking in her room, and sustained such severe injuries that from that day she has not been able to walk. On rare occasions she shows herself at Court, where her appearance cannot fail to inspire sympathy and pity. The traces of long suffering are clearly visible on her wan face-a face that was once very beautiful. To see her at her drawing-room, unable to move without help, surrounded by her ladies and gentlemen in waiting, youth, rank, and beauty passing and bending before the throne, while her eye wanders around with a sad, helpless expression to witness this, and to know that this poor invalid, to whom life seems to offer nothing henceforward but suffering, is Augusta, the Empress of Germany, the Queen of Prussia,-begets many philosophical reflections which I will leave every reader to make for himself. Of the Emperor's two children the Crown Prince alone need be mentioned here. His sister, Princess Louise, born in 1838, married, in 1856, the Grand Duke of Baden, and since her marriage has only left her own house now and then to pay short visits to her parents at Berlin. The Crown Prince is very popular in Berlin. This may be said of almost all the members of the Hohenzollern family, but more particularly of him and of his eldest son Prince William. The heir |