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NK of the unsettled questions of this year is
whether the most famous health resort in Eu
rope will he forcibly closed, as another episode
In the lively war between the French govern
ment and the church. Such action has been
threatened. If the government does forbid or
ganized pilgrimages to Lourdes, a little provincial town
away up in the southwest corner of the country, at the
foot of the Pyrenees mountains, its action will be re
ceived w’ith a chorus of protest in all sorts of keys. De
vout invalids and their friends will lament in genuine
distress. Hotelkeepers and souvenir vendors, who have
iioen mailing a good living out of the visits of a quarter
of a million pilgrims every year, will groan for reasons
of their own. And hardly a railway in France, in spite
nf having always made special rates on round-trip tickets
to the place of cure, will fail to use its own,influence for
the continuance of so profitable a custom.
N'o wonder! As many as 40.000 pilgrims have gone to
iiOurdes la a single August day. The crowds are always
biggest in midsummer, though, in fact, there is more or
i ss travel to the shrine all the year round.
J he treatment at Gourdes is more through the spirit
than through the flesh—that is to say, prayers—not
medicine nor surgery—aie the main dependence, though
the water of a spring in the Virgin’s Grotto is eagerly
quaffed by invalids and used for bathing suffering bodies.
And the poor souls who jw there are often in wretched
condition: many of them have to be carried or helped
about by relatives or nurses. A good many of the at
tendants are well-to-do women, who volunteer for a
certain number of days or weeks, toiling without any
payment. Doctors are always on hand, too, but only
to examine cases and record results. The treatment is
rot In their hands. They look with skeptical or puzzled
wonder at the immense numbers who go away apparently
well, after a few days* share in the very picturesque
devotions of the place.
Comparatively few Americans go to Lourdes, but there
is within 21 hours’ journey of Now York another miracle
working report, second only to the French shrine in point
« f popularity. It is at the little Canadian village of
tvaupre. on the left bank of thp St. Lawrence river, a
f.'W miles below Quebec, or rather It would he more cor
■ * pt to say that the viH^ee is at the church of St. Anne
do Deanpre. for the shrine is the only reason for the
existence of the village, with its half-mile of convents
inns and shops.
All the year around people inake special journeys there,
but the great season for the devotion of the sick is in mid
summer. Excursion trains run from all parts of eastern
Canada; invalids make journeyi from every state in the
Union, and even go up from Mexico. In August it is
no uncommon sight to see a train of 12 to 15 cars and
two or three river steamers, crowded to their utmost
capacity, carrying to the little riverside station a new
swarm of pilgrims. Some of course, go just for the fun
of the trip, but most of the party are in sober earnest.
Follow the crowd from the station into the great church,
a few reds away, and, no matter what your own faith may
he, you cannot help being profoundly moved. The air
is full of eager longings and implorings, even though
not a voice be heard except that of the officiating priest
or some singer in the choir loft. At your right is a
grizzled workman, so stiff with rheumatism he can hardly
bend his poor old legs to kneel. At your left a pros
perous young married couple, wish honest, troubled faces,
have brought their sick child, a blinking baby, too little
to realize that it needs help at all. And around you are
all other ages and conditions In life—all conditions ex
cept the thoroughly well and happy.
Then, when you make ready to go, you notice near
'he main entrance two huge stacks of what look at. first
like broken furniture and torn upholstery. You look
again. Each heap—high euough to reach the ceiling
of an ordinary house—is composed of crutches, canes,
splints, trusses and bandages, left behind by those who
came suffering and went away cured! In another part
cf the church are a bushel or so of spectacles and eye
glasses, abandoned for the same reason. A unique bit of
circumstantial evidence certifying to one cure is a
huge double-pointed carpet-tack, framed, under glass,
with a record of its having been swallowed by a little
child, and. by St. Anne's assistance, voided without doing
any harm.
The United States Itself does not appear to be the,
right field for just this sort of cure for the sick. Though
certain places have a small local vogue of the same
sort as Lourdes and St. Anne, none of them become
•videly celebrated. Americans more often take things
in a matter-of-fact way and flock to centers of healing
where scientific men point the way. But the M. D.'s
themselves keep changing their estimates of curative
value, so the crowds pour first in one direction, then
in another. Only a distinctly elderly person can have j
known Saratoga Springs in its painty days as the greatest
health resort of the east. Its supremacy of prestige long
ago passed away. The Hot Springs of Arkansas are still j
largely frequented, hut more and more people are turn- j
ing to places of comparatively recent vogue, like the
sulphur baths of Colorado, the sea beaehes <>f southern
California, or the high, dry plateau camps of Arizona,
where the sun m;fk< s the only outside application and
clean, dry air constitutes the only dose to be swallowed. |
If an invalid has money enough, he usually turns to \
Europe. J. Pierpont Morgan thinly; Aix-les-Bains is the
place if all others for undoing the effects of strenuous j
life on Wall street. Queen Victoria used to have a fond
ness for the Riviera, and spent months regaining strength
and serene poise in a sunny villa on a flowery mountain
side at Mentone. Edward VII. some years ago •dis
covered'’ the Rhineland resort at Homburg, so far as Eng
lish visitors were concerned. The place had been fairly
popular before that with the Germans themselves, but
after the (then) prince of Wales found its spring water
a panacea for liver trouble and indigestion, troops of
moneyed Britons had indigestion, too, and the place be
came almost as much English as German. Of late years
Great Britain’s arbiter of fashion has largely transferred
his affections to Marienbad. and. naturally enough, that
Austrian mountain village is now a sort of Mecca for
those who suffer from the same unromantic ill as the
British sovereign, namely, overweight. It is now declared
by enthusiasts that the fountain of youth, which a six
teenth century Spaniard sought in Florida, is really bub
bling up at Marienbad. Middle-aged persons with un
desirable waist measures are confidently encouraged to
believe that the Marienbad regimen, if “follered faithful."
will restore long-lost slenderness and grace. Hut it is not
an easy regimen. This miracle must be earned. You rise
at six a. m. or earlier, dress apd go out, fasting, to the
promenade, where other early risers are flocking to the
springs. A king, a grand duke, a Parisian butterfly, a
Chicago business man. no matter what jour worldly
estate may be, you meekly drink a certain prescribed
quantity of spring water and walk up and down long,
tree-shaded promenades to the encouraging accompani
ment of a really fine band concert. Sometimes jou sip
your dose as you walk along. Even if it rains, your de
votions to the goddess of health must be duly paid, though
the walking may be done under cover in a long colonnade.
The prescribed distance accomplished, you go to break
fast—literally to break your fast, but (if you take the
thing.conscientiously) by no means to feast. Diet is sup
posed to be strictly ordered and limited, but as the flesh
is often weak, though the spirit be ever so willing, some
pilgrims to Marienbad sell their purpose, as Esau, his
birthright, tor good things to eat. and go away as portly
as ever, to complain that, in spite of spring-water drinks
’and baths, the cure isn’t what it is cracked up to be!
Tbe ether famous health resorts on the continent are j
usually more or less like Marienbad, though some are ou
a much larger scale. Aix, Spa, Wiesbaden, Karlsbad,
Baden Baden, each has its specially promised, or at
least hoped-for, cure to attract the afflicted. Tbe win
ter resoits In the Engadirie valley, away up on a lofty
shoulder of the Alps, just above the Italian frontier, hold
out the hope of a new lease of life for sufferers from lung
diseases, ar.d the popularity of St. Moritz, Davos and
other Swiss towns in that vicinity is increasing at a
tremendous rate. People have a good time there, too.
if they are at all equal to active sports, for skating,
coasting, tobogganing, ski-running and every sort of
snowy fun are so much in vogue one would almost think
staid, grown-up men and women really had found the
fountain of youth up there among the ice-sheeted moun
tains.
* “Newest England,” as a recent writer cleverly called
New Zealand, is ahead of Europe and America in so
many lines of political and social interests, one is pre
pared to find it also w-ell toward the front in the matter
of considerations for public health. A large district in
the beautiful mountain region which they call the “Swit
zcrland of the Pacific" is reserved for public benefit, am
the government itself maintains an exceedingly attrac
tive health resort near the famous geysers. Only, as
New Zealand is about as far south of the equator as
Italy is north of the equator, its seasons are precisely
the reverse of ours, with Christmas set iu midsummoi.
That turns ihe caiendar of a health resort, like Rotorna.
upside down; but health conies, all the same, and the
wearied makers of Newest England go back to town
freshened and braced up for another year of business,
polities and sport.
Oiiental people take to Ihe occult as ducks to water.
It is net surprising to find lower-class Chinese and Japan
se resulting to marvel-working centers of one sort and
another to drive away sickness. The degree of educa
tion reached by the individual makes a great difference
there, just as it does here. As the whole world knows,
Japanese surgeons and trained nurses are second to
none in the whole world in their practiced familiarity
with ail the best modern methods of work. On the other
hand, a large constituency of common people cling to
curious superstitions of their own. In the garden of the
Shinto Temple of Kitano Tenjin, at Kyoto, there is a
certain favorite image of a bronze bull, which many be
lieve will cure all sorts of aches and pains if a person
rubs or strokes the part of its body corresponding to the
one where they are ailing. The treatment has at least
the merit of being simple and cheap, and there are
plenty of old women in Kyoto ready to testify that it is
efficacious, too.
If you are inclined to think contemptuously of pagan
granny in Japan, remember how many people you your
self have known who rap on wood whenever they mention
that they haven't had a bad cold all winter! We do not
average so far ahead of the east, after all.
The very oldest Of the world's .resorts for marvelous
cures is in India, at Benares. Compared with the prestige
of that spot on the left bank of the Ganges, even the most
time-honored resort in Europe or America is a mere
fad of to-day. The great German scholar. Max Muller, who
devoted years to the study of oriental thought, once de
clared: ‘ When Babylon was an upstart, contending with
lordly Nineveh, and the early Jewish heroes and kings
/were welding the Israelitisli tribes into a nation, while
Athens was hardly more than a name, and Rome not yet
i hought of, hither toiled streams of wf&tful pilgrims.”
And to Benares they are still toiling, even in this year
of grace. 1908. India is considerably bigger than the
whole United States,; so that the distances to be traversed
are often hundreds of miles, but at the very time when
this article is being written sick folk from every part of
the land are making slow, painful journeys on foot to
reach that particular place on the Ganges where the
gods have cured so many aiiing ones. Swarms of pilgrims
constantly fill Ihe riverside temples and line the ghats
where bathers undress and dress again. Rich and poor
jostle each other on the bank. Clean and filthy s and
side by side waist deep in the ill-smelling water, taking
it up in their hands, snuffing it up their nostrils, in sud
lime indifference to the fact that only ten feet away a
corpse is soaking in the same holy water, preparatory for
the funeral pyre, and that mangy dogs arc wading into
the same fetid Mth, on indescribable errands of their
own. British authorities say that, while great numbers
of cures are claimed to be worked at Benares, the place
is actually one of the worst distributing centers of germ
diseases in the whole empire.
The newest American resort for the healing of man
kind's ills is, as most people have recently heard, a Protest
ant Episcopal church in Boston, until lately regarded as
a stronghold of conservatism. The work is intentionally
limited to certain lines, especially to functional troubles
like nervous prostration and hysteria.
The treatment is a combination of spiritual inspiration
and encouragement with up-to-date twentieth-century
medical science, and therefore differs fundamentally from
“Christian Science,” which puts a taboo on the educated
nhvsician It is announced that the work begun in Bos
ton 'is to be taken up and developed by certain churches
in New York, where the still higher tension at which
people live makes nervous disorders even more prevalent
Maybe we'have here the establishment of new shrines
of healing- even more far-reachiDg in their influence than
those already famous. Time will telh g MEHRIAM.
MADE CHIEF BY WIFE
STORY OF RISE OF FRENCH RE
PUBLIC’S PRESIDENT.
Fallieres Was an Indolent Young Law
yer Till Wife, Stung by Sneers of
Relatives, Planned Future
for Gifted Husband.
London.—The recent visit to Eng
land of President Armand Fallieres of
France at a time when the public
hadn't ceased wagging about the rise
of H. H. Asquith to the prime minis
try and the amount of credit due his
tactful and friends-winning wife, Mar
got Tennant that wras, have given the
active friends of the other sex re
newed room for boasting.
President Fallieres isn't a self-made
man. He lacks the initiative, the en
ergy and the ambition for that some
times sorely miscarried process. Presi
dent Fallieres is the product, so you
are fold,' of his ambitious and ener
getic wife, Mme. le Presidente.
Madame is all that the president of
the French republic is not, and it is
entirely through her desire to be re
venged upon certain sneering relatives
that her distinguished husband is not
to-day the mayor of the sleepy old
world town of Nerac, in Gascony. Had
it not been for Mme. Falliere's force
and diplomacy her gifted other half
; would now b > leading the sheltered
! and stinted life of an ordinary legal
| piactitioner in his modest country
j home instead of the luminous career
, of head of his nation, entertained by
| royalty across the channel, pai l $250.
000 a year, force! to live in the great
j white Elysee palace an l be shot at
by anarchistic muddle brains (in com
1 mon with most of the blessed of mod
ern greatness).
The true facts about Clement Ar
i mand Fallieres (senutimes also called
Eugene by these who know the full
j utas of his sundry cognomens), have
been greatly exaggerated. You may
be told, if you care to read, that Fai
. lieres was bora in a smith's shop, but
in the most straitened of circum
I stances; that he rose from the depths
of poverty through his own efforts,
and more cf the usual exaggerated
j nonsense attributed to those who may
rise from comparative obscurity to no
! (ability.
! As a matter of fact., Fallieres was
the grandson of the b’acksmith in th'*
myth, while his father was a thrifty
(not to say wealthy) wine grower.
The son had a reasonably complete
education and was a law student in
the little city of Nerac. He was by
no means dull, but nature had instilled
into his bones a certain lethargic es
sence not a bit rare in a Gascon.
Henry of Navarre knew the Gascons
as poor swordsmen; a later genera
tion may find them poor workers.
Aside from this indisposition for
special efforts the young lawyer was
distinguished as a dreamer. “Cracked
brained revolutionist” and “feather
brains" were some of the really fine
epithets to which relatives of Mme.
Fallieres treated the future president
of a great people when they learned
of the prospective alliance. Fallieres
didn’t mind much. In common with
dreamers he understood his superiori
ty and would have let it be. Not so
madame.
Once married to her brilliant but
indolent barrister, Mme. Fallieres
brought about a peace with her father
and secured for her socially inferior
husband the rich legal practice of the
elder lawyer. She established a sort
of provincial political salon at Nerac.
had the happy faculty of making
friends and the rare prescience of dis
tinguishing those whose devotion
might prove disastrous. With herself
always in the background she labored
with the vim peculiar to a hurt, ambi
tious woman and she worked better
than may be told in mere words.
To-day the spiteful relatives bow to
the husband who has no social superi
ors in France—and possibly to the
skill of his wife.
Not Much!
“So you are one of those who want
to be let alone?”
“Yes, sir. What we want is a little
sunshine and not so much tinkering
wiih other people’s business.”
“What line are you in?”
“I am the owner of a number of
buildings that my agents are renting
to people who keep screens in front
of the windows. It may be that they
are not strictly moral—some of 'em—
but it's not my business to go around
looking through chinks for the pur
pose of trying to discover things I
mightn’t happen to like.”—Chicago
itecord-Herald.
The Path to Peace.
“Harmony is what 1 want,” said the
political leader.
“Don’t go too far,” counseled an ad
viser. “Let's not get rash. We can’t
kill all the fellows on tho other side,
you know.”
The Final Test.
The angel was making up the list.
“Put me down.” said the man, "as
one who will admit that my dog bites
and my baby cries.”
And lo! Ben Adliem’s name led all
the rest!
