An English writer thus speaks of an indiscreet adventure of a costermonger and an electric eel:
Before this gymnotus was publicly exhibited it was deposited at a French hotel in the neighborhood of Leicester Square. A burly fishmonger’s man, named Wren, brought in the daily supply of fish to the establishment, when some of the servants told him they had an eel so large that he would be afraid to pick it up. He laughed at the idea of being afraid of an eel, and when taken to the tub boldly plunged in both hands to seize the fish. A hideous roar followed this attempt. Wren had experienced a demonstration of the “psychic force” of the electrical eel, and his terror so largely exaggerated the actual violence of the shock, that he believed for the remainder of his life that he was permanently injured by it. He had periodical spasms across the chest, which could only be removed by taking a half-quarter of gin. As he was continually narrating his adventure to public-house audiences, and always had a spasm on concluding, which his hearers usually contributed to relieve, the poor fellow’s life was actually shortened by the shock from the gymnotus.
The man’s recurring pains usually made their appearance at places and times when thirst could be quenched. Many bodily ills are simulated or imaginary.
(2499)
PREVENTION
John S. Wise records this conversation with Grover Cleveland:
“I ought to have a monument over me when I die.” “I am sure of that, Mr. Cleveland,” I answered; “but for what particular service?” “Oh, not for anything I have ever done,” said he, “but for the foolishness I have put a stop to! If you knew the absurd things proposed to me at various times while I have been in public life—things which I sat down on, and sat down hard on—you would say so, too!”—“Personal Reminiscences of Cleveland,” The Saturday Evening Post.
(2500)
In morals, quite as truly as in physics, the profitable time to deal with any evil is in its incipient stage: