8 P,IRD NOTES 



No doubt a fickle, riotous stream like this is 

 difficult to keep in order ; sometimes it tears down 

 its own trees, but that is no reason why we should 

 make matters worse instead of better. 



Eiotous it is indeed at times, and furious, and 

 cruel ! Three persons have been drowned in it 

 since I came here. It was quiet when a poor old 

 woman, nearly blind, walked into it in broad 

 daylight, and was drowned, though there were 

 houses near. It was a broad, boiling, devastating, 

 storm-lashed torrent when a poor boy was blown 

 off a foot-bridge into it before his father's face, and 

 carried down so swiftly that rescue was impossible. 

 That same night a poor woman, half mad, who 

 lived in a cottage near it, was left for a few 

 minutes by the son and husband who had been 

 told to watch, and who only left the house to 

 secure something threatened by the wind, and 

 away was she out into the storm and darkness, 

 and into the boiling rushing flood and the darker 

 gulf of eternity ! No doubt the nerve-storm was 

 at its height in her poor frame also. I have 

 known such coincidences before. 



Those who study the connection between 

 storms in the sun and magnetic storms, the aurora 

 borealis and allied phenomena, would do well to 

 take. the nerve-storms into consideration also. I 

 am persuaded that they are .closely connected, and 

 that much might be learnt from the connection. 



