The Bolivar bulletin. [volume] (Bolivar, Hardeman County, Tenn.) 1865-1888, 1886-07-30
NO. 45.

ell the turn comes. You'll scarcely
credit 1t, perhaps; but the daily record
of the tides is the most important part
of the almanac to me in my practice.
If patient who is very low lives to see
| the current turn from ebb 10 flow,
know the case is safe till the ebb sets
in again. Then, take care!-fOr death
wins. You remember the old saw in
rhyme:
when the tide comes in, death waits for dole;
| When the tide GIBBS, it takes The soul"
''WeH, it has also proved 50 in my
practice"
OF course, the weather-beaten old
practitioner did not wish TO be under.
! stood as imagining that the tidal move
ment itself is in any way concerned in
| this tendency to fatality. Nor was he
| in possession of any definite theory, his
own, or generally accepted by the pro-
fession, of the cause or causes to whose
| agency the observed fatality of ebb-tide
| is due.
cit is simply fact of my expert
ence," he said, ''that patients die at
| ebb tide; and that the remaining hours
| of the day are hours of comparative
immunity from death, except by acci-
dent. The tower of Sloan is liable to
| fall at any hour of the day, high tide
or low. One fact may give you that
possibly bears upon the scientific solu-
ton of the question; and that is that
the barometrical pressure varies
rhythmically with the ebb and flow of
| the tide. But the relation of the two
phenomena is as yet undetermined.
Indeed, l am not sure that any observer
| but myself has noticed its existence.r
BY way of illustrating his subject,
the old doctor went on to tell a story
in some particulars parallel to that of
Barl1is. This young man was very
skeptica1 as to the basis in fact of tho
ancient notion, and so addressed him
self for three years to the verifcation
of the alleged relation, by ascertaining
the hour and minute of every death
that came under his notice, and COM
pairing this datum with the tidal move
ment. Some four years ago the young
skeptic commenced his record, with a
view to verify or disprove the world-old
hypothesis. During three years of
careful observation and inquiry he
amassed a record of fifty-one deaths.
Only two of these occurred when the
tide was rising, and these two were
deaths from fatal accident. At the age
of twenty-four, the young scientist
himself was stricken down by typhoid
fever, and eventually suceumbed to the
disease, after lying for many days on
the very verge of dissolution.
On his death-bed he sent for his
brother in New York City, but the lat
ter was, unfortunately, so circunl-
stanced that it was impossible to re-
spond Immediately b the summons.
and delayed a day after the receipt of
the message. On the closing afternoon
of his life, hour after hour, till the last
incoming wave had deposited its rid
dies of the sea, the dying man waited
in patience, exclaiming now and then,
or rather signing, as the tall, old-fash-
iOned clock in the corner of the room,
like gigantic coffin with figures and
hands, told off the seconds with mo-
notonous tick-tack, tick-tack of it's tribe:
'I'm afraid Valley won't get here
till after the tide turnsl Mother, what
time is itP''
And still the tall old clock, whose
exactly circular, silveP-frosted dial re-
sembled one of the cyclopean faces in
some old Hellenic bas-relief, went on
telling of the seconds with the same
relentless tick-tack that Hawthorne
has described with such symbolicaI
significance in the ''Scarlet letter.
the last incoming wave broke on the
lonesome sands of the sound shore;
and the ebb set in that stakes a soul. 3"
The dying man lost hope as the fated
moment went by and Valley did not
come.
'Walley won't get here, mother, till
I'm gone" he murmured, YEARLY. 81
shall be dead before the tide turns
againr'
The prediction was verified. He
went out with the tide, as Barkis did in
81. 4 Ell /,
as the souls of many more have done
before and since. The longed-and-
waited-for Valley arrived less th an an
hour after the last outgowing wave had
receded-but too late The tide of life
had ebbed forever; its last pulsating
wave had receded from the enfeebled
brain.
So ended the old Doctors story
whose parallel have listened 10 many
times in the folklore of this primitive
community-stories of the old and
young, the grave and gay, whose souls,
like that of Barlzis, had gone out with
the tide.
"Mind you" reiterated the grim old
'I profFer no explanation
of the fact. But fact il is, sir, and no
fancy of sea-going popu-
lation, that the pulses of tho living hu-
man heart rise and fall with the tidal
of the sea. Form your own
theory of the phenomenon. Within
the last five years, in a district en-
bracing sixty square miles or so BY the
sea, have noted the hour and minute
of no less than ninety-three demises in
my own immediate practice, and every
soul of them has all gone out with the
tide, save four who died suddenly by
fatal accident. II is a riddle--a mystery.
But who have sat with my fingers on
the wrist of many feeble patient, and
notice the pulse rise and strengthen,
Or sink and Danish with the turning
IF the tide, know that it is fact. -
Francis Gerry Fairfield, j's albany Ar