The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1908-09-20
ORIGINAL FAITH
HEALER IS DEAD
Mrs. Eddy's f val Dies At An
vergne, France
OF TEN EFFECTED CURES
Immortal" Members of French Acad-
envy Despoil Valuable Art Figures
In Lighting Matches on Them
In the Vestibule.
BY PAUL VlLLIERS.

Paris, September 19.-If Mrs. Eddy be-
leves she originated Christian Science,
she is very much mistaken, for an old
wizard of s5, who has just died In
Avergne practiced the doctrine more
than half a century ago among the I'M
sophisticated peasantry of that province
He did not call his method Christian
Science, but gave out that he healed in
secret" and gave absent treatment,
and very often seems to have been as
good as his word. When he called he
never touched a patient, prescribed no
medicine and advised no change in diet
or manner of living. All he asked was;
"Have YOU faith in God? Are you con-
WINGED that the Almighty can cure your
If the patient said YES" the healer
merely urged him to put faith in God,
who cures the sick, and never lose cour-
age"
He then went home to pray-and his
patients were cured. Some of them, at
least. said they were, and their number
was large enough to make the wizard
widely known When he had become
known all over Avergne his fame spread
abroad, and during the last Is years of
his life patients came to him from all
over Europe, chiefly from switzerland
and Germany. His death is looked upon
as a public calamity in Avergne, where
all the peasantry mourn him. The an
cient healer, whose name was Vigner,
was, at any rate, sincere, and a great
deal more disinterested than the Chris
tan Scientists of the United States, for
he never accepted any fee for his consul
tations and invariably returned even
gifts sent him by patients whom he had
cured by faith
Who would have thought that the 'im-
mortal members of the French acade-
my are incorrigible smokers, and that in
their anxiety to light their cigars they
do not even hesitate to desecrate the eff
igies of their deceased brethren? The
marble bust of Prosper Merrimee was
formerly placed in the vestibule of the
Institute of France in a handy corner.
Academicians found the marble Merri-
NEE particularly convenient for lighting
up as they went out, and struck their
matches for years on the hapless neck of
the author of Carmen" the cigarette
girl. Merrimee had long been streaked
and unsightly and the chief porter, out
of respect for him, at last removed
the bust. In his place he put Jules Fa-
vre, either because he hoped the states
man would awe the 'immortals' more,
or because his complexion mattered less.
Anyhow, the academicians did not re-
spect him a whit more than the author,
and the bust of Jules Favre now suffers
from the same streaky complaint as did
that of Merrimee, and in an even more
acute form 1t seems that Jules Favre
is in a special kind of Carara marble
which is even better than the Merrimee
marble for lighting French matches,
which, as every American tourist knows,
require rather violent methods of igni-
ton. The chief porter has given Jules
Favre up in despair, and the statesman
will now permanently be left to his fate
as the matchbox of the "immortals."
A new terror has been added to the
street traffic of Paris by the adoption
of an unwecome substitute for the ia
miliar bicycle bell or horn. The new
device consists of a tambourine with an
irritating staccato sound which start1es
nervous pedestrians and delights youth
full cyclists.
Sometimes the tambourine is of metal,
ami / heard a particularly annoying
form of the new device in Rue du Sem
tier yesterday, when a cyclists came
tearing down the street with the mallet
drumming miniature saucepan, tho
strident echo of which secured him a
wide BERTH
Owing to the immense development of
swindling by advertisement, the French
authorities are taking stern measures to
repress this kind of fraud. A man
named Boileau, who recently returned
from the United States, was arrested
the other night while opening a large
pile of letters containing money orders
for $3.50 sent to cover preliminary ex-
penses in connection with an alluring
advertisement offering $4,000 to those who
would adopt a child. Another ingenious
trickster announced in the provincial
press that for $1.25 he would forward a
package of seed potatoes which attained
enormous size and which he had chris
tened the "Fallieres" potato. No seeds
were ever sent to those who forwarded
the $1.25 but the author OF the swindle
carried on operations for SIX months and
made a small fortune before disappear
ing.
To lay the dust raised by automobiles,
tar has been put down on all the macad-
amized avenues of Paris, with the dis
astrous result that all vegetation in the
neighborhood has been killed. The latest
experiment made was In the Avenue du
Bots de Boulogne. leading to the wood
from the Arc de Triomphe. which is
crowded with autos nearly all the year
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