Evening star., 1928-12-11
WORLD FAMOUS STORIES
RHEUMATISM CURE
BY ROBERT J. BURDETTE.

! come to bed perhaps he had better sit
up all night. Mr.. Middlerib said
| nothing, and crept into bed. After ly-
ing still few moments he reached out
and got his bottle of bees.
1t was not an easy thing to pick one
bee out of the bottleful with his finger,
and not get into trouble. The first bee
Mr.. Middlerib got was a little brown
honey bee, that wouldn't weigh half
an ounce If you picked him up the ears,
but II you lifted him by the hind legs
would weigh as much as the last end
of q bay mule. Mr.. Middlerib could
not repress a groan.
Mr.. Middlerib felt hot, about SO all
over and 1877 on the end of his thumb
He reversed the bee and pressed the
warlike terminus of 1t firmly against
| the rheumatic knee. 1t didn't hurt so
badly as he thought it would. 1t didn't
| hurt at all.
Then Mr.. Middlerib remembered that
| when a honey bee stings human foe
| it generally leaves it's harpoon in the
wound, and the invalid knew that the
only thing this bee had to sting with
was doing its work at the end of his
| thumb. He reached his arm out from
under the sheets and dropped this dis
abled atom of rheumatism liniment on
the carpet. Then, after second blank
wonder, he began to feel round for the
bottle, and wished he knew what he
did with it.
In the meantime strange things had
been going on. When he caught hold
of the first bee, Mr.. Middlerib for rea-
sons, drew it out in such haste that for
time he forgot all about the bottle
and its contents, and left it lying un-
corked in the bed, between himself and
his innocent wife.
In the darkness there had been gen.
eral emigration from that bottle. The
bees, their wings clogged with the
water, Mr.. Middlerib had poured upon
them to cool and tranquilize them, were
crawling aimlessly about over the sheet.
While Mr. Middlerib was feeling
around for it, his ears were suddenly
thrilled and his heart frozen by wild,
| piercing scream from his wife.
Mr.. Middlerib sat bolt upright in
bed. His hair stood on end. The night
was warm, but he turned to ice in
minute.
Where in thunder" he said. with
pallid lips, as he felt all over the bed
in frenzied haste, where in thunder
are them internal bees?"
And a large humble, with sting as
pitiless as the finger Of scorn, just
then climbed up the inside of Mr.. Mid
dlerib's night shirt until 1t got sQuarely
between his shoulders, and then it felt
for his marrow, and he said calmly:
"Here is one of them"
And Mrs. Middlerib felt ashamed of
her feeble screams when Mr.. Middlerib
threw up both arms, and, with howl
that made the windows rattle, roared:
"Take him off! Oh, land of Scott,
somebody take him off"
And when a little honey bee began
tickling the sole of Mrs. Middlerib's
foot, she so shrieked that the house
was bewitched, and Immediately went
into spasms.
The household was aroused by this
time. Master Middlerib and the serv-
ants were pouring into the room, add
ing to the general confusion by bowling
at random and asking irrelevant ques-
tions, while they gazed at the figure of
a man a little on in years, arrayed IN
long night shirt, paving fiercely at
the unattainable spot in the middle of
his back, while he danced an unnatural
weird, wicked-looking jig by the dim
light of the lamp.
And while he danced and howled,
and while they gazed and shouted, a
navy blue wasp that Master Middlerib
had put in the bottle for good measure
and variety, dried his legs and wings
with a corner of the sheet, and
after preliminary circle or two around
the bed to get up his motion and settle
down to working gait, he fired him
self across the room, and to his dying
day Mr.. Middlerib will always believe
that one of the servants mistook him
for burglar and shot him.
No one, not even Mr.. Middlerib him
self, could doubt that he was, at least
for the time, most thoroughly cured of
rheumatism. His own boy could not
have carried himself more lightly or
with greater agility. But the cure was
not permanent, and Mr.. Middlerib does
not like to talk about 1t.