} “Bellefonte, Pa., July 14, 1911. — WOMEN ALWAYS THE VICTIM in Colonial Days Ducking Stools Were Common In Maryland. In Virginia the Penalty Was Often Inflicted, and Georgia Sinned as Late as 1819, Nowadays if 8 woman forms the habits of talking 100 loud and too long or Insists upon saying unpleasant things in wrong places and at wrong seasons there are several things which may happen to her. If she is a person of some social standing her busband may get u divorce, or if she belongs in one of the lower strata he may leave her without that little formality. If she makes life too unbearable for the neighbors she may possibly be ar- rested and fined. If she lives in Eng- land and interrupts the proceedings of parliameni. calls names, chases digni- taries to cover whenever they show themselves in public and knocks off policemen's helmets she is called a suf- fragette and sometimes imprisoned. But even the most “obstinately oppro- brious and virulent woman,” to quote the stately Addison, may be confident that she will escape the punishment meted out to her sister of old. What- ever happens, she won't be sentenced to the ducking stool. In many ways modern life is tame and lacking in dramatic incident for a self assertive lady, and even the English suffragettes complain that they are not taken se- rlously enough. No such claim could have been made in the past, say between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, when far more rigid views prevailed on the sub- ject of feminine self repression. In those days inagistrates were unani- mous in the conviction that “meekness is ye chojsest orniment for a woman,” and it was held a crime to speak “dis- cornfully” of those in anthority, civil or ecclesiastical. A woman must not even indulge in too great freedom of speech in the privacy of her own home and neighborhood. Sometimes she did, and then she was attended to in a sim- ple yet spectacular manner. She was bound securely to a stout chair firmly fixed to the end of a long beam, arranged to work up and down on the principle of the seesaw, on the edge of a river or pond. On the bank at the other end a man gorked the contrivance by means of a strong chain, and she was given a ducking. which lasted until justice was satis fied or reform was promised, the popu- lace of course gathering in large vam bers to assist at the function In England the practice was so gen- eral that each town had its ducking pond conveniently located where petty offenders of various kinds were disci plined. The pond for the western part of London was what is now a portion of Trafalgar square, Charing Cross Many of the old ducking stools are still fu existence as curiosities. In the days of their activity they were kept in the church porches, where they doubtless pointed a moral us to the haughty spirit which goeth before n fall. The first colonists brought the inst: tution to this country, although it nev- er flourished in New England In fact, there are no authentic records of the actual use of the ducking stool in these colonies, although a number of women were sentenced to be so pun- ished They had. however, other meth- ods of treatment for tadies of a shrew- ish disposition, one of these being the wearing of a cleft stick upou the tongue. In the central and southern colonies the custom was quite popular In the seventeenth century ducking stools were in every connty in Maryland, and in 1775 one was placed at the conflu ence of the Ohio and Monongahela riv- ers. In Virginia the penalty was often employed. and in 1534 & Thomas Hart- Iy of that colony wrote, it is said, to Governor Endicon of Massachusetts, giving a detailed account of a ducking administered to “one Betsey, wife of John Tucker. who by violence of her tongue had made his home and ye neighborhood uncomfortable.” After describing the machine he adds: “Ye rope was slackened by ye officer, and ye woman was allowed to go down under ye water for ye space of half a minute. Betsey had a stout stomach and would not yield until she had al- lowed herself to be ducked five several) times” After she promised to “sin no more” Betsey was untied and allowed to “walk home in her wetted clothes, a hopefully penitent woman.” The ducking stool prevailed longer in America than In England. In the #ld country it does not seem to have been used iater than 1809, but in Geor- gla women were ducked for scolding as late as 1819. It is interesting to note that in 1824 a woman in Phila- delphia was sentenced to be ducked, but the decree was not carried out, as it was “deemed obsolete and contrary to the spirit of the times.” A writer on colonial customs states that one of the last indictments for ducking in this country was that of Mrs. Anne Royall in Washington, a lobbyist, who “became so abusive to copgressmen that she was indicted as a common scold before Judge Wiliam Cranch and was sentenced by him to be @uok- ed in the Potomac. She was, howev- er, not subjected to the ducking indig- nity, but was relensed with a fine."— Bellman. fot Gelden. The power of speech 1s a gift vouch- safed to sdone, and the effect of it is to sender silence, perhaps the grandest thing In ail the world, a bore to hin. — Puck. time.—Rabelais. The Treatment In Fever Cases Till Quinine Wrought a Change. In 1832, when the French were cos ducting a campaign of conquest in Al geria, the mortality among the troops | and colonists there was France was being continually called upon for fresh levies of men and youths to supply this terrible loss, chiefly from fever incidental to the climate. At that time the practice of bleeding still prevailed. “Bleed them till they are white” was the injunction which Broussais, the head physician of the French, gave to his followers when the condition of the soldiers was re- ported to him, At Bone in one year out of an effec- tive force of 5,600 men, 1,100 died of fliness in the hospital. Most of them had been “bled to the white.” At this time the effects of sulphate of quinine were known, but few phy- siclans ventured to employ it. One, Maillot, had interested himself in the new remedy and, going to Bone in the medical service of the government, he resolved to see If it would not reduce the frightful mortality, which was one to every three and one-balf men who entered the hospital. At first he employed the quinine merely as an adjunct to the bleeding. He soon found that bieeding was kill- ing the men and that quinine was sav- ing them. Little by little he left off bleeding, to the great scandal of the medical profession. Exactly in proportion as the bleeding ceased the deaths in the hospital de- creased. In two years the deaths fell off from ove In three and a half of all who entered the hospital to one In