Let those who know my affection for Troy consider what my feelings were,
the other day, when on my return from a brief jaunt to London I alighted
at the railway station amid all the tokens of a severe and general
catastrophe. The porter who opened the door for me had a bandaged head.
George the 'bus driver carried his right arm in a sling, but professed
himself able to guide his vehicle through our tortuous streets
left-handed. I had declined the offer, and was putting some
sympathetic question, when a procession came by. Four children of
serious demeanour conveyed a groaning comrade on a stretcher, while a
couple more limped after in approved splints. I stopped them, of
course. The rearmost sufferer--who wore on his shin-bone a wicker
trellis of the sort used for covering flower-plots, and a tourniquet,
contrived with a pebble and a handkerchief, about his femoral artery--
informed me that it was a case of First Aid to the Injured, which he was
rendering at some risk to his own (compound) fracture.
"It's wonderful," said George, with a grin, "what crazes the youngsters
will pick up."
Thereupon the truth came out. It appeared that during my absence a
member of the Ambulance Association of St. John of Jerusalem had
descended upon the town with a course of lectures, and the town had
taken up the novelty with its usual spirit.
I said a course of lectures; but in Troy we are nothing if not
thoroughgoing, and by this time (so George informed me) three courses
were in full swing. The railway servants and jetty-men (our
instructor's earliest pupils) had arrived at restoring animation to the
apparently drowned; while a mixed class, drawn from the townsfolk
generally, were learning to bandage, and the members of our Young
Women's Christian Association had attended but two lectures and still
dallied with the wonders of the human frame.
George told me all about it on our way through the town--for I had
consented to be driven on condition that he removed his arm from the
sling, and he could not deny this to an old friend (as I make free to
call myself). Besides, he was bursting to talk. To be sure, he slipped
it back for a few moments as we breasted the hill beyond the post-office
and his horses dropped to a walk. I fancy that he glanced at me
apologetically; but since there was comparatively little danger
hereabouts I thought it more delicate to look the other way.
"And the Chamber of Commerce has not protested?" I asked.
We call it the "Chamber of Commerce" for euphony's sake. It is in fact
an association which keeps an eye upon the Parish Council, Harbour
Board, and Great Western Railway, and incites these bodies to make our
town more attractive to visitors. It consists mainly of lodging-house
keepers, and has this summer prevailed on the Railway Company to issue
cheap Saturday market tickets to Plymouth--a boon which the visitor will
soon learn (if we may take our own experience as a test) to rank high
among the minor comforts of life.
No; the Chamber of Commerce had not protested. And yet it occurred to
me more than once during the next few days that strangers attracted to
Troy by its reputation as a health resort must have marvelled as they
walked our streets, where cases of sunstroke, frost-bite, snake-bite,
and incipient croup challenged their pity at every corner. The very
babies took their first steps in splints, and when they tumbled were
examined by their older playmates, and pronounced to be suffering from
apoplexy or alcoholic poisoning, as fancy happened to suggest.
I believe that a single instruction in the Association's Handbook--
carefully italicised there, I must admit--alone saved our rising
generation. It ran: "_Unless perfectly sure that the patient is
intoxicated, do not give the emetic_."
To be sure, we left these extravagances to the children. But childhood,
after all, is a relative term, and in Troy we pass through it to sober
age by nice gradations; which take time. Already a foreign sailor who
had committed the double imprudence of drinking heavily at the Crown and
Anchor, and falling asleep afterwards on the foreshore while waiting for
his boat, was complaining vigorously, through his Vice-Consul, of the
varieties of treatment practised upon his insensible body; and only the
difficulty of tracing five Esmarch bandages in a town where five hundred
had been sold in a fortnight averted a prosecution. I was even prepared
for a visit from Sir Felix Felix-Williams, our worthy Squire, who seldom
misses an opportunity of turning our local enthusiasms to account, and
sometimes does me the honour to enlist my help; but scarcely for the
turn his suggestions took.
"You are, of course, interested in this movement?" he began.
"I have to be, seeing that I live in the midst of it."
"You have joined the Ambulance Class, I hear."
"Do you think I would neglect a precaution so obvious? Until their
enthusiasm abates, I certainly shall range myself among the First-Aiders
rather than the Injured."
"My idea was, to strike while the iron is hot."
"Oh," said I, "a town with so many in the fire--"
"And I thought, perhaps, if we could manage to connect it in some way
with the Primrose League--"
"But what can it have to do with the Primrose League?" I asked stiffly.
I will admit now to a slight prejudice against the Ambulance business--
due perhaps to the lecturer's having chosen to start it in my absence.
Sir Felix was disappointed, and showed it. "Why, it was you," he
reminded me, "who helped us last year by setting the widows to race for
a leg of mutton."
"I was a symbolist in those days. And, excuse me, Sir Felix, it was not
last year, but the year before. Last year we had the surrender of
Cronje at Paardeberg, with the widows dressed up as Boer women."
"Is that so? I thought we had Cronje two years ago, but no doubt you
are right. Now I thought that, with our Primrose fete coming on, and
everybody just now taking such an interest in the Empire--"
"To be sure!" I cried. "'First Aid to the Empire'--it will look well on
the bills."
Sir Felix rubbed his hands together--a trick of his when he is pleased.
"It's an idea, eh?"
"A brilliant one."
"Well, but you haven't heard all." He looked at me almost slyly.
"It occurred to me, that while--er--associating this enthusiasm of ours
with the imperial idea, we might at the same time do a good turn for
ourselves. You think that permissible?"
"Permissible? For what else does an empire exist?"
"Quite so. As I was saying to Lady Williams, only this morning, we must
bring _home_ to less thoughtful persons a sense of its beneficence.
Now it occurs to me: why go on subscribing to these great public Nursing
Funds, in which our mite is a mere drop in the ocean, when by sending up
a nurse from our own town--she would, of course, be a member of the
League--not only should we have the satisfaction of knowing that our
help is effective, but the young woman would be earning a salary and
supporting herself?"
"Admirable!" said I. "It would look so much better in the papers too."
"You see, we have at this moment a score of young women, all natives of
the town and members of the League, undergoing instruction from our
lecturer. After the course there will be an examination; and then, with
the lecturer's help--and the advice, if I might suggest it, of Lady
Williams, who can tell him if the candidate's family be respectable and
deserving--we can surely select a young person to do us credit."
Sir Felix took his departure in the cheerfullest temper, and I record
his suggestion as one eminently worthy of his head and his heart,
although subsequent events have, alas! brought it to nought. I doubt if
we shall send up a nurse from Troy; indeed, I doubt if there will even
be an examination.
Last evening the Young Women's Christian Association attended its sixth
Ambulance lecture. The subject--roller bandaging--being a practical
one, a small boy was had in, set on the platform, and bandaged in sight
of the audience--plain bandaged, reverse bandaged, figure-of-eight
bandaged, bandaged on forefinger, thumb, hand, wrist and forearm, elbow,
shoulder, knee, ankle, foot. He declares that he enjoyed himself
thoroughly. After each demonstration the young women took a turn and
practised with such assiduity that an hour slipped pleasantly away.
The bandages were applied, the spirals neatly stitched, and the stitches
promptly snipped for the next pupil to begin. An occasional prick with
the needle evoked no more than a playful remonstrance from the boy and a
ripple of laughter from the fair executants. At length, alas! Miss
Sophy Rabling, in snipping her bandage from the boy's foot, fumbled and
drove a point of the scissors sharply into his toe.
With a howl he caught at his foot, from which one or two drops of blood
were trickling. And the sight of it so affected Miss Sophy that she
dropped upon the platform in a swoon. A class-mate in the body of the
hall almost instantly followed her example.
The lecturer, I am bound to say, behaved admirably. So far was he from
losing his head, that he instantly seized on the accident to turn it to
account.
"First aid!" he cried. "Subject: Fainting. Patient No. 1, head to be
pressed down below her knees and kept there for a few minutes.
Patient No. 2, to be extended on the floor, care being taken to keep
head and body level. A form being handy, we could, as an alternative,
have hung Patient No. 1 over it, head downwards."
But at this point, unfortunately, the humour of the situation became too
much for Miss Gertrude Hansombody, another of the students. She began
to titter, went on to laugh uncontrollably, then to clench her hands and
sob.
"Subject: Hysterics!" called the lecturer. "Treatment: Be firm with
the patient, hold her firmly by the wrists and threaten her with cold
water--"
He spoke to empty benches. The rest of his pupils had escaped from the
room and were now on their way home, and running for dear life.
I do not expect that St. John of Jerusalem will figure prominently in
our Primrose fete. My reason for saying so is an urgent letter just
received from Sir Felix, who wishes to confer with me in the course of
the day.