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Our Boys
^ I
THE VERY BOY.
"There is a boy in the electrical shops that 1
want to recommend to your attention," said the
superintendent of the Eureka Manufacturing
Company, as he and the president came down
the steps of the office at the noon hour.
""What about him?" said the shrewd old
gentleman.
"lie has an inventive turn of mind, and has
already made several suggestions that have saved
us a lot of money."
"How old is he?"
"Fifteen."
"Fifteen? He is a mere child!"
"But he has a man's head on his shoulders.
There he is now?the little fellow that just
threw that handspring. He's the queerest possible
combination of childhood and manhood
that I ever saw. "What in the world is he up
to?"
As the superintendent passed, a fair-headed
slightly-built lad disentangled himself from a
crowd of fifty or sixty workmen who were
hurrying into the street, and hid behind the corner
of the building, peering keenly toward a
figure coming slowly down the road. The object
of his attention, a man of almost gigantic mold.
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dently just come out of the rolling mill, where
he had, no doubt, been puddling iron. In spite
of his dirt-stained garments, he presented not
only an imposing but an attractive appearance.
His great head was finely poised upon his broad
shoulders. Ilis features were strong, his blue
eyes keen, and his heavy shock of hair so fiery
red that his shopmates called him "Volcano."
The boy permitted him to pass the corner, and
then with an agile spring bounded onto his huge
back and flung his arms around his neck.
"You little imp!" the two observers heard the
giant exclaim, and they saw him hoist his evidently
not unwelcome burden across his shoulders
and start down the street on a run, the boy's
musical laugh ringing out, and the crowd cheer
IUK.
"That's his crony?Mike McGinnis," said the
superintendent.
"Queerly mated pair," the president replied.
"Perhaps you never heard how they became
friends?"
"Well, this little shaver's name is Alfred
Atherton. He lived in a little town up in the
state somewhere, and when his parents died, a
couple of years ago, he struck out for himself,
and came down to Cincinnati. For a few weeks
he sold papers, then got into messenger service,
and finally landed here. He was good-natured
and clever, making many friends, but exciting
some hostility by his indomitable teetotalism.
When he was not aggressive about temperance
ideas, it became perfectly evident that he disapproved
of his shopmates' habits of 'rushing the
growler.' They resented this, however, and they
resorted to the scurviest trick you ever heard
_ 1 A.
HUUlll.
"Eight or ten of the biggest and toughest boys
in the shop devised a scheme to inveigle him into
one of the saloons and either persuade or force
him to drink a glass of rum. Somehow or other
they got him inside the door, and, failing to
make him obey them voluntarily, began to
threaten, 'We'll pour it down your throat,' they
said. 'You willt' he cried with flashing eyes.
'Well s?e! My father fills a drunkard's grave,
and I promised my mother on her dying bed
PRESBYTERIAN OF THE SO
and Girls
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that I'd never drink a drop.' Now make me
break that promise if you can!' With these
words still on his lips the little shaver flung off
his coat and set his back against the wall.
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iu a jmj' me uruwu was uu mm, miiu ue weui
down, but fighting like a wild cat! Several of
them held his mouth open, and one was just going
to pour the whiskey into it, when the big
Irishman sprang from his chair and, seizing
them one after another, flung them across the
room as if they had been five-pound bags of salt.
When he came to little Atherton at the bottom
of the pile he picked him up, set him on the bar,
slapped him on the back, and said to him, 'You
little spalpeen, you make me want to sign the
pledge.'
" 'Then do it,' said Atherton.
" 'But I can't keep it."
" 'Yes you can, with the help of God,' " the
said.
mere was sometning aoout the Honest look
in the boy's eyes and the clear ring in his voice
that made the giant tremble. He had been a
terrible man, you understand, having taken .to
drink on account of the death of a little child.
He was the best puddler in the city, earning
good wages; but spending them all in weekly
drunks, and going home to abuse the sweetest
and most patient little woman in the world.
"For a moment McGinnis looked him blankly
in the face, while the crowd picked themselves
up and stood watching from a distance.
" 'My Dennis would have been just about
your size,' said the half-drunken puddler, and
burst into tears.
"Don't cry! Don't cry!' exclaimed little
Atherton, putting both hands on his shoulders in
an agony of sympathy, for it hurt him to see the
giant weeping.
" 'Come home with me, lad,' the Irishman replied,
and, lifting him down from the bar, led
him out the doors. No one knows just what happened;
but it looks as if McGinnis had adopted
the boy, for he stayed in the house, and the 'Volcano'
has never drunk another drop."
'' Send the boy to me at 7 :30 to-morrow morning.
I've been looking for him for twenty
years," said the president, when the superintendent
had finished his story.?Epworth
Herald.
A LITTLE GIRL'S BIBLE MEMORY.
The story is told of a school in Madagascar
where one of the pupils was a Malagasy girl who
was a fine scholar, but was especially interested
in the Bible stories. After she had been at school
ten months her mother came to take her home for
the vacation.
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.iourney. At night they stopped at a village, and
were asked many questions while waiting for
supper.
The little girl told where she had been, and
repeated some of the Bible stories she had learned.
After supper until late she was kept telling
more stories and what she knew about the new
religion.
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leave, but promised free food and lodging if
they would stay another night, resting through
the day. The evening was spent up to midnight
like the evening before, others coming to hear
the Bible stories and the hymns.
The next morning a group of the villagers
came to heg the girl and her mother to stay an
UTH [ April 10, 1912
other night, promising them the use of a larger
and better house. The following morning a company
came with a like request from the other
end of the village. In the end a week was spent
there, and Sunday was filled with calls upon the
little girl to repeat all she had learned about
Christianity.
In consequence of that visit a congregation
was gathered. On Sundays different ones would
tell all that they could remember of what they
had heard. A church was formed! and later
twenty-five schools sprung up within five miles.
?Ex.
OUR FIRE HORSES.
Chief Spencer of the Chelsea fire department
sat chatting with friends in his office the ohter
evening when he abruptly excused himself and
called some one by telephone. "I promised to
call him at five minutes to nine," he apologized.
"Rut how did you know that it was five minutes
of nine?" asked an observant visitor a few
minutes later, after he had satisfied himself that
there was no watch or clock in sight.
I i TTTU? T 1 -ixi 1 -
?y uy, x nearu mose norses pawing in their
stalls downstairs," replied the chief. "They
are very accurate timekeepers."
"You see," exclaimed the chief, "we have a
test blow on the fire alarm system every night al
just nine o'clock. The doors of the stalls open
automatically, the horses run out and take their
respective places under the swinging harnesses
of the different pieces of apparatus. They are
hitched into the harness and then after this
nightly drill is over, they go back into their
stalls for the night.
"Every night, just before that alarm strikes at
nine o'clock," continued Chief Spencer, "those
horses begin to paw the wooden floors of their
stalls. They never vary more than two minutes
either way, and almost never more than one.
I've observed this thing for years. Every horse
that enters the fire service does this after he has
been here a few weeks.
"How do they tell the time so closely? I give
it up. I simply know that they do it?that in
some mysterious way they are able to Dick out
that minute?that almost exact point of time
from the 1,440 minutes that occur within every
24 hours," concluded the chief.?Boston Evening
FTerald.
ANIMALS IN COLD WEATHER.
The wild animal that minds cold the least is
undoubtedly the rabbit. Indeed, it is said that
th6 rabbit is, of all warm-blooded creatures, the
most capable of withstanding very low temperatures.
A rabbit which had got into a block of ice
was imprisoned there twelve hours. When freedom
was finally secured, it began almost instantly
to feed.
Hares, too, can stand a lot of cold, so long as
they can get food. The Alpine hare, which is
found in Cumberland and Scotland, never seems
inconvenienced by the worst frosts. The Arctic
fox is another creature which no degree of cold
seems to bother. It is one of the very few
animals of the Arctic region which does not
hibernate.
Of domestic animals, sheep come first as cold
resisters. In a great blizzard which swept England
in 1891, sheep were dug out of the drifts
that had been buried twenty-four days. They
were still alive. Next to the sheep in cold weather
hardiness come goats and then pigs.
Among the birds, thrushes and blackbirds seem
J 1 -- " * - *
auic u? enuure icxs com man tne nncn tribe, or
which the house sparrow is the commonest type.
The hedge sparrow appears, of all birds, to be the
most affected by cold.?Our Dumb Animals.
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