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.Cinvnnnnh (tribune. Published by the Tnnruww Publishing 00. ) J. H. DEVEAUX. Mamaob* > VOL. HI. Fruit of the Topmost Bough. ‘I want the fruit of the topmost bough. Who cares for the prize that costs uo pain? What boots the bay on the light-pressed brow? ’Tis the iron crown as of Charlemagne: Tis the palace girt with the lion guards. The Eden beyond the stormy sea; Let those give way whom the toil retards, But the strife anil the heat and the dust for me' “There is Alexanders bitter tear O’er the lack of worlds for the victof’s quest; There is Cromwell stretched on his gorgeous bier. Taking his first and his only rest! There is Milton. blind to the suns of Time, Star-eyed in jasper courts at last; lake the bird that steers through the azure clime To the eyrie with hard-won repast. “I want the fruit of the topmost bough: him who trembles desert the fray; I think of the crown on the victor’s brow, And not of the lions that guard the way. For the time is short and the arm is frail, And the bark may weather no other gale; And the dews of death may lie gathering now; But my gaze is fixed on that topmost bough! “I want the fruit of the topmost bough. 'Tis a dizzy height and ‘tis lonely there; But the breezes play o’er the weary brow, And the fruit of that bough is fair—so fair! Can I rest and dream while a shred of life, While a spark of hope is left to me? Is this the way to the meed of strife? Is this the Eden beyond the sea? “In the marble effigy and bust I read but a dream of the prize I seek, For, spite of it all, it is dust to dust— A willing mind, but a frame that’s weak. Do I call memorials like these A fitting prize for the deathless soul? Is this the fruit 1 long to seize? Is this my star, my crown, my goal?” X* -i 5 Oh, weary heart of the toiler! turn From the maze of doubt and the dust of strife, And look, for once, on the empty urn And the wide-strewn ashes of vanished life: And then, beholding thy better hope, In starward gaze and with dauntless brow, Seek the pearly gates which the angels ope — This is the fruit of the topmost bough! —[Wrn. B. Chisholm in N. Y. Observer. A MINISTERING ANGEL. “Oh, Harry, how beautiful this is!’’ cried Sophie Garland, clasping her plump little hands with delight. I never dreamed that you had prepared such a home as this for me.” “Love in a cottage, eh?” said Harry ■Garland, looking down with eyes of amused admiration, at his pretty young bride. “But you see, Sophie, I thought this would be so much nicer than a town house; for the summer months at least!” Cloverdale was the pieltiest of Gothic cottages, all embowered in blooming lilacs, fragrant tresses of honeysuckle and climbing roses. There was a little lawn, shorn close as green plush, a run ning brook bridged over, and the smallest of grottoes, where the drip of a cascade was lost among the ferns and irises. “It s most charming,” said Mrs. Gar land, who had tilled both hands with fu ips, daffodils and early roses. “I never dreamed of anything so lovely'. And there is a cabinet piano in the drawing-room, and real stained-glass windows in the library and the quaintest sun-dial 1 ever saw.” “And plenty of spare room if mv mother should wish to spend the sum mer with u-,” said Mr. Garland, care lessly. Sophie’s face fell, all of a sudden. The roses and daffodils drifted to the ground; she came close to Harry and began nervously playing with the mid dle button of his coat. “Harry,” she said. “I don't want to seem ungracious but—but perhaps it is best to have an understanding on this question at once.” “On what qu»-tmnt' said Harry, somewhat bvwii r . <]. “Oa the mother-in-law question,” courageously answered Sophie. Harry burst out laughing. “My dear child,” said he, “who has been filling your innocent little h-»I with nonsense?” SAVANNAH. GA.. SATURDAY. DECEMBER 17,1887. “It isn’t nonsense, ” said Sophie. “But I have made up my mind never to let our domestic peace be imperilled by such an clement as this. And I—l can’t consent to receive your mother here, Harry.” Mr. Garland whistled low and long. ‘ ‘Tire deuce you can’t!” said he. “You wont ask it, will you, dear?” coaxed the young wife, in her sweetest accents. “If you only knew my mother, So phie”— “But I don’t know her,” pleaded So phi, ‘‘and I don’t waut to know her.” “I’m sure you would like her, Sophie; and lam positively certain you could not help loving her.” “As if there ever could be any relation ship nearer than armed neutrality between mother and daughter-in-law!” satirically observed Mrs. Garland. “No, Harry, it is too dangerous an experiment to try. You will let me have my own way in this matter, will you not ?” she added, caressingly. “It is the first favor I have asked of you. - ’ “Os course you are the mistress here,” said Garland, feigning an indifference that he did not feel. “I do not intend to oppose your wishes in any respect.” And Sophie stood on tip-toe to kiss him, byway of reward. After this discussion it is hardly necessary to say that Mrs. Henry Gar land was not a little surprised, two or three days subsequently, by the arrival of a cab at the gate loaded with trunks and the appearance of a juvenile-looking elderly lady, very much powdered and frizzed, with an eighiecu-year-old bon net and a parasol which a school-girl might have envied. Sophie started from the coscy nest in the hammock where she was reading Dante. “Mamma!” she exclaimed. “Yes, darling, it’s me,” said Mrs. Percy, her mother. “I was on my way to Brighton, so I thought I would sur prise you and dear Harold.” And she gave Sophie a succession of kisses, which were very strongly flavored with rose-powder, and beckoned the cab-man to bring in the trunks. “Four,” said she.” “And a bonnet box, and an umbrella-strap, and two traveling bags. I believe that is all. My darling Sophie! And the doctor says country air is the very thing I need to set me up.” Mrs. Peregrine Percy was one of those old-young ladies who remind one forci bly of an antique piece of furniture varnished up to look like new. • Sophie Garland had never been in sympathy with her fashionable mother. She had married decideHy in opposition to that lady's wishes, and was, to tell the truth, not especially pleased at her appearance on the scene at this particular moment. “But what am Ito do,” she said to herself. “I certainly can’t turn her out of doors, though I'm sure I don’t know what Harry will say after all those disagreeable tilings I said about his mother. But Harry Garland was too much of a a gentleman not to behave courteously under any circumstance. He welcomed Mrs. Percy with genuine hospitality, and did not even notice Sophie's ap pealing glances when the old lady inci dentally let fall the information that, since she liked the situation of Clover dale Cottage so well, she should perhaps remain there all the summer, “just to keep Sophie company you know.” “It is so good of Harry not to fling back my own silly words into my face,” .she thought with a thrill of gratitude. ■ But at the end of a week Mrs. Pere grine Percy sickened. “I Lope it's not going to be anything serious,” said she. Sickness does age a per-on so. I never had any wrinkles, you know, dear, before that last attack of neuralgia.” But when it transpired that .Mrs. Percy's ailment was a severe and con tagious form of disease, ther: was a general commotion at Cloverdale Cot tage. The servants gave warning, the neighbors kept away and poor Sophie was weary, worn out with nursing and fatigue, when one day a gentle little woman ia black presented herself “She will see v->u. ma’am,” said the little charity girl who alone could be in duced to cross the infected threshold, and who loudly declared that “at the ’ asylum she had everything, and wasn’t afraid of nothing!” “I told her to go away, but it was no good.” Sophie, pale and haggard, crept flown ; into the darkened drawing-room. “1 don't know who you are,” said ! she. “or what your business is, but you i had better go away. There is terrible I sickness here.” “1 know it,” answered a mild voice. I ‘‘and that is the very reason that 1 am j here. lam Harry's mother, darling. 1 j have come to help you.” So, like a ministering angel, the “mother-in-law” came into the. house, I just as Sophie herself succumbed to the fell disease. No sooner did Mrs. Peregrine Percy recover than she packed her trunks and made off for Brighton as fast as possible. “One always needs change after ill - ncss,” said she. “And the atmosphere of a sick-room always was most depress ing for me. 1 dare say that the good ! Mrs. Garland will do all that is necessary for dear Sophie, and I have my own ■ welfare to think of.” Sophie, just able to sit up in a pillowed , arm-chair, her cheeks hollowed by ill j ness, her large eyes shining from deep, ■ purple circles, looked after the depart ’ ! ing carriage, and then lifted her glance to the tender nurse beside her. “Mother,” she said, wistfully, “you will not leave me?” “Not unless you send me away, ! Sophie,” sai l Mrs. GArland, tenderly. 1 : “And that will be never,” said Sophie, closing her eyes with a sigh of relief. “How very good you have been to me! 4 Without you 1 should surely have died.” And even in her slumber she could not rest peacefully until she held Mrs. Garland's hand in hers. That evening, when Harry came home, she opened her heart to him. “Harry,” she said, “can you ever for give me?’’ “Forgive vou, dearest?” i “For what I said about our dear, dear mother,” fervently uttered Sophie. “She : is precious beyond expression to me now. ' She has saved my life by her courage and devotion. And I feel that 1 cannot part with her any more. Would she stay here with us always, do you think, Harry?” *T am her only son, Sophie,” said he. > “Yes, I think she will—if you ask her.” Sophie made her confession to her j mother-in-law at once. “I was so rude, so selfish,” she c.iu- I didly acknowledged. “But I did not know you then.” And Mrs. Garland's tender kiss was a ■ seal of the most loving forgivcnc-s. Mrs. Peregrine Percy never has gone | back to Cloverdale Cottage. “I don't fancy that stupid, monoto nous life,” said she. “And my poor child is given up, soul and body, into j the clutches of a mother-in-law! It wasn't for the want of warning, either. I told Sophie how it would be, but she j never would take my advice.” [New ■ York Journal. The Grotesque in Architecture. Ihe taste for the grotesqu and horri ble that leads men to wear skulls for | scarf pins and coffins for sleeve buttons, that induces a dainty girl to choose a i dress with snakes outlined on it, and a metal spider perched at her tliro.it, has got into architecture. The writer went to call, and, mounting the steps, laid a hand carelessly on the iron rail that meandered up the stone stoop. It fell i on the head of a bronze an t realistm snake that was coiled round and round the balustrade. The whole row of tint houses had the same sort of ai proach, and twisting about a’.l the hand rails w.,s 1 the vile serpent, with battened h? >.d a .<1 baleful eyes, natural and hideou enough ! ; to make one afraid to enter or leave the ! house. It’s to be hoped that old Major ' Jim Jams never rents one of e'm; he'll come home some night from the club and break his neck in a tit at his own door. • . . Ni-w York Sun. Cannibalism on the Congo. It is an open question whether canni balism is really a vice of any tribe in the regions of the Congo, though evi deuce of it crops up now and then in a second-hand way that is required a« sufficient by some travelers to take the custom as established. Mr. Stanley, on his second journey through the Dark Continent, nt a village named Kam punzu, found two rows of skulls running along the entire length of the village, imbedded about two inches in the ground, the “cerebral hemispheres” up permost, bleached and glistening white from the weather. lie was told they were the skulls of the “sokos”—chimpanzees, otherwise called “meat of the forest.” The chief said the bodies had been eaten. “What kind of a thing is* the ‘nyama,’ or meat of the forest, as you call it?” Stanley asked. “It is about the size of this boy” pointing to one of Stanley’s attendants, four feet ten inches in height—“and walks like a man; goes about with a stick, with which it beats the forest, and makes hideous noises. It eats bananas, and we hunt it, kill it and eat it." It was further described as very good food. Stanley offered a reward for one of these animals, but it I was found impossible to kill one before I several days should pass. Stanley had not time to wait for an example of the nyama, but he brought, away several skulls of the alleged chimpanzee, which Professor Huxley pronounced to be those i of natives of the ordinary African type, | upon which Mr. Stanley remarks: “Pro i lessor Huxley, by this decision, startles me with the proof that Kampunzu’s peo | pie were cannibals, for at least one-half ■ of the number of skulls seen by me bore i the mark of a hatchet which had been driven into the head while the victims i were alive. . .1 apa nose Sake- Dr ink e rs. Thomas Stevens, writing in the Now York Sun, says: No nation in Asia drink-; so persistently and steadily ns do the Japanese. The average Jap con sumes about half a pint of sake, or rice beer, with each meal—a pint and a half per day—saying nothing about, further social indulgence in the evening. Both men and women drink sake by the pint daily, and think no harm of it either. At meals the sake is served up in slen der, big-necked earthenware bottles, holding about a pint. The favorite way is to drink it warm. Il is usually warmed by setting the bottle in boiling water for a while before putting it on the table. Rice beer is a rather decep tive name to give sake, as it resembles liquor more than beer, both in color, . consistency, and intoxicating property. In the consumption of alcohol the Japs, as a nation, rank far ahead of any other Asiatic count ry. In addi tion to sake, they are rapidly coining to the fore as consumers of beer and brandy and whisky Their consumption of those beverages keeps a curiously even pace with their progression toward what we are pleased to consider our own higher plane of civilization. When they first began to think of wearing European : clothes they contented themselves with importing French brandy an I English and Milwaukee be r. Now, however, the Government compels all its officials to adopt European clothes, and the up p r crust society at Tokio are far from being alone in Europeanizing their habits and < stumes. Consequently the Japs have commcacid brewing their own beer and making a very good imi tation of French brandy. They have a big brewery now at Ko-fu that turns out hundreds of thousands of Lotties of very good beer annually. Arrow Throwing. The new Yorkshire sjrort of arrow throwing has been developed so that 250 yards are not rare, although 200 arc nearer the mark. The throwing is over hand. The arrow is an ordinary one of soft wood, but without feathers ormct.il at the cads, and Varis from 2 feet to 3 feet in length, as the thrower prefer-. A target is not aimed at. Distance tells, and it is marked off in spaces 20 yard? apart Nev. York Time . (fI.M Per Annnsn; 75 cent* for Six Month*; • 50 cent* Thr <e Month*; Single Oopia* I i cent*--In Advance. “ Would Kiss the Hund,” Ao. Maurice Barrymore is an Englishman, says a New York Bun writer. His courage is invincible and his wit pOr pctual. He has a good temper, but once in a while he gets ruffled. Such was the case one night last spring when young Mr. Van Brunt looked at him for a long while in a chophouse, and then expressed a deep contempt for actors in general, and Barrymore in particular. The actor overlooked the first affront or two, but finally Van Brunt became so pointed in his remarks that there was no evading them. He is a good amateur sparrer. Barrymore stepped up to him politely and said in a most engaging voice: - j “Perhaps, sir, you would like to step outside and repeat this conversation.’’ “With all the pleasure in life, sir” said Van Brunt, delightedly, as he winked at his friends. They all trooped out to Twenty-sixth street. It was about 3 o'clock in the morning, and the moon was shining brightly. Van Brunt took oil his coat and winked at his friends. Barrymore asked Van Brunt if he was ready, and he replied that he was. It must have been two minutes later when Van Brunt was carried into Paul's chop house by Barrymore aud his friends, and raw beefsteak and oysters were applied humanely to his swollen jaw, blackened eyes, and generally beaten exterior. “Who on earth,” gasped Van Brunt when he had sufficiently recovered to recall what had happened, “is that man?" “Maurice Barrymore, the actor, for merly champion middle-weight boxer of idl England." “Ab, champion of all Englund, ch?” said the amateur, drawing himself up as much as possible, nnd looking more con tent. “Then this is no disgrace.” Bhititirek Fined. Diiiing Printe Bismarck’s stay at .Mal ie:)bad the < !i:mcellor was in the habit of taking long walks un it tended, and one • lay, finding himself somewhat far from the town, look tli*' shortest cut back. His way led him ncro some fields find the prince inarched vigorously forward, forgetful of th • fai t that he was tre pass ing. Suddenly he w:n hailed in loud stentorian tones and on looking back saw a -tout country-woman pursuing him. The indignant proprictrc < of the fields accused him to hi? face of his offense ami declared that she would follow him and give him in charge. She proved as good us her word and tramped after the chancellor until the high road was reached ami a police officer came in view. The worthy woman formally made her complaint and the police officer was about to arrest the offender. Struck by the resemblance of the trespasser to a certain high functionary the police officer cautiously demanded hi- name. On hearing the name the po liceman was simply paralyzed with fear, ami the over-bold country-woman gath ering up her skirts fled precipitately. Naturally the police officer was reluctant to take the charge, but Prince Bismarck insisted upon going to the station. W hen there he charged himself with the offense of trespass, ami paid the fine customary in such matter-. In addition to this the prince sent a present byway of consolation to the woman whose land he had invaded.—[St. Stephen’s Review. t Home, Sweet Home, In Dakota. A gentleman h rating for land in Da kota came across a boarded-up claim shanty with half-a-dozen boards across the door, upon which were the following touching inscriptions: “Four miles from a nayber. Sixty miles from a postofis. Twenty-five miles from a raleroad. A hundred atey from timber. 230 faet from water. God bluss our home. We h ne gone east to spend the winter with my wife's folks. After Hours. Blind-M u.—Do you know that man going d '>v:> the street. Deaf ;> d Dumb-Mun—Biightly, just merely to -peak to. Do you know . him t Blind man—Not personally—only by *>iglit. -[Texas Sifting- NO. 9.