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ghc Oiuuinni'ili ©ritanc
Published bv the Tarawa Pnbliahfac 00. 1
J. H. DEVEAUX. Ms-Xiaa* >
VOL. 111.
After the Pay.
Down the west the daylight dies,
Twilight brings a 1 timid star,
Sleep steals into baby eyes,
Bright as sunlit waters are;
Little dainty baby prayers
Drowsily float up to Heaven.
Sweet goodnights come down the stairs,
While the solemn clock declares
It is seven.
Little garments lay away,
Little shoes, in comic file,
Till another-.happy day
Wakes each baby sleeper’s smile.
Glides the hour with flying feet—
There’s a goodby at the gate—
Well-known footsteps, firm and fleet,
Tread adown the dark'ning street
Just at eight.
Busy, tired mother hands
Help the time creep slowly past
Little buttons, little bands.
Little seams made firm and fast.
One by one the minutes go,
Marching as in solemn line;
Sure was never clock so slow,
Counting grudgingly and low,
Only nine!
Pleasant book and easy chair
Sweet companionship invite;
Other scenes and fancies fair,
Rise unbidden to the sight.
Noble thoughts from other hearts
Wake up better hopes for men,
All unnoticed time departs,
Even the old clock, seeming, starts,
Striking ten.
At the gate the winds of night
Toy amid the trembling leaves.
Hushed to breaths as soft and light
As the sigh of one who grieves;
And beneath the gems that glow
Calmly on the breast of heaven,
Footsteps tramping to and fro,
Like a great wave come and go,
Till eleven.
And on many a threshold’s shore
Breaks the wave in driftings dear
But a weary half hour more
Flow and ebb still finds me here
List’ning to my heart’s quick beat,
Till its echoes, tremblingly,
Deepen into footsteps fleet,
Coming up the darkened street,
Home to me.
-[Nancy P. McLean, in Good Housekeeping.
Whistling For My Life.
BY BELLA LEE DUNKINSON.
There were five of us cooped up in a
••uthern home in the Cumberland
mountains, just before the outbreak of
the Civil War. Four of us were sisters
in that Tennessee house—built like al
most all of those constructed in that
period with wide porches, a single story,
big, open fireplaces, and large rooms.
Our life was a jolly one, not unlike that
I came to know in other and equally
uncivilized parts of the world later; for
we were a happy lot, we girls, with on
ly one man among us—the brother-in
law of us all who was a true type of the
sportsman. He had blooded horses,
dogs, roosters, and even blqpded rats—
all of which made life run merrily along
to the music of the only piano that
could be found in that wilderness of
wildernesses. And*what took me to
that darksome part of the world, almost
at the edge of timber-line, soon to hear
the footfalls of angry brothers in the
clash of arms?
Our reason for migration was the same
that governs all—we were in pursuit of
gain; we went to open the coal mines
lying hidden among the rocky fastnesses
of the Cumberland Range. A roimh
country, too, it was then; those sturdy,
brawny fellows who work m the mines
the wide world over making up our
entourage, and among whom may l>c
found some of the noblest of mankind.
It is from among them that I have to
tell a little incident where I not only
I % whistled for my life, but for those of
my three living sisters, Fannie, Maddie
and Kit tic as well, and lor some forty
five hundred dollars that had excited
the cupidity of some of the restless and
eager men, recruited from all nations,
who lived in the little huts surrounding
our place.
My brother-in-law was the head of*
the mining enterprise which took our
entlye family to that land of the Moon
shiners. He had command of the
miners, was their paymaster and super
intendent. He was expected to render
faithful service to the corporate interests
of the stockholders, too. Hence he was
SAVANNAH. GA.. SATURDAY. JANUARY 21, 1888.
called away to Nashville frequently, and
one day he went, believing his return
would occur before nightfall. The men
must have known that his arrival would
be retarded nntil late in the night, and
what they undoubtedly knew was, that
in the chimney, on a ledge, was a sum
of money, approaching four thousand
five hundred'dollars, destined to pay off
the hands. As the sequel shows, I have
never forgotten that particular night.
It was beautiful, way up there among
the summits, mellowed by a clear south
ern sky. Our sister-circle had been
unusually full of cheap gossip, hilarious
romps, wild mountain poems, lively
dance music, and I well remember that,
as the oil grew less in the great parlor
lamp, we sang “Wait for the Wagon,”
hoping, too, that it would come up the
mountain side with our manly protector.
But even in the mountains, when the
man in the mqpn flirts with us, we must
get into our retiring costumes, even if
our chief be not at home; and so we
did, knowing all the time our fearfu
responsibility; that fortune in the chim
ney, those avaricious, dissatisfied men in
the cabirs—for many had been dis
charged, and were only awaiting their
wages. But our dogs were on their
watchful qui vive. My brother-in-law
had a kennel of the finest known at that
time in Tennessee, and they were all
chained up at convenient posts around
the house, for he well knew the des
perate character of those who made up
the little colony. Not only all of this,
but, girls with ever-flowing spirits as
we were, each was provided with a re
volver, and we were all dead shots.
While we were discussing, in no very
cheerful, aud certainly way-down-deep
tones, the long absence of our brother
in-law' from home, the dogs set up a
wild howl all around the grounds. We
sank, almost stupefied, absolutely dis
mayed, to the floor. We looked at each
other. Speech did not prevail, and
while the nocturnal chorus without was
of more than anvil majesty, we could
sec through the chinks of our rough
fashioned mountain home the forms of
men emerging from the bush. This, of
course, was a moment of terror tons all;
and the white of the gauze curtains,
freshly washed, waa black in comparison
to the pallor on my sisters’ faces, good
souls as all of them were, and are.
What should we do? How should we
act? Whither fly? ,
During this sufficiently sensational
period of my life the incessant barking
went on, when suddenly there was a
much more terrifying incident. The
dogs became still. What did it mean?
“They are throttling the dogs! ’ my
sister Maddie said. “Oh! what shall
we do?”
Then I said: “I'll whistle like a
man! believe lam a man, too!”
—this resHnse with a bravado meant
to inspire my sisters with courage
enough to straighten out their exceed
ingly limber members.
What did I do? I started the tune of
“ Old Bob White,” and not having the
largest mouth south of Mason’s and
Dixon's line, my nervous pucker even
made me smile as I surveyed myself in
the mirror opposite, yet I bugled with
true masculine vigor the lines:
Old Bob White,
Do your dogs bite?
No! They don't,
, But they bark all night.”
which I thought would be appropriate
to the occasion. While reeling off this
air with consequential audacity, Maddie
heard one of the would-be robbers aud
assassins say: .
“Why, he must be home. Somebody
has lied to us” —meaning our protector,
whom all of the men feared as much as
they re-pec ed him.
I kept up this whistling—l am afraid
to say exactly how long, but it must
have been for nearly half an hour; and
sure it is that I almost completely ex
hausted my repertoire of songs of the
period, put a heavy drain on my fatal
muscles, my courage, and my physique
too.
But the bandit-herd outside, I know,
believed me to be a man, expert as I was
at the art, and before my powers gave
way, I could sec them by the moonli _ht
retreating behind the fast-deca; ig
shrubbery, for it was then Oclober.
We were then safe! The dogs reop nod
their wild war-cry when released from
whatever restraint they were under;
their chains clanked in the midnight
air; the bushes rustled with hasty foot
steps, and out of the gloom I saw
approaching a well-known form, careless
of all danger, and knowing little the
terror in which we had lived.
As I look over that terrible Tennessee
night, when desperate men were intent
on pillage and murder, and think it
was my whistling which averted disas
ter and crime, I am impelled to culti
vate the accomplishment evcq to thj
horror of my friends and neighbors;
and whenever 1 am left in a country
house, isolated from convenient protec
tion, or see an unusually hungry tramp
whoso only occupation is shoveling
snow in mid-August, lat once get be
hind the shutters and whistle with sten
torian notes. Let al! unprotected wo
mqp go and do likewise.—[ Frank Les
lie's.
Bobolinks.
The bobolink is a favorite field song
ster in our Northern Stat s, but when
he goes southward he changes his name
to “reed bird’ and “rice bird,” and
puts on a most rapacious, vicious and
destructive character. In turn, he be
comes the target of pot-hunters, by
whom millions are destroyed for table
use. The bobolink, transferred to the
South, lives daintily on th ■ rice fields,
and this industry is actually crippled by
these birds, which appear in innumer
able hosts at seed planting and again at
harvest time. No one would imagine
that our well favored “Robert o’ Lin
coln” comes to us from a most fearful
raid on rice, and departs from us with
the same evil intent. The rice crop by
the last census was valued at $6,607,000,
the product bciim? 110,000,000 pounds.
The loss by the rice birds is estimated
at $2,000,000 annually. Thousands of
men and boys are employed to shoot
these trespassers, and the rici fields are
shadowed by a “sulphurous canopy,” as
if some grand battle was in progress.
Individual losses are often fifty per
cent, of the crop, and from five to ten
dollars an acre is not uncommon. The
flight of these birds is always in the
night. They appear in the sping in the
Last half of April, and return punctually
in South Carolina on the 21st of August
and the two or three days following.
—[Scicntific American.
Ridges in the Mouth's Roof.
Dr. Harrison Allen called the atten
tion of the last meeting of the Academy
of Natural Sciences to the subject of the
rugae, or ridges of mucous membrane,
on the roof of the mouth. He proposed
naming them for the purpose of descrip
tion in accordance with their relation to
the medical suture and the incisive fora
men, the sutural, pre-sutural and post
sutural folds. He had found in man
certain constant peculiarities- in the dis
position of these folds which serve to
distinguish the left side from the right.
For instance, on the left side there is a
tendency for the sutural fold to be turned
back, while on the right side it forms a
union with the fold in front. He re
garded the peculiarities of the left side
to be owing to a physiological over
growth of the bone on that side. The
data based on an examination of the
mouths of his patients did not, however,
apply to those free from disease or
irregularity. He considered the study
of these rugae to be of importance in
comparative physiology. In the lower
animals there is no variation in the two
sides, and the rugae are constant in the
different groups.—[Philadelphia Ledger.
Chinese Journals.
[n San Francisco there are four jour
nals regularly published in Chinese
characters. These appear weekly, and
have a circulation of 2500. According
to the Chinese method a good printer
can print 400 sheets a day. Five days'
work are required to get out ar
edition of 1000 copies. The journals
arc printed with black ink upon single
sheets of white paper, except on the
Chinese New Year, when the printing U
done with red ink or *j|>on red paper.
Pecullaritle; of the Hippopotamus.
Beginning with the exterior, the skin
J; of enormous thickness and toughness,
says a writer on the hippopotamus in
Good Words. From it are made the
terrible whips called “sjamboks," a
• troko of which will cut a groove in a
deal board. A large sjambok affords
the only argument to which a native
draught ox will listen, and a smaller in
drument, called familinHy a “cow
hide," is used in lieu of our riding
whips. As the hippopotamus spends so
much time in the water the skin is per
forated with a number of pores,through
which exudes a thick, dark, oily secre
tion, which, like the fur of the seal,
otter, b aver and otherhiquatic animals,
keeps the creature dry, even
when it is submerged. When in
July, 1819, Obnysh, the first hippo
potamus ever brought to England,
was taken in the Nile as a youngster
its slippery skin enabled it to wriggle
out of the arm of its captors, and it was
only secured by driving a boathook into
its hide, the scar remaining through the
rest of its long life. When in May ol
the following year it arrived in London
1 went to see it and inadvertently patted
it, not knowing of the oily secretion.
Consequently a pair of new kid gloves
which I was wearing* were utterly
spoiled. A female was afterward ob
tained, and in 1871 was born the first
hippopotamus ever produced in Europe.
As its mother did not know how toman
age it the yOUt g calf was taken away
and fed artificially. Taking it from its
mother was a most perilous task, and,
after aWhiost exciting serie- of ad
ventures, was achieved by Scott, whe
was afterward so well known as
Jumbo’s keeper. The little creature
weighed about. 100 pounds, but
kicked and screamed like an adult,
while its round, smooth body was so
•oily that Scott could scarcely hold it.
Now we turn to the head. The eyes,
ears and nostrils arc set nearly on the
same plane, so that the animal can sink
itself below the surface, and be able to
perceive the approach of foes by hear
ing, sight and scent. When it lies mo
tionless and dozing in the water, it is
naturally a little lighter than a cor
responding bulk of water and so flo its
with only a little of the back, and the
ears, eyes and nostrils above the surface.
But it often has to sink th swim for
some distance under water. This ne
cessity involves several other peculiari
ties of structure.
A Petrified Niilmon.
Henry Benson, of Lassen county, Cal.,
has in his possession a specimen of petri
fied salmon. The fleshy part resem lies
crystalized and variegated quartz, re
taining in part the yellowish color of the
salmon, and what was formerly the skin
of the fish is now a sort of porcelain or
white flint. The entire specimen is of
the very hardest quartz in texture. It
was found on a hillsi le al. about 1500
feet altitude, from the floor of Big Val
ley, and evidently petrified at that
point. This would indicate that salmon
inhabited the ancient rivers, the beds of
which now form the .strata of the
Sierra Nevada .Mountains, and in
which ancient channels lie the
rich deposits of California's gold.
These ancient river beds, as is well
known, are found nt various heights
above the sea level, and in soma places
but a few hundred feet below the crest
of the range* and perhaps hundreds of
feet beneath the solid formation of
mother earth, and running entirely in
dependent of any present surface forma
tion. To determine with certainty that
salmon inhabited these ancient rivers
would be an interesting fact, asit would
fix at a much later date than is now
generally supposed the geological period
when by mighty upheaval, these old
river courses wer - changed and oblit
erated from the sac of the earth.
Tired Enough to Sit Down.
. He had been out very I. te the night
before, aud it wax ten o’clock when he
came down to breakfast. *
Husband—“ What makes the coffee so
weak? ’
Wife—“ Because it has been standing
i-o iong.”—[Siftings.
I fLM Per Annum; "5 cents for Six Months;
• SO cent* Tnrra Months; Single Copies
6 oeute- -In Advance.
The Finger-King.
Os all the ornaments with which
vanity, superstition and affection have
decorated the human form, few have
more curious bits of history than the
finger-ring. From the earliest time*
the ring has been a favorite ornament,
and the reasons for this general pref
erence shown for it over other articles of
jewelry are numerous mid cogent. Or- 4
naincnts whose place is on some portion
of the apparel, or in the hair, must Ims
laid aside with the clothiiyj or head
dress, are thus easily lost, and often not
at once missed. Pins, brooches, buck
les, clasps, buttons, all sooner or Inter
become defective in some part, and ar#
liable to escape from an owner. The
links of a necklace in time become worn,
and the article is taken off to bo mend
ed; the spring or other fastening of n
bracelet is easily broken and the brace
let-vanishes. With regard to ornaments
fastened to part* of the savage body,
mutilation is necessary, the ear must be
bored, the nose be pierced, the cheeks
or 1 ij>s be slit, and, even alter the sur
gical operations are completed, the arti
cles used for adornment are generally
inconvenient, nnd sometimes by tfieir
I
weight or construction, nro extremely
painful.
In striking contrast with decorationt
worn on the clothing, in the hnir, round
the neck and arms, or pendant« from
the cars, lips and nose is the finger-ring,
the model of convenience. It is seldom
I lost, for it need not bo taken off; re
quires no preparatory mutilation of the
body, is not painful, is always in view,
a perpetual reminder,either of the giver
i or of the purpose for which it is given.
The popularity of the ring must,
therefore, bn in large measure due so its
convenience, ami that this good quality
was early learned may be inferred from
the Hebrew tradi ion, which attributes
the invention of this ornament to Tabal-
Cain, the “instructor of every artificer
j in brass nnd iron.”—(Popular Science
, Monthly.
The Cow an a Transmitter of DUhaw.
The transmission from the cow to man
of scarlet fever and tuberculosis was the
subject of the opening address of Pro
fe-sor Hamilton at Mnrischal Cottage,
Aberdeen, in which the lecturer gave an
excellent account of the investigations
conducted by Mr. Power and Dr. Kieiu
into the relation of a cow malady to
scarlet fever in m in. He referred also
to the observations ol Copeland, who
believed that both tire dog and th#
horse could suffer from the latter affec
tion, and stated that a febrile condition
of some time can be communicated to
animals by innoculating them with the
blood of persons who are the subject* of
scarlet fever. He further expressed the
opinion that tubercle could be conveyed
to man by means of milk from
tuberculous cows. While the jxmibility
of such occurrence cannot be denied, it
must be borne in mind that Klein has
pointed out that there ara certain im
portant differences between liovine and
human tuberculosis; and again, Creigh
ton has shown that man occasionally
suffers from a form of this disease which
resembles the bovine malady, making it
probable that by far the greater number
of cases art; not of bovine origin. Never
theless, the subject deserves much
greater investigation, and certainly
etery effort should be made to prevent
the distribution of milk from tuber
culous cow-. ■ London Lancet.
Frog* in Conimerce.
Almost alt the frogs used for cxpen-$
i riepts in vivisection in the European ■
Uinv> : ,'ties are ‘-tin; ” I’.v an ol
1 *
trmaii of Kopenich, who, for fo;ty |Kq/
years past, has devoi d himself to wnb
pursuit. Sometim sheli i- succeeded in
! catching as many ns a thousand in the. t
iii dit. The traflic inu-t be quite
able, a the frogs sell fur nil average; «?♦
two to four cents ap’w.
- —• “■•■MOBMBW’
true to iiis f oiitract.
Pitient (in contortions of agony): <
Great Scott, doctor! I thought you ex
tracted teeth without pain. a*
Dentist: So 1 do, sir; I haven’t been *
hutt the lea t bit, I assure you —[Tid-
Bita.
NO. 14.