Newspaper Page Text
ANDERSON Sc WALLIS, Proprietors
((£ren This Shall Pass Anay.”
Cnee iu Persia reijjned a king
Who upon his s gnet ling
Grave l a maxim true and wise,
Which, if held before hs eyes,
Gave him counsel at n glance
pit for ever , change and chance.
Solemn words, and these are they
n pveil this shall pass away.”
Trains ol camels through the sand
Brought him gems from Snmarcaudj
Fleets of galleys through the seas
Brought him pearls to match with these.
But he counted not his gain
Treasures ol the mine or main;
‘•What is wealth?” the king weult
“Even this shall pass away."
In the revels of his court,
At the zenith of the sport,
When the palms of all his guests
Burned with clapping at his jesta^
He, amid his figs and wine,
Cried : ‘ Oh, loving frieuds of mini
Pleasure comes, hut not to stufj
“Even this s. ell pas* away.”
Fighting on n furious field,
Once a javelin pierced his shield.
Soldiers, with a lou 1 lament,
Bore him bleeding to his tent.
Groaning from his tortured side,
“Pain is hard to boar,” he cried,
“But with patience, day by day.
Even this shall pa~s away.”
Towering in the public square,
Twenty cuoits in the air,
Rose bis statue carved in stone.
Then the king, disguised, unknown, i
Stood before his sculptured name,
Musing meekly, “VVImt is tame?
Fame is but a slow decay—
Even this shall pass away.”
Struck with palsy, sere and old,
Waiting at tlie Gates of Gold,
Said lie, with his dying breath,
“Life is done, but what is death?"
Then, i“ answer to the king,
Fell a sunbeam oil his ring,
Showing by a heavenly lay,
“Even tins shall puss awuy.”
— Indianapolis JVews.
“PAPA IS DRIVING.”
I arrived at the station at the ap¬
pointed hour. I entered or rather
was thrown by an attendant into the
tar nearest to me. The door was
quickly shut The whistle was blown
and we were off.
Curiously enough, the car was
crowded. I formed the fifth passenger.
Two of the corners were occupied, one
by an officer and the other by a civilain.
Faeing me was a woman, about thirty
years old, neatly and modestly dressed,
and beside her sat the most beautiful
little child I ever saw_a little girl
about six years old, with a flood of
blond curls waving under her immense
straw hat. Now and then the child
would look through the window in the
direction of the engine, and then her
eyes seemed to wander in the infinite
space that was unrolling itself before
her. We came to a station. The
train stopped. The little girl put her
face to the window. “1 don’t see him.”
she said to the lady beside her. “I
Unn’r cou rim n , r .„„ SlK ,, T/ , . Th „
aoLhn face brier) t i iv ZTn
or:r:\ ' f 11 ? b ih *J T llpS gWith, Came “ down u P°n 16
hands that came from the exte
nor a nd we replaced the frame ,
o he opened wmdow. “Ah, papa! ,
neighbor i n with P T the , eXCla exuberant ‘ med and m y inno- llttle ;
n joy of of her six years.
t w as the engineer of our train,
daughter !"V at and 001116 his wife, t0 s P eak to his little
who were, seat
m rent of me.
We are going very last,” said the
WC ™ au '
e must make up for lost time,
replied the man. ' “Were you afraid ;
’ ea ’’-No:’ ° ne J ’ said the child, “because I 1
Knew that you were driving.” !
‘Well, by-by,” said the man, as be
pft !
'%-by. papa,” said the child, throw
ing herself into his arms.
The train started and gradually
reached an extraordinary speed. I
worship children, and I began to ex
amine the little one in front of me.
She was full of life and good humor.
She amused herself with everything
and nothing, cajoling with her mother,
inquisitive with the window' severe
with her doll She was carrying on a
thousand different conversations all
at once, and with a noise that was al
most deafening, when suddenly the
gentleman in the other corner exclaim
“Decidedly , we are going too fast.
he train wili surely run off the track.”
“Oh, don’t be be afraid,” said the
child seriously; “papa is driving.”
The officer was reading. lie looked
°ut of the window, and then resumed
his reading without making any obser¬
vation.
The other gentleman again began to
talk.
“This is certainly madness,” said ha
Yes, madam,” he continued, address
>ag the lady, “your husband is either
drunk or crazy.”
“Oh, sir,” said the lady, “my bus
hand never gets drunk. You saw
him a littte while ago. Certainly, the
irtin is going at a furious rate. I
d on’t fluUe uadeisUad. it,”
®lie Comnoton Star.
COVINGTON, GEORGIA, WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 25. 1885.
,
The Officer closed his book and
stretched himself along the seat. “I
would advise you to do the same,”
said he, with the greatest coolness.
_
‘-Lt you keep seated, your legs will be
smashed. Remember the Versailles
accident.”
Certainly the train was running at
a terrifying rate. What in the world
could the engineer mean by such driv¬
ing.
“I am afraid!” said the citizen, white
with terror.
Then the officer took me aside.
“Here is my name and address,” said
hft “If am killed or mo'rtally wound¬
ed in the accident to which we are
running, and you escape, promise me
now that you will carry these dis¬
patches without a moment's delay to
the General whose name you wlU find
by opening this envelope.”
promised.
The woman took the chid in her
arms and covered her little face with
tears and kisses. She seemed to wish
to make a rampart of herself to protect
the little one against the frightful
smash-up that was momentarily ex
pected.
“I am not afraid,” said the child,
smiling, • papa is driving.” And she
alone among the passengers of the
ear, and doubtless she alone among all
on board the train, had faith and conli
dence. We could hear in the other
cars cries of terror and wailings of
dispair, and, in spite of the mother,
the child leaned out of the window in
the back door and shouted out with
all the force of its little lungs; “Don’t
be afraid; papa is driving.’ Ah ! that
sweet little girl, in the general terror,
was a tower of strength with that sa
cred love of a child for a father—an
affection that nothing can break down,
Gradually the train slowed and then
came to a standstill. We were at a
station. The engineer came to the
door. “We have been going very fast.”
said he, “but at all hazards we must
get to Reims before the Prussians.
That we must do at the risk of being
blown up or smashed to pieces on the
way. I’m told we are carying impor
tant dispatches,” and he looked at his
little girl with tears in his eyes.
“Give me your hand,” said the of
Acer. “You are a brave fellow. It is
1 who have the dispatches,” “En
route l” then saiJ tbe tbe maD - an<1 he
gave a parting glance at the fair form
of his child as if to bid her farewell,
But Jeanne was not afraid; and more
over . nobody in our compartment was
afraid any longer. We knew that we
were risking our lives for our country,
and that satisfied us. As for the
train, it recommenced its furious race,
This was in the month of Septem
ber, 1870, on the Eastern line.-Cowr
tier des Etats Unis.
Shark-Fishing . ... in in Iceland.
The U3Ual shark ' Gahmg 3eason of
Iceland i3 fromJanuar r orFebuary
tiU AugUSt DUriDg ^ WiQter
months the sharks frequent shallow
waterSi and are found about 20 miles
from laad> ia 5 0 fathoms of water or
thereabout9; in summer they seek
deeper waters, and are caught 100
• ile8 o£E the ast, in a depth ol
or so CO
200 fathoms. A hook, 12 to 18 inches
long, baited with horse-flesh and seal
blabber, weighted with an eight
pound sinker and attached by a couple
0 f yarda 0 f strong chain to a 11-inch
, ine> is used , an d is allowed to hang
motionless about a couple of fathoms
£rom tbe bottom. As soon a3 the
ahark is drawn up to the surface, har
poons and lances are struck into it,
an d the spinal column is cut. Large
hookg are flxe d into the body and
chaing passed ruU nd it, and thus se
cured it is cut open and the liver re
moved The livers are brought ashore
nn d stored in vats till the solid matters
have se ttled to the bottom; the more
fll|id portion is then melted in iron
tg over an ope n fire. By this pro
cegs jjver yields about two-thirds
jtg bulk of a coar3 e, dark-colored oil.
Q£ late years refiniug by steam has
come int o use> and the liver is melted
fregb ag poss j b le. By this means a
ag obtained,
Bghter-colored oil is
bu t the yield is less. The crew of ves
selg ^gaged j a shark-fishing are paid
about 55s , a mon th, with a premium
of ^ per barrel of liver; the captain
gets 2s. 3d. per barrel on the first hun
died barrels of the season’s catch, and
4d p er barrel on the remainder.
To Cure Stooping Shoulders.
Dio Lewis ifl his “Nuggets” advises
the stoop-shouldered that he doesn't
believe in shoulder braces, Nature
furnishes the needed braces to keep
the shoulders in position; and when
you use the artificial these natural ones
become weak for want of exercise.
The beat way to cure stooping s ou
ders is to carry a weight ou the e.i
a half hour morning and evening.
Make the weight large, There is no
other single exercise so valuable as
carrying weiuM on the head. A
a
< bag of sand weighing i- v .ritwen y
qjfcW}' fiSWi® IfcAlPS*
,
Millions of Marbles.
A few days ago, at, the office of the
Custom Surveyor, a Minute reporter
picked up an item which excited his
curiosity. He was told that Charles
Mayer & Co. paid about $150 duty on
marbles imported from Germany.
“An invoice of marbles,” said the
leporter, “on which the duty amounts
to that much, certainly must contain
enough of these play-things to keep
all the boys in the United States busy
for some time.”
“Well,” said Mr. Mueller, Deputy
Custom-house Surveytr, “you
count for yourself. The invoice
sists of sixty cases, each case
ing 1,000 gross of marbles.”
Taking in consideration the differ
e nce in the size of the marbles,
that each case was said to contain
125(00 o marbles, this would make the
entire inyoicQ consist of about g 000
000 or enough to give each school boy
in the United States at least a marble
or two. But as the firm referred to
is not supposed to control the entire
trade in marbles of the United States,
the boys are entitled to a more liberal
supply. If the stock just imported
were held for the Indianapolis boys,
a division would result in each boy
getting about 750 marbles. It is not
probable, however, that this supply
would last much longer than the doz
en or two of marbles which the aver
age boy now manages to get away
with each season,
Marbles belong to a class of play
things which cannot very easily be
broken or otherwise destroyed, still
disappear in a somewhat mysterious
manner, and of the 8,000,000 which
have just come across the ocean, forin
ing a bulky, but not very valuable car
go of one of our large ocean steamers.
not many will be left in a year from
now and a new supply will have to
be ordered from Steinach, in Thuringia,
where nearly ali the marbles come
from. Steinach is in the Sonneburg
District the principal industry of
which is the manufacture of toys, mar
bles being one of the main articles pro¬
duced. The trade distinguishes be
tween two classes of marbles, the
glass marble, which is the prettiest
and most expensive article, themar
bles with a porcelain finish and a
painted surface, and the common
stone marble. The glass marbles,
! SO me of which show very handsome
designs, are produced in the glass
works, while the other are made from
the stone which has been ground into
dust .—^Indianapolis Minute.
A Mill Horror Recalled.
January 10, 1860, the city of Law¬
rence, Massachusetts was smitten by
a disaster which carried agony and
death into scores of homes, and sent a
t,,ri11 of s >' m P ath / tic h ^ror through
the land. About o o clock , in the after
n oon the operatives i in the Pemberton
Mills felt swaying of the floors and
the machinery began to run irregular
/ Before, however, the dreadful fact
hat the buildiDg wa3 faffing could be
thjul realized> the walls were
bursti apartf the floors falling, and
ratUi * looms and human beings were
gwaIlo ed in a terrible phin ge of
dgath> The first those in the lower
gt . orieg knew of the catastrophe was a
crasbino . through of the machinery
them from the floor3 above .
There wa3 n0 time , no way to escape.
The building then caught fire, and
gcores o£ wre tcbed, wounded beings o'!
wgre burned t0 de ath. Hundreds
citizens we re on the scene immediately
ftfter the fa!]j and a n worked heroic
ally> j^d all the fire engines in the city
’
gd on floods of water, but it was
gometime be f 0 re the flames ware ex
tinguisbed> an d all the injured could
not be go t out of the building until
tb e following day. Over one hundred
p ersons were killed, and some three
hundred others were more or less in
j U red.— Inter-Ocean.
a. no,,, Babj's F.c
Doe stories are always in order, pro
J A gentleman in
specimen one « «»«
TZTm of tl.c epaniel b,«d, ,vbicb
1, ot children, and .ten
aDy visit his master’s house
constitutes . t himself their companion,
playmate and gua . A few days J
lady with a ‘ . t 4
ago a o£lh|
gentleman i, and in ‘
,
day the chikl was on
‘
the floor to amtis > f or a ^ time,
The dog took his place near fie i ^
usual. The day wasAmt a. d
one, as
the flies bail, aud the) lll < u e ,e
the target of frequent attacks. T -
rendered her restless. Doggie wa
ed her for a few minutes, and then
walking close up, with his nust oi
drove away every fly as soon as
paw ft baby’s face, and did it sc
lit on the the
irently too as not to disturb her in
The dog’s actions attracted tht
least mother ,md others
attention of the
who were filled •" jth fistiuusiiuient a'
bis thoughtful Kindness This story
has the merit of truth.—
Chrofti 1 ^-
A SULTAN’S DAILY LIFE.
Manner in Which the Turk,
ish Ruler Passes Time.
A Sovereign Whose Food is Always
Tasted by His Mother.
The Sultan is accustomed to rise at
an early hour, and after he leaves his
seraglio and has eaten a slight break¬
fast—at times he only drinks a cup of
black coffee—his secretaries bring him
the portfolios containing the tele¬
grams, official correspondence, and re¬
ports which are ready tor Ins perusal,
this occupation lasts till noon, when
the dejeuner a la fourchette, which is
generally the chief meal of the day, is
served. If a visitor happens to have
the honor of lunching with the Sultan,
his Majesty will perhaps show him af¬
terward in person some of the sights
of the park and gardens, of which he
is very proud. There are aviaries of
rare birds; the unrivalled collection of
pigeons; the well-stocked menagerie;
the stables containing nearly 200 hor¬
ses, some of which are presents from
the Emperors of Russia, Germany,
Austria, and the Prince of Wales;
the great riding-school in which the*
Circassian guards are accustomed to
exhibit their prowess and feats of
horsemanship; the lake on which the
Sultan’s little daughters row them¬
selves in tiny caiques, to the great de¬
light of their father; and now and
then some highly privileged gue9t is
even permitted to witness a musical
performance by the Sultan’s children
in a miniature theatre provided for
the purpose.
At A o’clock the secretaries take
away the papers and unfinished corres¬
pondence, for at that hour his Majesty
generally puts spurs on his patent
leather boots, and mounts his horse
for a ride in the park. Sometimes he
takes his gun (he has a fine collection
of the best arms that Purdey, Holland,
and Lancaster can produce), and
shoots the wild fowl which decoys at¬
tract to the various lakes in abund¬
ance, or at a series of marks fixed at
the side of the paths. If he does not
care to ride, he drives in a pony-car¬
riage along the roads which traverse
the grounds. His Majesty generally
returns to the palace before seven, and
it is at the dinner which now takes
place that he receives his moat hon¬
ored guests. The service is strictly a
la Basse; the table is covered with
gold and silver candelabra and mas¬
sive epergnes filled with the choicest
fruits and flowers. At the head of the
table sits the Sultan in a large gilt
chair, and behind him stands through¬
out the meal one of his interpreters.
The cuisine is admirable and al¬
though Abdul Hamid only drinks wa¬
ter himself, wines of tbe most costly
vintages are offered to those who
share his hospitality. Through his
interpreter his Majesty address s some
remarks to each of his visitors in suc
cession, and as a sign of special favor
he will often help a lady sitting near
him to water, salt, or fruit. The
splendid band of the Imperial Guard
plays during dinner, and the well
trained Turkish servants who glide
noiselessly about the room W3ar scar¬
let liveries and heavy gold epauletts.
If there is any fault to be found in so
magnificent an entertainment, it is
that the viands are somewhat cold.
The uninitiated would attribute this
to the insufficient warming of the
gold plate; but those who are behind
the scenes of life in an Eastern palace
know that every dish must, as a pre
cautionary measure, be previously tast
ed by the Talkie Ilanem the Sultana
dowager—the venerable widow of Ab
dul Medjid, to whom her son is devot
edly attached, and who regards this
particular duty in the light of a con
genial labor of love,
As soon as dessert . is . served - the .. Sul- q i
tan rises and , quits ih. the rnnm room «ith with th» the
— U
any gentleman p * 1
Mm U, Mo. ■*, well ■ «.«»
»«'“• dining- room is
Inmietad
,3lire ,re.iante-chamber, cigaret passed tes ,
coffee, and rose-water are
round. A conjurer, a amous singer,
or a young tiger may possibly be in
troduced for the entertainment of the
guests The tiger somtimes proves a
.
i itl Ie restive, but it is never old ,
enough to do any real harm, and its
antics and the terror they occasion are
source 0 f much amusement Be- j
^ ^ the imperial carriages have I
a ’ re adv conveyed the visitois back to
' again busy
and V be Sultan i»
big sect etarie>, and long after
hg is till occupied in set
.. knot£y po f jnts of internal admin
dic ating cipher messages to
< transla
his _ envoys reading a
{ newspapere arti
e /u understands o^Jy
Majesty a !
cles • the last
pondering over
owin' IS cjmmimicatipa from Berlin
1 or Lon ion, c< nsidermiFtbe beT means
of making matters smooth with “lit.
^
tie Said” at the Porte, or answering
with diplomatic prudence some per
plexing demand from a foreign Am
bassador. It is often one o’clock be¬
fore he quits his post, and a few will
be inclined to dispute his claim to be, at
the present moment, one of the most
hard-working and painstaking sover
eigns in Europe.— London World.
A Noted Duelist.
Baron de Seu Malta, a Sicilian and a
noted duellist, has fought forty duels,
but in none of them has he been the
challenger. It is told of him that dur
ing a heated political canvass, in the
course of a discussion in a public
square with a first cousin, the latter
called him by some opprobious epithet,
The baron replied,—
“You are a coward!”
The cousin answered,—
“Will you repeat that in five min¬
utes ?”
“Assuredly.”
The cousin went home and returned
with a revolver in his hand. The bar¬
on went up to him and said,—
“Guiseppe, seejierel. That revolver
don’t suit your hand; the stock w«a
never made for yon; for the life of you,
you could not use the pistol.”
As he ceased to speak he spit in his
cousin’s face. The suddenness and
strangeness of his speech and attack
bewildered the cousin that he neither
said nor did anything. The baron
spit in his face again. Friends inter
feered. The cousin challenged the baron
On the eve of the duel, the baron’s
aunt, who knew what an expert
swordsman he was, begged him to
spare her son’s life. He replied,—
“Guiseppe shall return from the
field without even a scratch.”
The duel rook place. The cousin
attacked furiously. The baron only
parried. At last he turned his head
and looked at his seconds, until his
adversary became so weak that he
could no longer hold his sword, when
the seconds interfered and ended the
duel. At an other time he was chal¬
lenged by the best broad-swordsman in
Sicily, while he himself was not skil¬
ful with his weapon. The broad¬
sword was selected by the seconds.
On the field the baron took his sword
in both hands and rushed upon his ad¬
versary, using the weapon as if it
were a club. His adversary retreated.
They were put in positions again.
The baron disarmed his adversary.
A third time they were put in posi¬
tion; at the first pass the baron’s sword
broke within eight inches of the hilt;
his adversary kept on; the seconds did
not interfere. The baron became furi¬
ous, rushed on his adversary, wounded
him; then turned en he seconds and
wounded every oi e of them, begin¬
ning with his own.
An Eskimo Illumination.
Lieutenent Schwatka says iu St.
Nicholas: The first snow of the win¬
ter does not make good sf long snow
blocks for the igloos, however deep it
may £ad> and f rom f b e time there is
enough of it, the Eskimo oiten have
(Q wid( . £b ree or four weeks before it is
fit for building. As it gets too cold in
their summer sealskin tents before
this time comes, the Datives generally
build preliminary houses of ice, which
singular as it may seem, are much
warmer than the tents, but not as
comfortable as the houses of snow.
when the ice has formed to about six
inehes ia thickness on some lake close
by ^ £bey cu£ ou£ their big slabs of ice
£or £be g j des o£ the house. Imagine
an ort |inary-sized house-door to be a
s i abo { ice a i )ou t six inches thick; then
lake a half-dozen of these doors, and
and then place them in a circle, join¬
ing them edge to edge, but leaning
in slightly, and you will have
formed your curious house of ice.
Over this circular pen of ice—which
you can imitate on a small scale with 1
a circular -i row of t upright . , . dominoes . , on
e 8U, “ m0r sealskin Tt tent “ is lashed
rota or. ..a Ic.
hou,. I. coKpl.t. By and b, th,a
“W”*
„a and a dome dl.now put on, which
glve s more height and consequently
mor e comfort.
Before these houses get covered in- j
side with the black soot from the
burning lamps, and before the snow
outside has drifted up level with the
rooft a nig , lt scene in a village of ice,
and especially if the village be a large
0 ne and all the lamps be burning brill
ianUV) is 0 ne of the prettiest views a
stranger can find in that desolate land.
If you could behold a village of cabins
suddenly transformed into houses of
gla3S> an d filled with Turning lamps, I
it might represent an Eskimo ice vil
li8ge a t night
---——- !
Waking Dp. j
Parson:—“H ither drowsy weather
this, Fayger Jones.”
Farmer J.:—“Aye, Parson, so it b®;
minds one o’ sermon time, don't jt?’
Punch. ,
VOL. XII. NO 2.
- dOSSING A YOKE OF OXEN.
-
An Exciting Reminiscence of
Life on the Farm.
I Plowing Stumpy Ground Among Snakes
and Yellow Jackets.
When my memory goes hack to the
good old days of “whoa-haw Buck,”
! 1 cannot help instinctively rubbing
1 sbin3 Tbe fir jt thin S 1 ever boss
-
j 0<J turo was a S e a o£ yoke n 1 of oxen, invested At the with ma
- was a
,ar g 9 whi P. ornamented with a keen
cl ' acker . and informed that I might
! shape the course of old Buck and
Bright while our hired man guided
the plow. I was young and inexperi¬
enced, and entered upon my new du¬
ties wi h a zeal well nigh amounting
to enthusiasm, but at the end of the
first half day, when 1 started for din¬
ner with the bark nearly all off the
front part of my legs, and 4,000 splin
.ers in the bottom of my feet, I felt
hat a change had come over the happy
scene, and was willing, in considera
tion of some slight recompense to re¬
sign iny position of honor and trust,
and accept a more humble and less re
sp nsible office, where I would not be
held to answer for everything that
happened to the hired man.
Oxen, w'hen drawing the plow in
and that has not yet yielded to the
gentle influences of civilization, are
apt to pause occasionally for the pur¬
pose of meditating upon the good they
are doing. They generally pause just
at the moment the plow gets stuck
against a stump, and when the hired
man, who has been walking leisurely
along after the team thinking about
getting married, overtakes the plow
and attempts to shove it right ahead
with his stomach, the sky generally
becomes a shade more azure, and the
superincumbent atmosphere reeks
with the fumes of overdone brimstone.
At such a moment, the boy who Is
driving steers needs great presence of
mind. Unless he is quick and firm,
be is liable to be slapped over before he
can detract the attention of the hired
man from himself to the steers. An
experienced boy, as soon as he ob¬
serves that the hired man has been
successful in driving the plow through
the stump, will have a great deal of
trouble with the whip in trying to
bring them to right, in a way that
will render it dangerous for the hired
man to get very close to him. The
chances are that he will get interested
in the oxen, and confer upon them the
favors he seemed about to shower up¬
on the boy.
There were a few other small issues
liable to crop out in the course of
driving a yoke of oxen across a field
of stumpy ground. One of them was
the premature awakening of the
snake that had lain dormant during
the winter. As the plow shear rolled
them up and then w'ound them around
the bare legs of the hired man, lie of¬
ten expressed himself in a way that
made me doubt his Christianity, and
I always noticed that he did not beam
upon me so graciously at such mo¬
ments as he did when the patriotic
note of the dinner horn was wafted to !
is from the house. '
There was another experience, how- ,
ever, that sometimes fell to our lot. !
It was to ruthlessly break in upon the j
domestic harmony and blissful repose |
of a den of yellow-jackets. -1 am afraid [
my readers never saw a yellow-jacket, !
so I will inform them right here that
it is a sort of a small, yellow wasp that
can sting a few bars and then go right
back and repeat fortissimo, The
yellow-jackets always build their nests
in the immediate vicinity of a small
stump, and the hired man never found
out that he had disturbed them until
the plow was effectually set against the
stump, when he bent all his energies
to pull it out while the oxen were
hpn bending ,„ n „ all all their thpir energies pnpr „ ip , to puli nnl , it it in, in j
^ .. n , ., 1P vp i l(iw i ai .k P u iv«rn working j
-
hired man, while a boy about my size
„„ catrJlng „„ ,„ rgl „ frum
„„ tral , , urp ,ui„ g .
The oxen daall, broke the chain
bmad them p,p„. „„j
made their way t0 a place where they
could stand in water something more
thaQ knee deep, and that ended the
work of that particular day, the rest
of wbich was devoted to cremating
the yellow-jackets’ nest-Blooming
ton Through Mail. j
One of the Original Members.
“Do you belong to the Toboggan
Club, Mr. Smith ? asked a little boy
of a Saratoga resident who was sitting
with the family on the porch of the
Grand Union, enjoying the scene on
the street below. •
‘‘Oh, yes,” Mr. Smith repl : ed, “I am
one of the original members of the ■
club.”
“I’d jest like to see you riding once,*
went on the httle^boy enthusiastically.'
“Ma says she neVer saw a ui3n o ()
down hill ps fast as you can .—New
York iSuft,
SCIENTIFIC SCRAPS.
A prize has been offered by the
Anti-Tobacco Society of Franco for
the best essay on the liability or non¬
liability of smokers to contract chol
ers
M. Aime Girard, after careful ex¬
amination of the composition and ali¬
mentary value of the different por¬
tions of a grain of wheat, concludes
that it i8 advisable to reject, as far as
possible, the outer layers and reserve
the farinaceous portions only foi hu¬
man food.
Admiral de Jonquieres.of theFrench
navy, has called attention to a remark¬
able phenomenon which may be wit¬
nessed at Papeete, in the Society is.
lands. At this point there is hut one
tide a day instead of the two which
occur at other places on the sea.
A microscopist, Mr. Spencer Moore,
has shown that, the bacteria which
produce or accompany “sweating of
the feet” are identical with those pro¬
ducing chemical action in the soil. In
the latter situation they reduce the
sulphates to sulphites, and the phos¬
phates to phosphites, and in both situ¬
ations are instrumental in setting free
ammonia.
Lyeil estimated that the gorge of
Niagara river was cut out in about
35,000 years, but surveys to determine
the present recession of the falls indi¬
cate that the work may have been
done in 10,000 years. During forty
one years the average annual wear of
the rock was 2 3-4 feet.
Analyses have shown that the fallen
h ave.s of maple contain four per cent,
of valuable matter (soda, potash, lime
magnesia, phosphorous and sulphur
compounds), and poplar and willow
five per cent, or more, and that conse¬
quently the trees constantly manure
the surface soil beneath their branch¬
es. Other leaves examined contained
about two per cent, of fertilizing sub¬
stances.
Lieut. J. P. Finley, of the United
States Signal Service, has found that
the West is not, as is popularly sup¬
posed, the peculiar home of the tor¬
nado in the United States, such storms
being much more frequent in the
South. Of the 180 tornadoes which
occurred last year within the bounda¬
ries of the Union, only 59 visited the
Western States and Territories, while
the Southern States had 105. The
Western gales are, however, usually
more severe and destructive than those
of other localities.
Caste in India.
Caste, like a terrible nightmare, is
firmly fastened upon the social life of
India. It is not easy for a stranger
to understand it. During a severe
famine a man with his wife and child
to a missionary for help.
They had come from a distance and
thin and pinched with hunger.
was at once brought, but, hun¬
as they were, they could.not touch
The child was on the ground
for and eating the raw rice
was scattered about the door.
being given them, they corn
to cook it, but devoured it be
it was half done. They would
lose caste by eating food jvrepared
any one not of their grade. There
four principal castes. The brali
or priests, are the highest,
consider it beneath them to labor,
tend cattle or to milk a cow would
be pollution. Formerly if a low-caste
person touched them (even by acci
dent) they could kill him on the spot
with impunity. The people yield to
them as superiors as a matter of
course. A high-caste man came into
a meeting, a whole bench was vacated,
the occupants taking seats on the
fl 00 r. The natives usually travel
third-class on the rail way. These cars
are so crowded there is 3 no r room °°“ to sif
t. f This has a , tendency to , break ,
. mi i
to drink. A high 8 caste man
drlak water brooght employing b? „
o( clste . „y enpplf.d. a
„.c„t, man ail can he
.It on their
while he pours the water into a
made by their hands, from which
drink without touching the
Sometimes a low-caste man
employ one of a higher-caste.
latter does not eat with his eni
but cooks and eats by himself.
high-caste man will not drink water
^ 0 ______ g . .. belonging . , to a.
each . caste lives by
n eir v ages
1- ac 43 1 8 own s °P S ’ or
Below the ^ regular castes are
sou cases lose w o ave >ro _ en
ver some rejected °f T* by n ®“ their 8 . rest sect, nctions. and
are
pariahs. There are manv sub
among these. CooUes or job
are often of this class. Off
lines of railway they are employed
traai *P°rt passengers.— Watchman
Befip.to'-.