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About North Georgia times. (Spring Place, Ga.) 1879-1891 | View Entire Issue (Sept. 17, 1885)
NORTH GEO •'f W. <?/MAiwiN,j Ml1 Proprietor*. A BEAUTIFUL POEM. The following beautiful poem, says Liter w > Life, was written by Bayard Taylor when a young man visiting Italy, and was dedicated to “Lulie,” daughter of Hiram Powers, she being the inspiration thereof. A manuscript copy of it was given by Mrs. Foawrs to Miss M. E. Abbott, who gave it to us. It was never published by the poet : TO AN AMERICAN CHILD IN ITALY. The warm Italian sun has shone, Sweet child, upon thy curls of gold, Till they have caught a softer tone Prom this bright land of memories old! The blue of northern skies has met The southern twilight in thine eyes; And that fair brow bears on it yet The brightness of the western skies. But not on Freedom’s distant strand Thy infant eyes first saw the light; They gazed on southern sunny land— By sun and memory doubly bright! The childhood sports in laurel bowers, In arbors rich with bending vines— Thou look’st on Florence’ domes and towers And on the far blue Apennines. Thou see st the olive’s moonlight groves That gleam and wave in Arno’s vale, Where, drunk with sweets, the zephyr roves And bears to colder climes his talel These wake no thought in thy young mind Of lands beyond the heaving sea, With suns less soft and colder wind, But with a people proud and free! Its mighty streams thou ne’er hast seen— Ne’er looked upon its rocky strand, Its giant hills and forests green, That clothe the broad and glorious land! But keep the blissful hope, sweet child, That thou wilt see them all ere long, And in their beauty, fresh and wild, Forget the sunny land of song! Let not these purple hills and skies Grow warm and homelike round thy heart ’Till yearnings for their forms arise, When thou hast wandered far apart) But dream of forests old and grand, 1 Of mountains swept by purer air; And when thou treadest Freedom’s land Thy heart will plant its homestead there! DUEL IN THE DARK. “Did I ever tell you about tho way Ben Clough saved the whaleship Sharon?” said a ship broker, formerly a sailor, as he sat the other day in his cosey office on the East river water front. “Ben was a New Bedford sailor and shipped as a third mate out-of his home port in 1841. I was before the mast as a youngster in the same ship. We had a fairish run of luck for the first year, and .on tbh.15th Of , October _ , tho . into next year put Aseen eion for wood, water, and recruits. We got our supplies, but instead of ini......i •ing our crew eleven men deserted, ..i d on the 27th we sailed away for Port • •. Jackson, having only seventeen men on .board, including four natives of the King’s Mills group aud a Dago boy named Manuel. We were out a little over a week when the lookout reported a school of whales on the lee bow, and Captain Norris ordered out two boats, leaving no one on board’except himself, three of the islanders, and the boy Manuel. The boat I was in made fast to a whale after an exciting *chase, and we soon had it spouting blood, for Ben Clough, who was acting as the mate’s steersman, was a master hand at the lance, and the mate was no slouch at giv¬ ing orders. The ship soon ran down to us, and we made the whale fast along¬ side, and then away we went for another whale. We had pulled about a mi e and a half away when Mr. Smith, the mate, who had just looked at the ship, said: “What’s the matter with the ship?” “All hands stopped rowing to look. The maintopgallantsail was coming down on the run, some one was aloft, and the ship was yawing around as if she was trying to sail three ways at once. While we looked we saw the signal hauled down to half-mast, and then we laid ourselves to the oars and pulled for the ship. Wc weren’t over twenty min¬ utes getting within hail of her. Manuel was in the maintop throwing his arms around wildly, aud shouting that the islanders had killed the captain. Just then a big native, stark naked, jumped on the rail with a cutting spade in his hand, and danced about in a wild way to show us he wasn’t afraid of us. We could see that bis companions had stacked up axes and all sorts of weapons and tools at both rails ready to keep us off. There wasn’t a gun or a pistol in our boat, and as the savages were above us they had a great advantage. Pretty soon the fellow on the rail spoke to the na tivethat was in our boat, but was an swered with a shake of the head. In ; stantly jumping to the deck, he threw the cook’s axe with such precision that the native in our boat had to dodge, and even then got a slit cut in the back of this shirt. The axe was followed by a heavy bone belaying pin, which was shattered to pieces on the rail of our boat. Ben Clough had darted his lance at the fellow twice, but the warp was too short to reach the distance, and we found it more comfortable to the case at longer range. Ben wanted to pull in, but Smith was. too cautious. “To prevent accidents in case of a ' /of wind, the mate told Manuel to cut SPRING PLACE. GEORGIA, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 17. 1885. sheets and halliards on the fore and main, so that the sails would hang flap¬ ping, but when Ben Clough wanted the fore-royal stay cut so that it would drop over into the water and give him some¬ thing by which he could climb to the jibboom, the boy had got so badly tuck¬ ered out that he couldn’t do it. It was 8 o’clock when we first saw the trouble on hoard, and we finally waited for night to come to enable Ben Clough to try a plan which he proposed. It would have been better if we had waited until midnight, hut Mr. Smith, had to use his authority even to keep the man from plunging into the water and shinning up the cutwater. Meantime the sharks had oome around for the dead whale that was alongside, and were streaking through the water and making a great stir to leeward. When night had fully come Ben took a knife in his mouth and slipped over the stem of the boat, which was then just beyond the end of the jib boom. He did not dare to strike out lest the stir in the water should attract the attention of the watchful savages, sp< he trod water slowly toward the stem of the ship. Two big sharks came around, but did not seem to understand the ver¬ tical figure in the water, and gave him no occasion to use his knife. It was nearly two hours before he ended Ms sus¬ pense by diving under the sMp’s quarter and coming up alongside of the rudder. Then he easily reached the open cabin window and crawled inside. Here he stripped himself, so that in case of a tus¬ sle with the savages they would have nothing to get hold of, and then he hunted up the muskets. Two only were in order to load, and when charged were put at the foot of the cabin stairway. It was absolutely dark in the cabin, but he managed to get his work done. While getting a cutlass he heard a footstep on the cabin stairs, and the next minute something knocked over the arms stand¬ ing at the foot of the stairway. Ben, with his cutlass in hand, crawled over that way, saw the dim outline of the savage against the sky over the com¬ panionway, and plunged the cutlass through that outline. Ashe drew it out (he savage seized the blade, and then began a desperate struggle for its pos¬ session. The savage, although desperately wounded, was p powerful man. Grasp • the we with bot h hands, he twisted the blade around, cutting Ben’s right palm to the bone. But when ho i closed in to throw Ben he made a mis take. Ben had him on the floor in no time and one eye gouged out, aud was sawing his neck with the dull blade of the cutlass in a vain effort to cut his hoad off. Finally the savage ceased to strug¬ gle and Ben arose, supposing his op¬ ponent dead. No sooner had he done so than the savage jumped up, cutlass in hand, but he was too much exhausted by the ]ogs of blood to do more tban j st|jke one or tw0 bloWi tbat did but i it - tie harm. “Although the two men never uttered a cry during the fight, the sounds of the conflict must have attracted the attention of one of the savages on deck. As Ben went over to the cabin stairs he saw one of them peering down with a cutting spade in hand. Ben picked up a mus¬ ket, and, aiming at the Bavage, pulled the trigger. The old flintlock snapped and missed fire. The savage was unable to see down in the cabin, and probably did not understand the sound of the musket lock. At any rate he did not move, and Ben tried again without suc¬ cess to firo the musket. The third time, however, the gun went off, and the fel¬ low pitched headlong down the stairway, the cutting spade which ho held striking Ben’s left arm right in the swell of the muscle, and cutting a fearful gash. The sound of the shot brought the third sav¬ age aft with a cutting spade, and Ben reached for the other musket. It was no use. The wounds in his hand and arm were so painful that he could not raise the weapon. The savage stopped to listen for a minute, and, hearing nothing, ran forward and jumged over¬ board, although neither Ben nor the rest of us in the boats, which was then under the 8tern> knew it . Ben heard us and shouted for be i P) 8ay i ng that two of the gavages were dea d, but the mate would not believ0 it, having heard but one gbot> g 0 g en ga t do wn on the floor and let tbe blood .run, after expressing his opinion of two boatloads of men that would allow a shipmate to face three savages, and then when he had killed two of them let him die for want ol help to bind up a wound. The men couldn’t stand that, and were soon climbing through the cabin window. A candle showed Ben’s condition, and the two savages lying on the floor. The first one was still alive, and the mate finished him. Then, having loaded the muskets, the men went on deck. Captain Norris lay on the quarter deck all hacked to pieces. We pitched the dead savages over to the sharks, and next day gave the captain a decent burial. The other mutineer had, meantime, crawled on board again, and was found in the fore¬ hold. Borne of the sailors wanted to pitch him overboard, but Ben wouldn’t allow it. We landed him at Port Jack son, and he was hanged for mutiny.” “What did the owners say?” “They were about as well pleased with Ben's bravery as anybody* you ever saw. We made a very profitable voyage, any¬ how, and the owners used the money to lay the keel of a new ship, of which they made Ben the captain and part owner. He sailed her many years, and was very successful .”—New York Sun. Fleecing the Farmers. “Here’s a notice of a note I’ve got to pay that I had much rather use to choke a Chicago dude with,” said an angry farmer as he started off toward the hank with the piece of paper rolled up with a hundred and twenty dollars with which to redeem the note. “What’s a Chicago dude got to do with it?” “A good deal. I’ve got to pay this $120 and interest at one per cent, a month for six cloth. months I’m for not about alone.j $30j worth of But There’s comfort in that. Misery does love company. It shows a fellow isn’ the only fool in the world, which fur¬ nishes more consolation to me than you might think. “Oh, you want to know about this Chicago fellow, do you? Well, last summer and fall the fellow came here from Chicago to sell a lot of goods be¬ longing to a busted dry goods firm. He didn’t sell the stuff in Denver, hut went among the farmers. He had the glib¬ best tongue I ever heard wag, and he was actually the best and most accom¬ modating fellow I ever saw. “A peddler would starve to death out in our neighborhood, but this pesky sin ncr sold a lot of goods to every one of my neighbors. He carried a largo of cloth with him, and went-through the; same programme everywhere he went, I rememher perfectly well how he confl acnced me. He had a large amount of cloth, and said he was agent for an im mouse stock of bankrupt goods. He got me and my folks to look at them, and told us he could let us have them Wholesale price, and that a Set of tailors! were following him, and would mane up the goods without extra cost to us, so we could get our clothing at about half of the usual price. Not only that. He didn’t care for the money now. That could be paid in two or three’or six months, just as I wished about it. There never had been such a glorious chance to save a few dollars, The goods were evidently very cheap, He showed me how much they had been marked down. “I got enough for a complete suit for each of the boys, and additional goods until my bill reached $120. Then he brought out a book full of blank notes and filled one out for me to sign, explain¬ ing all the time that he liked to accom modate people. Then he paid seventy five cents for dinner, saying that he would not beat; he charged me for his goods and wanted to pay for mine. He was the best fellow you ever saw. “But the tailor didn’t come. I talked the matter over with my neighbors and we investigated and found that we had got about one-third the worth of our money. We also found that the notes we gavo were such that we wouid be compelled to pay them. They had been prepared with an eye to an emergency like this. We couldn’t find our glib friend; he had indorsed the notes overto his firm, and gone to new pastures green. The notes were left with one of our home banks, and the last sinner of us have.had to pay. He never accepted a note.except where it was backed by property. Over twenty farmers that I know of haveihad to pay or will have to pay soon, and every one of them were swindled. I have heard of more than a hundred of the notes, and suppose that they ( repre¬ sent but a small part of the fraud’s opera¬ tions. You can put it down that the next ‘agent’ that comes along will meet with anything but a lucrative business,” and the indignant ranchman went off to denounce the swindle at the bank, accuse that honorable institution with standing n with the Chicago dude, and to pay the note.— Denver (Col.) Times. A Mexico letter to the Boston Olobe says: One of the most successful news¬ papers in Mexico is the Album de la Mujtrr (the Woman’s Album), a paper that hits the feminine taste, and is a credit to the able manageress and editoress, Con¬ cepcion Gimeno de Flaquer. This paper makes, I am credibly informed, a neat annual profit for the lady who owns it. Then there are papers devoted to music, to agriculture, to the bull ring and the theatres, to the doctors, to pub¬ lic school teachers, etc. Every class seems to have its organ provided for it. LONG-LIVED PEOPLE. Features of a Classified Record of Ten Thousand Centenarians. A Syracuse (N. Y.) letter to the New York Tribune says: Joseph E. Perkins, a newsdealer of this city, is about to publish a book entitled “The Encyclo¬ pedia of Human Longevity,” which is the result of thirty-eiget years of inves¬ tigation on his part. The book will con¬ tain an authentic record of a large num¬ ber of people, men and women, who have attained the age of one hundred years of more. The only exception to this is the case of a man who died at the age of ninety-nine years and three hun¬ dred and sixty-four days, and whom Mr. Perkins regards ^ virtually a centena¬ rian. The book will represent an im¬ mense amount ot labor and research, and its author believes that it may be relied on as accurate in every instance. “1 have,” said Mr. Perkins, in speak¬ ing of his book, “more than 10,000 in¬ stances" of people who have lived one hundred years and more. These names have been gathered from every part of the globe. This country leads in lon¬ gevity, and Connecticut is at the front among tho United States. In that State I have gathered statistics in regard to more than 6,000 persons who were more than eighty years of age, and of this number twenty were beyond the century limit. As regards sex the majority of these 20,000 centenarians were women. I account for this by tho fact that they lead loss irregular lives than men. I have instances of fifty old maids who come up to my century standard, and only twelve bachelors. As regards oc¬ cupation I find that sailors, soldiers and farmers are the longest lived. Among the professions I have tho instances of yoo ministers who lived to one hundred .years and more, while I could find only thirty doctors, ten lawyers and ten actors whe came up to the standard. lean find no case among my 10,000 of a news paper man who has lived to be one hun dred years old. Newspaper men do so much brain work that they die young.” Coming to special instances, Mr. Per¬ kins added: “Among the oldest people In the United States were Flora Thomp s™, * negress of Nashua, N. C., who died at the age of 150years;Betsy Fraut ham, a native of Germany, who died in Tennessee at the ago of 154 years; and Bins, a slave, who died in Virginia, 180 years old. I have the cases of ten per¬ sons who lived in safety for 100 years and were then burned to death. In Onondaga county I have the sketches of fifty centenarians. Among them is the Rev. Daniel Waldo, who died in 1864 at the age of nearly 102 years. For more than sixty years ho was a clergyman in the Presbyterian church, and on the anni¬ versary of his 100th birthday he preached a sermon in the First Presbyterian church of Syracuse, The Inst six pensioners of the Revolutionary war were centenarians and I have their photographs. Then there was John Weeks, of New London, Conn,, who married his tenth wife when he was 106 years of age and she only six¬ teen. He died at the age of 114. His gray hairs had fallen off and they were renewed by a dark growth of hair. Several new teeth had also made their appearance, and a few hours before his death he ate three pounds of pork, two or throe pounds of bread, and drank a pint of wine. Nicholas Schathcowski, of Posen, was another old fellow. He deposed on oath before the council of Constance, A. D. 1414, that he was one hundred and fifty years of age, and his father, whose age at the time of his death was nearly two hundred, remember the death of the first king Poland, A. D. 1025. Among the oddi¬ ties to be found in my book will be the photograph of a man who died at the age of one hundred and years. He had 144 children, dren, and great-grandchildren, and lived them all. Then there was Margaret McDowal, of Edinburgh, who died the age of one hundred and six. married and survived thirteen husbands. John Rovin and his wife, of Hungary, lived together as man and wife for years. He was one hundred and four and she one hundred and two years at the time they died, and their youngest son was one hundred sixteen years old when the parents died. “Then there is the case of a man married sixteen times and had no dren. This case is offset by that another centenarian who had forty-nin children. John Riva, an exchange ker of Italy, lived to the age of one dred and sixteen years and had cMld born to him after he one hundred years old. Betz, a Sioux squaw, who died a little while ago, for moro than one hundred years. She had been the wife in turn of an officer, an Indian chief, a border wayman, and a ^Methodist minister. VOL. V. New Series. No. 32. William Ward, of Westchester county. N. Y., died in 1778 at the age of 107, He was a member of the Ward family who were among the earliest settlers in Westchester county, and the particulars of his life and death were given in the Now York papers of the time. His brother John was a magistrate, and at¬ tended court in White Plains, N. Y., ns late as 1773. Another queer incident is that of a centenarian who was married four times and. had a daughter by each wife. These daughters married and each of them had fourteen children. Theu there was a man who went over the cen jury lino and had twenty-two cliildreu. His first was a boy, and girls and boys came after that in regular rotation. There was a person known as Elizabeth Page, who lived in London, and died at the age of 108 years. This person had acted as a midwife, and was supposed to be a woman. After death, however, it was ‘discovered that the supposed woman was a man. ” Railroad Sickness. A Lima (Peru) letter to the Philadel¬ phia Press describes the wonderful rail¬ road which ascends from the Peruvian capital to the crest of the Andes. The writer says: The sensation of riding up this rail¬ road, together with the rapid ascent from the sea level to the mountain’s crest, produces a sickness called “sirocche,’’ often fatal, and usually sending people to bed for several weeks. The symptoms are a terrible pressure upon the temples, nausea, bleeding at tho nose and ears and faintness, but the effects can bo avoided by taking precautions and ob¬ serving rules that experience has sug¬ gested, the chief ono being to drink a glass of brandy and keep perfectly quiet, as tho slightest degree of exercise will floor the strongest man. People who are compelled to make the ascent, if they have not become accustomed to it, usually take two or three days for the journey, stopping off at the stations along the lino, and going to bed at once upon reaching the town of Chicla, which stands at the summit. Here wc got our first erlimpse of tho condor, the king of tho Andes, whose flight is higher than that of any other bird and “whose unwinking eye,” etc., the poets have discoursed about. Here, too, wo found the llama, the beast of burden in the Andes as the camel is in tho deserts of the old world, and the vicuna, that rare mountain sheep peculiar to Peru, whose silken wool was the im¬ perial ermine of the Incas, which none hut those of royal blood were allowed to wear. Mules and horses and cattle are useless at this altitude, being even more subject to “sirocche” than men. The milk and flesh of goats and llamas consti¬ tute the diet of the people, and a haunch of the vicuna is as delicate as the finest venison. The Baboon and tho Kitten. Dr. Alfred E. Brehm tells the follow¬ ing in the Popular Science Monthly: I took one of these baboons—it was a fe¬ male—along to my home in Germany,be¬ cause she had always proved to be of extraordinary sagacity, and actually ex¬ hibited a far greater intelligence than the average of the countrywomen of Thuringia, where I was living. Apes in general like other creatures, providing they submit to their caressing and fond¬ ling. My baboon at first concentrated her tenderness upon the children of the village, but, to her great sorrow, found no reciprocity. Then she turned to cats and dogs, aud teased and tormented them in every way. A bright pussy, which the most of the time she carried in her arms, was tired one day of her company and attempted to escape. The ape strongly objected, and the kitten in its struggle, scratched her in the shoul¬ der. Gravely the baboon seized one of the paws of her pet, examined it care¬ fully, and finding, probably, the sharp claws a dangerous superfluity in so small a being, bit them all off, one by one. The First Interviewer. A recent Washington letter to the New York Herald says: Anne Royal, who was the originator of the American system of interviewing, had her office in one of them for a number of years. She published two weekly papers—one, Paul Pry, and afterward Ituntress. Anne Royal had an assistant named Sally Brass. They both had the reputation of being blackmailers. They forced hun¬ dreds to subscribe by threatening tbatif they did not the Paul Pry or Huntress would print some scandals about them. In those days, according to Anne Royal, female lobbyists “wore scouped bats and long veils. ” They dress differently now. In 1829 Anne Royal was indicted for being a common scold. She died in 1854, aged ninety-two. Sally Brass pre¬ ceded her about ten years. Anne Royal was the widow of a Revolutionary offi¬ cer. She was of Irish descent and was born in Maryland. WORDS OF WISDOM. Energy insures success in business. The great use of books is to rouse us to thought. Happiness, like youth and health, is ravel v appreciated until it is lost. There is nothing so sweet as duty, and all the best pleasures of life come in tho wake of duties done. There is nothing lower than hypocrisy. To profess friendship and act enmity is a suie proof of total depravity. On the diffusion of cducatioiwamong the people rests the preservation and perpetuation of our free institutions. We should never wed an opinion for better or for worse; what wo take upon good grounds we should lay down upon better. There is a beautiful moral feeling con¬ nected with everything in rural life, which is not dreamed of in the philoso¬ phy of the city. Never was any person remarkably un grateful who was not also insufferably proud, nor any one proud who was not equally ungrateful. Simple emotion will not suffice to ele¬ vate the character or improve the life. Thero must bo power of self-denial, strength of will, persevering effort. Everybody is making mistakes. Every¬ body is finding out afterward that he has made a mistake. But there can bo no greater mistake than the stopping to worry over a mistake already made. There ore no little enemies; people either hate you with their whole hearts, or they don’t hate you at all. This hating a little is like blowing up a pow¬ der mill a little,'for all know it cannot be done. As a tree is fertilized by its own broken branches and falling loaves, and grows out of its decay, so men and na¬ tions are bettered and improved by trial, and refined out of bitter hopes and blighted expectations. A man is spent by his work; ho will not lift his hand to save his life; he can never think more. Ho sinks into pro found sleep and wakes with renewed youth, with hope, courage, fertile in re¬ sources and keen for daring adventure. Baby Brooding. ! In 1878 a distinguished surgeon of Paris, Dr. Tarnier, visiting an establish¬ ment for hatching chickens, established in the garden of acclimation in Paris, was struck with the idea of using the same sort of apparatus for infants born prematurely, or having a very weak con¬ stitution. In tho latter part of 1880 he had a Bpecial model constructed for the pur¬ pose, and this brooder for infants, as it may be called, was exhibited in the mid¬ dle of the brooders for domestic fowls. The majority of tho visitors to the expo¬ sition supposed that it was a joke. Nev¬ ertheless, the brooder, or “conveuse,” was destined for the Maternity hospital of Paris where it was first put in use in November, 1881. These couveuses are large boxes of wood, with doublo walls, resting on a pedestal. They are divided into two compartments, the lower containing warm water and tho upper tho bed of tho infant. The upper compartment is cov¬ ered by two plates of glass, which are movable, through which may be seen the condition of the infant and the tempera¬ ture indicated by a thermometer placed within. A sufficient number of openings are made to give communication with external air, which enters from below, passes over the warm-water heating sur¬ face, and then into the compartment, rom which it escapes. The infant is thus placed in a warm-air bath, the tem¬ perature of which is maintained con¬ stantly at thirty degrees centigrade, or eighty-six degrees Fahrenheit. The greatest difficulty is to maintain this con* stant temperature. The heat is supplied by a special lamp. The results obtained by the employ¬ ment of the conveuse are worthy of the attention. From November, 1881, to July, 1883, there were treated by this method 151 infants, of whom ninety-one had been prematurely bom and the others very feeble. A healthy infant born at full time weighs 3,500 grams. Those infants which at birth weigh less than 2,000 grams are considered as very feeble; that is, it is more - probable that they will die than that they will live. Sta¬ tistics show for such infants a mortality of about sixty-five per cent. With the eon veuse, out, of ninety-two infants prema¬ turely born thirty-one died and sixty one lived. The time which an infant is kept in tho conveuse varies from ono day to six weeks, according to its condition. —Paris La Semicircle. Nine-tenths of all the forecasts made last year by the French weather bureau are said to have been verified.
