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LION HUNTING.
THRILLING EXPERIENCE OF AN EN
GLISH OFFICER—HABITS OF THE
LION AND THE PANTHER.
The Paris correspondent of the Bos
ton Advertiser sends that paper the
following letter relating to the expe
riences of an old African soldier, who,
he says, speaks of nothing he has not
himself seen; and who modestly with
holds only such episodes as would place
himself in a conspicuous position:
Dear Friend : You wish me to in
troduce you to the true Arab lion hunt,
which you must know little resembles
the fantastic tales told by certain Eu
ropean travelers, and dilated upon by
newspaper and novel writers until
there is no possibility of separating
truth from fiction, or drawing to any
satisfactory degree a conclusion re
garding the lion and panther, which
are in fact our only dangerous African
carnivorous animals. Lions are quite
numerous in certain parts of the prov
ince of Constantine, rare in those of
Algiers and Oran. Panthers, on the
contrary, are seldom seen in the last
two provinces, but are numerous iu
Algiers. The habits of these two car
nivora differ essentially. As a general
rule, neither the one nor the other
attacks men, unless molested or threat
ened by him. It sometimes happens,
however, that a panther surprised while
eating springs furiously upon the man
whose imprudent foot has troubled the
silence of his repast, and in this case
there is nothing to hope, as before the
bravest man can have got possession of
his arms he is a bruised and broken
mass. The panther tears and mutil
ates the body, even after all life has
fled, but does not devour it. In gen
eral he kills for the pleasure of killing,
and even when attacking a flock or
herd he vents his savage fury on many
before deciding to eat one.
The lion, on the contrary, springs
upon his victim and at once devours
it, or dragging it to a preferred dining
spot, quietly makes his repast, nor
thinks of troubling the rest of the flock
until renewed appetite leads him to
satisfy his hunger in the same way. If,
during the repast, he sees a man ap
proach, and is not ravenous, he gets up
and walks away slowly, one may say
solemnly; or sometimes not even deign
ing this, he raises his majestic head,
looks at the intruder, and by a half
friendly growl warns him that he will
not stand being troubled when at
dinner. A pedestrian finding himself
in this position does well to withdraw
slowly, for, should he become fright
ened and run, the lion is quite capable
of feeling a desire to overtake him
and in that case will; even in that case,
if the man has presence of mind suffi
cient to understand the danger, and do
the only thing remaining to be done
he may still escape sate and sound
For the lion seems oftenest actuated
by a half-playful, friendly sentiment
and so he does not lose his respect for
man—seldom troubles him. Often
times he joins and passes the pedes
trian, and when at a good distance
crouches across his path, watching his
approach. If the man has the unfor
tunate idea of turning to run away, he
is lost, but if he comes on quietly,
neither faster nor slower than his usual
pace, looking his enemy _ steadily in
the face, and showing no signs of fear,
he has every chance to escape. The
some matters to settle with tribes in
the environs of la Calk, I left my
troops to return to Constantine, and,
followed by only two spaliis, turned my
steps toward la Calk. Having started
just before day, we arrived about 4
o’clock in the afternoon at the ford of
the little river de la Mafrag. Our
horses, as well as ourselves, were sadly
in want of food and drink, and we
stopped to refresh ourselves at a little
inn kept by a European, and situated
on a low mound two or three hundred
yards from the ford. While waiting
rr\y r»r»r>oof T
sword, laid by my pistols, and, stretched
out comfortably in the shade, idly
watched a band of Arab women wash
ing clothes in the river. All at once
I was startled by cries proceeding from
the opposite side of a sand-heap bor
dering the river, and half a dozen
women came rushing into the midst of
their peaceable companions, dragging
them into the shallow water, and be
hind them a magnificent lion, his tail
proudly in air, and his great brown
eyes looking caressingly from one to
the other, raying no attention to their
retreat mio the river, ho followed them
there, rubbing himself up against them,
not seeming to mind, in the least, their
cries or terrified gesticulations, and
turning, majestically walked away into
the mountains from whence he had
come. This lion was a stranger in that
part of the country, and when on the
following day I went in search of him,
he had disappeared.
Educational Statistics.
The commissioner of education has
completed his fifth annual report
He
X
has in the present volume discarded all
special papers, and confined the con
tents strictly to a review of educational
work. The report proper covers 152
pages. The commissioner calls atten
tion to the intimate relation existing
between educational work and com
mercial prosperity, and points his
allusion by citing the depression affect
ing business disaster. He claims for
the work performed in his office great
value to all economists and politicians
as well as to the teacher and publicist.
The commissioner states that it is grat
ifying to observe the increase of the
determination of each state to take, an
annual census of the school population.
There has been an increase of 164,000
children during the year, and thirty-
five out of thirty-seven states report
the number of teachers. Thirty-seven
states and eleven territories report the
public school income, which shows an
increase of $1,232,000, but only thirty-
five states and nine territories can show
their school expenditures. There are
enrolled in public schools 8,000,000
pupils, and the average daily attend
ance is 4,500,000. The estimated pop
ulation between six and sixteen years
of age is 10,500,000. The total income
of public schools in the states and ter
ritories in 1874 was 882,000,000. The
total expenditures for the states and
territories was 874,000,000. The high
est salaries for school teachers reported
is accredited to the Cherokee Nation—
8225 monthly for male and 8200
monthly for female teachers. The
District of Columbia comes next-—
8113 and 875. Massachusetts shows
a greater disproportion—893 and 833.
•The expenditures in the year, per
not know whether they are adequate to
their necessities.
One thousand and thirty-one insti
tutions of secondary instruction, with
408 more teachers, are reported for
1874, as against 944 in 1873. There
were 20,391 students. The diminution
in attendance is attributed, in a very
large degree, to the financial depression
of last year. The effect of business
depression is particularly noticeable in
the preparatory schools for the superior
instruction of women. During the
year 563 degrees were conferred upon
WGiiieii. Tlicic me nun iii eOiiCgi£
and scientific schools 29,000, and in the
preparatory schools 25,000. One of
the features of the centennial report
will be the publication of a work on
libraries and museums in the United
States.
A Suicide’s Story.—Lotta Mont-
ford, an actress, committed suicide at
Dallas, Texas, soon after receiving the
following letter:
Hartford, Ct., October, 1875.
Mrs. Nichols: ^ .
Dear Madam: You™
enclosed we Amnd $20. Have very
little to say, only that your little girl is
well, only that she is growing blink like
your mother. She has spasms worse
than ever, and very often speaks of you,
and in her sleeps calls for her little
mamma. I am actually afraid she will
soon pass away. We bought the tomb
stone for your little boy’s grave, and
fixed it up nicely. It cost 8187. Mrs.
drew on your account, because
her husband was out at the far”’
Please do not let her know that I
to you. I can’t write much. 1,ow > * 3Ut
thought I would let you Know some
thing about Sady; I Know what a
mother’s feelings are. I wont write
any more. Good-bye. From your
sympathizing frieiKl^^ ^ Renney.
ue nas every cimuee w ~ capita of average attendance in the
lion will growl, wag his tail in rather j public schools, are as follows: Massa-
a terrifying way, but., allowing the man | chusetts, 820; Ohio, 814; Nebraska,
J P o . 1- - i oc ol C . lolovtrl SIX" I VinnCCtlCllt.
to pass before him, get up, and, as
though admitting to himselt that he
had honestly lost the game, go quietly
back to his lair.
A lion rarely attacks women, and I
once witnessed a scene which will go
further than the longest explanation
toward illustrating this. It was a hot,
sultry day in July. The sirocco made
the atmosphere dense with sand and
f lare; the very earth seemed on fire.
was returning from a little expedition
on the frontiers of Tunis, and as I haa
818; Khode Island, 818; Connecticut,
$19; Vermont, 812; New York, 821;
Iowa, 814; Michigan, 815; New Jer
sey, 818; Indiana, 814; Illinois, 813;
Maine, 810; Maryland, 819; Minne
sota, 813; Mississippi, 89; Tennessee,
85; Virginia, 88; Florida, 88; Dis
trict of Columbia, 826; Montana, 817;
Colorado, 822; Utah, 86; Cherokee
Nation, 824.
Many states cannot tell the number
of their school population, and some
have not counted their sittings, and do
A Suicide in Character.—At Vil
liers-sur-Oise the other day an English
actress, known as Mme. Beene—atone
time popular in London—committed
suicide m the rok of Ophelia. She
was sixty-five years of age, and had
lived in the above-named little village
for the past ten years. She was very
sad, but always very kind and good to
everybody. Nobody thought of rid
iculing her odd appearance and ways_
for it was well known that she had
carried a dead love in her heart for
nearly half a century. She luul left
London years before because her af
fianced married another woman. The
last part she had played on the London
stage with him was Ophelia to his
Hamlet, and what news had come to
her of him no one knew; but she was
found floating under the surface oi the
river, her gray head decked out with
flowers.
Photography in Medical Diag
nosis.—The useful applications of pho
tography are numerous and varied
and their number is constantly on the
increase. In a paper recently read be
fore the Medical Society of Lower
Austria, Dr. Ultzman mentioned, on
the authority of Dr. Vogel, that an
eruption of small-pox had been made
evident by photography twenty-four
hours before it actually came out. Al
though no one could as yet observe
anything on the face of the patient,
the negative plate showed stains on the
face which perfectly resembled the
varioius exanthem, and twenty-four
hours afterwards the eruption became f
clear) v tiviilwii.
PARAGRAPHS OF THE PERIOD.
Two children were making most of the day
In the sand their castles building,
\Vhile out in the harbor the sunset gold
Was every vessel gilding.
But the sea came over the castle* dear;
And the charm of sunset faded;
Oh, after a labor is lost, may we
Go happily home as they did
For we ouild>and build in a different way r
_ Till our heads arc wise and hoary:
But after it ail the sun goes down,
And the sea—'tia « connimii storv’.
—Atlantic jaonttutf.
A Chicago woman cured her hus
band of staving out late at night by go
ing to the door when lie came borne and
whispering through the keyhole: “Is
that you, Willie?” Her husband’s
name is John, and he stays at home
every night now and sleeps with one eye
open and a revolver under his pillow.
Wedding journeys, like the practice
of making wedding presents, according
to the latest fashionable intelligence,,
are out of style. Happy and favored
young men and women of the day!
Fashion, then. n-/' 1,ger requires you
- enow of yourselves, and you.
can get married m peace. No lost
time, no fuss, no crowds, no awkward
groomsmen, no chalky bridesmaids, ntyi
marching up aisles, no execrable tunes,
no splitting gkves, no dropping rings,
no kissing parsons, no carriages, no re
ceptions, no presews, no journeys, no
expenses, «o cards. Welcome and en
courages cha o«re.,
Ii
lght (lo one deeu ,
um little deed before I AiS}*»
-Or think one noble thought, that sn„ .i (l
Hereafter not forgotten lie,
I would not murmur, though I must
Be lost in death’s unnumbered dust.
That flimsy wing that wafts the seed
Upon the careless wind to earth,
Of it’s short life lias only need
To find the germ fit place for birth.
For one swift moment of delight
It whirls, then withers out of sight.
—F. IF. Bounhllm;
The Rev. Mr. Snyder, of Pittsburg,,
preached against the sinfulness of over
dressing. “How many Christians,’
he asked, “ spend an hour every Sun
day morning upon their knees in de
votions preparatory to service? Not
very many, surely. And yet how
many there are who spend a much
longer time than this every Sunday
morning on their feet before the glass
in getting ready for church—there is
so much to be done with hoops and
folds and ribbons and pullbacks.”
Mr. Torr, of Aylesbury, England;
recently sold eighty fine cattle for
8214,650, being an average of 82,525
a head. The highest priced beast,
Bright Empress, brought 810,800; the
other cows sold at §8,000, 87,500, $6,-
000, two at 85,000, and heifers at from
84,000 to 86,000.
Here is a self-evident .truth from the
Baltimore American: “An American
citizen ought at all times consider that
casting a vote on election day isRot
merely a right or privilege which he
may exercise or not at his pleasure or
convenience, but that it is also a duty
of the most imperative nature. ’
Two seas amidst the night,
„ „ nght,
In the moonshine roll and sparkle,.
Now spread in the silver light.
Now sadden, and wail, and darkle..
The one has a billowy motion,
And from land to land it gleams;
The other is sleep’s wide ocean,
Anil the glimmering waves are dreams,: .
The one, with murmur and roar,
Bears fleets round coast and islet;
The other, without a shore,
Ne’er knew the track of a pilot.
A nice boy of nine years was taken t
very sick while visiting a schoolmate in
St
y va.-.-.-.-v
A child’s bed should slope a little
from the head to the foot, so that the
head may be a little higher than the
feet; but never bend the neck to get
the head on the pillow. This makes
the child round-shouldered, cramps the
veins and arteries, and interferes with
the free circulation of the blood.
Even when a child is several years old
the pillow should be thin and made of
hair, not feathers.
>iek wh— 0
p«,,l Minn., ft few daw since. His
friend’? mother found that he required
an emetic, and prepared one for him.
The lad was suffering terribly, but
refused to take the dose, saying., that -
“his mama would not like it if he did, .
as she was a homeopathist and did not
allow him to take allopathic medicine.
The lady persisted, and told him; .that ■
he might not get well if he did Snot-:
take it. Finally the obstinate young
man exclaimed: “Well r I’ll;take• the
stuff, but I tell you one thingr-I wont,
vomit!”