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NUBIAN NOCTURNE.
For Th* Sunnt South.
I treasure the thoughts of that beautiful night.
We wandered together, beneath the tall trees;
The verdure was rippled to oceans of light
By amorous touch of the wandering breeze,
For over our beads in the deepest of blue,
The moon was abroad in her dainty canoe.
The moon was abroad in her dainty canoe,
and silvered the turrets and towers serene;
The streets were deserted with only just two
To drink in the beauty and graceor the scene;
When far undiscovered, described on the sight.
The roofs and the steeples rose dim in the
night.
The roofs and the steeples rose dim in the
night,
And fainter than all in the distance afar.
Then rose to the hearing (than those on the
sight).
A sound of a voice and a thrill of guitar.
Some lover was playing, it wandered so soft,
By whispering breezes of night blown aloft.
By whippering breezes of night blown a'oft,
The silence was deepened; and still 1 recall
The chirps of a bird in a neighboring croft,
The sound that an emigrant night- jar let fall,
Or splash of a fountain, that babbieu and fell.
Among the tall bowers where no one could tell.
Among the tall flowers where no one could tell,
Tne pillaging moth, in his jacket of gold,
Was sipping the sweets of each nectarous cell,
In silence and night, as a tale that is told
The dream has departed; before me now lies,
The waste of a desert beneath the calm skies.
The waste of a desert beneath the calm skies,
Before me is stretching, a ghost of a moon
Is hanging her horn in a clouay oisguise,
And over the reach of the marshes a loon
Ib skirling through shadows. With music and
light,
A paean is wafted to thee through the night.
A paean is wafted to thee through the night,
whose casement perhaps ac this moment is
stirred
And crimsoned. Behold in the distance a light,
And down in the valley a trill of a bird;
with labor, oblivion. Afar on the eye,
The birds of the desert are scaling the sky.
—Alonzo Leora Rice.
CATARRH A SCOURGE.
Medical Skill Nearly Baffled—-Only
One Remedy Known,
Catarrh is capable of producing de
rangements so slight as to scarcely at
tract notice, and is also capable of set
ting up disturbances so great as to
cause death.
Some catarrh subjects are able to go
about their business with more or less
discomfort, while others suffer a con
stant, living death. Catarrh numbers
its victims by myriads, in all degrees
of wretchedness and stages of disease.
Catarrh is a systemic disease, and can
only be cured by medicines that oper
ate to cleanse the system of it. Thus
far the medical profession has been
only able to discover one remedy that
cares catarrh permanently, and that
remedy is Pe-ru-na. All the other
remedies only relieve temporarily.
Pe-rn-na slowly, but surely, eradicates
the catarrh from the system, leaving
the patient entirely cured. No mat
ter how long the catarrh may have
run, or to what state it may have re
duced its victim, there is always hope
in Pe-ru-na.
A new book on catarrh, entitled
“Climatic Diseases,” is sent free by
the Pe-ru-na Drug Manufacturing
Company, of Columbus, Ohio.
The Year's Rental a Red Rose.
In 1772 Baron Henry William Stie-
fel, the founder of Manheim, Pa., do
nated the ground to the Lutheran coe-
gregation upon which Zion Church
now stands.
The baron exacted for his land “five
shillings in cash and the annual rental
of one red rose in June, when the same
shall be lawfully demanded.” That
clause is in the deed of transfer, and
for 125 years the red rose has been
paid by the congregation to some de
scendant of the baron.
On the afternoon of June 18 com
memorative services were held in the
church. Mrs. Elizabeth Boyer, of Har
risburg, who is the great-grand
daughter of Baron Stiefel, was pres
ent.
In a vase at the altar was a huge
rose, blood red and fragrant. It had
been plucked with care by a young
lady of the congregation. Dr. J. Sell
ing, on behalf of the church council,
made an address presenting the flower
to Mrs, Boyer, who in turn gave a re
ceipt in full for one year’s rental.—
Chicago Daily Tribune.
This sympathetic revenge, which is
condemned by clamorous imbecility,is
so far from being a vice that it is the
greatest of all possible virtues— a vir
tue whioh the uncorrupted judgment
of mankind has in afl ages exalted to
the rank of heroism. To give up all
the repose and pleasures of life, to
pass sleepless nights and laborious
days, and, what is ten times more irk
some to an ingenuous mind, to offer
one’s self to calumny and all its herd
of hissing tongues and poisoned
fangs, in order to free the world from
fraudulent prevaricators, from cruel
oppressors, from robbers and tyrants,
has, I say, the test of heroic virtue,
and well deserves such a distinction.—
Burke.
the sunny sohtu: Atlanta, Georgia September 30 ismJ
FROM YOUTH TO AGE.
For Tub Sunny South.
ROM CHILDHOOD 1
have been gifted with re
markable literary talents
if not With genius.
When others were play
ing with hoop or ball I
would be hidden away
with some ponderons
tome, oblivious to all sur
roundings; often my
mother would have to call
me repeatedly or shake
me, to bring me back from
the world of dreams wuich
I inhabited.
We were poor, and I had not the ad
vantages of a finished education, but I
think I made up for it by my untiring search
after knowledge; by the avidity with
which I read and retained in my memory a
great many solid works by profound think
ers. I had to a wouderful extent the pow
er to lose my surroundings by concentra
ting my faculties on the inner life.
My parents, fearing that I would injure
my health by so much reading, forbade me
the companionship of my darling books—
my books that taught me what I was, that
opened my understanding, that whispered
of God, that filled me with visions of ecs
tasy.
I was like one bereft of a life-long com
panion. But I now drew deeper inspira
tion than ever before, for I read from the
living book of nature spread before man’s
unseeing eyes. Nature wished to tell me
her secret, and she painted it with the
flowers, she spelled it with the moss ana
grass, she bubbled it in the winding rill,
she caroled it by the birds. I heard it in
the morning breezes, saw it in the waving
foliage, read it on the starry scroll of the
heavens until I was ready to exclaim like
the poet of old—“Visions of glory spare
my aching sight, ye unborn ages, crowd
not upon my soul!”
I could make fame and fortune, raise
my family from poverty to luxury, I
thought, if I could only ground some of
the mighty visions which swept through
my soul; indeed so much did i see in my
spirit life, such steps of thought did I
climb, that I would often be weak and
worn with mental exhaustion.
Unfortunately, just as I was verging
into womanhood 1 loved. There are few
people who know the meaning of that
word as I know it, for I could think more
profoundly, suffer more deeply, and love
more greatly than most. My love now
fi Lied my soul, books were forgotten, na
ture which draws near to us only as we
draw near to her, perceiving herself, neg
lected withdrew unto herself and
no longer chanted her love or whispered
her secrets to me. Ambition up longer
held a glittering crown in the vista of the
future. To be brief, I married, but dis
covered that the attributes with which 1
had clothed my ideal were created only in
my own brain.
Time passed, and by and by two little
ones came to fill my life with cheer, a
noble dark-eyed boy, and a golden haired
girl lovely as an houri, wiDsome as a
seraph; again the sleeping de
mon of ambition awoke in me;
we were still manacled by tne
bonds of poverty. I detested my limited
means and narrow life, the more because
of the richness and breadth of my imagina
tion. Again, I thought I will write such
wonderlul things that the world will be
amazed, I will oompel success at one
stroke, and then 1 will give my darlings
everything needful and beautiful that
money or love can procure. And so I be
gan to write. Day after day, night after
night I labored. I wove weird fancies, I
scaled dizzy mental heights, my children
were neglected, my house in disorder, but
still hurried on by an incalculable force I
wrote as if to redeem my soul. The
strange word pictures grew on the paper.
I drew the outlines with astonishing bold
ness and added the shading with exceed
ing delicacy: but my head began to throb,
zig-zag pains dashed athwart my brain, a
strange void began to take the place of
my vivid imagery, a ceaseless ache grew
at the back of my head, and a burning
band seemed to be drawn across my fore
head ; often when my pen was poised
over the paper I would forget the word I
intended to write. At last one night my
suffering was so intense that nature could
stand no more. I pressed my hands upon
my swelling temples and groaned aloud.
Was it fancy, or did some one echo the
groans ? I raised my tired eyes and look
ed around. No one in sight, but at the
same moment Buch a thrill of agony, such
a rending, tearing shock of the pain ran
through my head that it seemed as if a
bolt of lightning had stricken me, and I
knew no more.
When I awoke, after what I thought
was a deep sleep, I lay quiet recalling the
past events. How I had outraged nature,
Deen regardless of my children, how I had
labored—lured on by the glittering cheat—
ambition.
I rt solved to burn the manuscript
which some invincible power had im
pelled me to dwell on with such intent
ness that the common cdices ot life were
neglected. Yes I would destroy it, and
sweep and cook, and sew and sing and
make my little ones happy.
I opened my eyes, for I had been lying
with them closed, enjoying this long need
ed repose. I was amazed at seeing a
strange room, one in which I had surely
never seen before. I sprang from the bed
and found that I felt weak and stiff. I
1 saw my hands with affright; only last
night they had been smooth, soft and
white now they were yellow, wrinkled,
with tiogers like talons. My body too
seamed shrunken and distorted Was it
some horrid dream? I called aloud, and
shuddered at my own discordant voice; I
shook the door—it was locked ; the win
dows were grated; no one answered my
cries; no one noticed my knocking; where
were my children ? Where my husband,
and why was I here?
After hours, measured only by the furl
ous beating of my heart, some one an
locked the door. A stern-faced middle-
aged woman entered. I sprang to her
with eager questions. My heart felt hun
gry for the sight of my babies and their
caresses missed so long. Tne mother-love
I had repressed while consumed by ambi
tion rushed over me. You can imagine
the breathless questions I plied her with.
Frantically 1 caught her dress;
“Answer my questions, for the love of
God,” I cried; but she vanished through
the door crying back;
“I will send some one to you who can
tell you all.”
I tore my hair in my agonizing perplex
ity, and as it fell around my shoulders in
tangled disorder, I saw that it had
changed from a bright golden to a faded
gray. My blood grew cold with a congeal
ing horror. In a few moments I heard
footsteps in the corridor. Again I heard
the rattling bolts and bars withdrawn;
and this time two men stepped into the
room. One was young, with a keen, alert
face; the other was old, with that placid,
benign expression which one wears when
the heaviest gales of life are spent and
the calm waters of the harbor almost
gained.
I did not speak at first, for the whole
thiug seemed like a distorted vision. Per
haps I was a victim of a fevered hallucin
ation. I had written and studied so much
that my over-taxed mind was filled with
fever fancies.
The young man walked up to me and
gazed straight into my eyes curiously,
more as if I had been an object than a
conscious being. The old man looked on
with calm pity mirrored on bis face;
“Gentlemen,” I cried, “for sweet heav
en’s sake, if there is on this earth one
whom you love, in remembrance of that
love I entreat you to tell me, where are my
children ? And what baleful sorcery has
been at work to convert my youthful body
into this charnel-house of the soul ? See
this gray hair, these withered hands, this
stooped and emaciated frame 1 I pray, if
you are human and not demons, if this is
earth, and not Hades, to tell me what is
wrong, and where are my children.”
The old man’s face eloqnent with ten
der, painful pity. *
“You can go son,” he said to the other;
“I will take this painful duty on myself.”
“No,” was the answer, “there may be
danger, I will not ieave you.”
I threw my clasped hands aloft and
shrieked:
“Tell me, tell me!”
* Soon enough, poor soul. Come to a
more cheerful room; let us leave this bare
cell; you will not mind me knotting this
handkerchief loosely aronnd yenr eyes—
so ”
No; I did not care for anything, except
to know what gulf—what barriers sepa
rate me from the world and the people I
had known and loved.
The old man drew my arm through his
to support me, for I shook like “a hare
whom hounds and horns pursue,” and
led me through long, winding corridors,
down flights of steps, and at length unto a
warm bright room.
The young man drew the bandage from
my eyes. Glancing around the room I
saw a tall mirror on one side,—and merci
ful heavens; what meant the transforma
tion whioh I viewed ? I saw myself
bowed with age, with gray, disheveled
locks, sunken eyes and hollow cheeks,
with no glimpse of my former self; I
pointed to the glass and whispered to the
old man.
**If you are merciful, tell me.”
“God’s will be done,” he said, taking
my quaking hands, “for thirty years you
have been an inmate of this asylum, vio
lently insane; your husband and daughter
are dead; I can not tell you of your son,
he left here years ago; your old friends
are scattered and gone; naught remains of
your former life except the wreck of your
self ”
On. my knees I called aloud to God to
give me again the shield of madness, or
take from this aged body its youthful, but
desolate soul. I cried out to Him to give
me back my lost and cheated youth. In
vain; God’s laws are immutable; there is
no backward movement in the Universe;
it is all onward. Should he unroll the
years in which my reason had been bound
in chains of madness, what confusion
would be made. The dead would be
brought to life. The living annihilated.
No, the happy time when I had worship
God through the guise of nature was sep
arated from me by all those lost years.
No conception of my feeling can form in
the human brain.
“Spirit,” I cried, “thou art left alone
Alone on waters wild
For God is gone,
And love is dead and nature spurns her
child.
Thou art drifting, in a deluge
Waves below, and clouds above—
An i with weary wing comes back to
thee
Thy raven, and thy dove.”
In the throes of this anguish I awoke.
Yes it was a dream, but so realistio, so
full of strainiDg effort and searing thought
that my brow was beaded with agony
and my limbs shaken as with palsy.
But thank God; there were my loved
ones sleeping soundly and sweetly, while
the strong tide of health and youth still
flowed bouyantly through my veins.
Mary Foktcher.
The Tariff on Oilcloths.
The hearings before the ways and
means committee of the House as re
spects tariff rates upon various im
ported articles are more entertaining
now than they were four years ago,
when protectionists almost monopo
lized the committee’s time and Mr.
McKinley let interested manufactur
ers put into his bill almost any tax
they liked, provided only it was high.
The tax-eater has had his day; it is
now the turn of the tax-payer—the
consumer—to get a hearing.
Mr. J. Crawford Lyon, of Baltimore,
dealer in carpets, floor-mattings and
oilcloths, in 1889 and 1890 protested in
vain against the McKinley rates, but
now he renews his efforts in behalf of
the general public, as against the tariff
lords, with better prospects of suocess.
At a recent hearing before the com
mittee, Mr. John F. Preston, of this
city, at his instance, set forth effectu
ally the injustice of the present rates.
The moral aspect of protection as a
scheme of law for robbing A for B’s
benefit is presented in the outset of
Mr. Preston’s argument. This scheme,
continued now for many years, amply
accounts, it is held, for the embarrass
ment and poverty of our largest class
of producers and the vast wealth of
the protected few.
The hard times of farmers West and
South and the opulence of the pro
tected manufacturers of the East are
obvious to every observer. The commit
tee was accordingly asked to do jus
tice to producers of cotton, wool and
food products and poor consumers
everywhere. Legislation, it was urged,
should cheapen the necessaries of the
masses and cease to check the buying
of home comforts by persons having
little to spare for their purchase.
Among the articles in most general
use are floor oilcloth, linoleum and
mattings, together with oilcloths in
imitation of leather aad light oil
cloths used to cover the table, shelf
and stairs. These are used in every
house and cabin, either directly or as
materials for the manufacture of
many articles used by the poor. The
existing tariff rates, it is shown, com
pel consumers to pay exorbitant
prices for these goods—more than is
right and just. On the oilcloths and
linoleum for floors—stamped, printed
or plain—and in all other oilcloth and
water-proof cloth not specially pro
vided for, costing 25 cents a square
yard, the duty is 40 per cent, of the
value. That is to say, a poor widow
woman buying sixteen yards of 25-
cent floor covering would have to pay
$5.60 for it, whereas without the tariff
it would cost her but $4. In other
words, she is out 10 cents on every
yard she buys. Fully two-thirds
of the floor cloth produced and con
sumed in this country and all the
table, shelf and stair cloth is of the
class costing 25 cents and less a yard,
and on all this quantity the tariff ad
vances to the price by 10 cents a yard.
On such as is imported the govern
ment gets revenue, but on the vastly
larger quantity produced here the 10
cents award goes to sixteen floor cloth
makers and four linoleum makers.
All these makers have become, as was
to be expected, extremely wealthy by
means of this tribute of 10 cents a
yard levied through the tariff on the
millions of families of their fellow-
citizens. They prosper. Many of
them are millionaires. The law shut
ting out foreign competition brings
an extra profit into their pockets in a
continuous stream. They form com
bines, destroy competition among
themselves and put up prices to the
extent of the tariff wall of 40 per cent.
If they do not do so why are they so
clamorous for the duty? It passes be
lief that they ask high rates and pay
largely into campaign funds in order
to get their prices lower, when they
could lower them without the help of
the law if they chose to.
Mr. Preston shows that the materi
als of their wares, with slight excep
tions, are cheaper here than abroad,
and that machinery does nearly all
the work. They ought, accordingly,
to sell lower and not higher than
their foreign competitors. Instead of
enhancing the price of the imita
tion leather cloth entering into the
manufacture of children’s shoes, hats,
caps, traveling-bags, trunks, harness,
etc., they should reduce it.
Floor oilcloth is made of coarse bur
laps, costing from 3 to 5 cents a yard;
other oilcloths of a coarse cotton cloth
costing 2 5-8 and 3 cents a yard.
These “foundations” have applied
to them earths and clays worth from
1-4 to 1 cent a pound, and oil, gum and
varnishes which are extremely cheap.
Recently invented machinery almost
excludes human labor from the manu
facture. The labor in a square yard
of tnese wares is almost infinitesimal,
though 10 cents is allowed for it by
the McKinley law. The bonus goes
to a few wealthy firms and corpora
tions. There is no objection to their
wealth, of course, if honestly come by,
but wealth extorted from the toiling
masses by an abuse of the govern
ment's power of taxation is incurably
iniquitous.
Hence the force of the argument for
a reduction of the duty to a purely
revenue rate.—Baltimore Sun.
°} a reduction ot prices bel 0w tv.
level of a living profit; and whii Si the
r Q v il K 8 out contributions ft??
relief through charity of the miserable J? 8
ums of the sweating system, it holds
with the other to the purse strings n„n
prices have been beaten down to a ^ 1
that necessitates tne sweating systeJ? 1 ?*
make production possible. This 10
bility it seems desirable to fix*b eo au»* D8 !;
the forces of competition are ceaseless? 81
wort, and the ibuM. of
Cheapest grades of clotJ.
abuses oi the
, cheapest gradet eioth
mg are produced will presently be matS
in Other hr*nrrhe« malL “ed
in other branches of industry.'
There is no more marked deteriorative
anywhere than in the quality of the 1!?
put of the large puolisuiug house. JJd
especially those mat cater to the po D SJ
demand tor light fiction. This has
about contemporaneously with and nmi.
as the effect of an enormous reduction
m prices The paper-covered novel can
now be prepared aud put upon the marker
in nn monulihln nho.. „ , .
All
_ normeu ov sniHii.u
machinery.
enormous
paper-covered novel can
. - . x—'— the raa
in an incredibly snort space of time ...
the processes are performed by splendid
devised machinery, and the stalls am
simply flooded witn an ocean of books r>f
varying merit, but largely ‘
trash. Tiiis must
execrable
inevitably hapn eUi
reputation is tixed'
would rather
Lit* rary Sweaters.
No feature of modern industrial devel
opment has called for severer strictures
than the sweating system.
None of the prisoners of poverty have
been held to deserve more sympathy and
assistance than its victims. These poor
wretches, the last product of unbridled
competition, have lost independence, inia-
tive, everything that makes life wsrth
having.
They ask for nothing but the privilege
to purchase a few more hours or days or
years of life at the cost of unremitting toil
through the whole of the twenty four-hours
except the few devoted to sleep. They are
paid by the middleman for their work just
what will keep them from starvation; and
the cost of their blood and tears is the
profit which he makes and the low price
which the public has come to demand for
certain wares as its right.
It is, indeed, to no small extent, the
S eat, well-meaning, blundering public
at is responsible for the existence and
continuance of the sweating system. In
its rage for cheapness it is willing to sac
rifice the producer. It loses sight of the
Authors whose
and those who "umu. rataer u ttV er
be heard of than win the wrong kind 0 f
fame secure their own publishers, and their
ware, command a respectable price m th#
market. But the various “libraries” aud
the cheap book counter are supplied bv
books written anyhow, under contracted
gagement for a set purpose; and the best
that can be said is that the starvation
wages paid are, at least, all that the work
is worth. The literary hack has been •
familiar figure in every age; but this is
the first in which there ever was a system
that tended to produce him, and left him
as a product of its economic system in-
stead of the mere child of his own vanity
and conceit.—Pioneer Press.
WHAT THE fLESH DAS STAND.
Horrifying Te«t» Applied by u Fakir u f
Morocco.
The management of the Aquarium at
Westminster has the laudable ambition to
secure novelties, but that ambition has
overreached itself in engaging the "invul
nerable fakir,” Hadj Soliman ben Aissa.
This young man’s berformance is entirely
nnsuited for a public exhibition, however
interesting it may be to scientists. Soli
man is a pale-faced, muscular, French-
speaking Arab, 28 years of age, and he ii
said to be a priest of the Aissa sect of Mo
hammedans. Yesterday he gave an exhi
bition of his powers to a body of medical
and press men, and Mr. Ritchie made no
secret of the fact that the salary paid to
Soliman is one that some cabinet ministers
might envy.
The general appearance of the man in
his Arab costume was picturesque, and
his cast of countenance is ascetic. A bra
zier filled with burning charcoal stood on
a table, and Soliman, sprinkling some
mysterious powders over the embers, in
haled the incense-scented fumes. He
then went through the fakir dance, which
consists of throwing the head backward
and forward with such rapidity that it
needs must be screwed on well. Telling
his auditors in excellent French that he
was now insensible to pain, he ran a long
needle through the muscles of each arm,
through each cheek and through the throat
below the Adam’s apple. No blood came,
except at call, and the Arab did not wince
in the least.
Then a more objectionable “feat” was
accomplished. Soliman ran a dagger into
his abdomen—about the middle—fully
three inches deep. This was enough for
some of the audience, who left the hall.
But there was more to follow. The Arab
with a thick needle pierced his tongue,
the tongue being of course one of the most
sensitive parts of the human body. The
fakir next drew out his left eye, as far as
it would go, with a dagger. A medical
gentleman declared afterward that it was
done by dislocation. The eyeball is an
unlovely thing—at least those parts of it
which a merciful Providence keep3 con
cealed—and the “feat” is as disgusting as
it is, happily, uncommon. The carious
thing about it was that there was no run
ning of water.
Atter this it seemed quite tame to sea
the man take oat half a dozen vipers,
brought from his native Morocco, and al
low one of them repeatedly to bite his
hand.
The venomous creatures were a little
larger than those one often encounters in
this country.
Finally Soliman put his bared arm over a
fire till the limb blackened and the au
dience cried, “Hold, enough!” The flesh
did not seem to scorch at all.
Then there was a repetition of the dance,
and the man went at such a pace he fell
forward. He dashed water over his head,
breathed hard and groaned, and made an
exhausted bow to the audience.
The medical committee was unanimous
that the “performance” was genuine, but
no one attempted to solve the riddle. The
most probable explanation that occurs i*
that the powder fumes serve as an anaes
thetic.
The anthronologists of Munich seem to
have been delighted with the exhibition,
but the general public of this country
who raised an outcry against the aflah
last week at the Chicago Exposition, ar 0
much more likely to be sickened than sat*
isfied.—Westminster Gazette.
Hov’s This!
We offer One Hundred Dollars Reward
for any case of Catarrh that cannot be
cured by Hall’s Catarrh Cure. .
F. J. CHENEY & CO., Props. Toledo, 0*
We the undersigned, have known h
Cheney for the last 15 years, and b6lie v<}
him perfectly honorable in all business
transactions and financially able to carry
out any obligation made by their firm.
West & Truax, Wholesale* Druggists, To*
ledo, O.
Walding, Kinnan & Marvin, Wholes*! 0
Druggists, Toledo, Onio.
Hall’s Catarrh Core is taken internall/i
acting directly upon the blood and vaff
cons surfaces of the system. Price • 52-
par bottle. Sold by all Druggists, red-'
monials free.