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•'Ban tv leg, Bantyleg, where are you from V You must have been riding aatride of (t drum! All up with your prowess, all up with your jig, J* ever you started to fender a pig!” t his was the cfy that the little town set Wherever Bowlcgged Hutterball went — *-* e Jest of the village, the Joke of the place, But, Lord, what a winner he was in th* race! Tho capUtin who captured him first on his nine Was a victor all season. He took the base lino In a Hight not exactly a leap or a run: Ho rolled himself up and his little legs spun, And long ere the (lclder had captured tiro hall Bantyleg struck the home plate with a sprawl. Whenever ids turn came to handle the hat 1 lie nine scored a run, there was no doubt of that! 'the fire companies fought for him year after year To capture the plug with a shout and a choc r. With his uniform on in the village parade iie looked like a beetle ill splendor ar ia,Veil ; Hut lie* marched to the tune of the old country hand As proud as the proudest In all the broad land — A red shirt of glory, a buff overcoat, And a hat, fofe and aft, most as big as u boat! The Preacher’s Grip. “Say, Phil), lei's put up a joke ou the preacher,” said Jim Larkins, a loutish fellow, to his ne’er-do-weel c&mrade In many a drinking bout at the village tavern. “I’m in it, whatever it is,” replied Phin Crowle, with a vicious grin. These worthies were notable sports anti dog-fanciers, and each had his bulldog “that could whip anything of its size and weight in the country.” It was agreed, therefore, to bring their respective dogs to the evening preach ing, to keep them asunder till the ser vice was well under way, and then to Incite them to a tight. A few wall directed digs with their heels ex cited the beasts to angry growls and snarls, to the great amusement of the village toughs and to the great alarm of the women and girls. Lawrence Temple, a student from a neighboring college, had just been ap pointed a local preacher with a view to the ministry. He was sent to try his 'prentice hand on the natives of the Four Corners Schoolhoase, a neglect ed rural neighborhood near the college town. His lirst preaching experiences •were likely to be, to put it mildly, not uninteresting. His previous practice of athletics in felling trees in a lumber camp stood him in good stead. He did not easily get rattled nor lose his head. When the disturbance became too obvious, he re quested tlie owners of the dugs to keep them quiet or to take them out. When the unnoyauoe continued, he an nounced that the disturbing of a re ligious service was a violation of the law and must cease at once. "Now's yer time, Phin,” said Lar kins, in a loud aside, “let her go,” and in a minute the exasperated dogs were rushing at each other's throats and causing a panic of terror among the women. Quickly leaving the teacher’s desk which served as a preaching stand, Lawrence walked down the central passage to where the dogs were snap ping, snarling and rolling over each other on the floor. "Take your dogs out,” he said with a very decided tone and gesture. See ing that their owners took no notice, he added sternly: “And do it at once.” “Take ’em out yerself if yer wants to,” said Phin Crowle, “but I warns yer it's at yer peril. If my Ttge grips yer leg he’ll never let go—not if yer cuts his head off.” “Open the door, please,” said the young preacher, which was promptly done by a man sitting near it. ■ Lawrence had not practised football In vain. Before their loutish owners could interfere, lie had planted a well directed and tremendous kick on the Interlocked and astonished dogs that unlocked their jaws; followed by two others, that swept first one and then the other over the threshold and into the outer darkness before they knew where they were. “Now follow your dogs!" he said grimly to the cowardly bullies—for your bully is always a coward. "Supposin' wo don't choose to!" drawled Larkins. “I'll simply have to make you!" said Lawrence with blaring eyes, "and to morrow have you fined for disturbing public worship." "Let's go, Jim," said Pliin; "he's got the drop on us this time." "We’ll be even with yer yet, Mr. Preacher, and be blanked to yer,” growled the human brute, Larkins, more degraded than his dog, and went Into the blackness of night making the air lurid with oaths and curses. In a moment Lawrence was calm again, and with earnest pleading tones he read over the words in the Apoca THE BOWLEGGED MAN. The regiment forming enlisted mm. He carried the water, lor something’ to <1 . And when the led rattle and thunder o war ... Came knocking one morning on isnmt ieg’s door ~ , Ho sprang to the rally and followed tn Of the ilag to the heart and the heat of the imp ~, „ "Ono tiling,” he shouted, "you 11 s ee ITI ega.in; , ~ . I’ll straddle the balls and the bullets, di pen!” And he did! Not a scratch had he borne when he came , 1 forr.e again, happy and agile and '-.an ■■ With the badge of a veteran he waiiciu with renowh, , .• A relic of laughter long years in the t°” n - Shoemaker, carpenter, sexton as wen. Funeral or wedding, he tolled the > And smiled tlie old smile when t.i>> laughed at his legs And his penchant for checkers and mum bletypegs. "Bantylegs Butterball, bowlegged man- Catch me and kick me, if catch me you Youngsters who shouted this challenge to him ; ’ Are shadows as dim as those old are dim, ■ , But still through the valley of memory i The dear little town that was home town to me, ' ' And laugh when I think of that shape on the street With knees that had parted to nevermore meet! „ —Baltimore Sun. By W. H. WITHROW. lypse concerning the finally impeni tent: “ ‘Without,’ in the blackness of darkness forever, ‘are dogs, and sor cerers, and whatsoever loveth and maketh a lie,’ ” and with tears in his voice he exhorted his hearers to heed the solemn warnings of God and to flee from his present and eternal wrath. His words came home with strange power and not a few of the ruffians’ companions who had “come to scoff remained to pray.” An hour later Lawrence was making his way home from his first service at the Four Corners Schoolhouse. A great gladness filled his soul and he heeded not the wild and wintry winds nor the drifting clouds that were scud ding rapidly across the sky. Through their rifts the moon shone brightly. Just as he reached a bridge across a ravine two figures glided out of the shadows of the trees, accompanied by two dygs. Lawrence at once recog nized them as Jim Larkins and Phin Crowle and their invariable compan ions—we might almost say comrades —Bull and Tige. “Now, Mr. Preacher,” growled Lar kins, “I said I’d be even with yer yet, and blest if it isn’t goin’ to be ter night.” Only “blest” was not exactly the word he used, but one of opposite meaning. “I have no cause of quarrel with you,” said Lawrence. “I forgive you all about that little incident at the schoolhouse.” “But I ain’t forguv yer, nor Bull neither, and we’ve got yer where we want yer. Slc’m, Bull! Sic’m, Tige!” Ominous growlings and snarlings followed, but just then a rift in the cloud emitted a bright gleam of moon light which, reflected by the snow, re vealed the group with almost the light of day. Both dogs seemed to recog nize the man with the emphatic boots with which they had so recently made unpleasant acquaintance, and slunk behind their respective owners. “Curse ’em! 1 never knowed ’em to do like that afore. Ye’re not afraid, be yer? ’Ere, Bull, sic'm. Tige, seize holt.’ “We’ll have to wade In, Phin.” “I have no quarrel with either of you, and don't want to have,” said Lawrence. “Oh, ye’re a coward, be yer? On yer own ground in the schoolhouse yer wuz bold enough, but here yer sings another tune. Ye’ve got ter fight and one or other of us goes over that bridge,” and he pointed to the deep shadows in the ravine. “Not I, if I can help it, nor you either, so far as I am concerned,” re plied Lawrence, calmly. “Take that, will yer?” said Larkins, and he hit him a buffet mi the cheek. “I never struck a man yet,” said Lawrence, “and I don't intend to; but l don’t object to a passive resistance,” and he skilfully warded off blow after blow of Larkins’ furious onset. “Why don’t ye piten in, Phin? Give it ’im heavy.” "Not I,” said Pliin, ‘lt’s no fun hit tin' a man that won’t hit back. I’ll stand by and see fair play." "Curse 'im an’ yer too. It's not fair play I want, but his blood, an' I’ll nave it, fair play or foul," and he made a mad rush at laawrence which would have swept him over the undefended edge of the bridge, had he not been quick as a weasel. Larkins, with another rush, got In side Lawrence's guard and flung his long arms around the slim student preacher with a grasp like a boa-con strictor’s. The ground was icy. Law rence was in real peril of being hurl iedover the bridge side into the ra- I vine whose bottom was studded with stumps and wo*d-cutters’ debris. Put to his mettle he got a wrestling grip on Larkins, and they swayed and struggled on the narrow bridge, the one trying to get near the edge, the other to keep in the centre. It was not for nothing that Lawrep-~ had developed his thews and sinews Joading saw-logs in the lumber-camp. AVith a mighty effort he lifted his an tagonist from the ground and could easily have flung him over the bridge into the ravine, but he merely threw him into the snow-drift by the road side, and was in turn dragged down. “Here, Bull, hero, Tige, sic ’irn! Seize ’im! Tear ’im!” roared Larkins with lip-biistering oaths. “No, yar don’t, Tige,” said Phin: “two to one is agin the rules o’ the game.” Bull snarled and snapped, but the clouds agai ndrifted across the moon and in the shadow it v/as impossible to distinguish which was Lawrence. “Curse him! He’s bruk my wrist. The game’s up for this time.” “Sorry I hurt you,” said Lawrence. “I didn’t want to. Let me see if it is badly injured.” “Pains like thunder,” said Larkins, holding up a dangling wrist. “Here, Phin, yer take holt.” “Let the preacher try,” said Phin, as Larkins howled with pain. “He knows more about these things nor I do.” Lawrence, who had often bound up sprains and bruises in the lumber camp, took hold of the injured wrist, despite Larkins’ reluctance, and ten derly examined it, though Larkins winced at the touch. “No bones broken, my good fellow,” said Lawrence, “only a bad sprain. Let me make a splint,” and he rapidly shaped two flat pieces of wood, and saying, “See, Phin, how it is done,” carefully bound them with his own handkerchief on the sprained wrist. “Isn’t that better?” be asked. “Ain’t so all-fired painful as ’twuz,” admitted Larkins, “Now let me make you a sling. Got another , IKl'ndkerchief, boys?” But neither of them possessed such an article; so Phin took oif his braces — “galluses,” he called them —and “took up the slack of his trousers,” as he termed it, with a nail, while Lawrence made a sling to suport the injured wrist. “I 'am very, very sorry,” he said; “I didn’t want to hurt you, believe me.” “Oh, hang it all,” said Larkins, "served me right, I guess—ye’re not such a bad lot arter all. Will yer shake hands and call it quits?” and he held out his uninjured hand. “I meant murder, though, blest if I didn’t! ”-*-and this time the word was not a cur6e. “I couldn’t have done like yer did arter the ways I treated yer, not by a jugful. Will yer forgive me?” “With all my heart,” said Lawrence; and as he shook hands with both the cronies, he added, “I bear you no mal ice at all. God bless you both.” “Here, Bull, here Tige,” said the dis comfied comrades as they lurched along to the Four Corners, and Law rence went, light-hearted on his way to town. He had both killed an en emy and made a friend, adopting the Master’s own method, the true psy chology of overcoming evil with good. Jlenceforth Larkins and Crowle were he preacher’s champions at the Four Corners. "I ain’t no slouch at a wrastle nuth er,” Larkins admitted to Phin; “that underholt uv his is a corker.” —From The Christian Herald. A Silent Trumpet. Alexander Graham Bell, whose ex periments promise to give him as won derful a success with the flying ma chine as he ha<| with the telephone, used to teach the deaf and dumb —it was, in fact, his work among the deaf end dumb that led to the telephone’s invention —and at a dinner in Wash ington he told a deaf and dumb story. "This story illustrates,” he began, "the necessity for carrying on aero plane experiments secretly. Were they carried on publicly interference would ensue. Ignorance always causes interference. Many years ago an aged friend of mine visited a church in Maine one Sunday morning. As soon as the sermon began my friend, who was very deaf, took from his pocket an ear trumpet in two parts and pro ceeded to screw the parts together. \\ hile he was engaged in this work he noticed that the sexton, from his seat near the pulpit, kept frowning and shaking his head at him. Finally, jus; as my friend got his trumpet joined and made as if to put it to his ea~, the sexton hastened to him and whispered fiercely: " ‘Ye can’t play that here. If ye do I’ll put ye out’ ” —San Antonio Ex press. The Cat. The woman crowded into the seat reserved for smokers and sniffed ominously, contemptously. "Tobacco,” she remarked, "is a vile poison Nicotine would kill a cat.” "That being the case, madam,” re plied an unembarrassed smoker, “if I were you I’d make the cat cut it out." —Philadelphia Ledger. Bakers of Pompeii made their bread circular and flat, as appears from loaves found in the ruins. Georgia Cullings Curtailed Items of Interest Gathered at Random. Farmers’ Union at State Fair. R. F. Duckworth, state president of the Georgia Farmers’ Union, has an nounced the full program for "Farm ers Union Day,” which is to be cele brated at the state fair in Atlanta on October 16. This is to be one of the really big days of the fair and there is sure to be large delegations from the various farmers’ union organiza tions in the state. * * * All Telegraph Offices Open. When the railroad commission Fri day morning called for the considera tion of the petitions of citizens from various towns of the state, in which it was requested that the telegraph com panies be forced to furnish service at these towns, their offices having been closed since the strike of the opera tors, representatives of both the Pos tal and Western Union announced that every telegraph office in Georgia was now open for business. In view of the fact that there was no challenge of the claim of the tele graph companies, the commission de cided to notify the complainants of the telegraph companies’ statement, and if there was no further complaint the matter would be closed. * * * Pushing Work on G. & F. Road, It is officially announced in Augus ta that all necessary steps have been taken for the taking over of the sev eral railroads which will form a part of the Georgia and Florida railway. The connecting roads are the Au gusta and Florida railway, the Atlantic and Gulf Shore line, the Millen and Southwestern, the Douglas railroad, the Augusta and Gulf railway, Nash ville and Sparks railway and Valdosta Southern, comprising a total mileage of roads now in operation of about 220 miles. Contracts are about completed for the building of the four lines necessary to join the existing roads, and the entire system, when completed, will be about 350 miles long, the main line extending from Augusta to Madison, Fla. A. & W. P, Withdraws Motion. The Atlanta and West Point rail road has withdrawn its motion pending before Judge W. D. Ellis of the Fulton superior court, asking for a temporary injunction restraining the state rail road commission from enforcing its order reducing passenger rates within the state and the case of the petition ing road will now take its regular place on the docket, coming up for final adjudication in from twelve to eighteen months. This for the time being, takes the fight of the railroad out of the state courts, and is taken to mean that the Atlanta and West Point railroad will comply with the order of the state railroad commission, reducing passen ger rates pending final settlement of the case. * * * Seaboard Bows to Law. President W. A. Garrett of the Sea board Air Line railroad has expressed the willingness and intention of his road to co-operate with the Georgia railroad commission in carrying out the state laws. This expression ot President Garrett was contained in a letter received by Hon. S. G. McLen don, chairman of the railroad commis sion, and was in reply to a letter written him by the chairman. In his letter to President Garrett Chairman McLendon expressed the appreciation of the railroad commission of the at titude of the Seaboard Air Line in os readily complying with the law re ducing passenger rates. The Seaboard Air Line and the Western and Atlantic were the only roads that did not enjoin the commis sion from enforcing the reduced rates. * * * State W. C. T. U. Convention. The twenty-fifth annual convention of the Georgia Woman’s Christian Temperance Union will be he:d at Co lumbus October 23-25. It will be known as the jubliee convention. Eaoh union is requested to elect del egates at once and forward names to Mrs. John C. Cook, 1516 Third avenue, Columbus. If they find later that they can not attend, they are requested to not fail to notify Mrs. Cook of that fact also and thus avoid disappoint ment and confusion. The reduced rates granted by the Southeastern Passenger Association have been recalled, on account of the unsettled conditions with regard to rates brought about by recent legis- STOP AT THE ZETTLER HOUSE. The best SI.OO a day house in the c ; ty. 253 FOURTH ST., MACON. G A., Mrs. A. L. Zeltler, Proprietress, lation, but the rates have been redusea on some -roads so expenses will not be so heavy as heretofore. Certificates under the circumstances will he use less. * * * Will Guarantee Valuation. The first application of the new law which requires a Georgia corpora tion to obtain the sanction of the rail road commission before it can issue additional stocks or bonds occurred Friday when the Atlanta Telephone and Telegraph company argued its pe tition for permission to float a $2,000,- 000 bond issue. Heretofore all stocks' arid'beffids is sued by Georgia corporations have at least had the prima facie sanction ol the state. In future- such issues will not only have the approval of the state through its railroad commission, hut the fact that a corporation has permission that back of such issue there exists actual valuq. The commis sion will, in no instance, approve a bond or stock issue until by painstak ing and thorough investigation it has satisfied itself that the applicant is entitled to such approval. * * * Cotton Interview Condemned. At the recent meeting of the Upson County Farmers’ Union at Thomaston a strong protest was made against an interview recently published in the At lanta Journal, placing the cotton crop in Georgia at 2,000,000 bales. The resolutions passed were as follows: “Whereas, Governor Hoke Smith and others, in a recent interview given to the Atlanta Journal, place the cotton crop of the state of Georgia at two million bales for the year 1907; and, “Whereas, recognizing that estimate is wholly untrue from the present out look and what we can learn from all sources, we, the Farmers’ Union ofi Upson county, in called meeting as sembled, do hereby “Resolve, That we strongly condemn this method used to lower the price of cotton by making it appear that the state will yield fully 500,000 more bales than it is possible for her to yield this year, and words of censure are not too strong towards those who use such unfair methods against the farmers of the state. “Be it further resolved, That we heartily endorse the position taken by our state president, Hon. R. F. Duck worth, in his recent interview's pub lished in several of the daily papers of the state criticising the action of these gentlemen.” ~Several other county unions have taken similar action. - * * * Pure Food Law Operative. ,Tuesday, October Ist, the Pure Food, Law of Georgia, which, went into effect on August Ist, but inspection on which was temporarily suspended by Corn . missioner of Agriculture T. G. Hudson, became rigidly operative and will be strictly enforced. Out of deference to the country mer chants of the state w'ho were heavily, stocked with feed stuffs which come "’the, registration clause of this law,--the department saw fit to put off the inspection until the last named date. It is required by the department that all foods and feed stuffs shall be; registered and* the contents plainly printed, the foods tagged aiid on each tag there shall he placed an inspec tion' stamp ’and the .fS'tfiiftßr’-fged stuffs analys'd depar^eiiL,*^’:' In a special order “Commissioner Hudson calls attention-to that great cattle feed, cottoii seed ' meal, and states that to be biassed as -a legal meal, it nlus.t contain 38.G2 ybr- cent protein, and if It falls beldw that standard, it will be known as a mix?d feed and registered asjsuchiv Under section 17 of Food law, it is the duty of sheriffs to seize and sell at public outcry all "foods and feed stuffs not properly Registered. Already $6,000 worth, ppf pure food stamps have been sold by'the agricul tural department. This country manufactures about 32,- 000,000 lead pencils annually, argues the Boston Transcript, but it is stated that the red cedar from which the best ones are made is growing scarce, and no substitute has • yet been found. Strangely enough, no effort has been made to maintain the supply, though cedar trees are easily grown from the seed.