Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

AN EXCITING WOLF-HUNT, Youth's Companion. I well remember the moruiug we start ed after that wolf. It was an old she wolf, and she had been doiftg mischief for more than a year. It was about the 20th of April. She had been about the farms the fall before. As many as a dozen sheep and one calf had been found throttled. Deer had several times come out of the woods and joined the cattle in the pastures— through fright, it seemed, at having been pursued. During the winter, a large gray wolf had been seen three or four times near the logging camps, ten miles above. One night a man had shot at it from his camp door as it was snatching at some meat scraps that had been thrown out. As soon as the snow was off, and the sheep and cattle had been turned ont again, the wolf renewed its depredations. The second night when our sheep were out, three were killed and partly eaten ; and only two nights after this, a neigh boring farmer lost four. That same af ternoon, too, one of Mr. Murch’s —an- other neighbor’s —cows came to the barn worried aud bloody, as if she had been attacked by some wild animal. “ It is that wolf!” everybody said, and the following morning, six of us turned out to hunt it down. Besides my cousin George and me, there were Wilts Murch, Ned Wilbur, and a young fellow named Walt Evans. Evans waS a cousin of the Murch boys, and was up from Portland to visit them that spring. Alf Churchill, a boy who worked fur us, was another one of the party. Grandfather was too old for such a chase ; Mr. Wilbur was sick ; and Walt’s father was not living. The business of the farm fell largely to us boys, and we thought it belonged to us to rid the com munity of that wolf. I remember carrying a dQuble-barrd ed duck-gun, both barrels loaded with B. B. shot and a bullet. George had an old Sharpe’s carbine. Walt Evans carried besides his gun, a policeman’s “ billy ” and a knife in a belt. Ned and Wilts both had guns, but Alf Churchill had nothing bui an axe. We were a warlike party, so far as weapons weut, and we were determined to hunt the wolf down. George and I then owned two hounds. Oneof them, “Old Jim," wasa big sav age fellow. We took him with us. Wilts took along his fox hound, too, and Mr. Wilbur’s big watch-dog, “ Beave," came on after us. We went first to the pasture where Mr. Wilbur's sheep had been killed. The spot was a little hollow beside a thicket of cedars and alders. The sheep had been lying there to be out of the cold, biting wind, probably. In the dark, the wolf had throttled one after another of them ; for sheep, when attacked at night, w ill rarely run far, but huddle together. One of the sheep had been dragged into the thicket and partially eaten. Old Jim snuffed eagerly about it; add then, with a loud, fierce challenge, lie bounded off on the wolfs track. The other hound and Beave followed. You may be sure that six more thor oughly excited boys never set off after hounds. We ran through the brush af ter them, down into a swamp, crossed a muddy brook, and entered the old growth woods beyond. And it was not until Ned’s gun went off from accident ally hitting the hammer against a stub, and came near shooting Alf in the legs, that we settled down to a more cautious and steady pace. The hounds, of course, soon left us be hind. But we followed on, guided by their loud baying. The old wolfs lair was nearer than we had supposed it to be. We had not gone much more than a mile through the thick forest, when we heard Old Jim give a prolonged growl. The steady baying had ceased. “They’verun the old brute into some ledge!” cried Wilts. We hurried on, and came to a deep, wooded gully between two high hills, down the bed of which ran a brook, foaming over mossy, shaded rocks. The tracks led up this gully. George was ahead, and we all follow ed as fast as we could run. The hollow grew narrower, with steeper sides; and fifty rods farther up, we came to what looked to be a huge jam of old stumps, logs and brush, that filled the whole gul ly to the height of fifteen or twenty feet. Some heavy freshet had lodged it there. The brook roared and gurgled beneath it. The hounds stood at the foot of this jam of stumps apd brush near a hole between two mossy log'. They whined VOL, III —NO. 22. when wc came up, and Old Jiiagave an other long growl. We looked about the place. There were mafcy holcss, old ones and fresh ofies, and bits of tur aud wool scattered around. “ Here’s her den !” exclaimed Ned. It was a dark, vicious-looking hole under the old logs. Alf and George climbed over to the other side to see if there were more holes leading under or out. Salnd and earth had been washed in from above. The lower hole was the wolf’s ouly “door,” so far as we could see. The dogs would go into it a few feet and bark, but they did not seem over anxious to cotne to close quarters with its occupant. Old Beavc charged in once, and was greeted with a savage snarl. For a moment, we thought there would be a fight. But the dog bucked out, and we didn’t blame him. We had little doubt but whajt the old wolf had whelps in there. George said that we had better get our axes, and by cutting and dragging away the old stuff, w uk into the den. But Wilts said, “ No, boys; I believe the jam will burn, if once we can get fire into it and well agoing, and we can roast the old thief out.” Alf then got some chips and splints, which he tucked into the further end of the jam, where it was dryest, and set them on fire with matches that he had brought along. The fire was sometime in starting, but after a while the old stuff got well wanned up, and then it began to take flame nnd roar. “ Capital! We’ll soon have oiirgame, and roasted, too,” shouted Wilts. And it seemed —as the flames roared and began to wrap the whole great pile of drift—that we had got the old “ tor ment ” into limbo at last, and stood a ehanceof not only burning her “house” over her head, but of burning her up with it. We could hear her growling at the fire. But she was tough and wily, and not disposed to give in w ithout a savage fight for life. Just as the fire seemed to enwrap the wholejam, the wolf made a swift bolt out through the blaze, and all singed and sparkling with fire, flew at Old Jim like a mad hyena. Although we were on the lookout, we were not quite prepared for so sudden a spring as the old beast had made. “ Look out I” shrieked Alf. “ Shoot! shoot!” George fired —Wilts fired—Alf slung the axe, and Ned and I were both cock ing our guns —trying to get aim. But the savage brute flew from Jim across the brook toward Alf. He ran up the side of the gully, shouting: “Shoot! Shoot her!” No wonder he ran, for she was the ug liest-looking ereaturel ever saw. She got past us all, and scoured away down the hollow-. The dogs started af ter her, at full cry, down the gully, and off through the woods at the northeast. We rallied, too, loaded up again, and followed for a mile or more, Then we lost them from hearing altogether; and being now pretty tired and hungry, we went home. But just as George and Alf, and I were finishing a most hearty meal, Ned came running to the house to say that the hounds had come around from the northwest, within hearing again. We went into the yard. They seemed not to be more than two miles off, going in full cry towards the “ pond woods.” “ Come on!” shouted George. Guns were brought out in hot haste, and we went. But after running a mile or two, we lost sound of the dogs; and it was not till four o’clock that they came around from the south end of the pond. Not many minutes after that we heard the long howl of Old Jim. It was down by the east shore of the pond, where a crag, called the “ over set,” fronted on the water. Wilts and George had already started to go down there. The rest of us fol lowed them around the head of the pond and down through the woods to the “ overset.” George and Wilts were at some distance ahead. The dogs were whining about the rock. There was a great crevice, two or three inches wide, between two huge rocks which lay at the foot of the cliff. these, other great Imulders had fallen down. The crevices looked like the mouth of a den. “ The old brute is in there, sure enough!” Wilts said. “How I wish I had a bucket of nitroglycerine to tuck in after her 1” Finally, we concluded to set our guns —the whole of them—spring gun fash ion, pointing into the crevice. Ned went up to a house, about half a mile off, aud got some hemp twine. While he was gone the rest of us cut crotched stakes to rest the guns in, and set them in the ground around the hole. Five guns were set pointing into the den. When Ned came back with the twine, a perfect network of lines was laid across the mouth of the den ; and each of these cross lines ran around a stake to the triggers of all the guns. It was a nice job to fix them, aud a rather critical one when it came to put ting the lines on the triggers. The guns were then cocked. Each one had been loaded as heavily as wo dared to load it. By the time we got our guns set, it was fairly dark, and we went off' home as fast as we could. Early next morning, before either George or I w-as up, a boy from the house where we got the twine came in. The family had heard the guns go off late in the night. As soon as it was light, the boy had run down and looked over the top of the crag, and had seen the old wolf dowii on the pebbles, “ kick ing,” he said. We were soon out of bed and down by the crag. And sure enough, the old pest, that had done so much mischief, lay stretched out there, not “ kicking,” but stone dead. She had gone fifty feet or more from the mouth of the den, though both her forelegs were broken by the buckshot, and a bullet had traversed the whole length of her body. Three of the guns had been discharged when she tripped the lines. The Largest Tree in the World. 11l Sail Francisco, Cal., encircled by a circus tent of ample dimensions, is a section of the largest, tree in the world exceeding the diameter of the famous tree of Calaveras by five feet. This monster ot the vegetable kingdom was discovered in 1874, on Tule River, Tu lare county, about seventy-five miles from Visalia. At some remote period, its top had been broken off by the ele ments or some unknown forces, yet when it was discovered it had an eleva tion of two hundred and forty feet. The trunk of the tiee was one hundred and eleven feet in circumference and, with a diameter of thirty-five feet four inches. The section on exhibition is hollowed out, leaving about a foot of bark and several inches of the wood. The interior is one hundred feet in circum ference and thirty feet in diameter, and it has a seating capacity of about two hundred. It was cut off from the tree about twelve feet above the base and required the labor of four men for nine days to chop it down. In the center of the tree and extending through its whole length, was a rotten core about two feet in diameter, partially filled with a soggy, decayed vegetation that had fallen into it from the top. In the center of this cavity was found the trunk of a little tree of the same species, having perfect bark on it, and showing regular growth. It was of uniform diameter an inch and a half all the way, and when the tree fell and split open, this curious stem was traced for nearly one hundred feet, usually straight, but occasionally gnarled and twisted as though it had met impedi ments in its growth. It is believed to have sprung from a seed in the bottom, grown the whole length of the trunk, and supported a green, living top at the summit. The rings in this monarch of the forest show its age to have been 4,840 years. Atlanta Constitution: The Buffalo Express says The Constitution called Grant a fraud. Did we ? Really we had forgotten all about it. There are so many frauds in the republican party that wo find it impossible to keq> a list. HARTWELL, GA., WEDNESDAY. JANUARY 29, 1879. Sherry Ptaek. jAwiiriUt Couritr-Joumal. Judge Black, of Pennsylvania, tells a comical story of a trial in which a German doctor appeared for the defense in the case lor damages brought against a client by' the object of his assault. The eminent jurist soon rccoguized in his witness, who was produced as a medical expert, a laboring man who some years before and in another part of the country had been engaged by him as a bulkier of post and rail fences. With this cue he opened his cross ex amination. “ You say, Doctor,” he began with great deference and suavi ty, “ that you operated upon Mr. —'s head after it was cut by Mr.— ?” "Oh, yaw,” replied the ex-fence builder; “me do dat; yaw, yaw.” “ Was the wound a very severe one, Doctor ?” “ Enough to kill him if I not save his life.” “ Well, Doctor, what did you do for him ?” “ Everything.” “ Did you perform tl>e Cmsariau op eration ?” “ Oh, yaw, yaw ; if me not do dot he dis." “ Did j-ou decapitate Idm ?” “ Yaw, yaw ; me do dot too.” “ Did j-ou hold a post-morteui exam ination ?” “ Oil, to be scliure, Schudge ; me al ways do dot.” “ Well, now, Doctor,” and here the Judge bent over in a friendly, familiar way, “ tell us whether yon submitted your patient to the process known among medical men as post-anti-rail fennorum." The mock doctor drew himself up in dignantly. “ Sherry Plaek,” says he, “ I always know’d you vas a tam jay hawk lawyer, an’ now I know you for a tam mean man.” Pat on the Road. An Irishman, driven to desperation by the stringency of the money market and the high price of provisions, pro cured a pistol and took to the road. Meeting a traveler, he stopped him with i “ Your money or your life!” Seeing Pat was green at the business, the traveler said i “ I’ll tell you what I'll do; I’ll give yon all my money for that pistol.” Pat received the money and handed over the pistol. “ Now,” said the traveler, “ hand back that money or I’ll blow your brains out!” “ Blaze away, my hearty,” said Pat, “ never a dhrop of powder is there in it!” Atlanta Constitution: An eternal warfare seems to rage between the country negro and the town darkey. This was illustrated at the passenger depot yesterday. A colored youth from Pike county approached a town negro, and the following conversation ensued : " Whar bouts is de ticket office ?” “ Right dar ’fo’ yo’ eyes.” “ Fo’ whose eyes !” “Yonc.” “Is you de ticket office ?" “ Look ycr, nigger, don’t you gimme none yo’ slack.” “I’m a mighty slack man, n.on.w’en I gits stirred up.” “ An’ you’ll git stirred up ef you stan’ roun’ yer foolin’ longer me.” “ I)at’s de kinder ex’cise w’at I’m a pinin’ fer.” ■ And with that they clinched and had a right lively tussle. They were sepa rated, however, before a policeman came along, and the Pike county darkey found the ticket office. The town ne gro, it may be well to mention was badly used up. A Jones county man, who attended the Macon fair and saw a man handle a swarm of bees, went home and ex perimented with one of his own coveys. He tilted the box np and pulled out a handful, and held them up so his wife, who was standing at a safe distance, could see them. Then he tried to put them Back, but this was a failure. Then he endeavored to shake them off, and this also appeared to be a failure, for his wife beard him give a snort, and tiic next moment he was tearing WHOLE NO. 120. through an orchard of young peach trees, making as much fuss as a fright ened cavalry company. The place where lie went through the fence looked ns though the band-wagon of a circus had been shot through it sideways, lie was getting along comfortably at last accounts. Religious Experience In Nevada. Ktno (Xev.) Oautlt. “ I’m going to church to-morrow,” re marked a well-known citizen of Reno, with a red face in Sander’s saloon this afternoon. “ Why,’! demanded an astonished fel low old-timer. “ Well, you see," explained the gen tleman, “ I went last Sunday for the first time in nine years, an' I felt ever so much better than if I’d put in the day at pedro or poker as usual. Some how, seein’ so many well-dressed, de cent people in a crowd, an' bearin’ ttie parson aud list'nin’ to the hymns 1 used toknowwhenl was a boy, made me feel sort o’ tender-hearted like. An’ the feeling didn't we.ar away neither. I've felt so d—d good and pious-like all the w’cck that I could lick my weight in hoodlums this here minute. Goin’ to church is the boss rocket, you kin bet on that. Every leadin’ citizen had ought to go to church. Martin, tnkc sumfln' yourself.” Ex-Governor Vance lias been elected to Congress from North Carolina. Those who have seen Mrs. Grant in Europe, say she is homesick and wants to get back to God s country. Oglethorpe Echo : We believe Gov. Colquitt is a Christian gentleman uud a jicrfectly honest, correct man, but he’s no more fit to be Governor of Georgia “ than a frog ain’t got no tail." A recent colored emigrant from South Carolina to Liberia writes back to his brother to “ come out —coons are plenty here.” Let this information go through out the land ; let every darkey hear the glad tidings! Richmond Dispatch: The mayor of a Georgia town, so new that it had no lock-up, had two prisoners put under a wagon-bed turned upside down on the ground, and a cotton-bale placed on it to hold it down. A short article on dlptheria in the Mankato Review gives pure lemon juice as a cure for the disease. It is gargled every half hour, one, two, three hours, as recovery progresses, the patient swallowing a little each time, so as to reach the affected parts. It is settled that the screech of the locomotive is to resound in the streets of Jerusalem. A contract has been signed for the building of a narrow gauge road on the American principle from Joppa to Jerusalem. The dis tance is forty miles, and when the road is completed the trip will be as easy and comfortable as steam on land and water can make it. “ Billy, bow did you lose your fin ger ?” “ Easy enough,” said Billy. “ I suppose j-ou did, but how ?” “ I guess you’d lost yourn if it had been where mine was.” “ That doesn’t answer my question,” “ Well, if you must know I had to cut it off or steal the trap.” A young man recently saw the fol lowing advertisement in a newspaper: “ Ilow to Get I ich. A rare secret. Mend twenty-five cents to Geo. Fuller ton, box 413, Portland, Me." Being desirous of “ making a rise,” he forwarded the money and received the following reply: “ Work like the devil, and never spend a cent.” By Their Fruits. Methodist Recorder. To measure a Christian, we must puncture his creed and toss it as gossa mer aside ; to test a man we must rc connoiter beyond the lines of his pro fession, and get over into the domain where he lives. We must get beyond pew, beyond parlor, beyond the family aitar, and linger a little in the realm where he makes bargains, where he plans and where lie touches the world. There must be a righteous citizenship as the of an evangelic ft! prefer sion. HILL ARP’S SUNDAY ( HAT. Pr<Xln••! bjr Ciwutf Kara I.lna. Atlanta Ounttihition. We still live. For the past week we have had to move round lively and dance to the tune of “ wood up quickstep.” We run three fires, and it has taken back logs aud front-logs, aud top-logs and chips and chunks, and pine-knots, to keep the bairn comfortable. A good big load a day about doe* it, and I was think ing how thankful wc ought to be that we had the wood handy. J suppose a load of old cross-ties would keep an average family of poor folks from freezin for a day or two, but its uo time now to be put upon them sort of rations—especially in a house with cracks big enough to fling a cat through. May tliegco:! Lord have ' mercy on ’em. What would you poor I folks have done if the Georgia ruilroad hadn’t thought about the cross-tieaf When the treasury is empty, and the weather so cold, your good people can’t get out to buy or beg a little fuel for the poor, it's a blessed thing to have old cross-ties so convenient. While readin your account of their desolation and dis tress I couldn’t help ruminatin over the liberality of your people to Memphis oud New Orleans, ami Vicksburg, aud how l lmd known folks to strain their guns shooting at long range and overlook the game close to ’em. I've knowed good people to send clothes to the heath en at Bramapoota when there was plenty of children goin about barefooted and ragged and cold in the suburbs of their own town. School girls, aud their moth ers too, weep tears of sympathy over a thrilling novel which seems to prove that what we read of makes more impression on us than what we see. Just so with a touching picture on canvass or a tender scene well acted in the play, and Tom Hood's song of the shirt is said to have awakened more charity in London than the press and the pulpit, and all the bo ncvolcnt societies put together. Well, of course them poor folks who are lazy and trilling ought to suffer a little, and I reckon that’s excuse sufficient for moot everybody who wants one, but one thing is certain, helpless women and children ain’t goin to freeze to death in the nama of the Lord in this country. Somebody else will be held responsible for it, 6hor. A good Jog fire is about the best thing to keep a man comfortnblc these icy days that I know of, though Dr. Kane, who roosted a while in sight of the north pole, says it ain’t—that fat meat and grease aud blubber are better, and he had to stuff down ten pounds of it everyday to keep his blood clrculatin. There’s a heap of comfort in peroosiu his book these wintry nights, and reading about zero being a very pleasant state of at mosphere—a sort of Indian summer compared with the general temperature. My friend Dwinell says a man can stand any amount of cold if lie’ll fix himself up for it and brace his resolution up agin it. It’s intercstiu to hear him tell about ■ liviu away up in Maine some forty or : fifty years ago (I forgot which he said) when lie was a boy, and how the house used to crack, crack, crack all night, and shrink up, and one liextraordinary spell it shrunk off the pillars, and the rooms got so small the furniture was all jammed up together—and how they sat up and eat all night, and went to prayer as the sun rose, which was all that saved ’em, and how a man’s breath froze into icicles and stuck out sharp and straight a foot or two, and sometimes folks got hurt running into one another in the dark, and how one terrible night, when the mercury went out of sight and wouldn’t register, a house got on fire and nobody dared to go to it, and nextmoru in the house was goDe but the flumes were there stickin up fifty feet high and frozen into red ice—and how' they couldnt keep mules in Maine, for their ears froze off' so you couldn’t tell ’em from horses, and when they brayed at 40 decrees be low zero the bray turned into ice, shot and broke w indow-glass worse than hail stones —and how, in the fall of the year, whisky was poured into shallow pans to freeze, and then cut up and retailed all winter by the square inch, as chewing gum—and how, one bitter day a likely lad got frozen through and through as he was going to school, and it took the doctor three days to thaw him, and they got him thawed all but his heart, and they couldn’t reach that, and it’s frozen yet, and he couldn’t refrain from calling his name, w hich is that same Jim Blame, from the cold state of Maine* who is said to contain nary blood in his vein, and this serves to explain why he gets so in sane at a little blood-stain on a rebel shirt. Well, I dont blame Melville for de parting from those euclement coasts, and seeking a clime more congenial to his feelings. If he left any more of his sort behind him, they too will find a cordial welcome in the sunny south, for hes made a good citizen in peace and a good soldier in war, and it there s any thing higher I don’t know it. May ho and his family—when begets one—iivo lone and prosper. Yours, Bill Aff