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About The Crawford County herald. (Knoxville, Crawford Co., Ga.) 1890-189? | View Entire Issue (May 22, 1890)
’Tis Better to Laugh. The sunniest skies are the fairest, The happiest hours are the best, Of all of life’s blessings the rarest Are pictures of pleasure and rest. Though Fate is our wishes denying. Let each bear his part like a man, Nor darken the world with our sighing— ’Tis better to laugh when we can. Each heart has its burden of sorrow, Each soul has its shadows profound; ’Tis sunshine we’re yearning to borrow From those who may gather around. T?hen let us wear faces of pleasure The world will be happy to scan. A scowl is to no one a treasure— ’Tis better to laugh when we can. —Chicago Herald. HIS NEIGHBOR’S SEES. BY AM Y RANDOLPH. It was a still, frosty evening in Octo¬ ber, with the moon just old enough to cast a ruddy light on the leaf-carpeted path, and the ancient stone wall, all broidered over with lichens and moss. The air was instinct with sweet aro¬ matic scents, and one red light burned like a beacon star in the cottage window on the hill. “Look!” said Fleda Fenwick. C( Mamma has lighted the lamp! U’s high time we were home.” “And you haven’t said yes!” mourn¬ fully uttered Jack Trevelyn. “And I don’t mean to say yes!” Jack seated himself on the stone wall. just where the bars had been taken down. He was a handsome, sunburned fellow, with sparkling black eyes and a rich, dark complexion, as if, in his far back ancestry, there had been some olive-browed Spaniard. Fleda leaned against the bars, the moon turning her fair hair to gold and lingering like blue sparks in the deeps of her laughing eyes. If ever opposites existed in nature, they existed there, and then. “I’ve a great mind to go away to sea,” said Jack, slowly and vengefully. “Do,” saucily retorted F.eda. “And never come back again!” “Oh, Jack!” “The idea,” he cried, raising both hands as if to invoke the fair moonher- self by way of audience, “of a girl re¬ fusing to be married simply because she hasn’t got somo particular sort of a wedding gown to stand up in.” “If I can’t be married like other girls, I won’t be married at all,” de¬ clared Fleda, compressing her rosy lips. “The idea of keeping a man waiting for that! ’ groaned Jack. “It won’t be long,” coaxed Fleda. “But, look here, Fleda, why can’t we go quietly to church and be mar¬ ried, any day, and get the gown after¬ wards?” pleaded Jack. “But, Jack, it wouldn’t be the same thing at all. A girl gets married but once in her life, and she wants to look decent then." “My own darling you would look an angel in anything! ’ “Now, quit that. Jack!” laughed Fleda. “It’s what my school children call ‘taffy. y »» “1 hate your school children,” said Jack, venomously. “I hate your school. I despise the trustees, aud I should like to see the building burn down. Then you would hava to coma to me.” “No, I shouldn’t,” averred Fleda. ‘T should lake in millinery and dress¬ making until I had earned enough for the white silk dress. I never would — Oh, Jack! Who’s that?” “A tramp? I’ll soon settle him with blackthorn! ’ cried Trevelyn,spring¬ my ing up. > i No, don’t,” whispered Fleda, shrinking close to him; “it’s Mr. Mingden. He’s on his own premises; these woods belong to him. It's we that are trespassers. Wait! Stand still until he has gone by. He’s very near-sighted, and he will never see us.” “And who,” breathed Jack, as a stout, elderly person trotted slowly across the patch of moonlight, and van¬ ished behind the stiff laurel hedge, “is Mr. Mingden?” ‘ Don’t you know? Our neighbor. The new gentleman who has bought Smoke Hall.” “The old cove who is always quar¬ reling with you?” “Yes—the very man who hates bees so intolerably, and wants mamma to take away all those lovely hives, down by the south fence, ne says he can’t take his constitution in prace, because he’s always afraid of being stung.” . “Why don’t he take it somewhere else, then?" 4 v That's the very question,” *aid F.eda, “Mingden, eh? I believe he must be Harry Mingden’s uncle—it’s not such a very common name,” said Jack, reflec¬ tively. “Aud Harry’s my college chum —and I’m going to ask him to be my best man at tho wedding. ” “Ob, Jack! I hope he isn’t as disa¬ greeable as his unclel” cried E.fleda. “He’s a trump!” “Besides, I don’t believe his uncle will Jet him come!” added the girl. “Not let him come? Why shouldn’t he?” “Because he hates us so on account of the bee3.” ( t But, Isay, Fleda!” cried the young man, “this complicates matters! 1 promised to go and sei Harry Mingden when I was down here.” ‘ Go and see him, then; but don’t mention the name of Fenwick, for your life.” “Indeed I shall. Isn’t it the name of all others in which I take the most pride?” “Oh, Jack, you will only make more trouble! It’ll be worse than the bees. Promise me. Jack, or I’ 11 never, never speak to you again.” Aad Jack had to promise, after some unwilling fashion. Mr?. Fenwick, a pretty, faded little widow was full charged with indigna¬ tion when Fleda returned from her stroll in the woods. “Mamma, what is the matter?” said Fleda. “One of the hives was t-tipped over tonight,” sobbed Mrs. Fenwick; “and I’m sure he did it.” “It was the wind, mamma.” “No wind ever did that, Fleda. But I set it up again. 1 will never, never sacrifice my apiary to his absurd prejudices.” “Dear mamma, if you would only have the hives moved to the other side of the garden! ’ pleaded Fleda, caress¬ ingly. “And sacrifice a question of princi¬ ple! Never!' replied the widow. Mrs. Fenwick, ordinarily the most amiable of women, was roused on this subject to au obstinacy which could only be characterized as vindictive. And Mr. Ezra Mingden was ten times as bad as his neighbor. “That woman is a dragoness, Hal'’ he said to his nephew. “She keeps those bees simply to annoy me. I hate bees. Bees hate me. v «ery time I walk there I get stung.” 4 4 But, uncle, you shouldn’t orandish your cane about so,” reasoned Harry. “It’s sure to enrage ’em.” “I don’t brandish it on the woman's side of the fence. If her abominable buzzing insects persist in trespassing in my garden, am I not bound to protect myself sputtero 1 Mr. Mingden. “Can't you walk somewhere else?” “Can’t she put her bees somewhere else?” 44 But, uncle, all this seems such a trivial affair.” “Trivial, indeed! If you’d been stung on your nose and your ear and your eyelids and everywhere else, would you call it trivial? I never eat honey, aad I’ve always considered bees to be an absurdly overrated section of ento¬ mology. What business have her bees to be devouring all my flowers? How would she like it herself?” Harry Mingden smiled to see the de¬ gree of fury to which the old gentleman was gradually working himself up. He was already in Jack Trevelyn’s confi¬ dence, and thus, to a certain extent, enjoyed the unusual opportunity of see¬ ing both sides of the question. “Look here, sir,” said he, “why don’t you set up a colony of bee-hives, yourself? If her bees rifle your flow¬ ers, let yours go foraging into her gar¬ den. Let her see, as you suggest, how she would like it herself. Put a row of hives as close to your side of the fence, as you can get it. If they fight f let ’em fight. Bees are an uncommon¬ ly war-like race, I’m told; if they agree what is to prevent ’em bringing half tbe honey into your hives?” “By Jove,” said Mr. Mingden, start¬ ing to his feet, “I never thought of that. TII do it! I wonder where the deuce they sell, bees! There isn’t a moment to be lost.” “I think I know of a place where I could buy half a dozen hives,” said Harry. ■a “The gentleman wants to buy some bees,” said Fleda. “Drar mamma, do sell yours; wo can easily get all the honey we want—’’ “But I’ve kept bees all my life,” sa'd Mrs. Fenwick, piteously. “Yes, but they’ra such a car^ mamma, now that you are no longer young, and you are hardly able to look after them in swarming time, and— (she dared not allude to the trouble they were making in neighborly rela¬ tions, but glided swiftly on to the next vantage point)—“it wi 1 be just exactly the money I want to finish the sum for my wedding dress.” Mrs. Fenwick’s face softened; she kissed Fieda’s carmine cheek, with a deep sigh. ‘ For your sake, then, darling,” said she. “But I wouldn’t for the world have Mr. Mingden think that I would concede a single inch to—’’ “I don’t know that it is any of Mr. Mingden’s business,” said Fleda, quietly. The next day MA Mingden trotted to look at his new possessions. 4s Too bad that Harry had to go back to town before he had a chance to see how the bee-hives looked in their place,” soliloquized he. “A capital idea, that of his. I wonder what the old lady will say when she secs the op¬ position apiary! Won’t she be furious! Ha, ha, ha!” He adjusted his spectacles as he hastened down towards the sunny south walk which had heretofore been the battle-ground. There was the row of square, white hives on his side of the fence—but lo! and behold! the bench that had extended on the other side was vacant and deserted! “Why!” he exclaimed, coming to an abrupt standstill. “What has she done with her bees?” “Sold ’em all to you, sir,” said Jacob, the gardener. “Aud a flue lot they be! And not an unreasonable price neither! Mr. Harry looked arter that hissolf.” “I hope you’ll be very kind to them, sir!” uttered a soft, pleading little voice, and Elfleda Fenwick’s golden head appeared just above the pickets of the fence. “And I never knew until just now that it was vou who beuo-ht them.” “Humph!” said Mr. Mingden. “But, I hope, after this,” kindly added Fleda, “that we shall never have any more trouble—as neighbors, I mean. It has made me very unhappy, and —” The blue eyes, the faltering voice, melted the old gentleman at last. “Then don’t let it make you unhappy any longer, my dear!” said he, reaching over the pickets to shake hands with the pretty special pleader. “Hang the bees! After all, what difference does it make which side of the fence they’re on? So you’re the little school teacher, are you? I’m blessed if I don’t wish I was young enough to go to school to you myself l” Fleda ran ba^a. to the house in secit glee. believe,” “the “I do she thought, Montague and Capulet feui is healed at last! And ldo believe” (kuittiug her blond brows), “that Jack told young Mingden all about the bees, and that that is the solution of this mys¬ tery !” But that evening there came a pres¬ ent of white grapes from the Mingden greenhouses to Mrs. Fenwick, with the old gentleman’s card. “He must have been very much pleased to get the bees,” thought the old lady. “If I had only known he liked bees, I should have thought very differently of him. All this shows how slow we should be to believe servants’ gossip and neighborhood tattle! If I had knq^vn he was tho purc.aser, I should have declined to negotiate; but perhaps everything has happened for the best!” Jack Trevelyn thought so, when he stood up in the village church, a fort¬ night from that time beside a fair vision in glittering white silk, and a vail that was like crystalized frost-work. And the strangest part of all was that old Mr. Mingden was there to give the bride away ! “I take all ;ne credit to myself,” mischievously whispered Harry Ming- dea, the “best man.” “But I’m afraid it is easier to set machinery in motion than to stop it afterwards! And it’s just possible that I may have an aunt- in-law yet.” “Stranger things have happened,” sa d the bridegroom. — Tie Ledger. He Was Convinced. «—Prisoner, do ycu confess your guilt? 4 No Y'our Honor. The speech of my lawyer has convinced even me of my entire iunocecc-.” A NEW NATION. It Will Consist of the United States of Australasia. The Colonies to Unite in a Great Federal Union. Another ( 4 United States’' will, ere very long, no doubt, take its place among the federal unions of the earth. This will be the United States of Au=- tralasia, which will be composed of the various islands in the Australasian seas, which, from time to time, have been taken possession of and colonized by Great Britian. A conference looking to this end, and comprising representatives from the several colonies, has recently closed it3 sessions at Melbourne, the capital of the colony of Victoria. This impor. tant body was unanimous in its decision that the colonies should be bound to¬ gether by a closer tie than that which now exists. The only tie between them now is that they are one and all subjects to the British crown. The conference resolved that a convention, composed of delegates from all the colonies, should be called, empowered to con¬ sider and report on a scheme of a federal constitution, The colo- nies to be embraced in this remote United States will probably be at least ten in number, including those which are self-governing and crown colonies. The self-governing colonies are New South Wales, New Zealand, Queens¬ land, South Australia, Tasmania, Victo¬ ria and West Australia. The principal crown colonics are F;jii, New Guinea, and the Western Pacific Islands, The former practically govern themselves as nearly independent States, while the crown colonies are ruled directly by the Imperial government, and * be may likened to our Territories. That the new federal union will be a large and important one may be seen from the fact that it will contain a population of not far from four millions of people, at least a million more than the American colonies contained when they won their independence. The mineral and agricultural re¬ sources and the commercial interests of these colonies are large and various. The imports of Australia alone are worth annually two hundred and fifty millions of dollars, while its exports of wool, meat and gold /each nearly the same figure. It must be remembered that most of these colonies are really great English communities, peopled by English colon¬ ists and their descendants, and de¬ veloped and expanded by English in¬ telligence and enterprise. They have become used, for the most part, to free institutions, to popular elections, and to liberal and progressive legislation. They have closely followed the mother country m establishing board systems of education, and in providing the people with every element of health, protection and comfort, They are therefore quite ripe for taking their place, in a federal union, among the powerful and growing civilized nations of the earth. The new nation, more¬ over, will be essentially a naval power. Not only will it be wholly composed of islands, all of which are provided with good harbors and natural naval defences, but Australia at least, the largest of them all, is altogether a series of coast states. The interior of Australia is a vast wilderness, hitherto unsettled by Earopeaus. Most Aus- tralian colonies then, are connected with each other only by the sea. The object of the new federal union is mainly that of mutual projection and defence. Each state will he' 1 the others in case of attack; a will protect one aad all. The new nation i3 likely for a while at least, under the nominal rule of Great Britain. The connection between the colonies and the mother country has still mutual advantages, which will not be hastily discarded. Great Britain as a great naval power, now has in the Asiatic seas many har¬ bors where her fleets may find safetv, and take in coal and provisions. On the other hand, the Australasian colonies, in case they are attacked by some formidable maritime power, like France, may now depend upon the aid of the strong arm of the British navy. British rule rests so lightly on the colonics that they do not feel it a bur¬ den. They know that they can become absolutely independent any day they choose, and the tendency of a f e ^ union will no doubt be to gracing bring about their independence.] Youth's Companim. A Wonderful Japanese Family “A thousand years in one houseM (ikka sen-nen) is an old Japanese J ing, employed with reference to] event which, in respect of sigh;] extr.j rarity, may be classed with the a dead donkey or a tinker’s fn n J The Hochi Shimbuo. says that an J ] stance may at present be found i a household of a merchant called lf 7 J Gensuke, who resides at Kanazawa, 1 the Saitama district of Sado. | family consists of the following mj bers: Great- great - great - grand*! Gengo, aged 130; Great-great- grandmamma Tomi, aged 132; GrJ great-grandpapa Gembei, aged J Great-great-grandmamma Miyo, 3! 99; Great-great-grandaunt Yoshi, 3) 105; Great-grandpapa Gensuke, i 81; Great-grandmamma Kimi, aged Grandpapa Gempachi, aged 61; Gr» mamma Toyo, aged 60; Papa Genkic aged 40; Mamma Tome, aged 38; ( i cle Genroku, aged 35; Son Genshit aged 14; Daughter Toki, aged 5. ] united ages of the fourteen amouii at the close of last year to 9S0, j consequently became 994 on the J day of this year, according to the JJ anese method of calculation. U New-Year’s Day, supposing that da had not intervened meanwhile, i aggregate ages would be 1008, ana 994 is nearer 1,000 than 1,008, j family have resolved to celebrate a ikka sen-nen this Spring by a visit the shrine of Ise, and afterward Kyoto, where the whole fourteen, fr the little tot of 5 to the grayheadJ he still has any hair—of 130, will their sightseeing in company. Wooden Shoes. About the most foreign looks things in New York are the sabots wfl by a few thousand French aad (2 mans and by some others engaged! peculiar operations. There probal has never been a time in the history! New York since the Dutch settlenJ when wooden shoes were not worn bl considerable percentage of the popil tion, but it is hard to find a maker I sabots anywhere in the city who 1 speak more than a half dozen work! English. Their shops are mo3tlyl the French quarter of Wooster I Houston streets and in the German fl of the cast sido tenement region. 1 shoes are made in half a dol different forms some entirely I wood and scooped out to look ■ small canoes, others chiefly of wol but with a rough leather upper, ■ others again chiefly of leather, witl stout, misshapen sole of wood. ■ leather is of the heaviest and coat* kind, except that which is put into* shoes of stage dancers. Ice cri El makers use high coarse leather sht with thick wooden soles. They ( about $2 a pair, and would last definitely but for the effect of the i on the leather. French and Gen women mostly wear the canoe3 entit of wood. They stuff them 1 twisted straw at the heel and someti over the instep, and thus keep the a on to protect the foot from rubba The cheapest of these shoes bring ais $1.25 a pair.— W. Y. Sun. „ Heredity and Beauty. Heredity has much to do, of with facial beauty and Generations of cultured associations education will naturally produce of innate refinement and ^ ^ le cours c of such a life in a is uninterrupted, it will lead morel more to beauty and refinement of I tures. But it is, unfortunately, uninterrupted. There is degencrai i in nearly every generation, stock! through crossing with coarser lack of education or moral influence! cultured associations, or the demon ing defects of dissipation or low j suits. A Magnificent Water Plant- leaves of the Victoria regio TheA J j tain a diameter of six feet, circular, with a raised rim like the I of a shallow tin pan. The large-* -j ers are 23 inches across, They white, with a yellow center, hale a wonderful perfume. The i and leaves stretch out 20 feet from plan*. A board has been one of the floating leaves, and a six years of age has been upon the board .—Pittsburg Dispit
