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Grass and Hoses.
T looked where the roses were blowing*,
They stood among grasses and reeds ;
I said. “Where such beauties are growing,
Why suffer these paltry weeds?”
Weeping the poor things faltered,
“We have neither beauty nor bloom;
We are but grass in tbe roses’ garden—
But our Master gives us this room.
‘•The slaves of a generous Master,
Borne from a world above,
We came to this place in His wisdom—
We stay to this hour from Ilis love.
“We have feed Ilis humblest creatures,
We have served Him truly and long;
He gave no grace to our features—
We have neither color nor song—
‘•Yet lie who has made the roses
Placed us on the self same sod;
He knows our reason for being—
We are grass in tlie garden of God.”
—Rev. James Freeman Clarke.
A CAPE HORN INCIDENT.
On a December morning, in the year
1883, a mail steamer, homeward bound
from a New Zealand port, was ap¬
proaching the meridian of the Horn,
but on a parallel more southerly than
it is now the custom of steamships to
take in rounding that stormy, ice-girt,
desolate and most inhospitable of all
headlands.
December in those distant regions is
midsummer, and the weather of that
morning was as fair and still a» a
brcczeless April day in this country;
but the swell of the vast track of ocean
ran ceaselessly, reminiscent respira¬
tions of a gian'ess whose conflict with
the heavens is eternal, and whose
breaking-paip es arc very few and far
between indeed. Over this long,
dark blue, westerly swell the long
inetal fabric went sweeping in long,
floating, launching curtsies, whitening
tbe water astern of her with a mile of
milk-white wake. The frosty sun,
whose beams in that sea have some¬
thing of the silvery brilliance of the
electric light, flashed a score of con¬
stellations out of the gilt and glass
and brass about the steamer’s bows and
quarters and decks. A number of
passengers were pacing the long hur-
ricane platform. Far away on the
starboard beam, poised, star-like,
upon the keen blue rim of the ocean,
was an iceberg—a dash of crystalline
light against the airy sky that out
there, low down, wore the delicate hue
of the opal. Otherwise the ocean
swept naked to its confines, a plain of
rich, deep blue, with the heave of
the swell shouldering the morning
glory under the sun as it rati, and
making that part of the deep magnif¬
icent with flowing light.
The chief officer was on the bridge;
the first breakfast-bell had rung, and
the captain, smart as a naval officer,
in buttons and lacc trimmings, quitted
the chart-room and joined the mate to
take a look around before going be¬
low. The skipper was a man of eagle
sight, and instantly on directing his
eyes over the ship’s bows he ex¬
claimed:
“What is that black object yonder?”
The chief mate peered, and the cap¬
tain leveled a telescope.
i < A ship's boar,” said he, “and seem¬
ingly full of people.”
The boat, when sighted, was some
three or four miles distant, and the
speed of the steamer was about thir¬
teen kuots. In a few minutes the
alarm in the engine-room rang its re¬
verberatory warning, sending a little
thrill of wonder throughout the ship,
so rarely is that telegraph handled on
the high seas.
“1 count eight men, sir,” cried the
chief mate, with a binocular glass at
Ins eye.
Again the engine-room alarm rang
out; the pulsing that for days had
been ceaselessly throbbing through the
long fabric, languished, and in a few
minutes, to another summons of the
metal tongue below, ceased, and the
great steamer floated along to her own
impetus, slowly, and yet in re slowly,
till the boat was within the toss of a
biscuit off the bow, with the passen¬
gers crowding to the side to look, and
sailors and waiters and steerage folk
blackening the rail forward.
The occupants of the boat consisted
of eight wild, hairy, veritable scare¬
crows of men, dressed in divers
fashions—Scotch caps, yellow sou'¬
wester*, sea-boots, toil-worn monkey-
jackets. and the like.
“Boat ahoy!” hailed the captain, as
ehe slowly washed alongside. “What
{6 wrong with you?”
A fellow, standing up in the stern
sheets, cried back.
‘•For God’s sake, sir, take us
aboard! Our water’s almost given
out, and there’s nothing left to eat.”
“Look out for the end of a line,”
bawled the captain. “Are you strong
enough to get aboard without help’”
“Ay, sir, we’ll manage it.”
A rope was thrown, and one after
another the fellows came swinging and
scraping and scrambling up the clean
side of the steamer. The passengers
crowded round and gazed at them with
curiosity and pity. Their sympathetic
eyes seemed to find famine painfully
expressed in the leathern countenances
that stared back through mats of hair.
“We must let your boat go,” said
the captain.
“Can't help it, sir, thankful enough
to be here, I reckon,” answered the
fellow who had called from the stern-
sheets, and who acted as spokesman.
“Anything belongingto you to come
out after?”
“Nothing. Let her go, sir. If
sailors’ sea-blessings can freight a
craft she ain’t going to float long,”
The boat was sent adrift, the engine
bell rang out, once more the great
mail steamer was thrashing ever the
long, tall heave of the Cape Horn
swell.
(* How came you into this mess?”
inquired the captain.
The man who had before spoken
gave answer:
“We’re all that’s left of the crew of
the Boston bark “George Washing¬
ton.” She was a whaler, a hundred
and forty days out. It were four days
ago. I was the first to smell fire some
while alter two o'clock in the middle
watch.”
“It wanted ten minutes to six bells,”
exclaimed a man, and a general, em¬
phatic, hairy nod followed the inter¬
ruption.
“I was the first to smell fire,” con¬
tinued the other, “call it what hour ye
like. I gave the alarm, and all hands
turned to with hoses and buckets. But
there was a deal of oil in the hold, and
the ship’s planks was thick with grease
besides, and that gave us no chance.
By ten o’clock in the morning the
flames had bursted through and was
shooting up mast-liigh, and then we
calculated it was time to look to the
boats.”
The others stood listening with hard,
stolid, leathery faces, generally gazing
with steadfast eyes at the speaker, but
sometimes glancing askance at the cap¬
tain and the crowd of others which
stood round.
“There was an ugly sea running,”
the man went on, “and the wheel
being desarted, the ship had fallen off
and ran in the trough, and the lower¬
ing of the stern boats, whalemen
though they was who had the handling
of ’em, cost our company of twenty-
eight souls the loss of all hands saving
them as stand afore ye.”
“A bad job! a measly, cruel, bad
job!” here broke in a long-jawed man
whose brow and eyes were almost con¬
cealed by a quantity of coarse red
hair.
“Well, us eight men got away in
the boat,” proceeded the spokesman,
“bringing aloug with us nothin’ but a
small bag of bread and about six gal¬
lons of fresh water. We’re been a-
washing about since Tuesday, and
now, the Lord be praised, hero we
be with a chance of getting
something to eat, and what’s more
pleasurable Still to our feelings, the
opportunity of comfortably turning
in.”
A inurmer of pity rang among the
passengers, several of whom were
ladies, ami there was more than one
somewhat loud whisper to the effect
that the captaiu ought really to send
the poor creatures forward at once to
get some breakfast, instead of holding
them, starving and dry with thirst, in
talk. The eagle-eyed skipper, how¬
ever, asked several questions before
dismissing them.
“Since by their own confession the
fire gave them plenty of time to escape
from the bark, how was it they loft
her so ill-provisioned as they repre¬
sented?”
This was most satisfactorily account¬
ed for. Other inquiries of a like na¬
ture were responded to with alacrity
and intelligence.
Every sentence that one or an¬
other of them let fall was corrobor¬
ated by the rest. Their tale of suffer¬
ing, indeed, in the open boat was al¬
most harrowing; and the captain with
the first note of sympathy that his
voice had taken, ordered them to go
forward, adding, that after a good hot
meal had been served them they might
turn in and sleep for the rest of the
day wherever they could make a bed.
At the breakfast in the saloon no¬
thing was talked about but the whaler
that had been consumed by fire, the
dreadful drowning of some two-thirds
of her crew, and the miraculous de¬
liverance of the survivors from the in¬
expressible perils and horrors of an
open boat in the solitude of the stormi¬
est part of the ocean the wide world
over. A benevolent gentleman pro¬
posed a subscription. Before the lunch¬
eon-bell was rung a sum of th.rty
pounds had been collected. The incident
was a break in the monotony; aud when
the eight men re-appeared on deck dur¬
ing the afternoon they were promptly
approached by the passengers, who
obliged them to recite again and yet
again their melancholy story of mar-
time disaster.
On the morning of the third day,
following the date of this rescue, a
ship was sighted almost directly in a
line with the vessel’s course. As she
was neared she was seen to be rigged
with stump, or Cape Horn top-gallant
masts; she was also under very easy
canvas which gave her a short-handed,
look in that quiet sea. Great wooden
davits overhung her sides, from which
dangled a number of boats. She pre¬
sented a very grimy, worn aspect, and
had manifestly kept tbe sea for some
months. It was observed by the chief
officer, standing on the bridge of the
steamer, that the eight rescued men,
who were looking at the sail ahead
along with some of the crew and
steerage passengers, exhibited several
symptoms of uneasiness and
even of agitation. Suddenly the
stripes and stars, with the stars invert¬
ed, were run aloft to the peak-end—a
signal of distress! The engines were
“slowed,” and the steamer's head put
so as to pass tlie vessel within easy
hailing distance. A man aboard the
bark stood in the mizzen rigging.
“Steamer ahoy!” lie roared through
his nose.
“Hallo!”
“I have lost a boat and eight of my
men. Have you seen anything of
her?”
The captain, who had gained the
bridge, lifted his hand.
“Bark ahoy!” he cried; “what bark
is that?”
< 4 The ‘George Washington,’ whaler,
of Boston, a liundred-and-eighty-four
days out.”
The captain of the steamer con¬
trolled a sour grin.
‘ llow came you to lose your boat
and the men?”
“They stole her one middle watch
and sneaked away from the ship.”
The captain of the steamer uttered
a laugh.
“We have your men safe here,” he
shouted. “Glad to learn that you are
not burnt down to the water's edge,
and that the rest of your crew loak
brisk considering that they are
drowned men. Send a boat and you
shall have your sailors.”
Twenty minutes later the eight
whalemen were being conveyed
to their bark in one of their
own boats, rncst of them
grinning as they looked up at the line
of heads which decorated the steam¬
er's sides; and, indeed, there was
some excuse for the smiles, for among
them they were carrying away the
thirty pounds which had been sub¬
scribed for them. It would be inter¬
esting to knew what their skipper said
when he learned that they had lost a
fine boat for him; but ocean mail liners
have to keep time, and the steamer
could not wait to send a representative
on board the whaler to report the
many elegancies of sea-dialect which
we may reasonably assume embellished
her skipper’s rhetoric.—New York
Independent.
Greatest Fires in History.
The two greatest tires in history are:
The London fire of September 2-fi,
1666, in which eighty-nine churches,
mauy public buildings, and 13,200
houses were burned; 400 streets laid
waste, and 200,000 persons made
homeless. The ruins covered 436
acres. The amount- of loss is not
known. Second, the Chicago fire of
1871, in which 3.5 square miles were
laid waste, 17,450 buildings burned,
200 persons killed, 98,500 persons
made homeless, and about $200,000,-
000 of property destroyed.—[Chicago
Herald.
MEXICAN SOLDIERS.
THEIR GREAT POWERS OF
ENDURANCE ON THE 31 ARCH.
Toiling Along the Hot Plateaus for
Hour3 at a Stretch.
In the Mexican service as in our
own, the garrisons throughout the
country are changed in due order
from post to post, so that the soldier’s
life is pretty evenly divided between
the hard places and the easy ones.
Even tho Lard places, however, in
some respects are not so hard a9 those
to which our own troops are accus¬
tomed; for Mexican garrisons are
maintained not in desolate frontier
forts, but for the most part in fairly
good barracks in cities and towns.
'When Indian campaigning is in order,
the field force is detached from the
nearest available point; and when the
campaign is ended, the troops come
back to civilization again. On the
other hand, the Mexican soldier is fed
mainly upon beans and Indian-corn;
bis bed in barracks usually is his al¬
lotted place on the floor, where he
sleeps rolled up in his blanket; and on
the march—since the army practically
is destitute of a baggage train—he has
to carry the whole of his kit in addi¬
tion to his arms.
The lack of a baggage train is felt
with especial severity when a regiment
is transferred to a new post, for the
soldier then has to choose between
what few belongings he lias gathered
about him, and carrying them with
him on his own back. Fortunately
for his comfort in this situation—his
pay being small and his fondness for
gambling large—be is not often heav¬
ily laden with personal property; but
his lading of arms, accoutrements, and
mess properties usually gives him
about as much of a load as he can very
well dispose of.
Sometimes the regimental band plays
“La Golondrina”—which is the near¬
est equivalent in Mexican popular
music to “Home Sweet Home!”—as
the men file out from their quarters,
form in column, and set off to the new
station to which they have been as¬
signed. But this touch of the musical
proprieties is less often added than
omitted. As a rule, the regiment just
walks away, the men in tolerably good
lorm while traversing the streets of
the city which they are leaving; and
then, being fairly out on the highway,
going along with ragged files and
pretty much as they please. Their
service uniforms—an admirably sens¬
ible dress, consisting of blouse and
trousers of brown linen, linen-covered
caps, and sandals—are not especially
soldier-like, according to our notions;
but to this light rig they unquestion¬
ably owe in part their extraordinary
capacity to withstand fatigue.
Marching on the Mexican plateau is
a severe strain upon both muscles and
nerves. Unless some especial purpose
is to be served, garrisons are shifted
in the dry season, when the roads are
ankle-deep with dust, and when the
sun beats down, hot and strong, from
a relentlessly clear sky, and casts upon
everything a blinding glare. It is the
way of roads in Mexico, especially in
the Northern states, to seem intermin¬
able. One low ridge of rocky hills is
ascended, and from its crest another
like ridge is seen half a dozen miles
away across an arid valley, over which
the waves of heat shimmer and undu¬
late, and in which the only vegetation
—if so cheerful a word maybe used to
describe such brown and yellow bleak¬
ness—is thorny cactus, tufts of Span-
ish-bavonet, and a few distorted and
scraggly pita palms—a desolation so
complete that it seems unnatural and
unreal.
All day long, saving only the hot
halt at noon, the march continues
through this utter dreariness, op¬
pressed by the blighting sunlight, the
head of tlie column (where the officer
in command rides in plucky erectness)
raising a cloud of dust that grows
thicker ana heavier with each succes¬
sive tile, until the rear-guard literally
is lost in its dark density. The smaller
streams and many of the larger ones
are dried up, and a draught of fresh
water by-the-way is a joy impossible;
the water in the canteens grows hot in
the fiery rays of the sun, and never
anywhere is there so much as a hand’s-
breadth of shade. Aud yet such is the
power of endurance that these wiry
Mexican soldiers possess, the men
rarelv become exhausted by tho Way
and at night, when a halt is made
some little town, or at some liacieu
where water can be obtained, an.
when the cold delicious wind
down refreshingly from the hiils, the;
are as lively, and go at their rations 0 j
frijoles and tortillas with as much zn
as though their eight or ten hours 0 j
toiling through heat and dust had bed
no more than a paseo—an agreeab]]
ttroll.
It should be, and doubtless is, J
cause for thankfulness throughout buildiJ tbj
Mexican army that with the
of the new railroads, by which all tiJ J
important cities in tho republic,
cepting Oaxaca, Durango, and tU
forts on the west coast, have been cod
nected, the arduous marching hereto!
fore attendant upon garrison transfej
in great part has been done away witj
The increased military strength of til
federal government that has com
with this change is obvious. LarJ
bodies of troops can now expeditioj be moved J
nearly all important points
ly and without waste of strength J
the way.—[Harper’s Weekly.
Massacre of Chinese in Formosa. I
The last mail from China
news of tbe massacre of a
Chinese troops in Southern
by the aborigines now in revolt
The natives, or savages as they
called, aided, it is said, by a
of half castes, planned an
Butting on their sandals reversed,
made a number of tracks
with a particular spot.
were then dispatched to tin
Chinese post with news of an
and an appeal for assistance. T
troops went out, the
eers, it is said, being
tlie rear. Pretended sufferers by
raid appeared from time to time.
reaching the tracks the soldiers
lowed them up and fell into
when all but a very few were
Out of 200 which left the pod
ten escaped. A is reported that,
the first time in the history of
mosa, all the aboriginal tribes
banded together and act on an
ized system.
Thus tbe eighteen tribes of
in tbe South, numbering about
warriors, were concerned in this
bush. Shortly after the disaster
Chinese issued proclamations offerii
810 reward for the return of each
the guns lost on the occasion, arnlsa
scquently the Chinese general bod
negotiations, in which he was greafl
hampered by the bad faith shown fl
many previous occasions to the n
tives. At last, and with many pi
cautions on tlie part of the latter,
meeting was arranged,and a peace w I
patched up for the time by means
large presents and larger promises fold
tlie chiefs. The past is to be
ten, and the savages are to live Chid j
terms of friendship with their
neighbors. From subsequent infj t|
niation, however, it appears that
disturbances in the south of the islaj
have broken out with move violea
than before.
Japanese Etiquette.
A writer on the New York
who attended a “blow out” of the
anese club there, afterward
about it, said: “I was
the diflerence in etiquette
Japan and the Occident.
were a hundred or more present,
rooms were deserted, Every
talked in whispers to every one
The refreshments were served by ' va
ers who were silence embodied,
every Oriental who did anything.
anything or heard anything ex pi? 9
his pleasure by bowing from once
three times, until the American
was weary with the excessive cotii' :e
They even go so far that when a
son reading a newspaper turns it
to make a noise, he makes a bow
apology to all within earshot, and
who hear the sound or see the
in return, as if to say: “Do u0 ‘
tion it.”
Irrigation in Utah.
The great Bear River Caual inl !<
for the construction of which $2>*®
000 has been provided, is expected
be one of the most extensive irrig^t*
works in this country, It will
gate 200,000 acres in Salt Lake ^ *1
and 6,000,000 on Bear River. i» c H
ing the value of lhe land to
acre. Bear River is in eastern Id 3 ]
The reservoir for the canal covers
square miles. —(Boston Journal