Jasper news. (Jasper, Ga.) 1885-????, May 02, 1885, Image 2

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THE BABY'S EYE. A buby lay in H* motfiVr’* lap, Concealed and warmed by a woolen wrap; An inanimate masa of black it eeemed, Except that from an opening gleamed, A baby's eye. The mother, coaiw, unkempt, unclean, Wae clad in raga of a greaay sheen; But she loved her babe, and nho held it tight, And the only thing that wan left to sight Was the baby's eye. Like a sparkling gem in the cold, dull earth Or a smile that in tears finds sudden 1 Irth, The oue bright thing in thAt unclean whole, Was the window of an immortal soul, The baby's eye. —Columbus (Ohio) DispaUk. GHOSTS : Ont in the misty moonlight Tbo first snow Hakes I see, As they frolic among tho leafless Limbs of the applo tree. Faintly they seem to whisper, As round the boughs they wing, "We are the ghosts of the blossoms That died in the early spring." It. K. Mtnkittrick. THREE WEEKS BURIED. TOE 8TKANGE STORY OF JOHN BROWN, MINER. One day in Ootober, 1835, the miners who were at work in a mine near Dailly, Scotland, heard sounds whioh alarmed them. The noises were not loud, bat to the miners, who knew what they meant, they were terible. There was a tow crushing aouud, and now and then a slight cracking noise, while the bot¬ tom of the mino heaved a little and trembled. It was not an earthquake, but something quite as terrible to men who were in the long dark galleries un¬ derground. The roof of the mine was (ailing in t There was an enormous weight of rock and earth above, and the pillars of coal whioh had been left to support it were being crushed to powder by the pressure. The miners ran quickly toward the «haft through whioh they were in the habit of entering and leaving the miae, but its walls had already tumbled in. They ran next to another shaft, through whioh coal was lifted out of the mine, but that, too, waB already blocked up. Then they stood and stared at each other, while the orushing and grinding noises continued and increased. Tho part of the mine in which they stood showed no sign of falling in, but what of that ? They might as well be orushed as imprisoned in the depths of the earth, without food or water or air, to die of slow torture. Indeed, it would be bet¬ ter to suffer death at ouoe than to be buried alive in this way. Yet there seemed to be no way of esoape. At the supreme moment one of the miners remembered that there was a •mall tunnel whioh ran from the mine to a stream half a mile away. It had been out nioely to serve as a drain, and was very small, bat the miners believed it possible to esoape through it if they oould make their way to it, which was doubtful. Just as they were setting off to try this forlorn hope, old John Brown, a miner 66 yean of age, who had onoe before been shut up for days in a falling mine, remembered that he had left his cost where he had been at work. He wanted to go baok and get it, bat his oomrsdes refused to let him take such a risk. Suddenly he broke away from them and ran baok down the gallery be lore they could prevent him, and as he did so the root between him and them came down with a mash, completely fill¬ ing the gallery. The roof over the gang of miners still held firm, but tbey could do nothing for John Brown. Whether he had been crushed under the falling mass of rook or had been abut up in the end of the gallery beyond they bad no means of knowing, but in either case they could do nothing, and so they set about saving themselves. Finding the end of the little tunnel, they worked their way through it very slowly and with great difficulty and at last reached the upper world in safety. There a strange sight met their eyes. The surface of the earth heaved and sank in places, toppling houses over, rooking others like ships at sea and frightening the people not a little. Great seams in the ground were opened, sometimes to stay open, sometimes to olose again with a snap. It looked like the doings of an earthquake, but was in fact only the result of the gradual falling in of the mine as one after another of the supporting columns gave way. This continued for three or four days, and until it ceased nothing could be done toward recovering tin body of poor old John Brown, who had been a general fa¬ vorite among the mining folk. At last the ground ceased to rock and sway about and work was begun at the shaft. At first it was hoped that Brown might be alive still and that he might be saved, And so the miners worked day and night But the hard granite which had filled up the shaft wae difficult to out away, and at the end of a week the werk was only fairly begun. At the end of a fortnight the shaft had been cleared out, but the mino below was chocked up with rock, and the work of driving a gallery toward the point at which Brown had been left still remained to be done. There was no hope of finding him alive, of course, for he had now been buried there for two or three weeks. Still the miners worked on, determined to recover their com¬ rade's body. They drove a narrow gallery forward, working day after day as fast as they could, but at the end of the third week there was still a wall of rook in front. On the twenty-third day the man in front broke through an open chamber. ‘ itfte *roof of whioh had not fallen, auMm he did so, he distinctly heard a groan, ^ This frightened the superstitions man, who believed the groan proceeded from some evil spirit. He ran baok and re¬ ported, and another man went forward in his place. He, too. heard a groan and was frightened, for not one of the men had a thought that there could be a living man in the chamber. To test the matter the miner called ont, asking Brown if it really were he to groan again. “If it be trnly John Brown’s groan, gie us anither,” he said, and another groan was heard. Encouraged now, the miners tried to enter the ehamber, but the air was so foul that they could not breathe. They had to send back for selves, with which to fan tho air and create a current. As soon as it became possible for them to x ti :« iVm iy.._onioi-Q^ on( j take a lamp into aach an atmoaphere for e8 ^° RU 09 ,0n \ There they found , poor old ., John _ . Brown, aa oold a. a eorp-e bnt atiU .lire. For twenty-three day. and nighta he had been ahnt np there with ont food, and in an atmosphere of fool gaaea, and yet he was not dead! The mineta sent a messenger up the shaft to bring a doctor, and while waiting they .tripped off their clothes and lay down with their naked baok. against Brown a *>ty. in order to gore lum warmth -c£“e th r ."Srt a" SSIoSSS; had spoken the miners oonld not have been more surprised. They gave him a little water, and then he said: “Eh. boys, but ye’ve been long a oomiu*.” When Brown was taken out it waa found that the fungus whioh always oovers wood in a deep mine had grown all over his .face and hands. He waa wasted to a skeleton, but he revived un der the doctor s treatment, and waa able to tell of his experience in the mine. He said that for a few days—as he reckoned the time—he waa able to get water, and to walk al>out a little, but after that he had been too weak to move, and, enduring tortures from thirst, bad been forced to listen to the dripping of the water near him. Ho had heard the miners as they worked toward him, and slowly as they came, he never abandoned the hope of being rescued. John Brown was an old man, how¬ ever, and the terrible suffering had been too much for his strength. He rallied a little at first, but sank again and died three days after his rescue. For the exact facts of this strange story, we are indebted to Mr. Archie Gilkie, the geologist, who visited the mine and questioned the doctor and other survivors before writing his essay on the superstitions of the Scottish miners. _ The Little Housekeepers. I suppose you know that nearly all kinds of birds take their flight to a warmer part of the country in the far distant South, upon the approach of cold weather, and come back to us again with the opening days of spring. Among these are the blackbirds. But one win ler, not many years ago, in a logging camp, away up in the Minnesota Piner¬ ies, where the weather is very cold in midwinter, two blackbirds remained all winter, making their home in the build¬ ing used as a stable for the oxeD. The rough lumbermen,who had never known of a case like this before, were pleased and were kind to the little birds; the man who had charge of the camp and cooked for the stalwart choppers, scat¬ tered crumbs for them in generous quantities near the camp door, and the birds soon learned to expect their food at regular times each day. When the weather was extremely cold the little birds kept in the stable (or, as ihe men call it, “hovel”) all through the day. That is, they would “sit in the,barn todfeep themfelras and hide their heads under their win g® poor things.” And when the oxen were driven home from their work in the evening, the birds would hail them with cries of welcome, and alight on the warm backs of the oxen and nestle down in the thick bushy hair, probably to warm their toes. And every night they slept on their chosen perch, nestled down snugly on the backs of the good natured beasts, who either did not care or were unaware of their presence. In sunny days they flew about, alighting in the tall pines and on the big log build¬ ing—whioh the men call the “camp”— never, during all that long winter, did tbey go far away from their chosen home Davy Crockett’s Gnn. The _.... Little Bock „ , ^Ark.) . , . Gazette _ .. says; ^reasT er’s office, where it had been left by now ta ^ T began m.iong btB#led silyer moa nted affair, and ^ the top ol the barrel( go i d let £ er „ roads the inscription: -‘Presented ^ . the young men of Philadelphia to David Crooketti o( Tennessee." the nmzzle, just back of the bead, th# mot to; -Go Ahead." of the lette „ were go wor n as to dmost indistinguishable, and some of them were gone completely. The gnn *>« °° me doTO from 8ire 800 the Crookett |family ever sinoe it was pre ““‘o 1 * “ 1834 - To the “P”*® 8 “C® 1 - Boh " wko now owns ^ n » 8ald : “There is not a gnn in Arkansas to-day wil1 shoot truer. I killed liun of deera ^ink more °* n * kan * can grandfather l «ft at home wheQ ko went to Texafi - taking with him his old flint-look.'. It is a rare old gun and a great curiosity. I have been requested to send it to the Exposition at New Orleans, and shall do so m a short time.” . New Items or Dressmaking. Pointed waists both in front and back rival regular basques on imported dresses, especially those of silk, lace or Sicilienne. The point of the back is sharper than that in front, but not so long, and sometimes the short sides and back are finished by a knife-pleated frill of silk which is about four inches deep in the middle of the back, but slopes away to only half an inch under the arms. Sometimes this frill is caught up in a shell-like jabot in the middle of the back to give it a more bouffant effect. The folded surplice waists are also seen on lace, surah, and wool dresses alike. These usually have three or four pleats in the shoulder seams, and cross in various ways in front, some¬ times extending to a point at the waist line, in others below this, and still others reach only to the chest; a plastron of plain velvet or of lace fills in the pointed space below the throat. The stiff high military color is on almost all the dresses, and is usually of velvet, no matter whether the dress itself be cotton, silk, or wood. This collar is stiffly lined with buckram, has square or sloped corners instead of curves, and may be edged with braid set in as a piping, or it may be covered entirely with braid in rows, or with lace. The double breasted fronts and various kinds of veBts have been described in former papers; to these may be added the gen¬ uine Breton vest with clusters of but¬ tons set in groups of five or six each, ride of the top and bottom of the vest.— Harper's Bazar. “A Child of the Prison.” Under the above title we printed the story of an episode of prison life in New Jersey. It was that ofjpoor Rosa Mc¬ Carty, ruined by drink and evil living, and of her little five-year-old daughter and only companion. Mother and child have just been arrested in Jersey City and consigned to the Penitentiary for sixty days. Born in a prison, this lit¬ tle creature has passed four of her five years behind the prison bars with her mother. The twain have refused separation, and thus far have been so fortuuate as not to be driven into that am¬ putation of a tie which is, perhaps, not less sacred that its only associations are vile. The picture of the little sunny faced child accompanying her mother to and from the scenes of degradations and the scenes of incarceration within prison walls is one whose incongruity is its chief lesson to humanity—a lesson of fidelity, of natural love that not all sin and all wretchedness can uproot, of mute, automatic self-sacrifice beyond mortal ken. Is there not a way and are there not instruments to redeem, these two errant yet faithful lives ?— Npav York Herald. _ American Fables. A Wolf having offered to give a Fox a good Licking for two Cents, a loon who was Passing by and overheard the Liberal offer, halted and said: “I don’t allow any Animal on Earth to get Ahead of me on Liberality. I will Therefore give this Wolf a first class Walloping for Nothing ! ’ moral: Don’t Petition for better Street Oar service unless you want to see More bob-tailed Cars on the Route. THE THOUGHTLESS MECHANIC. A Mechanic who was Driving a Nail made a Mis-hit and brought the Ham¬ mer down upon his Finger. • In the Pain and Excitement he cried out: “I’d like to wring the Neck of the Man who Invented this Deceitful Tool 1” An Old Sage who was passing that way after some Fish Bait stopped and Replied: “Use the Tool to Pound Nails Instead of Fingere and yon will meet with the Utmost Sucoess. ” moral: Where the Law is Rightly Applied it seldom fails to give Satisfaction —/)« trpit Free Press.