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Air OLD STORY.
other sat through sunset’s golden hours
kdlng a wreath of faded orange flowers,
, siihlng. said ‘ it was but yesterday
ly babe \» lthln these fond arms lay;
ohed its dimpled smiles, Its laughing
yes,
love halfjoy, and hall a glad surprise,
ail unheeded, passing Time, so fleet,
pe my lair babe, and left a maiden sweet,
tor my sweet babe i shed not one sad teai
breathed no sigh this maiden was so dear;
, day by day t watched new charms uuiold
scarce its weight of Joy my heart oould
j.hold.
rent.y years! How like a pleasant dream
jlp ears of tenderness and wutcnlCg seem '•
fcw, from all nay love she turns away
'fond heart known scarce a summer’s
I 'day."
i father came, He paused beside her chair;
kissed tatr cheek, caressed the shining
Lair,
ten like a wooer, bent and whispered low,
‘Sweetheart, I pray thee do not sorrow so,
(Dost thou remember one bright alternoon
[When woods and fields were all aglow with
June
We wandered forth down by the river’s side,
b, too, forgetting all the world beside?
‘Forgetting time, till in the darkening Rtream
fe saw the first pale fights of evening gleam?
|And while we watched them ’neath our
trystlng tree
kHast thou forgot, at my fond words to thee—
f That when those lights that burned on high
so far
eked on the Charles and saw no answering
star
len shonld my love cease to be wholly
thine'—
|at thou didst leave thy mother’s heart for
mine?"
—E, E. Ikqbanam.
tn Eligible Boarding-place.
"No hotel?” said Mr. Percival
£iavne.
"Nothing in the shape of one,” an-
rered his friend, Lucius Warden,
pith the subdued triumph of one who
inounces a startling fact.
‘I never heard of such a thing in
ly life!” said.Payne.
"Nor I neither,” serenely remarked
harden.
"But how do you account for it?”
landed the would-be tourist, smit-
; his forehead in despair,
don’t acoount for it at all,” said
Wardeu, surveying the nails
rhich he had Just been carefully trim-
ling with a pen-knife, "except that
[nobody knows anything about the
[place as yet. There’s a factory—wall
jper I believe, or something of that
It—and a cignr shop, and a beer
jp, and two thread and. needle
)res, and a post office where the
ills come twice a week ; and there’s
Magalloway River, all carpeted
jth water lilies, and half a dozen
tie trout streams running into it,
bit of the finest scenery you ever
tw. But—there’s no hotel.”
i“But where’s a fellow to stay?’
plplessly demanded Payne.
‘Get an outfit and camp out, as I
said Warden, cheerfully. "A
jket, a cauvas tent with pegs and
>s, a little smudge of bran or pine-
lies, to keep the mosquitoes off at
It,
|ut 1 don’t enj >y camping out,”
lently remonstrated Payne. "I
food walls, a feather pillow, and
ir meals served three times a
fell, then, look here,” said War-
* Go to the Widow Buck’s. 8he
boarders now and then.”
tho is the Widow Buck ?” asked
,t, I don’t know,” replied his
id where does she live?”
iwra you have me agaiff.”
alive! are you crazy!” de-
sngly questioned Payne. “How
’’ain 1 to find her?”
‘Inquire,” calmly responded Mr.
harden, as he shut up his knife and
beplacvd it in his vest pocket. "Go
Mallzie Ford—eleven a. m. train—
itage coach—through in one day. Ask
for the Widow Buck’s! Bless my
'! nothing in the wide world could
r easier. I always heard that people
it good fare there and comfortable
Ms. And Mailzie Ford isapeifict
|little Paradise, when once you get
there 1”
“Welli” said Payne, dejectedly, “it
seems a wild goose chase, but I’ve a
luiiud to try it. A man can but come
back again.”
It was rather early in the season for
the conventional operation known to
the American public as "summering,”
but Percival Payne, being a bachelor
if independent fortune and cultivated
»tes, felt that he could do as he
Pleased. And it was rather a luxury
r to anticipate the first mad rush of
[travel, when all the seats are engaged,
[the cozy corners taken, and the <nost
lesirable points of observation usui ped.
Bo he packei^jj^ vaiise, did up his
fishing tutJi^^Hii a great stor
started for the far northern wilderness
of Mailzie Ford.
Of course, the train wa-- late—trains
always are late—and it was four o’clock
in the afternoon when Mr Payne
found himself perched up in an open
box wagon behind two trunks, pack
age of salt codfish, a mail bag, and a
pretty girl, with eyes as soft as black
pools of w’ater, and one of those odd,
friugy bats of black straw, all covered
with loops and ribbon that make peo
ple look so picturesque.
"Where do we meet the stage?”
said Mr. Payne, as he settled himself
so as to inconvenience his pretty
neighbor as little as possible.
The driver stared at him.
"This ’ere’s the stage !” said he
“Git up Sorrel!”
Mr. Payne stared.
“But stages have tops,” said he.
"This ’ere stage don’t,” said the
driver.
It was rather a trying situation—
steen uphill part of the way, and steep
down hill the rest, with the codfish
and the mail bag alternately tumbling
into Mr. Payne’s lap, and the pretty
gjrl laughing in her sleeve at his em-
barrasment.
"I’m rude I know,” said she, “but
if you’d just tie that codfish to the back
of the wagon, with your fishing line,
it would not trouble you so much.”
“A. good idea!” said Payne, briskly.
"Thanks, very much for suggesting
it!”
"I’ve traveled over this road before,”
said the pretty girl, laughing.
“Are you going to Mailzie Ford ?”
said Mr. Payne, with a sudden gleam
of animation.
"No,” said the pretty girl, "to
Catley’sDam.”
"Perhaps you know something
about Mailzie Ford?” hazarded our
hero.
"Oh,yes!” said the nymph with the
dark eyes. "It’s a lovely place! I used
to live there before I went into the
factory at Catley’s.”
"Do you know the Widow Buck?”
asked Payne, with interest
“Very well,” nodded the pretty
girl.
And then they hegan to talk about
the tall, blue crested mountains, which
were beginning to close in around
them.
The dewy-eyed damsel had read
Longfellow; she knew all about
Thore tu ; she was even “up” in Rus-
kin, and she expressed herself with
grace and spirit, which set Mr. Payne
to wondering if all the Maine girls
were equally cultivated and beautiful.
And then the codfish tumbled down
again and had to be tightened anew,
and by that time they had come to a
house in the midst of a lonely belt of
woods, which the driver said was
“Catley’s Dam,” upon which the
pretty girl disappeared in the purple
twilight, Mr. Payne and the codfish
went on, sorrowful, much jolted and
alone.
A glimpse of the beautiul Magallo
way river by moonlight; the cry of
the wild bird in the woods ; the noise
of hidden cascades; a blur of lighted
windows, which the driver said was
the factory, down a blind lane, and
checking the tired horses, at a one
storied Btone house behind a wall of
cedar trees, and then the Jehu cried
out:
“Now then, here we be. Widow
Buck’s!”
Mr. Payne got stiffly out, and help
ed to unload the various parapherna
lia of travel which belonged to him—
all of them by this time considerably
flavored with salt codfish.
“Perhaps you had better wait,”
said he, as the driver turned around
and chirruped to his horses.
“What for?” asked the man.
"In case Mrs. Buck should not be
able to accommodate me, or—”
“Oh, it’s all right!” said the driver.
“Bhe’ll take you in. Naomi would
have told you else.”
And away he drove, leaving our
hero alone in the spectral moonlight,
with a pile of luggage at his feet and
a gaunt dog smelling at the Bkirts of
his coat.
“Who’s Naomi?” said Mr. Payne,
addressing the moon. “And what
would she have told me?”
He raised an old fashioned brass
knocker that hung at the door, and
rattled it briskly. The gaunt dog left
off smelling and began to bark. Pres
ently, a tall, tliin woman, with a red
pocket handkerchief tied on her head,
with a
opened
kerosene lamp
lie door.
Vibe said, pejrh
the young,
1?”
nitia
her hand,
sharply at
from the
“All them traps your’n ?” demand
ed the widow, abruptly.
"Yes, madam,” Mr. Payne admits
ted.
" ‘Peers to mee it’s purty cheeky of
you, mister, to take it for granted
you’d be asked to stay,” said she.
“I thought, madam—”
“I’m a talking now,” said the
widow sbarhly. ‘ To begin right
straight at the beginning, we don’t
know anything about you. You may
be a bank-burglar, or a counterfeiter
for all we know.
“My references.”
“Yes, I know, and them very refer
ences is most likely forged But I’m
willing to be reasonable. H >w old are
you?”
And Mr. Payne, secretly wondering
if this was the way they managed
things in Maine, answered meekly :
“Two-and thirty!”
“Ever been married before?” sharp
ly questioned the widow.
“Certainly not, madam! I am a
single man !” answered Mr. Payne,
with a justfiable spark of indignation
in his manner.
Any business?” went on his cate
chist.
“None, madam.”
‘ Well, I like that!” said the widow,
with a scornful sniff. “Like your im
pudence, to come here and own to
such a disgrace as that! Except to
live on me, l;ey ?”
“Madam!” gasped Payne.
“How d’ye suppose you are going to
keep my Naomi, even if I allowed you
to marry her? which I shan’t do, and
don’t you to think it! She don’t
care for you anyway. When she
Heard you was coming she made up
her mimd to stop off at Catley’s Dam
to get rid of the sight of you. There.
Sojust pick up your traps and go back
agin in the way you come! You won’t
never be a son-in-law of mine!”
But while Widow Buck was volubly
uttering these last glib sentences, a
faint light began to dawn on Mr.
Payne’s semi-obscured brain.
“I think, Mrs. Buck,” said he,
“that you must be laboring under a
misapprehend on. My name is Per
cival Payne. I am from Boston I
was recommended here as an eligible
boarding place, by Mr. Wardin, of 15
Peppermint Place.”
Mrs. Buck nearly dropped her lamp
in tier consternation.
“Well, I never!” said she, instantly
flinging the door wide open. “Please
to walk in, sir. I’ll send the boy out
after your truuks and things in half a
minute. I beg your pardon, I’m sure,
for mistaking you for Peleg Driggs,
from Lowell, as was coming here after
my daughter Naomi! She works in
the Lowell mill, Naomi does. To
think how ever I could have made
such a blunder. Do walk in, sir!”
And Mr. Payne was promptly intro
duced to a delightfully little “interior”
of reed carpet, round table spiead for
tea, shaded lamplight, and a fire of
logs, burning en an open hearth, to
keep out the damp of the summer
evening.
After ten o’clock, when the wearied
traveler was in bed, in a pretty little
room, where there was an eight-day
glock in a cherry-wood cs«e, and a
carpet made of woven rags he heard
the opening and shutting of doors be
low, the clear sound of a familiar voice
—the voice of his black-eyed travel-
ing companion.
“Well, mother did he come?” she
asked.
“Peleg didn’t come, but a young
gentleman from the city came. And
don’t you believe, I took him for
Peleg, and I peppered away at him
well I”
"Oh, mother, what will he think?”
cried the softer young voice.
"I asked his pardon,” said the old
lady, “and he took it ail as a joke.”
And when Peleg Driggs himself,the
next day,put in an appearance he was
summarily dismissed. While Mr.
Percival Payne and the fair Naomi
were sitting by a trout-pool in the
cool woods below; for Naomi knew
all about the haunts and nooks of the
neighborhood, and handled a fishing-
pole most skillfully.
Mr. Payne liked Mailzie Ford, and
stayed there all summer. And as
there were several boarders in the old
stone house, Misz Naomi concluded
mt to return to factory -life, but to stay
and help with the^ housework ; and
when autumn came she was engaged,
—to Mr. Percival Payne.
“The sweetest wild flower in the
northern woodH,” he wrote to his
friAd Warden.
Warden went up to Mailzie Ford
He was introduced to Miss Naomi. He
agreed with his friend.
"Bhe’s a little jewel,” said he.
ou’re a lucky fellow, Payne. But
I didn’t know when you wrote me
that you were so well suited with ac
commodations here—”
"That f wa-< suiting myself for life!”
interrupted Payne. “But you see
that such was the fact.”
Electric Lamps.
If we examine oue of the electric
lamps in the streets, we shall find it
consists of two rids, one pointing up
ward from the bottom of the lamp,
the other hanging downward. The
rods seem to touch, and the brilliant
flame is exactly where they seem to
meet. Once a day a man comes around
with a bag of the rods. He takes out
the old rods that were burned the
night before, and places a new set in
each lamp. After he lias gone about, as
if he were puti ing new wicks into the
lamps, and each is ready for its night s
work, all the lamps are lighted in
broad day, to see that every one is in
proper trim. They are allowed to
burn until the men have walked about
in the streets and looked at each lamp.
If a 1 are burning well, they are put
out till it begins to grow dark. If
one fails to burn properly, a man goes
to tha f lamp to see what is the mat
ter. The rods are made of a curious
black substance like charcoal, that is
called carbon. When the lamp is out
the two rods touch each other. In
order to light the lamp they are pulled
apart; and if you look at the flame
thiough a smoked glass, you will see
that the rods do not quite touch.
There is a small space between their
points, and this space is filled with
fibre. Look at the other parts ef the
rods, or the copper wires that extend
along the stretts. They have no
light, no heat, no sound. The wireB
are cold, dark and silent. If we were
to push the two rods in the lamp
close together, the light and heat
would d sappear, and the curious hiss
ing sound would stop. Why is this?
Let us go into the woods near some
brook, and it may be that we can un
derstand this matter.
Here is the brook, flowing quietly
along, smooth, deep and without a
ripple. We walk beside the stream,
and come to a place where there are
high rocks, and 6teep, stony banks.
Here tae channel is very narrow, and
the water is no longer smooth and
silent. It boils and foams between
the rocks. There are eddies and
whirlpools, and at last we come to the
narrowest part of all. Here, the once
dark and silent water roars and foams
in white, stormy rapids. There are
sounds and furious leaping and rush
ing water and clouds c f spray. What
is the matter? Why Is the smooth,
dark water so white with rage, so im
petuous,, so full of sounds and tur
moil? The rocks are the cause. The
way is narrow and steep. The
waters are hemmed in, and there is a
grand display of flashing white foam
and roaring water-falls, as the waters
struggle together to get past the nar
row place.
It is the tame with the electricity
flowing through the large copper wires.
It passes down one wire into the
other, through the lamp, in silenct
and darkness, so long as the rods
touch and the path is clear. When
the rods in the lamp are pulled apart,
there is a space to be got over, an ob
struction, like rocks in the bed of the
brook. The electricity, like the water,
struggles to get over the hindrance in
its path, and It grows white-hot with
anger, and flames and hisses as it
leaps across the narrow space between
the rods.
There is another kind of electric
lamp, used in houses ; it has a smaller
and softer light, steady, white and
beautiful.
In these lamps, also, we have some
thing like the narrow place in the
brook. They are made with slender
loops o^ carbon, inclosed in glass
globes. The electricity, flowing si
lently through a dark wire, enters the
lamp, and finds only a narrow thread
on which it can travel to reach the
home-going wire, aud, in its struggle
to get past, it heats the tiny thread of
carbon to whiteness. Like a live coal,
this sleuder thread gives us a mild,
soft light, as long as the current flows.
It seems calm and still, but it is en
during the same fury of the electricity
that is shown in the larger lamps.
This is the main idea on which these
lamps are made : A stream of electric
ity Is sit flowing from a dynaino-elec-
trio machine through a wire until it
meets a narrow place or a break in the
wire. Then it seeks to get past the
obstruction, and there is a grand put
ting forth of energy, and in this way
the electric force, although Itself invis-
I lbl-*, is made known to our eyes by a
beautiful light.
Science—Expermental and
Otherwise.
To prepare a reliable mucilage for
adhesive labels dissolve by aid of beat
two ounces of dextrine in a mixture of
one ounce of acetic acid aud five
ounces of water. When solution is
effected and the mucilage lias cooled
add one ounce of alcohol.
Special poisons are secreted by the
toao, salamander, newt, etc. M.
Paul Bert has collected a liquid from
the glands on the neck of the frog,
which caused the death, with convul
sions, of a sparrow to which the sub
stance had been administered.
A good cement tor glass is gelatine
or glue treated with bi-chromate of
potassium. The mixture must be
made in tbe dark. The pieces are
pressed together for some time and
then exposed to the sun. The cemen
ted glass will noj be effected by warm
water.
The latest invention reported by a
Jat aneseljournal is that of Otsuka
Minakichi, who, after extensive ex
periments, is said to have succeeded In
making rifles of silk. They are des
cribed "a* rigid as iron guns, while
they are easy of carriage and have a
very long range.”
Tbe Journal of Science makes the
statement that no beautiful or useful
organic species, animal or vegetable,
becomes naturalized in any country
without human intervention, while
the ugly and the noisome contrive te
extend their range in spite of man’s
efforts to the contrary.
Claus Spreckles, of Honolulu, Ban-
wich Islands, was laughed at a few
years ago when he purchased 10,000
acres of land situated at the foot of a
volcano, at 10 cents an acre. He broke
up the lava dust and mixed it with
vegetable mold, irrigated and planted
sugar cane, and new Spreckles is a
millionaire.
In coppering caaMron M. Weil usee
a bath of copper sulphate rendered
strongly alkaline with an organic acid
added to prevent the. precipitation of
copper oxide. To effect the same ob
ject MM. Mignon and Ronati employ
a distinctly acid solution of a double
salt of copper and any alkali with an
organic acid.
M. G. Delaunay has been studying
tbe influences exercised by the
greater or less intensity of tbe nutri
tive phenomena in cases of poisoning
by strychnine. Equal doses of strych
nine were given to two frogs, one of
which had been kept active for a half
hour previously. The poison took ef
fect more quickly and more actively
upon this one than upon the one that
had been quiet. In another experi
ment tbe poison operated more
slowly and more lightly upon a frog
that had been bled than upon the
other one, which had not been hurt.
When one of the frogs was bled after
taking tbe poison it exhibited a ten
dency to return to the normal condi
tion in a measure as it lost blood.
The Journal of ChemUtry thinks
that if Latin is to be retained for the
pharmacopoeial nomenclature, it had
better be grammatical Latin. Those
who know tne language should not be
compelled to use a barbarous burlesque
of its forms, in order to spare others
the small effort necessary for master
ing a few inflections and construct
ions. Let the changes in the nomen
clature be in clearness, accuraoy,
preciiion and conformity to modern
science—changes which are obviously
for the better, but let “dog Latin” Ire
left to those who have never learned,
or, haply, have forgotten, the gram
matical kind. The best ef this pres
cription Latin is bad enough to a
classical scholar, and to make it worse,
deliberately systematically, would be
intolerable.
The experiments instructed by M.
Pictet to determine tbe density of li
quid oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen,
have been followed up by Messrs.
Cailletet and Hautefeuille, who hav«
facilitated the processes by previous!,!
mixing the gases with carbonic aci(
and protoxide of nitrogen, where!
the liquefaction is made to take pit
more readily. The density of the
quids of the latter gases being kno\
it is easy to compute that of the si
stances under examination. The
suits of tests made at a very low tei
perature are favorable to the theory^
the relations that have been sugges
between hydrogen aud magnesh
oxygen and sulphur, nitrogen
phosphorus ; but, as the freezing-pol]
of water is approached, discrepant
are manifested which grow inorj
more accentuated.
At Marlboro, Mass., Lewis T*
the ohqpipion bioycle rider ol
United B ates, was thrown froj
bicycle and had his skull fr
fcHe will probably djj