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SOMEWHAT STRANGE.
ACCIDENTS AND INCIDENTS OF
EVERY DAY LIFE.
Queer Facts nnd Thrilling Advcn
lures Which Show That Truth Is
Stranger Than Fiction.
In the peninsula of Abeheron, formerly
belonging to Persia, but now a part of
Russia, there is a perpetual, or, rather
what the natives call au eternal sacred
fire, which is known to have been burn¬
ing continually for more than 2,000
years. It rises from an irregular orifice
of about 12 feet in depth and 120 feet
square. The flames, which are constant,
rise to a height of from 6 to 8 feet, un¬
accompanied with smoke or disagreeable
smell, waving back and forth with the
wind like a field of golden grain.
A mah registered at a Madison (Ga.)
hotel a short time ago. He engaged for a
room and retired, and after sleeping dreamed
some time had a dream. lie
that he was on a railroad train that was
going at a good speed, when he dis¬
covered that another train was coming
toward his on the same track, and a col¬
lision was inevitable. The conductor
called out, “Jump!” and at that mo¬
ment the dream stopped, but the dreamer
did not—he jumped out of the second
story window. Be fortunately escaped
injury.
A curious instance of the recovery of
a lost ring in a root of celery occurred
some years back in Sweden. A lady,
when planting celery in the garden the in
Spring, and while dibbling holes for
small plants with her linger, uncon¬
sciously dropped the ring into one of
the holes. A plant was duly inserted in
the hole, and doubtless through the lost
ring, and as the root grew the ring must
have become imbedded in its substance.
The ring had been given up for lost
until the following winter, when the
mystery was cleared up by the ring
making its appearance in the soup at
dinner in a portion of the celery.
M. Brain, a Paris bootmaker, has an
ingenious fashion of catching appropriate persons
who manifest an intention to
any of the goods exposed for sale out¬
side of his shop. Whenever he goes to
his dining-room for meals he ties the
out-of- door selection of boots and shoes
to an electric wire, which communicates
with an alarm. Recently an intending
thief was caught in the act of trying to
annex a pair of “elastic sides.” The
alarm sounded and the bootmaker was
on the alert in time to point out the
fast-disappearing culprit to a policeman. of boots
M. Brain lost several pairs
before he tried the “electric bell arrange¬
ment.”
The tiny village of Lamphey, in
Wales, possesses a unique railway trains sta¬
tion. Less than half a dozen stop
•there during the day. There being in¬
sufficient work to occupy the time of the
station master and his assistant, a novel
arrangement has been made. Adjoining
the station bouse is an office where
printing is carried on by the assistant,
under the able superintendence of the the
station master. Here one sees
timy tables set who, up three and printed four
young man, or
every day, exercises also the fuuc
tioa of porter. The work turned out
from the little office embraces all the
necessary priuting for the line of rail on
which Lamphey is situated.
A five-year-old colored boy, 2t feet
high, weighing forty-five pounds, difficult who
reads readily at sight Bible the most in other
passages in the or any
book put before him, is creating aston¬
ishment at Camden, Ark. His articula¬
tion is perfect, every word coming out
clear and distinct. He never saw the
% ' inside of school, and his parents and
a
gtandparents are ignorant., full-blooded
Africans. He was born in Claiborne
Parish, Louisiana, November 2, 1887.
His powers were first discovered by his
father, whom he astounded by picking
up a Bible and reading therefrom to such
an extent that the ignorant and super¬
stitious parent fled and has not since
been seen. Benjamin Franklin Coleman
is the name he bears.
A young man in St. Louis was recently
married, and among music the box. wedding His house pres¬
ents was a nice
•was entered by burglars the other night,
and as they were rummaging tried through
the parlor one of them to open the
music box, thinking, presumably, something that
it might be a jewelry case, or
of that sort. His efforts started the box
to playing, and the owner was aroused
from his slumbers by hearing the strains
of “Auld Lang Syne” pealing forth
from his parlor. He got his gun, started
to investigate the cause of the untimely
music, and entered the parlor just in
time to see the burglars beating a hasty
retreat. Nothing was taken from the
house, and he thinks that the music box
saved him from a considerable loss.
A young lady of Wilcox, Penn., had a
beautiful gold watch of which she was
unduly proud. various The occasions, timepiece and was few ex¬
hibited on a
days ago when some admiring accidentally friends
were examining it the watch
slipped from their fingers. A cry of
dismay disappear went up when with the party saw in the
watch a gulp the
yawning mouth of a dog which sat at
their feet looking expectantly upward
and good naturedly wagging its tail.
ceived Poor doggie choice imagined that he had re¬
with a morsel, and looked
the pleased fly, but his it feat of catching his it on
proved to be death
warrant. He was summarily despatched,
and at the post-mortem the watch was
recovered none the worse from the mis¬
hap.
The sensation which Mary's lamb
caused when it followed her to school
one day was not a circumstance to that
caused by the recent visitation of a wild¬
cat to a school in Hamburg, Conn. The
school visitor, an elderly gentleman
named Hayden Gray, had just finished
the duties which devolved upon him in
his official capacity when a wildcat
jumped through one of the windows,
followed shortly afterward by a dog.
The children climbed on top of settees
in one corner of the room. The dog
slunk under a stool, and the school
visitor, with more alacrity than dignity,
scrambled to the top of the teacher’s
desk, and sought Miss Alice Griswold,
the teacher, to join Mm. It was a game
of puss in the corner with everybody in
the corner but the puss and the plucky iron
Miss Griswold, who seized a heavy
poker and dispatched the intruder.
accomplished A peculiar at case Geneva, of ear-piercing Ohio, t he other was
day at the winter quarters of Walter
Main's circus. A large lioness called
Nellie has been suffering from what
animal trainers term • ‘eye-shutters,” the
optics of the beast becoming closed from
a scaly substance appearing just over
the eyelids. As the lioness is a young
and valuable one the circus owner has
employed every means to prevent Nellie's
loss of sight, ’but without avail. As a
last experiment, the brute was securely
chained and a local jeweler, after cutting
a J-inch hole in each of the beast’s ears,
inserted two gold rings about the size of
a silver dollar, which it is expected will
exterminate the “shutters.” During the
brief operation the lioness roared loudly
and taxed the strength of the chains
that held her. The jeweler, who re¬
ceived $100 for his rings and services,
was as nervous as a dentist’s patient.
Assistant Postmaster Muller tells a
story about one of his friends on Price
Hill, says the Cincinnati Commercial
Gazette. The man was very nervous,
and especially about crossing Mill Creek
bottoms, and one night, while walking
there, met a stranger, who in the dark¬
ness apparently did not see him, and the
two collided. The Pigce Hill man had
gone but a few steps after this when he
missed his gold watch, and, drawing his
revolver, he rushed after the retreating
form of the man who had collided with
him. “Here,” he exclaimed, “you’ve
got my watch. Give it to me.” The
stranger protested his innocence, but in
vain. The Price Hill man held up his
gun, and the watch was handed over.
After administering a caution to the
stranger, and threatening to call the
police, the Price Hill man continued his
way, and got home safely. There he
told his wife the incident, and she re¬
plied that he had left his watch at home
that morning. The man jumped up and
pulled out the timepiece he carried, and
saw a face that he had never seen before.
He advertised for the man he had robbed,
and returned the watch with a satisfac¬
tory explanation.
“I owned one of the finest bulls ever
brought to Kentucky,” said J. B. Esk¬
ridge, a prosperous farmer living near
Versailles, Ky. “He was the most
beautiful animal that I ever saw, was as
gentle as a lamb and as tame as walked a pet
dog. About three months ago I
out in the cornfield where ho was graz¬
ing. As soon as he saw me he came
running towards me with lxis head
lowered to the ground and bellowing
with all the strength of his lungs. I
saw that he was mad and tried to es
cape, but he caught me before I could
get to the gate. The corn rows were
high, and when he struck me I got down
between them. His horns couldn’t
reach me in that position, and then he
began to cut me with his ‘hoofs.’
Fortunately my son saw me, and with a
pitchfork drove the maddened animal
away. An hour later the bull was found
dead. He had gone to a creek that ran
through the field and held his head
under the water until he was strangled.
It, was suicide and nothing else.”
The smallest missionary vessel afloat
recently left San Francisco for the Gil¬
bert Islands. She is 50 feet long, 14
feet wide and 6 feet deep, San is a Fran¬ two
masted schooner, was built at
cisco, and her name is the Hiram Biug
ham. She was paid for, however, by
the American Board of Foreign Missions,
of Boston, and is registered m that city.
The Rev. J. Walk up, who commands
her, is a captain, as well as a missionary,
who has passed twelve years of his life
among the Gilbert Islauds. Internally
the vessel is all cabin, as the crew is
com posed entirely of the missionaries
who intend to work among the islands,
and the vessel is designed for a sort of
tender to the big missionary brig, Morn¬
ing Star. It is built, therefore, to run
in nnd out among all the channels and
harbors where the large vessel cannot
go, and an odd feature about it is a ten
horse power gasoline engine and at¬
tached screw, so the vessel can navigate
the narrow channels by steam in a calm.
At the head of the extensive wide¬
ning of the St. John’s River, in Volusia
Township, Florida, that is known as
Lake George, lie two or three swampy
islands. One of these has a few acres of
ground that stand high enough out of
the water to encourage orange trees and
other remunerative growths and also to
afford room for a cabin. The cabin is
occupied and the trees are cultivated by
a queer old fellow who has built a^ long
ramshackle bridge from dry land to a
little dock that stands in the sedge close
to the main channel Here the steamer
stops on his signal to take oranges and
letters or to deliver flour and other
groceries. He is a hermit who seldom
ventures to the mainland. Passengers
on the river steamers occasionally see his
him busied about the little shed on
wharf, an extraordinary figure iu a home
spun suit of brown, with a patch his of
startling white on the seat of
trousers and an indescribable hat that
may have once been “plug,” but that
has been chopped and banged resembles and
battered and unroofed until it
the week of a Napoleonic chapeau indifferent more
than anything else. He is to
criticism, however, for he lives apart
from men. His* nearest neighbor is a
lighthouse-keeper, who would have to
hunt for him with a telescope. Some
affect to believe that in his younger days
he was a pirate.
A royal heart on the auction block is
the strange and gruesome spectacle into
which will rouse even blase Paris
unfeigned interest in a few days. It is
said to be the heart of the unhappiest of
all French princes, the dauphin son and of
Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette,
it has been preserved for ninety-seven
years in a jar of spirits, where it was
placed by the famous surgeon, Pelletan,
who nade the autopsy in the authentic. temple.
The history of the relic is
The only question is whether the boy
who died in the temple in 1795 was the
real dauphin or a child who had been
substituted for the prince. When the
boy died Pelletan and the three col¬
leagues were assigned interval, to make while a post¬ his
mortem. associates During an window chatting,
went to the
Pelletan removed the heart from the
body, wrapped it in a handkerchief and
slipped it into hi* pocket. He preserved
the relic in a vessel of brandy until Louis
XVIII. became king in 1817. Then he
offered to give the heart to the king for
royal burial. Louis neither refused nor
accepted Pelletan’s offer. Pelletan then
sent the relic to the sacristy of the arch¬
bishopric of Paris. In 1810 the people
of Paris sacked the archbishop’s the palace
and Dr. Jules Pelletan, son of sur¬
geon, saved the royal relio at the risk of
his life. He has recently died. The
heart in its reliquary is to come to the
hammer.
RELIABLE RECIPES.
Gum arabic and gum tragneanth in
equal parts dissolved in hot water make
the best and most convenient mucilage
you can keep in the house.
Tea or coffee stains of long standing
may be removed by rubbing washing the cloth A
with glycerine, washing leaves after the linen once. clean
second as
as before.
Kerosene is good for cleaning brass as
well as for woodwork. Moisten a cloth
with it, and rub the brass thoroughly; dipped
then polish with dry flannel in
whiting. Kerosene is also excellent for
the rubber rollers of the clothes wringer;
rub them with it occasionally, and you
will not be troubled with them stioking
together.
Roast Turkey.— An ordinary turkey,
weighing eight or ten pounds,requires and thorough at
least two hours for proper
cooking, for which The Poultry Yard
gives the following explicit little directions: in
if you are likely to have time
the morning, prepare your fowl over
night by singeing and removing pin¬ and
feathers, washing inside and out,
rubbing both with a clean cloth until
dry.. Mix a litlJe pepper and salt and
rub the entire ii%ide of the turkey before
putting in the stalling, or should dressing, as it
is usually called. This be made
of stale bread cvu«l>s—about three cup
fuls—to which is a a |ed a small teaspoon¬
ful of pepper, svft 4 o amount of pow¬
dered sage or % ■ marjoram, salt,
and a little salt piedi pork, chopped size
very fine, or a )f butter the
of an egg, if the latter i* preferred. Use
warm water to mix the whole to the con¬
sistency of thick hitter; heat up an egg
and stir into it at last, and proceed to
stuff the breast with half or more of the
dressing. Sew up the opening with a
coarse thread and needle, tying the skin
over the end ot the neck. If you have
skewers of wood or iron pin the wings to
the sides of the fowl closely, and pin the
neck onto the back. If you have ifo
skewers use twine to tie down the wings,
etc. Put whatever dressing is left into
the body, sew up the vent, forcing tight. the
legs down and tying them very pint of
Put in a dripping pan with a
water, and once in fifteen or twenty min¬
utes baste the turkey with the gravy.
The frequent basting "in is of great import
ance, as it keeps the juices and
allows thorough cooking without
burning or drying the meat, Turn
often enough to have the whole a rich
brown when done. For the last basting
of each side, dredge with flour and but¬
ter freely. It gives the crisp, frosty look
so desirable and appetizing. For the
gravy, wash in the morning, and set to
,boil in a saucepan the liver and gizzard.
When done chop or mash the liver very
line and put in the dripping pan when
the turkey is done, and place the pan on
the stove tipped a little, so that one cor
ner is free from the gravy. Into this
corner put a large spoonful of dry flour,
carefully mixing it with the butter on
the top "of the gravy. When it is well
saturated stir it into the gravy and let it
boil up once and pour into the tureen.
Dish the turkey in a large, warm platter,
breast up, ready for the carving knife,
the gizzard on the platter.
Catarrh and Its Cnre.
Most of our population catarrhal have affections some
general ideas of
of the nose and throat, hut very
few except those who have lost
their hearing from it have any
conception of its intimate causal relation
with deafness. The popular idea of
catarrh is that it is a condition of more
or less constant discharge of offensive
mucus from the hose. This is so only in
the most aggravated and worst forms of
the disease, and fortunately is rare.
Properly speaking, catarrhal affections of
the nose and throat are simply condition an en¬
larged, swollen and thickened
of the lining membrane of the nostrils
and back part of the throat. This thick¬
ened condition of the mucous membrane
in the nose is usually production accom¬
panied by an increased
of mucus which often drops and
backward into the throat,
by increased moisture in the back of the
throat, excites the continuous little hack¬
ing cough to dislodge it and clear the
throat. These patients are very subject
to what are called “colds in the head,”
with complete closure of the nasal pas¬
sages. The reason their colds in the
head are so severe is because a very slight
swelling of the inside of the nostrils,
which is always the condition in this acute
disease, occurring in a nose already
much narrowed by a chronic permanent
enlargement of its lining membrane, A to¬
tally obstructs the nasal canals. very
common but unhealthy remedy for tem¬
porary or permanent occlusion of the
nose is to snuff a solution of salt and
water through the nostrils. Unfortu¬
nately, this practice has been too often
thoughtlessly recommended by family
physicians. If the habit is is prolonged, used will
the condition for which it
surely be aggravated. A much better so¬
lution to use in the nose, and also as a
gargle in acute sore throat, instead
of chlorate of potassium, is com
mon baking soda, a teaspoonful
in a cup of warm water. What
ever solution is used iu the nose, it is
a great mistake to forcibly snuff it into
the nostrils from the palm of the snuffed hand,
as is too commonly done. If it is
too forcibly, it is forced into the upper
part of the nasal cavity, where it is very
irritating, often causing headache and
irritation of the eyes. The best and sim¬
plest way to use the soda solution is to
bury the nose entirely in the cup of fluid,
and then gently suck the solution into
the nose, at the same time holding risk the of
mouth widely open. There is no
choking if the mouth is open and the
head thrown forward, ae it necessarily is
in doing this, for all the fluid will run
out through the mouth.—[Popular
Science Monthly.
“SWEET BY AND BY.’
INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT A
FAMOUS HYMN.
Tho Author Is an Illinoisan—Story of
the Sacred Song’s Inception.
Mrs. M. L. liayne, a writer on the
staff of the Detroit Free. Press, contrib¬
utes to our contemporary the following
interesting article concerning the home
and life history of the author of a hymn
which millions have sung—“The Sweet
By and By”:
S. Fillmore Bennett, the author of
“The Sweet By and By,” lives in the
Town of Richmond, Ill. At the time of
writing the poem, however, Dr. Bennett
w as a resident of engaged the Village in the of ElKhorn, publica¬
Wis., and was
tion of sacred music. He was associated
with a musical composer who had fits of
melancholy and depression. On one of
these dark outlooks he came into their
place of business, silent and dejected.
“What is the matter now, Webster?”
asked his partner.
“Oil, nothing—it is and of no by,” consequence answered
—it’ll be all right by
Mr. Webster.
“Then,” says Dr. Bennett, “the idea
came to me like a flash of sunlight, and
I responded instantly: ‘The Sweet By
and Bv;’ why wouldn’t that be a good
subject for a song?” answered, indifferently.
“Perhaps,” he be discouraged. I
“But I was not to
turned to my desk and wrote the original
form of the poem.
“sweet by-and-by.”
“There’s a land that is fairer than day,
And by faith wo can sue it afar,
For th Father waits over the way,
Toprepaie us a dwelling pi ce there.
“In the Sweet By-and-By, Beautiful Shore—
We shall meet on that
In the Sweet By-and-By, Beautiful Shore.
We shall meet on that
“We shall sing on that Beautiful Shore,
The melodious songs of the bloat.
And our spirits shall sorrow no more—
Not a righ for the blessing of rest!
(Chorus.)
“To tho Bountiful Father above,
We will offer the tribute of praise,
For the glo ious gift of His love,
And tho blessings that hallow our days,
(Chorus.)
“When I had it completed I handed it
to Webster. As he read it he lost his
indifference and his face brightened friend with who
enthusiasm. Then he asked a
had stepped in to hand him his violin
and he improvised the melody. In a
few moments he had written out the
notes for tlie four parts of the chorus,
and in thirty minutes from the time I had
taken my pen to write the words, four of
us were singing the hymn. Within two
weeks we heard the children singing it on
the streets.”
There are only two of those who as¬
sisted at the birth of this inspirational
song who are now living—Dr. Bennett
and S. E. Bright of Fort Atkinson, Wis.
These two have been many times wit¬
nesses of its wonderful popularity, and
everywhere the notes of its plaintive
music was to them as a breath of their
native air.
This is the brief and simple story of
the inception of the song which was con
sistent with the life and sentiments of its
author, who, when an attack was made
on his religious belief, thus forcibly
and modestly defended himself and his
friend:
“When I claim that every man’s relig¬
ion is something sacred to his own soul,
and something no man has a right to
personally question, i feel compelled to
say that the hope and longing of every ‘The
immortal soul, as expressed in
Sweet By-and-By,’ firm was conviction not to us and a
‘painted lie,’ but the
faith of both of us, and to both creation
would have seemed a farce unless associated
with a belief in a Supreme Being of infi¬
nite love, and an immortal existence for
man beyond the grave.” interesting pri¬
Dr. Bennett, in a very
vate letter, says: dream devote
“When a boy my was to
my life to my pen, but an education was
the first object, a hard thing for enough one to
gain unaided. Before I knew to
teach I began teaching. I was about 18,
and sensitive as a girl. My book qualifi¬
cations were meager. I had plenty of
pupils much older than myselL I had
never looked in the algebra—to study it.
‘Could I teach algebra?’ came the ques¬
tion from these. ‘O, yes! But let us
wait a week before we organize a class.’ the
That night I walked bought eight miles algebra. to
nearest village and an
Thereafter 4 o’clock of the winter morn¬
ings, I was at the lonely seboolhouse
studying algebra by the light of a ‘tallow
dip,’ kerosene not having been invented.
I took my class through the book—and
they never knew the secret. That is
about the way I have worked all my life.
When I was younger I desired to publish
a volume of poems, but never hau the
money to do it. Thus I escaped the
critics and probably conserved my repu¬
tation.
“You inquire about ‘The Sweet By
and By.’ As to how it was born. I
only know the externals, as given life here¬
with. There are phases of the of
the soul unseen—like that are profoundly, the of sweetly
real, but scent a rose.
We may watch the unfolding of yet—the a rose¬
bud, but we cannot know—not
primal fact behind the visible miracle
nor the alchemy of God that works in
the fact. I have often been drawn from
bed bv a dear demon who cried, ‘fi rite!
Write!’ I have—on one occasion—
written nine hymns in a single night,
but never came anything to me just as
did ‘Sweet By-and-By.” Yes, I have
heard it sung in many places and under
many circumstances—but someway,
under no circumstances that were inap¬
propriate. It oftenest gives comfort at
the grave. It is the funeral hymn of
Free Masonry—the higher orders—in
America. I have received many a letter
from the mourning that made my heart
very tender, and humble. Well, the
universal heart of humanity loves to
think of and sing of a sweet, blessed re¬
union with those who have laid down
the burden of earth-life—w hether it can
demonstrate it or not. It is atavism of
the soul to the type of its primal inno¬
cence and communion with God.
‘Would you like to hear how the little
hymn sounds in Chinese? A New York
journal published it in the Chinese
characters and an interlineal translation,
whi<9 ^.- , .hentic. I will
t.ran Jse:
“TEo'eUT* -- is fairer than day,
Jay hin gwb«», .w yut jaw wall me shaw,
And by faith we can see it afar, bong
Yaw sun dock gwa chinong yip geen,
For the Father waits over the way.
Foo cheo yun hoy hen boon gong'jip gav,
To prepare ns a dwelling place there. .
Gwv hoi ehoey gin die juck we on goey.
In the sweet by-and-by
Dow how 1 iy dork win ' gwong,
We shall myi-t on that beautiful shore,
Go ehi dan bit joy chop wall me shaw,
I'i the sweet by-aud-by,
Dow how lay d ck wing gwong,
We shall meet on that beautiful shore.
Go chi dan bit joy chop wall me shaw.”
The Western Union Time Service.
The five foot time-ball to be dropped
at the World’s Fair will be made of can¬
vas on a steel frame. It will be wound
up each day to the height from which it
is to fall, and it will be set and electric¬
ally connected in such a manner that tho
breaking of the circuit at 12 noon will
release it. The cable by which it will
be controlled has already been laid, con¬
necting the new observatory with the en¬
tire Western Union Telegraph system.
Within thirty days it will be in opera¬
tion, the touch of a button at the Wash¬
ington end of it instantaneously trans¬
mitting notice of the hour over 550,000
miles of wire. When that button and speaks
the whole country will listen, the
hands of 70,000 electric clocks all over
the United States will point There to the 7,000 cor¬
rect minute and second. are
such clocks iu New York City alone. All
railways, factories and industries of every
kind pay attention to this signal. Three
minutes before noon each day all the
Western Union lines are cleared of busi¬
ness, every operator takes his finger/rom
the key, circuits arc opened, and at tho
instant when the sun passes over the
seventy-fifth meridian the spark of intelli¬
gence is flashed to all parts of the coun¬
try. It requires less than one-fifth of a
second to reach San Francisco.
The 12 o’clock signal sent from Wash¬
ington indicates 11 a. m. for Chicago,
10 a. m. for Omaha and 9 a. m. for the
Pacific coast, the United States being
divided into four perpendicular strips
and each strip setting its clocks by th»
time of the meridian which Bisects it
from north to south. Thus each strip
is only one hour liter than the next strip
to the east. The Western Union Com¬
pany earns about $1,000,000 annually
from its electric-clock service, charging
$15 a year for setting each clock at noon
daily. The time sold thus profitably it
gets from the Government for privilege nothing,
but anybody can have the same instrument
free of charge by putting an Captain
and a wire into the observatory. charge, is
McNair, the naval officer in
anxious to furnish time-ball service to
individuals and concerns in every sea¬
port city, only demanding as a condition
that he shall have a return wire furnished
him, in order that he may publish Such time- cor¬
rections in the newspapers.
balls would enable mariners to correct
their chronometers. It was chiefly for
this purpose, iu fact, that the time ser¬
vice was originally established.—[Wash¬
ington Correspondent of Boston Trans¬
cript.
_
Extinction ot the Cormorant.
Thc rapidity with which a species is
wiped out is startling. Some time ago
Dr. Leonhard Stejnegerof the Smithson¬
ian, undertook an expedition in search
of Pallas’s cormorant. Away out on the
extremity of that long arm of Alaska
which terminates in a string of islands
Pallas’s cormorant had its home. Dr.
Stejncger found nativeswho remembered
the cormorant. They could recall the
taste of the great bird, which could fly
but short distances, and which fell a
prey to them almost as easily as a barn¬
yard turkey' might. But when Dr. Stej
neger offered what to the Aleuts was a
fabulous price for just laughed one specimen and said of
Pallas’s cormorant they hadn’t
it was impossible. for thirty A cormorant Within the
been seen years.
memory of living whale-hunters there
were plenty of Pallas's cormorants on the
Commander Islands. Before the orni¬
thologists realized it the species had
passed out of existence. Specimens thau of
Pallas’s cormorants are to-day rarer
even those of the great auk. Of only
three stuffed specimens is there any rec¬
ord. One of these is in the British
Museum, another in the museum at St.
Petersburg, the third in the Leyden
Museum. There are no eggs.—[Boston
Transcript.
Two Remarkable Epitaphs.
The two most remarkable those epitaphs of Daniel in
the United States are
Barrow, formerly of Sacramento, Cal.,
and that of Hank Monk, Horace Greeley’s
stage driver. The former reads as fol¬
lows: “Here is laid Daniel Barrow,
who was born iu Sorrow and Borrowed
little from nature except his name and
his love to mankind and his hatred for
redskins: Who was nevertheless a gen¬
tleman and a dead shot, who through a
long life never killed his man except iu
self-defense or by accident, and who,
when he at last went under beneath the
bullets of his cowardly enemies in Jeff
Morris’ saloon, did so in the sure and
certain hope of a glorious and everlast¬
ing morrow.” Hank Monk’s epitaph
reads thus: “Sacred to the memory of
Hank Monk, the whitest, biggest-hearted the West,
and best known stage-driver of ill of
who was kind to all and thought
none. He lived in a strange era and was
a hero, and the wheels of his coach are
now ringing on the Golden Streets.”—
[St. Louis Republic.
Valuable Timber in Dismal Swamp.
A report is being circulated to the ef¬
fect that a Baltimore syndicate, the new
owners of the famous Dismal Swamp
Canal that connects the waters of the
Elizabeth in Virginia and the Dismal
Swamp with the Pasquotauk in North
Carolina, propose to improve the water
ways and develop the timber lands,
which are very valuable and include
tracts of cypress and other trees of large
size. With the exception of the main
Jericho Canal and a few smaller passages
and Lake Drummond, some ten miles in
the interior, the swamp is piactically im¬
penetrable on account of the dense
growth of cane brake.—[New York
W’orld.
POPULAR SCIENCE NOTES.
It is said that two French scientists
have lately discovered an entirely new
property of Faraday’s disk, and that the
result may be an important improvement
in the dynamo.
Children’s clothes can be made unin¬
flammable by adding to the last rinse
water two ounces of pulverized alum. that all A
prominent English chemist says
children’s dresses should be thus treated.
Aluminum is found combined with 195
other minerals, and, therefore, consti¬
tutes a large part of the crust of the
earth, but until recently has been very
expensive because of the difficulty of
separating it.
One of the latest applications of the
heating properties of electricity is to the
drying of lumber for planing Canada; purposes. this
At a large mill in Ottawa,
method has been tested with such grati¬
fying results that a Dumber of electric
drying kilns are now being erected.
A new' antidote for carbolic acid poison¬
ing has been discovered by an Italian
physician. The patient is dosed with a
strong solution of sulphate of soda,
which forms with the acid a harmless
mixture. Inhalations of ammonia are
used to hasten the action of the soda.
The Largest Telescope In the
World. —The Ycrkes telescope, which
will be the largest in the world, will be
made by the firm of Warner & Swasey,
of Cleveland, O., the builders of the
great Lick telescope, the contract having
recently been made. The new telescope
is to be the gift of Charles L. Ycrkes, of
Chicago, to the Chicago University. The
gift will also include au observatory, in
which the telescope .vill be university placed, the
entire amount given to the for
this purpose aggregating $500,000. Work
on the new instrument will bo pushed to
completion as quickly as possible. It the is
the wish of the company to have
telescope entirely finished in one year.
The Yerkes telescope will have an object
glass of forty inches clear aperture, and
the total length of the tube, with its ac¬
cessories, will not be less than seventy
five feet. The instrument complete will
wei^fi sixty tons. The instrument will
be provided with all the complicated such
motions which are necessary on a
large telescope. The machinery afford¬
ing this variety of movement can be op¬
erated by the hand of ihe astronomer,
or by electric motors, at the will of the
observer. In design and general con¬
struction the Yerkes will be similar to
the Lick, although it will he 25 per cent,
more powerful than that instrument.
The construction of the new telescope
will necessarily be undertaken in sections.
It would require an ordinary six-story
building to afford room for its second building
as a whole. As it is, tthe and
third floors of the large shops will be
partly removed in order to make room.
THE BODY AND ITS HEALTH.
Rise Early. —The excellence of early
rising and its inspiring influence themes on for both the
body ai/d mind have been
poet’s song and the sage’s sermon. Early
rising promotes cheerfulness of temper;
opens up new capacities delight of enjoyment which the
and channels of to
sluggard must be insensible. It increases
the sum of human existence by sfeu 'ng
from indolence hours that would be utter¬
ly wasted, and, better still, unquestiona¬
bly conduces to longevity. All long
livers have been early risers. Now, the
habit of retiring to bed at late hours will
hardly admit of early rising, therefore
the necessity of refraining from t!ie one
in order to secure the advantage of the
other. From six to eight hours and are doubt gen¬
erally held to be sufficient, no
on the average are so. Our sleep is reg¬
ulated much by the season. In winte f
people lie longer, on account, as the
say,of its being too dark to get up early]
There is some plausibility and in the weather reason,
but the system in cold dark
is more prone to sleep than in light and
sunny times. Invalids need generally
plenty of bed rest, but they should pro-
cure it by going early to bed. There is
more health and strength to be found in
the practice of seeing the sun rise than in
looking at it in any other part of the
day.
The Yosemite Valley in Winter.
Snowstorm follows snowstorm. Winter
has spread his icy mantle over the Yose¬
mite. The mighty cliffs and domes look
down upon the valley as in the summer
months, but it is with forbidding state¬ How
liness and with threatening aspect.
changed the scene and different the at¬
tractions! The smiling vale is no d longer
gay with gorgeous bowers at bright
with green meadowlands; no longer is it
resonant with the hum of busy insects,
the murmuring lullabies of slumbering
streams and the joyous songs of summer
birds; zephyr no longer whispi rs to the
pine fronds as he floats softly t irough
the forest, and echo no longer repeats
the exclamations of glad visitors. The
Merced rolls its swollen current flooding impetu¬
ously through the valley, many
an acre of the meadowiand—for rain
well as snow has fallen; the woods
hoarse with protesting against snow-slide the fierce-,
ness of the storm blasts; the
holds the beholder in awe as it races
with the waterfall in its downward
plunge, and slabs of talus and unshapely
chunks of rock loosen their hold of their
parent cliff as water and weather do their
work and are washed with din and head¬
long speed down into the valley. It is
tiue that such terrifying storms do not
occur with frequency', but one such was
witnessed by Mr. Hutchings and his
family during the winter of 1867, when
they were the only residents in the val¬
ley. On that exceptional occasion the
rain poured down incessantly for ten suc¬
cessive days; all the meadowiand was
covered with a surging flood; large trees
were Yosemite swept over the ridge into of the Upper
and shivered ftag nents on
the granite rocks, and pines and cedars
were blown down and piled in con¬
fusion upon each other by the windstorm
that followed the rain.—"[Californian.'
,'hiefly The famous cylinder-shaped hats married are
iadies. appropriated by young in their
so young ladies have
turn adopted hats smaller in the crown.
All twisted boring tools are of Ameri¬
can invention.
