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A LONDON CRIMINAL. THE FOG THIEF AND HOW HE PLIES HIS PECULIAR TRADE. Hje Operate* Boldly Both In the City and on the Thame*—Carries Oil HI* Plunder From "Van* and Cabs Shrouded In the Dense Gloom. Thousands of thieves long for fog rwith a great longing. Incredible as it may seem, property worth tens of thou sands of pounds is every year stolen from vans and lorries alone in London streets. Quite nine-tenths of this prop erty disappears during fogs. The leaders of the fog thief gangs usually have some liSle capital to start with. One of them affects to be a cartage contractor on a small scale. He takes very quiet premises that have a high boarding round and that are not overlooked. If he has plenty of cellarage, all the better. He has at least one smart trap and horse and two and sometimes three rogues to go with it. It is during the late foggy afternoons and early evenings of winter that the hauls are made. Streets with ware houses—and not shops that are lighted brilliantly and early—on each side and that are often congested with traffic are mostly chosen. The small and smart though dingy and inconspicuous looking trap plunges Into the thick of the traffic. It soon, in the gloom and murk, places itself immediately behind a van or lorry piled with packages of various kinds. The men in the quick trap are all on the alert. One of them, a man chosen for his immense physical strength, goes to the head of the pony on some pre text. He soon has a package down from the van in front. He is provided with sharp cutting instruments, and he has a powerful piece of strap with a hook at one end. If there is a boy sit ting behind th& van, the men in the trap contrive to get him down by di verting his attention. Even with a view to distracting the possible atten tion of carters, the thieves generally get up an altercation, or ‘‘barney,” among themselves ©r with others. They are men of colosskl impudence and powers of abuse, and all attention be comes riveted upon them. In one case not far from Farringdon street last De cember they carried off one parcel of furs worth £700, the wan boy being temporarily blinded, as alleged, by a lad with the thieves blowing some snuff into his face from a pea shooter and then disappearing. One of the most notorious of these fog thieves was a lithe young fellow who crept along the back of a pony to its head. American jockey fashion, and hooked what he could from out of the van in front. The great hauls of these men are when they follow cabs and private car riages from a railway station. In such cases they generally use two traps and horses. A cab Is marked that has ap parently valuable luggage on the top. This' is followed till some dark street is reached where the way is narrow or congested; then the driver of one of the traps, that has a very swift pony harnessed to it. deliberately drives across the head of the cab or carriage horse. Of course there is an angry alterca tion. and while this is going on the thieves on the other trap have got Into /the immediate rear of the luggage la den vehicle. One of the thieves goes along his horse’s back and lifts the lug gage down. One of the hauls effected last winter In this way was worth £8,000 and was the property of Mr. de Silva, an Argen tina millionaire. The robbery took place not far from St Pancras’ church just before the shops were lighted up. As the summer sun brings forth myriads of living creatures, so does a Thames fog bring out upon the dark and apparently deserted river a vast horde of thieves. At least a dozen of the wharf and lighter owners complain of losing from their respective wharves as much as from one to six hundred pounds’ worth of coal alone every year. The reader can learn at any river side house frequented by tugboat men that there are scores, literally scores, of tugs on the river that have never bought a pennyworth of coal for great numbers of years. The Thames police would tell that same reader that men have retired on competences who have been reported to have made their tvhole fortune out of coal stolen with im punity on the river. The police are helpless over the vast expanse of river and in the labyrinth ine backwashes. If they raid one of the pirate boats in the gloom and dark ness,, the spoil is turned out to the bottom of the river in a trice. If this sort of thing can be done to such an extent with a commodity like coal, it may be imagined what befalls other, -valuable property on wharves or in lighters. The fraudulent picker up of the river blesses the fog. The picker up Is a man who notices that certain barges with valuable cargoes are moor ed in such a way that, if they broke loose, they would entail vast expense. The picker up sees that these barges do break loose. That part of his work be does in dead secret And then, mak ing plenty of noise about it at this stage, he rescues from danger the very barges that he has set adrift and sends, in a heavy salvage claim.—Lon don Answers. HOUSES ON “MADE” GROUND The Reason They Teem With Mala ria and Noxious Gases. Good gravel has so largely come Into request that many suburban lands with that valuable substratum are quarried to a considerable depth be fore being sold on building leases. But it is essential to restore a level surface, as even the most speculative builder would hesitate to run up “neat villa residences” In deep holes. The owner frequently gets over this difficulty by allowing urban refuse to be shot into the excavation; in many cases he even exacts a small sum for every load tilted on his ground. The surface being thus leveled, a year or two are allowed for the soil to sink and become compact Occasionally grass is sown to give a natural appearance to the spot All is now In readiness for the build er, who proceeds to lay the foundation for his “terraces,” “avenues” and “gar dens,” which he subsequently adver tises as “on gravel soil.” So they are, but between their ground floors and the gravel lies a thick stratum of partially decomposed rubbish, teaming with malaria, and not for many years will the deposits cease to give off noxious gases. But the tenant coming from a dif ferent locality, knows nothing of the “making” process to which the plot has been subjected. When, therefore, ill health dogs his family, he puts it down to defective drainage or some other structural deficiency and spends money freely on remedial measures without the least benefit. All this misery might be prevented if it were legally prohibited to build human habi tations on decomposed refuse until the soil had acquired a wholesome char acter.—London Globe. Hew They Treated Washington. "As an example of the progress of medicine during the last century The Medical Record cites the case of Wash ington’s last illness. He died of laryn geal diphtheria, and the treatment was, it would seem, for an old man sick with a disease, very exhausting to the vitality. It consisted in the abstrac tion of between two and three quarts of blood, the administration of about 20 grains of calomel and 6 grains of tartar emetic and an injection, with ex ternal application of blister. And yet so strong was Washington’s constitu tion that he survived this treatment for 24 hours. One Comlngr. “Could you tell me the meaning of the word ‘cataclysm? ” he asked of the street car passenger who was folding up his newspaper. “Are you going to ride two or three blocks farther?” was queried In reply. “Yes, sir.” “Then you’ll see one; The conductor has carried that sharp nosed woman two streets past where she wanted to get off already, and she’ll wake up soon and start a cataclysm that’ll prob ably jump the car off the track!”— Washington Post. Called to an Faster Field. We wonder if any men with white skins are called to the ministry after the fashion described by Booker T. Washington in his autobiography. He says; “A colored man in Alabama, one hot day in July, while he was at work in a cotton field, suddenly stopped and looking toward the skies said, “O lawd, de cotton am so grassy, de work am so herd, and de sun am not so hot dat I h’lieve dis darky am called to preach!’ ” —Chicago Standard. Reversed. Blackburn — Judge Snyder made a rule some time ago that all women should remove their hats in his court, but I see that the order is not enforced. Whitehead—No. The women folks ap pealed to the judge’s wife, and she ren dered a dissenting opinion. — Denver News. Regular Course. ' “What course will you take?” inquir ed the senior. The new freshman from Boston spoke timidly. * “I’ll take bean soup, sir,” he said, imagining for the mo ment that he was at the dinner table.— Philadelphia Record. Poverty’s Penalty. ‘'‘Poverty’s no crime,” said the Job’s comforter. “Maybe not,” replied the poor man, ‘"’but it seems to be punishable by hard |bor for life.”—Philadelphia Record. Acids That Are Death to Cholera. The acid of lemons and oranges is fatal to the cholera bacillus. Even if placed upon the rinds of the fruit the gerins will not survive longer than a day.—Ladies’ Home Journal. In the Georgian language, spoken in the mountains between the Caspian and Black seas, dada means mother and mama father. THE KING OF HANDCUFFS. How Harry Houdini, American, Sur prised the British. When Harry Houdini, the American king of handcuffs, arrived in England, he tried to arrange for an exhibit of his skill at Scotland Yard, but the authorities refused to allow him an opportunity of putting on or taking off official handcuffs, says London M. A. P. So, accompanied by a skeptical London manager, he paid an ordinary call as an American visitor to the police headquarters. Mr. Houdini, after making the usual remarks on everything he saw and beard, casually asked a question about a pair of hand cuffs. The guide took them down and answered: “Oh. these are handcuffs impossible to remove.” Houdini was greatly interested, and the incident closed by the American visitor requesting his guide to lock the handcuffs ou his wrists. Then he turned his back and succeeded in get ting them off in a couple of minutes. One of Houdini’s strangest adven tures happened at a big hotel in St. Paul, Minn., where he was very well known. To bis surprise, he found that a couple of men occupying the rooms on either side of his own appeared to be mounting guard over him. At first he only suspected this, but after a few days he was perfectly sure that one or the other of his neighbors shadowed his every movement One afternoon, when Houdini was sitting in his own room, he heard the sound of scuffling outside the door. Flinging it open, he discovered his two unknown friends grasping a third man, who had evi dently been, wearing a long dark cape that was dragged on one side, showing that be was heavily handcuffed. “We’re a couple of detectives, Mr. Houdini,” panted one of the men. “This fellow made his escape from jail some days ago. We knew that be wouldn’t dare to go to a locksmith to get his handcuffs removed, and we suspected that he might come to you.” Mediaeval knights often took a volun tary oath that they would never spare the life of an enemy. CURES BLOOD POISON. | Scrofula, Ulcers, Old Sores, Bone Pains- Trial Treatment Free, ! First, second or third .stages positively i cured by taking B.B. B. (Botanic Blood j Balm). Blood Balm kills or destroys the I Syphilitic Poison in the Blood and ex pels it from the system. At the same time {Botanic Blood Balm builds up the shattered constitution. Have you sore throat, pimples, copper-colored spots, old sores, ulcers, swellings, scrofula, itching skin, aches and pains to bones or joints, sore monnth, or falling hair? Then Botanic Blood Balm will heal ev ery sore, stop the aches and make the blood Pure and Bich and give the rich glc «v of health to the skin. Over 3.000 testimonials of cures. Botanic Blood Balm thoroughly tested for 30 years. Sold at Drugstores, SI, including com plete directions. Trial treatment of B. B. B. free by addressing Blood Balm Co., Atlanta, Ga. Describe trouble and free medical advice given, jjon’t despair of a cure, as Biood Balm cures when all else fails At Holtzclaw’s Drug-store. Two hundred bushels of po tatoes remove eighty pounds of ‘ ‘actual * ’ Potash from the soil. Unless this quantity is returned to the soil, the following crop will materially decrease. We have "books telling about composition, use and value of fertilizers for various crops. They are sent free. A powerful engine cannot be run with a weak boiler, and we can’t keep up the strain of an active life with a weak stom ach; neither can we stop the human ma chine to make repairs. If the stomach cannot digest enough food to keep the body Btrong, such a preparation as Ko- dol Dyspepsia Cure should be used. It digests what you eat and it simply can’t help but do you good. Holtzclaw’s Drug store, This signature is on every box of tbe genuine Laxative Bromo^Quiuine Tablets tbe remedy that enres a cold in one day T t t TTT T-T-T TTTTT, T r •> DESIGNS TRADE-MARKS AND COPYRIGHTS OBTAINED ADVICE AS TO PATENTABILITY Notice in “Inventive Age ” ► Book “How to obtain Patents” " Charges moderate. No fee till patent is secured.i fi WINE OF CAROL'I has brought permanent relief to a mil lion suffering women who were on their way to premature graves. Mrs. Mitchell waS fast declining in health, when Wine of Cardui performed a “wonderful cure” in her case. She suffered with the ago nies of falling of the womb, leucorrhcea and profuse menstruation. The weekly appearance of the mensesfortwo months sapped her vitality until she was a phys ical wreck. Her'nervous system gave way. Then came the trial of Wine of Cardui and the cure. Mrs. Mitchell’s experience ought to commend Wine of Cardui to suffering women in words of burning eloquence. |WDrc«CAKM is within the reach of all. Women who try it are relieved. Ask your druggist for a $1 bottle of Wine of Cardui, and do not take a substitute if tendered you. Mrs. Willie Mitchell, South Gaston, N. C.: “Wine of Cardui aiid Tbedford’s Bleck- Draugbt have performed a miraculous cure in my Case. I had been a great sufferer with falling of tbe womb and leucorrhcea, and my menses came every week for two months and were very painful. My hus band induced me to try Wine of Cardui and Black-Draught, and now the leucor rhcea has disappeared, and 1 am restored t > perfect health.” symptoms, visory Department.” The Chattanooga Medicine Co., Chattanooga, Tenn. Letters strictly confidential. A< .-. j. 5 U A A. A, nctly coi E. G. SIGGERS, Patent Lawyer, Washington, Restore Vitality, Lost Vigor and Manhood Corelmpotency, Night Emissions, Loss of Mem ory, ail wasting diseases, all effects of self-abuse or excess and indiscretion. A nerve tonic and .blood builder. Brings the pink glow to pale cheeks and restores the fire of youth. By mail 150c per box. 0 boxes for .50, with our bankable guarantee to cure or refund the money paid. Send for circular and cqpy of our bankable guarantee houd. NerahTabtete”"™” PENNSYLVANIA PURE RYE, EIGHT YEARS OLE. OLD SHARPE WILLIAMS. Four ful Quarts of this Fine Old, Fnre BYE WHISKEY, $3.50 EXPRESS PAID- (yellow label) Immediate Results BRING US YOUR JOB WORK. SATIS FACTION GUARANEETD. Positively guaranteed cure for Loss of Power, aricocele, Undeveloped or Shrunken Organs, Paresis, Locomotor Ataxia, Nervous Prostra tion, Hysteria, Fits, Insanity, Paralysis and the Resnlts of Excessive Use of Tobacco, Opium or Liquor. By mail in plain package, $1.00 a box, 6 for $5.00 with our bankable guar antee bond to cure in 30 days or refund money paid. Address If ERVITA MEDICAL CO. Clinton & Jackson Sts., CHICAGO, IUU For sale-fiy H. M.Holtzclaw, Druggist, Perry,Ga Kodol Dyspepsia Cure Digests what you eat* It-artificially digests the food and aids Nature in strengthening and recon* structing the exhausted digestive ox* gans. It is the latest discovereddigest* ant and tonic. No other preparation can approach it in efficiency. Zt in* stantly relieves and permanently cores Dyspepsia, Indigestion, Heartburn, Flatulence, Sour Stomach, Hausea, Sick Headache, Gastralgia-,Cramps and all other results of imperfect digestion* Price50c.andfL Large sire contains 2)4 tlmeyi [ small size* Book all about dyspepsia mailedfres Prepared by E. C. OeWlTT A CO., Chicago. PATENT Good !i.„~ may be secured by our aid. Address, THE PATENT RECORD, Baltimore, Md. Subscriptions to The Patent Record #L00 per annum. We ship on approval in plain, sealed boxes, with no marks to indicate contents. When lyou receive it and test it, if it is not satisfactory, return it at our expense and we wil return your §3.50. We guarantee this brand to he EIGHT YEARS ODD. Eight bottles for §6 50, express prepaid; 12 hottfes for §9 50 express preoaid. One gallon jug, express prepaid, $3 00; 2 gallon jug, express prepaid, §5 50. No charge for boxing. We handle all the leading brands of Rye and Bourbon Whiskies and wiU save you 50 Per Gent, on Your Purchases: Quart, Kentucky Star Bourbon, § 35 Elkridge Bourbon... I Coon HoUow Bourbon..... Melwood Pure Bye. 50 Monogram Bye McBrayer Rye Baker’s AAA A ,< O. O. P. (Old Oscar Pepper) Old Crow .... Fincher’s Golden Wedding Hoffman House Rye Mount Vernon, 8 years old 100 Old Dillinger Rye, 10 years old, 125 The above are only a few*brands. Send for a catalogue. All other goods by tha gallon, such as Com Whiskey, Peach and Apple Brandies, etc., sold equally as low, from $125 a gallon and upward. We make a speeiasty of the Jug Trade,- and all orders by Mail or Telgeraph will have our prompt attention: Special inducements offered. Mail Orders shipped same day of the receipt of order. The Altmayer & Flateau Liquor Company, 606, 508, 510, 512 Fourth Street, near Union PassengerHepot. MACON, GEORGIA. Quart, Gallon. ...$ 35 $125 150 160 190 2 0« 225 240 65 240 250 75 250 90 300 100 350 l,.... 125 400 CA.STOB.IA. Bears the Jte Kind You Have Always BouglU Signature of GERMAN KALI WORKS, 93 Nassau St., New York. INVENT Something useful or entertaining: or, if you already have an invention get a PATENT. There is abundant profit in good patented inventions. Send for our interesting Illus trated Patent Hand-Book—free; gives more information than any other. "We obtain Pat ents that protect. Terms lowest possible for best service. OUR FEES REFUNDED IF WB FAIL TO SECURE PATENT. No charges for examination and opinion as to patentability. Promptness guaranteed. Best of references. Over 31 years experience. Address R. S. & A. B. LACEY, Patent Solicitors, Washington, D. C. Mention this -paper when you write - 1554 MILES OF MOOERM RAILWAY TRAVERSING THE Finest Fruit, Agricultural, Timber, and Mineral Lands SOUTH. IN THE THROUGH RATES.AND TICKETS FURNISHED UPON APPLI CATION TO ALL POINTS North, South, East, West. Central of Georgia Railway, Ocean Steamship Co. FAST; FREIGHT AND LUXURIOUS PASSENGER ROUTE toNqw York, Boston the East, Complete Information, Rates, Schedules of Trains and Sailing Dates of Steamers Cheer fully Furnished by any Agent of the Company. E. H. HINTON, Traffic Manager, fHEQ. 0. KUNE, General Supt J. C. HAILE, Gen’l Pass Agt SAVANNAH. CA. 50 YEARS* . EXPERIENCE Trade Marks Designs - Copyrights &c. Scientific American. A handsomely illustrated weekly. Largest cir culation of any scientific journal. 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