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DRIVING PILES FOR FOUND iTIOXS.
Wl.y and Where They Are t sed-PilesThai
Cost £50 Apiece*
A few sharp, asthmatic puffs c»
steam, followed by a heavy thud as the
block ox iron, a ton. weight, fails on the
long solid spruce pile, driving it a foot into
the ear ill ! In this manner the
foundations of many New York build
ings are laid—not exactly on a rock, bin
practically ns nearly so as if a solid
stonewall was built uu from the gravel
or the hard pan to which the pile has
penetrated, and at each euccetsive blow
the pile—often sixty or seventy feet in
length—sinks deeper, and when it has
at last touched the hard bottom,
heavy iron block rebounds with a ring,
as if it had struct i.n anvil. From t it
point there is no more driving or the
pile would be splintered as easily as a
match. in tuo* portions oi ti.e «ly
where the original l.oflows in the land
have been filled to the surrounding
grade, a pile foundation is always driven
when the building is of any considerable
or the filling is carted away and
foundation wall started on tho bed
rofk. In the lower portions of the citv,
which were once swamp bottoms , and
where the rock-stratum is far beneath
the surface, piles also must be used, and
they are frequently driven through a
foot or move of water. Fora building
now going up in Spruce street, a six
storied brick structure, the piles are
driven to a depth ranging the longest from twenty
five to forty feet; of them
would make very respectable telegraph
poles. When the massive abutment of
the Brooklyn Bridge, opposite the
Spruce street building, wasiponstructed,
it was considered best to begin at the
gravel bottom, laid and fifty the feet foundation
stones were below the
street. Under the Spruce street struc¬
ture 500 of these piles have been placed,
with a calculation that each pile will sus¬
tain supporting a weight capacity of six tons, each though the
of is much
greater. They are arranged in sections,
a double row in each section, with
mathematical accuracy ; the surface is
filled in with concrete, and a floor of
heavy planks, spiked on the piles, pre¬
pares them to receive the stone layers.
The woodwork is so covered with earth
that it is impervious to the air, and it
will last till long af ter the walls above
have crumbled. In another large ware¬
house now going up in Greenwich
street, near Desbrosses street, a yet
greater number of piles were used, and
their average length was fifty feet,
. When the piles do not exceed fifty
feet in length, the cost is comparatively
small for such a foundation. An inferior
grade of spruce is used, such as is not
deemed straight enough, or that is too
full of knots for ship-spars. The cost
is placed at about $10 a pile, exclusive
of the stonework. There are many
buildings in the city where the piles
have cost much more. In the founda¬
tion of the Vanderbilt Elevator, tho
large elevator in Jersey the month City and the" that re¬
cently erected at of Wee
hawken Tunnel, none of the piles, were
less than seventy feet long. They had
to be specially selected in Michigan
forests, and the first cost was $50 each.
Under tho Weebawken Elevator 15,000
piles were driven, and many of them
were over fifty feet long.
“It is a curious thing,” said Robert
Brown, an old pile-driver, “how these
piles behave. We start them in with a
blunt end, and if you should pull one ox
them up you would find the point
sharpened like a lead-pencil. And there
is no wear out to them when old they get
into the mud. I pulled one snag out
of the East River in 1863 that had been
driven in 1811, and, where the mud cov¬
ered it, there were green leaves sticking
to it yet. They are solid, too, as any
foundation. When I was doing some
work for the Government in the harbor
a few years ago, the piles engineer made a
calculation on some I had driven
about forty feet, and lie said they would
sustain a weight of 180 tons each. ”— N.
Y. Tribune.
The Verbiage of tlie Courts.
“I was in Court a few days ago,” said
a time-worn litigant, “when a young
lawyer arguing before Judge Joseph
Barnard, read from one of the papers in
the case including the usual verbiage.
The Judge suggested a briefer state¬
ment on the point, probably believing
with tho Judge of the Supreme Court in
the anecdote, that justices may be pre¬
sumed to know something of the forms
of law. The young man then stated his
point in plain and condensed English.
The idea then struck me when would it
be possible to relieve the law of all the
flummery of the verbiage now employed.
In actual proceedings before a magistrate absolutely
this verbiage is discarded as
unnecessary in argument; yet it is relig¬
iously maintained in all matters of plead¬
ing and in all orders, injunctions, etc.,
granted by the Courts. Half the delays
grow out of this use of verbiage. Half
the quibbles out of which some unscru¬
pulous lawyers make their living are
based upon this needless use of unneces¬
sary words.” A lawyer who was present
could give him no encouragement to
look for a speedy reform; on the con¬
trary, he irreverently said that the ver¬
biage of the law was as neoeesnry to the
existence of the lawyer as the flummery
of some religions was to the success of
its advocates and ministers.—iV. Tri¬
bune.
ForgetfaL
The Times, of Whitehall, New York,
tells of a salesman in that village who
started at noon for his dinner, and,
finding a few feet laid of it, sidewalk and then to lav
near his home he re¬
turned to his place of business. He
had forgotten something, he knew not
what. He explored his pockets and
faxed his memory, and at length con¬
cluded that it must be nails. He made
a memorandum to stop and buy some
at night, and then felt relieved. At
about four o’clock a rush of memory
came upon him—he had forgotten to
eat his dinner.
Desoratk. —The sheep ranches of
California are usually desolate places.
For the herders it is a terrible life, how
terrible is shown by the frequency of
insanity among them. Sometimes, after
denly only a few months, a herder goes sud¬
mad.
UNDER THE SOD.
While fragrant, flowery fingered May
Extends her hand to welcome June,
We come, with mournful tread to-day,
To claim this ever precious boon
Of offering on each hallowed grave
Our loving tributes to the brave,
0ll > brothers, dead ! while side by side
We marched with ygu through scenes of strife,
And gave your country all but life,
5 ' u marched, and fought, and fell, and died'
Dkd in a cause as old as time;
Died iu a cause more seamed and scarred
]u stri * e with cruelty and crime,
Than any veteran in the guard
Of Tamerlane or Ghengis Khan !
Died in the war-worn cause of man.
i gray hairs before me now,
which had not lost then- darker hue,
Aud fuwnv8 <j ecp oa many a brow
where Caro has driven his plow share through;
Where ye* no mark of age were laid,
for the haste which war has made,
i cannot tel; the awful story,
1 he bleeding heart is still too sore
For hitter thoughts to journey o’er,
E’en though it feel the balm of glory.
Their deeds shall shine, like jewels set
In Freedom’* glittering coionet.
Buthpw they fought and how they fell,
And, faliii-g. died, let others tell,
Who, looking backward through the years,
Can read with eyes, undimmed with tears,
And tell, with more than patriot pride,
Their children how their fathers died !
W. W. Fisk.
A FAR-AWAY MELODY.
BY MARY E. WILKINS.
The clothes-line was wound securely
around the trunks of four gnarled,
crooked old apple-trees which stood pro¬
miscuously about the yard back of the
cottage. It was tree-blossoming time,
but these were too aged and sapless to
blossom freely, and there was only a
white bough here and there shaking
iiseif triumphantly from amongst the
rest, which had only their new green
leaves. There was a branch occasionally
which had not even these, hut pierced
tho lender green aud flossy white in
hard gray nakedness. A1J over tho
yard the grass was young and green
and short, 'and had not yc-t gotten any
feathery heads. Once in a while there
was a dandelion set closely down
amongst it. low, of dark red
The cottage was a
color, with white facings around the
windows, which had no blinds, only
green paper curtains.
The back door was in the centre of the
heuse, and opened directly into the
green yard, with hardly a pretense of a
stop, only a flat oval stone before it.
Through this door, stepping cautious¬
ly on the stone, chocolate-colored caice presently two tall
lank women in gowns,
with a basket of clothes between them.
They set the basket underneath the line
on the grass, with a little clothes-pin
hag beside it, and then proceeded me¬
thodical ly to hang out the clothes. Every¬
thing of a kind went together, and the
best Jdiings on the outside line, which
could be seen from the street in front of
the cottage. curiously alike.
The two women were
They were about the same height, and
moved in the same way. Even t heir
faces were so simiiiar in" feature and ex¬
pression that it might have been a diffi¬
cult matter to distinguish between them.
All the difference, and that would have
been scarcely apparent to an ordinary if
observer, was a difference of degree, it
might be so expressed. In one face the
features were both bolder and sharper
in outline, the eyes were a trifle larger
and brighter, anil the whole expression
more animated and decided than in the
other.
One woman’s scanty drab hair was a
shade darker than the other’s and the
negative fairness of complexion, which
generally accompanies drab hair, was in
one relieved by a slight tinge of warm
red on the cheeks.
This slightly intensified woman bad
been commonly considered the more at¬
tractive of the two, although in reality
there was very little to choose between
the personal appearance of these twin
sisters, Priscilla and Mary Brown.
They moved about the clothes-line, pin¬
ning their the sweet white linen on securely,
thick white-stockinged ankles
showing beneath their limp calicoes as
they stepped, and their large feet in
cloth slippers flattening down the short
green grass, Their sleeves were rolled
up, displaying their long thin muscular
arms, which were sharply pointed at the
elbows. they
They were liomely women; they could were
fifty and over now, but never
have been pretty in their teens, their
features were too irredeemably irregular
for that. No youthful freshness of com¬
plexion or expression could ever have
possiblv done awav with the impression had
that they gave. Their enhanced plainness by the
probably only been
contrast and these women to people when gen¬
erally seemed better-looking than
they were young, There was an hones
rv ana patience In both taces tnai
showed all the plainer for their homeli-
11CSS. hair,
One, the sister with the darker
moved a little quicker than the other,
and lifted the wet clothes from the bas¬
ket to the line more frequently. She
was the first to speak, too, after they
had been hanging out the clothes for
some little time iu silence. She stopped
as she did so. with a wet pillow-case in
her hand, and looked up reflectively over-head, at
cite flowering apple houghs between,
and the blue sky showing ruffled her
while the sweet spriug wind
scanty hair a little.
“I wonder, Mary,” she said, “if it
would seem so very queer to die a mom
in’ like this, say. Don’t you_ believe
there’s apple branches a-hangin over
them walls made out of precious stones,
like these, only there ain’t any dead
limbs among ’em, an’ they’re all cov
ered thick with flowers ? An’ I wonder
if if would seem such an awful chance
' the
to go from this air into the air of
New Jerusalem.” somewhere
Just then a robin hidden
in the trees began to sing. “that tbere
“I s’pose,” she went ou, s
angels instead of robins, though, and
they don’t roost up in trees to sing, but
stand on the ground, with lilies growin’
'omul their feet, maybe, up to their
knees, or on the gold stones in the
•street, singin’.” an’ play on their harps to go with
the
The other sister gave a seared, awed
look at her. “Lor, don’t talk that way,
sister,” said she. “What has got into
you lately? You make me crawl all
>ver, talkin’ so much about dyin’. You
feeljvell, “Lor, yes,” don’t replied you ?” the other, laugh
ng, and picking up a clothes-pin for her
allow case; “I feel well enough, an’ I
ion’t know what has got me to talkin’
so much about dyin’ it's .lie lately, spring or weather. thinkin’
about it. I guess
P'raps flowers growin’ make anybody
; hint of wings sproutin’ kinder naterally.
I won’t talk so much about it if it both¬
ers yon, an’ I don’t know but it’s sorter
natural it should. Did you get the po¬
tatoes before we came out, sister? ’—
with an awkward and kindly effort to
change the subject.
“No,” replied the other, stooping over
the clothes-basket. There was such a film
of tears in her dark blue eyes that she
could not distinguish one article from
another.
“Well, I guess you had better go in
an’ get ’em, then; they ain’t unless worth any¬
thing, this time of year, they soak
a while, an’ I’ll finish bangin’ out the
clothes while you do it.”
“Well, p’r’aps I’d better,” the other
woman replied, straightening herself up
from the clothes basket. Then she went
into the house without another w T ord;
but down in the damp cellar, a minute
later, she sobbed over the potato barrel
as if her heart would break. Her sister's
remarks bad filled her with a vague ap¬
prehension and grief which she could
not throw off. And there was something
a little singular about it. Both these
women had always been of a deeply re¬
ligious cast of mind. They had studied
the Bible faithfully, if not understand
ingly, and the religion had strongly
tinctured their daily life. They knew
almost as much about llie Old Testa¬
ment prophets as they did about tlieir
neighbors; and that was saying a good
deal of two single women Still in this a New religious Eng¬
land country town.
element in their nature could hardly
have been termed spirituality. It de¬
viated from that as much as anything of
religion—which is iu one way spiritual¬
ity itself—could.
Both sisters were eminently practical
in all affairs of Priscilla life, down to their vei l
dreams, dealt and in religion especially with bare so.
She had the
facts of sin and repentence, future pun¬
ishment and reward. She had dwelt
very little, probably, Eternal upon the poetic
splendors of the City, and talked
about them still less. Indeed, she had
always been reticent about her religions
convictions, and had said very little
about them even to her sister.
The two women, with God in their
thoughts every moment, seldom had
spoken His name to each other. For
Priscilla to talk in the strain that she
had to-day, and for a week or two pre¬
vious, off and on, was, from its extreme
deviation from her usual custom, cer¬
tainly startling.
Poor Mary, sobbing over the potato
barrel, thought it was a sign of ap¬
proaching death. She had a few super¬
stitious-like grafts upon her practical,
commonplace character. finally, and went
She wiped her eyes
up-stairs with her tin basin of potatoes,
which were carefully washed and put to
soak by the time her sister came in with
the empty basket.
At tweive exactly the two sat down to
dinner in the clean kitchen, which was
one of the two rooms the cottage boasted.
The narrow entry ran from the front
door to the back! On one side was the
kitchen and living-room; on the other,
the room whore the sisters slept. There
were two small, unfinished lofts over¬
head, reached by a step-ladder coiling, through and
a little scuttle in the entry
that was all besides. The sisters had
earned the cottage and paid for it years
before, by working as tailoresses. They
liad quite a snug little sum in the bank
besides, which they had saved out of
their hard earnings. There was no need
for Priscilla and Mary to work so hard,
peonle said; but work hard they did, and
work hard they would as long as they
lived. The mere habit of work became
as necessary to them as breathing.
Just as soon as they had finished their
meal and cleared away the dishes they
put on some clean starched purple
prints, which were their afternoon
dresses, and seated themselves at the
two front windows with their work; the
house faced southwest, so the sunlight
streamed through both. It was a very
warm day for the season, and the win¬
dows were open. In the yard outside,
great clumps of lilac bushes stood close
to both. They grew on the other side
of the front door, too; a little later the
low cottage would look half buried in
them. The shadows of their leaves
made a dancing net-work over the
freshly washed yellow there floor. and
The two sisters sat sewea
on some coarse vests all the afternoon.
Neither made a remark often. The
room with its glossy little cooking
stove! its eight-day clock on the mantel,
its chintz-cushioned rocking-chairs, and
the dancing shadows of tb.e lilac leaves
on its yellow floor, looked pleasant and
peaceful. before “fix o’clock neighbor
.Just a
dropped in with her cream pitcher to
borrow some milk for tea, and she sat
down for a minute's chat after she had
got it filled. They had been talking a
few moments ou neighborhood Priscilla let topics, her
when all of a sudden
work fall and raised her hand. “Hush !”
whispered other she. stopped talking, and
The two
listened, staring at her wonderingly. but
they could bear nothing. asked
“What is it, Miss Priscilla?”
the neighbor, with round blue eyes.
She was a pretty young thing, who had
not been married loDg.
“Hush ! Don’t speak. Don’t you
hear that beautiful music ?” Her ear
was inclined toward the open window,
her hand still raised wamingly, and her
eyes fixed on the opposite wall beyond
them. her
Mary turned visibly paler shuddered. than “I
usual dull paleness, and
don’t hear any music,” she said. “Do
you, Miss Moore?”
“No-o,” replied the caller, her simple
little face beginning to put on a scared
look, from a vague sense of mystery she
could not fathom.
Mary Erown rose and went to the
door, and looked eagerly up and down
the street. “There ain’t no organ-man
in sight anywhere,” said she, returning,
“an’ I can’t hear any music, an’ Miss
Moore can’t, an’ we’re both sharp enough
o’ bearin’. You’re jist imaginin’ it,
sister.”
“I never imagined anything it in ain’t
life,” returned the other, “an’
likely I’m goin’ to begin now. It’s the
beautifulest music. It comes from over
the orchard there. Can’t you hear it ?
But it seems to me it’s growin* a little
fainter like now. I guess it’s movin oft,
perhaps. Brown set her lips hard. Ine
Mary anxiety she bad telt lately
grief and
turned suddenly to .unreasoning anger
against the cause of it; through her very
love she fired witn quieic wrath at the
beloved object. Still she did not say
much, only, “I guess it must be moyiu
of! 1 ,” with a laugh which had an unpleas
ant ring in it.
After the neighbor had gone, however,
she said more, standing before her sister
with her arms folded squarely across her
bosom. “Now, Priscilla Brown,”
exclaimed, “I think it’s about time to
put a stop to this. I’ve heard about
enough of it. What do you s’pose Miss
Moore thought of yon ? Next thing it
will be all over town that you’re get-tin’
spiritual notions. To-day it’s music
that nobody else can hear, and yester
day you smelled roses, and there ain’t
one in . blossom this time o , year, and , all ,,
the time you re ta.km about dyin . I 1 or
my part, 1 don t see why you am t as
likely to live as I am. liou le uncom
mon hearty on vittles. You ate a pretty
good iimner to-day tor a dym person.
‘T didn t sav I was goin to die, le
plied Priscilla, meekly; the two sisters
seemed suddenly to have changed na
tures. “An I ll try not. to talk so, if it
plagues you. l told you I wouldn t this
morinn , but the music kinder took mo
by surprise like, au i thought mar lie
you an’ Miss Moore could hear it. I can
jist hear it a little oit now, like the liym
awav of a bell.
“There you go agin . cried the ether,
sharpl y. "Do, ior mercy s sake-stop,
i risciiia. lucre ain t no music.
“Well, I won t talk anymore about
it.” she answered, patiently and she
rose and began setting the table for tea,
while Mary sat down and resumed her
sewing, drawing the thread through the
cloth with quick, uneven jerks. neighbor
That night the pretty girl dis
was aroused from her sleep by a
tivssed voice at her bedroom window, 1”
crying. “Miss Moore ! Miss Moore
She spoke to her husband who opened ho
tho window. “What’s wanted?”
asked, peering out into the darkness.
“ Priscilla’s sick,” moaned tho dis¬
tressed voice; “awful sick. She’s fainted,
an’ I can’t bring her to. Go for the
doctor—quick ! quick ! quick !” Tho
voice ended in a shriek on the last word,
and the speaker turned and ran back to
the cottage, where, on the bed, lay a
pale, gaunt woman, who had not stirred
since slio left it. Immovable through
all her sister’s agony, she lay there, her
features shaping themselves out more
and more from the shadows, the bed¬
clothes that covered her limbs taking on
ail awful rigidity. died in her sleep,’
“She must have
the doctor said, when he came, “without
a struggle.”
When Mary Brown really understood
that her sister was dead, she left her to
the kindly ministrations of the good
women who are always ready at such
times and places, and went and sat by
the kitchen window in the chair which
her sister had occupied that afternoon.
There the women found her when the
last offices had been done for the dead.
“Come home with me to-night,” one
said; “Miss Green will stay with her,”
with a turn of the head toward the op¬
posite room, and an emphasis on the
pronoun which distinguished it at once
from one applied to a living person. a-goin’
“No,” said Mary Brown; “I’m had"
to set here an’ listen.” She the
window wide open, leaning her head
out in the chilly night air. still
“You see,” went on Mary Brown,
speaking with her head leaning out of
the window, “I was cross with her this
afternoon because she talked about
bearin’ music. I was cross, an’ spoke
up sharp to her, because I loved her, but
I don’t think she knew. I didn’t want
to think she was goin’ to die, but she
was. An’ she heard the music. It was
true. An’ now I’m a-goin’ to set here
an’ listen till I hear it too, an’ then I’ll
know she ’ain’t laid up what I said agin
me, an’ that I’m a-goin’ to die too.”
They found it impossible to reason
with her; there she sat till morning,
with a pitying woman beside her, listen¬
ing all in vain for unearthly melody.
Next, day they sent for a widowed
niece of the sisters, who came at once,
bringing her little boy with her. She
was a kindly young woman, and took up
her abode ii) the little cottage, and did
the best she could for her poor aunt,
who, it soon became evident, would
never lie quite berself again, There
she would sit at the kitchen window
and listen day after day. She took a
great fancy to her niece’s little boy, and
used often to bold bim in her lap as slm
sat there. Once in a while she would
ask him if he heard any music, “An
innocent little thing like him might hear
quicker thau a hard uuhelieviu’ old wo
man like me,” she told his mother
o v ce.
She lived so for nearly a year after
her sister died. It was evident that she
failed gradually and surely, though
there was no apparent disease. It seemed
to trouble her exceedingly that she
never heard the music she had listened
for. She bad an idea that she could not
die unless she did, and her whole soul
seemed filled with longing to join her
beloved twin sister, and be assured of
her forgiveness. This sister-love was
all she had ever felt, besides her love of
God, in any strong degree; all the pas¬
sion of devotion of which this homely,
commonplace woman was capable, was
centred in tbnt, and the unsatisfied
strength of it was killing her. The
weaker she grew, the more earnestly
she listened. She was too feeble to sit
np. bnt she would not consent to lie in
lied, and made them bolster her up with
pillows in a rocking-chair by the win¬
dow. At length she died, in the spriug,
a week or two before, her sister had the
year before. The season was a little
more advanced this year, and the apple
trees were blossomed out further than
they were then. She died about
her o'clock in had the been morning. called The into day the before,
niece roonr
by a shrill cry of rapture from her:
‘I’ve heard it! I've heard it!” she cried,
t •A faint sound o’music, like the (lyin’
away of a bell.”— Hamer's Razor.
Northfield Bank Robbery.
DESCRIBED BY A WOMAN NEAR WHOM
ONE OF THE BANDITTI FELL.
Frank James, just acquitted on one
charge but held on another in Missouri,
is wanted by the Governor of Minnesota
j G j G [ Vl the Younger brothers, who are
serving a life sentence in Stillwater
prison. xt is charged that. James par
tic ; pateil in tho Northfield Bank rob -
bery, in broad daylight on the 15tli of
August, 1877. A lady who saw the raid
that was made says that while she was in
noticed a millinery store opposite sitting the handsomely bank she
some men on
caparisoned horses in the street, and
soon she heard the loud, hoarse
cry, “Ready!” Then tho riders began
nding furiously up find down the street,
filing their revolvers m every direction,
au<1 screaming and shouting profane
language, and ordering people oil the
street. “ They are robbing tho bank !”
a frightened furgitive said as he ran past
the door in which she stood. Just after
one man in the street had been killed
8 ] ie saw one 0 f the highwaymen reel in
^is ga( ^] e , He barely saved himself
f rom failing to the ground by throwing
his right arm over his horse’s neck. This
burned the horses up the street again,
The man dropped his pistol and slid to
q ie g rouQ( j about eight feet from her.
This wa8 stiles. He died soon after
ward- Mr. Manning’s rifle had done the
W01 - l K _ A horseman rode up to Stiles,
dismounted, and rolled tho dead bandit
over w j dl },j s foot. He took something
f rom Stiles’s belt, remounted, and rode
awa y_ Two more horsemen and a high
wayman on foot, but clinging to a sad
dlebow, appeared. The footman was
ji 0 b Younger, whose horse had been cap
t nre q His brother helped Bob to mount
his horse, and they fodo oft’ together. It
WJ1S kooh learned that the bank cashier,
Mr. teller, Reywood, had Bunker, been killed, and that
tho Mr. was wounded,
Before many minutes a large party of
citizens were in their saddles pursuing
refuge the highwaymen. the big woods, The fugitives week took
in and a
later all had been either killed or cap
tured except Frank James and Jesse
James. They only got a few nickels
from the bank.
Why the Prairies are Treeless.
The salvation of the great new prairie
empire of America depends cultivating in great
measure on the feasibility of windbreaks.
forests to serve its farmers as
Tlie potency of a grove of leafless trees
in shielding one from the winter wind is
hardly credible. Its influence on the
open prairie reaches houses a mile dis¬
tant. The laws of all the Northwestern
States favor the planting of forest little trees, of
and the subject employs their not a
the rattling rhetoric of numerous
orators. The expediency of these laws
was never questioned until recently. .Harvard A
few months since a professor of
University, after ten years of study, unsijjen- pro¬
nounced these laws useless and
tifle. The learned professor announced
that trees will grow where they ought to
grow and will not grow where they
ought not to grow; that the great inland
prairie lacks trees because it lias not a
large enough rainfall to support them,
anil that the laws encouraging arboricul¬
ture will be futile. In traveling explained through
Western Minnesota we this
theory with no little pride to our fellow
traveler, a teamster. The teamster
made no reply except to quicken the
pulse of his pipe. At length, having
made sure that he had smoked it to the
bottom of its socket, he drew the pipe
from his mouth and pointed its handle
toward a clump of native trees that
skirted one side of a large mud lake.
“Do yon notice,” he asked, “on which
side of the lake those trees stand ? The
southeast ? Well. that settles it. ”
There are, as he afterward explained,
hundreds of these lakes slotting tho
prairie land of Minnesota. Most of the
lakes oil the southeastern shores have
clusters of forest trees. The reason of
this is not far to seek. There are two
winds there prevalent—the northwestern
and southeastern, Tho southeast
wind is the rain-bringer. The north¬
west is cold and dry. The prairie fires
are spread by the northwest, never by
the southeast wind. When the prairie
fires swept over the prairie they burned
the young trees on all sides of the lake
except the southeastern, which was
sheltered by the water. There could he
no more conclusive proof ot the power
of the prairie fires to destroy the growth
of forests than in soil faverabj. to their
production.
A Slight Mistake.
He stepped into a cane store in 125th
street, near Third avenue, New York
city, and said to the proprietor:
“You are just tlie man I’ve been look¬
ing for, and your business ought to be
good.” “It is fair,” replied the proprietor.
“If you were near a church your busi¬
ness would be rushing.”
“What do you mean ?” asked the cane
merchant.
“Why. I lost mine in a church last
week and I want to get it back. ”
“Get what back?”
“Mv umbrella.”
“What have I got to do with lost um¬
brellas ?”
“Everything; don’t your sign say so ?
Here is my address, send it to me when
you find it,”
“But I don’t understand. I—”
“Don’t you. Well then look here,”
and the man pointed to a sign outside.
“Umbrellas, recovered.” Explanations.
- m:
-
Harry (tired of frocks, who has seen
that his widowed mamma is evidently
pleased with attentions paid her by
a bashful young professional man)—
“Mamma will Mr. Smythe buy roe a
pair of pants soon ?”
A WIFE’S romance:
A Burlington Inuly Elopes from her fins*
imnd, Expefitinff n Jolly Time*
The Davenport, la., Democrat thus
tells of the escapade of a young married
lady of Burlington, la., in that city, and
no doubt, from a perusal of tho article,
many will be able to determine her iden
tity:
There is one young woman in Iowa
who has been cured of romancing. It
was recently that the wife of a prom¬
inent physician engaged the services of a
young Yoman who was quite agreeable
in appearance, and who was sent to
housework. her from an intelligence girl, office, for
She gave the who ap¬
peared to directions be about twenty years of age,
general and when tho as girl to the told work her to be
done, that
she could cook, she told her what to get
for supper.
The doctor came home for his tea,
and the wife went into the kitchen to ?ee
how preparations for the evening meal
were progressing. There sat the new
girl with a pan of apples in her lap hut
there was no sign that preparations for
suppi r had been commenced, even. And
the lady was struck by the sad counten¬
ance of the girl. She asked the stranger
the cause of the delay in arrangements
for supper, and why slio looked so
downcast. The eyes of the girl filled
with tears-
“Oh, madam,” she exclaimed, “lam
in such trouble! Oh, I can’t tell you
how wretched I am !”
Tho lady convinced tho girl that she
could confide in her—and out came the
brief story:
“Oh, madam, I have husband a husband in
Burlington—as good had—and a I have as any
young wile ever run
away and left him !
“But why did you do it?”
“I don’t, know hardly—we had a little
misunderstanding, and I became very
angry, and thought I would punish him
by leaving him, thinking he would hunt
for mo and beg mo to return. 1 took
tho cars and canio to Davenport, deter¬
mined to earn my own living; but I
want to go back so much, I can’t work,
can’t do anything, but I want to go
back.”
The wretched young wife sobbed like
a child, aud besought her new employer
to assist her in returning to Burlington.
She thought such an advonturo would
be romantic—and it would be uiee to
have her husband hunting for she her said until
he could find her; hut now she
believed she was the most foolish and
miserable woman alive.
Tho sympathy of tho physician and
his wife went out for tho wretched crea¬
ture, and she remained in the house un¬
til morning, when tho doctor placed her
aboard of the southwestern train for
Burlington, and also wrote a letter to
the husband, m which ho stated the
the circumstances in which tho wife
ciuhe. to his house, and of his belief ini
her bitter ropenlciice of lur folly. IS In;
left her home full of glee over her pros¬
pects of a gay lark—and left for her
home with broken spirits and in fear and
trembling.
Why, Oil, Why 1
There are some unsolved mysteries in
the great problem of life that give me
cause for reflection and anxiety. If I
were rich I believe I would build
me a lonely coll somewhere in Olinton or
some place like that, worth about
$00,000, with a store-room like a whole¬
sale grocery, where I might have plenty
of help in studying these intricate prob¬
lems in our daily economy, he. or For extrava¬ often
gance, as the case my
and often I wonder and wonder;
Why you always put teaspoons into
the vase upside down ?
Why the pantaloons of a godless his ath¬ life,
eist, who never said a prayer ifi
bag at the knees just as quickly and
decidedly as the brocks of the saint
who spends half his days on his knees?'
Why it is wrong to eat pie with a
knife?
What Washington said to General Lee
at the#5attie of Monmouth ?
Why so many generals in the army
have been privates ever since the war ?
How the directory of a railroad com¬
pany can get rich, while the stockhold¬
ers gradually starve to death?
How a receiver prospers and glows
fat on a business that ruined the mer
chant?
Why the man who “has gone out of
polities” never misses a convention, (and and
always keeps “in the hands also
the pockets) of Ins friends?”
What the State would do for peniten¬
tiaries if all the rascals should suddenly
step up and confess?
Why a woman falls liko a flash not
two inches from the banana skin she
steps on, while a man falls like howling a cyclone
half way round the block, and like last
a demon at every plunge, at
climaxes with a crash under a peanut
stand on the other side of the street ?
Why “pure bear's oil” is always
cheaper when pork is a,way down, aud
booms up like a balloon in tho cholera
years ?
Why, when spring chicken*-are so
small you have to eat iWm by the dozen
to taste one, the price is so high you have
to buy them by the chicken?
Why a man frequently tries to make
himself necessary when be would serve
humanity much better by making him¬
self scarce?
Why it is so nmeh easier to lose half
a dozen lasts than it Is to win one ?
Why Tom Thumb was always billed as
"twenty-three years old” until the day
he died, when he made a jump of more
than his life time?
Why some people “remember tho
Sabbath day” as though it was only a
parlor-car porter, and give it a quarter
in full for all demands?
Whatever liecame of tho “blue-glass
remedy ?”
And what went with all the archery
clubs ?
I don’t believe in philosophy wasting
its time on trifles. If the wise men want
something useful and practical problems.—Buu- to ponder
over, here are their
DfflTR.
“A fair outside is but a poor substi
tnte for inward worth,” says a writer,
That’s what the small boy thinks, when
he can’t find a hole under the fence big
enongh to crawl through, and has to
content himself with peeping through
the cracks.