Newspaper Page Text
Me duty Tibs.
TRENTON, GEORGIA.
Ae unknown expert has eaused con
aiderable alarm in New York by the pro
duction of a cheap alloy so much like
sold that it cannot be distinguished from
the genuine article. Several jewelers
and refiners have been deceived after
making the severest tests. “If the dis
coverer of this new method of making
gold works his secret for all it is worth”
declares the Atlanta Constitution, “the
effect will be far-reaching. People will
no longer buy solid gold jewlery, and
governments will no longer issue gold
coin. The discovery of new gold fields
will excite no interest. Why dig for
gold when au expert chemist can mako
it?”
Its is rather a singular circumstance,
observes the Mail and Express , that hang
ing, which has just been abolished in
the State of New York, as a means ol
carrying out the last penalty of the law,
should be converted by a New York
physician into a means of preserving hu
man life, and preserving it in usefulness.
The gallows has hitherto been the
Sheriff’s instrument for destroying life.
It is now to be a healing and saving in
strument in the hands of the physicians
and surgeons. If this new thing works
well the gallows tree will become a bless
ing to humanity, the hangman will be
come a gentleman, and “Go and be
hanged” will be dropped from the list oi
maledictory phrases.
Says a cigarette drummer to a reporter
for the New York Tribune: “The con
sumption of cigarettes has fallen ofl
greatly during the last year. The house
I used to represent used to have a large
trade in all the popular brands oi
cigarettes. It still sells large quantities
of them, but not more than sixty per
cent, of as mauy packages as a year ago.
A great many persons who used to sraok<
cigarettes have quit doing so and are
now smoking cigars. The result is that
while the cigarette trade has decreased
the cigar trade has increased. I don’i
know how to account for this state of
facta, unless it is due to the onslaught
made during the last two years by the
press and pulpit upon the cigarette
habit.”
The approach of a new census always
stimulates the counting and adding ma
chine inventors. Some genius has just
made a most elaborate affair in this line,
which is described at length in th<
Washington Capital. It is specially de
signed to facilitate the tallying of tabu
lated statistics. The method is thus
described: This method consists essen
tially in first recording the date relating
to each person by punching holes in th<
sheets or strips of electrically non-con
ducting material (paper), and then count
ing or tailing these data, either sepa
rately or in combination, by means ol
mechanical counters operated by electro
magnets, the circuits through which are
controled by the perforated cards or
strips. The method is already success
fully in use at the Surgeon-General’s of
fice for the handling of medical returns
from the army posts.
That the United States produce the
best pork in the world, asserts the
Prairie Farmer, none who are familiar
with the product the world over will
question. It is encouraging, therefore,
to know that our Government will at
tempt to allay the prejudice that exists
against it in certain parts of Europe by
having the product exhibited at the
foreign expositions, and the exhibits in
charge of men capable of imparting to
visitors correct information respecting
it. We can raise pork for the world, and
with proper effort on the part of our
Government to stimulate the demand, its
may be doubled in a short
time. In no other of our exports is the
competition so slight or the possibilities
of development so great. We should
spare no effort in working for increased
foreign trade in pork. Every farmer in
the country would be benefited by it.
The Paris correspondent of the Phila
delphia Press of recent date says.
Frenchmen are now killing themselves
between nine and ninety in a constantly
increasing progression. The figures ar«
immensely higher, as a rule, in the North
than in the South and in towns than in
the country. The returns published by
the Minister of Justice show that since
1826 inclusive, the yearly average of sui
cides throughout France has risen from
five to ten for every 100,000 inhabitants.
The figures have therefore doubled in
thirty years. In 1876 there were 5804
cases of self-murder; in 1880 we find
0638 and in 1887 no fewer than 7187.
The total number during 1887, the last
recorded year, was 7572. of which 2168
are attributed to mental afflictions of
different kinds, 1228 to physical suffer
ing, 975 to domestic trouoles, 800 to
drunkenness, 482 to poverty, 305 to
pecuniary difficulties, 202 to the desire
to avoid imprisonment, 100 to the loss of
employment, 89 to the fear of exposure,
56 to the loss of relatives and 25 to the
dread of military service. Among the
other cases specified in the returns 22 <
suicides are put down to jealousy and
grossing in love. /
A FRIEND.
Tbe radiant beauty of her tender face
I iWas bat an echo of her lovelier soul;
To all things fair she lent a fairer grace;
What was not sweet some sweetness from her
stole;
In daily loving acts she met their needs
Who dreamed of future great and noble deeds.
She strove to round her life unto that law
She willed to be the world’s, in act and word?
Where others found but ill, some good she saw,
And held from all whate’or unkind she heard ;
She fain would see linked closer friend to friend,
And sought to make love deeper grow, not end.
And what she seemed to bo she was, in sooth,
Alike to all. herself, sincere and truo,
Earnest and trusting all, for such was truth
To her. It gave her faith in those she know,
And if they grew indeed, beneath her spell,
More like to what she thought them, who can
tell?
She loved the world, and made ft fair each day
About her ; to her steps joy seemed to cling ;
Thro igh paths of love she took her gentle way,
And dropped her words and looks like flowers
of spring.
And though she died in youth, who will but say
The world is better for her life’s short day?
—Oertrucle Alger.
MINE AND THINE.
BY D. T. HEATH.
Take me, and lock your amorous arms
About my willing neck. Entwine;
And press ino close in your embrace
And let your golden ht ad incline.
Bring rosebud lips to meot my lips,
Bear love, for I am thine.
I’ll kiss your dewy, pouting lips,
Tinted with rose-carnaiion fine,
As sweet as honey.dew they are,
As sweet as crazy love’s new wine;
I’ll taste their sweetness when I like,
Dear love, for thou art mine.
HER AUNT MEANT WELL
BY MARY E. MOFFAT.
“Fritz, go down to tlie servants’ hall
and ask if either of the maids would
like a sweetheart,”
The valet stared at his master —un-
decided whether to take his words as a
i'est or to act upon the command he
tad given. It was surely most extra
ordinary for the Baron to have time
to bandy words about the underlings
of his household just upon the eve of
his own marriage w’ith a fair and noble
lady; but his doubts were soon put to
rest.
There was no mistaking the angry
emphasis with which he repeated his
order; and Fritz at once hastened out
of the room and made his way to the
place where he would be sure to find a
knot of servants congregated to gossip
over the events of the day, or to can
vass the respective merits of their
master and of the bride whom he was
to lead to the altar within the week.
The question which Fritz had been
told to ask was duly delivered, and re
ceived by his hearers in the various
ways peculiar to each individual. One
somewhat forward young woman said,
with a toss of her ringleted head: “If
I do want a lover, it won’t be you; and
he’ll have to ask me twice.”
A giggling girl crammed her hand
kerchief into her mouth, to keep from
showing every pearly tooth within that
capacious part of her physiognomy.
Another cast an expressive glance in
the direction of one of the footmen, and
allowed silence to answer for her more
potently than words.
Only one little maid of sixteen, fresh
from the verdant fields, amid which
she had been bom apd bred, turned
and looked at Fritz with an ingenious
smile in her big blue eyes and upon
her pretty lips.
“I never had a sweetheart,” she said
softly, “and I’d dearly love to have
one. Only he must be a proper, well
behaved lad—or I wouldn’t care for
him at all.”
Her answer was greeted with a shout
of laughter, which caused her to look
around with a surprise which gave
fresh fuel to the amusement she had al
ready caused.
But the housekeeper had taken a
liking to the little, innocent creature,
and she interposed her authority to
shield her from the ridicule of her fel
lows.
“Gretchen is young, and knows little
of the world’s ways. When she is as
old as the rest of you she will be wiser, ”
she said, looking around at the amused
group.
Fritz also had not joined in the
laugh at Gretchen’s expense. For, if
he hail a warm corner in his heart, it
was for a little sister who had died in
childhood, and Gretchen was her liv
ing image.
He bowed with grave courtesy to
her, as he replied: “I will tell the
Baron what you have said.”
Then he went immediately back to
his master, whom he found reading—
with a frowning brow—a closely writ
ten letter. It was the same which he
had held in his hand when he had
turned from its fir*perusal and given
Fritz the abrupt command which he
had just returned from obeying.
“There’s a little field-daisy of a girl
among the servants who says she never
had a sweetheart, and would be well
pleased to get one under certain con
ditions. ”
As Fritz said this with the gravity
due the occasion, the Baron turned to
him with a peremptory: “Go to Frau
Brandt, and say I wish to see her at
once. Then bring the girl hither who
made you the answer you have repeat
ed to me, and wait outside in the hall
until I tell you to come in.”
The mystified Fritz had nothing to
do but to obey. Had the Baron not
been about to marry the lovely and
high-born Fraulein Anna, ho would
have been thinking: “What new mis
chief is afoot now?”
But, of course, all ideas of that kind
with reference to liis master would
now be out of the bounds of all prob
ability. A family man was henceforth
to be the role he was to fill. So Fritz
could only wonder at the course things
seemed about to take.
Frau Brandt had the interview with
the Baron, and Fritz and Gretchen
waited patiently outside, as they had
been ordered.
Some time elapsed, and the portly
housekeeper came fortn, and after an
interval spent by her in another part
of the mansion, she returned with some
rich articles of wearing apparel thrown
over her arm.
As she passed the two she said:
“Come into the Baron's room with me,
Gretchen. He has somewhat to say
to you. You, also, can be present,
Fritz.”
There was an air of suppressed ex
citement about Frau Brandt which did
not escape Fritz’* observant eyes. But
Gretchen accepted everything as a
matter of course.
She was well versed in the fairy-folk
lore of Germany, and believed in Hans
Anderson to the heart’s core. So she
had expected to be surprised when she
had come from the country to seek her
fortune, and was in nowise flustered by
this strange summons from the Baron,
albeit it had set the rest of the house
hold in a stir.
Gretchen wouldn’t have been sur
prised to have seen a fairy prince wait
ing her in the Baron’s room.
Instead of anything so extraordinary,
I however, she only saw her master, with
a most singular light in his large black
eyes, as he turned them upon her face
as she came in. Then, too, there was a
decided frown upon his forehead, which
caused his heavy, dark brows to meet
together above siis eyes, and a firm set
of his lips beneath the heavy mus
tache, which boded stormy weather to
some one; but, fortunately, that some
one was not little Gretchen.
His look softened involuntarily as he
Baw how young and innocent was tho
pretty face upturned to meet his gaze.
Gretchen stood modestly expectant of
what was next to happen—her hands
clasped, and her head bending a little
forward in her eagerness.
The Baron turned to Fran Brandt.
“She looks like a good girl, as you
say she is. To be sure, her air is that
of a rustic, but time and education will
change that, and I will see that it does
not at the same time refine ali the heart
out of her as it does out of her highr
born sisters!”
Then he said to Gretchen:
“Come hither, little Gretchen, and I
will say to you svhat it is I want of you.
I have had reason to think that all
women in my station of life are as false
as they are fair. For certain reasons I
have concluded to marry, and have
paade all necessary arrangements to
receive my affianced bride in a manner
befijfr'ng her station and my own. She,
at has sent me a letter
deellfcn fTJ.t she has changed her
mindfMEbSig to rmjorfs which have
reacließn. r some previous
in my life. She has been
in the matter by a relative,
who, at the last hour, has seen fit to
interfere. Now, Ido not propose to
wear the willow for my false sweet
heart, and my wedding is to come off
at once, providing that a bride is forth
coming. You are young, innocent,
and poor. I am middle-aged, blase,
and rich. But if I marry I shall prom
ise to be a kind and indulgent if not
a sentimental husband. Will you ac
cept the change of fortune I now’ offer
you, and marry me V”
Gretchen listened with open-eyed
wonder. Was it really true that this
noble Baron had asked her to be his
wife ?
He was so handsome and stately that
people in her station thought him more
princely looVng than the son of the
Emperor! one had heard them say so
many times.
“Oh, sir, do you mean it ?” she asked,
“or are you only making sport of a poor
girl like me?”
“I mean every word you have heard
me say. What is your reply?”
“My reply is, that I will love yon
with my whole heart! that I will wor
ship the very ground you walk upon!
but, oh, sir, lam not good enough to
be your wife! you will be ashamed
of me among all the fine ladies who
are your friends! and then I should
feel like falling down at your feet and
dying!”
“No, little Gretchen, I promise not
to be ashamed of you. I will value you
because you have a time, loving heart—
a thing which has been left out of the
make-up of the fine young ladies of
whom you speak.”
And the Baron’s voice had in it a ring
of bitter scorn.
“Then, too, I shall not expose you to
a chance of being shamed by a contrast
with them. We will go abroad, and
you shall be educated in a manner be
fitting your change of rank. What is
your auswer, Gretchen—yes or no ?”
“Yes,” came tremblingly from the
little peasant girl’s red lips.
“Then Frau Brandt shall see to it
that you are robed for your wedding
day, w hile my worthy Fritz goes forth
in search of a clergyman.
Thus it was that Gretchen became a
fine lady.
The Baron kept his promise to be
kind and indulgent to her, and after
their marriage ho left the country
without introducing his bride to any
one of his friends.
While she was pursuing the course
of studies and of accomplishments
which he marked out for her, he be
came interested in w atching and also
in helping the gradual unfolding of her
mental powers, which proved to be of
a high order.
So that the marriage instigated by
pique and anger at what had occi red
proved to be one of those which they
say are made in heaven.
After a time a noble boy came to
bless their union, and after a few years
a daughter was born to them.
Both children inherited the grace
and comeliness of their peasant-born
mother and the line intellect and
patrician bearing of their father.
In time he returned to his native
land with his wife and children. All
knew of their romantic story, and
looked forward with curiosity to see
how the lowly born wile would carry
her honors; but those who had ex
pected to be amused were instead
taken captive by her modest grace, and
her sensible answers to the salutations
of the Baron’s friends.
And when, a little later, she was
brought face to face with the fair and
haughty lady who had recalled her
promise to wed with the man who was
now her husband and the father of her
children, a flutter of pleasui’e ran
about the interested throng, as they
saw the Baron bend with courtly def
erence before Frauleiu Anna and say:
“Let me present to you my wife, and
at tho same time thank you heartily
for allowing me to win so priceless a
treasure,” and then without pausing to
notice the flush offended pride had
brought to the cheeks of the lady thus
addressed, he had bowed again a most
deferential adieu, and had turned in
differently away from her to address
another acquaintance who was drawing
near to be presented to the Baroness.
That night after Fraulein Anna re
turned home, she said in a bitter tone
to her spinster aunt, whose accounts oi
the fast life which had characterized
the Baron’s early, days had caused her
to break off her betrothal with him so
abruptly, “Auni Gretel, you have
ruined my life! my heart is filled with
envy to see that low-born woman’s
happiness! why did you interfere?’’
Tears tilled the eyes of the elder
woman as she saw that her niece’s blue
eyes were overflowing. But it was too
late to remedy the evil she had caused.
She could only look up and say con
tritely, “Forgive me, Anna, if I did
wrong. It was fer love of you that I
interfered- And all that I said was
true. The wour d you gave to the
Baron has probably proved bis cure.
Had he married you he would have
perhaps remained a profligate. At any
rate, dear, forgive me. I will try and
make up to you in fortune what you
have lost in love.”
Fraulein Anna turned toward her
aunt impulsively.
“I forgive you fully and freely, be
cause you love me--not on account of
what worldly gcods you will bestow
upon me! for fortune does not count in
place of lost happiness! We will live
on together now, two lonely spinsters
—for I shall never marry. And never
again, after this evening, shall my lips
reproach you, for I know you meant
well. This one thing, though, I will
say, ‘lt is wicked to come between
plighted lovers! ’ ”
“Stopping” Horses’ Feet.
Horses tnat are used on hot pave
ments or other situations which in
duce a hot, dry condition of the feet,
require special treatment to palliate
the evil. This generally consists of
filling the concave sole and all the
space within the shoe at night with
Bt me moist substance. The most usual
material for this purpose has for a long
time been fresh cow dung, either alone
or mixed with clay. While no one can
question the value of the practice, the
substance named is utterly unfit for the
purpose. Strangely enough, it >is rec
ommended by many eminent veteri
nary writers, though all admit that it
is a fruitful source of thrush. One of
these, after stating that thx-ush is
caused by the horse standing in its own
dung or other filth, recommends wrap
ping with cow dung as a palliative!
Another, equally eminent, remarks that
it should be “used with great caution
where there is any disposition to thrush.”
As if there ever was a horse without
such a “disposition” if its feet are kept
in contact with filth. Professor Law
denounces the use of this substance
by implication in a sentence. He gives
as the causes of thrush, “Exposure to
wet and filth; standing on dung or in a
dirty, wet yard; stuffing the feet with
cow dung,” etc. Then why fill the feet
with the filthy, corroding stuff? A
clean and inoffensive material is made
by mixing linseed meal with an equal
part of clay and wetting the mixture
to the desired consistence. This accom
plishes the object, without danger of
unpleasant effects, says the American
Agriculturist.
Opera in Italian.
Mrs. Pinks (at a new Italian opera)
—Wasn’t she graceful then?
Husband (eyes on libretto) —Didn’t
notice. I’m following the plot. Did
the action seem to fit the situation
and music?
Mrs. Pinks—Mercy me! How can I
tell ? I am not following the plot. I’m
watching the stage. —New York
Weekly.
A philosopher says: “Woman’s si
lence is more terrible than her speech;”
but very few benedicts believe that
question.
A MEXICAN’S ADOBE HOT.
BUILDINGS MADE OP MUD AND
REFUSE HAY.
Easily-Built Dwellings, With the
Pigs, Goats and Dogs Living
With the Family.
A correspondent of the New York
World says in a letter from Fort Davis,
Texas: It is hardly right to say that
the Mexicans live; they do not live as
we understand living—they merely ex
ist. The town of Chihuahua covers ten
or twelve acres, and is composed entirely
of adobe buildings. The adobes are
made of mud and refuse hay. In making
adobes four Mexicans work'together.
They start a hole in the ground, pour in
some water and throw in some refuse
hay. Then one man takes off his
trousers and gets into the hole with a
hoe; he mixes the mud, hay ancf water
until it is of the right consistency. Two
more men with a hand-barrow carry the
mixture up on the level ground, taking
enough each time to make two adobes.
This they turn over to the fourth man,
who, with a wooden frame, molds the
adobes. They are generally twelve
inches square on the bottom and four
inches thick. When the sun has dried
these sufficiently to make them hold to
gether they are turned up on edge to
dry more thoroughly. Four men work
ing thus can, if they contract to do so,
make 1000 adobes in a day, about one
third the number required to build an
ordinary house. The walls are made of
adobe only, more of the mud being used
for mortar. Only one thickness of adobe
is used, but this makes the wall twelve
inches thick. When about eight feet
up the poles for the roof are put across;
these are covered with brush and then
about nine inches of mud is put on the
brush. A doorway is left in one side
and a fireplace and chimney are built.
With this the house is completed. No
windows, no floor, no partitions, except
in some of the larger houses that have
two rooms instead of one.
In the daytime the door does the
woik of window also, and at night they
may have a candle or in cold weather
the light of the fire if they are fortunate
enough to have one. In this house will
live a Mexican, his wife and their chil
dren, perhaps four or five. These adobe
houses are well adapted to this climate ;
in summer they are cool and in winter
they are warm. There ia so little rain
that the adobe walls do not wash away.
Sometimes small stones are stuck into
the adobes to make them withstand the
action of the rain better.
In a northern climate, where there is
a heavy rainfall and where there is much
frost, an adobe house would crumble to
pieces in a year or two. But in this
part of Texas we sometimes go a yeai
without any rain, and never have any
or but little frost, so that a well-built
adobe house will last almost indefinitely.
There is little slope to the roof, so when
it does ram the water runs off but little,
so that the mud gets soft and if the
rain continues long, for a day or more,
the mud will drop down inside. The
Americans here all live in adobe houses,
but they build perhaps a two-story house
and finish it with wood and plaster and
so make it very comfortable.
A Mexican will generally collect four
or five worthless, half-starved dogs
about him, and these live’ in the one
room with the rest of the family. The
door always being open, I have fre
quently seen the pigs, burros and goats
going inside to get out of the sun.
Only those who have seen how the Mexi*
cans of this country live can realize the
low position that they occupy in the
scale of humanity. It is not one in ten
of them that can read or write; they
give no thought to schools or churches.
The Americans among whom they live
establish schools and churches, and a
few Mexicans attend these. They cer
tainly can have no ambition in life; they
work only to make a living from day to
day.
They live in a climate that is mild
the year around, so they require but little
in the way of clothing, shelter or fuel,
and they use just enough of each of
these to get along. They seem to drink
but very little, probably largely from
the fact that they cannot get the money
to buy liquor. About the only luxury
that they indulge in is smoking cigar
ettes. They do but little work and so
require but little foood. This consists
chiefly of cornmeal, made by grinding
the corn between two stones worked
with the hands. They kill a goat once
in a while and have a little meat, and
those that can afford it have bread and
coffee.
One thing that the Mexicans are fond
of is dancing. They have their bailes
very often, and then the young and the
old go and they dance nearly all night.
A bronco baile is a mixed danoe, and
where everybody goes.
The World’s Greatest Lumber Region.
A lumber pile made of boards, each
100 feet long and 6 feet in width, would
be an unprecedented sight in the East,
but a gentleman recently returned from
a visit to the coast of the North Pacific!
Ocean says that piles of lumber, such as
that are common at the mills on Puget
Sound. “Boards 100 feet long and (I
feet wide, without a knot in them,” he
says, “are common cuts from the gigan
tic fir trees of the Puget Sound forests.
These trees glow to the enormous height
of 250 feet, and the forests are so vast
that although the saw-mills have been
ripping 500,000,000 feet of lumber out
of them every year for ten years, the
spaces made by these tremendous inroadd
seem no more than garden patches.
Puget Sound has 1800 miles of shore
line, and all along this line, and extend
ing thence on both sides, miles and
miles further than the eye can see, is
one vast and almost unbroken forest of
these enormous trees. There is nothing
like it anywhere on the Pacific coast
An official estimate places the amount
of standing timber in that area at
500,000,000,000 feet, or a thousand
years’ supply, even at the enormous rate
the timber is being felled and sawed.
The timber belt covers ;’>0,000,000 acres
of Washington Territory, an area equal
to the States of \ ermont, Massachusetts,
Connecticut and New Hampshire. The
markets for the Puget Sound lumber
are entirely foreign, being South
America, Australia, Central America
and the Pacific Ocean islands.”—Phila
delphia Press.
Jews are found in large numbers along
the northern coast of Africa, as well as
in Abyssinia.
SELECT SIFTINGS.
Tarpon fishing is growing in popiF
larity.
Thirty years ago bald heads were a
curiosity.
The greatest height ever attained by an
aeronaut is 37,000 feet.
Ann Arbor, Mich., has suppressed the
sale of Sunday newspapers in its borders.
German cavalry officers hereafter will
have to include steeplechasing in their
studies.
The rarest and costliest of precious
metals is gallium. It is valued at $3250
an ounce.
H. Monk, of Lewiston, Me., has in
vented a machine that will starch eight
shirts a minute.
Sponges belong to the animal king
dom, although they were formerly
thought to be vegetable.
Squashes are now SBS a ton in Boston,
and the price is constantly advancing.
In former years the price has been about
$25 a ton.
George Swift, a boy of nine, living at
South Chicago, 111., was refused a cookie
by his mother and he went out and flung
himself under a train of cars.
At a Floridian fair a pretty Chinese
pagoda booth was one of the sensations.
It was entirely covered with oranges,
more than 5000 being used upon the
roof alone.
Blackbird oil is almost as expensive a
product as attar of roses. It sells usually
for SBO a gallon, or about $5 a pound.
A great deal of it is manufactured in
Connecticut.
Buckwheat is a corruption of hoc,
German buche, beech-wheat, so called
because it is triangular, like the beech
nut. The botanical name is fago-pyrum
(beech-wheat).
The “wine of years” is wine which is
reputed to have been made in the years
in which comets have been seen in the
heavens. The wines of 1811, ’26,’39, ’45,
’52, ’SB, ’6l, ’Bl are thus known.
At a political, patriotic, or social
gathering, composed of men only, any
where in New York, Americans usually
come in singly, Irishmen two at a time,
and Germans four or five together.
There is superstition among miners
that every ten years rich diggings will
be discovered somewhere. The record
so far is California, 1849; Pike’s Peak,
1859; Nevada, 1869; Leadville, 1879.
At an extensive factory in Detroit,
Mich., machinery cuts from a log of
steamed wood a thin sheet large enough
for a full-sized barrel. This new method
of cooperage is called the “veneering
process.”
The great canal of China connecting
Canton with Pekin is 1000 miles long
and i 3 the longest in the world. The
Erie, 363 miles, comes next. The Albe
marle and Chesapeake is between eight
and nine miles long.
At Bombay, India, a young worshiper
of the sun has recently confessed to the
murder of three persons simply for
robbery. The crimes were atrociously
committed and without any accomplices.
The young Parsee stated with sadness
that he had only realized about thirty
cents from the threefold atrocity.
Care of the Eyes.
Shades, on lamp or gas burners should
be of “milk” or ground glass; never of
colored glass.
Never sleep opposite a window which
will throw a flood of strong light on
your eye 3 when you wake in the morn
ing.
When bathing the face do not open
the eye under water, as this is apt to be
injurious to the epithelial covering of
the eye.
In all institutions, particularly for
children, where the eyes are required to
do close work, the proportion of the
square surface of the windows to the
square surface of the floor should never
fall below one to four.
The short-sighted eye is essentially
a diseased eye, and should be treated aa
such. It effects by preference those who
use their eyes constantly for fine or neat
work, and is almost unknown among
the uncivilized nations.
When children work by light which
falls in their faces they are apt to bend
the body forward so as to shade the eyes
by the head, or else twist it around so
that the light shall fall on the page.
Both of these positions are pernicious.
There is great danger of the chest be
coming narrow and contract’d and of
the spine becoming curved.
To bathe the eyes properly, take a
large basin of cold water, bend the head
close over it, and with both hands throw
the water with some force on the gently
closed lids. This has something of the
same effect as a shower-bath, and has a
toning-up influence which water applied
in any other way has not.
An Unique Plant.
The gradual extinction of a species is
not au uncommon phenomenon. In
most cases many individuals of the van
ishing species are known to exist. One
plant, however, seems to be perfectly
alone in the world—the last of its race.
This unique specimen is on the island of
St. Helena. It is a tree about twenty
feet high. Formerly this species seems
to have been common on the island,
forming large groves, but the wood
man’s ax and the ravages of goats have
left only this single specimen. It is
unique in another respect and of great
botanical interest, for it bears flowers
like those of the aster, being, in fact,
the only known tree of the composite, a
family which, with this exception, com
prises only herbaceous plants. It is to
be hoped that an attempt will be made
to propagate the species from the seed
of this plant.
Vanderbilt and the Old Engineer.
A good story is told in the Bangor
(Me.) Commercial about one of the Maine
Central engineers. Last summer, when
the Vanderbilt car was at Bar Harbor,
the manager of the Maine Central sent
an engine down there to take the car to
Portland. The run was made in very
quick time, and at Brunswick the train
stopped to take on water. While there
Mr. Vanderbilt got out and said to the
engineer that he didn’t want him to
drive so fast. The engineer, the veteran
Simpson, looked at him a quarter of a
minute, and then said: “I am running
the engine under orders from Payson
Tucker to be in Portland at 1:07. If
you want to stop here, all right. If you
want to go to Portland, get in.” He
got in.