Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

■:’* THE - 18 aimer ~3pjjjcssengct\ PUBLISHED EVERY THURSDAY -BY A. Eq&AR WI3C. The cruiser Bennington was storm tested off Cape Ilatteras, and found, congratulates Once a Week, to be all that we claim for her—-a fast and seaworthy gun-boat that neither tempest nor wavo can disconcert. The Canadians are troubled because the exodus to this side takes the best ele¬ ment of the population. It is believed the census of last year will show more than a million Canadians in the United States, or one-fifth of the population of Canada. Professor Thomas E. Edison’s latest suggestion is the most stupendous, thinks the Washington Star, of any he has made. He says that by surrounding a mountain of magnetic ore with wire, it would be possible to hear sounds from the sun. It would be going to a good deal of trouble, .adds the Star, merely for the sake of hearing a loud noise. The people of Iceland are the latest to be affected by the general spirit of dis¬ content that pervades Europe, observes the Philadelphia Record. Numbers of them have within the last few years set¬ tled in Manitoba, and it is now said that there will be a large immigration to Alaska. The Icelanders have long been itriving to secure autonomy in their borne affairs, but so far the mother country, Denmark, has refused them a fuller measure of legislative power. Charles H. Moore, a prominent lum¬ berman ol Galveston, Texas, contem¬ plates, it is said, the shipping of a hugfl raft of logs from Galveston to London, He thinks there is les3 risk in this trip than in shipping from St. Johns, New Brunswick, to New York. Old sea cap¬ tains assure him that his plan is entirely feasible. It is proposed to build the raft In three sections, firmly lashed and spiked together. It will be composed of yellow pine for building purposes. The London Financial Times place* the European wheat crop at 1,068,000, 000 bushels this year, a decrease of 263,. 000,000 bushels from 1890. It esti¬ mates the net decrease in the wheat crop of the world at 78,000,000 bushels. The net requirements of importing countries are put at 467,000,000 and the surplus of exporting countries at 390,000,000 busheb. It concludes that the deficit in wheat, as well as the larger deficit in the rye crop, must be made up by imports oi corn and provisions from America. The following sentence from a lettei from one of out friends in West Africa, remarks the New York Observer , shows how some of our missionaries live: “1 think it would greatly add to our live) and strength to have fresh meat once in two months instead of once in two years, as has been about the average since we came to Africa. ” This state¬ ment was made in view of the fact that there is now a better prospect of securing a supply of animal food at Kamondongo. Such provision is most desirable, and we are happy to learn that it can prob¬ ably be met. Notwithstanding the improved me¬ chanical prrecautions, the greater skill of employes, and the close which corporations, in their own interest, are bound to maintain, the frequency of railway accidents is said to be increasing in this country. The long series of aerioua wrecks this summer is strong evidence of the truth of this statement. A fact which must work to that end is the deterioration of roadbeds. One of the disasters which occurred on Western railroads this summer was manifestly due to the insecure condition of the rails. 'The railway authorities of the State in which it occurred notified the officers of the corporation that they must see to it that the road was properly repaired, or forfeit their franchise. The railway company’s officers replied that the road did not pay and therefore did nol warraut them in making the expenditures necessary to keep it in good physical condition, which was tantamount to an acknowledgment thet the road had nol been kept in a condition fit for use. This is no doubt an isolated case, but it is probable that many railways constructed in this country during the liat twentj years are getting to that where repairs are neceesarv. the mightiest water power. Boast not of the roaring river, Of the rocks its surges shiver. Nor of torrents over precipices hurled, For a simple little tear drop, That you cannot even hear drop, Is the greatest water power in the world. —Chicago Tribune. A CONSUMING FIRE, BY C. A. P. AND B. W. P. He is a man who has failed in this life, and says he has no chance of suc¬ cess in another; but out of the fragments of his failure he has pieced together for himself a fabric ot existence more satis¬ fying than most of us make of our suc¬ cesses. It is a kind of triumph to look as he does, to have his manner, and to preserve his attitude toward advancing years—those dreaded years which he faces with pale but smiling lips. If you would see my friend Hayden, commonly called by his friends the con¬ noisseur, figure to yourself a tall gentle¬ man of sixty-five, very erect still and graceful, gray headed and gray bearded, with fine gray eyes that have the storm tossed look of clouds on a windy March day, and a bearing that somehow im¬ presses you with an idea of the gracious and pathetic dignity of his lonely age. I myself am a quiet young man, with but one gift—I am a finished and artistic listener. It is this talent of mine which wins for me a degree of Hayden’s es¬ teem and a place at his table when he has a new story to tell. His connoisseur ship extends to everything of human in¬ terest, and his stories are often of the best. The last time that I had the honor of dining with him, there was present, be¬ sides the host and myself, only his close friend, that vigorous and successsul man, Dr. Richard Langworthy, the eminent alienist and specialist in nervous diseases. The connoisseur evidently had something to relate, but he refused to give it to us until the pretty dinner was over. Hay¬ den’s dinners are always pretty, and he has ideals in the matter of china, glass, and napery which it would require a woman to appreciate. It is one of his accomplishments that he manages to live like a gentleman and entertain his friends on an income which most people find quite inadequate for the purpose. After dinner we took coffee and re¬ fused cigars in the library. On the table, full in the mellow light of the great lamp (Hayden has a distaste for gas), was a bit of white plush on which two large opals were lying. One was an intensely brilliant globe of broken gleaming lights, in which the red flame burned strongest and most steadily; the other was as large, but paler. You would have said that the prisoned heart of fire within it had ceased to throb against the outer rim of ice. Langworthy, who is wise in gems, bent over them with an ex¬ clamation of delight. “Fine stones,” he said; “where did you pick them up, Hayden?” Hayden, standing with one hand on Langworthy’s shoulder, smiled down on the opals with a singular expression. It was as if he looked into beloved eyes for an answering smile. “They came into my possession in a singular way, very singular. “When I was in the West last summer, I spent some time in a city on the Pacific slope which has more pawnbrokers’ shops and that sort of thing in full sight on the prominent streets than any other town of the same size and respectability that I have ever seen. One day, when I had been looking in the bazars for something a little out of the regular line in Chinese curios and didn’t find it, it occurred to me that in such a cosmopolitan town there might possibly be some interesting things in the pawn shops, so I went into one to look. It was a common dingy place, kept by a common dingy man with shrewd eyes and a coarse mouth. Talk¬ ing to him across the counter was a man of another type. Distinction in good clothes, you know, one is never sure of. It may be only that a man’s tailor is dis¬ tinguished. But distinction in indiffer¬ ent garments, that is distinction indeed, and there before me I saw it. A young, . slight, carelessly dressed man, his bear¬ ing was attractive and noteworthy beyond anything I can express. His appearance was perhaps a little too unusual, for the contrast between his soft straw-colored hair and wine-brown eyes was such a striking one that it attracted attention from the real beauty of his face. “On the desk between the two men lay a fine opal—this one,” said Hayden, touching the more brilliant of the two stones. “The younger man was talking eagerly, fingering the gem lightly as he spoke. I inferred that he was offering to sell or pawn it. “The proprietor, seeing that I waited, apparently cut the young man short. He started, and caught up the stone. ‘I'll give you—’ I heard the other say, but the young man shook his head, nothing and de¬ parted abruptly. I found that I wanted in the place, and soon passed out. “In front of a shop window a little fuither down the street stood the other man, looking listlessly in with eyes that evidently saw nothing. As I came by he turned and looked into my face. His eyes fixed me as the Ancient Mariner’s did the Wedding Guest. It was and an ap¬ pealing yet commanding look, I— felt constrained to stop. I couldn’t help it, you know. Even at my age one is not beyond feeling the force of an im¬ perious attraction, and when you are past sixty you ought to be thankful on your knees for any emotion that is imperative in its nature. So I stopped beside him. I said: ‘It was a fine stone you were showing that man. I have a great fond¬ ness for opals. May I ask if you were oilering it for sale?’ “He continued to look at me, inspect¬ ing me calmly, with a fastidious expres¬ sion. Upon my word, I felt singularly honored when, at the end of a minute or two, he said: ‘I should like to show it to you. If you will come to my room with me, you may see that,and another;’ and he turned and led the way,I follow¬ ing quite humbly and gladly, though rather surprised at myself. “The room, somewhat to my astonish¬ ment, proved to be a large apartment, a front room high up in one of the best hotels. There were a good many things lying about that obviously were not hotel furnishings, and the walls, the bed, and even the floor were covered with a litter of water-color sketches. Those that I could see were admirable, being chiefly impressions of delicate and fleeting at¬ mospheric effects. “I took the chair he offered. He stood, still looking at me,apparently not in haste to show me the opals. I looked around the room. “•You are an artist?’ I said. t Oh, I used to be when I was alive,’ he answered, drearily. ‘I am nothing now.’ And then turning away he fetched a little leather case, and placed the two opals on the table before me. “ ‘This is the one I have always worn,’ he said, indicating the more bril¬ liant. That chillier one I gave once to the woman whom I loved. It was more vivid then. They are strange stones.’ “He said nothing more, and I sat in perfect silence, only dreading that he should not speak again. I am not making you dnderstand how he impressed me. In the delicate, hopeless patience of his face, in the refined, uninsistent accents of his voice, there was somehow struck a note of self-abnegation, of aloofness from the world, pathetic in any one so young. “I am old. There is little in life that I care for. My interests are largely affected. Wine does not warm me now, and beauty seems no longer beautiful, but I thank heaven I am not beyond the reach of a penetrating personality. I have at least the ordinary instincts for convention in social matters, but I assure you it seemed not in the least strange to me that I should be sitting in the private apartment of a man whom I had met only half an hour before, and then in a pawnbroker’s shop, listening eagerly for of matters wholly personal to It struck ms as the most natural and charming thing in the world. It was just such chance passing intercourse as I expect to hold with wandering spirits on the green hills of paradise. “It was some time before he spoke again. “ H first,’ he said, looking at the paler opal, as if it was of that he spoke, ‘on the street in Florence. It was a day in April, and the air was liquid gold. She was looking at the Campa¬ nile, as if she were akin to it. It was the friendly grace of one lily looking at another. Later, I met her as one meets other people, and was presented to her. And after that the days went fast. I think she was the sweetest woman God ever made. I sometimes wonder how He came to think of her. Whatever you may have missed in life,’ he said, lifting calm eyes to mine, and smiling a little, ‘you whose aspect is so sweet, decorus, and depressing, whose griefs, if you have griefs, are the subtle sorrows of the old and unimpassioned’—I remember his phrases literally. I thought them strik¬ ing and descriptive,” confessed Hayden —‘ 1 ‘I hope you have not missed that last touch of exaltation which I knew then. It is the most exquisite thing in life. The Fates must hate those from whose lips they keep that cup.’ He mused awhile, and added, ‘There is only one real want in life, and that is comradeship—comradeship with the di¬ vine, and that we call religion; with the human, and that we call love.’ “ ‘Your definitions are literature,’ I ventured to suggest, ‘but they are not fact. Believe me, neither love nor re¬ ligion is exactly what you call it. And there are other things almost as good in life, as surely you must know. There is art, and there is work which is work only, and yet i3 good.’ “ ‘You speak from your own experi¬ ence?’ he said, simply. “It was a home thrust. I did not, and I knew I did not. I am sixty-five years old, and I have never known just that complete satisfaction which I be¬ lieve arises from the perfect performance of distasteful work. I said so. He smiled. “ ‘I knew it when I set my eyes upon you, and I knew you would listen to me and my vaporing. Your sympathy with me is what you feel toward all forms of weakness, and in the last analysis it is self-sympathy. You are beautiful, not strong,’ he added, with an air of finali¬ ty, ‘and I—I am like you.’ “I enjoyed this singular analysis of myself, but I wanted something eke. “ ‘You were telling me of the opals,’ I suggested. “ ‘The opals, yes. Opals While always made me happy, you know. I wore one, I felt that a friend was near. My father found these in Hungary, and sent them to me—two perfect jewels. He said they were the twin halves of a single stone. I believe it to be true. Their mutual rela¬ tion is an odd one. One has paled as the other brightened. You see them now. When they were both mine, they were of almost equal brilliancy. This,’ touch- ing the paler, ‘is the one I gave to hers You see the difference in them now. Hev-s began to pale before she had worn it a month. I do not try to explain it, not even on the ground of the old supersti¬ tion. It was not her fault that they made her send it back to mo. But the fact re¬ mains; her opal is fading slowly; mine is burning to a deeper red. Some day hers will be frozen quite, while mine—mine —’ his voice wavered and fell on silence, as the flame of a candle fighting against the wind flickers and goes out. “I waited many minutes for him to speak again, but the silence was ua broken. At last I rose. ‘Surely you did not mean to part with either stone,’ I said.’ “He looked upas from a dream. ‘Part with them? Why should I sell my soul? I would not part with them if I were starving. I had a minute’s temptation, but that is past now.’ Then, with a change of manner, ‘You are going?’ He rose with a gesture that I felt then and still feel as a benediction, ‘Good-by. I wish for your own sake that you had not been so like my poor self that I knew you for a friend.’ “We had exchanged cards, but I did not see or hear of him again. Last week these stones came to mo, sent by some one here in New York of his own name —his executor. He is dead, and left me these. “It is here that I want your counsel. These stones do not belong to me, you know. It is true that we are like, as like as blue and violet. But there is that woman somewhere. I don’t know where, and I know no more of their story than he told me. I have not cared to be curious regarding it or him. But they loved once, aud these belong to her. Do you suppose they would be a comfort or a curse to her? If—if—” the connois¬ seur evidently found difficulty in stating his position. “Of course I do not mean to say that I believe one of the stones waned while the other grew more bril¬ liant. I simply say nothing of it; but I know that he believed it, and I, even I, feel a superstition about it. I do not want the light in that stone to go out, or if it should, or could, I do not want to see it. And, besides, if I were a woman, and that man had loved me so, I should wish those opals.” Here Hayden looked up and caught Langworthy's amused tolerant smile. He stopped, and there was almost a flush npon his cheek. “You think I am maudlin—doting, I see,”he said. “Langworthy, I do hope the Lord will kindly let you die iu the harness. You haven’t any taste for these innocent green pastures where we old fellows must disport ourselves, if we disport at all. Now, I want to know if it would be—er—indelicate to attempt to find out who she is, and to restore the stones to her?” Langworthy, who had preserved throughout his usual air of strict scien¬ tific attention, jumped up and began to pace the room. “His name?” he said. Hayden gave it. “I know the man,” said Langworthy, almost reluctantly. “Did any one who ever saw him forget him? He was on the verge of melancholia, but what a mind he had!” “How did you know him, Lang¬ worthy?” asked Hayden, with pathetic “As a patient. It’s a sad story. You like it. You had better keep your without the addition of auy of the facts.” “Go on,” said Hayden, briefly. “They live here, you know. He was the only son. He unconsciously ac¬ the morphine habit from taking of the stuff for neuralgic during a severe protracted After he got better, and found what had happened to him, he came to me. I had to tell him he would die if he didn’t break it off, and would prob¬ ably die if he did. ‘Oh, no matter,’ he said. ‘What disgusts me is the idea that it has taken such a hold of me.’ He did break it off, directly and absolutely. I never knew but one other man who did that thing. But between the pain and the shock from the sudden cessation of the drug, his mind was the unbalanced for a while. Of course girl’s parents broke off the engagement. I knew they were traveling with him last summer. It was a trying case, and the way he ac¬ cepted his own weakness touched me. At his own request he carried no money with him. It was a temptation when he wanted the drug, you see. It must have been at such moment, when he contem¬ plated giving up the struggle, that you met him in the pawn shop.” “1 am glad I knew enough to respect him even there,” murmured Hayden, in his beard. “Ob, you may respect him, and love him if you like. He died a moral hero, if a mental and a physical wreck. “And the woman?” asked the con¬ noisseur. “Keep the opals, Hayden; they and he are more to you than to her. She— in fact it is very soon—I believe that she is to marry another man.” “Who is—” “A gilded cad. That’s all.” Lang worthy took out his watch and looked at it. I turned to the table. What had happened to the dreaming stones? Did a light flash across from cne to the other, or did my eyes deceive me? I looked down, not trusting what I saw. One opal lay as pale, as pure, as lifeless, as a moon-stone is. The other glowed with a yet fierier spark; instead of coming from within, the color seemed to play over its surface in unrestricted flame. <<8ee here I” 1 said. Langworthy looked, then turned hi9 head away sharply. The distaste of tire scientific man for the inexplicable and irrational was very strong within him. But the old man bent forward, the lamp-light shining on his white hair, and with a womanish gesture caught the gleaming opal to his lips. “A kunaan soul!” he said. “A human soul. — Harper's Weekly. % Alaska’s Great Glacier. —1 A sun-burned but jolly party of tour¬ ists arrived »t the Palmer House the other day. They wore Commodore John J. Dickerson, of the New York Yacht Club, his wife aud two children, Miss G. Seeley and W. H. Chapman. The travelers are returning east after a two months’ trip to Alaska and the Yellow¬ stone Park. “I have traveled from the Hawaiian Islands to Egypt, but I never beheld a more beautiful sight than the Nyer glacier, two miles north of Sitka,” said the commodore, while at the Palmer last' evening. “The glacier is one mile wide and over 200 feet high, and it throws out the most magnificent colors. I have seen hundreds of glaciers, but none like the Neyer. hills of ice “Generally the monster delicate tint. are dirty and do not contain a Not so with the huge mass in Alaska. It is as clear a3 manufactured cakes of ice, and contains the most gorgeous colors.! At the base the color is a beautiful sap¬ phire blue and at the top a snow white. It was a rough trip to get the re,but I do not have any regrets for the hardships 1 was compelled to undergo. all “The Neyer glacier keeps moving the time at the rate of seventy-five feet a day. It moves out into the bay where the water is 200 feet deep, and chunks of ice as large as the Palmer House fre quently break off and float away. Some times a chunk three times at large as the hotel will break away from the glacier, and the sound that is made when the crack in the ice takes place is like the report of a thousand cannons fired simul¬ taneously. moving “The reason the glacier keeps out into the bay and chunks constantly break away is because of the enormous pressure behind the mass, The ice that constantly keeps accumulating behind the glacier,which is situated in a kind of ravine a mile wide, weighs millions of tons, and room must be made for it.”— Chicago Tribune. Russia is the Rye Country. Russia is the rye-producing country of the world. The crop is very poor, and the Czar lias commanded that none of it shall be exported. The Germans, who eat rye and not wheat, are alarmed. The soldiers are grumbling seriously at the prospect of being obliged to feed upon wheat bread, this year. Incidentally, the few millions of bushels of rye grown in the United Btrtes have advanced in value. It is very curious to observe how the different nations eat different grains. In the United States we feed largely upon corn, which in England is thought to be only good for horses. A very few years ago we ate no oats; at present we con¬ sume more oatmeal than does any other people. We don’t care much for rye, except for distilling into whisky, and so our production of it is comparatively small. Germany and Russia eat rye, while all western Europe feeds upon wheat. Go into a German beer-saloon, and it is always rye bread that you will find upon the bar. China and Japan choose rice for their grain. So does India. The latter also is a large con¬ sumer of millets—grassy-looking cereal plants, which are only considered fit for forage in this country.— Boston Tran¬ script. A Human Footprint in a Stone. On May 13, 1882, Mr. John B. Wig¬ gins, of Waverly, N. J., while searching for ethnological specimens on top of Blue Mountain, Perry County, Pennsylvania, discovered what is now believed to be the earliest trace of man in America. It is a piece of stone composed of meia morphic lime, about nine and a half inches thick, nine inches long, four indhes wide, and weighs six pounds. In the solid rock is the perfect impression of the right foot of a man. The foot¬ print is seven and a half inches long, three and a half inches wide across the ball of the foot and three inches wide one-half the distance from the small too to the heel. The pint is about a half inch deep, and distinctly shows the toe3, five in number, the whole being a per¬ fect impression of a shapely foot. Who was this early American, and in what age of the world did he step on that piece of soft clay which has now lieen transformed into a solid rock?— St. Louis Republic. A Moose Horn Grafted Into a Tree. Something of a curiosity is on ex¬ hibition in a show window at D. J. Hen nessy’s. It consists of a very large moose horn, grafted into a base of a tree. It has been in that position for years, as the tree has grown around it so as to get such a grip on it that cutting the wood away is the only means of separating the two. It was found near the Kitty O’Brien mine on the High lands, south of town, by Tom Gordon. It is evident that at some remote period of a huntsman was chasing the monarch the woods, who, in running away, was caught in a tree and in trying to extri cate himself the horn was broken off.— Butte ( Montana) Inter-Mountain.