Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

THE LINCOLNTON NEWS J. X). COLLEY & CO., VOL. I. Mt* FOUR SEASONS* bpbino. Laughing xxxaiden, how I love you 1 Gay as any woodland bird, Sparkling as the stars above you, Of your t»eauty all have heard. Happy as a t>ee in clover, Singing not, nor being stung, Full of joy and running over, Binging songs the sweetest sung. Now you have found a milk-white blossom Of the early red pocoon, It is sweeter to your vision Than a "world of dowers in June. Not a shadow ever lingers Where your fair footsteps fall, For your "wise and wand-like fingers Touch no pleasures that can fall. Gathering only thornless roses, Stranger to the pangs of love, Keveling "Where it reposes, Could you be more blest above? SUMMER. . Pensive, t»lushing girl I love you; You’ve n secret hard to keep ; God’a blue sky, that bends above you, Watches, while you pray and weep. Buds must bloom if earth has blossoms, Death is life—life bitter sweet, Let the rose leaves lie and moulder In the grass beneath yonr feet. Joy and sorrow round you hover; You have gained and you have lost—* Gained a true and faithful lover, But your heart is tempest tossed. You’re a captive—but your master Is your slave. Be true as steel. Chains of love are no disaster— They, life’s wounds like magic heal, When the conflict hot is over Then the sun will brighter shine, Till the world with light runs over, And its joy shall all be thine. AUTUMN. Mother sitting so serenely With tiiat cherub face to thine, Never prouder or more queenly Looked a dame of royal line. What is all the world about you To the new-born soul that lies Helpless, hapless without yon, Mute with wonder, witching eyes? Happy heart, you scarce remember When the blossoms hung on high, Hinting that in soft September Golden fruit should round you lie. Sing aloud your songs of gladness, Tho’ life’s rose hides a thorn, Let no minor Btrain of sadness Prelude be of sorrow born. Trusting mother, how I love yon 1 Earth has not a friend so true, Constant as the stars above you, Looking nightly thro’ the blue. WINTER. Lady, qniet, stately lady, Lovely as a lake at rest, Over which the wind blows lightly, Lest he shonld disturb its breast. Dusky leaves of gold now cover Baths with dead ambitions strewn; Only hannting memories hover Of the hopes forever flown, Bitter grief has burned yonr bosom, Graves are green that hold your dead; Yet yotr* still are brave and loving, Lofting np the drooping head; Leading others, faint and weary, From the valley of despair, To the tranquil plains of patience— How I love yon for yonr care! You are waiting as a snowflake Waits the sunbeam’s warm embrace, Till the gates ajar shall open, Showing you the father’s face. —Mrs. J. V. HALLIDAY AND SON. In the cozy little private office ap¬ pertaining to their business house sat Halliday and son. Halliday was a bluff, heavy old fellow of fifty or thereabouts, with a pair of keen, bright eyes, which twinkled incessantly, and was seated in his chair with heels upon his desk. Son was a young man of twenty-five, tall, dark and handsome, clad in a suit of navy blue flannel, and was seated on a corner of the desk look ing down upon his father. “Who is the object of your all-de¬ vouring passion, eh, Dick, my boy ?” The old. gentleman asked. “Some chit of a school girl?” “Her name is Wilkins,” replied the young man. “She is a widow—a double widow, I will say—for she had been married twice,and is—come don’t let your chin drop to such an alarming extent, for outside of all she is worth $50,000, although that, in my case, is a feather’s weight in the scales. She is actually thirty-six, but looks ten years younger, and is pretty as a picture. She has one child, a daughter who is at school in Paris, but as she is heiress to a cool $100,000, she is not an incum¬ brance toy any means.” “Dick Halliday, you’re a fool!” ex¬ claimed. the old gentleman. “The woman, is almost old enough to be your mother.” “Not quite as bad as that.” “I say sir, she’s almost old enough to be yonr mother! Have you com¬ mitted yourself—has she ensnared you?” “Don’t you remember the old agree¬ ment, father, that when I thought of marrying I would consult with you before taking the step? I will there¬ fore introduce you to Mrs. Wilkins, let you study her character, and then abide toy your decision; for I have no doubt as to what it will be.” “Ah !’ ’ said the old gentleman,“that’s better, That’s decidedly better. You may introduce me, Dick, and I will promise you my unbiasing opinion of the bewitching creature." "All wight. When will you go!” "To-zxight, to-morrow, any time you THE ATJGi-TJSTA, ELBERTON A1ND CHICAGO RAILROAD. please; but see here, Dick, to change the subject, how about this London business ? It’s going to ruin.” “Well suppose we will have to send a man to look after it.” “Send!” cried the old man, “that won’t do at all; one or the other of us must go. We’ve'trusted entirely too much of late, and home interests are almost as bad as our foreign. Now, Dick, I’ll tell y*ou what I’ll do. If you will go to London and straighten things up, I’ll give youtmy answer concerning your flame the‘moment you return.^ I’ve been over so* often that the* very thought of going makes me ( sick. Come, what do you^say, Dick ?” “If you desire it, tfather, I’ll go, cer¬ tainly.” settled.^.Where - “Then that’s are you off to now?” f 1 “I was going up to the.'Astor, but I’ll' wait until evening,, andithen you can accompany me.” “All right, Dick, all right; only don’t commit yourself. Beware of widows, know.” That evening Ilalliday and son re¬ paired to the Astor House and were conducted to one of the private parlers. In a few minutes Mrs. Wilkins entered, and it was plain to be seen that the old gentleman was amazed. IIa did not wonder at his son’s infatuation, and afterward acknowledged her to be the most beautiful woman he had ever seeen. When at length they took their departure after spending a delightful evening, the son said : “What do you say, father?” “Give me time, my boy, give me time,” was the reply. The next day at 1 o’clock Dick started for London. The weather was fair, 'the passage a prosperous one, and he reached his destination safe and sound. He found the business in a terrible state and had his hands and mind fully occupied, and a week slipped by. One morning he received a letter from his father, a portion of which ran as fol¬ lows : “Concerning the widow, I am well pleased with your choice. She is a good woman—as good as beautiful. A trifle too old for you is my only objec¬ tion.” Another week went by and another letter came, in which, speaking of the widow, the old man said: “I am astonished at your extraordi¬ nary good judgment in such a matter. The more I see the lady the better I am pleased. She is a most excellent lady in every respect. A trifle too old for you is my only objection.” “Good!” said Dick to himself. “I guess I will stay a week on my own account, now that the business is cleared up, and go to London. The old gentleman seems to be well pleased, and guess by the time I get home his only objections will have been over come. Not that I care a straw for his opinion one way or the other, but peace is preferable to war at any time.” And taking a picture of the widow from his pocket he embraced it most affectionately. week So Dick remained another and did London thoroughly. On the day before he was to have sailed for home he received another letter from his father, saying: “My Bear Boy :—I never was more pleased with a woman in all my life. She is an angel. I don’t wonder at you loving her. She is pure, honest, everything you imagine her to be, but she can never marry you. It is impos¬ sible. I don’t like to be severe, but it can never be. The truth is, Dick, she has become my wife. Don’t be a fool, now, but come home at once. A trifle too old was my only objection. Your affectionate father, Riciiaed Halliday.” To say that Dick was enraged would but faintly describe his feelings; he fairly boiled. He wrote immediately to his father, telling him: “In the future your foreign business may go to the deuce, and your home interests, too.” Then, after drawing a good sum of money, he started for the continent. For two years he wandered from place to place, and at the end of that time found himself in Paris. Here he fortunately fell in with an acquaint¬ ance he had made while in London; and who had since married, and was then doing business in Paris. At his friend’s house, one evening he was introduced to an American young lady of whom he became enam¬ ored at first sight. The young lady, Miss Julia Kent¬ ridge by name, was to start for New York in a few days, and, on hearing this, Dick engaged passage on the steamer. The voyage was a pleasant one, and - before they reached Sandy Hook, Miss Julia promised that, with her mother’s consent,she would become Dick’s wife. When they reached the city the young lady found a carriage in waiting for her, and Diok, having de¬ termined not to enter hi*f ether's home, LINCOLNTON, GA., FRIDAY, MARCH 30, 1883. for the present at least, went direct to an obscure hotel. The next day he mounted the steps of the Madison avenue mansion and rang the bell. A servant ushered him into the parlor, and shortly afterward en¬ tered Miss Kentridge. When they had greeted each other after the usual manner of lovers, Julia said: “If you will excuse me for a moment, Richard, I will go and inform my mother that you have come.” Dick was seated under a window looking out, and did not notice her re¬ turn till she said; “Mr. Halliday, allow me to—” Dick had turned at the sound of her voice, ready to appear at his best, but he staggered back fairly thunderstruck for there behind him stood the late widow—his father’s wife. “I really—” he gasped, “I—that is, I “Of course you did not,” said the lady, help'ing him out. “How could you ? But here is your father.” “Yes, here I am, Dick, my boy,” cried the old gentleman, rushing in. “How are you, lad, how are you?” They shook hands cordially, and the old man said r “Dick, my lad, you’re trapped—you’re ensnared. My wife and I were in Paris to bring Julia home, and when she told us of her meeting with you we just put our heads together to make a match of it. We came over with you on the same steamer.” “Really, though,” said Dick, address¬ ing his step-mother, “when I heard you speaking of your daughter being at school, I imagined her to be a little girl, n6t a young lady!” “Oh, no! I was married to Mr. Kentridge when quite young, and Julia is now nineteen.” “I’ve no objection this time, lad, non'e at all. A trifle too old was my objection before, you know ; ha ! ha !” and he went off in a fit of laughter that nearlr choked him.” After dinner the old gentleman said; “Well, Dick, our foreign business is going to the bad, sure enough, and I think the best thing you can do is to marry at once and take your bride abroad and look after it. I did not sell the old house when I bought this one, and upon your return I will have it ready for you to occupy.” And thus it was arranged. The house of Ilalliday & Son still flourishes, and the children, grand-chil¬ dren and what-not bearing that name, for their relationship is rather mixed, are numerous. Rertnuda’s Coral Reef si “There’s hills and mountains down there, sir,” said an old sailor to the writer one day as we were scudding in toward the sound; “and fields and forrests, all made of coral. Of a clear day eight or ten miles outside, sir, with my water-glass, I’ve seen things as you could hardly believe if I told you. Mighty big trees, and places like grass plats and onion fields, bigger’n any in Bermuda, groves like palmettos, and churches—cathedrals, I believe you call ’em—-like they have in London, with heaps of steeples, and big fish go¬ ing to meetin’!” “No fairy tale, no Captain.” “No, sir; all fact, except ’bout the meetin’. Fish hain’t got much feelin’ specially sherks, and marays, and gray snappers, you know.” The coral reefs on which the Bermu¬ da Islands are built extend a distance of from ten to twenty miles beyond the land west, north and east, much of the intermediate space being dotted with islands and darkened by innumerable shoals that are of endless torment to sailors. The shores are with little ex¬ ception rugged, broken, made up of over-hanging cliffs and peculiar terrace like layers of rock. In places the cease¬ less action of the waves has made deep caverns, bored holes, carved fantastic shapes and made decorations that re¬ , semble stucco work. Sea moss carpels many of these weird looking structures, and hangs in long wreaths from es¬ carpment and cornice, where mermaids and mermen can go to housekeeping and find all sorts of beautiful and esthetic articles to embellish their in¬ teriors. Hermit crabs scramble awk¬ wardly along the sharp ledges near the water, looking like criminals trying to hide, scudding for an untenanted peri¬ winkle or vacant couch shell when pressed for time, while here and there, in natural acquarin, little tanks and bowls of water in the rocks, you can see pretty small fry that seem to have concluded to drop in there and rest till the tide comes up again and en¬ ables them to rejoin their congeners in the deep green sex Fortress Monroe, Virginia, is the largest single fortification in the world . It has already cost the government over $3,000,000. The water battery is considered one of the finest military works in the world. DANGEROUS OLD HULKS. One of the Greatest Perils Encountered bj the Sailors on the Seas. Abandoned vessels or other floating obstacles are the cause of many disast ers at sea. These obstacles are ially dangerous because they give no warnings of their presence until too late to avoid a collision. Besides the abandoned wrecks, which are apt to become water-logged and sink just be¬ low the surface, there are other float¬ ing obstacles which are liable to prove dangerous to the vessels which run into them. Ships have been crippled and even sunk, owing to their having come into forcible contact with portions of wreckage, logs, pieces of timber, whales or other sea monsters, icebergs and ice Doubtless some, of the vessels which left port in an ap¬ parently sea worthy condition, bu were never afterward heard from, went down with all on board, after coming nto collision with water-logged wrecks which had not been observed by the men on lookout. Such obstacles are not as apt to sink a large iron steam¬ ship, but with small craft it proves very different. “The water-logged wreck is the most dangerous of these floating obstacles,” said an old sea capt¬ ain. “Many a vessel has been lost ow¬ ing to those abandoned hulks. And the worst of it seems to be that it is al¬ most impossible to get rid of them. They are mostly the wrecks of timber laden vessels. Almost any other cargo would sink a ship when she became full of water. The longer such a wreck drifts about the more dangerous it be¬ comes, for it gradually sinks below the surface, but remains just high enough to knock a hole in the bottom of the first ship that comes along. A great many sailors are altogether too apt to give up a ship before there is any real reason for such a course. And then they leave a dangerous obstacle float ing about which may sink half a dozen other vessels before it goes to the bot¬ tom itself. I remember the case of a three-masked lumber-laden schooner named Louisa Birdsall, which was abandoned about five years ago. Her crew were taken off the wreck by a passing vessel, and were landed at some port along the coast. The abandoned vessel drifted about off Hatteras, where I once passed close to her and where she \\;as sighted by a number of ves¬ sels. You couldn’t pick up a paper j>rinted in any large American, British or continental port without reading that some ship which had just arrived had passed the wreck of the Louisa Birdsall. ran foul of her and were more or less crippled in consequence. For over a year that water-logged hulk drifted about in the track of shipping. Scar¬ cely a dark night passed without some vessel running into her. It got so that whenever a ship would be towed into one of the ports along the coast with her bows well stove in the captains in that harbor would say, ‘Well, that Louisa Birdsall has been prowheg about off Hatteras again.’ At last, after long watching and waiting, the insurance underwriters received a cable dispatch from Bermuda, by way of Halifax, which announced that the Louisa Birdsall had at last drifted into shallow water and had sunk, leaving her masts sticking out of water. The whole maritime world rejoiced at this intelligence. A good many captains made it a rule to set fire to every water¬ logged wreck which they came across, but even then the chances are that the hulk will merely burn to the water’s edge. It is now almost as dangerous an obstacle to run against as it was be¬ fore, but as long as it is burning there is little danger that it will be run into No one can say positively how the ill fated City of Boston, with her hun¬ dreds of lives, was lost some years ago. But the disaster was probable caused by some floating obstacle. It may have been that she ran into an iceberg or that she ran over some hulk which was floating just beneath the surface of the water.—Yew York Times. Boots and Shoes. Exclusive of custom work and re¬ pairing the number of establishments in the United States in the census year, 1880, manufacturing boots and shoes was 1959; they had an invested capital of $42,994,028; they employed 3,483 children and youths; 25,122 females above 15 years of age; and 82,547 males above 16 years of age; they paid $43, 001,438 in wages. The material used was: 6.831,661 sides of sole leather; 21,147,656 sides of upper leather, in¬ cluding calf, morocco and other skins; 35,960,614 pounds of other leather. The value of materials used by these . factories was $102,442,442. Their product was as follows: 40,890,896 JM, 887,616 pairs pairs boots shoes valued valued at............. Value of unspecitied products.............. at............ '717, - MS 746 Total products. .«!&>, 060, SM lumber Puget daily Sound foreign ships a million feet of to ports. Churches on the ’Welsh Const. Along the entire coast of Wales cer¬ tain striking characteristics are ob served in the churches. Here is a group of Welsh churches; look at their towers, each more ponderous than the next. It needs no argument to con vince us they were meant for strong¬ holds as well as campaniles. They could almost defy the waves of ccean, like the cliffs; have done so, in¬ deed, in certain instances when the seas have risen in storm and fury, and plunged roaring inland to the church doors. The aspect of these places of worship is well in keeping with the shore scenery to which they give char¬ acter. The rough weather they are often doomed to encounter in their generally exposed situations, is pro¬ vided against by an entire absence of externa! ornamentation, and a rugged solid simplicity of construction. Many of them have been restored in the pres¬ ent century—some rather too much restored; but others err in this regard by omission rather than commission. The feelings of the antiquary are of¬ fended by the introduction of incon¬ gruous pointed or staring square¬ headed windows and such like base in¬ sertions ; but even this is more endur¬ able than the neglect which has been allowed to fall on many of these old sea-coast temples.— Wirt Sikes in Har¬ per's Magazine. An average day’s work for a brick¬ layer is 1,500 bricks on outside and inside walls ; on facing and angles and finishing around wood or stone work not more than half of this number can be laid. There were 466 more liquor saloons in Georgia in 1881 than in 1882. There are still 2,517 saloons in the State. Savina Ten Thousand Hollars. The feast was set, the guests were me' when a young man entered in. j “Sir;” said he to the master of the house, “I have come to you on, a very important mission. Were it otherwise, I should not have ventured to call upon you upon this auspicious day, when, as I perceive you are about to celebrate the betrothal of your fair daughter. Still, as it may save you $10,000—but if you are engaged I will retire.” “By no means, my dear sir, by no means,”said the father of the bride ex¬ pectant, warmly; we are just about sitting down to dinner, join us, and after dinner we can discuss matters.” The young man allows himself to be induced to join the jovial company, where he eats for two and drinks for three. At the conclusion of the feast the father escorts him to a private depart ment and begs him to reveal his busi ness, “I think sir,” he says to the stranger offering him a cigar of prime quality, “that you observed that you could show me how to save $10,000.” “Precisely,” says the stranger, light¬ ing the cigar. “Now, you intend in ar rying your daughter to that amiable but somewhat weak-minded youth down stairs, and giving her a marriage portion of $20,000. Give her to me. sir, and I’ll take her with half the money. That’ll leave you $10,000 ahead !”—Chicago Tribune. Bee Thieves. Butcher, in his physical lives of beasts, speaks of thievish bees, “which, in order to lessen their labor or dis¬ pense with it wholly, made attacks in mass on provisioned hives, committed violence against the sentinels and the inhabitants, pillaged the hive, and carried away all the store of honey. If this exploit was successful for several times, they, like men, acquired a stronger taste for pillage and violence than for work, and ended by constitut¬ ing real colonies of brigands.” There are isolated individuals which are ad¬ dicted to theft and endeavor to slip, without being perceived, into a strange hive; their sly tricks demonstrate that they are forced to concealment, and are conscious that they are trans¬ gressors. If they succeed in their at¬ tempt, they afterwards bring other bees to their hives to tempt them to similar thefts, and thus form a society of thieves. Buchner adds that bees may be artificially made thieves by feeding them a special food "consisting of honey mixed with brandy. “Like man, they readily acquire a taste for this beverage, which exercises the same pernicious influence upon them as upon him; they become excited, in¬ toxicated, and cease to work. Do they feel hungry? Then, like man, they fall from one vice into another, and give themselves up unscrupulously to pillage and theft.” The daily earnings in the cotton factories of the United States are nearly double what they were in 1840, The total number of spinning spindles is 40,653,435 ; of looms, 225,759. The actual consumption of cotton last year was 1,760,000 balm. CLIPPINGS FOB THE CURIOUS. At Stalvenfels-on-the-Rhine there is an ancient church reduped to ruins through a law-suit about tithes, which lasted forty years. Bats in a mine give warning of dan¬ ger by running about uneasily, and in great numbers. The miners are in¬ clined to treat them with great kind¬ ness. In 1816 Lord Schworterbuy gave 16,595 francs for a tooth of Isaac New¬ ton, which is now set in a ring and worn by the eldest branch of that family. The oldest tree on earth is probably the cypress of Santa Maria del Tule, in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. It is still growing, and in 1851 it measured forty-two feet in diameter. Among the Romans of the first and second centuries were certain societies called Colleffia, the members of which took their meals in common, and by regular payments prepared a fund for their burial and for festival. There are at present no fewer than ten establishments in F ranee devoted to the propagation of bait for the use of anglers, and one of these breeders sells from 30,000,000 to 40,000,000 of worms per annum, deriving a handsome income from the business. Four empires were constituted from the fragments of that of Alexander. Selencus Nieator had control of the countries between the Mediterranean and the Indus; Lysimachus of Thrace and Asia Min or; Cassahder of Mace¬ donia and Greece, and Ptolemy of Egypt. Among the antique articles in pos¬ session of Mr. Sewell, of Maine, are a set of pewter plates bearing the seal of King Richard and supposed to be more than 400 years old; also, one large sjj ver spoon, which represents all the money received for building a saw and grist mill—the payment having been made in silver and then cast into the spoon. When Darius set out upon his famous expedition against Athens, in 492 B.C., he took with him a block of marble to be set up as a monument of his victory; but by order of the people, after the battle of Marathon, Phidias cut this into a statue of Nemesis. The arms and shield gathered from the field were melted and cast into a statue of Pallas, which was placed on the Acropolis. A number of years ago Henry Clay was presented with a cane. The staff is of live oak cut from a tree that over¬ shadowed the tomb of Cicero ; and the head is made of verd antique, obtained from the house of Columbus, at Genoa. It is octagonal, and ornamented with exquisite meda lions of those two famous orators of ancient and modern times—Rome’s Cicero and Aonerica’s Clay. claimed be the most In what is to delicate pair of scales in the world, ac¬ cording to the account given in the scientific papers, the beam is made of rye straw, and together with the pans, which are made of aluminum, weighs only fifteen grains. In the most deli¬ cate scale heretofore made the beam and pan weighed sixty-eight grains, the beam being made of aluminum, and and the instrument was capable of weighing to the 1-1000 of a grain. This new scale, however, weighs to the 1-10,000 of a grain. A piece of hair one inch long, on being weighed with this wonderful apparatus, was found to represent the almost infinitesimal quantity of 1-1000 of a grain. Protecting the Reporters. Touching the various definitions which are being given of “obstruction,” the St. James Gazette says that news¬ papers were largely indebted for their privilege of reporting parliamentary debates to an act of downright obstruc¬ tion committed on their behalf by Ed¬ mund Burke. When in March, 1771, Lord Mayor Crosby was sent to the tower for protecting the reporters of the London Evening Mail, who had been ordered into arrest, Burke took up the reporters’ cause in the house. Mr. Reginald Palgrave, in his interesting little monograph on the house of com¬ mons, of which he is clerk assistant, tells us how this was done: “Burke could not prevent the committal of the printers, but he made the proceedings look absurd; he made them sick of the job. For twelve long hours—from five o’clock one afternoon till five o’clock next morning—by twen*y-three divi¬ sions, by facial motions, by jest, by every kind of absurd proposal, did Burke delay and make contemptible the attempt to silence the newspapers. The result of that victory of March 12, 1771, is most conspicuous—the gallery, namely, which runs aoross the house above the speaker’s chair. The first streebear line in the world was the Fourth avenue line to Har¬ lem, opened in New York in 1832. A company at St. Louis turns out 100 dosen shovels a day. PUBLISHERS. NO. 24. SCIENTIFIC SCRAPS. It is asserted by a Brazilian that coffee is a natural antidote to alcohol, and that the consumption of alcoholic stimulants is comparatively small where coffee is a popular drink, as in his own country. What has been called “sewer gas” is composed of air, vapor and gases in constantly varying proportions, to¬ gether with living germs—vegetable and animal—and minute particles of putrescent matter. The skeleton of a Dinosaurin reptile thirty-five feet long, has been unearthed in the Bad Lands of Dakota. The creature is supposed to have stood twenty-five feet high. The weight of the skull is 694 pounds, and of 1 the whole skeleton 1,900 pounds. Dogs, under favorable conditions, live to an age much beyond that whioh is usually assigned to them. Mr. B. Cordiner, of Oxford, England, knows a black ratriever aged thirty-one, and there is no doubt that others are ao quainted with like aged individuals of the canine species. j It is well known that minute metal¬ lic particles are often collected in places remote from terrestrial sources of dust. Recent investigation shows that many of these particles must have undergone fusion, which evidently proves that they have come from the smoke of factories, from volcanic fires of that they had a meteoric origin. A mixture of twenty parts of hard soap, forty parts of kerosene, and one part of fir balsam had been found very effective in destroying the inserts- which damage the orange tree. Pro¬ fessor C. Y. Riley is the authority. Other valuable plants, notably the vine might be similarly protected by a spray from an application of the same recipe. It can be dilutod at will with water so as not to interfere with the constita tion of the plant. The coal supplied to the Nagasaki market comes from a field in Japan situated along the coast line between Cape Momo and the mouth of Nagasa¬ ki Harbor and thence to nearly the most northerly of the Goto Islands. It isjef erred to the tertiary period, and is highly bituminous, of irregular frae ture, but somewhat eubicaL When freshly broken it has a lustrous black appearance, which changes by pro¬ tracted exposure to the atmosphere to a dull, rusty black. PEARLS OF THOUGHT. i On the day of victory no weariness is felt. A wise man reflects before he speaks, and reflects on what he has uttered. The head, however strong it may be, can accomplish nothing against the heart. The most important part of every business is to know what ought to be done. The wiseman looks for happiness beyond the narrow ken of personal interest. Infinite toil would not enable you to sweep away a mist, but by ascending a little you may often look over it altogether. Never leave what you undertake until you can reach your arms aroimd it and clench your hands on the other side. You can’t judge of the value of a man by his talk any more than you can judge of the value of the tree by its bark. One should be careful not to carry any of his follies of youth into old age; for old age has follies enough of its own. Do not despise the opinion of the world ; you might as well say that you care not for light of the sun because you can use a candle. Some minds are so constructed as not to be amenable to the ordinary rules of judgment; they deserve pity rather than censurff Sorrow itself is not so hard to bear as the thought of sorrow coming. Airy ghosts that work no harm do terrify us more than men in steel with bloody purpose. The bean-blower with which the modern school-boy loves to torment the children round about him and his teacher on the platform is only a feeble imitation of the “sumpitan," with which tho original DyrXs of Borneo goto war. Thesumpit? L is a blow-pipe, about five feet lon^j, and the arrows which are made of wood or fish-bones; are thin and sharp, and are generally dipped in the poison of the upas tree, which, though virulent, is not always deadly. This singular weapon is used with the greatest ac¬ curacy at a range of twenty yards, but it will carry a hundred. Within six months 138 car-couple* patents have been granted