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THE MOVING ROCK. A Wonderful Freak of Nature in Argentina. * An Immense Boulder, Which Sways in the Wind. "When European tourists visit the United States they turn towards tlSb Falls of Niagara as the greatest natu¬ ral wonder of the laud. Argentina, with its grassy plants and bare foot-hills presents few great works of nature to interest the stran¬ ger save at this quiet village in the southwestern portion of the Province of Buenos Ayres. English travellers especially take a run down to Tandil from the capital to see the moving rock, a freak of nature which is quite unique and is as much of a sensation for unfamiliar visitors as tho great cataract of tho Niagara River. Tandil is located 160 miles from Buenos Ayres. It is a parochial town, named after a famous Indian chief¬ tain who waged incessant war with the Spanish colonists. I came to Tandil over the Ferro Came del Sud, and after u breakfast on pacbero, tho invariable native dish, mounted a Spanish horse and rode a league up the hills to the moving rock. The scenery along the path was picturesque. The river Tandileofie, flowing down from the Sierras and winding among the hills, irrigates the adjacent country and waters the numerous herds and flocks. The huts of the peasantry, shabby but quaint and attractive in their squalor, lay on the slopes, and the ragged children, with eager, gleaming black eyes, ran along the road begging for dinero. The rock is of granite formation and weighs, according to the estimate of scientific authority, about 800 tons. It is poised on the sloping side of an enormous rock which is several hun¬ dred feet long and which rises high above the ground. The surface of the latter.is smooth; in the vicinity there are signs of the passage of a glacier. The point on which the moving rock rests is about eighteen inches in diam¬ eter, and l he stone was poised so ex¬ actly by tlie flood or the ice which left it in position that by the pressure of the hand I was enabled to stir it witli a swaying motion amounting to at least four inches. The wind wag calm and insufficient to move the heavy mass, but when the blasts sweep down the Sierras the boulder rolls to and fro. Notwithstanding the ease with which the rock is swayed, there is a limit beyond which it will not go by any power which has been applied- General Rosas, during his Dictator¬ ship of Argentina, made a wager that he could pull tlie rock from its po¬ sition by attaching 100 horses. The attempt failed, and Rosa, becoming incensed, swore he would overthrow the monster anyhow. The number of horses was increased to 500; the rock, however, went to the limit of its motion and no further. The supply of available horses being exhausted, Rosas was on the point of using gun¬ powder to accomplish his purpose, when his attention was drawn else¬ where by poitical events, and tho rock of Tandil remained unmolested. A terrible tragedy occured beside the moving rock in 1873. A fanatic named Sala Dios collected nearly 150 deluded followers for the purpose, as he claimed, of making an important revelation. Suddenly he commenced a massacre and killed forty-one per¬ sons before he was overpowered, He had hidden firearms in a crevice of rock and shot women and children in¬ discriminately.— [New York World. Daniel Boone’s Tomb. The Moberly Democrat thus de¬ scribes scenes 15 miles from Warren- ton, Mo.: The scenery is as grand and beauti¬ ful as tlie castled Rhine. Immense cliffs rear their tree-crowned heads hundreds of feet into the clear air; adown their sides cascades of crystal water tumble from crag to crag; love¬ ly ferns grow from mossy banks; wild vines embrace the gnarled trunks of the monarchs of the forest, while prickly pear flourishes in profusion, and, when covered in bloom, makes touches of color in the lovely scenes, more worthy of an artist’s pencil than the studies he seeks so far afi#id. One scene alone we mention among the many beauties, more lovely than its name. An immense cascade which flings its silvery spray from cliff to cliff adown the sand-stono crags, has formed some wonderful objects. On the first plateau of level rock stands an immense wash-bowl which tlio cas¬ cade has formed in its descent. Per¬ fect as though formed by the hand of man, about 30 foot in diameter, and. filled with water of crystal clearness, in which can be seen sporting the sil¬ very perch. Here the cliffs close to¬ gether, making a narrow chasm, down which the stream again falls to an¬ other plateau, and here nature lias again formed the complement of the bowl in an immense pitcher. It stands about 15 or 20 feet high, complete in form, and into the open month falls the water from the cliff above and then comes bubbling out and continues its course to the bottom of the declivi¬ ty. On tho Femine Osage still stands the old lint occupied by Daniel Boone, and on one of the hill tops near the “Devil’s Wash Bowl and Pitcher,” as it is called, was Boone’s tomb, cut in the solid rock. The tomb is yet to be seen, though tlie body has been re¬ moved to another resting place. Also near here are the remains of old stone forts, standing on the tops of four of the highest hills, probably look out posts of Indians and defenses of the valley, where undoubtedly many bat¬ tles were fought, as the place is still thickly strewn with arrows and spear heads and battle axes. When digging out and leveling for the Central Mis¬ souri Railroad, which will he built near here, graves were unearthed of an ancient race, whose customs and habits arc unknown to anyone now living. Tlie coffin was of potting, made in two parts, the length of the body to be buried, and the bones were found in the coffin, together with tlie tomahawks, skinning knives and ar¬ row heads. What Became of the Globes ? When Frederick Gerstaecker accom¬ panied the Duke of Cobnry to Eastern Africa the incognito of his sovereign was dropped at Cairo, where a Ger¬ man banker treated them to a dinner, followed by an exhibition of local talent in Arabian legerdemain. The principal exponent of the accomplish¬ ment, after a series of preliminary ex¬ hibitions in the magical art, invited his audience to an open terrace, and in the piaiu light of the evening sun flung up a number of transparent balls. These shining globes disap¬ peared at an apparent height of about eighty feet above the esplanade. The globes were colorless and pellucid like white glass, but were as light as gum, and were repeatedly subn> itted for the examination of the spectators. After passing from hand to hand they were put into an open vessel, shaped like a short-handled dipper, and, leaning back till his outstretched arm nearly touched the ground, the wizard then flung them straight up into the air, where they could be seen for a mo¬ ment like glittering globes against the blue sky. But no one ever saw them come down again, though the scene of the exhibition was surrounded by a large, level lawn; the air seemed to have swallowed them like globes of dissolving vapor. A sleight-of-hand trick was clearly out of the question, but a more tenable explanation would have puzzled a chemist as we 11 as an optician.— [St. Louis Republic. Titled Waiters in a Restaurant. There is a swell Italian restaurant in New York, which, it is said, has on its staff of waiters two Italian noble¬ men and an accomplished man of let¬ ters. An Italian gentleman happened in there one day, and found himself served by one whom he had known as professor of Latin in an Italian uni¬ versity. He had come to this country in the hopes of bettering his fortunes, only to be disappointed, and finally to be driven to waiting on tables as the only employment open to him. In the saipe restaurant, he said, there was a marquis and a count, who had been students in the university when he was professor there. These two scions of noble families had come to this coun¬ try after having ruu through in dissi¬ pation what little patrimonies had come to them, and after knocking about from one thing to another, had come down to their present low es¬ tate.— [Picayune. THE BACK STREET. Peculiarities of Seventh Avenue in New York. It Is One of the Queerest of Metropolitan Thoroughfares. 1 imagine that if a small man from a small town were to move with his family into New York he would grav¬ itate to Seventh avenue and start a grocery. Indeed, it must ho that such persons, of moderate prosperity and of much caution, coming in the past from other countries and from other parts of this country, have segregated in Seventli avenue as small grocers or petty dealers of one kind or another; for Seventh avenue, crowded with little shop* from its beginning in the slums almost to Fifty-ninth street is a series of neighborhoods, each preg¬ nant with gossip and tittle-tattle, each dotted with doorway liobnobbings. I went into a dozen or more shops there the other day. As I opened each door, a bell rang in tho back of each house. This sometimes brought the proprietor to view, but more often caused a child to dart from somewhere back to the sidewalk, and call in a grown person from a chattering or argumentative group. Once I conld rouse nobody at all, and after I had rapped loudly upon a show-case several times, the man who kept tho shop next door came in. He said the proprietor had gone to get a drink, and had asked him to watch the store. “I don’t know the price of anything,” ho added, “but if you do, I might sell il to you. I guess it would be all right.” If I had not heard the reminding rumble of an elevated train, I should have for¬ gotten that it was New York. The shop-keepers all have their families at hand, and generally sev¬ eral other families also, for Seventli avenue is almost a tenement-house street. It is probable that it does most of the cobbling for the west side. The cobblers and their families live in the basements, and you descend to them, guided by signs at tho head of the basement stairs. Business is so leis¬ urely that you find the cobbler asleep, and the baby whittling his bench with a shoe knife. The dealers in second-hand clothing are as numerous as the grocers. They are hidden in behind »?’ curtain of “pants” hung across the door. They arc sharp at a bargain, hut seem to expect less prices than such dealers in other parts of the city. Second-hand clothing shops everywhere have a deserted air; here they seem thor¬ oughly at home. You can get good groceries cheap in Seventh avenue, cheaper than any¬ where else in the city, So you are not surprised to find in the side streets just off the avenue many boarding¬ houses where lodging and meals of a respectable but far from luxurious kind are to be had at very low rates. And in these boarding-houses you find the best class of people to whom Seventh avenue is the outlet. Here are clerks and shop-girls,who arc hon¬ est, and set great store by their re¬ spectability. They have little money to spend; they are not ambitious; they wear “Sunday clothes,” and looked dressed up. Those who feel called upon to be tough find it pos¬ sible to do it cheaply and noisily in tho Seventh avenue saloons. There are back rooms for women, where “gents” are not allowed unaccom¬ panied by ladies, and where they may not smoke. But the chief life of Seventh ave¬ nue—especially in warm weather— comes from the colored people. They used to promenade in Sixth avenue, which still bears a name reminiscent of that time, but now they have de¬ serted Sixth avenue, and make Seventh avenue gay on summer evenings with their loud laughter and good-natured remarks. They are the chief patrons of the second-hand shops, as the loud patterns of the curtains of “pants” plainly show. You may see some curious costumes on the streets as the result of this patronage. Seventh avenue goes to bed early— earlier than any other part of the city. After 10 o’clock the policeman has rather a solitary time of it, except when tlie tough clerks are out harm¬ lessly proclaiming their devilishness. And yet Seventh avenue has been [the scene of many murders. This is due to tlie early quiet of it, making it a good place for robbery with the aid of the knife and tho sand-bag. There were once many dangerous saloons here, and also some notorious concert hulls, but only a few of them remain, and the police do not allow them to disturb the early-slumbering inhabitants. There are half-way out¬ breaks at the frequent balls given by sundry “associations” of not over¬ savory characters, but neither the as¬ sociations nor the guests at the balls belong to Seventh avenue. As the years pass, Seventh avenue becomes duller and duller. It seems to he drifting altogether out of touch with New York life. This is a neces¬ sary result, for Seventh avenue is the only lull in tho storm—the solitary great “back street.”—[Harper’s Weck- iy- The Mexican Swell on Horseback. The Mexican swell rides on a saddle worth a fortune. It is loaded with silver trimmings, and hanging over it is an expensive serape or Spanish blanket, which adds to the magnifi¬ cence of the whole. Ilis queer-shaped stirrups are redolent of the old mines. His bridle is in like manner adorned with metal in tho shape of half a doz¬ en big silver plates, and to his bit is attached a pair of knotted red-cord reins, which he holds high up and loose. Ho is dressed in a black vel. vet jacket fringed and embroidered with silver; and a huge and expensive hat, perched on his head, is tilted over one ear. His legs are encased in dark tight-fitting breeches,with silver trim¬ ming down tho side seams, but cut so as, in summer weather, to unbutton from the knee down and flap aside. Ilis spurs are siiver, big and heavy and costly, and fitted to buckle around bis high-cut heel. Under his left log is fastened a broad-bladed and beau¬ tiful curved sword, with a hilt worthy a prince of the blood. The seat of this exquisite is the perfect pattern of a clothespin. Lean¬ ing against the cantle, he stretches his legs forward and outward, with heels depressed in a fashion which reminds one of Sydney Smith’s say¬ ing that he did not object to a clergy¬ man riding, if only he rode vevy bad¬ ly and turned out his toes, It is tho very converse of riding close to your horse. In what it originates it is hard to guess, unless bravado, Tho cowboy, with an equally short seat and long stirrups, keeps his legs where they belong, and if his leg is out of perpendicular, it will he so to the rear__[Harper’s Magazine. The Iron Horse’s Breathing. The “breathing” of a locomotive— that is to say, the number of puffs given by a railway engine during its journey—depends upon the circumfer¬ ence of its driving wheels and their speed. No matter what their rate of speed may be, for every one round of the driving wheels, a locomotive will give four puffs—two out of each cylin¬ der, tlie cylinders being double. The sizes of driving wheels vary, some being 18, 19, 20 and even 22 feet in circumference, although they are generally made of about 20 feet. The express speed varies from 54 to 58 miles an hour. Taking the circumference of the driving wheel to be 20 feet and the speed per hour 50 miles, a locomotive will give, going at express speed, 880 puffs per minute, or 52,800 puffs per hour,the wheel revolving 13,200 times in 60 minutes, giving 1056 puffs per mile. Therefore, an express going from London to Liverpool, a distance of 2013-4 miles, will throw out 213,048 puffs before arriving at its destina¬ tion. During the tourist season of 1888 the journey from London to Edinburgh was accomplished in less than eight hours, the distance being 401 miles, giving a speed throughout of 50 miles an hour. A locomotive of an express train from London to Edinburgh, subject to the above conditions, will give 423,- 456 puffs.—[Iron. Art and Nature. Husband—What was that you were playing, my dear? Wife—Did you like it? “It was lovely I—the melody divine, the harmony exquisite.” “It is the very thing I played last evening, and you said it wus horrid.” “Well, the steak was burnt last evening.’’—[New York Weekly, A Love Song. My love is like the sea, As changeful and as free; Sometimes she’s angry, sometimes rough, Yet oft she’s smooth and calm enough— Ay, much too calm for me. My love Is like the sky. As distant and as high; Perchance she's fair and kind and bright, Perchance she’s stormy—tearful quite— Alas! I scarce know why. For thus I’m tempest-toss’d, A drifting skiff at most; l dare the waves, risk cloud aud rain I ever tempt my fate again, Nor care if I be lost. HUMOROUS. , Somo kisses are materialized poetry. It never pays to play with a rat- trap. The aimablo man doosn't always do the most work. Museum dwarfs should travel by the “limited mail.” A happy old age is the dessert of tho dinner of life. Some of the actresses do not draw, but ail of them paint. A geographical paradox: Mrs. Sippi is the Father of Waters. Members of a boating club should always be true to its scullers. Women think more of flattery than men, but they believe less of it. Doing nothing for others is one ol tlie surest ways of robbing yourself. Failures of hatters are nearly al¬ ways due to the fact that they cannot get ahead. There is one lucky thing about spoiled children—we never have them in our own family. Some men are born great,some men achieve greatness, and some men are not worth a continental. “Did you attend the obsequies of Snip, your tailor?” “Yes, aud I never saw Snip less obsequious.” Mrs. K.—But are you sure that parrot will talk? The Dealer—Cer¬ tainly, ma’am. It’s a female. He (poetically)—Ah, who can ex¬ press the power of love? She (prac¬ tical)—It’s two donkey power. When a young man says that he can never love another, he means, ol course, not for two or three weeks. It is the unloaded guns that always goes off at unexpected moments and wrecks things. It is different with men. It is, perhaps a trifle superfluous to say that recent failures in the sho« trade were because of inability to foot the bills. Sharpson—What makes your nosa sored? Plfiatz—It glows with pride because it never pokes itself into other people’s business. “How much is Siipkins out on that last transaction?” asked one brokor of another. “He is out of jail,” was the reply, “which is very lucky for him.” Some one says: “Woman studies man with regret; man studies woman with amazement.” Tlie woman in this case is evidently married and the man is not. “What novelty would you suggest for my 5 o’clock tea?” asks a young lady reader. Something substantial to eat would be a welcome novelty to most healthy guests. Father—Dr. McClure seems to be a very intelligent, well-read man. Son ■ Nonsense, governor! I talked with him at dinner yesterday and he does not know a thing about base ball. Banker at (11.30 p. m.) —I can’t say I like Spatts altogether. He goes by fits and starts. Miss Blanche (with a little yawn)—Well, I wouldn’t mind a man going by fits if he did but start finally. “What do you call your dog?” was the question which a policeman asked of a very large man who was followed by a very small pup. “I don’t gall him ad all,” was the reply. “Ven I vant him I vissle.” Miss Lucy—Has Aunt Belinda made much progress in riding, WeLlyn? Riding Master—Well, miss, I can’t say as ’ow she rides wery well as yet, but she falls hoff a deal more grace¬ fully as wot she did at fust. “And what is the trouble?” inquired the young wife of the physician. “Well, I don't think the case is really bad enough for a season at tlie sea¬ shore. I think a cure may bo effected by tho judicious application of a nice summer hat.”