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SUNDAY MORNINC.
Presidents inßented Houses
is not the first time that
a President of the United
R., States has been obliged to oc
ggQ cupy temporary quarters on
account of repairs at the White
House. Such a thing occurred at the
beginning of Mr. Arthur’s administra
tion when, Garfield having died, the
Executive Mansion was put through
an elaborate course of renovation, the
new Chief Magistrate meanwhile tak
ing up his residence in the big house
on Capitol Hilt which had been built
by Gen. B. F. Butler. This building,
now tenanted by the Marine Hospital
Service, came in those days to be
known as the Gray House.
Perhaps the most famous of all
dwellings serving as temporary homes
fftMmtUCtXT tViPPOH ji
of Presidents Is the Octagon House.
This picturesque old residence was
used by Madison as Executive Man
sion after the British had burned the
White House. It was here that the
celebrated beauty Dolly Madison held
her court. In August, 1813, a party
f invited guests were sitting down
to a banquet in the state dining room
of the White House, when a troop of
British soldiers hurst in and set fire
to the building. The fire made small
headway, as a drizzling rain was fall
ing, and soon went out. However, on
tho next day,- it was rekindled by the
British, doing serious damage, so
much, in fact, as to make the mansion
uninhabitable. The Madisons fled.
The next year, 1814, they established
their household in the Octagon House,
and it becume popularly known as the
''Annex Executive Mansion.” This old
residence is of queer shape, being
eight-sided, as Its name suggests. It
has a fascinating round room on the
second floor over the front door, which
Dolly Madison used as her boudoir.
The dwelling has three stories and a
basement, and was allowed to fall Into
decay, having been empty for a num
ber of years, until comparatively re
cently, when it was put in perfect re
pair. It is now used for offices, being
in a most convenient situation, at the
corner of New York avenue and
Eighteenth street, only one block
away from the War, Stale and Navy
departments, gp
President Madison occupied the Oc
tagon House until tne close of his ad
ministration on March 4, ISI7. Pres
ident Monroe also lived in this his
toric dwelling during the first year of
his term. At the end of that period
he moved hack into the White House
which had been repaired and recon
structed and was again ready for hab
itation. It had been coated with white
paint from root to foundation, aud
gets its name from that tact.
The reason the Octagon House re
mained uninhabited for many years
was because it was reported to bo
haunted. Many ghosts were said to
walk recklessly through the rooms.
One of the stories was that great ban
quets were held every night in the
dining room where the lovely Dolly
had entertained so delightfully. An
other was of a slave who moaned and
oiled at intervals in a most blood
curdling way, having been put to death
by a cruel master. There was also a
cat who roamed up stairs and down.
In fact, nobody could be persuaded to
live in the dwelling for love or money.
Several of the Presidents, including
Arthur, Grant and Lincoln, spent a
- Sderable part of their time each
iTTEfIP&AKV WTt HfllfttT &
CUITIEP e\ PKtilMNt K(Vtiy
yen' at what ia Known as the "Presi
dential Cottage,” at the Soldiers'
Home in Washington. In the spring
when the city became warm, they
would move out of this pretty house,
which is situated in an ideal spot, the
"Home” being simply a most beauti
fully kept park.
Another President who moved out
of the White House so that it might
be renovated was Mr. Buchanan. He
occupied a suite of rooms ht the Na
tional Hotel, on the second floor, and
facing Pennsylvania avenue and Sixth
street, as his temporary quarters. It
was whilq he was staying at this hos
telry that some of the guests were ac
cidentally poisoned.
The Cat Columns.
One of the features in which Eng
lish periodicals for women differ
from American magazines of the same
class is in the "cat column.” There
Is a section devoted to cat gossip in
many of them, in which well known
catteries are described, the good
(mints of their inmates aail the moth
ods of their owners set forth, and the
troubles of correspondents discussed,
all with an unconscious grav
ity and a dignity of stylo
which approach the humorous in
American eyes. The illness and con
sequent absence from a show of a
famous cat is thus gravely chronicled
In a recent publication: “She wag
prevented from appearing at Edin
burgh by an unfortunate accident,
having got a fishbone firmly fixed in
her nose while eating her supper.
She has got well over the effects,
barring a slight weakness of the eyes,
which will, no doubt, pass off in a
day or two.”
MORMONS WORK IN ENGLAND,
Their Missionaries There Are Gain
ing Many Converts.
There is commotion at Sarum and
the sleepy old city is being roused
out of its somnolency by the aggres
siveness of the Mormonistic propa
ganda, says the London News. The
agents of the “Latter Day Saints'"
cult have stormed the citadel of
Episcopacy and captured some of the
pillars of the Church and lights of
the Dissenting churches. These dar
ing raiders have laved their captives
in the classic waters of the Avon at
midnight in the chilly months of De
cember and January. Strange scenes
have been enacted under the stars
and in semi-secrecy. There Is wail
ing in many homes, and Eliminations
from pulpits Episcopal and Noncon
formist. On Wednesday evening last
the rector of Fisherton sacrificed the
Mormon doctrines and pilloried the
emissaries. Two of the Mormon eld
ers and one of their converts were
present, but sat unmoved. On tno
authority of the editor of the Salis
bury Times the evil is spreading, and
there are at least two thousand elders
from Salt Lake City in this country
actively engaged in proselytizing
work.
A Supplication.
Let me but hold thy hand,
And, through the valleys, dark with
toil and care
And disappointment I would pass with
stride
That faltered not, and I would count
as naught
The doubts and fears that now assail
me, fraught
With whispers of False Hope—twin
brother of Despair.
I’ll scale ambition's peaks untorriOed,
Could I but hold thy hand.
Just once, I’d lean back in my little
chair
And bet the limit sure, wliate’er be
tide.
Unnumbered stacks of “reds and
blues” I’ve bought
And lost. You've won all night; I
haven't caught
A thing to help along a sickly “pair."
Give me that “flush," and joy with
thee abide:
Oh, let me hold that hand!
—Charles B. Graves in New York
Times.
A Good Hater.
Two elderly ladies are conversing
in the room of an invalid, who is not
nearly as ill or as fast asleep ns sue
pretends to be.
First elderly* lady—Yes. my dear,
it’s awful the extent to which some
people will carry their spite. 1 was
talking to Mrs. Bloggs yesterday
about pocr Annie on the bed there
and she sox. —you kn< ■ they can't
abear one another —she sez, "Well, it
anythink should happen.” she sez.
“you'd never ketch mo going to her
funeral." she sez, "and ”
The invalid (loudly)—And you may
tell Mrs. Bloggs that if she don’t come
to my funeral 1 certainly won’t go to
hers. —London King.
Hard to Catch.
Over on the eastern shore of Mary
land in the district represented by
Congressman Jackson there was a
man who was suffering from a severe
case of “shakos,” as they call fever
and ague in that country. One morn
ing the local physician called on the
patient and asked him how he felt.
“N-n-not a bit b-b-better,” was the
shaking man’s reply,
"Your ease is a very peculiar one,
and hard to take hold of,” remarked
the doctor, sympathetically.
“Yes, th—that's so." remarked the
patient, trying to smile. "The c-case
sh-sh-shakes so l don't w-onder you
c-c-an’t get hold of it.”—Washington
Post.
Queer Place for Petroleum.
There is probably no ether city in
the world that can show a hospital,
with several oil wells in the grounds,
within a few yards of the building.
This strange sight may be seen in
Los Angeles. Cal., a couple of miles
from the business center. The wells
may be profitable, but whether they
are entirely unobjectionable, from a
hygienic standpoint, some people
would be inclined to doubt. Incident
ally it may be mentioned that in the
same institution a dozen nurses are
recovering from typhoid fever.
THE BRUNSWICK DAILY NEWS.
c <j) 5a b
WEIRD noise broke
* upon the stilly
Um* night. It sounded
Sip like the faint wail
a babe in pain,
then rose crescen
do into the well-de
fined caterwaul of
a Thomas cat with a powerful alto
voice. There came an answering high
soprano waii, and the nightly duet
was on.
Loveson Ahta, the poet, put down
his pen, pushed his hands through his
abundant hair, drew a little harder at
his pipe, and went to the window to
gaze out into the moonlight that
bathed in its effulgence the pretty vil
lage of Dingle in the Myrtles.
“I hate cats,” he said. “Confound
’em. Confound all cats —always—cats
of all colors, black, w'hite, gray; by
night a nuisance, and by day—-con
found the cats! Here, I come to this
bowery Eden bubbying over with joy
at the thought of escaping from the
ceasless roar and rattle of the city,
to be disturbed by eats! Why, their
noise is more destructive to inspire
tion, more trying to the nerves than
the clanging of a hundred trolley ears.
No, the comparison won’t do. There
is a certain fascination, a strange,
wild, stirring harmony in the diapason
of the city’s hum, and in the singing’
of the rushing trolleys. Whereas
cats —”
He ceased witii a gesture indicating
that words failed him in which to ex
press his opinion of the offending
felines.
Mrs. Loveson Ahta, who, while
making a pretense of working at some
embroidery, had
• been rocking hcr
, self in contented
■H indolence and
Jl. watching the
" * changing expres
sion on her husband's handsome
face as he wrestled with the
muse, laughed the little rippling
laugh that was one of her many
charms, and that from the very first
time he had heard it had always been
the sweetest music to hts ears.
“Well, it can't be helped.” she said.
‘Let Hercules do what he may, the eat
will mew.’ ”
“There are such things as guns, and
airguns at that By Jove, a happy
thought! I’ll get one. They say you
can kill a cat with an airguu at I
don't know how many yards.”
“Fie! you wouldn't hurt poor harm
less, necessary pussy! Besides, you
forget, dear, that a cat has nine lives.”
"Oh. no, 1 won’t do a thing to poor
pussy. Did you ever hear anything
like it in your life?"
Loveson Ahta put his lingers in his
ears and gazed desperately around
for a missile.
“And then,” continued his wife, “if
you were to shoot a cai you would be
lilled with remorse and haunted by a
ghostly tabby for the rest of your
days. Didn’t 1 see you release a
struggling fly from that sticky paper
Nora keeps in the kitchen?”
“They arc no good, anyway,” per
sisted the poet, with growing wrath.
"They ought as a public nuisance to
be exterminated.”
“They catch mice."
“Not as well as a mousetrap. And
they are cruel and treacherous. They
a don't kill
sHi
™ as other
and self-respecting animals do. but
needs must make sport of it and sub
ject it to the refinement of torture.
And they arc that deceitful and ca
pricious you never know how to take
them—just like women. Somebody
says somewhere that if a cat has nine
lives, a woman has nine cats' lives.”
"Oh!”
“That is. of course, other women.
You are not like other women.”
"What do you know about other
women, pray?” demanded Mrs. Love
son Ahta with a suspicion of asperity
and flushing slightly.
“Nothing, nothing, of course, from
personal experience, my dear. But
they have the reputation. It’s a well
known fact.”
“Oh. is it? Indeed!"
“Yes, and as I am saying," went on
the poet evasively, “they are no good,
they are utterly worthless, they are
tit for nothing on earth—the cats, I
mean.”
"Well, manufacturers make muffs
and boas 'and all kinds of things with
the skins.”
"Do they? Then I'm glad to know
the brutes serve some useful purpose
—when they are dead. Now a dog—”
“Never mind about dogs. We are
talking about cats,
and my purpose is
to prove that they
are good for noth- w gsggiayf’
"Yes I’ve heard & *
of it raining cats and dogs."
"In some parts of France they eat
cats!”
"Peuh!”
“You needn't look incredulous —they
do. They call them ‘gibier de la rue’—
street game—and In a stew you
wouldn’t know the difference between
a cat and a rabbit."
“You have tasted it?”
“Oh. no.' denied Mrs. Loveson Ahta.
hastily. “At least not to my knowl
edge; but I’ve read about it.”
“Then they are principally useful as
a dainty to tickle the palates of some
French epicures, I take it. I can’t Im
agine any more ways than those you
have enumerated in which they can
render service to mankind.”
“They are useful as timepieoe3.”
‘What!’’
“I aiu perfectly serisus. In China
they serve as very bandy clocks. It’s
this way: The eyeball of a cat con
tracts constantly from dawn until
noon, at which hour it is merely a
thin horizontal line. From noon the
eyeball gradually dilates until it
reaches full expansion at sundown. So
that in places where there are no
clocks or dials or where there are
_ dials and the day is
. . cloudy a Chinaman
just picks up a cat and
™ .learns the hour by
looking at its eyes.”
”! had no idea that you had made a
special study of cat lore, but there’s
no use talking, yon Vassar graduates
know everything under the sun.”
“Cats have still another virtue.
Rheumatism can be cured by rubbing
tho affected part with a ginger-colored
pussy.”
“You are a veritable encyclopaedia
dear.”
“That is nothing. 1 have lots of tal
ents you haven’t yet discovered. How
ever, that will do for the present, and
it now behooves you—the duet having
terminated—to sit right down and in
dite an ode to the Cat of Cats.”
“Strophes to a cat—catastrophes. 1
can’t do it; but I will dash off
rhapsodic stanzas ad libitum to the
most adorable little champion who
ever defended the cause of cats.”
Tried for Not Going to Church.
A book of forms, supposed to be a
hundred years old, written probably
by some former clerk of the court,
lias been discovered in the clerk’s of
fice of the Corporation Court, Lynch
burg, Va.. says the Richmond Des
patch of June 38. Among the orders
appeared the following:
“Judgment on a presentment of the
grand jury for not going to church.
“W. 8., who stands presented to
the grand jury for absenting himself
from his parish church, having been
this day fully heard (or having been
duly summoned) and not appearing,
tho’ solemnly called, it is considered
by the court that for the said offense
he forfeit and pay to the church war
dens of B. parish, whore the offense
was committed, five shillings or fifty
pounds of tobacco to the use of the
poor of the said parish. And that ho
pay the costs of this prosecution and
may he taken, etc.”
The Deacon's Protest.
The Rev. Dr. S. makes rather long
prayers, cowring in his petitions an
extensive territory. One of his dea
cons—a man of piety, but of a ner
vous temperament—finds these pro
tracted devotions trying, and one
Sunday ai dinner amused his family
by saying, with the utmost serious
ness ;
"l)r. S. made a beautiful prayer this
morning, a powerful prayer, but I
could have suggested ways in which
ho could have shortened it up. He
needn't have gone from Alaska to
Africa and then to China, when he
could just as well have cut across,
and anyhow. I do not see why he
could not lump the Indians and the
Freedmen. They are so much aiiko.”
Millions of Corks for Milwaukee.
Fifty-seven bales- of cork reached
Milwaukee Monday from abroad. It
is said that there is no city in the
world where a greater number of
bottle corks are used than in Milwau
kee. The consumption amounts to
over 4.OMK) bales, 60,000 gross, or 56,-
000,000 corks a year, of a value of
$350,000. Supplies of these corks are
assured by contracts which provide
for future deliveries, as there is no
cork warehouse in Milwaukee from
which large quantities may be sup
plied at short notice, though there ha3
recently been organized a number of
agencies which are making arrange
ments to meet orders for quick deliv
eries.—Milwaukee Journal.
An Up-to-Date Child. 1
It was in a photographer's studio,
and a lady called and stated that she
wished to have her child's portrait
taken.
“Certainly, madam," said the photo
grapher. "This is the little man, is
it? Coo-roo. Bless ’im. little tootsle
wootsie. Dear ’iekle fellow.”
"Mother.” said the up-to-date child
in a voice of scorn, “will you kindly
inform me whether the deplorable
condition of this person is due to lack
of education or hereditary insanity?
Kindiy proceed, sir. and make as
creditable a likeness as lies within
your apparently limited capacities.”
Growth of World's Commerce.
The volume of toe world’s com
merce is two and a half or three
times as great as it was thirty year*
ago.
THE LAND OF DEATH
r _ RAN CHACO, the most mys
■[■ terious Bpot on the American
>i continent, and po&sibly in the
world, has claimed another
hand of victims; again the
Piiccmayo river has proved Itself de
serving of the title given to it by the
natives of Paraguay, Argentin and Bo
livia—River of Death.
The last victims of tho unknown
place are the famous Italian explorer,
Guido Boggiauo, and his party. From
Asuncion in Paraguay the news has
reached American geographers that
the party has been officially pro
nounced dead.
With the slaying of Boggiano, Gran
Chaco, triumphantly keeping it3
secret, has successfully defied five
nations —France, Spain, Germany, It
aly and Paraguay. Each of them
Entrance to Land of Death.
sent its best explorers and to none
did their men return alive.
Creveaux, of France; Ibarretta, of
Spain; Lista, of Paraguay; Sirvent.
of Germany, and Boggiano of Italy,
all started from the borders, dived
into the primeval forests of El Gran
Chaco, reached the Pilcomayo river
and disappeared forever.
No man has gone in and emerged
alive. Wbat lurks in Its twilight for
ests that slays so surely?
Look on the map of South America.
Between the tropic of Capricorn
and latiture 30 south, and between
longitude 58 and 55 west, is a patch
that is left almost entirely blank.
That patch contains more than 75,000
square miles, about which man knows
nothing.
It. is the terra incognita of the
American continent.
Five months ago Guido Boggiano
started, from Asuncion with an ex
pedition of six Indians and a peon to
follow the path that so many others
had taken before him and that had
led them to death. Men heard from
him only once after he had left civ
ilization, as he passed through Puerto
Casado. Then came a week of silence,
broken by the arrival of two of the
expedition. Even in that one week
hardships and terrors had become too
much for them and they had fled to
ward settled country. They reported
that the line of march had been,
through constant dangers and through
constant mystery. Unseen enemies
had attacked therf®by day and bv
night. Unseen animals had prowled
on their trail. Unseen things had
terrified the Indian helpers, so that
even then Boggiano was finding it al
most impossible to force them on.
That is the last that has been heard
by man of Guido Boggiano and his
party. No doubt the entire expedi
tion -was destroyed, presumably by
the fierce, practically unknown Tobas
Indians.
This makes the second expedition to
vanish within a year.
First to meet fate in Gran Chaco
was Dr. Crereaux. He started into
the interior in 18SG with a large and
well-armed party, and forced his way
for several months through the wilder
ness along the Pilcomayo until he
penetrated into the Tobas country,
near the Bolivian boundary, wher
the expedition, worn and' thinned out
by constant fighting and hardships,
fell into the hands of the Indians,
who suddenly appeared from all quar
ters and massacred all.
The fate of the Creveaux expedition
only served to increase the eagerness
of explorers to tear the veil that hid
the unknown land.
And that eagerness next was to
cost the life of one of the most suc
cessful and earnest and daring ex
plorers that ever was in South Amer
ica. He was Ramon Lista, to whom
the world to-day owes much of its
knowledge of Paraguay, Argentina
and Patagonia. For many years he
Ramon Lista.
had lived almost constantly in the
wildest parts of the continent. He
was the first man to send out from
the depths of Patagonia the report
of the possible existence there of a
monstrous animal, the mylodon, a
giant sloth as great as an ox, that
still survived from prehistoric days,
tie reported subsequently that one
evening he had even shot at some
huge creature that might have been
It. But Its hide turned his bullet,
and the gloom of the forest made pur
suit impossible.
Ramon Lista. thus on the threshold,
possibly, of an epochal discovery in
modern world history, set his fade to
ward El Gran Chaco. He passed be
yond tha uttermost frontier of human
NOVEMBER .2
dwellers, and with canoe and men
paddled away to reach the Pilcomayo
river. And when he paddled thus
away he passed out of human sight
forever. For the River of Death has
never given him up.
Fragments of his story have drifted
to the outer world, and from the
stories told by boastful Indians and
the scattered rumors brought to Bo
livian and Paraguayan and Argen
tinian frontier posts, it Is known that
he forced his way far up the river
contending against nature and wild
beasts and wild men alike, until, thor
oughly worn out and sadly diminished
in numbers, the expedition found it
self cut off from either retreat or ad
vance by the allied forces of human
foes and hunger. For the Indians,
rarely showing themselves, but con
stantly lurking around the party, not
only picked off any members of the
expedition who strayed even slightly
from the main body, but prevented
all hunting. At last the party was so
reduced by privations that, panic
seized some and despair others. And
then came annihilation, so that none
returned. Lista hUm-ielf, so men have
learned since then, was one of the
last to dide. He was brained while
he lay starving. And scattered over
many miles of forest trails lie his com
panions, pursued and killed in fight.
While Boggiano’s fate was still un
known, Capt. Sirvent, a German in
structor in the Chilean army, started
with his son to enter the Chaco coun
try from the weSt. Ho expected to
return in a month. But three passed
and no sign came from the unknown
land.
Now, according to news just re
ceived in America Capt. Rojas, of
the Paraguayan army, who started
freta the east to search for him, nas
returned to Villa Hayes—named after
President Hayes to commemorate his
settlement of the Paraguay Argentina
boundary dispute with the almost pos
itive information that this expedition
also ha3 been destroyed. Capt. Ro
jas found that it bad approached tho
vicinity of the scene of Iharreta’s
death, and there, on the banks of
Typical Scene on Pilcomayo.
the Pilcomayo river, had perished, to
prove anew that the River of Death
still defies the world’s efforts to dis- (
pel its mystery.
Telescope to Start a Land Boom.
Prof. Turner declares that the erec
tion of tho observatory on Mt. Hamil
ton sent up the value of land in that
region considerably. Accordingly,
some enterprising gentleman in an
other neighborhood, desiring to test
the generality of the !aw that if a
large telescope were built the value
of land in the neighborhood would
go up, announced a still larger tel
escope, and ordered two 40-inch discs
of glass for the lens.
The experiment succeeded admir
ably and they were so well satisfied
with the rise in price which followed
ou the mere announcement (so the
story goes), that they considered it
unnecessary to proceed further with
the instrument.
The two lenses were produced, and,
r.ot being claimed, w-ere left on the
maker's hands, the result being that
the favorable opportunity for the pur
chase was brought to Mr. Yerkes’ at
tention, and he bought them for the
great telescope that bears his name.
This, at least, is Prof. Turner’s ver
sion of the story.—San Francisco Ar
gonaut.
What the World Speaks.
Some interesting information re
garding the chief languages of the
earth are given by a German statist.
Leaving Chinese out of the question,
which in its various dialects is the
language of four hundred millions,
English is easily first. Roughly speak
ing. English is spoken by one hundred
millions. German comes next with
sixty-nine millions, and, if the Low
German dialects be included, there are
eighty-five millions. Russian follows
with sixty-seven millions. Two lan
guages which once covered the world.
French and Spanish, are now spoken
by only forty-one and forty millions
respectively, and Italian,, which has
lately show r n signs of spreading, thirty
millions.
Wanted to Know.
Congressman Bingham is telling
about the handsome and popular wife
of a senator who has been well to the
fore in Washington affairs since last
December. Mrs. Senator was recently
accosted at a fashionable recaption by.
an overdressed, affected woman, the
wife of a western lobbyist, and asked:
"Have we met. before? Your face
seems familiar to me.”
"I do not think we’ve met.” replied
Mrs. Senator graciously. "Perhaps
you've seen my pictures. There have
been many of them in the magazines
recently.”
"That's it!” exclaimed the stranger.
“Ive seen you in the magazines. And
I want you to tell me, if you will, is
that soap you Indorse really as good
a3 you say it to?” '