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facts and fancies for the fireside A RARE OLD BOOK. We have in our possession an nu eount-book kept by the firm of Thos. H. White & Co., who did a business of general merchandise at Wrights boro, Ga., in 1828. Their stock in trade was miscel laneous. They dealt in everything that a country community could need. From molasses to muslin, from gold chains to coffee, from brandy to calico, from shoes to pare goric, from potatoes to silk, .from crockery ware to kid gloves, and parched groundpeas, you could get anything you chose from Ihos. H. White & Co. Dead these many years, are the members of the firm —dead are their wives and children. Dead are the customers who bought and sold. Dead is the town of Wrightsboro —a decaying monument of by-gone wealth and prosperous traffic. From page to page in the Book of Accounts of this long-forgotten firm is written an undeniable record of the life and times of the. people of Georgia in 1828. Beyond all power of contradiction we ean gather the facta which illus trate the home life of the folks of that remote period. We can take this old hook and follow the farmers to the village store and see vhat they bought, and what they paid for it. We can form a pretty clear idea of how the Doziers, Reeses, Scotts, Pet its, Parhams, Harrisons and Win freys lived and managed in these primitive days. The first thing which impresses us with these customers of the store is that all the accounts are marked set tled in full at the end of the year. In nearly every instance the set tlement is by cash. In a verv few eases, the settlement is by note. It has been our luck during the last fifteen year’s to examine dozens of account-books of ova merchant clients, and the difference in this re spect between the (record of 1828 and that of recent years is amazing. So far as regards the showing of accounts paid off at the end of the year, we venture to say that there is not a merchant in Georgia today whose books will bear comparison with these. The people paid because they were able to pay. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred when a man is able to pay his debts he pays them. Another thing that impresses us with these accounts is that they are small: people lived at home and boarded at the same place. If there ip any corn, meat or meal charged up on the 300 and odd pages of this book we have not been able to find it! This is an eloquent fact. • . What, then, did these people buyl They bought salt, calico, gin, spool thread, molasses, muslin, whis key, pepper, ribbons, shoes, brandy, candles, hats, knives, gin, nails, rope, hoes, brandy, plow lines, paregoric, magnesia, whiskey, cotton-cards> shearing, shirting, gin, bagging, bub tons, powder, shot, brandy, plates, cups, saucers, whiskey, indigo, eombs, tobacco, gin, blankets, snuff, paper, branky, knitting-needles, calomel, cinnamon, whiskey, brandy and gin. Our forefathers (to tell the plain and simple truth) had no objection to a dram. We have been slightly scandalized at seeing the frequency with which these venerable ances tors of ours bought every sort of liquor, from cider to brandy. Never did they buy much at a time—not enough to hurt them we are quite assured —but apparently they never left the store of Thos. H. White & Co. without dampening their whis tles with some kind of exhilarating tipple. Those were days when every man could make his own liquor:—no In ternal Revenue Taxes, no Deputy Marshals to intrude. Consequently whiskies were plentiful, pure and cheap. , i Brandy sold at this country store for one dollar per gallon, gin for one dollar and a quarter; whiskey for seventy-five cents to one dollar. Tea was worth two dollars per pound; coffee, twenty-five cents; sugar, sixteen cents. A paper of needles cost 12 1-2 cents; a spool of thread, 18 cents; a paper of pins, 18 3-4 cents. Coarse brogan shoes sold for $1.50. Bleached shirting for 43 cents per yard. Fine brogans for $2.62. Almanacs sold for 12 1-2 cents; cheese at 18 cents, almonds 37 1-2 cents, oranges 12 1-2 cents. Molasses cost 75 cents. Raisins, 31 1-4 cents. Cigars 31 1-4 cents per dozen. Powder, 75 cents per pound. Shot, 12 1-2 cents; goobers sold for 12 1-2 cents per quart, homespun for 31 1-2 cents per yard, bagging for 25 cents per yard, twine at 50 cents per pound. Tobacco was 37 1-2 cents per pound, calico 50 cents per yard, muslin one dollar, ribbon 62 1-2 cents. “Anti-Tariff Jeans” sold for.one dol lar per yard. Nails were 12 1-2 cents per pound, blankets, $1.37 each. Hampton Wade is charged, on October 17, 1828, with $5.56 for the ginning of 3 bags of cotton. Elvin Wright is credited, November 8, 1828, by 426 lbs. seed eotton at $2 per hundred. Thomas Dozier, Senr., is credited, Dec. 5, 1828, by “wheat and flour, SIL Henry W. Massengale is credited on Oct. 31, 1828, by “75 lbs. seed cotton, $1.50.” Comparing all these prices with those of the present it will be seen that the variations are remarkable. Many things are no cheaper today than they were then. Allowing for the difference in the quality of the goods, very few of the articles named are really any lower now than then. The calico, jeans, blankets and shoes of that day were very different goods from the calico, jeans, blankets and shoes of today. One of the interesting things about this old account-book is that it con tain* an account against Mrs. Martha Ball—whose husband was thq real inventor of the cotton-gin, WATSON’S WEEKLY JEFFERSONIAN. Fulton was not the inventor of the steamboat though he gets the credit of it; Howe was not the real inven tor of the printing-press which bears his name, nor was Eli Whitney the real inventor of the cotton-gin, though he gets the credit of it. T. E. W. SAW NAPOLEON’S RETREAT. Remarkable Career of Man Who Has Reached the Age of 105. One hundred and five years old, Rabbi Barnett Wolnisky, on Sun day night at his gread-grand daugtter’s marriage danced the wild steps of two Russian dances, perform ing this feat despite a lameness which compels him to wear one shoe with a sole an inch thicker than that of the other. His eyes, that watched Napoleon’s broken legions straggle westward again in the Russian snows ninety five years ago, shone as brightly on fifty-four of Rabbi Wolnisky’s de scendants on Sunday night. His legs which carried him briskly in boyish panic from the French soldiers in 1812, twinkled almost as merrily in Forsyth street in 1907, as he pranced with his great-great-grandchildren in the Zeide mit die Einiklach and later broke into the wild rhythm of the Komarishki. The only thing that tired Rabbi Wolnisky on Sunday night was the length of time he had to go without his pipe. He smokes before he gets up, he smokes all day and he smokes after he goes to bed. He had plenty of tea at the wedding, where he per formed his remarkable terpsichorean feats, however, and he needed it, for his daily quota is about forty big glasses, brewed strong, and taken without milk. He drinks no water and no liquor as a rule, though he takes both in times of emergency. One meal daily, consisting of soup, bread, and a little meat, is his only food, and is set for him at noon. Bom in Bobrine, in the state of Grodno, Russian Poland, he moved about with his parents in his early youth, and so came to see the ice beaten regiments of .the Little Cor poral falling back from Moscow. Marrying early, he settled in Anti pole and traded in liquors, most of his life in Russia being spent in the Phinizy & Co. COTTON FACTORS Augusta, Georgia * HIGH CLASS SECURITIES Amon ir others, we mention a small block of stock in cne of the largest and most conserva tive banking institutions in the t-outh, which will increase 460.00 per share in the next year. This is of interest to large or small investors and will be on the market but a short time. You wid find this a genuine banrain. Call or write CHAS. E. THOMPSON, Stocks and Bonds. 204 Equitable Bldg., Atlanta, Ga. wholesale liquor business. He pros pered, and twelve children came to him and his first wife, who died be fore he left bis Russian home for America, about twenty-five years ago, with two sons, thet first of his family to seek these shores. Wolnisky’s business ruin in Anti pole began when Alexander 11. was assassinated in 1881. Alexander TIT., who was by nature inclined to mild measures, fell under the influence of the leaders of the old regime, and in a period of repression which the ac tivity of the revolutionaries seemed to demand the Russian soldiery were more aggressive than ever. Cor sacks broke into Wolnisky’s establishment in 1881, drank all they could swallow, and opened every bar rel in his well-filled cellar. When they went on their way he was ruined. He at once determined to leave the country. In the East Side here he was im mediately recognized as a person of extraordinary learning, and he was elected rabbi of the Eldridge Street Synagogue, which place he held for many years, retiring only two years ago upon the death of his second wife. Wolnisky’s second wife was twen ty-two years old when, at the age bf sixty-five, he married her. They had fifteen children. He has ninety twio living direct descendants, of whom fifty-four are in this city or state or in New Jersey. The others are in Russia. His descendants have been increasing at a rate of twelve a year for two or three years. He knows the name of every one of them and never forgets their birth days. He rises every morning at 4 o’clock and has a few glasses of tea and a pipeful of Mohoke tobacco, import ed from Russia, for breakfast. He uses three pipes, one for the street, one for the house and a third for smoking in bed. This last has a big bowl and a long stem, the bowl rest ing on the floor. He has never been ill, but eight years ago was run down while crossing Canal street by a fire chief’s buggy. A wheel passed over his ankle, breaking the bones, and when it healed that leg was a trifle shorter than the other, making it nec essary to wear on it a shoe with a very thick sole. —New York Herald. PAGE ELEVEN