,T,
KNOXVILLE, GEORGIA.
The latest Iowa idea is a coal palace
Which is to be built in Oskaloosa of big
Mocks of coal. It is to be finished by
the middle of August, the very time
when the ice palace is a fond dream of
the soul and the thought of coal a misery.
But the Iowa people must amuse thera
telves in their own way.
At a recent sale of old coins in New
Fork one American piece brought a high
price. Tne collection belonged to the
late Dr. Linderman, Director of the
United States Mints, and the piece re¬
ferred to was the 1804 silver dollar, of
which only twelve or fourteen examples
Were struck. The last one sold brought
$1030. That was three years ago. But
Dr. Linderman’s was undoubtedly the
inest in existence,beinga perfectly sharp,
mcirculated specimen. Still it went for
£470, a low price when the amount paid
for the last similar coin sold is considered.
The assistant editor of the Pall Hall
Gazette , Henry C. Norman, who is mak
ng a tour around the globe, says that the
' thief surprise of his visit to Canada was
’.he prevalence of the sentiment in favor
)f commercial union with the United
States. The abstract question of com¬
mercial union between the United States
and Canada, according to this writer, is
"“intimately interwoven with the person¬
ality of its foremost advocate, Frastus
Wiman, and this personality is interest¬
ing enough to call for a special descrip¬
tion. Mr. Wiman combines the solid
basis of the English and Canadian char¬
acter with the immense energy and
breadth of view of the typical Amer¬
ican. He does what most people would
consider a day’s work before breakfast,
and his name meets you everywhere—in
the newspapers, in the pages of reviews,
and on the platform as a capital speaker
—and always a3 an enthusiastic and al¬
most resistless advocate of his pet idea.
He must be the very man for whom the
phrase was originally coined, that
‘when he pulls, something has to give.’
This time it is very likely to be two na¬
tions. ”
An accidental discovery in the records
stowed away in the vault of the Min¬
neapolis (Minn ) Court House will result
in some very lively litigation in the near
future. It is a discovery which affects
the title to nearly Ihe whole of the ad¬
dition called Kenwood lying out by
Lake of the Isles. The story runs back
into the early history of Minneapolis.
In 1857 Nason Stoddard owned the tract
of land which is now called Kenwood.
It was farm land and not thought to be
and Mr. Stoddard
it for a comparatively small sum. That
mortgage was never lifted, and in
1870 or thereabouir’Tt was foreclosed.
The land was subsequently plotted and
quite a number of different owners have
an interest there. In the meantime
Nason Stoddard had wandered back to
his old home in Ohio, where he died
several years ago, but his sons have now
grown to manhood and are prepared to
fight for certain rights which they claim
to have discovered in the property.- It
all turns on the fact that Mrs. Stoddard
did not join with her husband in making
the mortgage, and, in fact, knew.no thing
about it. If this be so, it would follow
that the mortgage was invalid, the mort¬
gage foreclosure illegal, and those who
afterward thought they were getting a
good title to the property didn’t get
anything of the kind. The property is
now wort h $750,000.
The Princess of Wales has a scar on her
neck, is thin, limps badly and hears with
angel. difficulty, but her smile is the smile of aa
TONS OF SILVER
COUNTING AND WEIGHING $40,
000,000 IN SILVER COIN.
Expert Counters Who Handled
More 'than 1200 Tons of
the Bright Metal —A
Day’s Work.
Expert money counters have been
in Weighing and counting the $90,000,000
gold, $40,000,000 in silver and $30,
000,000 of note3 and bills stored at the
United States Sub-Treasury, New York.
Describing the process of handling the
silver, the Commercial Advertiser says:
The high silver vault is a room of
in about width. sixty feet in length by forty feet
Its walls, floors and ceilings
are of heavy plates of riveted iron, sur¬
rounded by thick walls of granite. The
foundation of the vault is of solid
masonry foundation extending of the down as deep as the
This iron is divived sub-treasury itself.
room into twelve
compartments eight ranged on either side,
four larger compartments on one side and
ones on the other, with a
narrow passageway between them. The
compartments are formed by boiler iron,
partitions and fronts with doors or gates
of half-inch iron bars, crossed like lat¬
tice work, with the interstices too small
even to admit of the insertion of a child’s
hand. Each door is provided with a
ponderous The padlock.
entrance to the vault is protected
by two iron bars; the outer one similar to
a heavy safe door, and the inner one of
thick iron bars, and each with the
strongest lock that modern ingenuity
could devise. The vault is buglar-proof,
fire-proof ancl almost air-proof. Within
these solid walls not the faintest murmur
of the busy, hustling world above and
around ever penetrates.
The twelve compartments within the
vault contain nearly $40,000,000 in silver
of coin of various denominations, though
by far the larger portion is composed of
silver dollars. The coins are contained
in stout canvas bags, each bag holding
$1000 and weighing a fraction over
fifty-nine pounds, in round numbers
sixty pounds. These are pilled up from
the front to the rear of the compart¬
ments, and from the floor to the ceiling
with the utmost regularity and nicety,
until they form almost a solid cube of
silver of the size of the compartment
containing them. The four large com¬
partments $8,000,000 are capable and $9,000,000 of holding each, be¬
tween
and the eight smaller compartments
about $2,000,000 each. The quantity of
coin now stored in the whole vault just
about reaches its capacity. As each bag
contains $1000 and weighs sixty pounds
avoirdupois, thirty-four hays, "or $34,
000, would equal a ton in weight, 30
tons in round numbers, in reality 29 7-17
tons or 1020 $1,000,000, bags, would and be required to is
make up as there
about $40,000,000 in all the total weight
of silver would be 1200 tons, contained
in 40,000 bags.
The process of counting and weighing
the silver is very similar to that employed
in the gold count, only on a larger scale.
One compartment is purposely always
left empty in order to facilitate a recount
or transfer. A perfectly adju ted coin
scale is placed in the narrow passageway
between the compartments, and as each
bag is taken from a full compartment it
is and, if correct, is transferred
to the empty compartment and up
as it was in the fir-t oue. A K ag con¬
taining only perfect and unworn counted, coin,
which lias been carefully is
used as the test of the weight of each of
the other bags. When for any reason a
bag falls short in weight, it is set aside
to be especially counted piece by piece.
Sometimes bags fall short in weight abrad¬ be¬
cause they contain mostly worn or
ed coin, but the most frequent cause of
shortage is that the bag has burst, aud
some of the pieces have slipped out and
sifted down among the under bags to the
floor. In such cases the bags When are the set
aside for a special count.
bags are removed from the compartment
all the missing pieces are found on the
floor. The bursting of the canvas bags
is of frequent occurrence, pile. especially The in
the lower tiers of the enor¬
mous weight of the silver above pre-ses
upon the lower bags aud ruptures them.
All discovered the broken and bags are discarded, used in as their soon
as new ones
stead.
It* requires a force of eighteen or
twenty men to carry on the count. The
weigher, or man at the scales, and the tally¬
men, the watchers, the handle piler, eight bags
or ten men to simply the
and carry them one by one from the one
compartment to the scales and from the
scales to the man who does the repiling.
The mere manual labor of handling the
bags is so great that it requires men who
are used to heavy work to do it. A
dozen ’longshoremen are employed at
the task, and even they complain at the
hard work and the strain on their backs,
caused by lifting aad carrying the sixty
pound tomed bags, although they are accus¬
dens, but to the handling much heavier bur¬
the peculiar weight and solidi¬
ty of silver makes it much harder
than the handling of twice the weight in
some other material or form. The vault
is imperfectly ventilated for so many
people, and the breathing and perspir¬
ing of scores of men in its close confines
and the heat from the half-dozen gas jets
renders the vault, close and nearly as hot
as a Turkish bath, and while ail are com¬
pelled to doff their coats and vests, those
men who do the physical handling of
the and bags nether strip down to their undershirt
garments and frequently stop
to wipe the gathering moisture from
their brows. When they rest they sit on
bags of silver just as the miller sits on
his bags of meal at the mill door. It is
considered a good day’s work to handle,
weigh and pile $2,000,000 in silver,
and those who are engaged in the work
are only too glad when the day is done
and they can come out into the light and
air of the upper world.
An Accomplished Fish.
As a vaulter the tarpon is unequalled,
and his aerial feats must be seen to be
appreciated. On one occasion, says a
correspondent of the Jacksonville (Fla.)
News-Herald, my friend G. and a com¬
panion were rowing through Salt Iliver
(a tributary of the Homosassa) in a
sixteen-foot Whitehall boat. A tarpon
was sunning himself in the grass, and,
being disturbed, made for deep water.
Finding the water endeavored shallow and the boat
in the way he to clear it at
an angle. The head of the fish came
into contact with the side of G.’s com¬
panion, and which he deflected passed under him from his
course, one of the
boat seats. A pocket knife was used
“to settle his hash,” but it would not.
penetrate the ivory-like armor of the fish.
Oars were used to despatch the prisoner,
but it was found that, if he were In¬
terfered with, the boat would suffer from
the vigorous blows of his head and tail.
G. seated himself in the stern and his
companion fish in awarded the bow, the and for of the honor time
the was post
unmolested. When peace was declared
the gentlemen resumed their oars, but
the one who deflected the silver king in
his course found that he could not
“paddle his own canoe," for several of
his ribs were fractured. G. rowed the
boat to Jones’s Landing on the Homo¬
sassa, and the tarpon was weighed, tip
piug the scales at 153 pounds. The
above statement is not in the least ex¬
aggerated. other instances cited,, in
Among captain of the Water one Lily
which the
suffered is remarkable. The captain was
seated on a chair in the centre of the
forward deck with his back to the pilot
house on the steamer while en route
from Jacksonville to Maysport, As the
boat was passing St. John’s bluff a frisky
tarpon leaped from the water, cleared
the guards and landed in the captain’s
lap. The captain was knocked over by
the shock, but the briny vaulter was
secured, weighing sixty-eight and
The capture of a tarpon with a hook
line is a difficult hooked, undertaking. but Every
summer many are few are
landed. “I have had on many occa¬
sions,” writes Dr. Kenworthy, “these
fish seize my bait and run with lightning- hundred
like rapidity for twenty or a
yards, then leap into the air and shake
their heads, like a terrier shaking fisher¬ a rat,
and expel the bait. The colored
men have learned by experience never
to interfere with a tarpon while in his
playful moods, for one of their number,
while fishing in Trout Creek a few years
ago, had the sinker thrown at his head
-by a frisky member of the family. The
fish had taken the bait and rushed oil
only a few rods, when he vaulted into
the air and threw the bait, sinker aud
all clear into the boat, striking attempted the man the
on the head. He never
experiment again.”__
A German composer was concluding
one of his overtures. As the “horns”
played too loudly he told and them repeated¬ softly
ly to play more softly, more
ly they played each time. At the fourtti
repetition, with a knowing wink at each
other, they put their instruments to
their lips, but did not blow at all. The
conductor nodded said approvingly. “now “Very shade
good, indeed,” he; one
softer and you’11 have it ”
The Old Cat-Meat Man.
side Standing commission in the doorway of a West
house and talking with
one of its members, a reporter for Ihe
New r York Sun was startled by the sud¬
den exclamation: ‘ ‘Hero comes Old Cat.
Meat!” Looking down the street the re¬
porter saw approaching a little old man,
whose extreme height would scarce ex
coed five feet, but who was so bent and
twisted with the weight of an immense
willow basket which he carried-on one
arm that he might have been mistaken
for seme huge fiddler crab returning
laden from a foraging expedition. His
face, devoid of both hair and expression,
was as smooth and tranquil as a withered,
apple, hung while about his ears and neck
lets through a tangled mass of grizzled ring¬
which the March wind
whistled.
walking Coming slowly up to the store, and
in without raising his bead, the
old cat-cate: er gave vent to three short,
shrill whistles. Immediately there was
a scampering, and soon lie-had about him.
three black cats, all mewing expectantly.
Putting his basket down, and thereby re
vealing that its weight had permanently
misshapen him, he raised the cover and
took out a large scrap of raw beef. This
he held at arm’s length, and two cats be¬
gan it. springing up in vain endeavors to
get The other commenced working
her way up the old man’s leg and over
his back. She continued her climbing
until she was out on his arm and just
over the coveted morsel. Then spring¬
ing, and by a quick contortion seizing it,
she dropped on the floor and hastened
off, much to the chagrin of the other
old cats. Muttering meantime to himself,the
by gent’eman proceeded to console them
an extra allowance.
‘•Bin followin’ tins track for ’bout
fourteen years,” said the man,in reply to
the reporter’s query. “Switched on after
Lowry. He drank too much,an’ I bought
him out for $5. He was the first to ketch
the notion, an’ if he’d kept, steady he’d
made a good thing of it. No, there’s
nothin’ queer ’bout it. I make a decent
livin’ at it, but I have to work for all I
get. I go into over eighty stores every
day, an’ lug this basket over the hull
business district. One of the beasts
chawed' my hand ’bout a month ago,
an’ I laid up for three days. That’s the
only time I missed a day since I started
the business. I charge thirty cents a
week for each cat, Tab or Tom, an’ my
meat costs me than near $1 a -day; but I make
more on it those youngsters who
sit'” on a high stool an’ wear stick-out
collars.” ' *
And, picking up his basket, this queer
merchant sidled out the door and up the
street.
Despotic Power in Russia
There was a theatre in St. Petersburg
which was paying roubles its proprietor month. a profit in¬ of
two thousand a The
spectors decided that it was not safe from
fire, and directed some' improvements.
The proprietor made them in a slipshod
sort of way, without regard to the direc¬
tions of the officers, trusting to the pop¬
ularity he enjoyed to carry him through.
When the inspectors saw how he had
evaded their orders, and tried to circum¬
vent them, they simply closed up the
establishment and took the proprietor months to
prison, where he spent several
reflecting upon the danger of playing
with an autocrat.
On one of the islands of tne Neva is a
summer garden, with a magnificent cafe,
and open air theatre, and a fine collec¬
tion of wild animals, a mixture of res¬
taurant, circus and park. It was fitted
up at an enormous expense, was the most
popular place in Russia, and the owner
was a Prince, who was coining money
out of the enterprise, which he ran under
the name of his active manager. A guest
at the place was assaulted by a waiter
and complained to the police. They in¬
vestigated the case, or attempted to da
so, but found themselvos thwarted at
every turn by the manager, who thought
a man with a Prince behind him could
do what he pleased. The police directed
that the man who committed the assault
should report at He their did headquarters the An
next morning. not come.
officer came to the garden and asked why.
The manager told him that lie thought little
enough fuss had been made about a
affair already. His opinions changed, arrested,
however, for he was at once
sent to prison, and the place was closed
for the rest of the season, whose despite the in¬ ef¬
forts of the Prince, money was
vested, to have it reopened. high A little au¬ of
tocracy of this sort keeps a state
discipline in St. Petersburg.— Ghica<jo
News.
___
Russia’s cavalry equals that of Ger¬
many and Austria combined*
