HENRY A. PARSONS, Jr., Editor, and Publisher. NIL, DESPERANDUM. Two Dollars per Annum. VOLrXI. RIDGWAY, ELK COUNTY, PA., THURSDAY, AUGUST 25, 1881. NO. 2; The Morning World. Ile coruei doivn from youth's fnoiintain,top; . 'Tlfffuj'fl him Manhood's glittering plain Lio$" :i tretehosU--T!ev hamlets, towers - and Huge cities, diniitnd silent downs, Wirlo unreaped field of shining grain. ' ' ll sonnis a landscape fair as near; flo easy to be crossed and wonl " -No mist the distant ocean hides, And overhead majestio'rides The wondrous, never-setting sun. Gaze on, gaze on, thou eager boy, ' For earth is lovely, life is grand; Yet from the boundary of the plain Thy faded eyes may turn again Wistfully to the morning-land. How lovely then oe'r wastes of toil That long-left mountain-height appears! How soft the lights and shadows glide; . How the rough places, glorified, Transcend whole leagues of lovel years. And Btanding by the Bea of Death, With anchor weighed and Bails unfurled, Blessed the man before whoBe eyes The'Tery hills of Paradise Glow, colored lilie his morning world. MRS. MANCHESTER'S HOUSE. For how long a time Mrs. Manches ter had been my friend ! I was younger than she, and altogether different, for Blie was one of those born to rule the race, and I was utterly devoid of any courage of self assertion. Perhaps our very difference explained our friend ship. It often seemed to me that only the great women of history were quite her equals, and I often thought of the part she could have played had circum stances thrown her into any ' heroic situation, instead ot ruaiuug ner merely a rich woman of good family. As for me, I was always an applauding audi ence, an admiring worshiper, delighted , with her beauty, her grace, her ease, de lighted that anything so good should bo a woman ; I watched her, I listened to her, I loved her. My own delicate health would have hindered my making acquaintances, or entering into gayeties, if nothing else had ' d,one so ; and when we came, Harold and I, to live' in'-' the splendid city where, she mado her- winter home, her house was the only place where 1, et I: -list, had any view of the great world. Harold, of coursej had many more opportunities, for he was a strong and brilliant man, full of wit and charm ' anil, dating, only, as such men often are,' unfortunate in everything he touched relating. to money.- . We wore absolutely alone in the world, and we sustained ' toward each other a very touder relation, for. I had been- given a bibv into his mother's arms when, my ,.own mother died, and we had been brother and sister, in all but blood, since tliat hour. Harold represented the. whole of mankind to me, who had never .had a lover ; and I used to think he cared for me all the more because his untoward fate kept him apart from the girl he had loved so long so long, DUO IJKU HUtiU UUL bWHULJ'LWU HUUI' mers now, and she had promised her self to him six years ago. She had promised ; but her father who knew the advantages of money, its comforts and blessings, pnd had no idea .of sac rificing the thing he loved best in the world to want and care he had en forced another promise, this promise from Harold, and to the effect that he would not' claim her hand till he could 'give her as fine a home as that from which he took her. And so we lived on, he always hoping to seize fortune tor Amy McNeil s sake. fortune always eluding his grasp, and I waiting and watching, hoping and pray ing, for his sake, to have the little sun beam come and brighten my life by brightening Harold's lovelier than the .first wild rose, fresh as the violet, happy as a bird upon the bough, the sweetest little morsel of beautiful flesh and "blood, I thought then, that ever trod -the c-arih, and loving me. almost before she knew Harold, with one of the pas sions which young girls sometimes feel for stout-hearted old maids, and loved by me first on her own account, and afterward on Harold s. Every year we hoped for tho good luck to crown Harold's enterprises that should entitle him to bring her home, that should give him a home to bring her to, and eveiy year the luck fell short. Xow they had discovered oil on his waste land in Pennsylvania there were millions in it; the oil took fire, and burned the rpgion out. Now he bent eveiy energy toward procuring the run ning of a railway through his Michigan wood lots, whose cutting would furnish a life-long income; the railway ran miles to tho south of it. Now he plunged into stocks, relying on sources of informa tion that affected the market; his broker made a fortune, and not only stripped him of oveV-y penny, but left him in debt to a point that, with his finely- nightmare. At last he had settled down to the practice of his profession,- with its slow returns, economizing in every way, in order that he might pay each quarter some installment on the in debtedness which galled him so, and which now seemed to make such an im- Eassable barrier between him and his appiness, unless the great windfall of success that never came should come at last. Once in a while t he went and visited the McNeils for a day and night; once in a while he sent me; he limited himself to a weekly letter, both because Amy v.as not a letter-writer, and be cause he thought it the wiser way; and ti late Amy had been a little reproach ful that he should think more of honor than of love, and should be spending on his indebtedness what might be amassed into a home, spurred on, I saw on the occasion of my last visit, by her father's.talk about the Quixotic folly of "Harold's refusing to take the poor debtor's oath, and bo get rid of his wires and begin life anew. And Harold Bat evening after evening at his desk, not writing leaders or reviews, I knew, but poring overt he little ivory minia " - f - . T- V 1-V.i turethat thing of beauty which was all there was to represent to him wife, home and future. It used to make my heart ache for him, and sometimes I felt as if, were he only relieved of the burden of taking care of me, with my At-J V.'.Ml- J - 113 . i l" wu niiu iuvuuu wants, ne would do better; and once I hinted as much. But he wheeled about angrily, as I ought to have known he would. - ' Pauline 1" ho cried, " do you dare to say such, a thing to. me?"- Do you think life would be worth a farthing to me," ho went on, more softly, "or to Amy either, without my sister Polly in the house?" ' " " Ton would not miss" me, Harold dear, so much, after you had that little sunbeam in the house," I faltered. " She is a sunbeam," he said. " God bless her I But you are the light in the window, the fire on the hearth, Polly. Don't let me hear any more such stuff. I've trouble enough now, God knows, without feeling that you are turning over such thoughts as that." Time fled, and Harold still plodded on. Sometimes, when I ' was well enough and I had been gaining lately he dictated an article to me; sometimes I went to the libraries and gathered him data for his work, that brought him much praise and little pay. "We lived in our three rooms; we studied Spanish together for the sake of some Spanish records of use to him; we found a cer tain quiet and healthy pleasure in every day. My only dissipation in these times were my evenings with Mrs. Manchester, seldom going on those of her grand receptions, but on the off nights, when some cluster of distin guished people dropped in, or when she had music of a rare sort; and if there were only herself and myself, then en joying the time all the more, for the hours that I spent with her alone gave me glimpses into her nature that were like traveling in unknown regions. She knew my circumstances, but, of coarse, she could offer us no such indignity as to urge upon us any other assistance than her friendship, although she did more than once beg us to give up our little rooms and come and share her lonely splendor. But that would have been Harold's surrender of independ ence, and was out of the question. " Well," she said at one time, " it is absurd. It deprives you of comforts and enjoyments, and gives you no pleas ure but the gratification of your pride. Still, I like your pride; it is healthy. Au reste, I bIirII be of use to you when you little dream it." And she sat think ing moodily for awhile, and waving to and fro her feathered fan like the dark wing of some dream. Often, then, when oho nent me h6me in her sumptuous carnage, I half wished that Harold were not so healthy in this matter of pride, for house and equipage were all exactly to my taste, that loved surroundings of state and beauty. I was going down to the McNeils to spend a day, when I bade Mrs. Man chester good-bye one morning. " Take me with you," she said, impul sively. "I should like to see little Hop-o'-my-Thumb again," which was one of the names she had given Amy, varied of late, v,ith Her High Fligh tineas and Miss Hoity Toity. When wo came back that night Mrs. Manchester brought Amy with her for a visit.. And such a visit as it was I Mrs. Manchester seeined resolved that the child should have all the gayety she could lake, and there was no doubt that the little beauty could take a good deal. It was all new to her, just from he country town. At first it dazzled and then it delighted her. She had the world at her feet, for she was fresh as a dewy wild flower where one tires of wilted exotics. At first, too, she would have none of it without Harold and my self; but at last one person or another, it seemed to make little odds. Perhaps this was somewhat duo to Harold's open ly expressed objection to her waltzing repeatedly in one evening with young Peixotto, who seemed to clasp her more closely as they whirled by Harold, standing near, and to glance with a sort of insolent triumph at the lover with his love in another's arms; and to her morning rides with Mr. De Maury through the woods beyond the city; and to her appointment to meet Captain Merriam in the gallery, and all the rest of it. Then Amy would accuso him of trying to prevent her pleasures, and would pout a little, and perhaps cry a little, and then laugh a little, and end by dancing away to get ready for an af ternoon stroll and a call at Mrs. Gen eral Vance's with somebody else. " Great heavens !" Harold said to me, on coming home one night for I did not go to the routs after a little "how this business rubs the bloom off a girl I What did Mrs. Manchester mean by ask ing Amy into this inferno ?" But 1 knew full soon what she meant. She meant that Harold should see how little it takes to strip the down from the wings of a butterfly. "But," I said to myself, " it is useless, for there are none so blind as those that won't see." One night Harold had it out with Amy, after a fashion. We had gone up to dine with Mrs. Manchester and a small com pany, and I fancied that Harold hoped for a quiet lour or two with Amy after ward. How lovely she was I Judge McNeil had given the pretty spendthrift a check-book, and bade her use what she wanted; and his money was never spent to better advantage, inappropri ately splendid as some of her at tire was. That night in her close-fitting, long trained robe of purple velvet, with one yellow rose in the knots of creamy lace at her open throat, with her yellow hair, her apple-blossom face, she was so beau tiful that one looked again to make sure. But it was no quiet hour or two that she wanted that night. " Why, what nonsense, Harold 1" she laughed, at something he whispered as they stepped into the conservatory to gether. "As if we shouldn't have all our lives together, for you to be grudging me this first and last outing 1" " Of course I do. This is the world" 'But, Amy, it is no world for you. I can never give you anything like this. Our life must be very different from this festal life." "Then I don't want it," she cried, pas sionately. "Amy!" "I mean Oh, Harold, I shouldn't think you needed to interfere with thjs one little bit' of pleasure. And I'm going to Mrs. Colonel Torrance's in an hour, and my eyes will be red. I never saw anything so hateful and selfish as men are. There I kiss me and let me uo." And that was the end of it, she thought. But not so. " I will kiss von. Amv. and I will let you go," said Harold, gravely; " but I am g .ing to tell you that I think a longer term of this pleasant life will put an everlasting barrier between you and me. If you do not want that you will bid Mrs. Manchester good-bye, and go home to-morrow. It is not only ruining you, but me. I cannot endure to see you again in Peixotto's arms; I cannot endure to know " " You cannot endure, and you cannot endure I" cried Amy, in a sudden tem- Eer; and she flung herself away from im and he saw her no more. But the next morning she went home to her father, having left Harold a pen itent little note in which she said noth ing about me, however, except to re mark that if it were not for good-for-nothing prudes there never would have been any 'trouble between them, not having quite gotten over a word or two I had ventured to say to my little sunbeam in all gentleness and desire for hers and for Harold's happi ness. And Harold went down to spend the night at the judge's, and it was all serene again. One evening Mrs. Manchester handed me a linen envelope. " I want you to take care of this for me," she said. " It will be worth your while. It is a mem orandum of something I wish to do for you. Only the half of what I wish to do, thougn remember that. When you have opened this envelope, which you will not do while I live, you are to make personal use of that to which it relates, and exactly as I do, and only on that promise is it yours. And when you have done that you will find in it the means to obey my wish. I shall leave you nothing in my will, for those grasp ing Manchesters would be sure to bieak it if 1 did." " Why do you talk so ?" I exclaimed. "As if there were any chance of my sur viving you !" "But supposing there were a chance," she continued. " You have been more to me, with your guileless admiration and faith, than you ever dreamed. I love you, Pauline, and because I love you I wish yon to have your share of all that I have enjoyed." "I hope oh, I hope," I cried, "that I shall die first 1" " ' I shall die first, whispered Hope to the Rose,' " she sang. "And it looks as if you would, doesn't it ?" Bhe said, drawing up her stately figure to its full height, as she waved her fan of black feathers, and surveying the full superb outlines and the dark, rich beauty of the face in the mirror, and then turning with Ler sweetest, rarest smile to me. "Well, well, Pauline," she said, "I have had all that this life can give me, and 1 am ready to try the next. And who knows what a day may bring forth or a night either, for the matter of that!" Who knew, indeed i One week from that time I looked on Mrs. Manchester in her coflin. She had died of an inscru table heart disease, of which only she and her physician knew. What an ineffable loneliness beset me then 1 I had Harold at his desk, to be sure; but Harold's thoughts, T saw, were miles away from mo; and Mrs. Manchester she knew me through and through. It had been enough lor mo to breathe, and she had answered my thoughts; a thousand things I could say to her that I should never dream of say ing to Harold for I was willing, possi bly, that she should know me as I was, but wanted Harold to know me better than I was. Oh, I did miss her inex pressibly. "Have you opened the enve'ope that Mrs. Manchester left in your charge V" asked Harold, glancing one night from the ring of light cast by the lamp to where I eat in the shadow of the open window, looking out at the niaht. "I will get it now," I said. "If J had not quite forgotten it, I have ha'I dreaded it." . I went and brought it down, and opened it, and took out a legal-looking paper and handed it to Harold. It was the deed of the land and the house where Mrs. Manchester had lived, and of all that it contained, moreover the house that she had rebuilt and fur nished herself, and in which we had so long known her. The whole thing was properly executed and recorded long before, a3 we subsequently found. "Oh, Harold," I gasped, "see how she blesses us from the grave I She gave mo so much pleasuro, and now she gives me this. See ! It is the home to which you can bring Amy." "The home!" exclaimed Harold. " What have we to entitle us to such a home as that?" 'WThy, that is the condition she made, to make personal use of it ex actly as she did herself. Don't you re member ?" " Yes. You have to live in it, I sup pose, if you would keep your bond. It was the condition." " The condition on which it is ours" " Ours ?" he said, in a bitter tone. "Why, Harold! Harold! you don't mean, when yours has been miuo so long, that, you wouldn't take And Amy need never know " " Oh, Polly I Polly !" And there Har old's head fell forward on his arms, and, to my amazement, he had burst into tears. He was tired, and nervous, and worn out, I said. I could not tell what ailed me, but I could no more go to him then, and take his head on my shoulder and soothe him, as once I could have done, than I could fly. "Harold, dear," I said, presently, " we can as well live there as here. What feeds us here will feed us there." " What I can earn, Polly," he said, after some further words of mine, " would not keep that house in repair would not pay the servants to keep it in order. But you are so resolved, that we can go up and see. We can, at any rate, camp out in two or three of the great rooms with our one servant; and if we can't keep it, we can surrender it." - - And so, after some slight difficulties with the Manchester heirs, as Mrs. Manchester had apprehended, we did move lip; and for a week or so I en joyed the oooupancy of the great rooms; and enjoyed wandering through them with the sense of possession strong upon me. : At least 1 should have enjoyed it immensely, it was so entirely to my mind, the rest, . the luxury, the loveli ness, the space of it all ; but every day I grew more and more lonely, the rooms were so vast if they were so beautiful, and Harold sat now by himself so much. I seemed to hear Mrs. Manchester's step on the stairs, the sweep of her train on the carpets ; for all the rich furnishing of satin draperies and Ax minsters and paintings and cloisonnes and carvings had staid with the house. I turned twenty times a day, expecting to see that majestic figure, with its dark sweeping silken robes about it, with the diamond arrow in the hair, move up the room, waving the old fan of black feathers. We had been in the house a month, when I ventured once more to open the subject to Harold, and say to him that here was a home as good as nay, far better than her own home for Amy. " It is entirely beyond reason," said he. " To live in this house requires dress, equipage and style that are utterly out of my power." " And do you mean that even you and I, Harold, ought not to stay here ?" " Yes, to tell the plain truth. If we could sell the house, that would be another thing; but as-we can't, I think it will be cheaper lor us in the end to surrender it to the heirs. It is a white elephant." " That would be violating Mrs. Man chester's wish just as much as if we sold or rented it," I urged. " 1 wonder I do wonder what she meant when she bade me remember that this was only the half of what Bhe meant to do for me. Well, Harold dear, we will do exactly as you think best, of course. But it is too bad, too bad so beautiful, o charm ing a home, and so filled with Mrs. Man chester's presence as it is ! And how perfectly Amy would fit it all 1" " With her love of pleasure, it would be Amy's ruin," said Harold, hoarsely. A few nights after that I was sitting alone in the gray drawing-room, a vast and lofty room hung with gray satin, Here and there a marble gleamed from a dim recess; here and there the ray of a street lamp flashed up and played a second on fresco or portrait, or glinted in the mirrors between the long open windows, through which occasionally there drew a breath of welcome air, for it was an intensely hot summer night; too hot, it seemed to me, as I sat not far from the windows, for the stars to shine. As I opened my fan I thought if I was so warm in these spacious rooms, what were people enduring down in hovels and shanties, and I thought with a pang of regret of the necessity of rurrender- ing it, and l studied again and again tho meaning of Mrs. Manchester's words, " only the half of what 1 wisu to do remember that." I could not help a sen Ration of meanness, a feeling that I was sordid, although I knew it was without thought or hope of anything of the sort that I had loved Mrs. Manchester; but I repeated and repeated the woids, wishing bitterly that if the gift of the house was but the half of wh.it she meant to do, she had had time to fulfill her intentions, not for my sake, but for Harold'e. And then my mind dwelt on the rest of the sentence, " and when vou have done that, vou will find in it the means to obev mv wish." What had that implied ? Harold had hunted the house over, but we had found nothing to give us a clew to ner meaning. Perhaps I closed my eyes a moment ; perhaps there were tears in them I don't know. All I do know is that the next moment they wero wide open, for I could have affirmed that I heard the trail of a garment over the carpet. started and half turned, and my eyes were caught by something like the sparkle of a diamond in the long mirror, and there, as distinctly as ever L saw her in my life, was Mrs. Manchester, sweeping down the suite of parlors in her dark robes, and waving her fan of black feathers, and as she glanced over her shoulder at me tnere was the dia mond arrow in her hair. I was spell- bound. I dared not move ; I hardly breathed. . It was all in a half-dozen heart-beats, but she had moved slowly up the parlors, turned to the mantel shelf that carried its splendid old colonial wood-carvings to the ceiling, and rested before the armoire of Floreu- tine mosaic in one of the niches at its side. Then she had taken the diamond airow from her hair, inserted it in some invisible crack of the work , displaced with it a leaf and blossom t f the mar bles, taken from the interstice a bundle of papers, run her thumb over the edge. put them back, and replaced the stone spray of leaf and blossom, put the arrow iu her. hair again, and with her eyes on me, coolly waving her fan of black feathers,, had moved down the room again and suddenly there was empty air in the mirror where she was. I don't know what time had passed when Harold came into the room with an open letter in his hand, in all the heat I was icy cold. "You have been dreaming," said he, when I had stammered out my story, "or you saw the darkness and the street lamps in the glass." " Maybe so," I murmured. Only light the gas and let me see." I gathered my strength, and ran, as he obeyed me, and with my own plain hair-pins dislodged the mosaic spray in the front of the armoire, and took from the interstice a bundle of papers. "This is. it, Harold," I almost screamed. " She has come back from heaven itself to tell me what she had no time to tell me here. This is what she meant by her words about finding the means to obey her wish." I ran my thumb too over the edges of the parcel as she had done. A little cloud of dust flew out, but not enongh to hinder my seeing treasury notes and gold certifi. cates to an amount that put want for ever behind us. Bound the parcel was a little stran. and on the strap was writ ten Harold's name. " Oh, look, Har old!" I cried; "it is yours. She gives it to you. Now tnere is no trouble here is . your fortune; you are richer than we ever wisnea. Ana we need not go away, and Amy can come now to. a home far surpassing her father's." . "Amy will never come into this ho'iie, Pauline," ho said, toeing the new-found wealth on the table; aud he gave me the letter in his hand. Truly, she never would. ne nad been married to young Peixotto the day before. " Hnsh 1" he said: " don't pity me. I should have married her all the same, but from the time of her visit here it has hung over me like a cloud, for all my love of her burned out in the fire of the pain she gave me here." " Harold I " "That is so. Great heaven 1 it is the lifting of a load from my heart. Can you imagine what it is to marry one way and love another V For, Polly, Polly, do you suppose I am a bat and mole thus to live with your goodness, your angelic goodness, and not to see it ? Do you suppose that after my eyes were open I could do anything but love you, Folly? And he stretched out his arms to me, and held me in them as if he never meant to let me go again. And L So we live in Mrs. Manchester s house. I think she hid the money with some idea of the want of it and the trouble for it bringing us together. But she ha3 never walked up the gray parlor waving her fan of black feathers again, and Harold says she never did, but that excited and unconscious cerebration worked on some dimly remembered hint, with gas-lights and wind and star beams to make a ghost for me. "And a fortune for vou," JL say. "The best of all fortunes," he answers, " would have been mine with out it. For that letter set me free to seek it to marry you, Pauline. Har per's Bazar. WISE WORDS. Cheerfulness is an excellent wearing quality. It has been called the bright weather of the heart. Impoliteness is derived from two sources indifference to the divine and contempt tor the human. Faith has a vision of its own, but no light in which it can distinguish objects except the light of prayer. Each man sees over his own experi ence a certain stain of error, whilst that of other men looks fair and ideal. They that will not be counseled can not be helped. If you do not hear reason, she will rap your knuckles. Thev say fortune is a woman, and capricious. J3ut sometimes sue is a good woman, and gives to those who merit, Count up man's calamities and who would seem happy ? But in truth ca lamity leaves fully half of your life un touched. "To acquire a few tongues," says a French writer, "is the task of a few years; but to be eloquent in one is the labor of a life. The dishoneRt man gives no more lirrht in the world than a tallow candle, and when he dies he leaves as bad an odor behind him. Considering the unforseen events of this world, we should be taught that no human condition should inspire men with absolute despair. Be willing to do good in your own wav. We need none of ns be disturbed if we cannot wield another's weapons But our own must not rust. - Cod-Fishing. We have been out on the briny deep after fish, and the Hmckeve distinguished itself as usually. The Jester caught the first fish. And it was the only fish of that kind taken all day. Wo went out after codfish. It is pleasant fish to catch. Catching cod iu like drawing water with a rope and bucket. It is a very camey fish; after it is cuTed for the Western market, Limburger cheese isn't much gamier It keeps up & perennial smell that grows stronger and more decided as the years creep by, Ltorena. When the spring time comes, gentle Annie, the old cod fish that hangs on a nail away back in the darkest corner of the cellar discount the noisy onions piled up on the middle of the floor, and then it doesn't half try. The drver it gets the louder it grows, You must be blind if you couldn't hear the navor oi a iwo-year-oiu couusu. But when he is new he i3 quiet, and vou miss the old familiar bouquet, When you go for codfish you must first get your herring, for bait. ve ap proached a lone fisherman for this pur pose, and besought him that he would lend us a lew herring. But He wasn' doing a discount business then, andsaid he had only a lew on, sucn a very. verv few. "Well, couldn't you let us have three or four ?" But he shook his head sadly, as one who should say he only had four or five, Then we shouted and cried aloud and said unto the lone fisherman: " Lo. here is twenty-five cents, but what is .that to you? ' Will you see us die for three small herring ?' And the lone fisherman dropped his line and made a reach for that quarter even as a drowning man reaches for a crowbar, and spoke with great alaority: " Oh, yes, I have just about a quar ter's worth." And he gave us a peck, The sinker on the cod-line is a piece of lead about the size and shape of corn-cob, and it weighs as much as an old-fashioned family Bible. You fish very close to the bottom five feet or so from it; and the only labor involved is hauling up that deep sea-sounding ap paratus at the end of your line. When vou catch a codfish, it doesn't add the weight at all. Oh, no; the cod helps you to pull the sinker up to the surface, and that makes, your load lighter. That's the way you know when you have a fish on. That's just how gamey the cod is. Burdette. A Detroit young man denounces the poke bonnets ' ' because they chafe his ears." Here, now, is a question for scientists. Can they explain how it is that a bonnet worn by one person can chafe the ears of another person not wearing it? Eh? How's that? Oh well, well, now, that may be it. How stupid not to see it before. Detroit Fret Fres$. . - FACTS AND COMMENTS. The TJnUed States dollar of 1804 sells for $80(1. K the government official had known how highly these coins were to be valued they might have made a grand speculation by turning out a few millions of them. As it was they thought eight would " meet the busi ness wants of the country," and eight they made. A correspondent of a London paper warns people against throwing broken bottles among sun dried grass or heat at this time of the year, as the bottoms of such bottles frequently act as burn ing glasses. The Australi ns know that extensive and ' damaging brush fires have taken place in Australia in conse quence of broken bottles having been carelessly thrown down among the dried scrub. From the year 1875 to the present date 176 murders have been committed in Chicago. Of these, as is the case generally, nearly one-half were com mitted in the hot months June, July, August and September, chiefly in July and August. Only two of the 176 murderers were hung for the crime. But in that year, 1878, one of the hot test summers known, the number of murders decreased, from thirteen in the summer of 1877, to six; increased next year to nineteen, and this year bids fair to exceed it. . The Main Exhibition building at Philadelphia, which cost $1,600,000 to erect, was recently sold at auction for $97,000. Its sale calls to mind the long and disastrous effort to maintain a per manent exbibition within its walls with some of the shells and vestiges of the great Centennial fair. The scheme was doomed to failure from the begin ning, but it was heroically supported for four years by a company of Phila delphia gentlemen who have paid dearly for their enthusiasm. JNowheie has a large permanent industrial and art ex hibition been successful save at Syden ham, near .London, and that has in its favor the attractiveness of the Crystal palace and its park as a point for ex cursions, and the immense population of the British metropolis close at hand. A handbook giving a general account of the Jews, iust issued by Dr. It, Andree, estimates their total number throughout the world at about 6,100,000. Only 180,000 of the race are to be found in Asia, 400,000 in Africa, 300,000 in America, and 20,000 in Australia. The great maionty of the race, more than 5,000,000, live in Europe. Boumania contains a far larger number of Jews in proportion to its population than any other European country, namely, 7.44 per cent. ; while Norway contains only 34 individuals of the race. The local distribution of the Jewish population in different countries is traced out with great pains by Dr. Andree. Thus, in some of the government districts of Russian Poland the Jewish inhabitants constitute from 13 to 18 per cent, of tho population. Although for the whole of Germany the Jewish element is only 12 1-2 per cent, of the population, in the city cf Berlin it has increased to nearly 5 per cent. There is nothing small about nawab of Gondal in India. He the has chosen seven youthful and lovely brides from among the daughters of the lion dal aristocracy, and has made arrange ment to lead them to the altar, one after another, upon seven successive days. It will be the pleasing duty of each bride, progressively andinregula: rotation, to attend the weddings cele hrated subsequent to her own, so that tho first lady of the series will enjoy the unusual privilege of witnessing seven nuptial ceremonies, in all of which she will be more or less directly interested, within the limits of a single week. The seven-fold bridegroom however, has bestowed upon all his brides wedding dresses and ornaments of identical material, design and value, The rooms they are destined to occupy in his palace are all furnished exactly alike; and the accident of seniority, as regards the mere date of their respect ive marriage ceremonies, is not to carry with it any precedence at court, The time is not far distant when, ac cording to scientific geographers (who certainly ought to know), the passage across the Atlantio will only occupy four days. This will not be, as one may hastily suppose, on account of improve ments in steam power, electricity or any such out of the way attempts, but simply because in time the American continent will be something quite dif ferent from what it is to-day. The coast of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island is rising, the land round the Bay of Fundy is sinking. Green land is slowly sinking along a line of 600 miles; New Jersey and the coasts to the east are rising, and on the Pa cifio there is a subsidence of water. The American continent must in time project to the North Pole. Hudson's Bay will be a fruitful valley, with just a lake or two to keep up the watery character of the place, the Newfound land banks will become . arid and St. George's bank will be part of the main land. The coast line of all oceanic States will be carried out to the ipner edge of the gulf stream. Spiders Obstruct the Telegraph. One of the chief hinderances to tele graphing in Japan is the grounding of the current by spider lines. The trees bordering the highways swarm with spiders, which spin their webs everywhere between the 'earth, wires, posts, insula tors and trees. When the spider webs are covered with heavy dews they be come good conductors and run the messages to earth. The only way to re move the difficulty is by employing men to sweep the wires with brushes- of bamboo; but as the spiders are more numerous and persistent than the brush users the difficulty remains always a serious one The Paris Jockey club pays its chief eook $5,000 a year, and has done so for a dozen years. His specialty is soup. How Farmers nre Swindled. ' '- The Cincinnati Enquirer has an article ' describing how many Western farmers have been : swindled by an organized gang of sharpers. The Enquirer Says : The farmers have often been warned against these gentry by the press, but they readily change their tactics and assume all sorts of protean forms tor entrapping the unwary, and scarcely a day passes that some countryman is not made a victim of the wicked wiles ot the ubiquitous scamps. The latest heard of is a gang who go about selling an alleged seeding machine, and these ha-e victimized a number of people. The Enquirer reporter has been shown acopy of an exceedingly ingenious docu ment which these fellows use in their operations, and by means of which they have caught more than one who thought himself entirely too smart to be dnped by any city sharp. The reader is here by presented with a- fae-simile of the 'contract drawn by these patent seed- in -machine fellows, which, they in duce farmers to sign, and which shortly afterward turns up as a plain note of hand in the possession of some paper-shaver in his neighborhood who has purchased the same of the swin dlers. It is as follows : The swindlers, says the Enquirer: go to a well-to-do-farmer and tell him he has been recommended as a . good man to sell their machines, and ask him to become their agent. He is persuaded that they sell rapidly and that he can make a large per cent, profit. He is told that he will not be expected to risk any money or pay anything until he has sold 8325 worth of the machines. ' He is induced to sign the contract above 2 13 5 b 2 3 S a a a 9 'V g 1 I I 1 I J E j. fi "S a 3 ft S 3 ' g 1 g S3 S j ?. I I S - 9 I p. & 8 : t u O p, 6 'i ? 1-1 " o r3 -S . a -b i "lit & !?'' - ' 1-1 c y a o p. -: . r. : - given, which, it will be seen, sets forth this agreement when read straight across. It looks fair and innocent enough, and soon the farmer, typified in the foregoing document as John Smith, puts his name in the blank space just before the words " Sole agent for Company." Afterward the scamps easily change the document from a contract to sell into a promissory note by tearing off that part to the right of the line drawn through the agreement as printed. In the original presented to the farmers, of course, no line appears; and it is given here sim ply to show where the division takes place, and the separation at which point so radi- ally changes the nature of the document. It will be seen at a glance that this is liable to deceive any one without close inspection, and a number of Indiana farmers have been cheated -with them this summer. After the farmers' notes get into the hands of "innocent purchasers," there is no re course but to pay them off, as they can not well go back on their signatures. This description is got up to warn all readers ot the Enquirer to sign no. papers whatever that are presented to' them by strangers, however innocently' worded or plausibly pressed for their . acceptance. Home Life lor the Blind. In an address before the college for the blind at Upper Norwood, Henry Faweett, the blind postmaster-general of Eng land, said that, speaking from his own experience, the greatest service that could be rendered to the blind was to enable them to live as far as possible the same life as if they had not lost their sight. They should not be impris oned in institutions or separated from their friends. Few who had not ex perienced it could imagine the inde scribable joy to them of home life. Some persons hesitated to speak to the blind about outward objects. The pleasantest and happiest hours of his life were those when he was with his friends . who talked about everything they saw just as if he was not present, who in a room talked about the pictures, when walk ing spoke of the scenery they were passing through, and who described the people they met. When wiih the blind people should talk to them about and describe everything they saw. The speaker concluded by remarking that there was plenty of good-will to assist the blind, but what was required was ' better organization. How Snakes are Shipped. Snakes are shipped-from Africa and South America to the United States in, bags. These bags are inclosed in tight boxes so that the serpents have neither food nor sea air during their passage.. Their chief ailment at their arrival is canker in the mouth. Treatment con sists in grasping the snake just back on the head, forcing its mouth open by pressing on the nose, and then taking a sharp buck, removing vuo imiw uu applying British oil to the wound, . The average age at which students enter American colleges is seventeen; a century ago it was fourteen.
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers