Bellefonte, Pa., April I, 1892 THE THINNING OF THE THATCH. Oh, the autumn leaves are falling, and the days are closing in, : And the breeze is growing chilly, and my hair is getting thin! : I've a comfortable income—and my age is thirty-three; But my thatch is thinning quickly—yes, as quickly as can be! Iwas once a mery urchin—eurly headed I was called, And I laughed at good old people when I saw them going bald ; J 5 But it’s not a proper subject to be likely joked about, : For it’s dreadful to discover that your roof is wearing out ! 1 remember asking vncle—in my innocent surprise— How he liked his head made use of as a skat- . ing rink by flies; ] But although their dread intrusion I shall manfully resist, : I'm afraid they’ll soon have got anohter rink upon their list. When invited to a party I'm invariably late, For 1 waste the time in efforts to conceal my peeping pate— Though T coax my hair across it—though I brush away for weeks, ora Yet I can’t prevent it parting and dividing in- tostreaks! 1 have tried a hair restorer, and I've rubbed my head with rum, But the thatch keeps getting thinner, and the new hair doesn’t come— So I gaze into the mirror with a gloomy, va- cant stare, For the circle's getting wider of that open space up there | People tell me that my spirits I must not al- low to fall, And that coming generations won't have any hair at all— : Well—they’ll never know an anguish that can adequately match With the pangs of watching day by day the thinning of your thatch. Poh —runch. TALL JANE. “You don’t mean that’s Jane's skirt, Mrs. Ward 2” Yes, YT do.” “Why, it’s larger than yourn.” “T know It. She's taller than I be. She's grown all out of everything late- ly. D’velet down tucks an hems, an . pieced at the top, an’ now her pink gingham is most up to her knees. I had to buy her this new so she'd look decent to go toschool. Jane, come here a minute.” Then Jame came in hesitatingly. Her small head, with its mat of fair braids, diooped forlornly, her slender shonlders were bent. She pulled down her pink skirt nervously, trying to make it longer. : ‘Stand up here ’side of me,” order- ed her mother. “I want Mrs. Mason to see how much taller you be.” Jane's pretty young face flushed pink. She stood beside her mother, and the tears started in her eyes, al- though she tried to smile. “You can’t get through the door if you don’t stop pretty soon, Jane,” laughed Mrs. Mason, who was visiting the Wards, “I never seesuch a sight. An she ain’t over fourteen?” “She ain’t fifteen till next month,” replied Mrs. Ward. An if she don’t git her growth till she’seighteen I don’t know where she’llbe. Her father tells her he’s goin to hire her out by an by for a telegraph pole.” Jane laughed feebly when her moth- er and Mrs. Ward did. Then she stole back to the doorstep, and the tears rolled down her cheeks. Itwasnearly time for her to start to school. Pre- sently her mother came with her din- ner pail. Here's your dinner,’ she said. “You'd better start before long, so as not to hurry, It's a pretty warm morn’n,”’ “Yes'm,” said Jane. She kept her face turned away from her mother so her tear stained eyes should not be no- ticed. “You shall have your new dress to wear to-morrow,’ said her mother as she finally started with her school books under her arm and the dinner pail swinging. “You shan’t wear that short thing again.” Jane tugged at her pink dress skirt as she went out of the yard ; she even stooped a little to make it look longer. Nobody knew how sore Jane's heart was over her height. She had a mile to walk to school, and she never thought of anything else all the way. Presently she came to a large white house, with a crabapple tree ia (he front yard. Mary Etta and Maria Starr lived there, and she saw the flut- ter of their blue dresses at the gate. They were waiting for her. “Hullo!” said Mary Etta as Jane drew near. “Hullo!” responded Jane, trying to make her voice cheerful. Maria was eating a crabapple and did not say “hullo!” but presently both she and her sister stared wonderingly at Jane. “What's the matter?’ asked Mary Etta, finally. “Nothin’s the matter.” “Yes there 1s too. You've been cryin.” Jane said nothing, “She's mad,’ said Maria. Mary Etta lingered. “What's the matter ?”’ she asked again, quite lov- ingly. *Nothin’s the matter. I wish you'd let me alone,” cried Jane, with a burst of tears. That was enough. Mary Etta and Maria hurried up the road, with switches of their blue starched skirts, and Jane plodded miserably on behind. Poor Jane was the tallest girl in school, and not only that, but the tall- est scholar; not one of the boys was as tall as she, and not only that, but she was taller than the teacher. It did seem to Jane that the the commit- tee ought to have chosen a teacher who was tallar, just out of regard to the becoming and suitable appearance of the school. A stranger might al- most have taken her for the teacher, especially since her hair was done up. When the bell had rung, Jane sat at her desk, ber pink shoulders and her pretty, pink face above all the others. She looked like a tall, pink hollyhock in a bed of daisies, This was a trying moment for her. The committee came to visit the school, and a strange gen- tleman and his wife came with them. Jane distinctly saw this strange lady turn her white plumed head toward ‘ come,” said she, her, then whisper to her husband.’ Then shesaw him look at her and ask one of the committeemen who that tall girl was. She could tell what he said by the motion of his lips. Then he told his wife, and a little smile stole over her serene face between its soft curls of black hair. Jane thought she was laughing at her. She did not dream that the lady had noticed her because her face was 80 pretty, and not because she was so tall.” ~ The geography class came and the visitor were still there. Jane filed out with the rest. She thought she had her lesson perfectly, but she missed in bounding Uruguay, and had to go down. A little bitof a girl in a long sleeved apron went above her. She had a conviction that the visitors were saying, “What! that great, tall, grown up girl with her hair done up miss- ing!” However, the change brought her next to Robert Carnes; he shuffied his bare toes uneasily on the line, as he bounded Venezuela in a high, sweet voice; then he cast a quick, shame- faced, but wholly sympathetic glance at Jane, which she felt rather than saw, but it comforted her. She and Robert were near neighbors, and when they were children had played togeth- er a great deal. But the worst came when one of the committeemen addressed the school, and in the course of his remarks said distinctly chat intellect was not to be measured by size, and he often noticed that the smallest scholars had their lessons much better than those who were taller and older. Jane felt that he referred to her and little Hattie Boker and the bounding of Uruguay. Her cheeks burned hotter and hot- ter. Maria Starr, who was three desks off in the same row, leaned forward until she see her and tittered. Mary Etta, in the seat behind, pulled her sister's arm to make her stop, but she did not heed. Jane saw the committee and the strange lady and gentleman go out, while the teacher stood courtesying at the door,and all through a nearing cloud of tears. When the door closed after the company she hooped her arms around her face, and laid it down on the desk. The teacher came and stood beside her, and asked her what the matter was. Jane. only shook her head and wept. ; “Are you sick ?”’ asked the teacher, bending low over her. “No, ma'am,” sobbed Jane. She would not say another word, and the teacher went back to her desk and call- a class. ‘““Jane,” she said presently, in a clear, authoritative voice, “You may go out and get a pail of water.” The teacher meant it very kindly; it was considered quite a privilege to get a pail of water, and then pass it around in a tin dipper; she thought it would serve to distract Jane's mind from her grief, whatever it might be. But it was dreadfuljfor poor Jane to pull herself up to her full height and crawl slowly down the aisle, with her arms crooked in a pink ring around her face, and all the school looking. She stumbled overa protruding nail, and everybody tittered, and the teach- er called out, “Hush!” sharply. Jane went out with the water pail, but instead of filling it from the pump near the school house she sat it down on the platform and fled desperately down the road to a little bridge over a brook. Her mind was made up, she would not go back to school, she had never been so miserable in her life, and the misery was all the greater because she was ashamed of it and ashamed to con- fess it. She did not want to tell even her mother that she minded so much because she was tali; she crouched low down in the bushes and wept. Presevtly she heard a quick patter of bare feet on the bridge, then a break in the bushes. “Hallo!” called a hesitating voice. Jane made no sound. “Ho, you needn’t play you ain't there,” said the voice. “I see you come in here. I was looking out of the window. I raised my hand when teacker asked where you was, and she sent me out here to fetch the water, and tell you to comein. Jane looked up and saw a boy’s face peering down at her from the top of the bank, his brown cheeks flushing, his red lips parting in a bashful laugh. “I ain't ever going back to school, Robbie,” said Jane with a sob. All the old childish comradeship seemed to come back to her, she had not seen much of him for a year or two; she had played more with girls. “I don’t care, you're the prettiest girl in school anyhow,” said Robert in a shamefcced way. “Why, Robert Carnes! I ain't.” ‘Yes, you are.” “Oh, Robbie—maybe I shall be— taller than I am now.” “I don’t care if yon are, you'll al- ways be the prettiest. Come along.” “I ain’t going back to school.” “Teacher won't like it.” “I can’t help it.” “Oh, come along.” “I won't.” The girl's pink face turned up toward him like a pink flow- er from the bushes. There was a look in it that the boy knew that when his old playmate said “I won't” in that tone, she didn’t. Robert seated himself on the bank and began to whistle. Jane looked at him; she could see his slender should- ers in his little homemade blue and white shirt, and his handsome face gazing ahead adstractedly as he whistled. “Why don’t you go back to school ?” she asked hesitatingly. “Oh, I ain’t going back if you ain’t.” “Why not, I'd like to know ?” “Cause I aint. Say, Mary Etta ! has got her head down on her desk crying cause you don't come in, and I seen Maria passing along some crab apples to put in your desk.” Jane said nothing. Robert whistled again. : ~ Jane waited a minute. “Well, T'll “You go ahead and get the water.” There was a leap of bare feet over the bridge, and Jane came out from the swarm of flower butterflies, with undefined conviction that brought com- fort in her childish heart, that how- ever tall she grew, although she might outgrow all her dresses, she would nev- er outgrow love.—Mary E. Wilkins in Boston Globe. i Richest Woman in the World. She Has an Income of Twenty-Five Million and Lives Like a Queen. — The richest woman in the world— such she has long been acknowledged ——is Dona Isadora Cousino, sometimes known as the “Croesus of South Ameri- ca.” Her various homes are in and near Santiago in Chile. She traces her ancestry back to the days of the Span- ish conquest. She has been a widow for about ten years, but even during her husband's lifetime she managed her own property, worth many mil- lions, which came from her ancestral estate. i The Cousino estate—now represent- ing the property of her late husband, as well as her own, with the incre- mente due to her executive ability, which is said to be greater even than ber husband's, consists of millions of money in bank, of cattle and sheep, of coal mines, of copper and silver mines, of iron steamships, or real estate in the cities of Santiago and Valparaiso, smelting works, of railroads and farm- ing lands. From her coal mines alone Senora Cousino 18 said to have an income of $80,000 a, month, or $960.000 a year. This incote from one form of wealth alone represents a branch of her estate which should be considered, at a fair capitalization of its income, to amount to $25,000,000. The extent of her coal property, however, is known only to herself; but whereas it cost: only $1.35 a ton to mine her coal, she readily realizes for it $7.50 a ton. Her own fleet of eight iron steamships carries her coal and ore to market. She owns every house in the town of Lota, which has 7,000 inhabitants, al- so nine-tenths of the houses 1n the min- ing town of Soronel. The town of Lota is her favorite residence. Trere she has a magnificent mansion in the cen- ter of the finest private park in the world. It is supplied with all the lux- uries that untold wealth can procure, brought to her very doors from the ports of Europe, Asia and Africa by her own steamships. She has another park and palace about an hour's drive from Santiago on the finest plantation in Chili. Her vineyard at Macul has upon it a single cellar 500 feet long by 100 wide which is kept constantly full of wine, and sup- plies the markets of all Chili. She has another large estate about 30 miles from Santiago, also a great town-house in that city built mostly of red cedar brought from California. This house is decorated by Parisian artists; it is said, by those who have seen it, to be os than any residence in New York ity. The income of Sencra Cousino is put at $25,000,000 a year, and South Americans say her estate would realize not less than $200,000,000. This would make her not only the richest woman but the richest person in the world. A Marvelous Aqueduct. England's Efforts to}Fight Famine and Drought an India. ‘While it is true that California and Colorado have made great progress in irrigation development since the Amer- ican settlers first grappled with the sub- ject yet there are many lessons to learn in the various branches of the science. It is a fact that there are many Califor- nians who fancy that they ‘knew all about errigatin’ they want to,” but a little inquiry will show that these same self-satisfied irrigators are still in the depths of ignurance with regard to the subject of which they knew so much. The greater number of irrigators in the State, however, are intelligent men anx- ious to learn all they can which bears upon this subject, and these will be in- terested in a stupendous work recently completed in India, India, it should be premised, presents what are undoubtedly the most ancient irrigation works in the world, and also lays claim to some of the most extensive and costly systems of the present day. The English G~vernment, led by the necessity of making provision against famine, has taken a lively interest in ir- rigation enterprises, and in its hands & large amount of expensive canal con- struction has been carried out. One of the most extensive enterprises of this kind is the Sirhind Canal, which has a total length of 4,950 miles, of which 503 miles are navigable, that be- ing one of the prominent features of nearly all of prominent Indian canals, and affording a practical demonstration of the feasibility ot a similar enterprise in California, which is now under dis- cussion. The Sirhind Canal cost $12,- 000,000, of which $400,000 was expend- ed in headworks, $6,600,000 in actual canal construction, and the balance in right of way and other features. By far the most extensive irrigation system in India is that of the Ganges Canal, which supplies water tor 4,000,000 acres and has » length of near- ly 4,000 miles. One of the leading fea- tures of this, as of the other Canals in India, is the elaborate and substantial character of the works by which the wa- ter is diverted from the parent stream and the canal carried across water courses which cut its channel. No such works are seen in any other part of the world. To carry the Ganges Canal through certain districts the tracks of mountain torrents had to be crossed in many instances. Some times torrents had to be diverted in other directions, and sometimes they are provided with broad channels of masonary to carry them peacefully over the bed of the can- al. Monster wires had to be built across the big rivers whence the supply of wa- ter is taken, and the canal carried across broad sireams on aqueducts, The Ganges Canal, for instance, crosses the Solani River on an immense aque- duet three miles long. The aqueduct consists of earth work approaches, which’ carry the canal across the low valley subject to overflow, ‘and fifteen arches of masonry of fifty feet span each across the normal bed of the river. Over this aqueduct flows a stream 200 feet broad and twelve feet deep. On a portion of the same system an immense aqueduct has just been com- pleted across the Kali Naddi River. This structure is known as the Nadrai aqueduct, and it was designed as an ex- tension of the irrigation scheme of the Upper Ganges Canal, conceived and constructed by Sir Proby Cantley about the time of the mutiny, and was opened in the year 1876. . In the year 1888-89 the Lower Ganges Canal had 564 miles ot main line and 2,050 miles of minor distributaries, and irrigated 519,022 acres of crcps. From this it will be seén how important a line of irrigation this canal constitutes, and how urgent the reconstruction of the aqueduct was. The new aqueduct replaces one of much smaller size—viz. :five spans of 35 feet, which was damaged by a high flood in October, 1884, and completely destroyed by another high flood in July, 1885. The Kali Naddi, for the greater part of the year, is a very insignificant stream, some 50 feet in width only, but on the date mention it was swollen into a river a mile wide and in places 25 feet” deep. In addition to the con- struction of the Nadrai aque- duct all the railway and road bridges below it were also destroyed and many villages swept away, The proportion of the foundation to the superstructure of the new Naarai aqueduct can be gathered from the fact that three-fourths of the expenditure of money and time were consumed by what is now hidden below ground. The foundations consist of 268 circu- lar brick cylinders or wells, as they are always called in India, all sunk fifty-five teet below the river bed. There are fif- teen bays of 60 feet, divided into three groups of five each by abutment piers. The abutement piers consist of a double row of 12-feet wells, spaced two feet apart, and the ordinary piers of a single row of 20 feet wells similarly spaced. The wells are all sunk through a stra- tum of stiff yellow clay, averaging 15 feet thick, into a substratum of pure sand. The wells are all hearted with hydraulic lime concrete filled in by skips, and in each pier the wells by cor- beling out the brick work, are joined to- gether for the superstructure of the pier. The total quantity cof well-sinking was 15,019 lineal feet, or nearly three miles, and was executed by hand and steam dredging. It was commenced in May, 1886, and completed in May,1888. The arching was commenced in Novem- ber, 1888, and finished in April, 1889. The well-sinking and arching went on night and day, the work being light- ed by ten are lights ot 2,500 candle pow- er each. i“ The solidity of the great arches and piers and the fine sweep of the bastion- like wings all unite to give an idea of vast strength and stability, while the monotony of such a large surface of fa- cade is relieved by the effect of hight and shade obtained by the bold corbeling out over the spandrels to form a support for a roadway on either side of the canal and the long horizontal lines of the cor- nice and railings are broken up by a tower at each end of the abutment piers. - Under the care of the British Govern- ment irrigation enterprise in India is making great headway. Among the systems that have been commenced and partially completed within a compara- tively recent period are the Soonsekala and Bellairy Canals, from the Poombu- dra River, 350 miles long ; the Soane, just completed from the river of the same name, to carry 4,500 cubic feet per second, with a capacity to irrigate about 1,000,000 acres ; the Sirbind Can- al, from Sutlej River, to cost $15,000,- 000; the Lower Ganges Canal, to carry 6,000 cubic feet per second ; the Orissa Canrl, built by the East Indian Irriga- tion Company, all of which are very large enterprises, some of them rivaling the Ganges Canal in magnitude and im- portance. To these may be added the Agra Canal, from the Juma, and the Eastern Ganges Canal. All of these except two have been built or restored by the Government,which owns all of them but one. ———Dyspepsia’s victim’s are num- bered by thousands. So are the people who have been restored to health by Hood’s Sarsaparilla. ——The children’s health must not be neglected. Cold in the head causes catarrh. Kly’s Cream Balm cures at once. Itis perfectly safe and