- cali Bellefonte, Pa., June 12, 1896. OPEN THE DOOR. “Open the door, let in the air, The winds are sweet, and the flowers are fair ; Joy is abroad in the world to-day, If our door is wide open he may come this way. Open the door. “Open the door of the soul, let in Strong pure thoughts, which shall banish sin ; They will grow and bloom with a grace divine, And their fruit shall be sweeter than that of the vine. er Open the door. “Open the door of the heart, let in Sympathy sweet for stranger and kin ; It will make the halls of the heart so fair That angels may enter unaware, Open the door.” y — Exchange. A PIECE OF PASTURE. BY HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD. ‘Yes,’” said Mr. Dexter, ‘‘honest poverty is nothing to be ashamed of.”’ ‘Nothing to be proud of, either,” said his son John. ‘‘And very disagreeable, anyway,” said Sylvia, his pretty daughter. “Well, I don’t know why we need to talk about it. It’s something of which we have no experiende,’’ said his wife, ‘‘hon- est, or otherwise.” “Yes,” said Mr. Dexter again—looking round at the breakfast room, whose walls were lined with Sylvia’s vines and flower- ing plants that made it a bower of greenery, at his shining table, -and the pretty petu- lant woman with her pink ribbons at its head—we have every comfort, and some luxury’’— ‘Papa means Mamma for the luxury*’’ ‘No ; he means her for the comfort,” said John, who was her especial care. “Thanks, thanks,” said Mamma brid- ling a little. ‘‘Comfort is quite rela- tive.”’ ‘A very dear relative, sometimes,’’ said . John. ‘John,’ cried Sylvia ; ‘‘you really must go into politics !”’ ‘‘Heaven forbid !’’ said his father. “He has such a capacity for pretty speeches he would be invaluable to diplo- macy,’’ urged Sylvia. ‘It is all he has a. capacity for,”’ his father thought. But he did not say so. ‘No, no,’’ he said ; ‘‘the less politics the better, His desk in the bookstore is the place for John.” ‘I should be well content with that if I owned the shop,”” said John. ‘‘But this spending the best of your days for others isn’t what it might be.”’ ‘It is a great deal better than running into debt for your beginning,” said his father, as he left them. ‘‘Yes,”” said Sylvia ; ‘‘save your salary and wait till I can help you.” ‘You !’’ was the contemptuous reply. “T do think,’ said Mrs. Dexter, “that a little dose of poverty wouldn’t be amiss for Sylvia. She always feels such immense capabilities that it might bring her”’— *‘To a realizing sense of her inefficiency, ”’ said Sylvia. ‘‘“Well, Mamma,’’ she added presently, sipping her coffee—John having gone upstairs again to change his tie—*‘‘you speak as if that would give you pleas- ure. ‘No, I don’t ; not at all. always opposing John’’— “Why, Mamma !”’ ‘Yes, you are. The moment John comes anywhere near proposing to your father to give him the money to buy out the stock of that place, you come in with your influence against it. “My influence, Mamma !”’ were such a thing j”’ “Well, there is! You are so exactly like your father that he hears all you say. And he feels you behind him and laughs the whole thing off. Saving his salary, in- deed ! He might as well think of buying the crown jewels with his salary ! A salary is a dreadful thing ; it Binds you down in chains. Yes ; there is no doubt about it, a salary is a dreadful thing.” ‘But, Mamma, do you think it is right, when Papa has you and the little children on his hands—I don’t speak of myself, he- cause I suppose I can see to myself. ‘“There it is again ! Your immeasurable conceit of yourself.’ ‘‘But, Mamma, there are quantities of young girls who do not care of them- selves.” “Their name is then.” “Well, if I can’t see to myself, it seems to me there is all the more reason for Pa- pa’s not crippling himself by giving his money to John and risking everything.’ “There is no risk about it. You are a selfish and unnatural girl, Sylvia ! You would let your poor brother toil and moil all his life, rather than make a little sacri- fice yourself. “And he has always been so good, so kind ; he was such: a beautiful child—I remember when his curls were cut off that Mrs. Dares said.—"’ ‘‘Mamma, dear, you sent Julia on an er- rand, and said you would make John’s lunch)’— ‘Sylvia ! And it’s almost train time ! Why didn’t you see toit ? So full of the good of the family theoretically—and poor John all day in town with nothing to eat’’ ‘And not a restaurant handy, said Sylvia. “Well, I have seen to it. And there’s an egg-sandwich, and a breast of duck, and some celery, and some salt, and a buttered mufflin, and a little tart, and a doughnut, and a flask of coffee. John has a better lunch than we shall have. He has'it every day.” ‘‘I should think you grudged it to your brother !”’ ‘‘No, indeed ! John likes good things, and I like to put them up for him ; so we are even. John doesn’t think so badly of me as you do, Mamma.’ “I don’t know what you mean, Sylvia, I never said I thought badly of you. You annoy me with your jealously of John— poor, dear, John ; he was meant for a prince—and you uphold your father in his severity.’’ ‘‘Here, John—excuse me, Mamma,— here John,’’ cried Sylvia, hurrying to the the door as he went by. ‘Don’t forget your luncheon.” ‘Oh, hang the luncheon !"’ cried John, as he took the parcel. ‘My father’s economies will be the ruin of this family yet. If there’s any one thing that has a cheap and detestable look, it’s this pulling a luncheon out of your desk instead of going out like a man with any indepen- dence.”’ “I'm sure you needn’t take it, John, .if. you don’t wish,” remonstrated his moth- er. ‘Yes, take it, John,’’ interpolated Syl- via. ‘‘A penny saved isa penny earned. It means more than half a dollar toward your capital.” But you are As if there not Sylvia Dexter, ‘‘Come, now, that’s interesting! Work it out for me while I’m gone, and see if I will have enough at that rate to put out at interest Stoel die.” ‘‘There,”’ said Sylvia to herself, ‘I shall say no more about it. If Papa chooses to take the risk—poor Papa ! Well, its for- tunate that Aunt Jeannette has invited me to visit her just now.”” And she put on her jacket to go and call upon the neigh- bor whose cow pastured in her lot, and see if it would not be as convenient to pay the rent now as later, so that she need not ask her father to open his purse for her. And she came back with so bright a face that her mother declared she thought that cow- right was worth more to Sylvia than the whole place to them. ‘Perhaps it is,’’ said Sylvia : ‘for it’s mine, Mamma. And it isn’t going to be absorbed and lost in John’s business, if the rest of the place is.” For the little three-acre lot was Sylvia's. She had bought it and paid for it from "her small savings, together with the two hun- dred dollars her grandmother had left her, when there was rumor of its purchase for some unpleasant purpose, it being just at the foot of the garden. Her mother had never given her any peace concerning it, so to say. She ought to have lent the money to John, was the tenor of Mrs. Dexter's frequent remark ; and doubtless she would have done so but for Harley Melton’s in fluence, and for her part she wished Sylvla had never set eyes on Harley, undesirable and unsuitable as he was ! But Sylvia, for all that, had been a proud and happy land- holder and tax-payer ever since, and had enjoyed the sight of the neighbor’s cow un- der the great trees, aud drinking from the little brook formed by the spring that bub- bled there as cold as if it had come all the way from Spitzbergen ; and she had en, joyed quite as much the ten dollars a sum- mer that the neighbor paid her. She had had another pleasure in it too ; for often had she and Harley Melton laid out those three acres in their strolls across them ; and here should be the house, and here the little lawn, and here the orchard ; and it would be so pleasant, being near Papa ; and if Harley did not think it would be so pleasant being near Mamma, he kept the thought to himself. Sylvia, with her great blue eyes, her lovely fair- ness, and her sweet sparkling brown-haired beauty, was so precious, that if the mother who bore her was not perfect, too, he was not sure that the fault was not in himself. He loved Sylvia beyond any words, the bright and busy little creature, alive to the tips of her hair with interest in all things and all people, feeling all things alive as well to her, the bird on the bough, the blossom there, too the child playing be- neath it. They had no idea of marrying, except for in the indefinite future ; they had nothing to marry on ; it was enough to love each other now ; by and by they would build the little house, perhaps, in the piece of pasture. They used to wander over the bit of land as if it were an estate, with a joy of A pos- session ; and where the spring bubbled out of the ledge that cropped up beneath the group of great trees, they would sit and watch the water as if every bubble were a miracle. ; “Just look down in it Harley—how clear ! Look at the jewels on the bottom ; they are rubies, sapphires, emeralds, opals, topazes beryls—oh, what a glitter ! What color,” what splendor ! It seems as if I could put down my arm and scoop up a handful of the gorgeous things.” ‘The pebbles down there? It is the wonderful clearness of the water that makes them so near ; and I suppose it is the vertical sunbeam that makes them seem so beautiful. They are really a dozen feet beyond your reach,’’ said the young chemist. “They can’t be, Harley !”’ ‘Yes, I sounded the spring last week ; it is eighteen feet deep ; and I don’t dare to say how many gallons it pours out a min- ute that all go so waste through the Tel- assee River.” * ‘To think that our brook makes part of a big river !”’ ? ‘And I analyzed it, too. The river that went out of Eden could not be purer. One drinking this might think he was drinking of the water of life.” “Well, it will be Eden when we have our little house up there on the knoll. ‘What a beautiful earth it is, Harley, when such freshness and purity pour out of its dark places ! What a dear earth, to let us call this little piece of hers ours !”’ ‘1 really should think,’’ said Mrs. Dex- ter when Sylvia came in, ‘‘that that spring was full.of diamonds by the way you and Harley Helton hang over it.’’ “It is, mamma—it is!’ and Sylvia danced away with no idea of the truth in her words. ; It was lonesome at Aunt Jeannette’s, in the big town twenty miles away. Her father and John and Harley came in every day to their business, and for five minutes she saw Harley, who made occasion to go by the gate. Her father and John found time for few visits. Her first letter from her mother informed her that she would be glad to hear that her father had at last sold his bonds and given John the proceeds to buy out the business where he had slaved so long as a clerk. Sylvia knew, however, under what unbearable pressure her poor father had been brought to buy out the business where he had slaved so long as a clerk. Sylvia knew, however, under what unbearable pressure her poor father had been brought to yield ; and her indigna- tion and pity for him made her feel at first as if she never wanted togo into the house again. Succeeding letters were very jubi- lant and happy ; it gave his mother so much pleasure to see John taking his place as became him, a man among men. She thought the business must be flourishing, for John had a little naphtha launch on the river, in which he went to town now, instead of traveling with a fhe dust and jar of the railway. urse, there had been opposition, the letter said, for his father was one of those men who never liked innovation ; but probably he would soon be going into town on it him- self. He was always prognosticating evil ; any one would think John was committing an unpardonable extravagance in having devised a healthier way of going to busi- ness than they had ever known before. Mr. Dexter did not approve of John’s new horse, either ; and yet any one could see that the horse was as gentle asa woolly lamb, and he ate apples and sugar from the children’s hands, and when he traveled he simply flew. When Sylvia made an errand to her father’s office, she found him as anxious as she had expected. But it would do no good for her to go home with him just now ; she would show her disapprobation of the state of affairs too plainly ; and she couldn’t if she would, for Aunt Jeannettee was ill with typhoid fever, and, of course, it was out of the question to leave her. There was really a pestilence of typhoid in the town. All the drinking water was drawn from a river that passed large pol- luting towns and tanneries, and every day a new case appeared, till there was almost a panic in the place. Fortunately for Sylvia she was one of those creatures so full of vital strength and fire that fear was unknown to her ; and so well had she nursed Aunt Jeannettee that, when she was a little rested, the hard- pressed physician begged her to help him on another case. And so it chanced that she went from one sick bed to another, and presently came to be offered large payments for her services ; and in view of her appre- hensions concerning John and her father’s unsecured loan to him it seemed best for her to continue both earning money and carrying relief. Harley protested that she would wear herself out ; but she protested in return that she was well and young and strong, and liked it ; and that even if the duty had not heen set so plainly before her in relation to the sick and her ability to help them, it would be a wanton waste for her to refuse to earn the money thus offer- ed her. ‘Oh, Harley !”’ she cried ; “I must do all I can’ for them. For when I think of the poor creatures dying for want of good water, murdered by bad water, and remember our spring in the pasture bub- | bling up fresh and pure every second, I feel like a criminal ; as if I kept health and strength all to myself ; as if I, and not the spring, were wasting what would be life to them. “‘Such a morbid feeling shows that you are tired and in no condition to be nursing the sick,” said Harley. But suddenly, as they went along together—for he appointed to meet her almost every day now in the hour’s walk allowed the nurse by custom —his face flushed and flashed with a sud- den thought like the passing of a sunbeam. “Will you give me permission to do what I please, to take all I want of the spring water, and in the way I think best ?”’ he on her finger some little time before. ‘‘Pa- pa, you are quite another person already,’’ she cried pinning on her hat and going out to the minister's with them and her Aunt Jeannette. ‘Oh, you dear, sweet, confiding old Mother Earth,” Sylvia exclaimed, kneel- ing at her window that night, and looking out on the dark, slumbering, country be- hind the town, “I love you so!’ “I think,” said Harley, ‘‘you had better be saying how you love me !”’ ‘“That goes without saying,’’ she replied, leaning back her head on his arm. ‘‘But this dear Earth—she makes us so happy while she rolls with us about the sun that it seems to me now only a happiness to think of the time when we shall be a part of her—just brown dust together in her bosom !’ “Oh, but a long way off I’ he cried, folding her still more closely in his arms. Dexter, having inspected the released mortgage and the gratifying check, had coquettishly picked out the pink ribbons of her. cap and was remarking to her hus- band : ‘Well, it was the most thoughtful thing Sylvia ever did—to save me the fuss of a wedding, That piece of pasture ! Is John to have a salary—or a commission ? A salary is so comfortable. You always know where you are with a salary. It has to be paid. Oh yes, a salary is the best thing ; I have always said so. Harley Melton is turning: out better than I | thought. I never said there was any harm [in him ; only that he was so inefficient. Still, with the money coming in, Sylvia could have done better. She could have married almost any one. It is vexatious, said. “The idea !"’ cried Sylvia. ‘Permission, | indeed ! Isn't what is mine yours, I say what you will, to have an outsider like Harley directing family affairs. It is just ! the thing for John himself to do ; and it is It was about the same hour that Mrs. | Terrible Downpour of Water in Altoona. | Rainfall the Greatest Ever Known in the History of the City, Ober Two Inches Falling in Two and One- Half Hours:on Sunday Afternoon. Beginning at half-past 12 Sunday after- noon the greatest rain storm which ever visited Blair, Co., swept over Altoona and its suburbs. In two hours and a-half 1 19-100 inches of rain fell according to the official register. This is the heaviest rainfall in that length of time ever recorded in .Al- toona. The storm was accompanied by terrific displays of electrical force, though there are but few casualties from this source re- ported. Mrs. Eliza Ennison, of 3023 Seventh avenue, was terribly shocked by lightning while putting down a window at her home. The storm twas general thoughout the city, but was particularly heavy on the west side over a belt extending from Fair- view southward over the First, Third, Fifth and Sixth wards. All over the city the streets were innundated, sewers over- flowed and street railways washed out. Gaidens, outhouses, business places and manufacturing plants were flooded and losses entailed which will aggregate from $75,000 to $100,000. The scenes along the devastated dis- tricts remind the visitor of the great Johns- town flood in 1889. There is the same ap- pearance of disaster noticeable, but in a lesser degree. Residences and outbuild- ings are turned . topsy turvy ; gardens washed out and strewed with debris many feet in height”; there is terror among the residents along the paths of seething tor- rents. : At Fifteenth avenue and . Eighteenth street, four families only reached their homes by means of rude bridges construc- ted with portions of fences and side-walks. | Men, women and children crossed these frail should like to know ?’” And they passed ! my private opinion that John suggested | structures from one window to another to more purely personal matters. i ‘the whole business in the first place. He | over raging torrents of murky waters which “I don’t know if you are aware,’’ wrote | always said that water was pure. John is swept with resistless fury around the cellar her mother some weeks afterward, ‘‘that Harley Melton is meddling with the spring | in your piece of pasture, as you call it, meddling in my opinion must unwarrant- ably. He has had men there scooping it out and curbing it ; and he has rigged an unsightly derrick there, and men are filling great glass demijohns by the wagonful. And at this rate there’ll be no spring there at all presently. I suppose it is to save himself the trouble of distilling water for his prescriptions—that is so pure. I'm sure if he has money enough to hire men and rig derricks and all that, and cares as much as he pretends ahout you, he had better lend it to John, who can’t sleep nights for worrying about his notes,’ Sylvia was too busy with her sick and dying people to wonder much about the burden of her mother’s letter. She knew that whatever Harley did was likely to be right. She could not spare the time ‘to go and see her father again ; she could not get the time ; hut she felt oppressed with fear for him, and she laughed a little bitterly at herself to think she had supposed she could help him with her earnings, when a whole year of them would not amount to a thousand dollars. But at any rate she was glad that she was lifting any portion of ex- pense from him, be it ever so small. It was some weeks afterward that when she went out ‘for het morning walk ina new direction, and saw great posters on all the fences and telegraph poles, ‘‘Drink water from the Sylvan Spring and prevent typhoid,” she understood with a double. thrill of joy for themselves, and joy for the sick, what Harley was doing. And when she met him driving in with a load of the glass car-boys filled with Sylvan Spring water, which he left from house to house, before going to his headquarters for fresh orders, she felt as if he were really an angel of the Lord in mortal guise. And he held out his hand for her to mount to his side, and she rode back into town with him, feeling as a devotee might do who carried holy water to the perishing and penitent. Sylvia had gone back to her Aunt Jean- nette’s for a short rest after the hard and cruel winter, when, one bright May day, her father came to see her. John had fail- ed ; and all that Mr. Dexter had saved and spared in the long years had gone into the gulf with the money of the other creditors. There were no assets to speak of—a few notes, the remnants of an ill-choosen stock, the horse that had gone lame, the disabled naptha launch. Sylvia felt as though her heart would break when she saw her fath- er’s despondency. ‘‘Don’t blame your poor mother,” he said. ‘Love isa good fault. It was her love for John, and her ‘belief’ in me. She thought I was equal to any trouble that might come, superior to it ; but even I supposed John had some capacity. It’s hard, my child, to begin life over again at sixty.” ‘‘I don’t think you will have to do that, Mr. Dexter,” said Harley who, coming in just then, had heard the last words. ‘I am just making a return to my chief ; and I am sure it will be a joy to Sylvia to re- place a good portion of your losses by in- | dorsing this check to you.” “Harley !”’ “I have deducted all the expenses and my own commission,’’ said Harley. ‘You will see by the schedules that we supply in this town and others along the route and on the further side—for the typhoid scare is widespread now—more than a thousand families with the Sylvan Spring water, at fifty cents a week. Of course the expenses are heavy ; but then the net profit is heavy, too. It gives Sylvia and me enough to build our house in another spot at some distance from the water-works, a pasture of mine. ‘And if you, Mr. Dexter, will take the management of the business in town— I think it need not interfere with your pre- sent arrangements ; and John will overseer the teams—that is quite within his power ; I can attend to the spring-house until the time, that is, when the towns take the works off our hands and pay us fifty or a hundred thousand for our plant, with per- manent positions in the business.” ‘‘There is no more honest poverty in ours, Papa,’’ cried Sylvia. “Harley !”” said Mr. Dexter ; ‘you are my salvation.” . ‘‘Well, sir, you can reverse the thing and be mine by giving your daughter a command to become my wife here and now. !”’ ’ ‘“Without her mother ?*’ “Well, papa,’’ said Sylvia, blushing rosy-red, but feeling obliged to come to Harley’s help,” Aunt Jeannette would do. And you know that mamma has a great—a great faculty for obstruction. I think she will be so relieved about John that ‘she will forgive us. And we will make her a wedding present of a paid-up-mortgage of the house.” : ‘You are a nouveau riche, Sylvia. Har- ley must not allow you to be too free withe your money.”’ : ‘Oh, it isn’t ours ; it is a trust the dear old Mother Earth gives us. - We, are to be- happy out of it, and to make every one else happy. And, oh, what happiness it is to: bring health to whole towns full of peo- ple ! Don’t you remember I told you the sprin- was full of sapphires and rubies and emera.ds, Harley ? “And real ones you see, papa !’ for Harley had slipped a ring | so full of ideas !”’ “rr | Rev. Weaver and His Assistants. | Night after night the attendance at the | Tabernacle on the school groumds at the | corner of Spring and Lamb streets keeps up. | The Bible readingsat three o’clock are well | attended for day services and since school | closed, the children’s meetings; at four | o'clock, fairly swarm with youngsters. | Rev. Weaver came to Bellefonte in Feb- { ruary under the auspices of the W. C. T. | U., and was so successful in his revival | meetings that he was persuaded to return | as soon as he could with his associate evan- | gelists Wharton and Weeden. , Mention | has been made in the WATCHMAN several times of the Tabernacle, its construction and how it happened to be built, so we will only sketch the noble men who are do- ing a great work towards the evangelizing of our community. Evangelist Leonard Weaver isan Eng- lishman by birth, born at Leommster, Herefordshire. verted and the result of the prayers of pi- ous parents and Christian training soon manifested itself in consecration to what has become his life work. When 21 years old he gave himself up to evangelistic ! work, and for nine years traveled through Great Britain and Ireland preaching to great congregations. Six years ago his health failed him and he came to this country, and with the change came re- newed health. James Wharton, the English evangelist is a native of Penrith, Cumberland. He was born in a saloon named ‘“The Golden Keg,”’ kept by his parents. He attended the Congressional Sunday school along with his brother, where he received his re- ligious impressions. He was at the age of 15 apprenticed to the hardware business, but after awhile left it and went to sea, where he experienced _many hardships and hair-breadth escapes.” After five years or so of seafaring life he returned to his na- tive town, where a revival was in progress, and he was converted from the error of his ways. This changed the whole tenor “of his life and he soon afterwards became a worker in the cause and kingdom of his new Master. He married and settled. in business as a house furnisher at Barrow, England, and he finally relinquished his business for evangelistic work, and since then has had calls to preach and conduct revival services throughout the United Kingdom and the United States and Cana- da and the Shetland Islands. He has crossed the ocean 23 times, and for 20 years has preached the Gospel in nearly all the large towns and citigs of these countries including the southern states. He was the first man who attempted to preach af- ter the war in the open air in the city of New Orleans, and during these many years has been instrumental in bringing hund- reds into the peace which ‘‘passeth all un- derstanding.” : W. 8S. Weeden was born in Columbia county, Ohio, March 29th, 1845 ; his father moved into southern Ohio when Mr. Weed- en was about 10 years of age. He grew up in that country, went into the late war from there, served 23 years, came home in the fall of ’95, being in his 19th year, and attended a revival held in a Protestant Methodist church and was converted dur- ing the meetings, was married the follow- ing spring, took up the study of music, be- gan teaching singing schools, and soon af- ter he began to study, and served as choir- master in small towns for several years. About 10 years ago he was called to Alle- gheny city as chorister of one of the largest churches there, where he served for a num- ber of years. Three years ago he moved to New York city, taking charge of the music at Washington Square M. E. church serv- ing them two years, and during the week singing in evangelistic work in the slums and missions of that city and Brooklyn. Could All Live In Texas. They are said to lie at times, but they can tell the truth. A statistician who is also a bishop, and hence of necessity truth- ful, says that if all the arable lands in the United States were under cultivation it would feed 450,000,000 people and we could also export 2,555,000,000 bushels of grain. He declares that we could care for 1,000,000,000 people and also keep the world from starving. If all the people in the United States lived in Texas it would not be.as thickly settled and populated as Germany. We are worth $69,000,000,000, and the most astonishing part of “this story is that the larger part of this wealth has been acquired since the war. ——An exchange says that gossip has made many a home a hell on earth ; gossip has parted husbands and wives ; gossip has blackened and sullied the character of many poor girls ; gossip has parted lovers who would have been very happy if it had not been for gossip. One little misstep or one little indiscretion will cause gossip to arise with new strength and start on her mis- sion. Her, did we say ? We ought not , to, for we have our male gossipers, and as a rule they are ten times more venomous than a female. A good, healthy man -gos- sipper is about as mean and low and dan- gerous as the meanest thing on earth. When a boy he was con-! | walls. Residents near Tenth street and Howard | avenue were surprised to see a torrent of | water five or six feet deep come sweeping | down Tenth street from the direction of | Eighteenth avenne. After passing Fifteenth | avenue it cut diagonally across the street, | crashed through cellar walls and residences land made its way to Ninth street, down { which it sped in a raging rivulet a hundred | feet in width and fouror five deep. | The intake of the First district sewer is | situated in Eighteenth alley near Tenth | street. The terrific downpour speedily clogged this and the waters gathered into a raging~torrent and sped down through the city. The residence ‘of C. L. Koller, 1016 Eighteenth avenue, was almost wreck- ed. The rear yards in this vicinity are devastated, outbuildings overturned, cel- ar walls crushed in and cellars flooded. The water rose eight feet, filling the first floors of the houses, tearing down fences and literally washing gardens away. The sufferers in this vicinity are : John Miller, { 1010 Eighth avenue, John Smith, 1012 Eighteenth avenue, Charles Mattas, 1014 Eighteenth avenue, carpets ruined, fences, outbuildings and residences damaged, loss $200 ; C. L. Koller, 1016 Eighteenth ave- nue, loss $400 ; C. C. Durburrow, 1018 Eighteenth avenue, loss $200. The residence of Mrs. Rachel Marks, 1013 Eighteenth avenue, was damaged to the extent of $200. Miss Virgie, her daugh- ter, had to be carried out of the house. J. L. Jones, and A. G. McGlaughlin, of Seventeenth avenue, lost much. While 0. S. Kane, of the 7Zimes office force, was washed into the torrent and narrowly escaped drowning. v4 There are many sufferers in the Tenth street district whose losses will aggregate several thousands of dollars. Some of these would not or could not estimate the dam- age they suffered. Down in Logantown the damage was restricted to the district between Third and Fourth streets and Cherry and Chestnut avenues A large number of cellars were flooded, fences and outbuildings destroyed. The damage here, however, did not nearly approach in magnitude the Tenth and Eighteenth street disasters. ALONG EIGHTEENTH STREET the climax of destruction was reached. The inlet to the Fourth district sewer is situated at Eighteenth avenue and Eigh- teenth street. Here a small child fell into the torrent abot 4.30, and would have drowned had not a bystander jumped in and rescued it. At Fifteenth avenue and Eighteenth street the scene was indescrib- able. At 6 o'clock in the evening the water was still running down its improvised passage way several feet in depth. Through the Eighteenth street culvert the flood poured to a depth of four or five feet. Fences, lumber, sidewalks and debris indescribable were borne along with the current and mostly lodged in the yard in front of the Edison plant on Union avenue. The water poured into the elec- tric plant, filling the draft tunnel and practically closing the plant. After the storm was over pumps were rigged up and by dint of hard work on the part of Super- intendent Greene the current was turned on in full by 10 o’clock. Previous to that a large portion of the city was in dark- ness. After passing the Edison plant the water spread over a large area, filling cellars, but doing less damage. The various streams did not converge again until they reached the culverts at Ninth avenue and Twenty- fourth street. Once through here a river six or eight feet in depth and fifty feet wide was formed, which continued the work of destruction in the lower Sixth ward and beyond the city limits. Travel on the Seventh avenue line was suspended because of the great washout at Seventh avenue and Twenty-fourth street, while on the Logan Valley line the bridge on Fifth avenue near Twenty-fifth street was render- ed so unsafe as to make its use perilous. Accordingly passengers were transferred here, while workmen repaired the damage. Near Llyswen the Logan Valley line was washed out for a space of nearly 220 yards. Travel south of the power house was sus- pended altogether. On the Bellwood line the damage was correspondingly great. Be- tween Blair and Flizabeth Furnaces about thirty-five feet of the tracks are standing edgewise, while in other places it is dan- gerously washed. More than $1,000 will be requiled to repair the Logan Valley and City Passenger companies’ losses. In the vicinity of the three culverts there is chaos. The wagon roads is obliterated, and where a few days ago a shallow streamlet trickled yesterday a raging riveg flowed. Trees, fences and other debris FOR AND ABOUT WOMEN. A woman in St. Louis has gained the right to solicit fire insurance. Some time ago the Board of Underwriters expelled the company which employed her. The case was taken to the courts, and the firm was reinstated, with full privilege to employ this or any other woman. All thin textures are now arranged over color, and the skirts are quite separate at the edge, which gives a lighter and more fluffy effect. In many cases the slip is distinctly a separate garment, and can he used as a foundation for several gowns. Bran water is recommended for the com- plexion. Put a cupful of bran in a small cheesecloth bag. Pour over it very hot water, and when the water is cool enough to use it will be found creamy and soft. The bran bag is used hy many in the daily washing of face and hands. Some- times there are added shavings of olive oil soap er orris root, which give a delicate perfume like violets to the skin. Indian meal or oatmeal is often substituted for bran. The dry air of the modern dwelling house is inimical to beauty, drying up the skin and causing early wrinkles. The tailor-made girl is strictly in it this summer for a tailor-made costume is one of the necessities of the day. They now fit the back to perfection and cling to it, and the loose fronts show the sides of the figure, which is a marked improvement. Only the best tailors understand the secret of doing it. If you order coat and skirt at the best places you will find your skirt untrimmed but faultless. Your jacket will be mould- ed to your figure, except directly in front, where it will close with two large mother- of-pearl buttons and hang loose from the bust down. A narrow opening above will reveal a mousseline white or cream chemi- sette or plisse, of course. Then broad revers, turn over, and the material will have an edging of guipure. Cadet blue is an especially favored color this season, and comes in all the newest goods. It is clear, yet soft, and is eminent- ly becomlng to a face daintily flushed with pink. A charming tailor gown made up in English homespun in this soft color has a sfx-gored skirt, made to flare smartly at the foos, where a five-inch hem is turned up on the outside and heavily stitched. The fullness at the back is arranged in flat, box plaits to harmonize with the box plaits at the back of the little coat. The jacket is in reefer effect, cut open broadly to show the shirt waist front, and having a rolling collar and oddly-cut square revers, thickly braided over with black. The sleeves are in in the melon shape, with the braided decorations at the wrist as a finish. The entire gown is interlined with rustling black taffeta. One of those simple—mind not inexpen- sive—the two are a long way apart, and beautiful gowns is of white Swiss dotted with black and lined throughout with an exquisite shade of yellow silk ; the bodice was trimmed with horizontal rows of black lace insertion, while the bottom of. the skirt was finished by three or four tiny lace-edged Tom Thumb ruffles. The stock and wide girdle of black taffeta completed this airy costume, which looked the acme of girlish simplicity. Another, of white organdy, made over pale pink ; the skirt, which was very full, was finished with a wide flounce, trimmed with many rows of white lace insertion. The bodice, in blouse effect, was a mass of lace, and was partly covered with a wide mull collar. “Harper's Bazar says the proper length for a bicycle skirt is now conceded to be about. to the top of the boots ; no shorter, and for hall riding even longer. The fulness is all in the back, but there is so much. gor- ing over the hips and width below that the outlines of the figure are becomingly hid- den. On the correct cut of the skirt de- pends the beauty of the costume, which may be made of a cheap material, if only it hangs well. i There are two ways this season of ar- ranging the fulness of the skirt at the back. One has it all beneath the folded-over- pleats which meet at the back ; the other has two box-pleats, double, like many of the walking costumes. The latter fashion looks rather better off the wheel, but the former looks Deny when riding, for the folds. hang more ully. The —_— style for the waist is. . the Norfolk jacket, but this season the fill-- ed in Eton jacket is more popular. The: Norfolk jacket has the pleats sewed down (and cut away underneath), and there is. none of the ugly bulkiness which formerly condemned that garment for stout women.. It should be made to come quite below the. waist-line, and with full-gkirt effect. At the neck it is cut open just enough to- show the neck tie—the four-