Pewarraly
ce
Al
~TaO
Bellefonte, Pa., Aug. 27, 1897. |
OH, LET ME DIE AT HOME!
Though I might travel all the earth
Or sail the ocean o'er,
Should fate decree that I must sail
To that celestial shore,
Oh, guide me to my native land,
Wherever I might roam!
When death shall come and call for me.
Oh, let me die at home !
Though I might gather all the sweets
From out earth’s fairest bowers,
The moments steeped in ecstasy,
And golden winged the hours,
Though richest treasures should be mine,
Wherever I might roam,
When death shall come and eall for me,
Oh, let me die at home !
Through fields of art and ancient love,
Through castle and through hall,
In vineyards fair, where golden fruits
In rich abundance fall :
By sunny stream or bat bling brook,
Wherever I may roam,
Whenever death shall call for me
Oh, let me die at home !
Then guide me to my humble home
In my dear, native land,
Where I can feel the tender touch
Of a familiar hand,
That I may rest at last in peace
When I shall cease to roam
And death shall come and cali for me,
Oh, let me die at home !
—Carrie E. Emery in Boston Ideas,
—
AN AFFAIR OF THE HEART.
When a woman is thirty and unmarried
it is fair, if she be neither deformed nor de-
ficient, for her neighbors to speculate
whether she is single from necessity, hav-
ing never been ‘‘asked,’’ or whether she
has had ‘‘an affair.”
Almost never, by any chance, is she giv-
en the benefit of the doubt and credited
with the choice of single blessedness. In
most minds it stands to reason that if she
hasn’t she conldn’t.”” How the advent of
the new woman may effect this I am not
prepared to say, but with the old woman
it has always been as I describe.
Miss Sarah Burdick was known to have
had ‘‘an affair.”’ Even those who were
sure of the fact and time of it were not
possessed of many details. With the na-
ture of such things, it had been variously
reported in Miss Sarah’s circle, during the
last ten years, that her lover had been dis-
covered to he a drunkard, and she had
tearfully cast him off ; that he, the
| which blew
which was the distraction of
shadowy man in the case, had jilted her
for a girl with money ; that he was a Pa-
pist, and her father had forbidden the un- |
ion ; that she was his social inferior, and |
his parents had whisked him off to Europe; |
and lastly, that he was now, in this very
day of grace, an inmate of an insane |
asylum, and that Miss Sarah went regu-
larly, and under cover of secrecy, to see
him.
This last report obtained with eminent
satisfactoriness among the more dramatic-
ally inclined, as the jilt theory pleased
those who had any reason to dislike Miss
Sarah, and the drunkard story came into
periodical favor with such as loved to
dwell on the blight of drink. For unusual
and unforeseen necessities there were left
the theological and, least interesting of all,
the social explanations of the tragedy.
Once upon a time it had occurred to a tim-
id little woman, at the missionary tea, to
venture the surmise that ‘‘he died.”” The
vehemence with which this uninteresting
theory was frowned down, and the great
number of reasons put forth to show why
it could not be tenable, prevented its ever |
being raised again in Plumpton.
To remain true toa living but errant
lover, however, was considered very
fine. The particular errancy of the lover |
was of minor moment ; it was the faithful-
ness of the waiting one that Plumpton
took a pride in. - Pertinacity is a quality
in high favor with Puritan blood, and
Plumpton was Puritan to a degree.
Midway of Plumpton’s main street was
Miss Sarah’s cottage. The best key to the
position of Miss Sarah, and the subtle dif-
ference between her house and others like
it to all outward seeming, was that the
lonely occupant was always called ‘‘Miss.”’
No one ever ventured upon the gross fa-
miliarity of “Sarah Burdieck,’”” and
‘Sally’” would have seemed like calling
the preacher “‘Bill.”’
Miss Sarah was an artist. She painted
miniatures of the most exquisite type, and
it was understood in Plumpton that she
put annually several thousand dollars into
the bank, or wherever persous of opulence
deposit their fortunes. It was even whis-
pered in Plumpton that in New York,
where Miss Sarah spent her winters, she
was considered quite a personage. Now
success in New York was identified, in the
Plumpton mind, with the Vanderbilts, and
when Plumpton tried to picture Miss Sa-
rah as a personage in New York, the Van-
derbilts always figured in the picture.
Sut if Miss Sarah knew the Vanderbilts, |
she had never been heard to say as much, |
and somehow she fitted so admirably into
the little cottage where she had been born |
and raised, and into the life of P] umpton her |
native heath that for the most part, noone |
thought much about her probable existence |
from November to May. Anything might
readily be believed of a young woman who |
bought the old manse after her father’s |
death, and in exchange for it gave a new |
one, much better, to the young man who |
succeeded him. |
The young man was delighted, and Miss |
Sarah was gratified, and Plumpton looked |
on and admired while it marvelled, With
all her reputed wealth, Miss Sarah made |
few changes ; and it soon became a part of |
Plumpton’s existence that the minister’s |
daughter, who had been away studying so |
much of her girlhood, came back in ‘Ther |
young womanhood with the May blossoms
of each year, and lived quietly on in the |
old home until the first flurries of snow be- |
gan to fly ; then hied her back to her mys-
terious town life again, only to reappear
with the lowers next spring.
In Plumpton she did her house-work,
and painted, and read, and played the
piano, and sang softly, and sewed and vis- |
ited with her neighbors, and went to |
church to hear the Young man preach crude |
discourses with the stamp of seminary |
learning and world ignorance on every sen- |
tence. None of these things savored of a !
broken heart, but Plumpton drew its own
conclusions about a woman who was thirty |
and pretty and had money, and was a per- |
sonage in New York and yet unmarried. |
Miss Sarah knew all about these conclu-
sions, and often smiled over them to her-
self. Sometimes she cried, too—cried all
night almost, and then in the morning the
sun would be shining and the flowers smil-
ing and a neighbor would run in witha plate |
of hot muffins and a hurried word about |
“thinking you wouldn't he makin’ ‘em
|
i
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i
i
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just for one,”” and Miss Sarah would tell
afl someness that made her feel bad, and, so
herself that it was the dark and the lone-
saying, would begin to hum a tune as she
put the water on to hoil.
One summer Plumpton had a delicious
excitement. A man from New York—a
man who looked as if he might be on very
intimate terms with the Vanderbilts—
| came down to Plumpton and took board
{ with the widow Tripp. He was having a
picture painted by Miss Burdick, he said.
That was all the information he offered.
Plumpton had its opinion of a man who
had no more to do than to go off for three
weeks to have a little picture painted, es-
pecially when the painter was in town
with him for six months of the year.
Presently Plumpton solved the problem to
its entire satisfaction—he was in love with
Miss Sarah, of course !
The painting went on, for the most part,
under a strip of awning-cloth which Miss
Sarah had stretched from the high brick
wall, in the corner of her garden, to two
slim poles about six feet away. The red
wall at the back and one side was covered
with a luxuriant growth of Virginia-creep-
er, and a very old lilac-bush shaded the
other side, so that this improvised bower
looked deliciously green and cool and fit
for a studio. The sun was away from that
Spot in the morning, and there in the hours
betwixt ten o’clock and noon all Plump-
ton might see, if it wished, Miss Sarah at
her work.
She was quite large, was Miss Sarah, and
just the kind of a woman any one would
call *“fair,”” in preference to all other ad-
jectives. Her hair was of that soft, light
brown which has been gold in early youth,
and besides a huge fluffy braid of it at the
back of her head, Miss Sarah had witching
little tendrils that were not exactly curls but
about her forehead in a fashion
every Plump-
ton woman under forty. Miss Sarah’s eyes
were blue—not deep blue, but the color of
the sky on a bright, warm day in summer,
and her skin was fair and beautifully clear
and soft, while her hands, although she
washed her own dishes, were the most fas-
cinating things imaginable, so white and
slim and graceful: Not a woman to dazzle
was Miss Sarah ; not a woman for satin
and diamonds, a woman to breathlessly
worship ; but a woman to enchant, a
woman for soft mulls and pearls and cash-
mere and tea-rose buds, a woman one
ached to touch and enfold and adore.
Courtlandt Taylor thought 80, as he sat
for the miniature which was to be ‘‘a
birthday gift to his mother.”” He could
find so little time for sitting in town, he
explained, and as the fly-fishing near
Plumpton was celebrated (Miss Sarah had
never heard this before), he thought he
would kill two birds with one stone dur-
ing vacation.
If Miss Sarah thought that Mr. ’ "aylor
could have had a dozen pictures painted in
the hours he had sat at her five-o’clock-tea
table, or if he had begged to drive her to
any of the four corners of the earth behind
his Kentucky thoroughbreds, she did not
say so, of course. So the picture went on,
although the fly-fishing must have been
poor, for what time Mr. Courtlandt Taylor
should have devoted to it, he spent either
in reading Shelley or talking music with
Miss Sarah, or in fretting ahout by himself
and wishing that he were with her.
Presently the picture was done.
*‘Miss Sarah,’ said her sitter, falling un-
consciously into the title he had heard so
much from the villagers—*‘Miss Sarah, my
mother died when I was a little boy.”
Miss Sarah said nothing, and the contrite
look on her sitter’s face began to give way
to a look of anxiousness. It was hard to
go on.
“If she were alive, though,” he finally
said, *‘I know she’d like that picture very
much. Don’t think I don’t reverence my
mother, please. I do; and I wouldn’t
have brought her name into this only I had
| no sister and no male relative that I could
think of who would value a miniature of
me. So Isaid it was for mother, and if it
hadn’t been that I thought mother would
be with me in the undertaking I wouldn’t
have said so. Miss Sarah I'd like to give
you to mother instead of the picture. She
never had a daughter, and I’m sure she’d
know and be glad.”
A proposal of marriage might have been
far funnier than this and not seemed to
Miss Sarah a thing to be smiled at. Her
eyes were wet when her lover finished.
Miss Sarah was not one of the women who
would will it that men should love them
hopelessly. It seemed a reproach to her
that she had let such a thing come to pass.
Then she looked, through the mist of her
unshed tears, at the big, loving man across
from her. He looked ridiculous, on the
small camp-chair, leaning forward in an
agony of expectancy to catch her word or
look. - But Miss Sarah saw only that he
was bonny and that he loved her. Why
should it be a reproach to her instead of a
crown ?
Probably only women can imagine all
that Miss Sarah saw in her mental vision
in those few breathless moments while her
lover waited for her reply. The whole of
her lonely life arose before her, the memory
of all her hunger for love and care and the
clinging caress of baby fingers on her own.
She put out her hand, and it was on her
tongue to say, ‘‘Let me make her glad,
then,” when another vision completely
shut out all sight of the man before her,
and there was a fair-faced boy in his place,
and a sunny-haired girl in hers, and all
the heavens and earth seemed full of the
glory of plighted love.
“I'll wait and be true,’’ she said to her-
self, for the ten-thousandth time, and rais-
ing the the hand that had clasped hers to
her lips, she kissed it once, and murmured,
“I'm so very sorry,”’ and fled within doors
where the pillows of her little white bed
held out their embrace to her as they had
since she was a child with a hroken toy,
and Miss Sarah went all through the battle
of her life again ; and the fight had not
been harder at twenty, when it was first
fought, than it was now, after ten years of
fighting.
If she had stabbed Courtlandt Taylor he
could have stood the pain, but the burn of
that benediction kiss drove him frantic.
Ii
Plumpton knew that Miss Sarah had
“given her young man the mitten’’ as well
as if he had told it. He left very abruptly
that very night, although Farmer Wiggins
had promised to take him to some really
good fishing the next morning. And Miss
Sarah sent a note to the minister's wife
saying that she was not well enough to go
to tea as she had expected.
Sunday, however, found Miss Sarah in
her pew in the little old church. For
once she was unconscious of the interest
her affairs had excited, and those who
studied her face and her movements with
the hope of discovering some indication of
what she had gone through had no more
satisfaction than if they had looked for
love-lorn symptoms in fat Serena Gibbs,
who was known to have married her equal-
ly fat hushand because he owned a pasture
and she owned cows.
Emmaline Hitt, so hopelessly a spinster
as to have no further need for any of the
graces of delicacy and shyness, made bold
to ask Miss Sarah, ‘‘as innocent as could
be,” if her young man had gone, and Miss
Sarah, looking straight at her with her
large light eves, had smiled serenely and
answered : ‘‘Oh, yes! The picture was fin-
ished on Thursday, and he hurried right on
to keep other engagements.’
Emmaline said ‘Miss Sarah Burdick
couldn’t fool her with her baby face and
her baby ways.”” But Emmaline, in com-
mon with the rest of Plumpton, recognized
that the late sitter was no more to be dis-
cussed with the mistress of the old manse
than was that mysterious he of long ago
who figured in Miss Sarah’s historical ‘‘af-
fair.”” This same ‘‘he’’ was become more
interesting than ever now, and Plumpton
was exercised, from foundation to circum-
ference, to know what manner of man it
could be for whom Miss Sarah refused an
elegant personage who looked like a Van-
derbilt.
The summer was quite gone when Miss
Sarah’s next visitor came, and it was that
delightful time of year when the first fires
are lit and a downy blanket feels so good
at night, and out-of-doors is full of that
glorious crispness which makes the blood
tingle and labor seem a delight.
Miss Sarah knew he was coming. He
had written and told her so, and she had
wired him back, “Always welcome,’’ and
then sat her down to think.
She was used to all sorts of strange freaks
on the part of Joe Hastings ever since the
day he had come to her in the summer of
her bliss, and told her in a straightforward
practical way that he found it was going to
hamper him seriously to marry ; and while
he should always be immensely fond of her
didn’t she think it would be sensible to
forget those foolish boy and girl dreams of
love in a cottage, and try the world a bit?
Miss Sarah was twenty then, and the |
“hoy and girl dreams’ had heen of three |
years’ duration. He was a young Senior
in college when they began, a penniless
youth, but rich in hope ; and she was in
{ the second year in the seminary in the
penniless, though |
same town, and equally
rich in faith and love.
Three years in New York. in a profes-
sion, killed or blighted all the romance in
Joe Hastings. He saw the future with a
clear eye, and there came a night, in his
boarding-house room, when he took the
picture of Sarah Burdick out and looked
long and hard at it, then held it in the gas
flame until the features were burned to a
charred tissue. At Christmas he went
down to the college town just before the
holiday break-up. He sought Sarah out |
and told her, and came away.
The next mail brought Sarah a packet of
letters, and she locked them away. ina
daze of distress. Afterward, when she
thought of them, she had an impulse to
burn the pitiful little pile. Then she said:
“I'll wait. When I’m willing to burn
them it will be a sign that love is dead.’
And for ten years those letters lay in
Miss Sarah’s desk. Love never died.
When school was done, destiny took
Miss Sarah to New York. Every now and
then destiny crossed her path and Joe
Hastings, and he told her he was doing
splendidly. He did not say, ‘‘See how much
better off we hoth are than if I were a strug-
gling practitioner and you were cooking
my meals and tending children !”’ but his
manner towards her always implied it ;
and the hard times in Miss Sarah’s battle
with her heart were nor when she was away
from Joe Hastings, but when she was near
him.
For this reason Miss Sarah’s summers
were her happiest time. Then she could
indulge undisturbed her woman’s blessed
short-sightedness. Then she could tell her-
self that Joe’s folly was the folly of youth,
and that some day he would taste ‘of the
emptiness of wordly things alone, and
then mayhap he would come back to her.
“And he shall find me waiting,’’ said
Miss Sarah to herself, with no thought
of making him suffer for his folly, no
thought of the dignity due her slighted
love, no thought of any kind save ten-
derness and pity.
And now Joe was .
True, he had not said what for, but he
evidently needed her in some way, else he
would not have sought her out, and Miss
Sarah’s pride in the fact was beautiful.
After many hesitations and fluctuations
between several plans, Miss Sarah decided
to ask Widow Blodgett to house her guest,
and she herself would feed and entertain
him. This was somewhat in defiance of
Plumpton opinion, but Miss Sarah had
long since learned to do what she thought
host, pnd leave public opinion to do as it
would.
So the round table was spread for tea in
Miss Sarah's dining-room, and the old fire-
place of this one-time kitchen was full of
blazing hickory logs. Miss Sarah had lit
her lamps and replenished the fire and tak-
en five unnecessary peeps at her biscuits in
the oven, besides nervously re-arranging
the chrysanthemums on her tea table and
twice changing the location of the pickled
pears, and still no sound of footsteps from
that five-thirty train. Then Miss Sarah
did a queer thing for her. She lit a candle
in one of her dainty china candlesticks and
went into her bed-room, holding it close to
the mirror in her dressing-case to see how
she looked. Half an hour ago she made a
careful toilet, and felt a sweet pride that
was far from vanity in the result. Joe had
seen her in elegant array, and it was not a
sense of how well she could look that she
longed to give to-night. Her heart told
her that it was not for an elegant woman
that Joe had left New York and come to
Plumpton, so it was a gray dress she chose
to greet him in—a pale, soft cashmere, very
plain, with a big Marie Antoinette fichu of
white mull, fine and filmy and feminine,
such as men love to see on the women who
reign on their hearths. She had a sheer
actually coming.
white apron on, had Miss Sarah, and pret- |
y white cuffs at her prettier wrists :
ty white cuffs: prettier wrists, and | how many yards did you get?"
she had fastened two chrysanthemums into
her bodics, but instinct told her they were
a jarring element, suggestive of being
“fixed up.” and she removed them. This
| of
|
might have been, but from fooling they
drifted into banter, and hy easy stages into
argument, with relapses into banter again,
and then they fell to talking about their
respective work and plans. Miss Sarah
would have avoided this if she could, but
Joe Hastings was not a man to be easily di-
verted. His mind was evidently on this
matter, and to a feverish degree, and Miss
Sarah felt a queer little tugging at her
heart as she wondered if the reason of his
coming was about to be explained.
‘I’ve made a queer mess of all my work
and plans, or rather they’ve made a queer
mess of me,” he said, abruptly, asa man
plunges into a critical subject, and bitterly
as strong men acknowledge defeat.
‘Why, what do you mean’’?
If he had come looking for sympathy,
Miss Sarah’s face and tone must have been
a comfort to him.
“I mean that I’ve got to leave New
York for good inside of a month, and that
the rest of my life, however much it may
be, I’ve got to live in Colorado. Sarah !’’
and the ring in his voice startled her, ‘‘do
I'look like a man whois going to die of
consumption ?’’
His eyes rested appealingly on her face
while he waited for an answer, but none
came, and presently two great tears chased
rapidly down Miss Sarah’s face.
‘Sarah ! What have I ever done to de-
serve that you should cry over me 2”?
In an instant he had left his chair and
was standing by her, forgetful of his im-
pending fate and mindful only of his un-
worthiness of those tears.
How little a man knows of good woman-
hood unless he knows that women were
not made to be just, but to be generous ?
‘‘Listen, dear!”
by her side, holding both of her hands.
‘Physician that I am, I did not know un-
til a week ago. I suspected something for
months, but tried to make myself believe
that it was the fantasy of a morbid brain.
Lately I began to know better, and con-
sulted specialists to make sure. There is
no mistake. The taint is in my blood,
and has got to come out. I am thirty-five
and my life is done.”’
It was too much for him and he bowed
his head on her hands. In an instant Miss
Sarah had disengaged them from his clasp.
and laid one of them tenderly on the bowed
shoulders, and with the other was softly
caressing his hair, as she had done long
ago in the golden days when joys were
many and comfort was for headaches
and ‘‘stiff exams.”
‘Not ‘done,’ Joe dear,” she said.
“Why, you can live years
Colorado !
who are far worse when they go than you
are. And think how you can help them—
there are so many like you there, and you,
with your medical skill and your sympa-
thy born of like suffering, can do so much
fer them. Why, I more than half envy
you all the good you will do !”’
Joe Hastings did not raise his head for a |
few moments. Then he looked up at the
sweet face bending over him, and kept his
hungry eyes on it while he said :
“Sarah, I half hate myself for what
is in my heart now. I can’t imagine how
I came to have the cheek, I'm sure, but I
came down here to tell you this, and to ask
you if you would go to Colorado with me.
1 deserve to he kicked for my pains, I know,
I’m a selfish brute for
to come to you in my trouble, and if yon
don’t feel like throwing yourself away to
help a consumptive die, Ishan’t blame you
one little bit. I—?*
Miss Sarah’s finger was on his lips.
“I'd die for you, if I could, dear,” was all
she said.—By Clara E. Laughlin, in Har-
per’s Bazar.
The Value of Her Time.
She didn’t like housekeeping ; she pre-
ferred to have a place in the world of busi-
ness, she said.
“I want to earn something,’ she fre-
quently proclaimed. “I know I have the
business instinet, and that I would be a
success if I only had a place in some
office.”’
“Well,” returned the old gentleman
thoughtfully, ‘I'll take you into my office,
if you wish.”
**Will you really 2’ she cried delighted-
ly. ‘“‘And how much will you pay me?’
‘‘Whatever your time is worth.’
‘‘But how will you decide that?” she
demanded.
“Oh, it is very easy done,”” he ans-
wered.
“‘Let’s find the valuation
first.’
‘I'd value itat about one dollar a min-
ute,’’ she returned promptly.
**You never have shown any indications
of doing anything like that yet,” he said.
“We'll just figure it out. Now, yesterday
you and your mother went down town
didn’t you ?”’
“Yes. We went down to get some cloth
for a gown. But what has that to do
with it 2’
“I heard you say that vou found just
exactly what you wanted at the first place
you stopped, but that they asked too
much for it,”’ he continued, ignoring her
question.
“That was right,”’ she admitted. {They
wanted 90 cents a yard for it, and hoth
mamma and I knew that we could get it
for less.”
“Did you?”
‘Of course we did. I guess we know
enough not to be cheated on ordinary dress
goods. We had to go pretty nearly all
over town, but we finally got the same
thing precisely for 87 cents a yard.”
‘‘How long did it take you?’ he asked
next.
“Well, we went downtown before lunch-
eon and never got home until dinner
time. One can’t geta bargain in a hurry,
you know.”’
“Of course not,” he admitted.
You put on it
“And
‘Six, ”’ she answered. .
“Saving altogether the magnificent sum
eighteen cents,’ he suggested. “The
1 ie v +: 3: y y ry v
was hardly accomplished when the knock | prop) on 8 ve ry Sipe poy ; oy ou 2 on
came, and in a moment Miss Sarah had | worked nearly one whole ¢ iy eigen
the warmth of her hearth and her love.
After the first moment of constraint it
was a pleasant meeting. Joe was full of
fos trad cents, or nine cents apiece. Making a lib-
ed her visitor, and taken bi Ys .
| Welcomed he A aken him in mln estimate for the time you spent at
home in the morning I should say that
You and your mother value your services
. . ? . : sd 8 ¥ ‘e cents p Hl. N £
spirits, and Miss Sarah fell readily into his | & Ahan swelce coms a day each. Now
mood. They laughed and talked like
children ata play party, and Miss Sarah
half hoped it was only for a visit he had
come. He praised the biscuits and the sal-
ad and the ham, asked for a third helping
of preserves and a third cup of tea, and
Miss Sarah laughed merrily when she got
up to replenish the cake-plate. >
Then she gathered up her pretty china,
and would have piled it away until he had
gone for the night, but he begged that she
wash it and let him “wipe.”
“I used to for mother, when I wasa
boy,’’ he said.
And they cleared everything away, only
wishing the dishes were not so few, and
then Miss Sarah drew two chairs to the fire
and they sat down to talk.
Not a word said either one of things that
I shall be very glad to pay you—"
But he never finished. “Then both of
them declared that he was a mean thing,
and there was nothing for him to do hut
take refuge in flight.
a —————
Price of Salt Advanced.
The Michigan Salt Association has ad-
| vanced the price of salt in all markets of
the West five cents a barrel and in the
home markets eight cents a barrel, which
brings the price up relatively the same in
| all markets.
Salt is moving fairly and is in good de-
mand and it was thought advisable to ad-
yance the price because the amount on
hand is much less than at this time last
year, and the prospects for the future are
bright.
He was on his knees
| green crests above the earth all that re-
and years in |
Lots of people do, and people |
a man that’s got to |
die and face another world, but I just had |
{ over the country to see it.
| so that I had to knock the roof out of the
| greenhouse to give it room.
| plant is I have no means of knowing, It
{ has been here for several years, stowed
Century Plant in Bloom.
When the Flowers Die Many Uses Will be Made
of the Plant.
Nearly three months ago a century plant
in a greenhouse in New York sent forth
a flower shoot. The plant, with many
others of Mexico, had been lying untended
in a corner of the greenhouse, and when
one of the employees told the proprietor
that it was behaving in an unusual man-
ner Mr. Condcn supposed at first that it
was merely developing a new leaf shoot.
After three days, during which time the
pale green point had ascended one foot, he
changed his mind, and had the century
plant moved out into a sunny spot. It
; Was carefully tended and watched, for the
blossoming of one of these plants is so rare
in this climate that the occasion on which
it has happened in New York within the
fifteen years can be counted on one’s fin-
gers.
Now the plant is in full bloom. It has
reached a height of twenty-five feet, and
fifteen feet up the first branch appears.
There are twelve other branches above
this. Each branch is decorated with corn-
colored flowers hanging in clusters like the
familiar begonia rubra. These flowers are
more curious than beautiful, their pale
hue unfitting them for an ornamental
flower. For a month the flowers remain 3
then they fall, and when they alight hun-
dreds of little century plants will spring
up. With the falling of the flowers and
the consequent propagation of the species,
the plant, which has lived perhaps seventy
or eighty years to this end and purpose,
dies. First its leaves swell enormously,
then they wither away, and almost before
the tiny cententarians have probed their
mains of the mother plant is the round,
spike-like stem, hardened to a stony con-
sistency.
In Mexico, where this species of century
plant flourishes—it is called scientifically
Agave Mexicana—the plant is put to many
uses, and Mr. Condon intends, as an ex-
periment, to get all the use from his plant
that he can. The Mexicans use it for the
three primal necessities of life—food, drink
and shelter. As Mr. Condon has roofs on
all his buildings, he doesn’t know quite
when he shall use the dried flowers for
thatching, though they form an excellent
thatch, impervious to rain. From the
leaves he will experiment at making a
flour much esteemed in Mexico. The juice
he will ferment into the insiduous pulque
or distill into the fiery vino mezcal, both
of which are highly esteemed drinks in
Mexico, and aid largely in keeping the
population down, both by doing their own
killing and by inspiring their victims to
murder. The owner of this plant will
deal cautiously with this particular pro-
duct. Besides this he will use as soap a
sort of waxy substance which exhudes from
the leaves, and plait the fibre into rope.
Also he will get ice from this extraordinary
plant by splitting the leaves lengthwise
and laping them flat in the sun. Evapora-
tion is so swift from the leaf that thin
strips of ice form on it. Finally he will
split the stony stems down the centre and
have the best razor strop known to man.
“I have been particularly fortunate
in century plants,” said Mr. Condon
‘for this is the second one that has
bloomed in my greenhouses. The other
was in 1892, and people came from all
That one grew
How old this
away under a bench most of the time. In
Mexico these plants blossom sometimes
after twenty or twenty-five years of growth
| while other specimens will require seventy
| or eighty years.
| century plants about, but I am not look-
I have a number of other
ing for any of them to sprout, as it is very
rarely that one of these plants blooms in
this climate, and two in a lifetime is as
much good fortune as any horticulturalist
bas a right to expect.’
Coal is Too Cheap.
We have spoken with some of the larg-
est employers in the coal districts respect-
ing their present difficulties with their
men, and without an exception they agree
that the pay is too small. They all be-
lieve in higher wages, but point to the
prices of coal at the seaboard and else-
where as an insuperable barrier to im-
| proved wages.
Competition among themselves has
brought coal to an unprofitable level, and
the wage scale has followed it steadily
downward. They cannot raise the price
of coal, because their competition is of
such a nature that they cannot maintain
an agreement as to either production or
price. They must submit to being howled
at and abused for not paying their men
more money or agree to he stoned for de-
manding a better price from consumers.
The coal operator’s lot is an unhappy one.
Between inability to keep his men at work
and inability to get a living price for his
coal he is likely to be crushed out, to the
advantage of none.
He wants to pay higher wages. The
prosperity of his employees is reflected in
his own condition. How .is he to do it ?
There is only one way ; one sound, effi-
cacious, and common-sense method. It is
to pool all east-bound coal and appoint a
single sales agency to distribute it on the
basis of a rational apportionment and at a
price which will provide wages for the
miner, profit for the owner of the coal, and
compensation for the railroad and the boat
that carry it.
How grinding is the reckless competition
that starves the miner, impoverishes the
employer, and ruins the railroad, when,
were the business tactics of the humble
miners adopted, there would be instantly
a sufficiency for all! The miners are a
unit against the aggression of their em-
ployers ; they are banded together in one
earnest and vigilant association to main-
tain the price of their labor, whereas their
employers are all at war with each other to
see who can mine the cheapest, and so un-
dersell all his competitors.
The labor trust has the better of it this
time. It is winning, as it ought to win
and that by the sheer moral merit of its
case. Now let the masters follow the men
and betake themselves to common sense
for the obvious and handy remedy for all
their troubles.— New York Sun.
Willing to Please.
‘This is too much !”’ he exclaimed when
his wife appeared in her new bathing suit
for his inspection.
“Do you think so 2”? she asked. ‘Well,
I'll take off six inches more of the skirt.’
Defined.
‘‘What’s the meanin’ of ‘responserbility,’
Billy #7
*‘Oh, well, suppose as yer 'ad two but-
tons on yer trousers an’ one cum orf ;
w’y, all the responserbility ’ud be on the
other 1”?
put onto a net foundation.
built over black, white or colored silk.
FOR AND ABOUT WOMEN.
Some women apparently consider that
hey are not looking their best unless their
collar is so tight it makes a deep red mark
on the throat.
Miss Agnes Slack, secretary of the
World’s W. C. T. U., who is now in this
country, said in a recent speech in Boston
that the women of England and America
will yet bring about the passage of an arbi-
tration treaty.
Biting the lips is a very bad habit, and
one calculated to do a lot of harm, not
only to the lips, but to the expression of a
face. Very often people bite their lips on
account of nervousness ; and sometimes if a
girl has pale, colorless lips she tries to
remedy the defect hy an occasional press-
ure of the teeth to bring the blood to the
surface. This, however, is likely to de-
velope into a habit of nibbling at ‘the lips
unconsciously, till by and by they get a
cracked, parched look, and the mouth
loses all its pretty curves through the con-
stant distortions it has undergone.
A pretty combination for mid-summer is
black chantilly and white muslin. An ef-
fective design shows a full skirt and blouse
waist, hooped about the hem, bust and
half-way up the skirt with narrow black
insertion. The small sleeves of white are
finished with epaulets of black lace, and
for a slender figure a sash of lace will make
a pretty finish. The hat to be worn with
this gown is of white straw, the crown al-
most covered with white and pink tulle,
and the brim faced with black velvet,
This is turned up on the left side, and on
the bandeau is fastened a large white bird.
At the present day the charm of a wom-
an is the sense of cleanliness about her—
the bloom on her sweet skin, the luster in
her hair, the sparkle of her teeth. This
cleanliness is her wise effort to main-
tain and if the least particle of what is
known as “making up’’ should become ap-
parent about her she knowa her charm is
lost.
The rouge pot, the hare’s foot, the pencil
of the eyebrows, if there is a suspicion of
the use of any of these, there will be left a
hint, a suggestion of uncleanliness in the
beholder’s mind. which utterly destroys
anything accomplished by skill in the pic-
torial line ; for no one who is not virtually
an artist can use these articles so that she
will not be discovered and she who is
discovered bears not only the stigma
of having failed in her purpose of the vani-
ty of caring too much for her personal ap-
pearance, but of having tried to cheat,
and having beeu unsuccessful in that
also.
For the woman who “makes up’ in her
dressing room never knows exactly what
the effect is going to be in the full sun-
shine of outdoors, and she who powders
and paints and pencils by daylight has no
notion of the effect of her work by candle
light, and she who puts on her bismuth
and her antimony and goes to the ball or
theatre does not know at what moment
the gas from the chandelier or from other
sources is to streak her with moldy green
and bister brown and blue.
The good grooming of the bath, the brisk
rubbing of the brush, are really all suffi-
cient wherever there is any good degree of
health. Those whom that does not make
lovely will never look lovely in false col-
ors, and it will make anyone who is at all
healthy and wholesome look more so ; and
in the long run, the wholesome look is the
greatest attraction of all, for when the
beauty of early years has faded, the per-
fectly healthy woman who never had any
beauty is bound to be more attractive than
she who has neither beauty nor health,
health itself being a beauty; and continu-
ing a beauty into old age.
And then the ‘‘well groomed” woman
knows not only what sort of clothes to
buy, but how to wear them. She is aware
that style is not a matter of money, not
yet exactly of brains, but of taste.
No matter what the fashions decree, a
‘well groomed’ woman always discovers
something which is becoming to her.
Every year wider scope is allowed for in-
dividual fancy.
Red will be much worn this fall but the
girl who can afford only one dress should
not invest in a red one as it is rather con-
spicuous. One worn lately by a girl who
filled all the requirements called for is
worthy of mention. It is red striped pique
and red chiffon. The skirt is made with-
out a lining, with hem eight inches deep.
It is trimmed with folds of the same mate-
rial. The body is of red chiffon shirred over
cords. A double pleating of red taffeta is
placed down the side. The sleeves have
three groups of shirring inside the top,
forming a puff. Fantail of red taffeta,
over sleeve and a fall of the same at the
wrist. Shirred stock and belt are finished
with pointed bias pieces of taffeta. A
black hat and patent leather ties, with
very delicate cream yellow gloves and para-
sol the same shade, do much in toning
down and softening the effect.
The sailor hat holds its own. Nothing
has heen found that will take its place,
as a shade for the eyes. Tan shoes, both
high and low, are worn with all outing
costumes. There is a notable decrease in
the size of the sleeves of jackets and shirt-
waists. Duck stocks have taken the place
of stiff collars for golf players. The newest
patterns have the band part of white and
and the tie or ends of colored duck. Maid-
ens devoted to their golf clubs wear the
club colors not only on their hat bands but
in the ends of their stocks. The recent
tennis tournament has made that game
popular among the women. The favorite
costume worn for the sport has heen the
white duck skirt and colored shirwaist.
Cool evenings also bring forth the dainty
and alluring neck ruches. Colored chiffon
in all tones is converted into decorations
for the neck, but the black and white
ruches are the most popular. Feathers, or
rather short tips. are nestled in the full
puffs of the thin fabric .The Marie Antoin-
ette style of wrap is now seen worn over
charming frocks of muslin and silk. A
dainty affair of pale gray mousseline de
soie, plaited, has one of the old fashioned
Maltese lace scarfs draped hood-fashion at
the back, the long ends extending around
the full ruched collar and fastened in front
with a jeweled clasp. The latest capes are
either only sufficiently long to reach to the
elbows, or much longer. almost touching
the knees. A blouse wrap has a bodice of
plain black satin, pouching over at the
waist, where it is held in place by a cur-
iously eniumeled belt. Old-fashioned black
capes and collarettes are being converted
into shoulder wraps. They are made to
reach nearly to the waist line. If the lace
cape is too short it is made longer by plait-
ed chiffon or additional lace ruffled and
They are
Grass stains may be removed by cream
tartar and water.