- Dewornic ial, Bellefonte, Pa., Jan. 26. 900. LOVE AND LAUGHTER. Laugh and the world laughs with you; Weep and you weep alone; This gay old world must borrow its mirth, It has troubles enough of its own. Sing, and the hills will answer ; Sigh,—it is lost on the air ; The echoes bound to a joyful sound But shirk from voicing care. Be glad, and your friends are many ; Be sad, and you lose them all ; There are none to decline your nectared wine, But alone you must drink life’s gall. There is room in the halls of pleasure, For a long and a lordly train, But one by one we must all file on Through the narrow isles of pain. Feast and your halls are crowded ; Fast, and the world goes by. Succeed and give, it will help you live ; But no one can help you die. Rejoice, and men will seek you ; Grieve, and they turn and go— They want full measure of all your pleasure But they do not want your woe. —Col. John A. Joyce. THE END OF A STORY. Lilian Blythe’s fresh tints and trim out- lines were displayed to best advantage by yatching dress, and she, who rated herself justly, was aware of it. Therefore, on a certain July morning when the sky and the ocean rivaled each other in fleckless blue and the steamer was making a record- breaking ran for the first day from Queens- town, she leaned against the taffrail and faced her fellow passengers ‘‘confident of her charm.’”’ The fact that Dugald Neil had smoked his after-breakfast cigar beside her, and that he seemed in no haste to re- sume the walk her appearance on deck had interrupted, added to her self-satisfac- tion. Consequently, when Muriel Denison pass- ed, staggering under an armful of rugs, she felt sufficiently amiable to exclaim : “Do help Miss Denison! You don’t know her? Come along and I will present you. It will be nice for you to begin the day with a kindness—especially as Muriel if not used to much of that Christian quality poor dear ?’’ She sprang forward the more alertly be- cause of Neil’s obvious reluctance to ohey her commands. “Muriel ! Let this big idle man carry part of your barthen,’’ she cried. Mr. Neil —NMiss Denison. I should not have dared an introduction yesterday without formal British preliminaries, but today with Eng land far behind us, I feel a free American again, and consider my friends good enough to know each other as they know me.’ ‘Legally we are in England while we re- main under the English flag,’”” Miss Deni- son answered unsmilingly. “Socially also. Thank you very much, Mr. Neil; here is the deck-steward, so I need not trouble you.” With this she turned her graceful shoul- ders upon Neil, and, bestowing a little nod on Lilian, followed the steward into the companionway. ‘We have heen snubbed !"* Lilian laugh- ed. ‘“‘Don’tlook vexed. If Muriel is dis- agreeable occasionally the infection of her disagreeable circumstances surely provides her excuse.’’ “How should I he aware of either cir- cumstances or excuse ?’’ Neil said sharply. He had flushed as he stood holding his cap while his. frowning. glance pursued Miss Denison’s retreating figure. * * “You shall be aware at once, if you will stay here in the sunshine and recover your good humor. NoI do not want a chair,”’ Lilian added, reflecting that a man may es- cape speedily from a fair companion who is seated, but that he must not desert while she is on her feet. ‘‘Muriel has a story,’’ she continued, leaning comfortably against the deckhouse. ‘‘Nothing to her discredit of course, or I should not tell it to you. Justa bit of school-girl folly—a runaway marriage which her father broke off at the church door. But it was the church door after the ceremony, and there was nearly as much bother in getting a divorce as though they bad been married a year in- stead of ten minutes! So that Muriel is known everywhere as a divorcee who has re- sumed her maiden name, and the innocent details are rarely stated as clearly as I have stated them.”’ ‘‘Hitherto it has not seemed to me that a divorcee is apt to be unhappy or unpopu- lar,”” Neil remarked between puffsata cigar he was lighting. Even in Montana, where I have spent the eight years since Miss Den- ison’s divorce—'’ “How have you heard the number of years when you never heard the story 2”? “A dim remembrance returns to me,’’ Neil answered, smilingly. ‘“Who was the man ?’’ “I have forgotten—a mere nobody to whom the Denisons objected because they were ambitious for Muriel, who was pretty I am told, before her troubles made a quick end of her prettiness.”’ ‘Surely a divorce which she sought could not deeply afflict her?’ *‘I don’t suppose she regretted that any longer than all of us regret a first love— which is only until we have another !’’ Lilian’s dark lashes flashed a charming glance which Neil’ssombre gaze at the hor- izon missed utterly. ‘‘Muriel, however, has never found that consolation. When she came out the winter after her divorce the story haunted her, and men seemed afraid of the ghost. She lacked partners at the cotillons, and, being a proud girl, she presently stopped going to them. Then her stepmother. who had expected that a pro- file sach as Muriel’s would be a success, took it en grippe that she proved a failure. They went to Europe for the education of the younger sisters, and as Mr. Denison had lost money and Mrs. Denison is indo- lent, I fancy Muriel was an economical kind of courier maid until they came home again, when Constance left sehool. Con- stance has turned out the beauty Mrs. Den- ison intended Muriel to be. They brought her over to London this spring to be pre- sented just for the chic of the thing—and I am told that Lord Beaufort isto follow them to Newport, though Constance, of course, is as penniless as Muriel.” * 3% * ‘Miss Denison was not included in their London gayeties?”’ ‘Oh, no! They could not afford court dresses for two daughters,”’ Lilian declared with a display of dimples. ‘‘Muriel has adopted another role. She goes slumming seriously, not fashionably, and is more popular in East Side tenements, I believe, than among her own class® But it isn’t a cheerful destiny to overtake a woman of six and twenty.”’ “That depends, probably, upon whether she is merely a disappointed woman or the stuff of which saints are made.”’ “Look into Muriel’s eyes and you will read which of the two she is.”’ ‘She seemed scarcely likely, just now, to give me an opportunity for such reading.” Lilian clapped her hands—her hands were pretty. “I will give you the opportunity, and she shall have a chance of amusement while Mrs. Denison and Constance are safe in their berths!” she exclaimed. ‘I will have a series of afternoon teas on deck and of card parties after dinner in the saloon with Muriel and Jim Van Bleeker to make up our company.’’ ‘Very amiable of you.”’ “I am always amiable! Here comes Jim as proof thereof, for I have allowed him to extort the promise of a walk, which is the thing I most detest at sea.”’ Thus deserted Neil turned to go below. In the doorway of the ladies’ deck cabin | Muriel Denison confronted him, and in her eyes were neither worldly disappointment nor saintly serenity, but a blaze of resent- ment. *‘The porthole was opened beside which you stood. I heard Lilian’s account of me and your acquiescence in her proposed dis- play of me for your judgment,’’ she said in a voice none the less bitter because it was very low. “Do you wish me to avoid you?’ he asked, and his steady glance sent a swift color across her pallor. “It is eight years since I have wished anything concerning you,’’ she answered coldly. ‘‘Good breeding might, however, indicate that you should merely meet me, when necessary, with such civility as you would show toa recently presented ac- quaintance.’’ “Such civility as you showed me? Or as nearly like as my creed of manners per- mits ?”’ “Was I rude? You must pardon me, but one is impulsively sincere when sur- prised.’’ 2 She made a step or two away and paus- ed. Straight and slight in her long traveling coat. her eyes and lips eloquent of pride and pain, Neil thought how blind were they who said that Muriel Denison had not ful- filled the prophecy to her beautiful girl- hood. “I wish to assure you that Miss Blythe has deepened the shadows of my life and left out its sunshine,’’ she said with effort. ‘‘To he a professional beauty was never my ideal, and though I am yet far from the de- sire of my heart my path towards it is most happy"”’ She swept to the companionway and van- ished in the depths below. As for Neil, he returned to the deck and passed unseeing many a‘‘beck and nod and wreathed smile’’ from occupants of the line of chairs. Forward he walked to the farth- est limit of the long bow, and leaning on the rail, gazed ahead as if he would fain go farther. : Yet it was the past, not the future, that his thoughts were so busy that he did not see the blue ocean foam broken by the steamer’s hurrying stride. He saw instead a pine forest in far-off Maine, and two young figures close together whose happy eyes and trembling lips promised each oth- er that neither governess nor father on her side nor lack of fortune on his side should ever divide them. Lilian Blythe won her way with the tea parties and the card parties—a result which she was wont to declare that she always achieved, being of those, wise in this world’s wisdom, who blazon their triumphs and are dumb as to their defeats. “Dugald Neil is all right,’’ she replied easily to an inquiry from Miss Denison con- cerning that gentleman’s antecedents. ‘‘Fi- nancially all right, because he has made a pot of money out in Montana, mining or ranching; socially all right, because last year he did a good turn somewhere among those Western wilds to Lord Arthur Saville and Lord Arthur has made a hero of him among the smart set in London this sum- mer.”’ If these glittering generalities impressed Muriel there was no sign on her fair, im- passive countenance, but she consented to keep Lilian company during the entertain- ments planned for the remainder of the voy- age, and though she proved more ornament- al than amusing as one of their partie carree Lilian did not object. To be amusing was her own special vocation, which she fulfill- ed to Jim Van Bleeker’s entire satisfaction and, apparently, to the serene content of Dugald Neil. * % The winds and the waves, however, even in the most prosperously begun of Atlantic crossings, are influences as uncertain - as preponderating. The first three days hav- ing been delightful, the forth showed a sul- len determination to be disagreeable, which increased as night came. ‘Suppose we go on deck for a ‘look aloft’ as the dear Jackies say,’’ Lilian exclaimed that evening after whist had grown tire- some and the anchovy toast had been con- sumed. ‘I foretell that we shall be prison- ers below to-morrow.’” They went upstairs all together. Bat outside the deck house Lilian and Van Bleeker were missing,and Muriel stumbled silently along the heaving deck beside Neil for a few yards. “Do you prefer a fall to my assistance ?’’ he asked abruptly. “I prefer returning below to either,’’ she answered. ‘‘Muriel !”’ ‘My name is Denison.”’ ‘Your name for a time was mine. How brief a time to have cost so endlessly !”’ *‘What has it cost you ?’’ she began ve- hemently, and broke off with an unsteady laugh. ‘‘We are absurd to count costs of a folly which was paid long ago.”’ “Is it paid? Does it not reckon with us yet??? He caught her hand, but she withdrew from his touch. “We agreed the other day that, since chance has thrown us together——?’ ‘‘Blessed chance it may be if you will —as you used —"’ *‘I?”? she interrupted. They had halted by a door of the deck house, and the electric lights shone full on bs defiance of her eyes, the appeal of is. ‘'This is nonsense !’’ she exclaimed sharp- ly. *‘If you remember any thing of the girl yon used to know, believe me, you remem- ber a girl who ceased to exist eight years ago.”’ ‘Why di she cease to exist ?”’ “I should have said more truely that she never existed. She was as entirely a phan- tasm of youthful fancy as—as the boy who —who played out the foolish fable.’ “Muriel !"’ She .stepped across the threshold of the hallway. “Good-night, Mr. Neil,”’ she said care- lessly. “‘Steward, is it going to be rough ?’, Notwithstanding the professional cheeri- ness of the steward’s assurance to the con- trary, the weather continued to roughen, and the morrow dawned with a heavy sea and a wind whose fierce squalls were omi- nous of more enduring violence. Lilian Blythe did not make a public appearance until after luncheon, when indeed the pub- lic of the ship’s society had shrunk exceed- ingly. She was. however, a mariner whose courage and whose digestion rarely failed, and she settled into a cozy corner of the sa- loon with a chess-board into * which the pieces screwed, and which thus defied the malice .of the ocean as successfully as her- self or Van Bleeker, who was her antago- nist in the game. To these two came, latein the afternoon, Dugald Neil with a mien as gloomy as the day. ‘If your countenance speaks truth, the smoking room has not proved the paradise it is depicted to us proscribed feminines,’’ Lilian said. She was tired of Van Bleeker, whose per- sonal subjugation was ancient history, and who allowed her to checkmate him too easily. ‘I have suffered from more bad tobacco and dull stories than in any previous ex- perience among seafaring men,’’ Neil said restlessly. ‘I hoped this was tea time.’’ *‘It shall be when I have ordered the stew- ard to serve it in the deck cabin,’’ Lilian answered briskly. ‘‘That is it will be tea- time for you and me and Jim, but I have not seen Muriel since last night.”’ ‘‘She was disputing with a steward as to the wisdom of going on deck an hour ago,”’ Van Bleeker interposed. ‘‘And as Isaw the shine of silver pass between them I fancy he took her upstairs in spite of his re- luctance.”’ * ¥ “What madness! The seas sweep the ship from end to end !”’ Neil exclaimed. ‘Not on the lee sidle—— He is gone !”’ He was gone. Up the companionway three steps at a stride, with a recklessness of the possibility of , broken limbs really reprehensible, as Lilian remarked tartly. The hatches were closed along the weath- er side. But across the hallway a half-door had been fastened open, and Neil sprang out upon the sloping, sloppy deck. There was Muriel, her chair lashed in an angle of the deck house, and herself cover- ed to the chin with tarpaulins. ‘That confounded idiot has torgotten her,” Neil muttered, and, holding by the hand rail along the cabin, he reached her chair with creditable alertness. “You are not safe here,’ he declared, without formality of greeting. ‘‘Each sea that sweeps the weather side sends more water over these buildings, and presently a whole wave will follow. ‘‘The steward is taking care of me,’’ she replied with all the dignity attainable in her prostrate position. ‘“The steward is not here and I am,”’ Neil said doggedly. ‘‘It would be my re- sponsibility if I left you here alone, and I will not risk it.”’ “Iam used to being left alone—and I prefer it.’’ Something that burned in her eyes filled the hreak in her sentence. Neil came closer to her. ‘You cannot look at me and repeat that I ever left you !”’ he cried. “I did not accuse you.”’ ‘‘Your eyes accused me—falsely! You left me at the church door because your father bade you. You left me again when you signed the petition for a divorce be- cause——’ ‘‘Because I had waited long for you to make some claim upon me, and yon made none!’ ‘‘Was that why you signed ?'’ He had clung to her chair. He was bend- ing over her. But she shrank from him. ‘‘Stand back !”’ she exclaimed. ‘‘Some whim of a tedious voyage makes you ask questious which were answered years since —1I will not answer again.”’ ‘‘Listen, Muriel! This voyage together did not happen by chance. I booked my name when I saw yours on the list. I meant to see you alone—not as Miss Blythe forced us together——’ “You dared think that I—2"’ ‘‘No woman'’s face has ever come between us, though I have tried to put others there. ‘Why should not I dare hope that you, too, sometimes regretted, though you had desir- ed to be rid of me——"’ ‘Am I to believe that after eight years —when any day you could have sought me ee? ‘Was I, penniless, to seek your wealthy father’s daughter after her petition for the divorce had echoed his taunting repudia- tion of me ?”’ ‘Could you conceive that I, who was told daily that I had forced myself upon you during those happy weeks, when you and I—-"’ ‘They were happy weeks? My love— my one love——"’ Fe * * But shé had struggled with ropes and wraps, and escaped from him, somehow, to her feet. ‘We are both of us mad. storm !’’ she gasped. ‘Muriel, my wife! Listen to me!’ “I'will not. Our lives parted years ago. Nothing can bring us together——’ Her voice panted into a cry. A power mightier than her pride swept down upon them in a mass of icy water. Swept them into a desperate embrace. Swept them across the deck, which was steep and slippery as a glacier. A crash roared behind them, hurling fragments of brass and wood from the roof of the deck house against the taffrail. An- other crash—a shriek from those beholders whom the shock of wreckage had assembled in the doorway —and Muriel’s chair, to which some of her wraps were yet bound, rushed through a gap of broken rails into the seething chaos beyond. ‘She is lost !”’ Lilian cried, hiding her eyes as she crouched beside a porthole in the deck cabin. ‘‘No, thank God !”’ Van Bleeker cried. Neil has caught at the davits of that boat. He holds her safe.”’ ; Safe, indeed ! Drenched, breathless, Neil clasp her close with one arm, while the other clasped the rail which had resisted the impact of water. The ebb of the great wave raced by them harmlessly. Two or three sailors cheered lustily. But Neil heard nothing, and saw only her white radiant face as she clung to him. “Whom God hath joined together,”’ he muttered. ‘‘Neither life nor death shall part us !”’ And he kissed her undenied. By Ellen Maclubin in Saturday Evening Post. It is the Big Timber. Talk about big timber, why, there are some Fayette county oaks almost equal- ling in size the giants of California. Here are some figures : The men engaged in cut- ting the timber on the Rainey tract at the Beal farm felled a tree last week that made 14 logs and 4,238 feet of sawed lumber. This tree was 43 feet at the butt, and cut the following logs : One, 21 feet long; ene, 16 feet; five, 10 feet; two, 53 feet, one, 14 feet; one, 12 feet; three, 11 feet. There is another tree in the woods 5} feet at the butt which may cut as much lumber as the one mentioned. One of the Queerest Cities in the World. Frank @. Carpenter Tells About the Capitol of Par- aguay, Its “Hello” Girls and its Odd Colonies. We are in the very heart of the South American continent. It is now summer. Everyone is going ahout in cottons or linens, and at midday there seems to be only a sheet of brown paper hetween us and inferno. The children go to school very early, and every one is resting or dozing at noon. The mornings and evenings, however, are pleasant, and there are mule street cars which will take us to all parts of the city. But first let me say a few words about this town of Asuncion. She is the queerest municipal maiden on the South American continent. She is the social, political and industrial mistress of all things Paraguayan. She has the government buildings, the colleges, the banks and chief business houses, and still she is so small that she might be hypodermically injected into the cheek of Chicago, and she would hard- ly raise a bump on that fair lady’s face. Asuncion has only about 30,000 people. Her buildings are almost as small. They are chiefly one-story houses, and outside the government structures there are not two hundred any more than thirty feet high. . The Paraguayan who lives in a two- story house struts about like a king, and the owner of a three-story block is a na- bob. Still this maiden Asuncion is wonderful- ly beautiful. Mother Nature has clothed her in the brightest of dresses. In her gardens lemons and oranges grow. Great palm trees throw their shadows upon her, and the amorous waters of two mighty rivers are always washing her feet. She is seated on the high east bank of the Paraguay river, just opposite the mouth of the winding Pilcomayo, which has flowed down from the Bolivian Andes I500 miles to get to her. She is just in the centre of the west bor- der of Paraguay proper, and in a good posi- tion to command the whole country of which she is the capital. BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF PARAGUAY. I get my best idea of Paraguay by think- ing of Illinois. It lies on the South Amer- ican continent in much the same place that Illinois does in North America. It is in the junction of two rivers, just like Illi- nois. Along its west side is the great Par- aguay river which corresponds to the Mis- sissippi, and on its south and southeast the Parana, corresponding to the Ohio river. Both the Paraguay and Parana are nav- igable for large river steamers, giving a broad waterway from here to the Atlante, similar to that of the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. Paraguay proper is just about as big as Illinois. Itis 375 miles long and about 200 miles wide, and it includes all of the land lying east of the Paraguay river. There is a vast wilderness to the west of the stream called the Chaco. This is the wild west of Paraguay. It is inhabit- ed by Indians and wild animals, and has good forests and pastures, but as yet is not much explored. Paraguay proper is not unlike Illinois in character. It has excellent soil and great pastures. The face of the country is roll- ing. In some places there are low moun- tains which furnish numerous streams, so that you can hardly fence off a farm with- out including good water. It is in Paraguay proper that the greater part of the people of Paraguay live. The country has not more than six hundred thousand, and, as I have said, a large ma- jority of these people are women. The Paraguayans are the off-springs of the In- dians united to some of the best Spanish element that settled South American. One of the first cities established on the continent was the town of Asuncion. If was built 17 years before John Smith landed at Jamestown and the Spanish-In- dian babies born then were gray-haired before Boston sprang into being. Paraguay was for years the leader of wealth, civilization and culture of this part of the world, and it was not until the close of our Civil war that it fell out of the race. It then had a fight with its neighboring republics which lasted five years and killed off almost all the men. This ruined the country. A report went forth that it was desolate and the bulk of the European immigration since then has gone to the Argentine, Uru- guay and Brazil. There are to-day less than 10,000 foreigners in all Paraguay. I have an estimate from the Secretary of State which says that there are now over 5,000 Argentines, 200 hundred Italians, 600 Brazilians and 800 Germans. The rest are French, 8wiss, Americans and Eng- lish. In addition to these and the 600,000 na- tive whites and of the mixed breed, there are about 130,000 pure Indians. There isso much Indian blood in the whites that it is hard to tell where the red man’s blood ends and that of the Caucasian begins. You see a dash of ginger-bread in the complexions of most of the people and the language generally used is that of the Guarani Indians. It 1s a beautiful lan- guage, more soft and melodious than even the Spanish, and is used by everyone out- side the cities. NO LARGE TOWNS IN PARAGUAY. I have said that Asuncion has 30,000 population. The average Paraguayan con- siders it a very big city. I have gone through some of the best set- tled parts of Paraguay, and I am sarprised at the fewness of the people. There are a number of villages and some very small cities. The cities are much smaller than the books would lead you to think. The Statesman’s Year Book mentions a number of from five to twenty thousand. Those I have seen have not one-third the number claimed in the books. I spent some time in Villa Rica. Itis in the interior about a hundred miles east of Asuncion. If is put down as having 19,- 000, but I venture that it cannot number 6,000 souls. Villa Conception which is 250 miles north of Asuncion on the Para- guay river, bas certainly not 10,000 people and Villa Encarnacion, the biggest town of South Paraguay, is not nearly so large. The small towns are composed of huts from 15 to 25 feet square. The smaller cities have one or two streets of one-story brick dwellings, the walls of which are covered with stucco, and which are roofed with red tiles. Some have walls of stone and are roofed with palm bark. The larger cities have parks or plazas, but none outside Asuncion have paved streets or any other modern improvements. Even Asuncion is still lighted by coal oil, and but few of its people have ever heard of a sewer. The sanitary arrangements of many of its houses ave filthy, those of the chief hotel, for instance, being dirty and unhealthy to an extreme. Although Asuncion is older than any city of North America, it appears delight- fully clean and fresh. Its streets cross one another at right angles, and they slope so toward the water that every good rain washes them clean. They have sixty inches of rain here every year, and when it does rain it pours. Only a few of the streets are paved. The most of them are of red sand, giving the city a rose-tinted foundation. The houses are built close to the side- walks in solid blocks, forming great one- story walls, with here and there a door or an iron-barred window opening into the street. You can tell the different houses by the colors. Some are painted rose-pink, others sky blue, some blood red and others of all the tints of yellow and green. The post office is a light lavender. There is a market house painted rose pink, and a little further on there is a cathedral the color of rich Jersey cream. Even the pub- lic buildings are painted. The houses of Congress are of a delicate lilac, while the official newspaper is printed in a monastery- like structure of Indian red. NEWSPAPERS, TELEGRAPHS AND SCHOOLS. It seems funny to think of newspapers in Paraguay. But there are news boys every where poking their dailies under your nose. The papers are printed in Spanish and they sell for ten cents a copy, or about 2 cents of our money. They are folios of the old blanket sheet shape, containing littie news but big advertisements. There is one that has telegraphic dis- patches, including cables from Washington and Rome. Asuncion has a telegraphic line connect- ing it with Buenos Ayres, from where dis- patches can be sent to all parts of the world. There are also one or two wires to the interior of the country, and these are patronized to such an extent that 46,000 messages were received in one year. Asuncion has telephones. They are owned by a stock company, which pays dividends of 24 per cent. every year, not- withstanding that its rates are lower than any in the United States. The company charges business houses $2 gold per month and for telephones in resi- dences the monthly charge is only $1.50 in gold. We can visit the central station. It is an interesting sight. The ‘‘hello girls®’ of Paraguay have even sweeter faces than our own hello girls, and some of them are quite pretty. Most of them are in their bare feet, and their low-necked dresses are as white as the orange blossoms that some of the girls wear in their hair. There are orange trees just back of the office, so that the flowers are ready at hand. The girls stand up to their work, making the connections by putting pegs in and out of a wall of numbered holes, thereby bringing together the various customers. T asked the manager some question as to salaries and was told that each girl re- céives about $6 in gold a month, or $1.50 a week. There are tram cars on the principal streets. The cars are open at the side and are so rudely made that they seem to have been chopped out with a hatchet. Each is drawn by three mules, which go on the deep gallop, and the cars run so far apart that you often have to wait half an hour for a ride. The different lines connect the wharves with the railroad depot, and they go out to the suburban towns. They are well pa- tronized, but are not paying investments. It is the same with Paraguay’s only steam railroad. This was built under a guarantee from the government by English constructors. The English made money building it, but the road has. paid no divi- dends since it was opened. It goes about 150 miles into the interior. It connects Villa Rica with Asuncion, and will be extended it issaid down the Parana river. Another line which is talked of, but which I fear will not soon be construct- ed, is to run from Asuncion to the port of Santos, Brazil on the Atlantic. Such a road, while very expensive to build, would open much good country and would probably bave a large traffic. BANKS WHICH BEAT 4 PER CENT. One of the queerest things about Asun- cion is the money. That in circulation is a paper currency, poorly printed and of poor material. It now comes from Germany, and is not nearly so good as the old paper money which was made in the United States. The banknotes are in all denominations, irom 5 cents to $100, and the paper is at such a discount that a Paraguayan dollar is now worth about 13 cents of our money. The banks of Asuncion handle this stuff by the basketful. They cord it up like paper, and they are making a lot of money out of their business. Indeed, it seems to me there is a chance for some of our idle American funds to be used in banking in Paraguay. The usual rate of interest outside the banks is 15 per cent., and in the banks you cannot borrow money for less than one per cent. per month. The usual discount rate is 12 per cent., and a bank gives no favors without receiving a money compensa- tion. : As a result, the banks pay big dividends. Take the Mercantile bank of Paraguay, upon which I have letters of credit. This bank paid a dividend of 16 per cent. last year, and its president tells me it has never paid less than 10 per cent. Its capital {is only $120,000 in gold, and still its business last year amounted to $2,000,000. The Territorial bank, which has a capi- tal of $70,000, paid a dividend of 12 per cent. last year, and other private banks do, it is said even better. From these figures it will be seen that it takes a good deal of money to do the busi- ness of Paraguay. There is now between $8,000,000 and $10,000,000 of Paraguayan money in circulation, and the government is trying to increase the value of the cur- rency by withdrawing a certain amount every year. It takes about $5,000,000 an- nually to run the government, and the ex- ports and imports amount to about $14,- 000,000 in gold a year. Considerable money is made in the rais- ing of cattle. There is a great deal invest- ed in shipping hides,jand a large amount in preparing and shipping mate or Paragua- yan tea. Paraguayan tea comes from the leaves of a bush which grows wild in some parts of Paraguay. The leaves are gathered, roasted over a fire and ground to a powder. They are then put into skin bags, being packed so tightly that the bags are as hard as stones. In this shape the tea is shipped to all parts of South America. There are millions who use it in the Ar- gentine, Uruguay and Brazil, and you will find it for sale in Chile and in the lands farther north. The people prefer it to “tea or coffee, and even in the coffee districts in Brazil it is greedily drunk. The usual breakfast of the poorer Para- guayans consists of a cup of this tea—or rather a little bowl, for it is always served in a gourd about the size and shape of a base ball. This is half filled with the powdered leaves. Boiling water is then poured on it and the person who drinks it sucks up the liquid through a silver or brass tube at the end of which are a lot of small holes which act as a strainer. Nearly all the foreigners who come to Paraguay drink mate. They say it is an excellent brain stimulant, and that it has no bad effects if used in moderation. I have tried it several times, but I al- ways burn my tongue with the tube. The tea tastes to me somewhat like a decoction of quinine and hay, and I doubt if I shall ever be able to acquire a love for it. Returning to the banks, one of the queer- est financial institutions of Paraguay is the Agricultural bank. _ This is managed by the government. It 1s a sort of a combination of a bank and an agricultural department. Its business is to help along agriculture by introducing seeds and tools and by loaning money to farmers on farm property. It has a capital of about $500,000, gold. It loans on about half the assessed value of the property, charging what is here con- sidered the very low interest rate of 8 per per cent. Connected with it there is a warehouse, which is filled with farming implements and seeds. The officials say the institu- tion is a success, although such banks in other parts of South America have ended in failures. This bank is one of the methods by which the Paraguayan government is trying to build up its farming interests. The gov- ernment also offers inducements to immi- grants, giving each new settler some agri- cultural machinery, eighty acres of land and a loan of 12 cents a month for seven months for each adult and 9 cents for each child. It gives each immigrant a milch cow, oxen and seeds, and also agrees to pay his passage from Buenos Ayres up to Asun- cion. There are strings attached to some of the above gifts, by which the immigrants pay back in installments for all they receive outside the land. THE WICKED GOLDEN RULERS. The immigrants who come to Paraguay settle in colonies, and not upon their farms. There are scattered over the country per- haps a half dozen colonies composed of dif- ferent nationalities. There is one not far from Asuncion called San Bernardino, populated by Germans. There is another of Australians, who go up a brotherly love scheme and came to Paraguay to live after the Golden Rule. They began enthusiastically. They chartered a ship, each selling his property and putting his money into the general fund. In order to cut down ex- penses they divided the work on the voy- age among the different members of the colony. They had hardly left Austria before the Golden Rule was kicked higher than Gilde- roy’s kite, and when it came down it fell in a thousand pieces. These brotherly lovers and sisterly lov- ers acquired a pleasant way of throwing the dishes at one another during the trip, and by the time they reached Asuncion they were quarreling as disorderly as so many strange parrots. They soon became disgusted with them- selves and their lands have now been re- divided. Another colony of special interest to the United States is just across the river from Asuncion, in the Chaco. This was named after President Hays, because he decided a territorial question between the Argentine and Paraguay in favor of the latter. The colony is called Villa Hayes, but they pronounce it here as though it were spelled Villa Eyes, for that is the way the Spaniards pronounce Hayes. This colony, named after our Presi- dent who, it will be remembered shudder- ed when they talked of putting Roman punch on the White House table, is large- ly engaged in cultivating sugar cane and distilling its juice into a rum so villainous that it will kill at forty rods. Inasmuch as rum is an article that is in demand in all parts of Paraguay at all times, the colony is probably in a good fi- nancial condition.— Frank G. Carpenter. Domestic Mail Service. Length ot Mail Routes, 496,498 Miles. 207,089 Tons of Newspaper Carried. The annual report of second assistant Postmaster General Shellenbarger says that there were in operation under the domestic mail service, on June 30th last, 34,228 mail routes of all descriptions having total length of 496,498 miles. Included in the report are communications from the post- masters at New York, Brooklyn, Boston and Philadelphia, noting the successful operation of the pneumatic tube service in those cities, and recommending its exten- sion to other stations. Judge Shellenbarger recommends an approporiation of $500,000 for this purpose. The amount of second-class matter (newspapers) carried during the year ag- gregated 207,089 tons. Many of the pub- lishers, says the report, have, on request, rendered the department valuable assistance by making up their papers in such shape as to render unnecessary a rehandling of the matter at the office of origin, but other publishers decline to comply. He recom- mends the enactment of legislation making this service compulsory. Judge Shellenbarger appends to his re- port one by superintendent Bradley, of the railway mail service, on the results of an inspection of the railway mail service in Great Britain, Germany and France. Mr. Bradley compares the service in these coun- tries with that in operation here, and is of the opinion that the service in this coun- try is not only more efficient, but that it required only one-half to one-third as many employes for the same work. He could not find any mechanical devices in use in the three countries that he would recom- mend for adoption by the service in this country. Troubles of its Own. Under present conditions India can be of little help to England in South Africa eith- er in a military or financial direction. The famine and the plague are both active there, and Lord Curzon, the Viceroy, ca- bles to London that two and a-half mil- lions of the population under his adminis- tration would die of starvation but for the food supplied by the government. The peninsula is loyal enough, but for the pres- ent has its hands full with its. own troub- les. BUCKLEN’S ARNICA SALVE—Has world wide fame for marvelous cures. It sur- passes any other salve, lotion, ointment or balm for Cuts, Corns, Burns, Boils, Sores, Felons, Ulcers, Tetter, Salt Rheum, Fever Sores, Chapped Hands, Skin Eruptions; Infallible for Piles. Cure guaranteed. Only 25 cents at F. P. Green’s drug store. -
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers