Bellefonte, Pa., December 2
These Votaries of Silence Are Cheer-
fal and Contented.
One scarcely would look for cheerful-
ness among those votaries of eternal si-
lence, the Trappist monks. Everybody
has heard of their great monastery in
Kentucky, where, isolated from the world,
the Trappists yet minister by their labors
to its welfare, and of the silent and aus-
tere life they lead. There are several
monasteries of this order in the world,
and in all of them the monks are said to
be an extraordinarily cheerful and con-
tented lot.
Herbert Vivian, who writes of them in
his “Romance of Religions,” says: “It is
true that they get up at 2 in the morning;
that they limit their meals to a small al-
lowance of vegetables, washed down with
spring water; that their days are devoted
to manual labor, relieved only by frequent
intervals of prayer; that they sleep on
bedsteads of planks and straw; that their
, 1901
i
thoughts are constantly centered upon !
their latter end, and that there is no re-
lief for their hardships, even when at the
point of death, when, as a last, most
signal object lesson, they are removed
from their straw and laid upon a heap of
ashes.
Yet they are, nevertheless, as con- '
tented and cheerful a lot of people,” he |
says, “as can-be found among the most |
zealous pleasure seekers.”
He declares that while prisoners who
have been condemned to silence and se-
clusion generally have gone mad, the
| civil service examinations.
Trappist monks find that their vows of |
silence confer a fresh zest upon
their |
chants in church and upon all their devo- |
tional exercises, and it is certainly a fact
that they enjoy extraordinary Lecalth and
spirits and generally attain to a good old
age.
Upon the death of one of the monks, his
body, borne on a rude wooden bier, with
his brown cloak as his only winding
sheet, is placed in the center of the
church. Some half dozen candles in tall
wooden candlesticks are lighted around
him, and the brothers take turns in pray-
ing beside him, never leaving the body
alone until the time comes to place it in
the grave which it has been one of the
dead monk's duties to dig for himself
while yet alive. And yet these people, of
whose life and death the bare recital gives
the ordinary man the blues, are described
as jolly, happy, full of spirits and con-
tentment. It certainly does take all sorts
of people to make a world.
Sight In Man and Lower Animals,
Dr. G. L. Johnson, whose studies of the
eyes of mammals have recently been pub-
fished in The Philosophical Transactions,
ealls attention to the fact that men and
monkeys alone possess parallel and con-
vergent vision of the two eyes. On the
other hand, the lower mammals possess
divergent and consequently very widely
extended vision. Squirrels, for instance,
and probably bares and rabbits as well,
are able to see an enemy approaching di-
rectly from behind without turning the
bead.
Littleness.
“It’s a small village.”
“So small they call a shop a store?”
“0h, smaller than that. They call a
store an emporium.” —New York Sun.
Hard to Get a Book.
An Irritating Expertencs in a Boston Library—Rules
for Lending to Unknown Borrowers Bothered the
Stranger In Town, Who Feared He Was Doomed
to Serve a Term in Jail.
“Well,” said the reflective looking man,
“I tried to get a book out of the Boston
Public library once, and it honestly look-
ed to me for awhile as if 1 was going to
get jugged.
“I was up in Boston on a couple of
months’ business, and I took up my quar-
ters at a boarding house in the Back Bay
district. I had my evenings to myself,
and as there isn’t much worth speaking
of going on down town in Boston after
dark I soon began to feel the need of
reading material. I remembered the
name of a certain book that had been
recoinmended to me and tried to get it at
the Boston bookstores. I couldn’t get it,
however, because it was out of print long
ago. So one afternoon I hiked over to the
Boston Public library to see if I couldn’t
get the book.
“ ‘Have you got such and such a book?’
I asked the gloomy looking man at the
library desk.
“ ‘Yes, we have it,” said he suspiciously.
“ ‘Good,’ said I. ‘I'd like to read it.’
“‘Um—you would, eh? said the man
behind the desk. ‘Very well.
“He got out a pile of blanks and hand-
ed me one of them to fill out. It contain-
ed about as many questions as a census
schedule appertaining to the iron and
steel industry. As a matter of fact the
blank differed in no essential particular
from the blank handed to applicants for
I had to give
my name in full, age, habits, occupation,
residence for the past fifteen or twenty
years, state of my health and all that
sort of rubbish, and it took me a good
| twenty minutes to digest that bunch of
questions and fill in the answers. Then I
pranced up to the desk with the filled up
blank and patiently waited ancther twen-
| ty minutes for the solemn looking cuss to
pay some attention to me. I handed in
the carefully prepared blank to him.
“There you are,” said I cheerfully. ‘I
did the best I could with it. Now would
you mind getting the book or sending for
it for me, for I've got a lot of things to
attend to before dark.’
“*Um—you don’t get the book today,
you know,’ said the sulky looking chap
behind the counter. ‘Just leave this blank
with me, and your case will be attended
to.’
“ ‘But,’ said I, ‘don’t you issue books to
the public here, and if you don’t what
have I been spending all this time for fill-
ing out that blank?’
"ease finish.
“ “You shall ascertain the reason later !
on,” said the man, with stern reproof in
his tone. ‘We shall perhaps be ready to
' was afraid they might man handle me
issue the book to you some time tomor- °
row if you cal! around then.’
“Well, I was so sore that I clomped out
without saying anything more. It was all
beyond me the way that library was run, !
and I determined to let the book slide and
to forget all about that repository of
printed knowledge as soon as possible,
“I was sound asleep in my hoarding
house bed at 11 o'clock that night, and I
guess everybody else in the house was in
bed, too, when there came the most infer-
nal ringing of the front door bell.
ringing was so angry and determined that
I slid out of bed upon being awakened
and went to the stair landing and rub-
bered down below to see what the trouble
The .
a — —
was. The landlady finally slipped on a
bathrobe and went down to answer the !
bell. When “she opened the door, my
heart came into my mouth when I saw
dimly in the doorway the huge form of a
gigantic cop, and when he inquired of the
landlady in a deep, gruff bass, ‘Is there a |
man named Ta-ra-rum living here?’ men-
tioning my name—say, wouldn’t that have |
deterred you?—I fell into a tremor and be- |
gan to wonder what I'd been doing, any-
how, to get the law after me. 1 hadn't |
been up to any criminal devilment that I
was aware of, and yet there was a big
cop inquiring for me, and there was a
donjon keep staring me square in the
face.
“ ‘Yes,’ repiied the landlady, ‘there is a
Mr. Ta-ra-rum living here.” And I could
see her freezing solid over the business.
It was 10 to 1, I figured then. that she
would conclude that I was a celebrated
counterfeiter or confidence man or some °
sort of a crook that the police were after
and that, even if I managed to evade ar-
rest, she would order me out of her house
in the middle of the night.
“¢Oh, very well, said the cop more
mildly to the landlady; ‘library. you
know.” And then he executed a swift dis-
appearance into the darkness.
“Now, I’ve always believed that the
best way to meet trouble is to go right
after it and give it a hug when it comes
your way, and so I slipped on a bathrobe
myself and went to meet the landlady as
she came up stairs. :
“Madam,” said 1, ‘I overheard your
colloquy at the door with that guardian
of the law, and I heard my name men-
tioned. I am not conscious of having vio- |
lated the law in any respect. but I feel
compelled in case you have conceived any
suspicion of me to freely volunteer to give
up my room here. You would be wholly
mistaken in supposing that you were
harboring a criminal, yet I dislike to put |
you to any inconvenience.’
“Then the landlady held on the bannis- |
ters and laughed loud and long. It was |
about ten minutes before she was able to |
control her voice sufficiently to tell me |
that I was simply a victim of the Boston |!
Public library’s method of investigating |
its applicants for reading material. Ev- |
ery night the library issued to the police
department, she said, the filled in blanks
of those who applied during the day. for
books, and these blanks were sorted over
and given out to the cops on the various
beats. It was a part of the duty of the
policemen to ring up the addresses given
by the applicants for books and thus to
ascertain if they actually lived at the ad-
dresses they gave. And it was this that
came so near to giving me the heart dis-
I never went back to the
Boston Public library after that book:
and lock me up in the coal cellar and
never let me out again in this life.”’—
Washington Star.
Built on Skeletons.
Richmond. Va., is built over a stratum
of what was once a mass of living forms.
This deposit has been examined to the
depth of more than a hundred feet and
extends over an area of more than two
miles in diameter. Every cubic inch of
this deposit contains the skeletons of
10,000,000 of tiny forms.
If wisdom wags to cease throughout the
world, no one would suspect himself of
ignorance.
fhe Five Stages Through Which
This Weapon Has Passed.
While peering around one of the many
old curiosity shops down on Fourth ave-
nue, where are to be found all sorts of
| interesting curious, I saw a row of five
| swords hanging on the wall differing in
shape ard workmanship and apparently
placed where they were for some special
purpose.
“See,” said the proprietor, who showed
pleasure because I seemed interested,
“that tells the story of the stages that the
sword has passed through in its evolution.
I divide it into five distinct parts. See that |
first one on the left, shorter than the oth- |
It came |
from a ruin in southern Italy and repre- |
ers and broader at the point.
sents unadulterated barbarism. Tt was
for sanguinary use and tells us of the !
epoch of carnage. It was hand to hand
* and throat cutting in those days.
“Then comes a longer and more elabo-
rate sword that was carried in the days
when legends were born and is credited
wth feats that it never performed. It was
called ‘good sword’ and ‘trusty sword’ in
those days. and, although it did some
good work. it was more of a badge telling
of the wonderful things that the owner
might do if occasion should require.
“Here is the third one, with its handle
in the form of a cross, that tells us of the
feudal time and of the piety that prompt-
ed the crusades and the killing of the
Saracens for a sentiment.
“Then we have this more slender blade
. that tells us of the days of fencing and of
when gentlemen all carried swords as a
{ mark of station and for offensive and de-
fensive purposes when occasion required.
“And here is the last chapter in the
eventful history, showing a sword that is
a mere military accouterment, without
any idea of being used for any purpose
other than a badge of rank. Its glory has
departed, its end has come. for it is now
being discarded even as an emblem of
military authority and will be known
only in song and story.”—New York Her-
ald.
WONDERS OF THE ALPS.
Their Most Impressive Features
Neglected by Guidebooks,
Myriads of British and American tour-
ists are year after year delighting them-
selves with the grandeurs of Alpine trav-
el. Nothing in the world’s history is more
impressive than the story of the Alps.
Ten or twelve million years ago, possibly
far more. a long unseen line of weakness,
a crack or fissure in the earth’s crust,
stretched away from I[‘rance eastward
hundreds of miles. Ou this line followed
huge voleanic outbursts.
Next ensued a vast slow subsidence
which went on through geologic epochs
unti! where Mont Blanc now rears its
summit 15.780 feet was a sea fringing an
old continent. Large rivers emptied into
it. Deposits of mud, sand, gravel, were
laid one en another as the sinking went
on until the layers became 50,000 feet,
nearly ten miles, thick. Then at last com-
menced a great uplifting. The struggling
subterranean forces raised a huge load.
For ages this went on until the rocks,
cruinbled, crushed, contorted, rose above
the waters and continued to rise, forming
lines of mountain chains and making
Switzerland a tableland. Every hour
since then rain and snow, river, glacier
and avalanche have been sculpturing into
peaks and carving into lakes and valleys
that vast platform with its recent sedi-
\
mentary covering and primeval granite
core.
The result is a land of unequal gran-
deur. Find you this in the guidebooks?
Not a word of it. Yet Professor Judd in
his charming “Volcanoes” (Kegan Paul)
told the tale years ago in half a dozen
, pages. Would not the traveler look on
! the Matterhorn, the Jungfrau, the stu-
{ pendous Splugen, the massive Gothard, !
! the Mer de Glace, the deep lake of Gene-
' va, with quickened interest had he this
| story before him? And it can be told so
' easily, but ’tis not there.—London Tele- .
graph.
A Story of Stevenson.
After one of Dumas’ plays which he
saw presented in Paris and in which a
man employs an
| wrote:
“I came forth from that performance in
a breathing heat of indignation. On the
day down the Francais stairs I trod on
that suavity which so well becomes me, |
turned about to apologize and on the in-
stant, repenting me of that intention,
stopped the apology midway and added
something in French to this effect: ‘No.
You are one of the persons who have
been applauding that piece. [I retract my
apology.’ fo
“Said the cld Frenchman, laying his
hand on my arm and with a smile that
was truly heavenly in temperance, irony,
good nature and knowledge of the world,
‘Ah, monsieur, vous etes bien jeune’ (AL,
sir, you are very young).”
Willie Knew a Way.
Four-year-old Willis found a new way
to keep a promise the other day. His
older brother John hid their sister Nell's
doll and told Willie not to tell where it
was. Nellie came in later and asked Wii-
lie where it was.
“I promised not to tell you,” the little
fellow replied.
“Oh, please tell,” pleaded Nellie.
“No: 1 can’t tell you. Nellie,” replied
the boy, “but | will tell mamma, and you
can listen.” —New York Mail and Is-
press. ,
Working Under Water.
Submarine divers have not yet suecceed-
ed in reaching 200 feet below the surface
with all the advantage of armor. air sup-
ply and weights to sink them. The effort
has been made to reach a wreck in 240
, feet of water. The accounts state that at
130 feet the diver began to experience se-
rious trouble. At 200 feet, after suffering
terribly, he lost consciousness and was
hauled up. Divers cannot work much be-
Tow 100 feet.
Her Shape.
Kitty—3diy dressinaker says it is such a
pleasure to fit a gown on me.
Edith—Considers it a sort of artistic
triumph, I suppose. The true artist de-
lights in difficnities.— Boston Transcript.
Landed.
Agnes—Well, Ferdy has finally pro-
posed. [| knew he would.
Ethel— Why. you said you thougnt he
had no intention whatever of proposing.
“Well, he didn’t have.” —Tit-Bits.
Many a man’s success is due to the fact
that he never attempts to do anything
beyond his ability. —Chicage News.
The Watchman for 1902.
The WATCHMAN for 1902 will be brighter,
Fhe Juvenile Idea.
A teacher, says the Boston Transcript,
had been reading to her young pupiis an
account of a man “who had lived for
some years upon the frontier.” When
the story was reproduced by a child, to
the teacher’s surprise it read that he had
lived for some years “on his front ear.”
Another teacher read that a gentleman
“had occupied for some time a fine coun-
try seat.” Upon asking the children
what was meant by a “country seat” a
dead silence reigned till one little fellow
said he thought he knew and to the in-
* quiry of the teacher replied, “A milking
unworthy stratagem |
against a woman Robert Louis Stevenson !
stool!”
Still another had been reading to her
pupils about the rain. Asking one of
them to write a little story about the
rain, he, after declaring his inability to
do so. upon the teacher's insistence pro-
duced the following: “What does the
rain say to the dust? ‘I am on to you,
! and your name is mud!” ”’
an old gentleman’s toes, whereupen, with |
Rossetti and His Visitor.
Toward the latter part of Rossetti’s life
he rarely left his house and garden. He
depended upon a close circle of friends
for society and in his own way was a so-
ciable man, but he preferred to see his
friends and acquaintances by appoint-
ment, and woe betide the too intrusive
stranger.
One day an enterprising man called
who was duly armed with a letter of in-
troduction, and the servant was nearly
yielding to the impulsive stranger, where-
upon the painter of ‘‘Dante’s Dream”
leaned upon the banister and said in
firm, mellifluous voice, “Tell the gentle-
man that I am not at home.”—Lippin-
cott’s New Magazine.
Dealing In Futures.
Mr. Newed—I have an option on that
Blank avenue house. How would you
like it for.our home, my dear?
Mrs. Newed—Oh, it’s a pretty place,
but you know it is said to be haunted.
Mamma says she wouldn’t set her foot
inside the door for any amount of money.
Mr. Newed—That settles it! [I'll close
the deal for it the first thing in the morn-
ing.—Chicago News.
Combination of Ideas.
Little four-year-old Mabel coming into
the room one day and finding the baby
with the end of the doorkey in his mouth
exclaimed, “Baby, take that key right
out of your mouth or the first thing you
will have the lockjaw.”’—Glasgow Times.
“The Candle on the Plate.”
‘““The year that I lived in Chicago I no-
ticed one night in passing through the
Polish Jew quarter something 1 have
gince seen elsewhere,” writes the Rev.
David M. Steele in The Ladies’ Home
Journal. “It was ‘the candle on the
plate’ A man dies, and for want of
means to pay the rent his family is to be
turned out on the street. The widow sets
a plate on the pavement before the door
and puts a lighted candle on it. For the
length of time that it will burn it is &
fummons to the neighbors passing by to
put in nickels, dimes and pennies, which
invariably they do, until a fund is raised
sufficient to save the family from evie-
tion. Would the same thing happen on
the Stock Exchange if a bank failed 2”
Every man desires happiness not neces-
sarily for publication, but as a guarantee
of providential good faith.—Life.
larger
and more to your liking than ever. Havent you a
friend who would like to have it? It costs only $1.00 a
year.
Remember that such job work as the WATCHMAN
Printery does is not to be procured in any other estab-
lishment in the county. Do you get yours done here?
It costs no more to get the best than the poorest.