Bellefonte, Pa., April Il, 1902 HOW LITTLE 1T COSTS. How little it costs, if we give it a thought. To make happy some heart each day ! Just one kind word or a tender smile, As we go on our daily way. Perchance a look will suffice to clear The cloud from a neighbor’s face, And the press of a hand in sympathy A sorrowful tear efface. One walks in sunlight: another goes All weary in the shade : One treads a path that is fair and smooth, Another must pray for aid. It cost so little ! I wonder why We gave it so little thought ; A smile—kind words—a glance—a touch! © What magic with them is wrought. A CONFESSION OF LOVE. It was a cool August evening when Prof. Viarnois came forth from his modest apars- ment on the fourth floor back of Veuve Collin’s pension, to raise his spirits,if possi- ble, by means of fresh air and exercise. He had been two weeks in Antwerp, hav- ing gone there from Rouen in search of a position as professor of French in some in- stitution of learning. This, after some dif- ficulty, he succeeded in finding,and thought himself fortunate, as French teachers are not much in demand in a city where French is universally spoken. However, in the school where Prof. Viarnois was to practice his art there were a number of English and German pupils; to these his time was to be devoted. His dejection arose from the fact that four weeks were yet to elapse before the opening of the school,” and his entire per- sonal fortune, then in his pocket, amount- ed to exactly thirty fiancs. He had hoped to eke out this sum by means of private pupils, but none were to be heard of, and the financial outlook was growing daily darker. The professor, known to his friends as Jean Louis, was the son of a Rouen photog- rapher, who had sold so many views of the Cathedral and other monuments of ancient Gothic art, that he had been able to give his boy a good education with a view toward fitting him for teaching. Jean Louis bad studied faithfully, and taken his degree after having won the con- sideration of his teachers and fellow-stu- dents. He wasa slim, delicate young fellow, whose life had been too full of hard work for him to have become infected with mod- ern ideas. Facts had oceupied him to the exclusion of conjecture, and at twenty-four he retained his belief, in the ghurch, the marriage tie, and the literature of the ’for- ties. He had a boyish timidity in the pres- ence of strangers, but was light-hearted in solitude, being blessed with the seeing eye of an artist and something of a poet’s im- pressionable soul. Even now, with the prospect of pauperism gathering darkly on bis horizon, he felt his spirits rising as he became part of the gay, cosmopolitan tide which ebbed and flowed through the ave- nues of Antwerp. Instead of the musty, mediz:val city he had fancied it before his arrival, Antwerp seemed to him to have all the life and ani- mation of a little Paris. Old Antwerp, if it still existed, had apparently withdrawn into a corner where, in silent dignity, it awaited the approach of the reverent and serious-minded visitor. The professor walked slowly along. stop- ping now and then to look in a shop win- dow, until, in the gathering dusk, he came to the Place Verte, in sight of the Cathedral. The beautiful spire rose, delicate yet ma- jestic, into the deep twilight blue of the sky. Behind it the light of the early stars melted in the last gleam of day. The doors were closed. The professor pictured to himself the interior, cold and vast and dark; the veiled altar-pieces; the lingering trail of incense; the dark spaces where, in the daytime, glowed the brilliant painted glass of the windows; the ghostly shadows of pulpits and choir-stalls. Surely, there in the blackness and solitude, he thought, there 1ings of itself at midnight the bell which announces the Presence, He wandered on nntil he came to the river side. There, where in the daytime stood a row of dingy waiehonses, there shone now a line of glittering lights, as if the city, like a coquettish old woman, had covered up her hones with a diamond neck- lace. The professor shivered in the cold breath of air which blew over the wide current of the Schelde. With the old depression stronger than ever, he turned to go back to his lodgings. At the doorway he met Veuve Collin. ; ‘Well Monsieur, how goes it?" she asked. The professor responded rather curtly. He found the widow fat, greasy, and intol- erable. The cat arched her back at his approach, and showed hy graceful, feline coquetry that she was ready to receive at- tentious; bust the professor passed her by without a glance, and went heavily on his way up the staircase until he came to his own room. He lighted a candle and glane- ed around the apartment. The one north window opened on a small iron balcony, where stood a few straggling geraniums— plants which, deprived of the sun, refused to do more than simply continue a barren and dispirited existence. The next morning, as he was sitting in dressing-gown and slippers, slowly sipping the muddy coffee be had himself prepared over a small oil stove, he heard a heavy tread on the stairs, and the lond,asthmatic breathing which always announced the ad- vent of Veuve Collin. A moment after,she knocked, entered in response to his sum- mons, and stood for a moment, speechless and gasping, her band on her bosom. She was evidently out of temper at being obliged to climb to the professor’s lofty abode. When she regained breath, she spoke. “There is a monsieur below,” she said, regarding the professor with a small, un- friendly eye, ‘who would speak with you —an Englishman who talks like a Spanish cow. He awaits you in the salon.’”” ‘‘A pupil I’ thought the professor. He arose, directly the widow’s broad back was turn- ed, and began, with some agitation, to di- vest himself of dressing-gown and slippers; then he put on his shiny black coat and his best shoes, cut off the frayed edges of his coffs with a pair of scissors, and made all possible haste down stairs. The door of the small, dark salon was open, and he found his visitor seated on the extreme edge of a chair, his hands folded on his walking-stick, which was planted firmly between his kness. He was a man of abont fifty, dressed with great care, and wearing his clothes with the air of one who feels that he bas a right to the best. His face wage smoothly shaven save for a short, stiff mustache; and his mouth was a straight, | inflexible line above a very square chin. The eyes which met the professor's were deeply set aud of a pale. cold blue; eyes which seemed made for piercing disguises, for watching opportunities, and for guard- ing secrets. He did not rise from his chair, but said, ‘‘Good-morning,’’ and began to explain in fluent French, badly pronounced, that he was searching for a teacher to give French lessons to his niece, who was stopping with him at the Hotel St. Martin. He had been | recommended to professor Viarneis by the | English hook seller in the Place Verte,and he wished to know the professor’s terms, also the hours which he could give daily to his niece. The professor, concealing his embarrass- ment before the business-like stranger un- der an elaborate show of courtesy, replied that he received one franc fifty centimes | per hour for lessons, and that as to time he was entirely at monsieur’s disposal, as he had no regular pupils. From the expression on the stranger’s face it might have been thought that he considered this last admission as stupid as it was unnecessary; at the same time his manuer increased slightly in cordiality, as if he were making an unexpectedly good bargain in getting French for one franc fifty centimes an hour. After some further discussion it was ar- ranged that the professor should present himself at the Hotel St. Martin the next morning at eleven. The visitor, as he took his leave, offered his card, on which was engraved the name, Mr. Jamas RB. Harris, and in one corner, 1331 Madison Avenue, New York. The next day, in a state of ardent, peda- gogical zeal, the professor made his way to the Hotel St. Martin, and sent up his card to room 9, which, as the German concierge informed him, was the drawing-room oc- cupied by the rich Americarand his niece. He was bidden to ascend immediately and was ushered iuto a square apartment gaud- ily furnished and comfortless. Mr. Har- ris, who was seated by a much-ornament- ed, uneven-legged wiiting desk, reading some letters, greeted the professor with a nod, and looking toward the end of the room, where a figure had risen, said, with business-like abruptness, ‘‘The Professor, Madeline !"” Jean Louis howed nervously, and the young lady made a slight inclina- tion of the head. She was dark and slender, with a face wherein certain signs indicated extreme youth and others the experience of an older age. Evidently she did not share in the professor’s embarrassment, for she sat down at the round centre table, folded her slim hands upon the rough, woolen roses of the cover, and said something in English. The professor did not understand English. He deposited his hooks on the table, but re- mained standing with his hand on the back of a chair. *'Is it that you speak French at all,made- moiselle?”’ he asked respectfully. ‘‘A very little,” she answered in that language, speaking in a painstaking manner, and as if she recalled the words from some phrase book. She motioned toward a chair, and the professor sat down, keeping at a scru- pulous distance, however. *“Let us then begin,’’ he said slowly and carefully, in order that he might he under- stood, ‘‘hy learning the names of the ob- jeots in the room.”’ His pupil looked at him attentively, but with the vacant expression of one who only partially understands. The professor re- peated his sentence, and went on to give the names of the surrounding objents. In this fashion the lesson proceeded, Mr. Har- ris, meanwhile, regarding from the window the operations of some Flemish laborers who were repairing the road with crushed stone. Finally be interrupted the professor by exclaiming irritably, ‘‘Look at that dump- cart ! Raised with a hand-crank and emp- tied from the side. I'd like to show them a first-class American dump-cart once I"? A moment alter, apparently with a desire to vent his scorn of primitive Belgian meth- ods to the workmen themselves, he seized his hat, and saying hastily, “I’m going out, Madeline,” quitted the room, much to the professor's consternation. To he left alone with a young girl was to him an en- tirely novel and disconcerting experience; but he forced himself to appear at ease,and composed a series of sentences, according to the Gouin Method, with a swiftness and mental fertility which surprised him. He seldom ventured to raise his eves to those of his pupil, hut when he did, he found her regarding him serenely, with an im- personal attention which went far toward restoring his self-possession. A phonograph mechanically giving forth words and phrases might have received as much consideration as did the professor. Becoming aware of this he took a less fur- pretty in a fragile, uninsistent way, and attracted Jean Louis as being the product of an unknown race and unknown environ- ments. Something about her, too.impressed him as being distinctive, apart from birth or circumstance, some hint of melancholy and reserve. He commenced hy trying to un- derstand, and ended, like all true worship- pers, with simple love and faith. That first lesson was the beginning of a spell which crept slowly over him. Day after day he went to the Hotel St. Martin with the humble devotion of a pilgrim go- ing to a votive shrine, yet between him and his pupil there was as impassable a wall of silence as if they had hoth heen dumb. What interchange of thought could there be over such sentences as, ‘‘I cross the room;’’ ‘I reach the door;”” ‘I put out my bhand;” “I take hold of the knob;” “I turn the knch;”’ ete ? Indeed the professor, try as he would, was obliged to confess to himself that his pupil hed no natural aptitude for foreign tongues. Even the Gouin Method, to which be faithfully adhered, proved inef- fectual in her case. One had only to look in her eyes to see that she was not stupid; the bar to her progress was more a sort of weary indifference, or, again an almost irritating levity. Once when the professor had triumphantly concluded a series of sen- teuces on the proceedings of an imaginary cook, she wilfully confounded them with the evolutions of smoke, learned the day before, and asserted that the cook was dis- persed through space, lost himself in the air, and disappeared. Poor Jean Louis was as much disconcerted hy this pleasantry as if the wax Virgin in the chapel where he worshipped had deliberately lifted her stiff, gold-embroidered skirts and executed a pas seul. In the meanwhile Mr. Harris went on his own way,comparing Belgian.and Amer- ican customs, manners, and institutions. At times he insisted that bis niece should accompany him on long, fatiguing expedi- tions along the quays, and then left her standing among dry docks and warehouses while he became absorbed in the working of sluices and hydraulic cranes. Again, he went off alone, not to return night, and” she spent the day as’ best she tive observation of his pupil. She was’ b until late at | could in the dreary solitude of the hotel. | All this Jean Louis was aware of and mourned over with the dumb sympathy of a faithful dog. 4 The time set for the departure of Mr. Harris and his niece at length drew near at thand. The former was plainly chafing with impatience to set sail for his native shores. He had, guide book in haud, thoroughly patrolled the streets of Antwerp, and visit- ed all the spots insisted upon by the truth- ful, unswerving, and relentless Baedecker. The professor divined this, and perhaps cherished a student's contempt for the mere mau of business. Mr. Harris, on his side, did not consider Jean Louis at all. A French professor with a puny frame, a timid manner, and pale blue cravats bad for him no place whatever in the scheme of the universe. One morning, a few days before the sail- ing of the Red Star steamer on which Mr. Harris bad engaged passage, Jean Lonis left his pension to go and give his last les- son at the Hotel St. Martin. It wasa fete day. In the Place Verte the sun shone brightly, and a military band played livelyand popular airs. The flower market was a mass of fragrant bloom; laitieres, having disposed of their stock of milk, stopped a nioment to listen to the music, and the tired dogs harnessed to their little carts lay down and snatched a moment’s repose. Tourists conscientious- ly took note of local color, soldiers in gay uniforms ogled the pretty girls, babies pur- sued a wobbling career underfoot,and every- where through the crowd hobbled the beg- gars—dirty, crippled, revolting, import- unate. Suddenly there came in sight two Sisters of St. Joseph in their sombre gowns, black poke bonnets, wide white collars, and swinging rosaries. They were going in the same direction as Jean Louis. and walked so swirtly that they presently overtook him and went on ahead. The professor pursued his way with lead en feet and a heayy heart. In afew days there would he no more lessons; she would be gone. He approached the hotel and was greet- ed by the concierge with his usual toothy smile. Seeing that the man wished to speak to him, the professor stopped. ‘‘The young lady in Ne. 9 is very ill,” said the concierge ‘‘Monsieur le docteur has heen twice in the night. The Sisters of St. Joseph have just arrived to nurse. What a misfortune ! Hein 2" The professor waited to hear no more, but hurried up the stairs. A voice re- sponded in answer to his knock at the door of No. 9, and he went in. Mr. Harris was pacing up and down the room, looking angry and excited. ‘Yes, she's ill,”’ he said in answer to the professor’s anxious inquiry. ‘I was a fool to have brought her. She has been delicate for a year, nothing much the matter with her it seemed. The doctors said the ocean voyage and change and all would do her good, so I brought her over. Well, it’s done her no good, and my trip is spoiled. Here she is on my hands.”’ Mr. Hanis thrust hie hands deep in his pockets and looked at the professor, with a line between his brows. Jean Louis was silent; he could find no words. ‘‘Of conrse I shall have her well taken care of. She's got two Sisters in there now, and the best doctor in the city. The money is noth- ing. Itisthe bother of having her laid up here in this foreign hole.’* ‘‘Her family ?’' the professor ventured to inquire. L *‘She has no family but we,’ replied Mr. Harris. *‘She is a queer girl—Made- line—not like any one else. I never liked these little creatures with their minds a thousand miles off; they are depressing to bave around. I like a woman who is full of life and spirits and go. Not but that Madeline is good-tempered enough.” he added. The inner room, where Sister Felicie and Sister Anastasie were busy, had taken on the grim look of a place besieged hy death. The sick woman lay on the bed, her flush- ed, haggard face thrown back on a low pil- low, her bair dishevelled, her eves closed. Under the coarse blanket which zovered her the outlines of her figure could he seen, straight, rigid, and almost inanimate. Yet, though she lay seemingly unconscious, her mind was abnormally alert and strained to catch the meaning of the low murmur of rapid French which came from the lips of the Sisters as they moved noiselessly about the room. Once she heard a word which flashed distinctly across her brain as she bad seen it on the top line of a page in her grammar, ‘‘Dire, to say,” *‘‘Monsieur le docteur,”” and she remembered that in French one never omitted the polite title. She wondered what the doctor said, then fell to conjugate the verb “‘dire,”’ with some vague idea of improving her time. : Jedis, tu dis, il dit, etc. What was the imperfect ? She bad forgotten. How an- noying not to be able to remember ! Her eyes half opened, and she saw the black bonnets of the Sisters bobhing toward each other in the corner. They were discussing the case, the patient,” and, incidentally, many things. Outside the hot noon sun blazed on the roofs of the houses across the way. Through he partly closed shutters there could he seen a strip of sullen blue sky,and the tree tops gray with dust. The tap of feet on the sidewalk sounded from beneath the window, and from the adjoining room, where Mr. Harris was solacing the long hours of weary waiting with a brandy and soda, came the tinkle of a silver spoon against glass. The second day of the fever came. a fever which, meeting with no resistance from an exhausted body, was raging with the license of a tyrant and conqueror. The long, hot hours went slowly by, the doc- tor came and went, and there were many whispered consultations between him and Mr. Harris. “It is the brain,”” he said, ‘and the heart is weak. It is a matter of a few days—hours perbaps.’’ ‘‘She has been sickly for a year,” re- plied Mr. Harris; ‘I don’t know why I brought her.”’ Toward night the Sisters went to their convent for supper, and’ Mr. Harris took their place watching by the patient’s bed. He was more disturbed than he had ever been by any mishap, not connected with his business. in the course of his en- tire life, and he bad no great affection for his niece to draw his mind away from the contemplation of the material vexations and perplexities of the position. Poor Jean Louis had spent a day of agony walking aimlessly to and fro in the streets, straying sometimes into the Cathedral to pray for the soul of her who was so soon to depart for a world more inaccessible even than America. Toward night fall he had ventured to turn his steps once more to- ward the Hotel St. Martin, fearing his visit might be an intrusion, yet unable to keep away. N The Sisters came back from the convent and-found their patient lying in a sort of stupor, and murmuring incoberent words in a half-whisper. Sister Anastasie knelt by the side of "the bed’ and-took' the thin, weak bands. in. hers. . Madeline's: eyes opened and rested on the face of her nuise. DD’ eau,” she said faintly. **No, de l'eau; I forget. Water is feminine. Give me some lady water, Sister.”’ The water was brought, and she drank a few diops, her gaze wandering around the room. When she had finished, Sister Felicie took Sister Apastasie’s place, and knelt by the side of the bed. Her eyes, resting on the sufferer’s, had a compelling power as if to anchor the soul to couscious- ness. She spoke in her ear, very slow and distinctly, in her sweet, tender voice : **This world is nothing.” The sick woman's eyes met the Sister’s with a look of ineffable yearning. ‘‘Noth- ing—nothing !"” she repeated. Her face quivered like that of a child seeking com- fort and sympathy. She struggled to find words—the words of that strange foreign tongne—to express her thought, hut the ef- fort was too great. Her face grew dull again. The Sister held the crucifix against the dry, hot lips,but already she had lapsed into unconseipnsness. “It will be to-night,” said the doctor when he came again. And in the night, when the chill that precedes the dawn was in the air, when the wasting candle threw on the wall monstrous, fantastic shadows from the Sisters’ poke bonnets, and the room was heavy with the smell of fever, Mr. Harris’s niece died. The professor heard the news when he came early in the morning to inquire. ‘Such a misfortune !"’ exclaimed the con- cierge. ‘‘And the house full of guests! However, the American is rich, he can pay.”’ In the upper hall the professor en- countered Mr. Haris, who seemed hurried and full of business. He stopped long enough to hear the professor's expression of sympathy and’ condolence, and then made a movement as if to go on, hut the other still detained him. It seemed as if he wisiied to say something more, yet no woids came. His face grew suddenly very white. “Well 27 said Mr. Harris. “If I might ask such a great, such an unmerited, favor,’’ began the professor, in a voice which trembled; “it is that [ might look once more on the face of mademoiselle. I had for her so deep a respect, so—" Certainly,’ replied Mr. Harris. *‘The Sisters are there. You can go in. You will pardon me if I leave you. I have much to do,’’ and he hurried off. The professor made his way to the door where he had knocked so many times, was opened by Sister Anastasie. He brief- ly explained his wishes, and the permission he had received from Mr. Harris, and Sister Anastasie motioned toward the inner root:. He pushed the door gently open and went in. The disarray of the sick- room: had not heen yet removed. The table held some glasses, a spoon, and alcohol lamp, and an iron saucepan, and on the shelf stood a row of medicine bottles on which the dust had already begun to gath- er. There were no flowers, no burning tapers; only on the hed a stiff, shrouded figure, : As the professor entered, Sister Felicie rose from her knees by the side of the dead. There lay the body of the lady of his dreams. In life she had been as far re- moved from his thoughts and knowledge as a star; hut in death alone, neglected, forsaken, she seemed suddenly near. He approached the bed. Sister Felicie drew the covering from the still face, and then went to the other side of the room. A quick impulse came to the professor. He leaned over and whispered in the dead woman's ear the words he had never dared say to his own heart while she lived : “I loved you !"’—By Helen Huntington, in Everybody’s Magazine. Steer Worth Its Weight in Silver. Originally Valued at $30, Law Suits Over it Have Cost Litigants Thousands. Quietly browsing on the stubble fields of northern Charlton county in Mo., is a spindle-shanked steer that promises one day to exceed in value that of any of its kind ever shown in a Western cattle mar- ket. All unmindful of its greatness, it runs with the common berd, scrapes around ihe same feed lot for fodder, journeys to the same little pond when thirsty and rests its weary limbs in the same barn with plebian cattle o’nights. The steer was originally worth only $30. That was before John Massengale, of Macon county, and Elijah E. Rice, of Charlton connty, began lawing over it and raised its value nearly pound for pound equal to silver. One day in September, 1899, Mr. Massen- gale went out to round up his cattle and discovered that one of them was missing. In his search he visited the domain of Mr: Rice, some miles south of his own, and claimed he found there his missing ani- mal. Mr. Rice was equally positive he had raised that identical steer from calfhood. Both Rice and Massengale are extensive stock raisers and have plenty of money to back their respective opinions. Although they have been friends and neighbors for years, they went to law. Massengale led off with a suit in replevin. As the first trial the jury disagreed. As the second trial Massengale won out, but Rize promptly went into the Circuit court. When the case was called, in February, 1900, there was a re-enforcement of law- yers on both sides, and it looked as if a re- cruiting officer had been out hunting up witnesses. The case was bitterly fought from start to finish, but at the ‘‘round-up’’ the jury had six stubborn men on, the litigants thought, for the ballots were ties. The case went on again in September, 1900. As a salient bit of evidence to back up his oral testimony the defendant drove the steer all the way to court—some fifty miles —but the Court refused to permit the ‘‘ex- hibit’ to go to the jury. The trial lasted a week and the defendant got the verdict. Undaunted by the extent of the record and the expense of getting it up, the plain- tiff promptly instructed his lawyers to ascend the next step in the legal ladder— the Appellate court. The issues were presented to the Kansas City court of Appeals in a 241 page brief this week. It is expected that a decision will be handed down early next month, Whoever loses will have to pay the court costs and for the transcript and brief. Each of the eight lawyers will also naturally ex- pect a good fee for his long and hard work, and this, with the court costs, will proba- bly land that scrawny, bow-legged steer in the $3000 class. ——Daniel Houseman, foreman of the laboring department of the Altoona car shops, was retired Tuesday, he having reached the age limit of 70 years. A great demonstration was held last Thursday at 5 o’clock, when thousands of the employes assembled in the round house where he was presented with a gold watch, a gold headed ebony cane, eye glasses and stud. Rev. A. E. Wagner of the Second Luth- eran church, made the presentation speech. + ——Subscribe for the WATCHMAN, It | Horrors of Death Valiey of Southern California. Desolate Region, Where so Many Prospectors and Pioneers have Perished, has Valuable Natural Products. The most thorongh exploration made of the mysterious grewsome Death Valley in California since Lieutenant W. B. Craw- ford’s expedition there in 1890 began with the cool days of last November, and will close for a season when hot weather comes to Death Valley in May. The expedition consists of a dozen mineralogists, botanists and biologists of California, and several geologists from Boston and Chicago. The building of the Los Angeles, San Pedro and Salt Lake Railroad from Salt Lake City, Utah, to Los Augeles, Cal, through the desert country adjacent to Death Valley has roused interest in the mineral possibil- ities of this little known corner of the Union. With a railroad, by which ores, borax aud same products may be hauled cueaply to smelters and market, there may be fortunes to be found even in so forbid- ding a bit of the earth’s - surface as this. Thus far the explorers have located, under the United States mineral laws, the largest deposits of nitre in North America, several beds of naturally formed borax, besides numerous outcroppings of silver and cop- per ores. The expedition has carefully studied the remarkable topography and geology of Death Valley. To cover the subject thoroughly, however, many months will be required, and when cold weather returns next fall the expedition will re- sume its work for another season. Death Valley lies in Inyo county, about 250 miles from the nearest railroad, 350 miles from the Pacific Ocean, and close be- side the Nevada-California State line. It is a part of the Mojave and Colorado des- erts, and is the quintessence of all that is melancholy, grim and withered in desert characteristics. The valley proper is about one hundred miles long ard fifty wide. While most of Inyo county for thousands of square miles is a plateau ‘averaging 5000 feet 1n altitude. Death Valley is from 300 to 450 feet below sea level. Mount Whit- ney, to the east, is over 15,000 feet high, and the descent from that to the valley 1s very precipitous. All about are mountain walls of bleached granite. In some places the walls rise sheer several thousand feet. The valley is seamed with deep Ganyons and desolate whitened gulches, and there are but few places where one may cross from one side of it to another. In summer when the mercury ranges from 125 to 145 in the shade, and when rocks are a shimmering white and the alkali wastes are scorching, even the strongest cannot make the jour- ney safely. GEOLOGICAL STUDIES. The bottom of the valley is made up of great acres of saline deposits, beds of borax and salt, which under a strong sunshine, present ghastly appearance with their glis- tening whiteness. The bedrocks are shale and schist left from the Jura-triassic pe- riod, but a most exteusive volcanic eruption has so scatte.el and demoralized the var- ious formations that widely different de- posits are often found within a few feet of one another. There are dozens of craters of extinct volcanoes in the valley, and with their blackened ruins and coating of dark cinders, acres in area, the general whiteness of the valley bottoms stands out all the more lonely and ghastly. Sand hills that shifc and grow and di- minish with every desert whirlwind abound, and great sink holes (half a mile in diameter) are found all over Death Val- ley as dry powder, with an alkaline sedi- ment dry on the hottom, where it was de- posited thousands of years ago. The In- dians of the Mojave desert call the valley “Devil’s Hollow (mingotunk),” and none will go farther into it than the threshold, and then only in winter. A wealth of un- canny stories are in the lore of the Mo- jave tribe about bad Indians who have been condemned to live through all eter- nity in Death Valley. Therz is no hotter, drier spot in Africa or Asia. Birds which abound in the Sier- ras do not wing their way across this spot. Nature is absolutely lifeless in Death Val- ley. While the waters of melting snows on the lofsy mountains run tumultuously down the canyons on the western sides of the Sierras, they never reach Death Valley on the eastern side, for they are sucked away in the vast sandy stretches long be- fore they pass the feet of the mountains. Nowhere else in all America is evaporation so high. One’s thirst must be slaked every few hours even in the depth of winter, and thirst soon hecomes raging, and in bal a day may cause insanity. Many a hardy mining prospector has gone insane with thirst in a few urs, when on the edge Death Valley. The desert from Mo- jave to the Searles’ borax works on the western edge of Death Valley is frequently dotted with the graves of ‘teamsters and prospectors who have reeled and died on the hot sands when they had run short of drinking water. The mirages of Death Valley, the explor- ers there say, are the most remarkable in the world. Every day in any season one see’s among the parched hills and scalded mountain sides phantasmic pictures, miles in area, of foaming mountains streams, sylvan shades, alfalfa fields and browsing cattle—scenes reflected from the other sides and tops of the Sierras. Occasionally scenes from the Pacific Ocean may be reflected in the mirages, and sailing ships and tossing waves may be seen amid ‘the shimmering desolate sand hillsand alkali canyons of Death Valley. The Indians call the mi- rages the Big Spirit’s picture. Sometimes in the hottest weather the mirages will re- main floating wonderfully distinct in the valley for a day at a time, but generally it’ lasts only a few minutes. There the phan- tasma vanishes in a twinkling, to be soon succeeded by another—until as many as seven different mirages have been seen there in one day. FIERCEST OF SANDSTORMS. Sandstorms are a serious thing on the Colorado and Mojave deserts, but nowhere do they approach the deadliness of a sand- storm in Death Valley. The simoons of the Arabian deserts are well known in lit- erature, bus the present explorers of Death Valley say the simoons are mere babes by side of a howling gale of hot sand in this place. The hot air rising from the canyon, and hottoms of the valleys encounters the cold atmosphere currents from the Sierras and Rockies, and the rushing of the cooler air into the valley instantly creates a storm undreamed of in any other part of the world. For hours at a time the sandstorm rages; occasionally for a day and a night, Nothing alive can brave the hurricane. The man who will keep closz within a tent, with his head wrapped in a blanket, will survive, but he will suffer with heat al- most as severely as if in an oven, and for days thereafter with a pain from smarting nostrils and inflamed eyes and ears. Old- time plainsmen, who knew about all the hardships that man’s anatomy can exper- ince, are a unit in saying that the ‘desert sandstorm, more particularly a Death Val- ley sandstorm, is the moss trying physical ordeal. The mountains’ which bulwark Death Valley show the terrific erosion of their flinty faces by successions of these tempests. Here and there are starved grease-root plants, like stunted, starved trees tnat have been half-buried in sand during these storms. Many a man who has been a desert teamster or a mining pros- pector has suffered chronic inflamation of the eyes by reason of having experienced oue of these whirlwind of alkali sand. The nearest water course to Death Val- ley is the Amargosa river, a little stream that trickles down in an enormous bed from away up among the mountains in Ne- vada. Centuries ago the Amargosa was a mighty roaring torrent that eroded granite rock and ate a river bed half a mile wide for over eighty miles. The Amargosa touches the extreme southwestern end of Death Valley, and-in the locality lizards and venomous crawling things may be oe- casionally seen darting from under rocks. In the same locality tiny rivulets of heavi- ly charged borax water issue from the base of ancient volcanoes and form in pools. Hundred of acres of the purest borax are created here by the intense evaporation, and large fortunes have been made by Cali- fornians, who hauled the product across the desert to the railroad station in Mo- ave. WELL DESERVES ITS NAME. Death Valley gets its name from its ghastly aspect, its desolation, and its dead- ly effect upon many venturesome or ignor- ant mining prospector who has attempted to cross it in summer, and who has died of thirst there. Among all the tales of grim hardships and dreadful suffering by emi- gauts to California before there was rail- roads west of the Missouri river, none is so pitiful as that of the party who got lost in Death Valley in 1849. There were 500 emigrants in a caravan at Salt Lake City in August of that year. All were going to the gold fields in California. A division of opinion arose as to the safest and easiest and trail across the trackless plains and the Sierras to the new Eldorado. Some 200 of the party struck out for the southeast, and found the old Santa Fe trail, which finally led them to Southern California. The rest went plodding in a caravan across the wastes of Southern Utah. There was noth- ing to show them the way through the life- less roasting valleys, past the bald moun- taing, and then westward over the tower- ing Sierras. The caravan was in the Land of Thirst. For four months the starv ng, half-crazed men and women wandered hither and yon through the region of horror, seeking some pass between the mountains to the Pacific Ocean. Mirages led them vainly miles away from the trail. Their wagons fell apart from the dryness, and horses fell daily under the withering heat. The oxen fell, and stalwart men sickened and died in the cainps. One day nine young men became separated from the main party, and years later their whitened bones were found in an extinct volcanic crater, where they had crawled in their delirum and weak- ness. For days the gaunt, weak men in the party went without food. The days were too hot for them to be out in the sun, and they confined their efforts to the nights for finding paths that might lead out of the roasting tomb. At last eighty-two of the original party —uow mere skeletons and so weak that they could scarcely walk—found a passage- way through the Funeral Mountains, and, summoning all their little remaining strength, managed to get up and out of Death Valley into the cool aud well-water- ed region of Southern California, beyond the Sierras. One of the party, the Rev. J. W. Grier, weighed 187 pounds when he left Salt Lake City, and when he reached Los Angeles eighteen weeks later his weight was down to 92 pounds. Two of his broth- ers and oue of his sisters-in-law died during the awful journey.—New York Evening ost. Rallroaded To Gallows. Quick Trial for Triple Murderer. Peculiar Relations of Man and Woman. William H. Lane, the Philadelphia negro who shot and killed the reputed wife of Charles A. Furbush and her danghter Madelive, aged ten . years, and fatally wounded Eloise, the seven year old daugh- ter of the woman, has confessed the crimes and will be hurried to the gallows as swift- ly as’ justice will allow. Peritonitis set in and the wounded little one died Friday. Friday was set for the ingnest and the evi- dence was given to the grand jury thas evening and Lane was arraigned in court Saturday. The trial will be a mere for- mality as he has confessed the crimes and has been identified by the dying child, so his execution is expected within the month. The name of the dead woman is Ella Jarden and her mother and two sisters live in Philadelphia, but they refuse to say any- thing that would throw any light on the relations of the woman and Furbush, wha bad lived together as man and wife for sev- eral years. Furbush also refuses to talk on the subject and is prostrated over the crime, which occurred while he was away. He said he could throw no light on Lane’s mo- tive for the tragedy and the latter express-- ed contrition at injuring Eloise, but said Madeline and her mother deserved their ate. Farmers Swindled. Patent Hay Fork is Used as a Ruse to Victimize: Them. A gang of swindleis are victimizing farmers of York and Adams counties, Pa. Approaching a farmer they appoint him agent for a patent hay fork and agree to. give him a fork if he will show it to his: neighbors and devote one day of the month, to taking orders. The farmer signs a con-- tract agreeing to the terms. When the contract is cut in two, the sig- nature end is a judgment note, which the- farmer is forced to pay ata bank. Scores. of farmers have heen forced to pay from $75. to $450 each. Apparently a Mistake. Leo was a very bad companion. At least so thought little Gertie, who often tried to play with him. Gertie’s mother was telli that God made everybody. ‘Did He make Leo, too ?”’ said the little 2irl, with eyes wide open. ‘‘Yes,”” said her mother. ‘‘He made Leo, too.”’ “Well, if I had been God I wouldn’ have done that,’’ said Gertie. ng her one day ——The following ambiguous advertise- ment recently appeared in a Detroit paper : ‘‘Notice—If——, who is supposed to be in Chicago, will communicate with his friends at home he will hear of something to his advantage. His wife is dead.” ; —— The April Fool who's worst of all . . When spring gets in the air wa tid] ¥ Is he who's led to go and shed. hb Sh Lah His winter underwear,
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers