Bemorraic iat
Bellefonte, Pa., November 7, 1902.
THE FISHERMAN.
The fisher’s face is hard to read,
His eyes are deep and still ;
His boots have crushed a pungent weed
Beside a far-off rill.
Oh, early lifted he the latch
And sped through dew away,
But when we asked him oft the catch
That was to mark the day,
He lifts his empty hands and smiles ;
*“] fished for hours, I fished for miles.”
The fisher has an open mind,
A meditative heart ;
He walks companioned by the wind
Or sits alone, apart,
Within some stream-enchanted dell,
The fish about him play
In sweet content, They know full well
That friend of his are they,
Dame Nature all his soul beguiles
With murmurous hours and emerald miles.
But one who trod the path he took
By fragrant woodland ways,
To where the cold trout-haunted brook
Ran thick-leaved from the gaze,
Heard him but sigh : “How fair it is!
My God—and what am I
That Thy most secret harmonies
Should flood the ear and eye ?’
At eve, with empty hands, he smiles :
“I caught the best of hours and miles,”
— Ethelwyn Wetherald.
ONE OF THE ARISTOCRACY.
That is what he was—there is never a
doubt ahout it—though the term is now
one of reproach in the land wherein he
dwelt. That he labored for a monthly
wage—a very meager wage it was—is true.
Many a racer is put to a cart when he is
old and bas broken his knees, hut he is a
racer just the same. Blood tells in men
just as it does in horses.
Hopkins was born in the blue-grass coun-
try, where the women have heauty and the
men have iron in their klood, and he lived
there a long time. So much I can make
ous clearly from the very few papers he has
left. For the rest there is only a rusty old
sword, a pair of pistols and a picture.
Somewhere in it all there is a story—a
heart breaking story, no doubt—but you
and I will never read that, for Hopkins was
no man for self pity nor for the babbling of
woes.
But he was of the blue grass, of the coun-
try where they rear his kind, and yet it was
far from his own that I found him—as far
as a rude little Arkansas town may be; a
town built of ‘‘rough-edge’’ lumber and
standing on a sand bluff beside a broad
blue river. He walked with a limp then;
and his white hair was long, reaching al-
most to the collar of his coat. Tall, spare
and erect, he made a picturesque, striking
figure, but none in the place knew any-
thing of the manner of his history. So far
as the crowd that harbored on the river-
front was concerned, his past, like many
another’s there, reached just to the boat
landing some two hundred yards away.
There one day he had limped ashore from
the up-river hoat, a man clean of face,
hooked as to nose and thin as to nostril,
showing in his every motion the decision of
the soldier.
But they could not read all this, these
unrefined people of the Arkansas town,and
had they read it they would not have
cared. To them be was simply an old man
come to look after Dobson’s horses—Dob-
son the liveryman, whose stables was un-
der the bluff,
As for Hopkins, he told nothing—not
even to Dobson—and it is against good
breeding in a river town to ask a man very
many questions. So Hopkins went about
his business; a ‘‘has-been’’ and a “‘broken-
down aristocrat’’ who was, of course, en-
titled to but small regard. For the town
bad many other ‘‘has-beens’’ on its streets
whom its citizens, with much refinement
of cruelty, jeered at or joked or pitied as
time and occasion served.
But they did not annoy Hopkins so, not
even when they were drunk. Once, in-
deed, a flippant fool—but he was a stran-
ger—made the old man a hutt for shallow
wit; but the play didn’t last long, for Hop-
kins looked at him. Then the fool's little
stunted soul shivered and shrank, and the
white lipsstammered excuses.
As a liveryman, however, Hopkins wasa
success. The stablemen and drivers could
not lie to him like they could
to Dobson. These, superstitions as all
negroes are, said that Hopkins was a wiz-
ard; that the horses coming in from the
road . spoke to him and told him things.
They didn’t know that Hopkins had been
born in the blue . grass country where men
learn all about horses before they are taught
to speak. The foam flecks on a glossy coat
the grip of the bit in the teeth or the turn
of the hair from the whip lash, were so
many words to him. It was this that cans-
ed his trouble with the charch going folk
—there were some such in the little town.
The preacher had overdriven a horse and
had broken him in his wind, and Hopkins
spoke strongly. Hell, he said, was made
for men who brutally misused horses. In
this Hopkins was wrong, and this partica-
lar minister kiew that he was. For him,
hell was a place to barn one’s enemies in.
Therefore, he said that Hopkins was an
infidel, but I don’t think that he really
kuew.
Sill, the old man was by no means a
saint, He swore at times fluently and with
. expression. That was when some one had
beaten a dog ora little child. When the long
nights came, when the storm whipped the
river into flying foam, and the night wind
tore shrieking through the tree-tops on the
bluff ahove, then Hopkins would eit by his
fire. And for a while, it seems to me, Hop-
kins might think of the storm or of the
horses or of his pipe ; but afterward, when
the lights burned low, and the flickering
flames leaped in the chimney, and the
weird wild shadows set to dancing on the
walls, then Hopkins would forges the Ar-
kansas town, forget the stable and the
horses, forges poverty and trouble and age;
and his proud old spirit would rise, in the
smoke from the brick red powhatan, and
float, and, drifting far, would come again
to the pleasant blue grass country. Then,
for a space, for that homesick wraith even
gnm old Time relented; and, while the si-
leat hours slept, old Hopkins, with famil-
iav ease, walked through stately corridors
and bowed to stately dames. Or it may be
that, pressing a good steed close between
his knees, he swept long hillsides, waking
the silent slopes with the wild, free music
of the bunting horn, and barking to the
Joyous baying as the pack swept up the
glens. Or else, perhaps, he heard the bu-
gles as the gray squadrons charged or saw
the dusky columns marching or caught
with anxious, straining ear the far-off roar
of the guns. And when these had passed
or had vot come at all, I am sure that she
of the picture came down to him out of the
silence, touching his hands with hers—
touching him tenderly—and led him softly
down long lost walks in dim old gardens.
And with her, I think, an old faith came
back to him—a faith once learned ata
mother’s knee—and the past became the
future for Hopking, and only his grave was
between. And so the long, wild night
would pass, and the gray dawn would
come—and with it reality.
Although there were some of us who
liked the man, even we did not suspect the
manner of his fashioning wor gauge in any
way the calm, cool courage of his stanch
old heart. But knowledge came to us lat-
er. It was the beginning of winter, I re-
member, and the dust lay thick in the roads,
for the drought had been great that year.
West of us, in the hills, the farms had been
sorely stricken. And among those who
suffered was a man—a ‘‘poor white’’ from
the blue grass he was—with a wife and one
little child. :
Aud, since thesummer had been hard on
the man and the autumn had bronght him
no harvest, he was downcast, and his wife,
also was sad, but he could have stood that
and have tried again save that his child fell
ill of the slow hill fever and babbled of the
home land and of the clear streams and of
the meadows. Then, because his heart was
sore and because he could in no way escape
the heavy lidded eyes that foilowed him,
the settler sought to retrace his steps that’
the child might die in peace. For it seem-
ed to him in his ignorance that heaven
must be far away from the hot dry hills
and very close to the blue grass country.
So ‘he harnessed his one poor beast and
turned his face eastward.
But the beast, heing unfed and old, made
but a two days’ journey. After that, it
died by the wayside. Then it was plain to
the man that very truly his God had for-
saken him; and, accounting himself already
accursed, he went by night and took a
beast. Afterward, he drove hurriedly, fifty
miles in a day, and it was nightfall when he
came to the river.
But the wagon had hampered the man
since he could by no means find shelter in
the swamps and in the tangled cane. There
were men on his trail—twenty men of the
hills, heavy browed and stern. And when
morning had come and the red sun capped
with golden light the wavelets out on the
river, these came up with the fugitive, and
they were twenty and he was one. ‘Also
the stolen horse was fast in his wagon-
shafts. Because of these things, they bound
him and led him away; and there was left
in the wagon only the wailing woman low-
bent above a dying child.
Still, the townfolk who came out to see
knew nothing of the two who were left.
The river town was ‘‘tough,’’ it is true, but
it would pot have stood that, I think. But
as for the man—well, horse stealing was a
common thing then, and the penalty there-
of was death. Sothe men who had taken
the thief set him in their midst and consid-
ered his guilt, and we of the town looked
on.
The prisoner sat quietly. Once he let
his eyes wander back toward the wagon and
then the quick tears came, but he dashed
them away with his hand. Beyond him
the river ran, and the ripples chased each
other, and the bright bubbles danced in the
eddies. The man watched them absently.
The leader of the mob was polling a vote.
‘‘Looshus ?”’
‘‘Hang !”?
‘Long Jake?"
‘Hang !”’
“Bill 2”?
“Han m
The roll call was slow and monotonous.
Suddenly another figure appeared—a man
tall and straight, with long white hair that
reached to the collar of his coat. A light
leaped in the prisonor’s eyes, and he tug-
ged at his hampering bonds.
“Colonel !”’ he called. ‘‘Don’t you know
me, Colonel ? Don’t you ’'member the Fift’
Kaintucky ?”’
Hopkins started, then turned and shoul-
dered his way through the crowd.
“Billy Hitt!” he said, sternly, ‘Billy
Hitt, what are you doing here ?’’
In a few short words one of the mob told
the story; but, as he concluded the thief
spoke up again :
‘‘He ain’t tole hit all, Colonel,”” he re-
marked, dejectedly. ‘‘Thar’s a waggin
back yonder, an’ my wife's in hit an’ my
baby—an’—an’—my baby’s a-dyin’, Col.
onel.”
The tears had come into the old man’s
eyes when he turned to those about him.
‘‘You didn’t know that, gentlemen,’ he
said, quite softly. ‘‘You didn’t know that,
I'm eure.”
The leader of the regulators frowned.
He didn’t want the facts brought out for he
wasn’t sure of the town.
“Stand back, pardner !”’ he exclaimed,
impatiently. But Hopkins did not heed,
and he was forced to speak again.
‘‘Stand back, old man !’’ he repeated in
meaning tones.
Quick to scent an affray, the crowd clos-
ed in, surging and hooting and roaring.
Then suddenly they hushed, for Hopkins’
eyes were ablaze and his long forefinger
was shaking in the other’s face.
‘‘Stand back yourself,”” he thundered,
‘‘and give this man a chance!”
The hill man sprang backward, his face
flushing with passion and hie right hand
slipping to his holster, but Hopkins only
straightened himself.
‘Shoot, you coward!” he hissed.
*‘Shoot I’? It’s safe !’* .
The crowd broke out into a turmoil and
babble. This was a row to their minds.
The leader advanced a step.
“'Git out of this pretty damn’d quick,’’
he ripped out, wrathfully; and as he spoke
a man of his party crept upon Hopkins from
behind. Like a flash, Hopkins turned and
gripped the new man’s arm.
‘Your pistol !”’ he commanded, sharply,
and the slow witted fellow obeyed.
Realizing their comrade’s folly, the oth-
ers rushed forward with curses.
‘Down with him !”’ they cried. ‘Knock
the old fool down !”’ ¢
But Hopkins faced them. ‘‘The first
man dies !”? he said, and they halted. Then
their leader passed again to the front. ‘‘Old
man,’’ he yelled, ‘‘I’m goin’ ter shoot !”’
*‘So am I!’ said Hopkins. . ‘‘Back !’’
The other quailed, and for a little space
the two men eyed each other. Then the
hill man raised his weapon. A hush fell.
The crowd was rigid with expectation.
“Don’t Hank! Fer God’ssake, don’t do
that !”’ begged some one. The prisoner
strained at his thongs.
‘Give hit up, Colonel,”” he muttered.
‘‘Fer shore he’sgot yer !”’
*‘Git I’? said the hill man, fingering the
trigger. : >
Hopkins laughed. ‘I’m goin’ to kill
you,’ he replied quietly. ‘‘I shall shoot
you just between the eyes.’ Then he rais-
ed bis band suddenly. ‘‘Fire!’ he cried.
It may have been that the sharp com-
mand startled the other—he said so after-
ward—into that which he would not have
done; it may be that passion had its way
with him; bus he fired five shots in quick
succession.
As they struck, Hopkins reeled and his
thin face went very white. Then a dark
stream oozed from his sleeve, and a red stain
marked the front of his shirt; but he stead-
ied himself, and his pistol arm rose with a
deadly aim.
“‘Oue !"”’ be counted, solemnly ; “I shall
kill youn at three !”’
A snarl ran through the mob, and weap-
ons came flashing out, but the town had
taken a hand.
‘Fair play !'’ called Dobson, sternly,and
“Fair play !"”’ the crowd echoed back.
The hillman fell back, sullenly.. It was
hard, but they knew the rude ethics of the
river towns.
“Two m
The rebellious outbreak had hushed, and
the stillness was appalling. The bands of
the leader twitched convulsively, and his
empty pistol fell to the ground. Behind
the group, a man grew frantic.
“Pray, Hank !”’ he urged; *‘pray !”’
The leader moistened his dry lips with
his tongue. ;
‘A chanst !”’ he murmured ; ‘‘give me a
chanst !”’
Hopkins slid his fingers lightly along the
trigger. '
‘‘A chance ior a chance,’ he said. ‘““You
spare Billy Hitt and I’11 spare youn.’’
The leader turned his face to the men.
There was supplication in his look, but it
was not needed. :
“We’ll do it. Yes, shore we will!”
they cried, and they sprang to loose their
prisoner’s bonds.
Then, as Billy Hitt stumbled to his feet,
old Hopkins, with his last fight won, stag-
gered, grasped blindly—and fell.—By E.
Crayton McCants in The Cosmopolitan for
October.
May be Lynched.
Pleasant Sprading Brutally Murdered his 4-Year
old Son last Friday.
Pleasant Sprading, of Inez, Ky., held
for killing his 4-year-old son and whose
15-year-old daughter is missing, is threat-
ened with lynching. Sprading’s family
consisted of his wife, three daughters and
ason. With his daughters and boy the
father was herding sheep last Friday. The
boy was unable to keep up with the others.
The father placed him on a stone beside a
spring, telling him to wait until his return.
The boy, becoming tired, begau to peel the
loose bark off a tree that overhung the
spring. When the father retnrned he asked
the boy who had stripped the tree. The
boy replied that he had.
“I wonld rather have you dead than raise
you to destroy everything on the farm,’’
is the reply the father is said to have made,
and then, it is charged, he picked up a
stone and struck the boy on the head,
knocking him down. Then, it is alleged,
he kicked the prostrate child in the head
until he had killed him, and turning to his
daughters’ threatened them with a like fate
if they ever told what had occurred. After-
ward he went home and said the boy, while
chasing sheep had run against a tree and
killed himself.
Becoming alarmed Sprading took his
eldest daughter and went to the mount-
ains. His wife hired neighbors to bury
the body of the child and then went to
Judge E. Hensley. She told him of the
death of her son and said she suspected
her husband, who told her he was going
into the woods to hunt squirrels and added
that at different times he had threatened
to kill the whole family. Judge Hensley
presented the case to the grand jury. One
of the little girls told the jury that her
father had kicked the boy to death. Short-
ly afterward a sherifi’s posse captured
Sprading in the woods, but his eldest
daughter was not with him. The posse is
still searching for her, while Sprading is
held on the charge of murder.
Wolves Eat a Railroad.
About 1872 one of the first railoads of
the Northwest was built in the Territory of
Washington, from Walla Walla to Walula
along the banks of the Walla Walla river,
and following the general line of what is
now the Oregon railway and Navigation
company’s road between those points.
The road was a primitive affair, and was
built, owned and operated by Dr. Baker,of
Walla Walla. It had no Pullman cars,
chair cars or huffet cars,and the day coaches
were mostly platform or flat cars. Ipstead
of having a right-of-way, the road had per-
mission to go through the fields of the
farmers, consequently the road was not a
rapid transit one, as the train hands had to
ges off and lay down rail fences and put
them up again after the train had passed
through, says the Anconda, (Mont.,)
Standard.
The roadbed was constructed by laying
orossties six or eight feet apart,and on those
laying wooden stringers for rails. The
heavy traffic over the road caused the train
to wear in spots, so that train wrecks and
smash-ups were of daily occurrence. These
were not serious, for, when the train crew
saw a wreck coming their way, they would
hop off and let it wreck.
The annoyance, however, soon became
detrimental to the interest of shippers, so
the owner had to devise some means of
overcoming the difficulty. Rails of standard
railroad iron were out of the question ; they
had to be shipped ‘‘the Horn around’’ and
freighted by wagon quite a distance, and
strap iron could not be had, and the doctor,
with Yankee shrewdness, finally hit upon
the happy idea of substituting rawhide for
strap iron. Cattle were plentiful and raw-
hide cheap,so the doctor soon had his track
layers at work putting the rawhide on the
wooden stringers. The rawhide soon be-
came dry and as hard as iron, and answer-
ed the purpose admirably during the dry
weather.
The winter succeeding the laying of the
rawhide track was a severe one for that
part of the country. The snow lay on the
ground for several weeks. The wolves
were driven from the mountains by the
deep snow, and skirmished for a living as
best they could in the valleys. When the
snow began to melt it softened the rawhide
and the hungry wolves soon found ‘the
tracks. When spring came and the snow
bad melted, the wolves had eaten up the
railroadtrack from Walla Walla to Walnla
Recreation.
A Serious Matter.
‘So he’s trying to live on other people’s
brains,”’ said the publisher indignantly.
‘‘What’s the trouble? Has some one
been stealing the ideas from your books ?’
‘‘Isuppose so. But that’s a minor mat-
ter. They’re trying to coax away the man
who writes my advertisements.’’
Large Pin in His Bread.
While H. L. Detwiler, a farmer of Nor-
wood, near Lancaster was eating supper
Saturday evening he felt a stining sensation
in his throat, as though a bone had loaded
there. After taking an emetic a large pin
was dislodged. The pin was in a slice of
bread which he had just eaten.
——Subsoribe for the WATC HMAN.
What a Man Smokes.
The Immense Value of Tobacco that goes up in
Smoks.
There muss he a great army of men who
smoke an eunce of tobacco a day. Smok-
ers are men of a philosophic and reflecting
disposition, although they do not always
care to favor the world with the results of
the high meditations due to the influence
of the soothing weed.
It will be new, even to many of them, to
know that it wonld take no less than 98
yeas to dispose of a ton of tobacco at this
rate of consumption, and it will be still
more surprising to consider the magnitude
of this amount under various aspects.
The smoker of an ounce a day is almost
invariably a faithful discipline of the pipe.
He may submit to a cigar or cigaret to
please the ladies, but the pipe remains his
true love. Hence we will first suppose
that our ton of tobacco is to be sacrificed to
My Lady Nicotine in the homely pipe.
If the ordinary ounce packets in which
the tobacco is probably bought were piled
in a single column they would tower to a
height of 2,700 feet, and if piled rdge to
edge to twice the height of Snowdon. Ar-
ranged in a solid block they would form a
| cube of packed ‘‘shag’’ measuring 13 feet
in every direction, or more than twice the
height of a man.
We might conceive a pipe specially built
to consume this mass. Such a pipe, if built
on the plans of the familiar briar, wonld he
100 feet long and the bowl would he 20 feet
in diameter. The bowl could accomodate
70 men.
Should the smoker of such a huge pipe-
ful prefer the ‘‘Churchwarden,’’ he would
ohtain a graceful clay 500 feet long: bus
enough to stretch across the Strand front of
the royal courts of justice.
Such impracticable calcniations serve to
illustrate the magnitude of our ton of tohac-
co hus it ia no less interesting to consider
it under ordinary conditions.
On a low average two matches are used
to each pipe of tobacco. After his 750,000
pipes the smoker would have used as many
matches as would stretch from London to
Coventry, or Bath or Gloucester, if placed
end to end. The timber would be barely
contained in a grove of 20 stalwart trees,
each 40 feet high. The heat energy repre-
sented* and which is largely waste, would
serve to run a locomotive a considerable
distance.
It the smoker were economical and expend-
ed on an average of 5 cents per ounce on
his tobacco he would dishuse no less a sum
that $3,000. In the tirst 10 years after
marriage, when his supply is probably ruth-
lessly cut down to half, he will save on this
head alone $175.
We must not forget that there are many
. who prefer the mild cigaret. Let us consid-
er our ton of tobacco in this form.
There will be considerable difference in
the actual number of cigarets consumed if
the smoker makes his own in preference to
buying them ready made. In the former
case he will turn no fewer than 1,000,000
in fragrant smoke, a quantity which, if
plazed in order, would make a thin white
line from London to Brighton, and in the
latter case they would stretch for 37 miles.
Placed side by side they would pave a small
pathway 5 miles long.
Could we make these ocigarets into one
huge whole, we would obtain a cigaret 10
feet in diameter and nearly 100 feet long.
A man built in proportion to enjoy this
little smoke would be a mere 2,200 feet
high, or as tall as 15 Nelson columns, placed
one over the other. He would possess a
dainty foot as long as two of these columns
placed horizautally, and would turn the
scale at over 500 tons. It would require
the imagination of Dean Swift to conceive
a smoker of such Brobdignagian propor-
tions.
The paper used in these cigarets, if they
are manafactared, would be of the same
area as the paper contained in 1,000 com-:
plete copies of ‘The Republic ’’ If they
were made by the smoker himself, the
papers being then of larger area, a mere
400 more copies would be demanded to
equal the vast expanse of paper used. The
cost of these ‘‘smokes’’ would be from
$4,000 to $6,000. Again, since one-fifth of
the cigaret is waste, at least $800 is literal-
ly thrown away.
The consumer of this tobacco may, like
Svengali, be a lover of the big cigar of the
Havana. If so, he must be prepared to
spend at least $15,000, of which $2,5
will be wasted in fag-ends. y
The quantity of nicotine in tobacco varies
greatly, but it. has been authoritatively
stated that the average cigar contains
enough nicotine to kill two men. Needless
to say, this is volatilized or otherwise
harmlessly removed, and so does not affect
the smoker. Here, however, is a hint for
the political economist.
The quantity contained in our ton of oci-
gars, if judiciously administered in the
crude state, would he calcnlated to solve
the pressing problem of our surplus popu-
lation by relieving 400,000 superflaous
healthy adults of the burden of existence.
As we are not anxious to alarm the wife
or curtail the privileges of her husband,
we will refrain from stating the amount in
value of clothes, or the many orther in-
cidental branches of this interesting theme.
These formidable amounts should not
discourage the wavering smoker. My
Lady Nicotine may be an exacting mis-
tress, but the hours of real enjoyment, the
solace in sorrow and pain, the companion-
ship in solitude which she gives her wor-
shipers in return compensates for all, and
ampley justify us in acknowledging our-
selves, humble votaries at her fragrant
shrine. Sf. Louis Republic.
Chair While
Shaved.
Died in Waiting be
With a joke on his lips, and no thought
of his life’s ending, John S. Smith died
Saturday morning in a chair at Matthew
Miller’s barber shop in Trenton N. J.
Smith entered the shop in usual good
health and took a seat to await his turn.
A boy was receiving a hair cut, and Smith,
noticing the closeness of Miller’s manipula-
tion of the shears, remarked : ‘‘That
youngster’s head will get frosted.”
The next instant he gasped and straight-
ened backwards in his chair. Miller ran
to his side, but life was extinct.
Heart failure is given as the canse of
death.
——Beginning November 1st practically
all the New York Central yard work will
be transferred from Jersey Shore Junction
to Oak Grove. After that day ail Beech
Creek freight trains will be ‘‘broken up’?
at Oak Grove, the cabogses run onto a
caboose side track and the engines turned
over to the care of the hostlers. Train
crews will be relieved at Oak Grove. Trains
for Newberry and those for the north over
the Fall Brook will be made upat Oak
Grove. At Corning the Fall Brook trains
will be made either solid Oak Grove or
solid Newberry trains. If the former they
will be run over the Y, just west of Jersey
Shore Junction, to the Oak Grove yards.
SSS
Breadwinning by the Blind.
8ome S8ightless People in Front Ranks of their
Callings. One of Them in New York Tunes
Paderewski’s Piano—Men Repair Clocks, Make
Brooms, Practice Law. Women Sew, Teach,
Wash, Make Laces, Etc.—City’s Annual Gift.
‘“The poor fellow is blind; he can’t do
much of anything except depend on
others,’” explained the sympathetic man in
the street car to the small boy with him.
The blind man heard. He turned
toward the speaker.
“You are wrong,’’ he answered, smiling.
‘We do a great deal. Some day, when
you get time, come to this address and I
will try to show you something that will
interest voun.’’
The blind man fumbled in a pocket, and
presently handed a card to the man. It
read : “Armin Schotte, Piano Tuner.”’
A few days later the man went to the
piano house where Mr. Schotte is employed.
He asked for the taner.
‘Sorry, but you can’t see him,’’ said the
manager, ‘‘he’s up stairs with Paderewski
suning a piano for him.”’
; a visitor showed the astonishment he
elt.
“Yes,” said the manager, ‘he always
tunes Paderewski’s pianos when he js in
this country. And he is not only a tuner;
he is a splendid musician on half a dozen
instruments and a writer of music. I heard
Paderewski praise one of his compositions
not an hour ago. i
This expert piano tuner, whose yearly
income is away up in the thousands, is
only one of thousands of blind men and
women in this country who are earning
their own way through the world.
Search for the blind in a large city—
where they are al ways numerous—and you
will find men who are paper sellers, piano
tuners, piano teachers, organists and choir
leaders, experts with all kinds of musical
instruments, repairers of clocks, makers of
mattresses, brooms and brushes, and uphol-
sterers.
In addition, you will find several who
keep stores that retail the products of the
little manufactories ran by men similarly
afflicted ; one or two lawyers, ball a dozen
real estate dealers and as many fire and
and life insurance brokers and agents.
Go to the homes of these blind men and
to other homes and you will find blind
women whodo plain sewing, who cook,
scrub floors, take in washing and ironing,
make laces that rival the silky webs from
the Old World’s lace centers, do exquisite
fancy work, and build dainty basketware.
You will also find blind women who are
waitresses in private boarding houses,
blind women who teach elocution in
schools and one or two colleges, blind
women who emboss letters for other blind,
women who teach music.
All told there are 682 blind persons in
New York City who are self-supporting by
means of these occupations. In Philadel-
phia, in one places alone, the Working
Home for Blind Men, 250 men secure a
livelihood by maunfacturing brooms.
As the head of this factory, one of the
largest of its kind in the East, is a blind
man® Those who have come in contact
with him say there is no shrewder dealer
in Atlantic City real estate.
He is reputed to be worth nearly $200,-
000, all made out of seaside land. His
wife describes to him a piece of property
that he may think of buying; tells him its
environments, and then he takes a day or
two to think it over and draw conclusions.
Sometimes he buys, and sometimes he
doesn’t; but he has made a fortune out of
real estate that once was the despair of own-
ers and speculators.
There is another capable bind man in
the real estate business in New York. He
is a lawyer, too, and he gov his degree by
attending lectures and having a boy read
aloud to him many heavy volumuns for
eight years.
He has a fair civil practice. But he has
time to dabble in 1eal estate, and in many
subarban townsin New Jersey his trans-
actions are well known and regarded as
wise.
His method of selecting property is simi-
lar to that of the Philadelphia man. He
has memorized numerous law books to such
a point that he rarely finds it necessary,
when getting up a brief, to have a clerk
look up the law lor him.
Scarcely any of the working blind need
assistance in business.
The news stand man, even through the
roar of the city is all about him, can tell
the footfall of a customer as he approaches
the stand, and, knowing the position on his
stand of vhe paper wanted, pulls it out and
gives it to him. There are 200 such wage
earners in New York alone.
The mattress maker sews together the
cover. He runs the hair cleaning and tear-
ing machine. He does the stuffing, not
forgetting to make proper allowances at
the sides and ends for shrinkage in the
ticking by reason of stuffing.
He places and fastens the tufts, and he
strengthens the sides by blind stitches. He
even has hoys with good eyes as appren-
tices.
Nor does the clock repairer ask belp of
any man. As with the mattress man and
the broom maker, he trusts entirely to his
highly-developed sense of touch.
There is a blind clock repairer in the
horough of the Bronx in New York who
has everything his own way in his neigh-
borhood. - He can make clocks run right
that other repairers always fail with.
It is feel that guides the blind women
in their tasks also. If they are washing
clothing they feel to learn if the spots of
dirt, which a person with sight shutting
his eyes could not detect by touch in a
thousand years, have been removed by the
soap and water.
They never burn clothing while ironing;
they know through their hands juss the
amount of contact the iron should have
with the article being pressed. When
sewing with a machine their fingers serve
them as eyes, and they make stitches as
straight as the most exacting could de-
mand.
As waitresses they gather the dishes in
the kitchen by feel and properly arrange
them around the diner’s plate by the same
swift and accurate method. And in mak-
ing the finest and most intricate laces their
only guide is touch.
In truth, the blind person in business
has, as one of them said recently, ‘‘ten
eyes, which are at their fingers’ ends,”
while seeing persons have only two.
Despite the fact that the blind who work
are exceedingly industrious and often as
expert in the various trades as men with
sight, they do not make much money. The
blind man gets sympathy when he is not
trying to sell a mattress or a broom.
Let him try to sell something. Because
he is blind the customer will expect a price
lower than he obtains elsewhere and hag-
gle until he gets it. This statement is
universally made by the blind shopkeep-
ers.
For this reason he is a lucky blind shop-
keeper who, when the week is ended,
finds he has cleared $7 or $8 over and above
expenses.
The most highly paid among the blind
are the piano tunersand musicians. These
men, who call their highly sensitive ears to
the aid of their skillful fingers, make all
the way from $45 to $150 a month.
The larger figure represents money large-
ly earned by means of piano and violin
classes. The piavo tuners almost invaria-
bly conduct several classes.
The broom and brush maker receives the
lowest returns for his labor. Frequently
he makes not more than $3 a week. His
average is $5.
Time was when the small broom maker
could earn $10 a week. Now the big fac-
tories have up to date machinery, which
the blind man, working alone, cannot af- -
ford, and so he is slowly being driven out
of the business. Gradually he is drifting
into paper selling or mattress making.
Now York is the only city in this coun-
try that encourages its blind to be self sup-
porting. To every sightless man and wom-
an who earns a living the city each year
makes a gift of $50 in gold. This money is !
used generally to clear off any indebtedness
that a blind person may have incurred, and
give him a clear start on a new fiscal year.
This custom has held in the metropolis
for over fifty years. The man who decides
on the blind who are entitled to secure an-
nuities is S. Jerome Bettman. He is known
by every blind person on the Island of
‘Manhattan.
For eighteen years he bas been investigat-
ing their cases. It is he who every year
distributes the annuities.
Bat New York, despite this pension sys-
tem and care of the blind when they fall
ill. has found that no inducement can get
the men and women stricken blind in their
majority interested in industrial pursuits.
This is the experience elsewhere.
While these persons realize their depend-
ent position, and know that, unless they
have relatives who will support them, their
inevitable end is the almshouse, they seem
to be unable to cultivate the senses of touch
and sound to the point where they can be
put to commercial profit. Many try, but
after a few months give up in despair and
request to be taken to the almshouse.
It takes years of training in an institu-
tion for the blind to fit the inmates for
bread winners in the trades that require
expert use of the senses of touch and hear-
ing. Nowadays no attempt is made to
teach the boys and girls any other callings,
for long experience has shown that time
thus spent was thrown away.
The blind themselves recognize that they
are of no monetary value in an occupation
where sight is absolutely necessary, ‘‘bus
in the other trades we can hold our end
with the best of sighted men,’’ they say.
And they can. A good blind mattress
maker turns out as many mattresses in a
day as an expert mattress maker in fall
possession of all his senses.
Big Grower of Apples.
In the last twelve years, Judge Well-
house has grown in Kausas nearly one half
million bushels of apples, for which he re-
ceived an average of 28 cents a bushel.
Judge Wellhouse has increased his orchards
annually until he now has more than 1600
acres in Leavenworth, Miami and Osage
counties. He has reduced the industry to
a science.
When the seasons are favorable, as the
season of 1902, he raises from 60,000 to 80,-
000 bushels of apples. In hot and dry sea-
sons his yield falls as lows as 400 bushels.
In the season of 1893 he did not pick the
crop at all.
The Judge's original venture in apple-
raising was on a 120 acre tract. This or-
chard was planted in 1876 near Leaven-
worth. The land was poor in quality, so
far as the production of wheat or corn was
concerned, and many Jooked upon his ven-
ture in doubt.
The varieties of apples are divided as fol-
low : Ben Davis, 620 acres ; Winesap, 76
acres; Missouri Pippin, 409 acres; Jona.
than, 190 acres; York Imperial, 150 acres;
Gano, 160 acres; Maiden Blush, 16 acres;
Cooper’s Eatly, 16 acres.
In the years when he picked 80,000 bush-
els or more, Mr. Wellhouse’s expenses were
nearly $15,000 annually, and his receipts
for 1890 were $52,000. In his vears of ap-
ple raising he has realized anet profit of
$104,000, to say nothing of the increased
investments and holdings in Kansas land.
Mr. Wellhouse has found the Ben Davis
apple to be the most profitable, while the
Jonathan has yielded more bushels to the
acre. Missouri Pippin comes second in
yield and the Ben Davis third. But the
best price and most appreciative and active
market is for the Ben Davis. On Fair-
mount Hill, near Leavenworth, he has
erected a packing and drying plant, and his
shipments of fruit are made to Kansas City,
Chicago, New York, Boston, and foreign
points. He also has a large trade in dried
apples.
Big Beef Merger Goes into Effect New
Year's.
Gossip Says $500,000,000 of Capital, of Which $200,-
000,000 Is Water. Plants in the Combine.
January lis fixed for the debut of the
giant beef merger. Several more independ-
ent plants, from which competition is
feared, are to be purchased, but the biggest
clean-up will be taken in of practically all
the stockyards in the West.
The Chicago yards are controlled in Bos-
ton, but the other yards are largely in con-
trol of the packers. The different yards
that will be included in the deal, aside from
the Chicago yards, are those at Kansas
City, East St. Louis St. Joseph, Mo. ;
Fort Worth, Texas; South Omaha and
Sioux City.
The Armour interests is largest in the
Kansas City yards. The Armours, Swifts
and Morrises control the East St. Louis
yards, the Swifts own the St. Joe yards,
the Armours and Swifts own the Fort
Worth yards. the Armours, Swifts and
Cudahys control the Omaha yards, and the
Swifts control at Sioux City.
With these yards consolidated, and the
additional great power of the refrigerator
car line of Armour, Swift, Morris, Cudaby
and Hammond, the market is under abso-
lute control.
It is the ocnrrent gossip that of the $500,-
000,000 capital, the $200,000,000 preferred
stock represents all tangible assets, go
will, ete. The $200,000,000 common stoc
represent water, and the $100,000,000 bonds
represents some $25,000,000 paid for plants
purchased doring the past six months.
An 80-Year Old Apple Tree.
There is an apple tree on the farm of
Joseph Sieber, in Fayette township, that
is over 80 years old, and is still a great
producer of fruit, there being over fifteen
bushels on the tree this fall, all perfectly
formed and of the most pleasant flavor,
Mr. Sieber’s mother dropped the seed in
the orchard in 1821, and from that grew
up a thrifty tree. From its first bearing
season large crops have heen harvested from
the tree, and from appearance it will con-
tinue a healthy and great bearing apple
tree, Mr. Sieber takes the best of care of
this old tree, treating it as an heirloom,
and hopes to keep it in perfect condition
for years to come.