Bemovrai atc
Bellefonte, Pa., April 10, 1903.
HER EASTER.
“I shall be well when Easter comes !” she said;
And there was wistful longing in her eyes;
“I am so tired of snow and chilly winds;
I scarce can wait for April's soft, blue skies,
I long to see the fresh grass clothe the fields,
And young lambs play, and hear birds sing in
glee,
And I shall be as happy then as they;
The joys of spring will all be dear to me.”
When Easter came the skies were soft and clear,
The little lambs played on the green ‘hillside,
The violets purpled every sunny slope;
She did not see them, but was satisfied;
For God hath set a place where spring abides,
And where His lilies bloom can fall no blight,
And His beloved walked in rapture there,
And fear no chilling wind or darkling night.
—By Emma A. Lente.
WHO WAS HER KEEPER?
Early as it was when the young teacher
reached the little country schoolhouse,
some of the popils were there before her—
the Tilleys, who, living three miles beyond
the oreek, maintained with jealous zeal
their distinction of always being the first to
a.vive, a girl of twelve whose morning it
was to sweep, and a tall youth, who, in a
corner by himself, was ciphering diligently
on his slate,oblivious to what was going on
around him. Along the red road, which
the house fronted, other groups appeared
at intervals, bare footed for the most part,
and plainly clad, the little tin dinner pail
or the home made basket as much in evi-
dence as spelling books and readers.
It was ‘‘laying by’’ time for corn and
cotton; the three months’ free term had be-
gun, and the number of pupils had sudden-
ly gone up from fifteen to fifty. Their at-
tainments were so unequal, and the books
they brought varied so in date and author-
ship, that, many and long as were the
hours of the hot July days, Lucy Dow
found it hard to hear all the classes, and
impossible to keep always profitably em-
ployed these children, with whom a few
weeks of schooling had to go so far. She
had hardly learned all their names yet, hus
she recognized this morning two new faces,
and was struck by something unusnal in
both.
The boy, two or three years the elder,
was holding on to his little sister in an ex-
cess of fear; but her clear brown eyes, lift-
ed from the limp ruffles of the faded pink
sunbonnet, had never looked npon any-
thing not a wonder and a delight, and they
had in them now a consciousness of the im-
portance of this hour and its promise of un-
imagined good that was as comical as it
was charming.
She told the teacher—the boy could not
be induced to speak—that she had been
waiting for herself to get six years old, and
this having occurred the Saturday before,
her father had gone to. town and bought
her a book to come to school with, which
Nathan was to use too. She produced ib
from a brown homespun satchel—a blue
backed speller, to the child a treasure so
miraculous that if handled carelessly it
might vanish into thin air.
‘‘There’s ab e¢’s in it,”’ she explained
gravely, ‘‘but we don’t know ’em yet’’—
inclading Nathan in her words, as she did
always in every thought of herself—‘‘we’re
goin’ to learn ’em from you.
The narrow pine henches were already
crowded, and Lucy let the two children sit
on the edge of the low platform which held
her own table and chair. If little Cassie
had been sophisticated enough ever to plan
for herself it would have been the place
above all others that she would have chos-
en; as it was, she accepted its facilities
with deep content, withont apprehending
that they or her use of them were nnusnal.
Ast first she was too much dazzled in this
Eden, presided over by its gentle voiced
angel, to concentrate her mind on discov-
ering how one letter differed from another
in shape or sound; but by the third day
she bad grasped what was expected of her,
and began forthwith to learn with a sur-
prising quickness. Nathan in his timidity
would have been left far behind, except
that whatever he failed to learn at the
teacher’s knee she taught him herself, with
glowing zeal, when they had slipped back
to their places at the rear of the little plat-
form.
She soon discovered that other pupils
were studying the same book as herself, but
were further on in it. ‘Where is what
they are saying ?”’ she whispered, creeping
to Lucy Dow’s side; and Lucy, putting an
arm around her, would point to each word
as it was spelled or line read, the child fol-
lowing with an absolute attention that
missed nothing, whether understood or not.
So it happened that, learning in half a doz-
en places in the book at once, she was soon
able to read; but whatever she acquired one
day, Nathan was sure to know also by the
next, his sensitive face flushing whenever
he was called on to recite, and she watch-
ing him with a lovely smile of triamph.
One day when the other pupils had gone,
Cassie lingered, a great purpose in her face,
which was reflected on Nathan’s, The
sound of talk and laughter coming in from
the red road hardly seemed to affect the sud-
den stillness that possessed the little school-
house. Cassie helped in her quick.way to
put to rights the disorder of the day’s work.
and then at last, catching at the white
muslin apron which Lucy wore tidily in
the schoolroom, and pressing it against
her little pink cheek, preferred her request.
“I want you to go home with me—and
see Ma—and all of em,’ she whispered,
her brown eyes all affection and desire.
Lucy looked at the clock on her table.
“It is nearly six o’clock now, Cassie, and
you live—how far >—more than a mile from
the cross roads yon told me. I could not
go and get back before it was dark. How
will next Saturday do? If I come then, I
can leave Mis. Miller’s soon after dinner
and have a long time to stay with youn.”’
3 The brown eyes expressed their satisfac-
ion.
Nathan for once escaped from his shy-
ness. “We'll come up to the crossroads to
meet you,’’ he said; ‘‘there’s a tall persim-
mon tree there, and we’ll be under it wait-
ing for you.”
They were there as he bad promised, and
she went back with them, the last of the
way over a rocky field planted in cotton
that was much overgrown with grass. The
log house stood out in the field—one large
room, a shed in the rear, and a rough porch
in front. A few morning glory vines made
* a slight shade from the afternoon sun, andl
two or three stalks of prince’s feather were
growing in the hard, san baked soil before
the door with admirable courage.
The whole family were at the house to
do honor to their visitor. There were two
girls of ten or twelve, a boy nearly grown,
and three round, ruddy children younger
than Cassie, looking all about the same age.
The father bad in his face that dull submis-
sion wrought by the monotony of poverty
and of ignorance long united; the mother,
as worn physically, seemed to have still re-
tained something of a natural vigor and
hopefulness.
‘‘Have you been living long at this place,
long Mr. Purvis ?”’ Lucy asked, finding a
conversation which was largely interroga-
tive on her part somewhat difficult.
“I come here last Christmas from over
bout Candler’s Creek,” he said, ‘‘butI
ain’t had any better luck here than I had
at the other places I’ve tried.’’
‘‘He’s sick a heap,’’ his wile explained ;
‘‘that’s why we’re so much in the grass.
The child’n can’t do much without him.
We've got a right good crop o’ corn, if if
don’t take it all to pay us out.”
“*Farmin’s pore business when a body
aint got nothin’ to start with,”” Purvis
said.
“It must be,”” Lucy assented with sym-
pathy. ‘‘But the children can help you
more as they get older. Couldn’t you have
sent Jane and Missouri to school some this
sammer ?’’ she added, her heart tender to
the two girls as they sat there regarding
her with fixed, unexyressive faces.
“They didn’t seem to keer about it,”
Mrs. Purvis said. ‘‘Their Pa and me
couldn’t give ’em any start at learnin’, and
they didn’t want to go not knowin’ any-
thing at all. Cassie there and Nathan they
seem to take to their book sorter natcharl.”’
‘‘Cassie takes to everything natchurl,”’
Purvis said. ‘‘She’s been smart ever since
she was a baby.”” The pride in his face
was like a lighted candle. This small
flower was the one hlossom which redeem-
ed for him the gray desert plains of life.”’
“I shan’t teach here again next year,’’
Lucy said when she arose to leave, ‘‘and
here is something for Cassie to remember
me by when I am gone.”’ She laid a paste
board box that held a wax doll, fine in
white muslin and blue ribbons, in the little
girl’s lap.
If, instead, she bad presented Mr. Purvis
with a deed to a house and farm, the im-.
mediate effect upon the family would have
been less striking. They gathered around
the child as she held up the beautiful mar-
vel, with a naive interest and delight ; but
in a few minutes the instinct of parenthood
had asserted itself.
*‘She never needed nothin’ to make her
remember you,’’ Mrs. Purvis said, her
hard, lined face tender with feeling ; ‘‘hut
she’ll thank you for this, and I will, too,
Jong after youn’ve forgot you ever give it to
er.”
As for Cassie, there was as yet no space
in her baby heart for any conscious obliga-
tion. She was holding the doll out at arm’s
length and bringing it back to her breast
with a beatification in look and gesture
which the young teacher was wont to re-
gard afterwards as the most exquisite ex-
pression of joy that he had ever seen.
With the dry heat of September cotton
opened rapidly and the children began
dropping out of school before even the brief
three months’ term was ended. ‘‘But I’m
going to come till the very last day,’’ Cas-
sie declared, clinging now, not to the white | en
muslin apron, but to Luey’salim white
hand, and pressing it against her little pink
cheek : ‘*Nathan and I both’’—she had
picked up a part of her teacher’s English—
*‘Ma said we might.’’
But when the last Monday of the season
came, Cassie and Nathan were not there.
On Wednesday Lucy went to see what was
wrong. The little cabin was shut, and the
place looked deserted; but presently she
saw at the further end of the cotton field
Floyd Purvisand his sister Missouri. They
had seegpher and were coming to the house.
‘‘Pa and all of ’em moved away day befo’
yestiddy,’’ the lad told her. ‘‘A man
came here last week from the cotton fact’ry
up in Chester lookin’ for hands, and Pa de-
cided all of a sudden to go. The man’s
promised to let us have a good house to
live in, painted white, with three rooms in
it. And we can ev'ry one get work, that
will pay us cash money ev’ry Saddy night.
Me and Missouri staid behind to finish
getherin’ the crop, and then we’re goin’
too.”’
Lucy was silent. These few lives, bound
to no one spot by any sccial ties or by the
possession of even a few feet of land, where
land was so abundant—what was to be
their destiny ? And what the destiny of
the little child, the first unfoldings of whose
life were so full of promise ?
The boy pushed open the cabin door and
went in. ‘‘Cassie took on powerful be-
cause she didn’t get to see you ao mo’,”’
he said, ‘‘and she charged me to give you
these flowers and that little box there, and
to tell you she wasn’t never goin’ to forget
you forever.’’
He took from a broken earthenware cup
a drooping bunch of the red prince’s feath-
er that had been growing in the yard, and
handed it to her, with a little dingy paste-
board box that bad held some kind of medic-
inal powders. She did not open the box
till she was by herself on the lonely coun-
try road. Inside was a minute curl of flax-
en hair, which she recognized as having
been cut from the wax doll’s beloved head.
II
Two years afterwards Lucy Dow was vis-
iting a friend in Chester, and one of her
first thoughts was to find the Purvises and
learn what had become of Nathan and Cas-
sie. She went first to the mills, reaching
there shortly before the half hour intermis-
sion at noon. The throbbing of machinery,
the flying wheels, the ceaseless repetition
of the same noises made her dizzy, and she
was glad when the tour of inspecting was
over. She had recognized among the oper-
ators the two older Purvis girls and their
father; but they had not looked up from
their work, and she waited outside to speak
to them.
*‘T can’t work reg'lar,”’ Purvis told her,
‘and IT ain’t a good hand and don’t make
but forty cents a day. Jane and Missouri
get fifty, but we all have to lay off for sick-
ness more’n we want to.’’ .
‘‘How many hours do you work in the
week ?’’ Lucy asked.
‘Well, we go in at six and come out at
half past six, with half an hour at dinner.
I never counted it up to see how many that
makes in a week. A right smart I
reckon.’’
Lucy looked at the two girls, sallow fac-
ed and apparently no taller than when she
had seen them two years before. ‘‘I am
glad to see that you do not let Nathan and
Cassie work in the mill,”’ she said; “‘but I
had not supposed that you would.”
The man’s eyes fell. ‘‘Well, Cassie did
work in it till here lately, when she was
took sick,’’ he said. ‘You know how she
always has been ahout not lettin’ anybody
go ahead of her. She went on the night
force a little more than a year agoc.”’
‘The night force—what do you mean by
that???
*“The comp’ny’s been runnin’ the mill a$
night as well as in the day sence last Sep-
tember was a year,’’ and they don’t gener-
ly let all of a family have day work. The
foreman was opposed to Cassie workin’ at
night, but Floyd and Nathan was put on,
and she wouldn’t hear to Nathan goin’
without she did too.”’
‘And how many hours of night work are
required ?’’ she asked faintly.
A young man who was near enough to
hear the question answered it. *‘Sixty-six,
ma’am; but there’s been some talk in one
of the papers that it oughtn’t to be but
sixty.”
“‘Sixty-six hours of night work for a child
of seven !”’ Lucy felt as she had felt when
the noise of the factory was beating upon
ber ears. ‘“‘And you say Cassie bas been
sick ?’! she asked almost mechanically, too
shocked to know that she was speaking at
all.
‘*Yes’m, she’s been right bad off,’’ he an-
swered, speaking of her condition with that
pitiful euphemism common when misfor-
tune has become the one certainty of daily
existence. ‘‘Our house is in the very last
row,” he added, as she turned away.
‘“You’ll know it by its bein’ next to one
with a little tree in front of it. And there’s
a wooden box on our front step, with some
sort of lowers growin’ in it that was Cas-
sie’s.”’
Lucy made her way to the dusty level,
where row after row of cottages stood, all
alike and nearly all equally bare of any
suggestion of homelikeness or of individual
taste and pride. It was easy to find the one
occupied by the Purvises. The ‘‘tree’’ was
a sufficient guide, and, when she got near-
er, the box on the steps holding Cassie’s
little bunch of heartsease. Several little
children were playing in a hack yard, and
alittle girl of five or six was pushing a
baby in a home made wagon of rough pine.
Lucy went up the steps and stood for a
moment at the open door without knock-
ing. The warm October sunshine poured
into the narrow hall. Floyd Purvis was
lying on a lounge asleep. In the room on
the right his mother was mending a coarse
garment, beside a child’s bed. Lucy en-
tered softly and went up to her side. ‘‘Do
you remember me, Mrs. Purvis ?’’ she said.
The woman’s furrowed yellow face
brightened. ‘I reckon I do remember
you,”’ she said, heartily, ‘and there ain’t
nobody in this whole world that I'd ruther
see. How come you to be here, and how’ve
you been gettin’ along ?’’ she asked.
“I was visiting an old schoolmate over
in Chester, and I am very well,’’ she said,
noting unconsciously the new lines on the
woman’s face. ‘‘But I don’t want to talk
about myself. I want to know how things
have been going with you.”” She saw that
the little figure on the bed was her former
pupil, but she could not speak of ber yes.
‘Well, I reckon we’ve done tolerable
well,” Mrs. Purvis said with fine reti-
cence. She would not give pain to Cassie's
friend. ‘‘Maybe not as well as he expected
we would’’—she always spoke of her hus-
band as ‘‘he’’—*''but we’ve made out to
live. I reckon you noticed the new baby
out in the yard, and saw how the little
ones had growed.”
“Yes, Isaw them. Mrs. Parvis, isn’t
that little Nathan over there on the bed in
the corner ?”’
The light shone full upon bim through
the blindless window, and flies were crawl-
ing over his little thin face and hands, but
his sleep of exhaustion was not easily brok-
‘‘He ain’t lookin’ so well sence he’s been
one o’ the night hands,”’ his mother said;
“but he’s a good worker and gets good
wages, to be as little as he is.”’
‘‘And did he and Cassie keep on trying
to learn? Have they been to school any
since you moved here ?”’
Mrs. Purvis shook her head. ‘‘There
was a night school when we first came here.
The lady that taught it came to see us, and
got Jane and Missouri to go to it for awhile
—she did not take any as little as Cassie—
but they was too tired to learn, and went
to sleep over their hook. The comp’ny’s
started a day school this year, and some o’
the child’n gets to go to it; mine never
has.” She looked down at the little figure
before her. ‘‘That was the only thing that
ever made Cassie sorter worry about doin’
night work. When the school started, it
looked like she was just obleeged to go. Of
course slie couldn’t after she’d worked all
night. Her Pa tried his best to get her to
quit, but we conldn’t spare what Nathan
was makin’, and she wouldn’t hear to quit-
tin’ without he could too. We had a heap
o’ sickness all the winter and spring, and it
throwed us might’ly behind.”
Lucy Dow went to the bed and touched
gently the soft light bair that lay tangled
on the blue veins of the child’s forehead.
She stirred a little, and her mother leaned
forward and tried to attract her attention.
‘‘Cassie, honey, here’s Miss Lucy come to
see you,’’ she said. ‘‘Don’t you remember
Miss Lucy ?”? The brown eyes were wide
open now, but there was no Jook of recog-
nition in them.
*‘It seems like her mind’s done give way
for now better’n two weeks.’”” Mrs. Purvis
said in a patient acquiescence in what was
hopeless. ‘I could see befo’ she had that
spell in the mill that she warn’t exactly
like herself. It looked like she had sorter
quit keerin’ for things, even for the baby.
And she give up tendin’ to them little
heartsease she’d been so proud of. She
didn’t seem to have but jus’ one idea, and
that was to keep on goin’ to the mill. And
one night about twelve o’clock she fell in
the spinnin’ room, where she was tyin’ the
broken threads. The boss on that flo’
found her and thought she had jus’ gone to
sleep, and throwed water in her face like
he’d been a-doin’ when the other child’n
would fall asleep; but she didn’t wake up,
and she never did come to till they’d got
her home and fetched a doctor. She ain’t
never been up sence.’’
“Don’t you know me, Cassie darling?
Don’t you know Miss Lucy ?’’ the child’s
friend said. her tears dropping on the
coarse sheet as she bent over the bed. She
felt gently for the little hands, that she
might take them once more in hers, hut
they seemed to be clarping something tight-
ly under the cover. Was that the figure of
a doll whose outlines showed upon the lit-
tle breast ? Lucy lifted her eyes in ques-
tioning to the mother.
The woman nodded her head. ‘‘That
doll’s one thing she ain’t never give up,”’
she said, tears coming to her eyes. ‘‘She
holds on to it that way all day long. But
I couldn’t say as she really knows what it
is any more than she does anything else.
It may be that she’s jus’ been used to hav-
in’ it with her so long.”’
Perhaps in some mysterious way the
longing of the friend’s heart communicated
itself to the child’s numbed brain. Perhaps
some chord of memory vibrated again as
the once loved face bent over her own. The
little hand stirred under the cover, lifted
itself into the air, and seemed to be trying
to compaes the weary distance to her teach-
er’s cheek. Another hand raised and held
it there for a moment. And then the heavy
eyes of the child, once fountains of living
joy, closed, and Lucy guided the thin fin-
gers back to their touch upon the doll, and
turned away.—By Mary Applewhite Bacon
in MeClure’s Magazine for April.
Kicked by a Horse.
While working about a horse in the
barn on the Fortney farm near Mackey-
ville Friday, Williamson Rishe was kicked
in the abdomen by the animal with both
hind feet.
——Subseribe for the WATCHMAN.
Easter tm Our Bethlehem.
Rising of the Lord for the Moravian Folk—With
Trumpets of Rejoicing the Day Was Ushered in.
—Dawn Came as the Congregation in the Old
Church Rejoiced-=Visit of Triumph to the Grave-
yard.
This is how Easter came to old Moravian
Bethlehem in Pennsylvania very early in
the morning while it was yet dark ;
The moon was high over the church stee-
ple. The steeple stood out from the som-
bre silhouettes of the roofs of the century-
old houses, clustered about the church as
they were a hundred years ago. Itis a
round steeple with a dome that rises from
a balcony and that ends in a weather vane,
which pointed straight up at the moon.
There were a few dim stars, glowing rather
than twinkling, here and there. The sky
was 80 clear that the stars might well have
been the reflections up there of the blue-
white brilliance of the arc lights along the
street corners of the little city.
It was 3 o'clock, but it was still night.
The soft-tinkling gong of the clock within
the church sounded the hour to the big bell
in the dome above, and the big vell boom-
ed it out to all the valley. There was the
murmur of voices in the church where the
windows had made great rectangles of yel-
low light all through the dark of the
night.
The tinkle of the clock inside the church
marked the quarter hour. Down the half
spiral of the steps from the door of the
church to the street came a row of menwho
walked singly, one behind another, across
the street. The light on the corner flashed
up in bright reflections from the brass in-
struments 1n their hands. They stood hud
dled together in the shadow of the grim
graystone building, which was used as a
hospital for the soldiers of the new nation
in 1778.
Against the darkness of the hills across
the valley rose a ghastly yellow and red
light that grew until out of the mist blend-
ed all the outlines of the buildings over the
river. The yellow faded and it became all
red. It was merely a blast in one of the
South Bethlehem steel furnaces, but it
might well have been a light shining out of
a crack in the portals of hell.
There was a movement in the little group
in the shadow. A trumpet note rung up
through the night, full and clear. It was
a shout of joy and a challenge together.
The red glow was gone. A single cornet,
thrilling and strong as the voice of one of
the greater angels, carried the air, and the
royal chorus of the sombre trombones sup-
ported. It was a familiar chorus to Beth-
lehem. By those same brazen throats have
the deaths of the Moravians, aged and in-
fants, been told to the city from the gallery
around the belfry. Only once a year are
their tones raised in glad tune; only at the
Easter dawning.
Windows were raised, in the darkness.
From one Bach carol to another the mausi-
cians played on and on. Then, without a
whispered direction, they ceased and walk-
ed together up the hill to another of the
ancient buildings, there to repeat the same
carols and others. So every five or ten min-
utes for an hour or more the trumpet calls
greeted the pale blue sky with the mist-
veiled moon hanging over the belfry weath
ervane.
But the scraping of the window sashes,
when the music began was the waking of
the Moravians. Long rows of windows
lighted and gave form to buildings which
had been but shapeless masses of shade a
moment before. The tramp of many feet
rose from the flagged sidewalks, increasing
constantly. Amid the rising bustle. the
trumpets in a distant corner of the city
sounded very faintly indeed. In the Eagle
Hotel and in all the nearby boarding-house
crowded with pilgrims from Nazareth and
Mount Bethel and Egypt and Lebanon,
sounded the heavy rap of knuckleson bed-
room doors, waking those who had not been
aroused by the trampets. The Pennsylva-
nia Dutch sleep hard. Shrill voices arose
from many quarters, warning many a slog-
gard handmaiden of the rising wrath of the
master and the mistress and of the guests
waiting for their coffee below, dared she
disregard the summons and ‘‘go yet again
to sleep.’’
As each household and the guests of each
hostelry finished the cup of coffee and the
flat round bun which make together the
“love feast’ of the Moravians, the streets,
still dark, became full of people, pouring
from every side toward the church. Until
a quarter before 5 o'clock only members of
the church were admitted; seats were re-
served for them. Meanwhile crowds gath-
ered and waited patiently on the high steps
and on the sidewalke all about the church.
Many of those who were waiting were de-
vout Moravians from other churches. Then
too, there are many people from New York
and Philadelphia who go out to Bethlehem
each year to see Easter come. There were
a few, a very few, who came simply with
idle curiosity, and most of these were from
the unregenerate distriot across the river,
*‘Sous Bess’lem, the land of the outlanders.
For in Bethlehem of 12,000 people, more
than 10,000 are Moravians. Indeed, until
1844 none but Moravians might own land
in the town, and the tradition against en-
croashment is still strong.
A brief peal from the belfry announced
the opening of the doors to those who were
waiting in the dark. They found the
church full of light. It is a high-ceilinged
rectangular auditorium, not unlike Ply-
mouth church in Brooklyn in ite shape.
The recess back of the altar was filled with
a pyramid of lilies and azaleas and palme,
with a graceful cedar tree at the apex. The
odor of the lilies was heavy in the church.
The pews were filled at once. The aisles
were filled. In the shadows beyond the
doors on either side of the altar were vague-
ly outlined the figures of men and women
sitting on the stairs and crowded together
in the minister’s rooms. All waited, chat-
tering in whispers, frankly, cheerfully
happy. ; :
The clock in the church, sounding some-
how far less loudly than it had in the si-
lence of the night, tinkled the quarter
hour. A burst of melody from the organ
filled all the church. Three ministers,
young men, all of them, whose black clerical
coats and waistcoats made them appear
unduly pale, walked upon the platform.
One stood bebind the reading desk, and,
with a commanding gesture of his ount-
stretched arms, lifted the congregation to
its feet. Throwing back his head, he
chanted with the choir :
“‘“The Lord is risen!’
“The Lord is risen indeed !”’ "answered
the congregation with a mighty voice of
song.
With hymns and prayers one minister
after another took up the service. For the
most part the ministers recited the litany
of the Moravians, which is not only a
litany but a creed. The litany paused.
The organ took up a glorious Bach march.
The windows, which bad become faintly
tinged with the blue of the dawn as the
first minister began the litany, were now
throwing more light into the room than
was shed by the pale yellow gas flames
along the edges of the ceiling. The morn-
ing had come while the people were in the
Ee ————
church, though the time had been less than
half an hour. They walked out into the
light, turning their faces toward the bury-
ground, for the services were but half over.
There was no sunlight yet. The hills
over beyond South Bethlehem were chang-
ing from coid gray to purple. There was
a glow of pink in the east. Across a little
lane back of the church, up a narrow path
among the Moravian school buildings,
climbing the hill to the cemetery, moved
the long line of worshippers almost in si-
lence. So they came to the burying ground,
which is on the crest of the hill.
Since all men are equal in the sight of
God the Moravians deem it unfit that one
man’s memory should be exalted above
another’s by the material surroundings of
his grave. All the stones in the Moravian
buryicg ground are laid flat upon the
graves, which are very low and in very
straight rows. north and south and east and
west.
In the centre of the graveyard stood the
clergy; grouped a little distance away were
the choir and between was the trombone
band of the Moravians. Some of the mem-
bers of the band have lifted Easter music
to the sunrise for fifty years and more.
In a hollow square, each side of a thousand
men and women, stood the congregation.
The lines poured up from the church below.
The newcomers found places and were
orderly and waited. In the bared branch-
es of the maples and in the delicate tracery
of the pines against the growing splendor
of brunished gold in the east were robins
lilting cheerily. A small flock of black-
birds made rasping music in a clump of
pines lower down the hill. The Blue
Ridge spurs beyond South Bethlehem turn-
ed from purple to brown and then the gray
tone of the leafless tree began to assert
itself. The sky above became bluer and
bluer and white flecks of clouds stood out
against it. The robins sang louder and flitt-
ed through the fretwork that the branches
traced across the sunrise.
One of the ministers raised his hand.
Trumpets and voices together raised the
solemnly trinmpbant hymn :
The graves of all His saints Christ blest,
And softened every bed ;
Where should the dying members rest,
But with the dying Head ?
Thence he arose, ascending high,
And showed our feet the way ;
Up to the Lord our flesh shall fly,
At the great rising day.
Then let the last loud trumpet sound,
And bid our kindred rise ;
Awake, ye nations under ground ;
Ye saints, ascend the skies.
A long silence. Then one of the clergy
in a rich voice that seemed to fill the arch
of blue as it had filled the roofed-in church
took up the litany again :
“I have a desire to depart, and to he
with Christ, which is far better: I shall
never taste death: yea, I shall attain unto
the resurrection of the dead; for the body
which I put off, this gain of corruptibility
shall put on incorruption; my flesh shall
rest in hope. * * * And keep us in
everlasting fellowship with those of our
brethren and sisters, who since last Easter
Day, have entered into the joy of their
Lord and with the whole Church trinmph-
aut, and let us rest together in Thy pres-
ence from our labor.”
Once he paused. And the great congre-
gation chanted.
‘‘Amen. We poor sinners pray, here us,
gracious Lord and God !”’
Another hymn. An ascription of all
glory and power to God and the Church
which awaiteth him and is around him
from everlasting to everlasting. The min-
ister, who, like all the congregation, had
remained with his head covered during
the graveyard service, lifted his black
slouch hat. Every head was bared. While
he spoke the words of the benediction the
yellow sun rays shot across through the
trees over his head and struck the school
building at the western side of the grave-
yard and filled all the place with a golden
light :
““The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and
the love of God, and the communion of the
Holy Ghost be with us all, Amen.”
A Corning Man Coughs
Inch Lizard.
up =a Four
The danger of drinking heartily from un-
protected springs was strikingly illustrated
recently at Corning, says the Leader, when
an illness from which Harry Lee had mys-
geriously suffered for two years and which
has baffled several physicians, was explain-
ed when a four-inch lizard was forced ont
of his stomach by nauseation.
Harry Lee is an employee of the Erie
freight house in Corning. He is a young
man about 23 years old and up until three
years ago followed the life of a farmer on
the farm of C. W. Lee, his father, at Horn-
by. Soon after removing to Corning Mr.
Lee began to experience curious sensations
in his stomach and finally became so tron-
bled that he went to physicians.
The symptons were peculiar and puzzled
the doctors not a little. He would be vio-
lently ill in the morniug and unable to
hold much food on his stomach. From a
strong, husky farmer lad he dwindled into
an emaciated and almost consumptive look-
ing young man. :
Nights he would be suddenly awakened
with the sensation that something was
crawling up into his throat. After Mr.
Lee had been to several Corning doctors
withont receiving help, one told him that
he was probably affected by a tape worm.
He advised him to abstain from drinking
water for a few days. This was about ten
days ago. He was feeling so badly that
nothing would stay on his stomach.
He ceased drinking liquids and Tuesday
night was taken violently ill as thestomach
when the animal, dead, was ejected. The
lizard was of the common variety so often
seen about the vicinity, and was over four
inches long.
Mr. Lee has an idea that the animal got
into his stomach through drinking from a
spring on his father’s farm. He remembers
one warm day in particular, when exhaust-
ed from a hard day’s work he lay down by
the spring and drank deep draughts from
the pool. This was over three years ago.
Cooked Steak With $300.
Trenton Woman Used Greenbacks to Start a Fire,
Mrs. Ana Law, of Spring street, Tren-
ton, N. J., cooked a 30-cent steak recently
with a roll of greenbacks worth $300.
Intending to go to Philadelphia on a
shopping tour, Mrs. Law had drawn $300
from the bank. She laid the money, in-
closed in an envelope, on a table in the sit-
ting room. She decided to breakfast on
steak before leaving home, and gathering a
handful of kindling paper, kindled a fire
in the kitchen stove.
When the steak was cooked it dawned
on Mrs. Law’s mind that she had used the
greenbacks for kindling. She gathered the
ashes and took them to the mint in Phila-
delphia to find out if she could get her
money back.
Rural Mail Delivery outes in Penns-
valley.
Four Routes to Start out of Spring Mills on
May 1st and One out of Centre Hall a Month -
Later.
According to a recent order of the Post
Office Department nearly all the people of
Gregg township and North Potter will soon
be served with free mail delivery.
On May 1st four routes will be inaugu-
rated leading out of Spring Mills as follows :
Route No. 1—Length, twenty-two and
thirteen-sixteenth miles; area, eighteen
gquare miles, population, seven hundred
and twenty-five, no. of houses, one hun-
dred and forty-five. Beginning at post
office to Farmers Mills, to Ilgen corner, to-
James Grove corner, to John Ream corner,
to Ilgen corner, to Green Grove, to Brush
Valley road, to Hoy corner, to Yearick cor-
per, to Green Grove, to Penn Hall, to
Spring Mills. The carrier will be W. O.
Gramley, of Spring Mills.
Route No. 2—Length, twenty-one and
three-sixteenth; area, fifteen square miles;
population, seven hundred; no. of
houses, one hundred forty-five. Beginning
at post office to Penn Hall, to Beaver dam,
to Beech corner, to Beaver dam, to Heck-
man, to Gentzel corner, to Stover corner,
to Sawmill corner, to Ertle corner, to Stov-
er corner, to Kean corner, to Smithtown,
to Meyer corner, to Pike, to Reformed
church, to Bitner corner, to Penn Hall, to
Spring Mills. The carrier will be J. A.
Wagner, of George's Valley.
Route No. 3—Length, twenty and eleven-
sixteenth miles; area, seventeen square
miles; population, eight hundred and
twenty; no. ol houses, one hundred and
sixty-four. Beginning at post office, to Har-
ter corner,to Long corner to Sprucetown,to
Potters Mills, to Armagast corner, to Moyer
corner, t0!Bover corner, to Colyer corner, to
Fleisher corner, to Armagast corner, to
Allen corner, to Lewistown pike, to
Hennigh corner, to Deckard cross roads, to
Beech, to Harters, to Spring Mills. The
carrier will be William McClellan, of
Beech.
Route No. 4—Length, twenty-one and
thirteen-sixteenth square miles; population,
six hundred and seventy-five; no. of houses,
one hundred and thirty-five. Beginning
at poss office to Tressler corner, to Wood
corner, to Centre Hill, to Runkle corner,
to Red Mill, to Runkle corner, to Tussey-
ville, to McClellan corner, to Colyer to
Tusseyville, to Ulrich corner, to Kerr cor-
ner, to Wm. Kerr corner, to Centre Hill,
to Sprucetown to Tressler corner, to Spring
Mills. The carrier will be John Snavely,
of Spring Mills.
The mails leave the office at 8:45 a. m.,
and return by 3:05 for the 3:47 train going
east and west. Post-master Krape, of
Spring Mills, expects to have his new post-
office building erected and equipped for
the new service by the time it goes into
effect.
The route for the north precinct of Pot-
ter has been decided upon and will go into
effect July 1st. :
.
Postmaster Kift Quits Business.
Even ‘Though His
Accepted.
Resignation Has Not Been
A peculiar condition of affairs exists ab
present at the United States postoffice at
Muncy Station—or, rather where the post-
office once was at that point. In fact, the
Muncy Statiopites are now without a post-
office, the postmaster, Mr. Kift, who is the
father of Mail Clerk P. S. Kift, of Lock
Haven, having closed the office Friday.
Some time ago it will be remembered,
Postmaster John Kift, who bas held the
office for a number of years, sent his res-
ignation to the department, to take effect
April 1st. No action was taken by the de-
partment on the resignation, and on
April 1st, Mr. Kift simply put up the
shutters and quit. He refused to accept
any more mail matter and patrons of the
office will have to get their mail at the
Muncy office until action is taken by the
department.
Mr. Kift has no bondsmen, those who
served in that capacity having died some
years ago. And the office heing such an
insignificant one, new bondsmen were not
asked for by the government. Hence the
office is closed.
Doing Ever the Best.
Michal Angelo used to say that ‘‘noth-
ing makes the soul so pure, so religious,
as the endeavor to create something per-
fect.’’ There is a noble teaching clothed
in those simple words. Work that is poor-
ly done, slighted and ‘‘skimped,’’ has a re-
flex influence on the worker; it helps to
degrade him. Anything which keeps a
man from doing his best works to his un-
doing. The so-called ‘‘labor’’ principle
that does not allow the full play of the
faculties, calling out everything that is in
a man in the task he is doing, is a vicious
principle, and can only work harm to those
who advocateit. There is a moral demand
upon every soul todo his best, and nothing
so develops that which is good in a man as
the effort to do a perfect piece of work.
Do not be content with second best; your
heart will not be satisfied as yon look back
upon it. ‘While one may never reach per-
fection, honest effort may put him in the
class of those who have reached the top—in
the estimation of God. Again and again
is it true, that is is not perfection but the
pursuit of perfection that makes the coin
of life gold.— Baptist Union.
“Not Dead,” He Cried.
Man Who Had Been Dumb for a Year and I'early Dead
Calls His Doctors Liars.
A surprising April fooi joke was played
by John Matt, section foreman of the Great
Northern at Basin, Mon. A year ago Matt
suffered a stroke of partial paralysis, since
which time he has been unable to speak.
A week ago be became ill and gradually
failed. Wednesday morning his attending
physician, after a consultation. announced
in his presence that he was as good as dead.
Matt resented this and for the first time in
a year found himself able to speak. He
called his doctors liars, sat up in bed and
ordered them from the room.. -He has since
been speaking.
A Human Pincushion.
Mt. Carmel @irl Fills Herself With Needles in Order
to Avoid Attendance at School.
During a clinic at the State Hospital in
Ashland on F:iday, an operation for the re-
moval of two needles from the hand of Jen-
nie Fessler, 16 years old, of Mt. Carmel, led
to an astonishing discovery.
During the past three years the girl has
had more than 125 needles taken from her
hands and arms by operation. According
to the story by the doctors she disliked
school and would break off needles in her
body, pleading illnessand remain at home.
She has suffered no inconvenience from the
effect of making herself a pin cushion.