Deworalic; Wad
Bellefonte, Pa., April 14, 1905.
SPEEDAWAY.
Now you take it in one of these factory
towns—there’ll be a heap of carious cus-
tomers drift in. A feller with capital, like
the boss, finds a place, bere in the back
country, where there is a river running fast
enough to twist a turbine, and he’ll build
a mill and put up a dam like that yonder,
and there'll be ten flat-cars of machinery,
and then, for every native that has failed
at farming or lumbering and comes in to
run a racing machine, there’ll be twenty
lasters for the bottoming-room and ten
girls for'the sewing machines, half of em
experienced and half green, and all coming
from the cities because the cities won’t feed
’em any more. We get low tide out of
both—ocity and country. Two hote’s, six
bars, four pool-rooms, thirty-two boarding
houses, one church, and no public library.
That’s a factory town.
I was thinking of Speedaway. Funny
ouss. Hecame into my mind because—
well these factory windows are pretty
dusty, but juss look out there up the val-
ley ; see how blue them mountains are; look
at that red line where the maple trees are
turned; get onto those streaky clouds that
look as if somebody had spilled shoe-black-
ing on the sunset. Then smell that air
that’s coming up the elevator shaft. Frost
to-night. Is was about this season that
Speedaway used to turn up—every year on
a day like this.
His real name was Benson. I thought
I’d told you about him. The first year he
showed up was just after the first snow,and
he was no dude. His coat was shiny and
showed the lining under the arms, and
what with the blue of his stubble beard
and the tan of his skin, he looked the color
of a plate that’s been used for baking pies.
We were short of hands and the boss gave
him a job on the McKay machines. I guess
he wasn’t sorry he done it either, because
Benson was as good a man as we've ever
had. He could make the cases walk along
and it’s nothing easy wish hot wax spatter-
ing, and the machines heaving and pound-
ing like a human being out of breath, and
the heavy steel needles snapping like tooth-
picks. Iremember the first time I ever
talked to Speedaway—they called him that
because of his yellow streak—I found him
after hours bending over his machine with
a three-pound wrench in one hand, and his
arms and face covered with machine grease
till be looked like a nigger minstrel.
‘‘We’ve had a bad day of it,’’ says he,
pointing his finger at the machine. ‘‘Me
and it. Bat if I went away now I believe
the darn thing would think it had got the
best of me. A machine like this is some-
thing like a man, ain’t it ? Some days it
acts sour and peevish, and hasn’t got any
sense at all. You've noticed how there’s a
particular kind of east wind that’ll blow
bere some days when no one says ‘good-
morning’ to anyone else when they come
in at seven o’clock. Maybe there’s some
kind of a wind or something that makes
this machine feel just assore. Then there'll
come a day when the old thing will have a
certain kind of sound and sing away as
happy as a twenty-cent cigar.’
That’s the way Speedaway would talk,
and I got to like him first-rate. If it hadn’s
been for the fever that started him away
in the spring,he would have been a sizzler.
Never put liquor in, and from the middie
of October till the days when the sun had
turned loose the last snows off the pastures,
he’d work hard as any of us, and never get
docked for being late. Then it would come
along about the time when the ice busts
on the top of the river, and the boss would
come to me and say : ‘‘Jim, don’t you sup-
pose we can keep Benson this year? If
he’ll stay on over the summer, I'd make
him a foreman.’” And I'd say, ‘“‘All right,
I’ll speak to him,’’ bat all the time I knew
the only thing would hold him would be a
jail or a graveyard. You could talk your
teeth loose and not do any good. I tried it.
Sometimes during the winter evenings
when the snow would be six feet deep in
the woods, I'd drop in to smoke with
Speedaway, in the little room where he
used to hang out. Maybe there’d be the
snapping and howling of a storm on the
windows, and then Benson would shift his
pipe into the corner of his mouth and peep
his eyes and tell me how he had bummed
uis way on top of a mail-car from Chicago
to Topeka, or how he’d gone down the
Mississippi on a lumber raft, or nearly
cashed in, riding the trucks of an express
across the alkali deserts, and how a thun-
der storm looked at night on a Kansas
prairie, and how he’d found an eagle’s nest
on the shores of Lake Champlain last sum-
mer. I'd realize a bit that he saw more
things in life than I saw, and what thiogs
he could make me see of the life he led,
looked bright and fascinating like a six-
colored lithograph. Bat then I’d get mad
for listening to him and I'd say, ‘That's
boy’s tricks, Benson, and if you’d only
fight off the fever you get every spring to
go tramping, and be a man—"’
Then he’d take the pipe ous of his mouth
and look at me wide-eyed. ‘‘Jim,”’ he'd
say, ‘‘you aren’t telling me anything. I
know those things better than you do—I
know just how much I ache to get loose
and see places, and never know where I'l]
get the next meal. That's something you
don’t know anything about. And then,
again, I know why I onght to hitch down
and be somebody, and there’s nothing you
can say that I don’t tell myself a dozen
times a year. I’ve made up my mind to
stay bere next summer anyway. Just wait
and see.”
That’s the way he’d talk—just as if be
was a drinking man promising not to touch
liquor again, but when the first warm days
would come with those breezes that smell
like the woods juss after rain, I'd know the
Jig was up. Speedaway would try. Bat
it weren’t auy nse. The fever was in his
blood. I'd’know, because he'd begin to
wear the look of a rat that’s fallen in the
molasses, but perhaps it’s only fair to say
he’d put up a good fight.
He would stand there in front of his ma-
chine and try not to look out the windows,
and try not to fill his big chest with those
soft airs that came sneaking in across the
valley. Sometimes I'd stop on my way
through the room and try to prop him up,
because I'd know that he was all wobbles
and fever to get going again. I'd say,
‘Anything doing?’ and he’d say, ‘Fine.
If I felt any better I'd have to see a veteri-
nary,’’ for he was trying to put in a few
props himself. And shen perhaps he'd
smile and say, ‘‘Jim, take a look at the
new shoots on those pine-trees—just as
bright as pickles, ain’t they ? Snow’s most
gone and we’ll have a great summer. I'll
bet it’s fine down in Virginia now.”’
‘‘Benson,’’ I'd say, “I know what ails
you, and a fool is too gnod to call you.
Suppose you started off. What of it?
Why, now vou know where yon’ll sleep
tonight.” : Sf
“And I wish to God I didn’t,” he'd say,
and then I'd bave to see that I'd been left
at the post.
Perhaps the next day he’d be gone with-
out even asking for his pay, he'd be so
ashamed to face the boss. One spring I
found out he left his bed in the middle of
the night, and another he didn’t come back
after the one o’clock whistle. Then we’d
know the fever of the spring had flang him
down—we’d get next when he did'nt show
up prompt, and the. men would say,
‘‘Speedaway’s off again,” just as if they
were saying, ‘‘Yesterday was Friday.”’
Then it would be along the fall—about
the time I'd see horse-chestnuts on the
ground, and perbaps laler when there'd
been the first spit of snow, and the flies
had begun to die on the ceiling. Speed-
away would turn up again on a day like
that, dirty and with the listle cough he’d
get from sleeping out of doors, and with a
growth of beard that looked like the front
of a hair brash.
I guess it was the fourth winter he’d
been with us when Nellie Conroy came up
from the city to work in the sewing room.
That’s the way things happened. You
oughter see Nellie Conroy—it would do
your eyes good. She had bair as black as
a new piece of patent leather, and big, sad,
gray eyes, about the color of that streak of
river you see yonder, and her bands were
thin like my Annie’s was when I married
her, and not coarse and stuffy like moss of
the girls. She was a good girl too—which
kind of points outa girl ina town like
this—and it wasn’t because she didn’t have
the old human badness, and I always have
thought there weren’t half enough girls
like that, and that when you found that
kind you’d found the difference between a
specimen of the other sex and a woman.
She'd come up here into the woods to
get rid of what a girl who is playing a lone
hand has to go up against in the city, bus
the first week she was here she went on her
back with pneumonia, and my Annie was
sitting up with her at all hours, when their
kerosene lamp was the only light in the
village. She told Annie how she’d work-
ed in a store for five dollars a week in com-
petition with girls who were living at
home, and who’d work for the five so as to
buy a seat to the theater and a new hat for
two ninety-eight, and bad somebody tak-
ing them out to dinner while she was eat-
ing a ‘‘quick-lunch’’ under a tailor shop
and doing balf her own washing evenings
in a china wash basin. And how she was
stuffed into the kind of corner where every-
body was razzled with the glitter and
hotelsand the mean things of the city.
When Annie told me, I thought—‘‘Here’s
where you get the worst part of the city,
out here under God’s hills.”” But I was
telling about Speedaway.
Speedaway might have worked out his
winter without ever speaking to Nellie
Conroy if it hand’ been for Henry Cowan,
who runs the edge trimmers. You know a
good many men oan tell a girl, just as if it
were written on their forehead with a
stencil. Well, Henry’s too vain to be that
kind. I remember just as well as if I
could see it now—that the girl had stayed
a few minutes after the factory had shut
down. I saw her come out from the stitch-
ing room door over there and turn into the
hallway. Then I heard Cowan’s voice :
‘‘Hello, Nellie,”’ he says, kind of fresh,
and I thought it would be just as well to
let him know I was around, so I started
for the door. When I got there I saw the
girl was standing sort of scared on the top
landing, and he was coming up toward
her. °'A feller bet me I couldn’t kiss yer,
little girl,”’ he says, ‘‘but I guess yon will
whether you like it or not.”’ Bat right
then, before I could say a word, she slam-
med her little fist under his chin, and the
punch set him off his balance so that he
went clawing with his hands down to the
next landing. Speedaway was standing
there—I badn’6 seen him before—and he
stepped aside as if Cowan was something
dirty. Henry picked his carcass up and as
he started down the stairs he said some-
thing to her I couldn’t hear, and she turn-
ed sort of white, and stiffened her arms
down at her side. But all she said was,
‘‘I was afraid I had killed him.’ And she
fell back straight like a flag-pole being
blown down, and I caught her in my arms.
Speedaway came up the stairs cool enough
on the outside, and went to the wash room
for a bit of water. He chucked it in her
face, and she opened her big gray eyes and
looked straight at him. And it was funny
—he was half down on one knee and just
getting up, but he never moved but just
kept right there, looking at her till she
said, ‘I’m all right now,’’ and the blood
ran back into his face and he kind of gulp-
ed as if he’d swallowed a fish bone. A fool
could tell what had happened,—in just
those few seconds.
He got up and pulled a big breath. *‘I’m
in a hurry,’ says he, with his lips put hard
together, and the girl didn’t know what be
was going to do, bat I kind of guessed that
Speedaway was going after Henry Cowan,
and it wasn’t in my heart to call him back.
When I went by the window yonder, I
knew I was righs, for there’d been a fresh
fall of snow that afternoon, and Cowan,
who was the only band in the factory who
lives up on Maple Hill, had tracked his
way across the fields,and I could see Speed-
away following right on those tracks with
a thirty-four inch stride and his breath
showing on the cold air.
Benson was one of those loose built fel-
lers, with a mild brown eye and stoop
shoulders—the kind of man that surprises
vou when he gets busy, and when he gets
his clothes off, liis back looks as if it was
stuffed with peach-stones. So it wasn’t
startling when Cowan came in Monday
with a wad of cotton over his ear and one
eyebrow higher than the other.
For a general diet, I keep my mouth
shut, but I told the whole business to my
Annie, and she’s a woman—and there yon
are. Everybody was next. And then
Nellie Conroy heard it, and she met Speed-
away when he was going through the hall,
wearing a pair of greasy overalls, and his
face spotted with machine grease. ‘Mr.
Benson,’ says she, with a red spot on each
cheek, ‘‘it was wrong—what - yon did.”
But she smiled kind of soft, and put out
ber band, and be took it and said, just like
a fool, ‘I’m much obliged,’’ and that was
the way they got to speaking to each other.
There was quite a time that Speedaway
hung off. Iguess he was one of these fel-
lers that knows it quick enough when men
like bim, but perhaps a girl would have to
make an affidavit before a justice of the
peace before he’d believe she ever even
looked at him. So Nellie—maybe she’d
meet him coming in the front door and
emile—why, she’d smile with the whole
business, the big gray eyes and the cor-
neis of her mouth, the kind of smile that
would brace up a bunch of wilted flowers.
And there weren’s any boldness in it eith-
er, you understand, bot just the trick of a
good, old-fashioned smile. Then Speedaway
would smile too, and stare right into her
eyes,and that day he'd turn so many goods
over his machine it would have made him
rich if he’d been on piece-work. It uster
kind of vex a man to watch him. Bat
after a month I saw he was buying a new
necktie now and then. I says to him,
‘Benson, I saw you at church yesterday,
and yon’re studying the fashions a bit.
Am I right?” :
‘*‘No,”” says he,scowling, ‘‘yon’re wrong,
and your head is light.’
It wae the scowl that gave him away,but
in a week he was walking home with her,
and the factory was full of talk about how
she was teaching him to skate evenings on
the river, which probably might be true,
and just as likely not, this being the kind
of town where people talk just to keep
their band in, and when there’s no talk,
they make it.
So, of course, they had all sorts about
Speedaway and Nellie Conroy. And then
there was jealousy broke loose in the
stitching room—not because of Speedaway
exactly,. but more becanse Neliie could
look better than any of the other girls who
spent more money on clothes, and learned
the trick of some simple little bow or
something that would catch a feller’s eye
without smashing into it with something
gaudy. Besides, some were jealous be-
cause Nellie had the knack of saying little
and speaking mo bad word for anyone.
“Stuck up,’’ they called her, which is often
called to people who mind their own basi-
ness. One day in March sometime, I guess
they thought they’d take a fall out of her,
so, at the noon hour, three or four of the
girls came over to her machine and perch-
ed up on the bench. Katie Jordan, the
girl with the big yellow pompadour, did
the talking.
‘“Nellie,”” she says, ‘‘I should think
you'd dread the spring to come.”’
‘Why so, Kate ?’’ says Nellie.
“Oh, then you don’t know. Say, it
wasn’t white in him not to tell you—your
particular friend gives us the good-by every
year in April. Goes tramping. I'm sor-
prised he didn’t tell is to you, he having
known yon so well,” says Katie, just like
that and scornful.
I was fussing over some scrap leather
and I saw a flash in Nellie’s eye.
“Katie,’’ says she, *‘if the subject don’t
interest you so much you can’t keep still,
let’s talk of something else.”’
“Oh, well,’’ says the Jordan girl, toss-
ing her head and twisting her mouth at the
crowd of girls who'd gathered around,
‘‘perhaps it’s nothing to you, but if you
want to keep him, I should think you'd
have more life in you and not act so
mousey,’’ says she, ‘‘and it’s against my
own interest to tell it, for I’ve just taken a
bet with Mary Clews that Speedaway
would go this year just the same as ever.”’
Nellie Conroy stood with her back to a
big case of uppers, and looked from one to
another, so if she were a man she’d look as
if she weregoing to say, ‘‘Open to the
world. Give or take five pouands,and color
no bar,”’ and then she smiled—just a quiet,
contented little look around the eyes, and
she says, ‘‘He’ll not go away this year,”’
and walked out of the room, leaving them
looking as each other, like a lot of losers
at the races. :
Bus still there were a lot of the girls and
men that thought Speedaway would leave
her when the spring came. Sometimes I
thought so myself, and as the weather got
warmer, there were bets going a!l over the
factory. Perbaps somebody at the lasters’
bench would look out of the window, and
see Nellie going up the hill from work with
Speedaway walking alongside of her, and
sort of bending down to hear her. Then
perhaps one of the men would say, ‘‘It’s
too bad —it’s a ehame,’’ and perhaps Teddy
Donovan would say, ‘‘What’s a shame ?”’
‘“That Speedaway’s got to leave he:,’”’ says
another feller, and Teddy looks up with
his bits of blue eyes. ‘‘I’ll het you an even
pay day,”’ and the other feller would say
sort of thoughtful—*‘It’s worse than liquor
with him, and I’ll take your bet.”” That's
the way the whole factory would do—some
taking one side and some the other, until
we got to feel just as if it was a presiden-
tial election or a prize fight. It was a mill
between the old fever and the new—the
love for his old life and the love for the
irl.
2 Of course, Speedaway didn’t know how
the others were watching,but knowing him
better than any of them, I watched him
closest. The time came when all the snow
bad gone, and the clouds began to look fat
and cottony, and maybe you’d see a V of
geese flapping to the north up the valley,
and when you’d go across the flelds to
work, you’d see a woodchuck riting in
the sunlight, with his nose a-sniffing and
his eyes kind of half shut and lazy, and it
would sort of make yon want to lie down
beside him, and run your fingers through
the new sprouts of grass and such things.
And when you'd go. home at night, the
frogs along the river were peeping like a
rusty shafting, and the smoke that came
out of somebody’s cottage when they were
cooking supper would stick op into the
sky, juss like a strip of black paper.
The fight was on with Speedaway, and I
knew it. I could see his eyes getting a
dreamy look to them, and instead of going
home to lunch at the noon hour he’d go
out on a rock near the hank and smoke and
look down into the water and wait there
until be paw Nellie coming back down the
hill, then he would jamp up quick to mee
ber. Besides, I could see him kind of
fighting it out when he was at his machine,
with a look on his face like a new member
of a state's prison.
Nellie Conroy knew what was doing all
right. She wasn’t so cheerful and bright,
but her lips were shut tighter together,and
I guess there was nothing the matter with
her sand. She was fighting it out with
him, and afterwards, when the end came,
I found cut she’d had the sense to fight it
out with her mouth shat.
I remember well enough the day when
Speedaway didn’t come to work. It was
raining, too, ever since the early morning,
with the south wind slapping the water up
against the windows just as if it were a wes
towel. Benson wasn’t ‘at his machine
when I looked into the bottoming-room, so
I didn’t say anything, but I went down to
the office and telephoned to Nick Johnson,
the clerk of the Midland house, and asked
him to step over to Speedaway’s lodging-
place and get wise. And he telephoned
back that Benson hadn’t slept there that
night, and the last the landlady bad seen
of him he was sisting out on the front steps
in the moonlight, smoking his pipe. I
knew then there was no use and that
Speedaway was gone, and it most tarned
me sick when I thought of the girl work-
ing away at her machine upstairs,
It was tough to go up and tell her,
tougher than a funeral, but I did it. She
got ap when I walked over to her, and she
put her hand out, right before the whole
roomfal of girls, and took hold of mine,and
she says in a sort of a whisper, *‘I know.”
Her eyes were kind of red and her lips were
pulled in ztraight, just like they had been
pulled over a last and tacked down, and I
had to look out the window, and Katie
Jordan turned from her machine and grin-
ned at me until T got so mad thas if I
could have found Benson, I'd have pound-
ed the teeth out of him.
‘‘Do you think he’ll come hack ?’’ says
Nellie, and it sounded to me just like a
crazy woman asking about somebody who
was dead.
“No,” says I, “‘he won’t come back,”
and she sat down, grabbing at the bench
with her hands, just as if I'd struck her in
the face.
*‘He won’t come back to me,’’ she says
over again, and I was thinking how a good
woman can love a man, and I just bad to
leave her. I went back to my room with
the feeling that there weren’t avything
much good in things, anyhow.
The boss came up during the morning,
looking mad as I've ever seen him, and he
cursed at the new lot of leather that came
in the day before, and raised a fuss about
some mistake I'd made in the tags, and
blew up everybody and complained about
the rain and mud, and finally he says,
‘‘Well, Speedaway’s gone again ?”’
And I says, ‘‘Yes, he’s gone. Same as
ever,’”’ but the boss scowled and says, *‘It
ain’t the same! Anybody who has eyes
knows that. You talk like a fool, Jim.”’
So I just went on with my work.
Then Dave Houston passed on with an
armful of vamps and says, ‘‘Speedaway’s
lit out. I bet ten dollars he'd go,but, say,
Jim, I'd give twenty to see him back again.
What ?”’ I guess a good many of them felt
like that—even those who bet ou the other
side.
It rained all that day and the next, and
it was a kind of relief when the clouds
lifted on the next afternoon and the sun
came out about five o'clock, and flang a
yellow light all over the fields and trees
that looked so bright and green from the
storm. We opened the windows, for the
air was moist and warm and pleasant, and
we could hear the birds piping up on the
other side of the river.
Nellie Conroy left the factory just before
we shut down—I never knew her to leave
early before, except those two days, but I
guess there was an exouse for her,good and
plenty. You could see it in the curve of
her shoulders when she walked out of that
door there, and she stepped as if she’d been
traveling barefoot for two days on a brick
sidewalk.
I saw her when she left the factory and
started up the bill through the mud, and I
watched her until they shut down the mill
wheel, and the machinery stopped with the
regular sigh that sounds like the sigh you
give when you get into bed after a hard
day. You’ve heard it yourself. Then
there was the hurry of everybody getting
ready to go home, and running down the
stairs. Of course, one of the mien generally
walks home with some other, and there’sa
good deal of waiting around for each other
in front of the office, so when I got down
there was quite a little gang standing
around the doer. And then somebody
says, ‘‘See !"” as if he noticed a house on
fire, and everybody looked up the hill.
Nellie Conroy was walking up through the
mud all alone, but at the top of the hill
was Speedaway.
He walked down to meet her, with his
back straight and his head high, and none
of us even moved until he came right up
to ber and put his arm around her, and
then no one could stand it any more and
we broke loose and just yelled ! Everyone
of vs.
Then those inside the factory came to the
windows to see what the fuss was and, by
thunder, they just bust right out, too, just
like a crowd yells when a batter knocks
out a home run, and the boss put his head
out the window and says, ‘‘Jim, is that
Speedaway ?’’ And I says, ‘‘You bet your
life it’s Speedaway !”’ and he says, grin-
ning, ‘Well, I'll be darned !"’
We kept right on a-looking and Speed-
away just waved his band to us, and then
he said something to the girl, I guess, be-
cause they both laughed and all of us
langhed too, and Katie Jordan sang out
the window to Mary Clews, ‘‘The money’s
yours.” And it seemed as if there was a
lot of decent things about all of us.
The girl had won the game—that was it.
See here ! Just look out there at that red
house, with the trees back of it—that’s
Benson’s house. See that kid on the piazza
—fat and pink as a piece of ribbon ? That’s
Benson’s kid.—By Richard Washburn
Child, iu MeClure’s Magazine.
Forest Fires.
The Canadian Saoperintendent of For-
estry in his latest report declares that,
though the Dominion has Jost vast
quantities of timber by fire, it undoubs-
edly stands at the head of those coun-
tries from which a fnture supply may
be expected. The official sounds the
warning note that if adequate means
are not taken to preserve the virgin
forest growth Canada will ultimately
cease to be the best ‘‘wood lot’’ of the
world.
The United States has a direct inter-
est in the preservation of the Canadian
forests, for its own supply of timber is
rapidly diminishing. The Secretary of
Agriculture in his report says that the
science of forestry needs all the encour-
agememt it oan receive hecause of the
vastness of the interest involved ‘‘and
the critical point which forest destruction
bas reached.”” The subject is of im-
mediate importance to the house-builder
and renter. The price of lnmber is rising
rapidly, and this induces the lumberman
to extend his operations into new forest
areas. The Federal Forester notes that
the general consumption of lumber isgrow-
ing steadily with the increasing population
and prosperity of the United States.
“We have never been so near the exh aus-
tion of our lumber supply, and itis evident
that vigorous preventive measures have
never been so urgently required as now.”
The Bureau of Foresty is making an in-
telligent effort to encourage reforestization,
to prevent waste by lumbermen, and to
limit the ravages of fire. It is urged that
the exclusion of fire depends on local sen-
timent and State or local police and patrol.
The fires in the Adirondacks from April
20 to June 8, 1903, burned over the
enormous area of 600,000 acres of timber
land. The loss from the distiucticn of
trees and the burning of the soil, direct,
and indirent, was incalculable.
The season has arrived when extraor-
dinary precautions should he taken to
extinguish forest fires in their incipiency.
A number of rach conflagrations have been
already reported from Pennsylvania and
New Jersey, in nearly every instance the
result of carelessness. The appropriations
for forestry in most of the States are too
meagre. The Federal Secretary of Agri-
culture declares that the whole cause of
forest preservation hinges upon the inter-
est of the State Governments.
*‘Becanse no matter how fully pursnaded
the private owner may be that forest man-
agement promises to yield him good returns,
without fair assurance of safevuard against
fire and of equitable taxation of forest lands
he can make ro headway.” — Public Ledger.
——Willie—Teacher told ue today that
there’s a certain kind of tree that grows
out of rocks. I can’t remember what it
was. ?
His Pa--It’s a family tree, T guess.
— — The statement in a literary journal
that a certain well known anthor ‘‘writes
hy candlelight?’ is not surprising. Very
few of em can afford gas now.
--_
Sinking of the Maine,
NEw YORK, March 28.—That the bat-
tleship Maine, through an error, was de-
stroyed by a homb of his manufacture was
the statement made by Gessler Rossean in
the Tombs prison. Rosseau has just been
convicted of having sent explosives to the
Cunard line pier, this city, in May,
1903. He made the following state-
ment:
“For several years, while the Cuban
patriots were struggling against Weyler, I
watched the contests with deep interest and
sympathy. I decided to go to Jacksonville
and do what I could to assist the revolu-
tionists.
‘“‘Before leaving St. Louis for the South
I got together the material for the con-
struction of two exploding machines of
tremendous power, so arranged that they
could be wound up and left in a selected
place, with the certainty that they would
go off with terrible destruction within a
few hours.
‘‘At New Orleans I rented a room and
put the hoxes together, after which I went
on to Jacksonville. There I became ac-
quainted with a party of Cuban leaders,
who were planning a filibustering expedi-
tion. They had engaged the Destroyer,
a small vessel, to take them to Cuba along
with a number of American and European
adventurers who were anxious to strike a
blow for Caban freedom.
‘‘Several of the leaders of the party are
men now well known and 1 will
not mention their names, although I
Have among my papers a lis of them
all.
‘I suggested to them that they use my
machines to destroy Spanish warships in
the harbor of Havana and in other ports on
the coast of the island. They readily
seized upon the idea and when the De-
stroyer sailed with the filibusterers they
took my two machines with them.
ROSSEAU REMAINED IN FLORIDA.
‘It was my intention to go along with
the party so as to direct the work of sink-
ing the Spanish ships, but they dissuaded
me, urging that I could be of greater use
in Jacksonville preparing other machines if
the first proved successful.
‘It was planned to have sume members
of the revolutionary party join the Spanish
navy so to get the machines abroad. It
that failed it was decided to fasten] one of
the boxes to the hull of a ship under the
water line, for I had constructed my ma-
chines so they could be exploded under
the water. .
‘“That was in the the fall of 1897. The
next spring the Maine was destroyed.
‘‘Only one of the men in the secret of
the machine ever returned to America. I
saw him some time after the war with
Spain bad hegun.
*‘He told me he had nothing to do with
the boxes after reaching Cuba, but had
heen told a mistake had been made.
“The wen who had been instructed
with the task of destroying a Spanish
vessel attempted to fasten a box during
the night to one of Alfonso’s warships and
blundered into blowing up the Maine.
‘I was told that the man, immediately
after learning of the error he had made,
committed suicide.’’
Rossean said he had attempted to blow
up the statue of Frederick the Great in
Washington because he did not wish to see
the statue of a king in America. He added
that he was not an avarchist or a pihilist
and that he had made no effort to supply
exploding machines to the Russians.
Unlucky Friday.
BY BISHOP CHARLES C. M’CABE
Ounce upon a time I was in a railroad ac-
cident. It was one of the only two I have
ever experienced, and I bave traveled over
seven hundred and fifty thonsand miles on
traine and steamers, three times as far as
from here to the moon.
A broken wheel threw the train off the
track. The car I was in was shattered
very much, Seated just ahead of me was
an elderly lady suffering with rheumatism.
It was necessary to change cars. I belped
her off the car, carried her valise. and gave
ber the support of my arm. Behind us
came a noble-looking Englieh lady with
ber busband by her side.
She was scolding him well for
starting on their journey on Friday. ‘I
told you, James,’”’ she said, ‘‘something
would happen if we should start on
Friday.”
‘‘Madam,’’ said I, ‘‘do you know that
Columbus set sail to discover America on
Friday?"
She locked at me with indignation and
said: ‘‘Sir, in my opinion it is a great
pity America was ever discovered at all.”
So she held to her opinion that Friday
was an unlucky day. The old lady who
bad the rheumatism was convulsed with
laughter, while the English lady went on
ahead of us, scolding James for daring to
Sisrsgard her warning not to start on Fri-
ay.
If there is such as luck surely the
American republic has had its full share
among the nations’ of the earth, and this
republic was oreated~ by thirteen colonies
of the mother country. 1t can be proved
that thirteen is the most lucky number
there is, if interesting coincidences may be
considered indications of ‘‘luck.”’
There i8 no such thing as lack. There
issuch a thing as Providence. ‘‘Commis
thy way unto the Lord; truss also in Him,
and He shall bring it to pass.”
Essays of Little Bobbie.
lawyers is men wich git foaks in trubbel
& then charge the saim whether thay git
them out or not. lawyers is of 2 kinds:
1. good lawyers.
2. cheap lawyers.
the cheap lawyers cost you more than
the good lawyers, the only trubbel is that
you never know the good lawyers til you
try them and then may be they aint vary
good after all.
lawyers is made in 2 ways. One kind
goes to college and plays foot ball & the
other kind works for a lawyer & studies
law books at nite. ‘Mister Lincoln was the
last kind and the first kind is easy to find
anywhare, you can git them %o try a case
& lose it for you any day. Sam of them
is good, tho, but not a grate many.
lawyers git mad at eech other when thay
are trying a case, but after the case is over
thay call eech other Old Chap and say
Lets go in & have a drink. Then thay
stay thare till they bave 8 moar drinks and
then they call eech other‘'dere old chum.”
The Lull in the War,
There is a lull in the fighting in Man-
churia. General Linevitch has been rein-
forced by fresh troops from Rassia and in-
structed to oppose the Japanese advance at
the broad river Sungari. It is said that
Harbin, the Russian base, i8 so congested
with supplies and wounded, and so exposed
to Japanese attack,that a new base is being
prepared at Twitsihar, on the Siberian
Railwav, to which headquarters may be
removed in case of emergency.
Simplon Tunnel is Opened.
The Simplon tunnel, the longest in the
world, was inaugurated Sunday morning,
when from the Swiss and Italian sides the
first trains passed through, meeting at the
centre, where there was the iron door which
originally prevented the overflow of a tor-
rent of hot water, and which was Sunday
opened for the first time. The weather at
the entrance to the tuunel was springlike,
though the surrounding mouatains were
covered with snow; but once inside the
temperature became very high.
The train from the Italian end was the
first to reach the iron door, but a little
later the train from the Swiss end was
heard on the other side of the door. Final-
ly the door was knocked down, amidst
frantic applause and cries of ‘‘Long live
Switzerland’’ and*‘Long live Italy ;” bands
played the Italian royal march and the
Swiss anthem.
The Swiss bishop then preached a short
sermon, in the course of which he said,
‘“The church blesses progress.” In the
name of God he blessed the tunnel.
What Russia Has Sacrificed.
The newspaper of Saint Petersburg which
if looked upon as the special organ of the
army, admits that when the war broke out
Russia’s force in Manchuria was only
nominal. 1¢ states that from Feb. 6, 1904,
to March 12, 1905, the War Office had dis-
patched 13,087 officers, 761,467 men, 146,-
408 horses, 1,521 guns, ané 316,321 tons of
munitions and supplies to the front, there-
by straining the Siberian Railroad to its
utmost capacity. Itis further ad mitted that
though the War Office was correctly in-
formed of the organization and strength
(on paper) of the Japanese, the ability of
the generalsand the spirit of the soldiers
were sadly underrated. As the present
effiective Russian force in the East is not
far from 300,000 men, it would appear that
between four and five hundred thousand
men have already been swallowed by the
greedy maw of war.
Funny Figures.
Prof. Rangler, who dreams in figures,
has evolved the following curious specimen
of figure gymnastics:
1 times 9 plus 2 equals 11
12 times 9 plus 3 equals 111
123 times 9 plus 4 equals 1111
1234 times 9 plus 5 equals 11111
12345 times 9 plus 6 equals 111111
123456 times 9 plus 7 equals 1111111
1234567 times 9 plus 8 equals 11111111
12345678 times 9 plas 9 equals 111111111
1 time 8 plus 1 equals 9.
12 times 8 plus 2 equals 98.
123 times 8 plus 3 equals 987.
1234 times 8 plus 4 equals 9876/
12345 times 8 plus 5 equals 98765
123456 times 8 plus 6 equals 987654.
1234567 times 8 plus 7 equals 9876543.
12345678 times 8 plus 8 equals 98765432.
123456789 times 8 pl. 9 eqnals 987654321.
Town Quarantined Because of Smallpox.
Mount Union, a small town on the Mid-
dle division of the Penusylvania railroad in
Huntingdon county, is suffering from an
epidemic that has caused the railroad com-
pany to quarantine the horongh as far as
the company is concerned.
Some time ago several cases of shallpox
developed and the people of that town did
everything in their power to suppress the
spread of the disease, but all their combin-
ed attempts proved futile. The germs of
the disease continued to spread and one
case after another in rapid soccession fol-
lowed.
There were 140 cases in the town Mon-
day and General Superintendent George
W. Creighton of the Pennsylvania railroad
issned an order restraining the sale of
tickets from any point on the line to the
town and, furthermore, prohibiting the
stopping of any trains whatever at that
place. : .
——Some men’s ideas of charity is to
contribute to a campaign fand.
——Abous all the suburbanite raises in
his garden is blisters.
HiGcH PRESSURE DAys.—Men and wo-
men alike have to work incessantly with
brain and band to hold their own nowa-
days. Never were the demands of basi-
ness, the wants of the family, the require-
ments of society, more numerous. The
first effect of the praiseworthy effort to
keep up with all these things is com-
monly seen in a weakened or debilitated
condition of the nervous system, which re-
sults in dyspepsia, defective nutrition of
both body and brain,and in extreme cases in
complete nervous prostration. It is clearly
seen that what is needed is what will sus-
tain the system, give vigor and tone to the
verves,and keep the digestive and assimila-
tive functions healthy and active. From
personal knowledge, we can recommend
Hood’s Sarsaparilla for this purpose. It
acts on all the vital organs, builds up the
whole system, and fits men and women for
the high-pressure days.
Baby Rattlesnakes.
The fallacies surrounding the rattle-
snake begin with the very coming of
the reptile. Many suppose that, like
the garter snake, the bull snake, the
members of the “racer” family and
our other nonpoisonous snakes, the rat-
tlesnake is hatched in broods number-
ing from forty to eighty. Not so. Rat-
tlesnakes are born into the world, as
are all members of the viperoid fami-
ly, in litters numbering from seven to
twelve.
Between the middle of July and the
middle of August the babies appear.
Lively, self reliant, dangerous little
fellows they are, fourteen inches long,
no thicker than a lead pencil, marked
like the adult snakes and provided
with a single button at the end of the
tail, the first link in the series of rat-
tles to be developed, ring by ring,
with each shedding of the skin.
Motionless, eyes gleaming, the long
mother les extended across the back
of a sand hummock beneath the fan-
like leaf of a dwarf palmetto, glaring
coldly at her active, squirming ba-
bies. For a brief half hour she tar-
ries; then she drags herself away, for
from the first moment a young rattler
enters the world he is independent of
his mother and eminently able to shift
for himself. Fach young snake is a
full fledged rattler, ready to hunt and
ready to defend himself with the sting
of death. Each flat, triangular little
head is provided with the long, sharp
poison fangs containing the identical
venom of the reother snake.—Pearson’s
Magazine, :