Bellefonte, Pa., May 17, 1907.
nh.
_——
THE »ORROW OF A SKIPPER.
“1 hate to think of dyin,” says the skipper to
the mate:
“Starvation, shipwrecks, heart disease I loathe
to contemplate,
1 hate to think of vanities and all the erimes
they lead to" --
Then says the mate,
With looks sedate,
“Ye doesn’t reely need to.”
“To conjer up the happy days what careless has
slipped by.
I hates to contemplate the day 1 ups and left
me Mary" —
Then says the mate,
“Why contemplate,
If it ain't necessary®
“Suppose that this here vessel,” says the skip-
per with a groan,
“Should lose "er bearin’s, run away, and bump
upon a stone;
Suppose she'd shiver and go down when save
ourselves we couldn't" —
The mate replies,
“Oh, blow me eyes!
Suppose, ag'in, she shouldn't”
“The chances is ag:in up,” said the skipper in
dismay,
“If fate don't kill us out and out, it gits us all
some day.
So many perish of ole age, the death-rate must
be fearful" —
“Well,” saysthe mate,
“At ally rate,
We might as well die cheerful.”
“I read in them statistic books,” the nervous
skipper cries,
“That every minute by the clock some feller
ups and dies.
I wonder what disease they gits that kills in
such a harry" —
The mate he winks
And says, “I thiaks
They mostly dies of worry."
“Of certain things," the skipper sighs, “me
conscience won't be rid,
And all the wicked things I done I sure should
not have did.
The wrinkles on me inmost soul compel me oft
to shiver" —
“Yersoul's fast rate,”
Observes the mate;
“The trouble’s with yer liver.”
—Wallace Irwin in “In Lighter Vein" in the
May Century.
OTTAWA
The capital which now likes to call itself
“‘the Washington of the North’’ was born
of hostility tothe Washington of the South.
In the ugly old days when our grandfathers
glowered as each other across she interna-
tional boundary the British Government
thought it needed a military route less ex-
ed to American raids than that by the
t. Lawrence, which bad heen considerably
disturbed in the war of 1812. Accordingly
it offered to help the Province of Upper
Caoada to dig a canal from Kingston, on
Lake Ontario, to the Ottawa River. The
Province was not impressed with the idea
of spending its money on such a project,
and the Imperial Government had to do
the work itself. It sens Colonel By, cf the
Royal Eogineers, to survey a canal, and
when a little town sprang up at the end of
it, the natural name for it was ‘*Bytown.”’
That vame was good enough for over a
quarter of a century, but finally the town
began to feel some stirrings of ambition;
and when it became incorporated as a oity
in 1854 it had itself rechristened ‘Ottawa.’
At thas time the question of a capital for
the Province of Canada was acute. Canada
then consisted of the present Provinces of
Ontario and Quebec, which were governed
by a single Legislatmie. This body had
met at Montreal, but after the riots in
which Lord Elgin, the Governor-General,
was insulted and the Parliament Hounee
burned the Legislature took to the road
and met alternately at Toronto and Quebec.
The inconvenience of this arrangement led,
in 1857, to a request to Queen Victoria to
select a permanent capitol, and the next
year she choose Ottawa. The rival cities
grumbled, and a contest ensued, in the
course of which the royal choice was more
than once rejected. But in the end the
natural advantages of the site and the per-
sistency of the Government wore down the
opposition, and Ostawa won a prize which,
as it turned ont, was greater than anybody
bad imagined. For hardly bad the new
Government buildings been finished than
they were called upon to acoommodate, not
a provincial Legislature, bat the Parlia-
ment of a continental Dominion.
Some glimmerings of Ottawa's destiny
bad not heen lacking from the first. In the
very year of Bytown’s birth its founder had
predicted that it would some day be the
capital of Canada, and Sir John Franklin
had made the same prophecy. Its situation
was one that marked it out for such a dis-
tinction. It was as nearly as possible on
the iine between French and English Cana-
da. If the two parts of the country were
ever to be united, it was somewhere in that
vicinity that the common capital must be
placed. The balavce between Upper and
Lower Canada that made it necessary to
put the capital of the united Province on
the Ottawa River was like the balance be-
tween North and South that made it nee-
essary to put the capital of the United
States on the Potomac. As it happened,
the site marked out by political necessity
was one of superb natural advantages. A
series of bold, wooded bluffs overlooked a
mighty river which tumbled over a broken
cliff in a cataract forty feet high. Below
this Chaudiere Fall the Ottawa received on
one side the Rideau, d og in by an-
other fall of the same height ; on the other
the picturesque Gatinean. Above and be-
low, great stretches of tranquil water open-
ed invitingly the gates of the forest wilder-
ness.
When Ottawa wae selected as the capital
of the old Province of Canada a vast pile of
Government buildings was begun. This
was the critical moment in the town’s his-
tory. Had these buildings been unworthily
planned or unfortunately placed Ottawa's
civic ambition might never have awakened.
There was no grandiose city design like
that by which Washington has been
up in spite of itself to the level of a great
capitol. The street of Oitawa was and
is common t was drawn without
imagination to suit the immediate needs
of somal] provisial town. It took the
a oe Au: dood
e was ever to bean
bave not fully assimilated the
t the Parliament Buildings
have stood year after year as an exam
and a stimulus to civic pride, teach
tawa to her ities and life.
og her eyes above the swirl of sawdust at
r
Crowning the boldest promontory that
jacked | parkway, four miles
ET: the
juts into the river, the great Gothic tower
of the Library of Parliament soars like a
mountain peak into the sparkling Cana-
dian air. Visible for miles around, it adds
at once the touch of haman diStinetion to
the natural sublimity of the scene. Likea
European cathedral town, the city possess.
ing this treasure is lifted at once above the
commonplace. The Library of Parliament
is the dominating feature of the great mass
of Government Bnildings, forming three
sides of a quadrangle, with its back to the
river and its front on a terraced court fac-
ing the city. There would be a fourth
side, but business came too near,and a new
department block facing the Parliament
Buildings, across the avenne hordering the
court, was made to conform with the busi.
vess rather than with the official standards.
When you stand on Parliament Hill you
have from several pointe of view that satis.
fying impression of completene-s that is so
rare on our rough-hewn continent. There
i a finished picture; the raw edges of shab-
by neighborhoods do not obtrude upon it.
In this respect Ottawa is incomparably
more fortunate than Albany. The New
York State capitol cost at least six times as
much as the whole group of Government
buildings at Ottawa; yet it is so elbowed
and jostled by mean houses that it looks
cheap in comparison. The Canadian huild-
ings are so spaced and isolated that they
have some of the stateliness of the capitol
at Washington.
When the Parliament buildings were de-
signed, practical men at Ottawa thought
they were laid out on a scale of wanton ex-
travagance. Bat now the Government has
overflowed ite accommodations. It has had
to build one new block outside of the orig-
inal quadrangle, and it is paying so much
rent for other quarters that it is preparing
to build more. Across the canal is Major
Hill Park, and on the other side of that it
is proposed to raise a new range of Govern-
ment buildings that will double the extent
and impressiveness of the civic centre.
At the foot of Parliament Hill are the
locks of the Rideau Canal, which might
reaily be called one of the natural features
of the place, since they were there, along
with the bills and waterfalls, before there
was any Ottawa. It is not often that a
canal is one of the attractions of a city.
Usually it is a disfigurement, which people
who are not tied to it by business try to
avoid,as they do the railroads and wharves,
Bat the Ridean’s long flight of stone locke,
running up the hill from the river like a
giant's stairway, is a decorative feature
and a source of endless entertainment.
People stand for hours on the bridges ahove
it, or on the masonry copings of the locks,
watching the boats lazily climb the stairs,
while the skippers’ wives nurse their babies
on deck. There is nothing squalid about
its surroundings. It lies between two
parks, an attraction for each, and a per-
manent refutation of the theory that busi.
ness and ugliness must necessarily go to-
gether.
Unlike Washington, Ottawa is a com-
mercial town, and was a commercial town
before it was a capital. This fact bas col-
ored its entire outlook on life. Business
has been first and attractiveness second.
The great business of Ottawa is lumber.
Fortunately that trade is one of the least
repulsive means by which money can be
made. The logs shooting the chutes of the
Chaudiere at sixty miles an hour and then
roundiog up like herded cattle into huge
bunches covering acres of river, thus buzz.
ing sawmills charging the air with the tang
of fresh-cut pine, the neatly stacked piles
of c'ean boards do not tend, like coal yards
aud slanghter-houses, to make life unhear-
ahle. They are not at all inconsistent
with an attractive city. They really -add
to the interest of living. The ohief annoy-
ance is the sawdust, which is all right in
its place,'in dolls, pinenshions, prize-rings,
and breakfast food, hut all wrong in a river
otherwise ro perfect for fishivg. canoeing,
and bathing. The Ottawa people are con-
stantlv complaining of she millmen’s hahit
of throwing sawdust into the river—a prac-
tise forbidden by a Dominion law sixteen
years old—hat they keep on doing it. Still
there has been a marked improvement in
tnis respect since the time when the stream
was «0 choked that ite beauty was utterly
dsstroged and the builders of the Inter.
provincial Bridge had to sink a pier through
sixty feet of solid sawdust.
The people of Ottawa were going ahead,
making money, and paying little heed to
the saffering beanty of their surroundings,
when, ten vears ago, Sir Wilfrid Daarier
made a speech in which he referred to the
Dominion capita! as the fatore ‘Wash.
ington «f the North.” The name stuck,
the Ottawans liked it, and they began to
look about to see how they could live up to
it. All the attractions they had at that
time they owed to natare and the General
Government. Bot what the Government
had done had heen entirely in the line of
supplying its own needs, and not with any
congcions purpose of beautifying Ottawa;
for Ottawa, again unlike Washington, was
not under national control, but was simply
a city of the Proviuce of Outario, with its
own Mayor and Council, like any other.
There seemed very little probability that
the local authorities would ever do any-
thing worthy of the city, and finally the
Dominion was induced to take a band. In
1899 it established a permanent Improve.
ment Commission, and endowed it with a
standing revenue of $60,000 a year—not
very much, but enough to make a showing
when judiciously used.
The Commissioners took the greater part
of the park system of the capitol and is
environs,and began to develop a systematic
lan of extensions. They were not experts | PY
n Jasidsenge work, and they made some
mistakes, but fortunately the mistakes
were not of a kind hard to remedy, and
the factors of the problem pointed the wa
to its solution. As the funds were limited,
it was necessary to make them go as far as
ble, and t very necessity held the
missioners to the true policy, which
was to let the characteristio features of the
place count to the fullest extent, and
money only in setting them off and ng
them more accessible. The characteristic
features of the place were its waterways,
aod there the work began. Looking about,
like the good business men they were, to
find where they could get the most for their
money, the Commissioners saw a Govern-
along the Rideau Canal. The Government
had no farther use for it, and willingly con-
sented to turn it over to the Improvement
Board. Here was the material for a unique
long. The Commis-
are common enough, but this
uncommon. The canal, which
been turned by neglect into a
on the town, like so many
hugged the lawns and the
driveway, mile after mile, in a panorama
of ever.-varying beauty and interest. Pleas.
ure steamers loaded with excursionists
shared this amphibious boulevard with car-
riages and autoruohiles. At last the canal
expanded ioto a lake, which the drive
crossed on a causeway before ending in the
five hundred acre Experimental Farm.
That is another pleasing variant on the or-
dinary city park. Itisa real farm, where
they raise crops of all kinds in sample
quantities, and at the same time it is so laid
are ground,
The ‘‘Government
mission's greatest exploit as yet. To build
it without neglecting the other works on
band, including the acquisition of some
necessary land, called for more money than
the Commissioners had in a lump: so they
hit upon the ingenious idea of capitalizing
their expectations. They issued bonds
based upon their promised appropriations,
and in that way raised enough todo at
once what otherwise would bave had to Le
spread over a number of years. They bave
always been good husiness men. you see—
they have known how to make the most of
their resources.
The glory of Ottawa is its wonderful
variety and extent of water frontages. The
Ottawa, here as wide as the Mississippi,
there a# narrow as the Harlem, flows with
an infinite complexity of rugged shore lines
along the whole length of the city. The
Ridean encircles the greater part of the
town, leaping at last into the Ottawa over
a oliff forty feet high. The Rideau Canal
parallels at a little distance the cnrve of its
river. The Gatineau enters the Ottawa on
the other side. Here at once is a system
of civie adornment all laid out by nature,
and it merely remains to take advantage of
it. Three years ago Mr. Frederick G. Todd.
the landscape architect of Montreal, pre-
pared a plan to this end on the invitation
of the Improvement Commission. It pro-
vided for parks and bhonlevards along the
whole city front of the Ottawa, except for
a short space in the sawmill region. A cir-
cuit was to be completed by a parkway
along the Rideau River, paralleling the
present one along the canal, and coming
hack to the Ottawa by a boulevard from
the Experimental Farm. Across the river
| there was to be another park at the mouth
of the Gatineau for the suburb of Hull,
and two or three great forest reserves were
to be set apart within easy driving distance
of the city. The magnitude of the plan
rather staggered the Commissioners, who
did not see the use of looking =o far abead.
Still they are working, a little at a time, in
that direction, and if they keep on, doing
each year the next thing at band, they will
eventually find Mr. Todd's scheme sub-
stantially executed, although ata greater
cost of money and effort than would be re-
quired to make the necessary reservations
now. Already the wonderful scenery of
the Ottawa River has been made public
property at several points. At the lower
end of the city, opposite the mouth of the
Gatinean, Rockliffe Park and its extension
stretch for over two miles along a wooded
bluff, lapped hy the gently flowing iver,
which broadens here like an exquisite
mountain lake. It wounld he imper-
tinence to “‘improve’’ this wonderful scene
with the trivialities of artificial decora-
tion, and the activity of the Commissioners
has been wisely limited to laying out drives
and walks through the natural woods to
make the views accessible.
At the other end one of the greatest na-
tural attractions possessed hy any city in
the world has heen given over entirely to
bald commercialism. The Chandiere Falls,
which for volume of water and sublimity
of effect rank second only to Niagara among
the cataracts east of the Mississippi, remaia
outside of all Ottawa's plans of civic im-
provement. Mr, Todd, in his report, ex-
pressed the belief that at some time in the
futare these falls would ‘‘he restored to
somewhat of their former beauty, even
though still utilized for their valuable wa-
ter power,”” hat nobody has: ventured to
suggest any definite scheme for their reo-
lamation. Like the Ridean Falls, which
ought to be another superb embellishment
of the city, they have no other present pur-
pose of existence than to run sawmills. Of
course that purpose will have to be recog-
nized. It is probably only a Niagara that
we (and from this point of view the *‘we’
' includes hoth Canadians and Americans)
can he induced to sacrifice a great water
power for the sentimental object of saving
a view. The Chaudiere Falle represent
seventy thousand horsepower at low water
and three hundred thousand at high water.
That means too much to the commercial
prosperity of Ottawa to he thrown away.
It every drop of water flowing over the
Falls ean he used it will be used, and it is
vain to think of interfering. But at pres-
ent there is a great volume of water which
is not nsed. The Falla are still a magoif-
icent spectacle from the old bridge, crowd-
ed with trucks, which is the only point
from which they can he seen to advantage,
and there seems no reason why some at-
tempt should not he made to heaatify their
surroundings without interfering with
their commercial value. A sawmill 1» a
factory, and is has been found possible in
other places to make factories architectural-
iv attractive, to surround them with park-
like grounds, and to make their neighbor-
hoods pleasant places of resort. There isa
beautiful gronp of islands abose the Falls
at Ottawa which it is proposed to turn into
water parks, connected by bridges. That
will he a charming attraction, but it will
not give the citizens that view of the cata-
ract itself to which they are entitled as
long as the water is not needed for other
rposes. People make long journeys to
see waterfalls, and Ottawa ought to appre-
ciate her good fortune in having a superb
one within her own limits.
From every point of view the Canadian
capital should be in the future an increas-
ingly delightful place to live in. It will
be a great manufacturing city without the
grime of coal dust that makes life in most
manufacturing cities insufferable. Within
a madins of forty-five miles it has water
powers that can develop the energy of near-
a million horses at low water, and over
three times as much at high. That is more
than will ever be allowed to be taken from
Niagara. To be a clean,smokeless, electric
city, with some of pature’s most glorions
spectacles freely displayed in a at-
mosphere, seems to be Ottawa's fortunate
destiny—By Samuel E. Moffets,in Collier's.
Much Simpler.
At a county fair a man went up to a tent
where some elk were on exhibition and
eared wistfully up at the sign.
“I'd like to go in there,” he said to the
, ‘bat it would be mean togo in
without my family, and I cannot afford to
pay for ay wife and seventeen children.’
keeper stared at him in astonish-
ment. ‘‘Are all those your children ?" he
. one,” ssid the man.
‘‘You wait a minute,” said the k y
“I'm going to bring the elk out let
them see you all.”
| ——Some men never know when to let
bad luck alone.
out as to serve the purpose of a public pleas- |
Drive” along the |
Rideau Canal is the Improvement Com- |
A SONG IN THE NIGHT.
In silence of the middle night
I wake to be with Thee;
And through the shadows, as the light,
Thy mercy smiles on me,
I talk with "hee upon my bed
In meditations blest,
And sweetly piliow there my head
Upon my Saviour's breast,
Ithink of Him who kvelt and prayed
At midoight on the hill;
Then walked the sea His friends to aid,
And bid the storm be still,
I think of Him who took the cup
In dark Gethsemane,
And, gathering strength from prayer, rose up
To die for such es me.
Ithiok of heaven, where never more
The weary ask for night;
But ever-fresh'ning glories pour
New raptures on the sight,
So do | learn a parable,
That is my darkest day,
When waves of sorrow ‘round me swell,
The storm shall pass away,
Nor «ill I turn my head aside,
Though bitter griefs be mine;
Butsay with Him, the Crucified,
“Father, my will is Thine!"
Thus + hall I praise Thee while I've breath
To sing Thy love to me; ‘
And welcome e'en the night of death
To wake and be with Thee!
—(3, W. Bethune, D. D,
Petrolenm.
The petrolenm region that lies in the
State of Pennsylvania, with a narrow
fringe in New York State adjoining, ix hilly
and covered with forest, says Pearson's
Weekly. The older districts where the first
wells were made are now exhausted; the
towns which a few years ago counted their
inhabitauts by thouvands have scarcely
any left behind. .
The horing for oil was at first a very
speculative business and wa« as deep as
from 1100 to 2000 feet. A well when once
tapped may flow ouly for a few days, in
other cases for years. Some will yield bat a
barrel a day, others will force up as much
as 3000 barrels within the first 24 hours.
Of all kinds of property the oil well is
the most capricious. Its life is utterly
precarious, its yield is a matter of pure
speculation. Asand industry it is but 40
Jean old, and its origin almost accident-
al.
A Colonel Diake who had a farm in
Pennsylvania, happened to notice a greasy,
evil-smelling fluid floating on the rocks,
oozing from crevices, and was led to dis-
cover that it lay beneath the soil in great
quantities.
The Indians bad long nsed itasa reme-
dy for rheumatism. The discovery led to
the formation of a patent medicine com-
pany called the ‘‘Seneca Oil Company,”
which found the capital for Colonel Drake
| to hore the first well. No one then imagin-
| ed that this natural medicine would soon
become the cheap and popular light of the
world and secare a fabulous fortune for its
later possessors.
Soon, however, the enterprising Yankee
began to exploit it asan illuminant. The
oil was refined in a variety of ways; lamps
were speedily invented for its special use,
and then came a process for cheapening the
production so as to place it within the
reach of the masses,
The startling reformation that cheap oil
has made in the social and family life of
hundreds of thousands can scarcely be real-
ized hy those of us that live in comparative
comfort. Poor people 50 years ago could
not afford enough light of an evening to
read hy, aod even in good-sized farmhous-
es a lew flickering candles were the only
light. Now in millions of our homes the
genial lamp invites to games, mosio, study
and xocial recreation. Like railways and
electricity, lamp oil has become a large
eciviliziog and humaniziog force.
In Pennsylvania and New York States
there are today nearly 3,000 oil-producing
wells, and boring for new supplies is heing
constantly parsned.
Luce Bark Trees.
There are in all about half a dozen lace
bark trees in the world, so called because
the inver bark yields a natural lace in
ready made sheet form which can be made
up io serviceable articles of apparel. Only
four of these curious species of trees are of
much practical value.
In its natural state the real lace brak is
of a delicate cream white tint. It is prob-
ably a kind of fibrous pith. When the
outer bark is removed it can be unfolded
aud unwound in one seamless piece, hav-
ing a surface of a little more than a square
yard. Washing and still bleaching give it
a dazzling white appearance. The fabric
1 airily light. It is used io the West In-
dies for mantillas, cravate, collars, cuffs,
window curtains—in a word, for every
purpose that ordinary lace is nsed. In mak-
ing up shawls, veils and the like, it is ous-
tomary to piece two sheets of lace bark to-
gether. Delicate aud apparently weak as
it is in single mesh, a bit of lace bark, if
rolled into a thio «tring, will all but resist
human strength to break it.
Despite it practical use there is no essen-
tial demand for lace bark. It has been
used by the natives for hundreds of years
and yet is comparatively little known to
this day. A few specimens of lace bark
articles exist in different countries of Eu-
rope. These were made hundreds of years
ago, yet, although their age is consider-
able, they are said to be in a good state of
preservation.—[ Chicago News. .
The Old Plane Tree ef Cos.
In the island of Cos, in the JEgean Sea,
there stands, jealously ed, a huge
e tree, measuring nearly eighteen ya:
n circumference. It is surrounded by a
ium, or raised platform, breast high,
oubtless built to support the trunk of the
tree after it bad become hollow and weak
from age. The lower branches are still
well preserved, and bave been shored up
by pieces of antique colaomns, over the r
ends of which the branches have grown like
caps in consequence of the pressure of their
own weight.
Close by the tree is a solid marble seat,
which is said to be the chair of Hi
the father of medicine, and it is supposed
that be taught the art of healing from that
seat. He was born at Cos 460 B.C. This
gives a clue to the age of the celebrated
plane tree, which must be considerably
more than 2,000 years old.—[London
Times. ]
~—Many a man will be su when
be Ae to heaven to find how a place
his little kindly deeds occupy in its his-
tory.
—‘‘Are there any sharks around here,
?? “I don’t know. Never stop-
at the hotel.”
oo SS
|
|
|
| lor,
THE JERUSALEM CHAMBER.
A Celebrated Recess In the Wall of
Westminster Abbey.
In the southwest wall of Westmin.
ster abbey a narrow recess shows an
old ocak door. Behind it is a passage
leadicg into a small room with finely
carved paneling called the Jericho par-
which leads into the celebrated
Jernsalem chamber. This chamber is
of profound modern interest in that it
was the scene of the 1611 and 1884 re-
visions of the Bible, in the latter in-
stance the United States taking a most
Prominent part.
The Jerusalem chamber is also of
great historic interest, being one of the
few remains of the old palace of West-
minster, which for centuries was dis-
dinct and separate from the abbey.
Many rooms in the old palace had sim-
ilar fanciful names, such as heaven,
paradise and the Antioch chambers,
The Jerusalem chamber was built by
Abbot Litlington in 1386 and was so
named from the colored glass brought
from Jerusalem which decorates it.
The room Is rectangular in shape,
wainscoted with cedar and other
woods, all of which were brought from
the Holy Land. The ceiling and the
upper part of the walls are frescoed,
and here and there hang costly tapes-
tries, which Henry VIII placed in the
choir of the abbey, but which have
since been removed to this room. The
splendid cedar mantelpiece was put
up in commemoration of the marriage
of Charles I, then. Prince of Wales,
with the Princess Henrietta Maria of
France. The carved and wooden heads
on either side of the mantelshelf repre-
sent the royal pair,
One of the frescoes depicts King
Henry IV., who breathed his last with-
in these walls in 1413. This event oc-
curred twenty-five years after the
room was built and was doubtless the
first really important Incident in its
history, for celebrated, indeed sacred,
as the chamber has since become, at
its construction it was only intended
as the withdrawing room for the
guests of Abbot Litlington.
King Henry, with the uneasy con-
science of a usurper and a supersti-
tious belief in a prophecy that foretold
his death at Jerusalem, decided upon
a crusade to the Holy Land. The cru-
sade, which the king deemed ample
atonement for his sins, was, however,
too long deferred. Preparatory to leav-
ing on his journey to Jerusalem, while
praying before the shrine of St. Ed-
ward the Confessor in the abbey, he
was stricken with a mortal sickness,
and, in the words of the old chronicle,
“they for his comfort bore him into the
abbot's place and laid him down be-
fore the fire in this chamber.”
On coming to himself and learning
that he was in the chamber named
Hierusalem then said the king, “Laud
be to thee, Father of heaven, for now
I know that I shall die in this cham-
ber, according to the prophecy made of
me before said, that I should die in
Hierusalem.” And so he made himself
ready and died shortly after.
The body of Addison lay in state in
this room, whence it was borne at the
dead of night to its last resting place
in the chapel of Henry VII, the pro-
cession passing round the shrine of Ed-
ward the Confessor and the choir sing-
ing a funeral hymn. From the Jeru-
salem chamber also the body of Sir
Isaac Newton was carried to the
grave, the pall being borne by the lord
chancellor and by dukes and earls.
Scott's Worst Hour.
It is not the foolish and ignorant who
are prey to the most unreasoning fears.
Scott, who had grand moral courage
and seems ordinarily not to have lack-
ed physical courage, has left it on rec-
ord that the moment of greatest terror
in his life was that he spent while
walking back through the fields after
passing a day with Joanna Baillie at
Hampsted. He met a rough looking
man, a disreputable figure of the real
jail bird. Scott hurried past him in
alarm and was further disconcerted
when he saw, by turning his head, that
the man had crept through a gap
to the other side of the hedge. Scott
climbed through another gap, so that
he was able to see the fellow groping
at the bottom of the hedge. It was a
stone or a cudgel that the ruffian was
seeking, so that he might do murder.
the novelist thought. And in that mo-
ment he experienced an agony of fear
such as never before or afterward pos-
sessed him. The purpose of the man
was quite innocent; he was merely
picking up a bundle. Scott vaulted a
stile with such thankfulness to escape
that he was unconscious at the time
that In grasping the wood he drove
home a splinter three-quarters of an
inch long between the flesh and the
nail of one of his fingers.—St. James’
Gazette.
The Kaleidoscope.
Have you any idea what a wonderful
thing a kaleidoscope really is? Did you
night for ninety-one years and forty-
without exhausting the dif-
binations or the possibilities
a new figure on the next
f the number of pieces of glass
increased to twenty, a calculation
that 462,880,5800,576 years
necessary to go through all of
of which it would be ca
of the Instrument turning
so as to get ten changes
and working day and night
illions of years.
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GOLD THIMBLES.
Process by Which These Dainty Finger
Caps Are Fashioned.
The gold from which thimbles are
made is bought at 2 United States sub-
treasury in the shape of snug little in-
gots brick shaped and two and a half
Inches long and one and a quarter
fuches thick. Each one contains of
pure gold twenty-four karats fine metal
of the value of 8600.
Gold of this fineness would be much
too soft for thimbles, and it is alloyed
down to fourteen karats, in which con-
dition it is rolled into sheets of suita-
bie thickness. In the first process ot
manufacture a sheet of this gold is run
into a machine, which cuts out of it a
disk in size sufficient to form a thim-
ble, the same machine stamping this
disk also into the form of a straight
sided capsule with irregular edges.
Then the thimble blank goes into an-
other machine, in which the die stamps
it into its conical shape. Out of this
machine it goes into an annealing fur-
nace for tempering and from that into
an acid bath for cleaning and the re-
moval of the fire coating.
Then the thimble is put into a lathe
to be turned down to its final shape
and dimensions.
With repeated applications of the
tool the operator brings the crown of
the thimble into its perfect form and
cuts down along the thimble's sides to
bring the walls of the thimble to the
requisite thickness, defines and finish-
es the smooth band that runs around
the lower part of the thimble and
brings into relief the rounded rim that
encircles the thimble at its openjug at
once to give it a finishing ornamental
grace there and to stiffen it. The glis-
tening little gold shavings that he cuts
off in these various operations all fall
into a canvas trough. ~~ -
It lacks yet the familiar indentations
in its surface that serve to support the
needle and to hold it in place. These
the thimble maker now proceeds to
make. It is done with a tool called a
knurle. There are an end knurle and a
side knurle. An end knurle is simply
a handle having set in it a tiny thin
revolving wheel of steel upon whose
periphery is a continuous encircling
row of little bosses or knobs corre-
sponding in size to the little indenta-
tions to be made. The side knurle has
in place of such a wheel a little steel
cylinder of a length sufficient to cover
that section of the thimble that is to be
indented on its sides, this cylinder hav-
ing knobs all over its surface as the
end knurle wheel has around its edges
and turning, like the wheel, on its axis.
The thimble in the lathe is turning at
2,600 revolutions a minute, and it
seems as if the application to its sur-
face of any sort of tool with protuber-
ances on it must leave there only a
jangled and mixed up lot of irregular
marks. But now, with the end knurle
the thimble maker makes an Indenta-
tion in the _onter of the top of the
thimble and then proceeds rapidly and
with perfect certainty with the end
knurle to describe around that center
concentric rings of indentations, with
the indentations all perfectly spaced
from the center of the cirer mference
of the top.
You may see him do this, but you
can't tell how he is able to do it. And
then with the side knurle he makes the
indentations in the side of tha thim-
ble, making them as well as he deftly
presses the tool against it, indentations
that run absolutely uniform and true
and that end at their lower edge in a
perfectly true encircling line.—Chicago
Chronicle.
City Servants Mustn’t Snore.
“Excuse me,” said the polite employ-
ment agent, “but do you snore?”
The rosy face of the young girl fresh
from the country turned rosier.
“Not that I am aware of, sir,” she
answered. “But what has snoring to
do with my suitability for this post of
chambermaid ?”
“You are from the country,” the man
answered, “or you would understand.
You see, here in New York we all live
in apartments or flats and snoring is
with us an objection, a grave objec-
tion, for it hinders sleep. Suppose
your master turned in, worn out with
a bard day's work and could not get
to sleep on account of your snoring.
That, if it happened night after night,
would settle your hash though you
were a very model of a chambermaid.”
“I see,” said the young girl thought-
fully. “I must look into this. “I'll let
you know later whether I snore or
not.”
“Yes, I can’t give you the place till I
find out. If you do snore,” the agent
went on, “the vice may with patience
be cured. Stop sleeping on your back;
sleep only on your side. Your slum-
bers will then be as silent as a babes.
All city people have learned to sleep
on their sides so as not to snore.””—New
Orleans Times-Democrat.
He Paid For the Boots.
According to an old French tale, a
number of shoemakers argue the ques-
tion, Which one of them is the most
meekly submissive to his wife? To the
one who is least so the host offers to
give the best pair of beots in his shop.
If any one claims the boots and falls
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