e———
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~~
_ :
Bellefonte, Pa., July 31, 1908.
IN NATURE'S AISLES
The woods and dales,
And the hilis and vales,
These are a church for me.
The chorus sweet
That the birds repeat,
And the paeans of the bee;
The rustling praver
On the still, sweet air
Of the leaves oa the kindly trees;
The light divine
Of the soft sunshine,
And the woodland harmonies;
The sturdy strength
Of the monntain length
As it stretches athwart the sky;
The fresh clean thrill
Of the mountain riil
As it runs s-whispering by;
The perfumed scent
Of the meadows blent
With the pine of the balsam boughs;
And the sweet wild rose,
And the elder-blows,
And the grain in the bnnmming mows;
All speak to me
Of the majesty
And glory of God above,
Who made the hills,
Aud the dales and rills,
And taught them to sing His love!
—[John Kendrick Bangs, in Harper's Week-
ty.
THE LEE SHORE.
It was strange that all day he should
bave thought of her. Nos for years bad
she been more than a memory—vagrant,
lingeringly bittersweet. It was yearseven
since her presence—that like a spirit had
baunted bim so often—like a spirit was
laid. And then in the mides of a particn-
larly busy day, while he was turning in
his mind a question of some moment, her
face had risen before him vividly, recur.
rently.
Bat perhaps it was that very problem
which, instead of shotting out the ocou-
flioting influence, invited is, for Richard
Marsh wae hesitating on a step which
meant much—much of material gain, much
of moral joss; and each time some memory
of her had fl:sted with a seemingly perverse
incontinence across his mind, he had pauns-
ed to wonder what she would say if she
knew.
He could bave little doubs of what she
would say. Though their intimacy had
been 80 short-lived it bad sounded all of
the many obords to which they were muta-
ally attuned. They understood each other
in a world that neither had found sym-
pathetic. They were compatriots of tem-
perament meeting in exile,and each shared
conviotion was an artiole of faith to bind
them oloser in a common creed.
How far he had fallen from the grace of
their beliefs Richard Marsh might have
measured hy his mere consideration of this
soiling transaction. Is marked ves anoth-
ed step in his deterioration. Two years
ago he would bave shuddered at she idea;
five he would have laughed as it.
Aud her face, that he so often longed to
forget, came back and made him remember
—remember other things that were slip
ping down into the oreepiog tide : youth
and bope and belief. He threw his arm
across the desk and rested his head upon it
for a moment. What was the nse? There
were no ultimates in life. Ideals led eith-
er to the disappointment of failare or the
far keener disappointment of success. What
was the nse?
He bad met her years ago at a little fish-
ing village on the Maine coast where they
were both spending the Summer. Their
acquaintance had been of the briefest, their
friendship, carried on by a scattering flight
of letters, had lasted somewhat longer ;
while their love—his love at least—had
survived through the years
It was on a morning early in Ootober—
any of the East coast folk could supply the
year and date, for it was the morning of
the great gale. All night she storm had
raged and the dawn broke wild and gray,
with the wind driving sheets of rain against
the sodden earth and the cobbled gatter of
the steep-set street roaring like a waterfall.
The glimpse of the sea, visible through
the drawn skein of the storm, gave promise
of a fine spectacle for any who would ven.
tare ont; aud Richard, olad in fisherman's
oilskins and high boots, set his face against
the gale, picking his way down the slippery
rocks to the heach while the roar of the
surf grew louder every moment in his ears.
He paused at the head of the steps asa
farious gust snatohed his breath from him,
hesitating a« to whether he should go on,
He often thought of that in after years—if
only he had not gone on, how different his
whole life would have been; what a placid,
eventless conrse he might bave steered !
And then, looking down, he noticed
someene just helow him pressed hack under
the shelter of the rocky oliff, gazing ont
across the wilderness of leaping, driving
water. A second glance and he felt a thrill
—buat a thrill less of sarprise than one
vaguely premonitory : It was a girl.
Richard descended she steps, drawn,
strangely quiescent, by a feeling stranger
still—an almost unconscious conviction
that this scene was familiar, the stage.
setting of a predestined experience.
The son’wester was pulled down over
ber eyes, but a lock or two of heavy black
hair had escaped from it and was blown
flat against a cheek showing, even under
the sting of the wind, a miracalous trans.
parent whiteness. There was indeed a
rather wild quality in her beauty that
seemed singularly appropriate to the scene,
She might have been a nymph borne ashore
by the gale. her slim figure hidden beneath
the oloak of some poor fisher-lad she had
lured to his destruction.
Three feet away Richard had to raise his
voice to be heard. His smile gleamed and
he swept a hand toward the sea.
‘‘Isn’t it magnificent ?"’
She turned. meeting his gaze quite frank-
ly, and be noticed her eyes were of that
rare orystalline quality which, like the sea,
seems to reflect a color in barmony with
its surroundings. Now like the sea they
were green with a fleck of white, clear as
foam, in the slightly raised corners.
It was ail the more uncanny that his
words did not, seemingly, reach her. Her
brow slightly drawn, she corners of her
mouth drooped.
‘“Have they any ohance ?’’ she said.
Richard followed vaguely the direction
of her gaze. Not fifty feet before them the
waves were shattering their hissing, bigh-
raised crests against the long black reef
that drew its head up on the beach; its
orael jagged vertebrae stretching away,
covers, sreacherons, to the thin pencil of
the Gray Shoals Light.
a
ond that mptoons human de-
ay barely TT throngh the
clouds of spindrifs and the recurring sweep
of she rain, was a ship, a two-masted
schooner; heeled over till her deck, with
every incoming breaker pouring over is,
be bad wruog from ber the admission that
sbe loved bim.
And it was so thas they had made their
mistake—the fine idealism of youth, a too
sensitive honor, and the very sublimity of
their love keyed them to the point of sacri-
looked from where they were standing like | fice.
the terrace of a waterfall. Close pointed,
ber drenched sails quivered as though
with the fear of a living thing.
“Good God!" Richard muttered, “‘I
baduo’s seen thas.”
The girl was watching his face anx-
iously.
*‘Is there no chavoe #"’
He glanced hack as the little knot of
fishermen huddled in the boat boase door,
and shook his bead.
“Not much, I'm afraid.”
“Bat it's too awful to think we are just
to stand here and watch them drown. If
we could only do something.”
“‘It's a lee shore and the tide is ranning
in. With this sea there isn'ta craft on
the coast oonld reach them.’
He drew a step closer so her and they
stood thus, side by side, watching while
the long minuses dragged by and the little
vessel, with a nerve-tortaring rhythm, sank
from sight in the trough and struggled
high up on tbe crest.
She was making a gallans fight and slow-
ly —s0 slowly as occasionally to deceive the
watchers—she wae losing it. The storm
was driving her against the fangs of its
pitiless ally, and as this sertcinly grew in
their minds the man and the girl, with a
low-breathed question and assent, turned
aud moved over to the hoat house.
There were baif-a-dozen men and a flew
children gathered in the porch—the rapt
silence of the little ones giving to the scene
the moss solemn touch of all. Nota soul
of the group, though they had been there
for hours, shifted sheir gaze as Richard and
the girl joined them.
“Do you think they could ges in with
the dingy ?”’ Richard asked after a mo-
ment.
*‘No chance in God's world !"’ It was an
old man thas spoke. Peter Harley, bowed
and weather beaten ; his faded blue eyes
peering ous across she reel; his knotted old
bands working nervously, like a blind
creature groping its way.
“‘She’s a trawler, isn’s she ?"’
“Yes, the Martha M., young Jim
More 's.”’
“What ! he lives here ?"’
““That’s one of his chillen right there,”
the old man responded. ‘‘Ouly she don’t
know it’s her dad, pore little bit. Be care-
ful, doo’s speak the name. There ain't
no use in Martha knowin'—yet."
A little boy stole over to them.
*‘Hullo, Mies Katherine,”’ he said, ad-
dressing Richard's companion. She siip-
ped her arm abous him and stooped down.
“Bring listle Janey More over here,
won't you ?"’
Then she seated hersell on the bench,
and throwing hack the oilskins took the
little girl in ber arms.
The child was not more than five, but
she was horn of those who for generations
had gone down to the sea in ships, en-
trusting their lives day by day to the ever-
changing moods of its treacherous surface,
confronting open-eyed that yet greater
mystery of which it is the fisting symbol.
And so it seemed that Shere lurked in the
wide, innocent eyes some hall-ivstinotive
anderstanding of what it was that hashed
the voices of those about her and froze to
wanness the accustomed emile.
Mins Katherine pressed the little oreatare
close against her breast to hide, perhaps,
her own unchecked sears, and Richard,
looking down at them, was strangely
moved. Grief and pity, nataral emotions
springing from the fountains of being,
swept aside the horror which had been the
first feeling inspired by this sudden mees-
ing with one of the great primal orisis of
existence.
He stooped down aod whispered ten-
derly :
*‘Won't youn let me take her home? And
yoa—there is no use in your stayiog on.”
She shook her head, meeting his anxious
gaze with a grateful smile.
‘*No, I conldn’s leave now."
The ohild reached a hand sleepily up,
grasping his lapel, and in almost ancon-
sgions response he stooped and kissed her.
He vould feel the girl's warm breath on his
neok. He could almost hear the beating
of her heart in the hosom that rose and
fell so olowe to his cheek. He closed his
eyes while a strange, immeasurable hap-
piness surged over him. He forgot the
boat and its peril, forgot his sarroundings.
He was one of the sacred trinity—man,
woman and child. A« he straightened
himself the miracle which in that moment
had happened shone from his eyes.
And then, gazing hack across the water,
he saw that in that moment something else
had happened. The boat was vo longer
pointed inte the gale. It was flying before
it, orashed and broken, struggling in a
tangle of rigging like a frenzied fish ina
seine. But no one was looking at the ship;
all eyes were riveted on a dark speck toss-
ing between the mountainous hreakers. Jt
rose and fell, rose and fell. Then a great
wave engulfed it and for a full minute
evervone held his breath. Bat it reap-
peared, tossed skyward like a ohild’s ball.
Then once again it rose and fell, rose and
fell, rose—sheir anxious hearts conld al-
most deceive their straining vision. It had
risen before, surely now— ?
But the tumultuous green waste showed
no sign of the burden it had borne so
treacheronsly. Nothing but heaving water
and low- hung, swift-driving sound.
Riobard turned and lifted the child in
his arms.
“Come,” he said, ‘‘we will take her
home.”” And he drew the baud thas
Katherine had laid caressiogly on his bar-
den ander his arm, and without farther
word they went together up the path.
It was strange that all day he should
have thought of her. Not for years had
she been more than a memory; yet through-
out the busy hours her had olang
to him, tenacious, compelling, and now at
home she was still with him by his study
hearth in the firelight.
He had gone once more over she old,
familiar round, dwelling foodly on the
picture of that
when his thought touched the wound that,
unhealed, was ever throbbing back of his
consciousness
How he oherished the memory of those
few gray days that bad flitted by like
ghosts of the pageant Summer | A deserted
beach; storm-shuttered oottages; and the
boats hauled back from the reach of the
boldest wave. The social tocsin bad sum-
moned their kind back to the cities, bus
these two lingered on, drawn together by
what they had witnessed—this great and
awfal thing =o apast from their screened
existence.
Yet dwell as he might on those brief,
precious hours, Richard could not
tell their sum without coming to the end—
the struggle when he had fought her con-
science and his own, the weight of her
given word against the happiness of hoth ;
for though she had fought her battle, too,
Then had come his first meeting with
Henry.
“I want you to be friends,’ she said, as
their bands met and the man who was rob-
bing bim laugbed his jovial, full-fed laugh
and swore shey were friends aiready.
‘Katherine's pals are my pals—we shall
want to see a lot of you when we're mar-
ried.”
His voice bad had time to grow familiar
in the la of years, but the tone still
came to Richard, awakiog his distaste as
clearly as if freshly spoken.
He shrugged his shoulders impatiently,
as though be would shake off the long-
lingering im ion, aud rising from his
chair by the fire he took up agaiv she paper
which awaited only his signature to make
it a powerful weapon—insidious, deadly,
in the bands of a ruthless coterie.
Richard hesitated, his fingers on the cover
of the ink-well. He, toc, was on a lee
shore—he bad been fighting a long time
and slowly, inch by inch, losing the fighs.
He bad done rather well at first. There
bad been temptations resisted, but thas
was | past. And after all was is worth
while— it made him happier ?
A fresh current of air swung ajar the
door, rustling the papers on the desk and
drawing a dart of flame from the dying
embers. Richard Marsh faced about, his
head thrown back, filling his langs deep
ly; tor there had come to him, unmistak-
able in the moment of passing, the pungent
odor of salt marshes. .
And that she was horne to him on thas
breath of the ocean did not surprise him.
Her presence had heen so real to his other
senses, thas for the veil to be at last lifted
from his eyes seemed bat nataral. He had
indeed a strange conviction that he had
been expeoting this to happen.
Yet he did not approach or for the mo-
ment address her, but sank to his knees
apon the hearth-rog, then dropped back
against his obair; looking up, weaving ber
presence into a glorious make-believe,
“Katherine!”
‘‘Richard!"”” The word came faint and
clear as the echo of his own. Perhaps the
yearning tone was an echo also.
‘‘Richard, I’ve come to help you. Some-
thing is wrong."
‘*Beloved,” he breathed, ‘‘your coming
helps me. Only your failure to come is
wrong.”
‘You want me always, Richard, but to-
night you peed me.”
His voice sank to the faintest whisper.
“How did you know ?"’
*‘I heard you calling me. I heard it
above the sound of the surf. The tide and
the wind are setting in together, Richard,
and yon are on a lee shore.”
They were the words he himself had used
but a few minutes before. . . Perhaps. . .
But the mystery of it all was stealing into
him, mounting to his brain like the incense
of forbidden wine. While those fathomless
eyes, piercing the shadows that lay be-
tween them, burned their way into his
very soul, their color, the deep gray-blue
of a wintry sea, strangely visible through
the dusk.
“Tell me, Richard.”
“Tell you? Can yon do more than
watoh ?”’ he asked. ‘‘You bave your hus-
band, your boy ?"’
‘Yes, I can do more than watch.” The
low voice grew even lower. ‘I can ory to
you to fight on—hbecause I love you, Rich-
ard ”
He drew a sharp breath, but remained
mate while the silence, intense, absolute,
became a tension straining for the cleavage
of a word; giving to that word a momen-
tounsness that withheld its utterance.
‘*Riohard, you mustn’'s shipwreck—you
are the one strong man to whom I ean
point my boy. You hold my faith in his
futare—my faith in everything.”
He shook his head, smiling sadly.
*‘No, I am not a strong man, Katherine.
Would to God [ were even steadfast in an
evil course; better that than to he unstable
—=a shuffler., The soaring head and she
feet of clay. No, you must never point
your boy to me. Do you know that now,
at this moments, there is a paper lying on
that desk to which I think even Henry—
forgive me—would hesitate to pat his name.
I hesitated tonight, but I was going to sign
is tomorrow,at the office, when I had forced
myself to forges.”’
Her brows gathered as at the touch of
physical pain. She seemed to be striving
to remember and understand the words he
bad spoken. Then with her eyes still
clinging to his uptarned gaze, she bent
over the desk; her hands groping as though,
blind, she should know the unclean thing
by ita touch.
“This is it?"
He nodded.
She held is out to him. ‘‘Barn it.”
‘‘Burn it?’’ he repeated. ‘‘Will barn-
ing it bring gladness into my life? Or oan
this turning from youth's heroios take from
me the happiness I do not possess?’
The emotion iz her tense poise, in every
deliente contour of her face, pleaded with
m.
“Burn it, Riocbard,’” she repeated.
Bas he did not seem to hear her; he was
bent forward, listening.
‘‘What is that? Can you hear anything,
Katherine?
‘‘Is is the booming of the surf on the
reel,”’ she said.
Then on a sudden the panorama of that
tragio struggle— that dark vision so which
he seemed bound as to the wheel of fate
was sweeping him along. There again was
the low-hung, driving soud ; the hurling tu-
mals of water; the long white line of she
reef. And the seal of doom was on all.
It bad reourred to him a thousand times,
but there was a difference now. He was no
longer watohing from the shore. He was in
a [rail boat, sw aging between sky and sea
in the abyss of eternity. Great mountains,
SDOW-0a| , reared themselves far up
beside him, sending down orushing ava-
lanches of water upon the Staggering ves-
sel; while he, Richard Marsh, olinging to a
wrenching teller shaft, faced death open-
first meeting, shrinking | eyed
yed.
‘‘Katherine, Katherine,’ he oried.
“I am losing you forever. Not without
me, you were mine, and now’ —her voice
seemed strangling in her throat—*‘I am
slipping away from you, down, down into
the very aephinn
A long me must have elapsed before he
struggled back from that unknown, mystery
baunted void to the pain of consciousness.
All around him was dark and still and be
lay there, his colder senses striving with the
vividness of thas last impression; she orush-
ed paper held Yikutivvingly above the fire ;
the Wotpeptaty glow as, , it flatter-
ed up in the drafs like a spirit at the tor-
ment; and then her last words, as she laid
her hand upon his head : “I know now
why I came.”
He rose unsteadily to his feet.
“Dreams—never more than the evanes.
cent fantasy of a moment,” he marmured.
He struck a light. After nine. Per-
haps there in thas otber house she was kiss-
ing the children good night, while for him
—only dreams.
He hesitated a moment, then walked
over to the telephone.
“Yes, one eight-thnee-four . .. This is
Mr. Marsh . . . Oh, is shat you, Henry?. ..
I ran across Larkins the other day snd he
said you'd gone into L. P. R. pretty heavy.
I thought I'd better give you the tip to
realize wow, there's a new deal on ...
Don’t mention it, Henry . .. Yes, I am
rather a hermit ... How is Katherine?
What, really? I've been dozing, too; only
jost woke up, but then I'm old enough to
be rather bored by mv own company. Give
her my regards . . . Yes, I'm coming to see
how my godebild’s grown . . . Good-hye.”’
He turned away smiling. *“‘Dreams—
dreams,’ bus there was a sweetness in the
thought now, for pernaps she had shared
them. He would make himself believe
that she had.
‘And it may bave heen a message after
all,” he said, ‘as beacon-light by which I
may steer.”
He walked over to the desk. If he
waited his mood would have time to change.
His matter-of-fact seuses might hesitate at
the destraction.
He lifted she paper-weighs trom a pile of
documents.
‘‘Fanuy, it was right on top,’’ he said.
It was not there now. He brought him-
self round sharply and dzopped on his knees
before the grate.
The fire was almost ont. A few fast-dy-
ing embers glowed through the fused cicders
above like the fading afterglow of jnst such
a clood-hung sunset as he had so often
watched across the rook-bound waters of
his dear East Coast.
At the back of the grate the blackened,
feathery ashes of a piece of paper stirred
under his breath.—By Gay Bolton, in the
Smart Set.
The Comforts of a Smow House.
The experience of those who tent in she
arctic during the colder winter mouths is
to be summarized ahout as follows :
When the tent has been pitched the tem-
perature within it is some fifteen or twenty
degrees higher than outside, or thirty de-
grees if it is fifty degrees in the open ; one
is damp and warm from the strenuous ex-
ercise of the day, bat soon becomes cold
and shivers ; one crawls into his sleeping-
bag aod makes entries in the diary olamsi-
ly with one’s mittens on ; the heat from
one’s body forms boar frost on everything
in the tent, and congeals in the sleeping-
bag, so shat it becomes stiff and heavy with
ice during the day’s travel when it Ireezes,
and soaking wet when one gets into it as
night and thaws it ont ; this in tarn wets
one’s clothing, and the trousers and coat
freeze stiff as eole-leather when one breaks
camp in the morning; she swenty-four
hours are a round of wretobedness, and the
ice crusted tens and ioy sleepiug-bage be-
come a heavy load for the sled.
When ove follows Eskimo methods the
conditions are markedly different. On any
treeless open (unless it be perhaps during
the firsts month of winter) an area of com-
pactly drifted snow is easily found ; the
snow knives (of bone or iron, according to
circumstances) are brought out and she
surface of the drifs is divided into blocks of
domino shape, say fourteen by thirty inches
and four inches thick; these are then
placed on edge and end to end in a circle
the size of the desired ground area of the
dome-shaped hut ; then, on the principles
of architecture that apply to domes, wheth-
er made of stone or snow, the beehive
house is completed. Two men can in an
hour build a house large enough for ei-hs
to sleep in. When the house is completed
a doorway is out in its side vear the
ground, skios are spread over the floor, one
brushes himself as clear of snow as possi-
ble and crawle inside.
The oil lamps are shen lis, and the honse
is soon brought to a temperature consider-
ably above the freezing point ; for snow is
one of the best known non-conduotors of
heat, and the intense cold of the outside
penetrates the walls only toa very slight
degree. But when the house gets warm the
inner side of the snow dome begins to
thaw, and the water formed is sucked up
into the snow, blotter fashion ; when shis
water penetrates far enough into the snow
to meet the cold from the outside it freezes
and your snow house is tarved into an ice
dome so strong that a polar bear can crawl
over it without danger of breaking
through.
When once inside the house the Eskimos
strip naked to the waist and havg their
clothes todry on pegs in the wall. On
some journeys we had sheet-iron stoves
(procared from whalers in former years),
which we installed in the snow houses,
and in which we built roaring fires.
One is well placed to take comfort in the
ingenuity of man overcoming a harsh en-
vironment when, sitting snug, warm and
lightly clad, one listens to an arctio bliz-
zard whining helplessly over the ice vault
that two hours before was an oval snow-
bank. Ilooged for a dressiug-gown and
slippers, but one cannot burden his sled
with such luxaries. There was no cold to
make the hands numb in writing diary,
no frost to congeal on the hed-clothing and
make them wet, none of the night's dis-
comforts and the morrow’s forebodings
that have been the stock in trade of the
makers of arotic books. And when we
broke camp in the morning wedid not
hurden the sled with an ice-stiffened hun-
dred-pound tens, but stuck in our belt the
ten-ounce snow-knife, our potential roof
for the coming night.—[V. Stefansson, in
Harper's Magazine.
~——There seems to be a popular impres-
sion, according so Good He t
an oriental rag will wear forever, no mat-
ter what sort of treatment it receives, but
this is one of those mistakes which are
often discovered too late to be rectified.
In the East, where they are worn smooth
by the gliding of bare feet, their chances
for immortality are great, but in America
boot-heels are their constant and insidious
enemies. However, their lives may be
prolonged by ekilful attention. If the
overcasting on the edge is gone or gi
way, a thread of wool or yarn wil
supply new ev og and give new re-
Ita or weft thread on the
back is broken, it
Id not be left to sip
ous, taking the knots with it, but shoul
have a linen thread tied to is ‘at one end,
be woven over and under as far as the break
extends, and then be tied at the other. If
knots come out they should be replaced at
onoe with the aid of a coarse, old-fashioned
worsted needle. If the selvage wears
orooked, it should be ravelled out and over-
cast, saving the surplus wool for other re-
pairs. All these are valuable preventive
measures. A good Oriental rang ie a work
of art, and it should be treated with the
reverence which it deserves.
S———————————————
——Russians never eat rabbits, as they
say they nest with rate,nor will they tonoh
snails or turtles, which are found in great
Crows, Crows, Crows.
Some American boys, and girls living in
the cities have scarcely ever seen a crow,
and those living in the country are used to
seeing them only in she fields and woods
where they scratch up the planted corn, or
pull ous the first shoots thas appear, and
where the young ones make a fearful olas-
ter during the time before shey are able to
leave the ness. Bot in Burma, while there
are not many crows in the fields, the cities
are full of them, and any boy or girl who
was ball as bad as a Barman crow wouold
be putin jail for life. They live up to
the doctrine of total depravity to the very
best of their ability, which means that they
areas bad as they can be, aud are glad of
itand don’t want to be any hetter. There
aresome boys who at certain times in
their lives would like to have yon believe
that of themselves, bat down deep in their
hearts they would like to be kind and
honest if they shough: they could be.
The reason there are 50 many crows in
Borma is shat the uvative people will not
kill them because it is against the law of
their religion to take life in any form.
This is not 80 mach because they are kind-
hearted hat because they believe she crow
may in some former existence have been a
man who bas now become a orow hecause
of bis sinfulness, and 1t would bring great
punishment upon them if they interfered
with bis fate and put an end to crow exis-
tence before his time.
The crow is a most persistens and skill-
ful thief. He will dodge io through a win-
dow and soatch victuals off the table while
it is being set for breakfast. The Burmese
women go to the bazaar for eatables every
day and carry them home on trays on their
beads, but if each didn’t keep her tray cov-
ered the crows would soon empty is. Ove
day I saw a little naked Burman boy about
two aud a half years old going along the
street munching ‘‘pinzo,’’ a sors of oake
made of shell fish and onions, ete. A orow
kept hopping along io front of him just
out of reach. A noise behind him caught
the lad’s attention for an instant and im-
mediately the crow snatched his ‘‘piazo”
from bis hand and made off with it, and
seemed to ohuckle to himself as be gulped
it down on she roof of a neighboring house.
The other evening I saw a flock of crows
flapping noisily about the finial on the top
of a house. No sooner would one highs on
the point than another would fly against
and knock him off. The game seemed to
be to see which could maintain his position
the longest, hut none seemed to makes
Yory bigu score.
ey very often light on the backs of
cattle and buffaloes grazing in she fields,
and I bave seen one light on the back of a
valture that was busy picking at a dead
dog in the stream. I presume the flies on
the cattle and she vermin on she vultures
are the attraction. I once saw a crow try
to pick off a huge leech that had fastened
itself on a bullock, but I guess he thought
he bad struck too tough a proposition that
time, for the leech seemed sougher than
India rubber.
The best that can be said of the crow is
that he helps much with the scavenging of
a tropical city, but what a scamp be is.—
By Rev. B. M. Jones.
a —
Plus, Needles, Hooks and Eyes.
According to the censas of 1905, forty-
six establishments made a specialty of
manufactaring one or more varieties of
needles, pins hooks aud eyes. These es-
stablishments reported a capital of $5,331,-
939, 3,965 wage earuers, wages amounting
to $1,595 923 aod products valued at $4,-
750,589. Almost equal numbers of men
and women were engaged in this industry,
the numbers being 1,862 and 1,860 respeo-
tively.
In addition a number of factories pro-
duced guantities of these articles withous
specializing on them. The total oantput
amounuted to 1,766,073 gross of needles,
valued at $1,518,411, aud pins valued at
$2,632,656, a total value of $4,151,067 for
both classes of produoots.
The leading variety of needles manu-
factured was sewing machine needles with
a prodnotion of 776,542 gross, valued at
$600,046. Latch koisting machine needles
were next in rank in importance, the 310,-
846 grose of such needles being valued at
$422,655. More spring knitting machine
needles (332,788 gross) were manufactured
but their value was coosiderably less
($118,223).
Large quantities of each variety of pins
were prod uced—132,632,232 gross of com-
mon or toilet pins, 2,550,650 gross of safety
pins, and 1,704,900 gross of hairpins. The
values of thess varieties were $1,129,006,
$820,386, and $109,245 respectively.
All other produots, including hooks and
eyes, were valued at $1,542,028. —S8cientific
American.
The Japanese Growing Taller,
A Scotch physician and ethnologist, Dr.
Munro, resident in Yokohama, says that
the stature of Japanese young people of hoth
sexes is increasing, and that this increase
has become more noticeable since they have
become acoustomed to use benches and
chairs, instead of squatting on the floor, as
was formerly she custom, in public schools.
While not expressing any positive opinion
on the subject himself, he says that many
able men in Japan are inclined to believe
that the Japanese stature will be further in-
oreased with more general abandonment of
the squatting babis. It is by no means im-
possible that there is ome truth in this view
and that attention to posture in early life
may tend to a better physical development,
The Japanese people bave shown them-
selves not lacking in physical vigor and en-
darance, and with a larger frame they may
that | be able to exceed their former records.
There are, of course, many other factors in-
floencing stature; the question of sabsist-
ence, the exhaustion of wars, and even the
nature of the soil all may bave their infla-
ence on the growth of a people, aside from
the effects of racial peculiarities.— Medical
Guess.
The following questions are to be ans-
wered by the abbreviations of the names of
the states:
What is the most religious state?
What is the state of exclamation?
Best state in haying time?
Best state to core the sick?
Best state in a flood?
The most maidenly state?
Name the numerical state?
The father of states?
Bw state for nipas? de "
te represented by a girl’s name’
Good state for the untidy? .
State named in the vocal scale?
The most egotistical state?
The state thas is the sickest?
The most military state?
~— [Children’s Magazine.
~The original regiment of dragoons is
quantities all over the country.
44 so bave been organized in England in
681.
Only a Game.
Never say, “It is only a game.’’ Games
are valuable for many reasons, and the per-
son who scores them wonld often be bene-
fited in mind and body if she would only
learn to play them.
If you go in for exercise, it is better to
take it in the form of a game, particularly
an outdoor one, as you will be muoh more
apt to keep it up.
Besides the help to your health, you are
gaining certain essential mental and moral
qualities,
The advantages of golf over mere walk-
ingisa case in point. One could walk
indefinitely without acquiring the control
of temper, the keen judgment and precision
of eye and band thas is necessary to he a
good golfer.
No one, with the best intentions in the
world, could ever in regulation exercises,
however violent, bring hody, mind an
disposition into combined action as they
are when matched in a skilled game of
tennis.
Indoor games are even less to be dis-
regarded for their effect on the mental and
moral pose.
The boy or girl who has been trained to
game playing from youth will be more
alert, decisive and make quicker decisions
than the child whose taste has not run to-
ward this form of amusement.
Game players also learn to be good
losers, and rarely are touchy when things
do not go their way. They likewise get a
horror of not ‘playing fair,”” as even a
suspicion of cheating at any form of game
is not tolerated by companions.
Games that brush op she wite and
strengthen the memory are particularly to
be commended. Certain ones, such as
anthors, geographical games, and other
literary contests are adopted by many
advanced teachers for impressing necessary
facts on small children.
In one successful school part of Friday
afternoon is always set apart for Pa ing
games of all kinde, and teachers who have
watched the effect declare their pupils learn
more history, geography and literature
from that hour once a week than they do
from the most laborious teaching.
It is not uncommon to hear said of a
woman, “She has no card sense.”” This
may seem a slight lack to the opponent of
cards, but it is a real defeot, nos only for
the unfortunate partoer who must play
with the person so afflicted, bus for she
woman herself,
Card-sense usualy means good judgment,
the power to make deductions quickly,
prompeuce of decision, and the faculty of
ooking forward so what others may or
may not do; any or all of which faculties
are invaluable to the possessor in every
business of life.
One quite noted teacher declared recent-
ly that she would like tosee whist tanght
in every school as part of the curriculum,
for she mental discipline it gave.
If you do not like games, of course it is
not necessary $0 martyrize yourself, but
do not make the mistake of discouraging
children from playing them. If in no other
way they will benefis socially, for the
woman who is unskilled in every form of
game, both indoor and out, often finde her
society is not in demand where she would
much like to he included, when her more
adaptable friends are invited.
Our Own Country.
There was a mighty wise little woman I
once heard of who had a way of inventing
many odd devices to inspire her children
with a fervens love of their country. When
she laid out the little garden around her
house there were shady retreats filled with
wild acacias and mouvtain laurel. “We
must have them because they are Awmeri-
can flowers,” rhe said A hedge of Indian
corn shat iu the slope like a phalanx of
stately sentinels with tossing plumes, ‘‘he-
cauase it is so heantiful, and i» an American
plant,” she exclaimed. In their vacations
the boys were taken to see the finest scene-
ry ou the continent, from the Hudeon
River to the Grand Canon of the Colorado,
and they were told: “This is yours; this
belongs to your home. God has given it to
Do you wonder that when these boys, as
men, climed the Alps or came into the val-
leys of Italy, they did not feel their beauty
less, but more, because they thought,
‘‘We, too, have a fair land, as fair as
this!”’
It was, too,always the bahis of this little
family to hoist the flag over the roof on all
festivale of the year,not only on the Fourth
of July, but on sheir own birthdays, their
mother’s wedding day, and all family an-
niversaries.
“Your country and vou are one,” the
mother would say. ‘‘You canuot rejoice
yourself and leave her out.”
She taught her smallest child this rever-
ence for America. When she piuyed ths
evening songs for them to sing around the
piano, the last song sbe played, the last
notes they carried to their beds with them
were the notes of “The led Ban-
ner.”” And vever,they were taught, no mat-
ter where they were, must they hear that
song unless they stood with their caps and
bats off. The little mother went to her last
sleep years ago, and sons, now sane, intel.
ligent men, are not blind to the faults of
their country. But America is their mother.
They had been ht to love her. They
vever will disgrace her, depend upon that.
They have that patriotism which is one of
the strongest forces to uplift a human soul.
— Ladies’ Home Journal.
King Edward's Almasgiving.
The annual distribution of the royal
bounty, in the form of Maundy money, bas
juet been made with picturesque oceremo-
nies in Westminster Abbey. Sixty-seven
old men and an equal number of women
were the recipients.
Every year for several hundreds of vears
Maundy money bas been distributed by
the English sovereign to as many old men
and women, separately, as there are years
to his age. Thus on the last occasion of
Queen Victoria’s benevolence eighty-one
persons of either sex received this alms.
Al rocession marched along the
Abbey r, including the Lord High Al-
mouner, the Dean, the ohildren of the Chap-
el Royal, the Abbey choir, and the Royal
Almonry, the of the Almoonry
and his assistant, girt with towels, as well
as the Yeomen of the Guard.
Each man received, in all, $25, and each
Sowa $22.50. a sams luciuged the
andy goins, sixty-seven pence in epe-
cially Fs money, twopenny, three
penny and fourpenny pieces. These coins
were eagerly sought after by collectors,
and bought up at many times their value.
“. Three other bounties had been previous-
i given. They were the minor bounty
the discretionary bounty, and the roya
gate alms, and they were doled out at the
Royal Almonry to one thousand aged and
deserving subjects of the king.—[ Harper's
Weekly.