Bomar ato.
Bellefonte, Pa., September 18, 1908.
A ————
AUTUMN.
The bees in the meadow are merrily hum miug
The crickets chirp shrill on the lea;
The woodpecker down in the p. ure is drum-
ming
A tune oa the old beech tree;
I'll tell you a tale of the days that are coming;
The swallows have told it to me,
O bonny green trees! you are talking together
As if you could never grow old;
You whisper and laugh in the sunshiny weath*
er,
And all your green garlands unfold;
Do you know there'sa king coming over the
heather
To deck you in crimson and gold?
O birds in the branches so merrily swaying,
You sing your glad songs in the sun.
Do you hear what the wise little swallows are
saying?
“The beautiful summer is done!
Away while the blustering winds are delaying;
'Tis time that our fight was begun,
O blithe little swallows, the meadows of clover, {
Will blossom again for the bee;
You'll skim their green billows like gulls float-
ting over.
The white-crested caps of the sea;
For summer will bring back each gay little
rover
Again in the meadows and me,
—In Songs from the Nest,
HIS WIFE.
He was a shabby, ilttle, middle-aged
man—one of that innumerable host whose
dull, irressolute faces and lax, lethargic
bodies pathetically puilish them as fail-
ures. And the unkemptness of his rusty,
gray bair, the dinginess of bis coarse skin,
the uncleanness of his blunt finger-tips,
the stains on his threadbare coat lapels,
and the grimy glaze on his linen, all were
symptoms expressing poignantly his apa-
thetic acquiescence in that destiny. In
that struggle for which fate had prepared
him, in mind and spirit, 0 inefficiently he
had been long since well beaten into a pat-
tern for eubmi-sion and drudgery. Now,
at last, he was irrevocably a poor machine,
none too accurate even for small perform-
ances, doing whatever task was set for him
by those who, because they were every-
thing that he was not, controlled his mean
and trifling fortunes.
All day long he worked in a big room
fall of desks and active young men, where
the clerical business of a great factory was
done. His tasks were calculated to re-
quire little of the spirit of enterprise
aud alertness which characterized this
place. In an atmosphere of eagerness and
sharpuess, he moved about his petty em-
ployments quite uvaffected by is. me-
times, npon indiscriminating strangers, his
dullness imposed as calmness, his lethargy
as deliberation, his bulging biow—the pe-
cualiarly salient, deceptive brow of so many
futile souls—as an evidence of capability
suppressed. To such casnal, myopic ob-
servers he seemed to be a man who had not
been given a proper chance—a man inap-
propriately employed. For he ruled forms,
filed nuimportant papers, distributed or
stamped letters, kept the desks in order,
id whatever the time of the keen, young
clerks was too valuable to be wasted on.
A hoy could bave doue neatly all that he
did, aod, by the deadly accaracy of his
enployers’ judgment, he received nearly
us little as a hoy's wages,
In the evening, when all the olerks had
#oue and he bad put the big office to rights,
he wonld begiu inevitably to think of his
po bome-going and, consequently, of his
wife.
His wife ! How ofteu he bad expressed
to himself iu incoherent terms, at such mo-
ments as that, what a travesty on proper
reward for all bis long days’ effort were
those home comiugs of his to her !
It was part of his little tragedy that, as
though at his making he had been hail in-
tended for better uses, he should be able
vaguely to appreciate the values of what
other people bad and he was missing.
What shonid be, even among the people of
whose e:pecial class he was, the legitimate
expectation at such an hour, with home in
view? Simple, warm coziness, without a
doubt ; a soothing sense of sungness engen-
dered of pleasant, trauquil companionship
in cheerful setting Bus what, in place of
that, had he to anticipate ?
He always knew exactly how he would
find his wife : As the stove in the kitchen
of their gloomy little flat, her face blotched
and shining from the heat of frying food,
her thin hair pirioglog down around her
coarse, oreased neck, her shapeless figure
wrapped in a faded and stained working
dress. And he always anticipated even
the expression with which she would re-
oeive him at his home coming ; an expres-
sion of recognition without welcome, signi.
fying an almost sullen acceptance of his
presence—as though, in her opinion, there
was in bim some constant, sobtle canse for
resentment and hostilisy.
What could be the sointion of this fur.
tively hostile riddle which was so aps to
appear in his wife's eyes as soon as she
taroed them on him ?
He had too little intaition or capacity
for seeing even himself clearly to find the
snewer. But he could understand that
something intaugible was, nowadays, al-
ways between them—something that she,
who bad so evidently raised it up herself,
seemed always with carious, wicked injus-
tice to be blaming him for.
Whatever, unconssionsly or not, she
meant by this, how blighting an effect it
bad on him, coming home with timorouns
aspirations toward peace and tranquility,
always to be so greeted ! That maddening
look of hers—sometimes he almost fixed it
as a sors of tired contempt—would fill him
with a weak, hewildering rage. The strange
inequity of it! He would ges swiftly a de-
sire to retaliate for it upon the ove person
in the world ov whom be could feel per-
feotly safe in retaliating. Then, casting
abons for means of retaliation, he would
most easily find them jost in seeing her as
she was, with olear, spiteful eyes. He
would see her as she was after all the yepre
they bad lived together in absolute, gross
intimacy, without any appreciation of the
saving quality of carefully preserved ideals,
having destroyed every illusion. There
would be no little repulsive detail in her
conduct or appearance that he would not
remember aud ohserve, that he would not
mark vindietively. And his reprisal wonld
come when she would see—and she oconld
not belp seeing—written on his face, his
com ensian of her stale state of degen:
eration and his repuvnavce at it. Is was
through his expressed contempt for her ex.
isting self, aged, grown slatternly and ug-
ly, become something that he never
bargained for, that he would strike back at
her. It was not by ingenious understand-
ing, but juss instinctively thas be bad come
across this weapon for revenge. If he bad
known how terrible a ny was |
so, oh air surcharg-
tipathy provocation,
they would begin their evening.
pig RL
se n one . ae
said is, as he put on his worn-out coat and
bat to leave the empty, dasky office and
go bome. “That's married life!” Uo.
consciously he made those three inade-
glass words, by the accent of vague bewil-
erment with which he uttered them, ex-
quisitely pathetic
As he was going along the hall on his
way ous, some one called to him from the
private office, the open door of which he
a PO cing everything else in
a sudden thrill of uoreasoning, unreasona-
ble fear. For he was, at best, always se-
oretly apprehensive of that private office
or, rather, of those in it. And now, as
this unusual call for him, presaging he
could not guess what act of theirs, for an
instant be was really frightened. He felt
the acute fright of a poor and defenseless
person whose unstable, trivial fortunes are
suddenly menaced. that they
bad all at once found kim in some way in-
efficient or too old for their full profit!
| Suppose that they were actually going to
| turn him out, aghast, to walk the streets !
Hat in band, be shuffled to the open
| door, having on his [sce that wide-eyed,
| flaccid expression of humility and anxiety
| which aging, ineps independents take into
the presence of powerfal employers.
i In the bright private office there was but
ope person ; the owner of the factory. He
| was sitting tipped back in his chair beside
a large, glistening desk, smoking, with the
air of a man who bas finished satisfactorily
| bis sort of dag’s work. His calm face in-
{ dicated, for the employee in the doorway,
strange qualities such as uovarying sell
possession, self-confidence, and competen-
cy. [Ionumerable details which made ap
his immacnlate appearance hinted at an ex-
traordinary, felicitous existence amid other
sarroundings of nnguessed luxury and at.
tractiveness. Expressing, by every visible
charaoteristic, the idea of unlimited posses-
sion, ability, and power, he was the sort of
being for one quite without possessions, or
ability, or power even over himself, to be
properly afraid of. When he began to
speak, the other held his breath, prepared
by bis extravagant and senseless trepida-
tion for any dire announcement.
The employee was told thas there was an
errand to be done at once which had been
forgotten until every one else bad gone. It
related to some repairs being made in his
employer's house fiom the factory. There
were some measurements, necessary for
the completion of the work, to be got be-
fore morning. He was rapidly and clearly
instructed in their natare and was told to
make them ou his way home that evening,
and to give them to a foreman the first
thing next day. He received the address
and mouey for car fare. In another mo-
went be funud himself in the hall.
As be stumbled down the factory steps
and set off on his errand, his nervous reac-
tion from fear affected him peculiarly. At
once, half realizing the absurdity and the
shame of his emotion, he began to hate the
man before whom he had been forced to
feel it. He bated that calm, rich man for
those intangible qualities in contemplating
which he bad fels 20 pitiably helpless. He
bated him for everything differentiating
which he had—even for his persoval ap-
pearance, for his physical immacnlateness
and fineness. He bated him as the embod-
iment of bis class ; of that class which, as
he bad always implicitly believed, from a
position of luxurious ease inexorably
drives the poor and defenseless bither and
thither in deep worn ruts of toil, to pile
up its illimitable profits.
These thoughts of his seemed, as he went |
on bi- way, to attract toward him for bis |
having Jelt the rough factory streets bebind,
through clangorous, feverish zones of bus-
ivess and pleasure mingled, he came into
the particular regions of the rich.
There, in an evening mist made lumin-
ous by glittering lamps and the brilliant
facades of wonderful hotels and shops, he
moved like a man in a strange, superior
land, bewildered, oppressed by a sense of
his own miserable insignificance. That
was, perhaps, the worst of his condition ;
that he was not permitted to view these
things with the nvappreciating, obildlike
wonder which is the unsus blessing
of #0 many of the lowly. The poor metal
of his brain oddly contamned of better stoff
jo enough for bis dejection ; so that even
rom his place he could look ap, balf-com-
prebendingly, at this strange, inaccessible
existence aud envy bitterly. So, the clas
ter of extravagant sraffio tangled in the
broad avenue, the dazing glimpses, caught
through carriage windows, of beautifully
perfect women, his occasional contact with
the tide of well clothed, alien beings that
flowed about him, the very crisp air,
scented by winter flowers aud perfumes,
filled him with a despondent sense of pri
vation. Aud, at his despondency, there
smoldered in bim a hot envy for ali this
heartless, cruel, greedy race wto whose
especial country he was intruding. How
bitter a commentary ou injustice be was
among them—beaten alter long years’
futile struggling for just a listle of what
they bad never wanted for and would
never relinquish, in the smallest part, for
such as be. Ah, the ghastly, wicked in-
humanity of the conditions that allowed
it!
He passed from the refalgent section of
that avenae into the quieter, darker parts.
Here were silent stretches of massive and
barmonious dwelling-houses, solemnly
grand, suggesting discreetly for him, just
by the illaminated richness to their wide
doorways and drawn window-cartains, un-
told magoificence within, Among these he
foand the house of his employer. He
rang the bell at the servants’ door and
presently was admitted.
A waid, leading him back through a
narrow hall, passed him on to a man ser.
vant whom-—at first sight of bis tall, cor-
rectly clothed figure—the intrader took for
a geotieman, This imposing domestic
heard the other's errand with av air of
reloctance and disfavor aod then told him
coldly. as though he were responsible for
beiuu there, that he bad chosen a very bad
time. “How long will yon be ?'' the ser-
vant iugaired bruskly. “‘At any rate, yon
will bave to out itshort, There's a dinver
party to night and you must ges out of here
before any one arrives.’ He preceded the
other qarckly through a door and into the
main pars of the house.
At ounce the stranger stepped, with a
thrill of amazement, into a region of ex-
traordinary and stately beauty. He stared
about him with no deficite comprehension
of the suggestive details in those decora-
tions ; whe extensive, solt-oolored ruoge
shining ou the stone floor, the massive,
ancient fountain-basin in the midst of the
ball, the few great paintings on the wooden
walls, or she bulky, green-bronze group of
consummately mote figures at the base
2
§
g
g
§
I
7
fH}
:
blankly shining picture
he set to work at his measure-
an-
easiness, as though is formed an environ-
ment ip which he bad no right—in which,
in fact, by his presence he was effecting
something reprehensible.
With his task nearly finished and escape
at band, all at once in the silence he heard
hebind bim a soft, suggestive rustling and
thao a litsle, low, feminine exclamation of
surprise. Tarniog involuntarily, he saw
in the doerway, looking at him, a lady.
She was a beautiful person, tall, slender,
and delicately blond. She was dressed for
the evening in a Jow-necked gown whose
peculiar, frosty rosiness so harmonized with
herself that, as perhaps was intended, it
seemed something aimoss less alien thao a |
dress—nearly like a subsequently created
part of her. Standing at the doorway in
the soft light, she was something so com-
plete, harmonious, and perfect, she was so
exceptional and unprecedented a sight that,
for the shabby intruder, she bad quite the
quality of an apparition.
Here, for the first time in his life, this
man was face to face with a woman of thas
other, alien world. Here he was seeing
her in the intimate setting of her own |
proper place, in this heantifal attire which,
too, to his bumble, unsophisticated senses,
seemed distressingly intimate, Now, final
ly, be could see, with all the appreciation
ery
less a bis most work in little, fatile
.| nate difference—that +
- | dismal oorrohoration of this, how every-
of which his mind was capable, to what
environment, to what associations, fate al-
lowed those other men to come home. i
When this wonderfal lady learned the |
reason for his intrusion she asked, in a
voice pregnant for her hearer with such |
unexampled softuess and refinement shat
it added to his confusion : |
‘Are you nearly through? You muss |
barry. This is a very inopportune time ; |
my hazband, perbaps, forgot—"'' |
The man folded his role and notes with |
baste and picked his rusty hat
floor.
“I aw all through, lady,” he answered, |
buskily, and stood waiting tiwidly for her |
to step from the doorway. At once her |
slight expression of irritation faded ; she |
turned indifferently and left the room with |
a slow, barely undulating step.
‘‘See him out,’ she said over ber snowy |
shoulder to the servant. ‘‘Open the library |
windows before you go down.” !
The ivtruder, following into the ball, |
came into air faintly perfumed with some
strange, sweet, very sabtle odor, which |
lingered where she had heen. As be de. |
scended the stairs he hegan to remember, |
in little flashes, amazing details of ber thas |
his mind bad been able, half-anconscions. |
ly, to grasp. He remembered the exquisite
smoothness and color of her cheeks and |
throzt, the white beauty of her shoulders |
and breast that he bad in some way com- |
prehended without daring to look at di- |
rectly. He remembered the splendor of |
her slim, ring-laden fingers. He remem- |
bered the the illusion of yontbfuiness in |
ber figure as she left the room, trailing ber |
soft, clinging, frostily-rosy skirts, undualat- |
ing juss perceptibly. He began to remem. |
ber all ber half-apprehendable perfection |
which actnally made ber seem to him,
weighed by his inadequate measures of ex- |
perience, hardly a woman. i
The cold air struck his forehead and |
bind him. He looked np and about with
the manner of a man snddenly waking oat |
of nurealities. Slowly he set oat for home. |
As he weut, at once inevitably there oc-
curred to him a comparison between the |
place he was leaving and that to which he |
was now going ; between the woman be |
bad just seen and the one he wounld see
presently. Two images stood snddenly |
before him in cruel contrast: the images |
of his employer's wife and of his own. !
The difference in that comparison, as vat
as iu every other between his coudition
and his employer's, affected him terribly
by what he would bave termed its injas-
tice. Both of them, he reflected, after all
just men, the one had everything that
signified contentment and enjoyment in
prosperity, the other had nothing. Both
of them bushands, the ove a wile
in whom was embodie! that evident per-
fection of womaubood hy which the other
was aotoally bewildered. And this shabby
mau, realizing that for some one else inti-
mate life with such a woman was an actnal-
ity, was going home to the woman allotted
to him—hisown wife. He would find her
at the stove in the kitchen of their dingy
little flat, in a murk of greasy smoke, di-
sheveled, red-faced, coarse, nowadays re-
pulsive even to him, ready to greet him
with her old look of mean, perpetual hostil-
ity. At that moment, his whole weak
vatare crying ous against the cruelty of is
all, how he loathed her, for her part among
the instroments of his punishment !
Panishment ! Bat what had he done to
deserve his punishment ?
That was, be thought then, the worst of
it; there was no justice atail in a world
where such conditions were possible. By
the only dootrine which he knew—the
illogical doctrine which teaches the poor
how to envy and to bate illogically—this
was the intolerable thing : that the rich
should be able to take everything,and such
as he, striving pathetically for so little,
nothing. How vividly that villainous
wrong stood out hefore his eyes tonight,on
his realizing all the tremendous difference
between bis employer's fortuues and his
own, between their homes, their wives,
everything—even themselves,
' He stopped in the street as this thought
seized him. Yes, between themselves, too,
He was nos thinking then of their differ-
ences of clothing and cleavliness, of edn-
cation and refinement. He was thinking
of something beyond these things, setting
bim and his employer nnalterably far apart
—-something which he was trying to iden-
tify. . His mind, uunadapted for
any consecutive reasoning, eeized clumsily
on his new idea and began to grapple with
is.
He remembered his employer as be had
seen him iv his private office, still as his
post after every ove else bad gone—surely
a poor fignre from which to draw an ex.
ample of idleness rewarded with criminal
prodigality. His was a face fashioned in a
superior mold. Power and ability and
perfect self-reliance were written on it too
clearly ever to have replaced other sorts of
lineaments eraced. Those qualities, 80 ex-
pressed, had surely not grown up with that
| a cracking voice, striving to express for her
man's good fortune. Surely he had been
born with them. Sarely they had urged
was; they bad been
ble for that, had done that for bim.
Mua! lat, shroagh a rift in she dark
spiri# in their faces, there could be nothing
in commoa between them and sach as this
man. Their sort must gain every-
ways forever and gain nothing. Thas in-
ragedy of fate’s
bandicap of brain and spirit—
that was the answer.
Walking on slowly, he remembered, in
thing he bad ever undertaken, in all his
lite, bad failed. He remembered how
everything with which he bad ever had
personally to do bad been infected by his
own perpetual failure. Is has been so al-
ways, with all bis associations, with the
woman he bad brought iuto hie lite—
Ah! What was he seeing now? He
was seeing his wife, ina form for a long
time strange to bim and vearly . forgotten.
He was sceiug her as she had been in thas
brief, almost unbelievable period marked
by their wedding day.
He remembered : she had been young
and fresh; her mind had then heen largely
still anformed ; her character had been still
Our Ex-Presidents.
There isa widespread impression that
ed, | Cleveland lived longe- shan any other pres-
ident after leaving the White House. It
is true that he lived longerafser retirement
3545 any other executive since the Civil
War, with the exception of Hayes, bas the
records of the lives and deaths of the Amer-
ican presidents show thas Mr. Cleveland
did not come near the record of having
lived in retirement she longest of the ex-
ecatives.
That credit belongs so the first John Ad-
ams, who left the chief! magistracy in
March, 1801, and did vot die until July 4,
1826, at Quincy, Mass., general debility
being the cause. He attained the ripe old
age ofl 90 years, baving lived five years
longer thau the pext oldest president,
James Madison, who reached 85. Jobn
Adams, therefore, lived 25 years and four
months after leaving the presidency. He
bad seen she three donble-term administra-
tious of Jefferson, Madison aud Monroe
follow his own and before his death he saw
his son, Jobn Quincy Adams, enter the
White House. This is a record which
probably will never be equaled.
Next to Jobn Adams the president to
live longer after leaving the White House
was Martin Van Buren, who went ont in
untrained. She had been the plastic ma-
terial from which—how terrible to realize i
it—almost anything might have heen fash-
dragging her down with bim throngh the
gloomy paths of his puerile, profitless
career. If she had began then with heed-
less, youthfal certainty of the future, with
vague, hut trustful, young optimism, how
long had it taken to show her the mistake
of that, to wear such tenuous things out, to |
give her. in place of them, all their aon-
titheses ? With him she bad lost them so
quickly, so long ago, that ouly now, with
a quick pang, bad be remembered shem.
What was she now ? She had grown too
early middle-aged and ugly under worry, |
slovenly and gross under hardship, quera-
lous and bitter under misfortune. She was
what be had made her.
He had made ker so. He had made her |
what, but a little while ago, he bad loath- |
ed her for being. i
His wife! That long-forgotten mental
picture of ber stood before him : the pic-
ture of ber as she had been at the begin-
ving when, under the protection of such a
man as bis employer, might she not have |
approached in large degree, through ease |
from the | and prosperity and cultivation, the image | the Civil War, did nos
| of such a woman as his employer's wife ? | Janoary 17, 1893. He,
If that was so, ab, the mortal injury
all these years he had been doing !
Finally, all his numbing thoughts ar- |
ranged, he came miserably into thas fa-
miliar region, crowded, strident, dirty, and
that
| malodorous, where he lived. He reached
his tepement and climbed the soiled,
littered stairs, through air rank with odors |
of cooking food and of ancleanly living. |
He reached his own door and, pushing it
slowly open, went in.
But when he saw ber, exactly as he bad |
pictnred her in that contrast with his em- |
ployer’s wife, with every unlovely detail |
of her appearance oruelly evident, he sop. |
ped in the doorway, staring at her wretch. |
| edly. He was staring at all that he had |
done.
She rose from the kitchen chair in which |
she bad heen waiting for bim, glanced |
Awiftly at the clock, and then tarned to |
hima race fall of irritable, indignant |
inquiry. |
ut he stood still aud mate, struck so |
by the look that one—a look of real relief, |
for one instant illaminating her face as be, |
appearing at last, had quieted her appre. |
heosion at his long lateness. The old, |
familiar greeting he bad expected —and he
had analyzed it now, and knew what bit.
ter, hopeless, and just thoughts must he
behind it. But shat first, unconscious
ti tl ihl t the | neck, hot and moist from his late con. | 100k which he bad fonod to-night in place |
conditions which he was batiog. For now, | (ation. The door was slammed shat be. | Of that lash. of unguessed sooivude—
melted all his numb apprehension. It
drove him, stumbling forward to her with
a face tremulous, chaotic ; with his fingers
involuntarily reaching out for herin a
gesture which fora lovg time be bad for-
He took her in his arms ; he
smothered ber Jtrogeling amazement with
a sudden, weak convulsion of dry sobs. In
his piercing realization, he cried :
“My wife. . . . My poor wife. . .."”
Could it have been merely a contagion of
emotion which leaped from him to ravage
her susceptible, feminine nature ? Peculiar-
ly her month, in a ewift, sympathetic
response, was suddenly contorted as
though from pain. And then, going all
limp, sheclung to him, her coarse bands
clutching bis threadbare shoulders, her un-
kempt bair pressed inst his obeek.
Their sobs, their bungling motions, were
incoherent. Perhaps even their agitation
was to them, just then, inexplicable,
roused they knew not how aod shaking
them they knew not to what par Bat
at hat sodden mutual crambliing into
emotion, ail at once miraculously all their
long bitterness and all their otael, reorimi-
native thonghts were gone. All in an
instant those unexpected, unfamiliar tears
ewept away the sullen barriers between
them—the angry sense of rights and
wion-e, the wanton injaries and ghastly
procesces of retaliation. And perbaps,
alter all, gifted then divinely with a gold-
en intuition, each saw withouta word
needed to explain, all of the others tragedy
standing in brimming eyes, and finally
understood. —By Stephen French Wistman,
in Collier's.
Wenther=Prophets.
If you go out in the morning and find
the ants busily engaged in clearing ont
their nests aud dragging the sand and bits
of earth to the surface, yon may be sure,
no matter how cloudy it is thas there will |
be no rain that day, and possibly for sev-
eral days. If, however, in the afternoon
you see the ants horrying back to their
nests, and the sentinels bunting up the
stragglers and urging them to go' home,
youn may be certain that there will be rain
that atternoon or night. How the ants
koow, we bave no idea, bat they do know
t.
—— ‘What's the matter with that tall
man over there?”’ whispered the manager
of the big department store.
‘He's absent-minded,” replied the floor-
walker.
‘‘Absent-minded?”’
“Yes, he says his wile sent him down
here to get rome article that’s fall of holes
and he can’t remember whether itisa
porous plaster or a peekaboo waist,”
—— During a leoture at one of the schools
on the subject ‘‘Ventilation and Architec-
ture,” the temperature of the room rose so
a very high pitoh.
‘And now we will tarn to Greece,” said
the lecturer. :
“So we will,” vaid one of the audience,
wiping his brow, ‘‘uanless you open some
March, 1841 and lived until July 24, 1862,
when he passed away at Lindenwold, New
| York, on asthmatic catarrh, at the age of
ioned ! |
Aud he, all their life together. had been |
79. He lived 21 years, four months and
20 days after giving up the first position in
| the land. After stepping out of the presi.
dential chair he lived to see it oconpied
successively by Harreion, Tyler, Polk,
Taylor, Filmore, Pierce, Buchanan and
Lincoln. He is the only man as ex-presi-
dent who witnessed the election of eight of
his sucoessors.
The ehort-lived president after bis retire-
ment was Polk, who vacated the office in
Mazch, 1849, and lived only until June
15 following, or just three months and 11
days after becoming a private citizen. The
uext shortest-lived was Chester A Arthur,
who gave way to Cleveland on March 4,
1835, and lived just 1 year, 8 months and
13 days.
Cleveland went out of the White House
March 4, 1897, aod lived, therefore, 11
years, 3 months aod 20 days in retirement.
Benjamin Harrison lived 8 years and 9
days, having died at Indianapolis, March
13, 1901, immediately after the second
inauguration of MoKioley. Hayes, who
lived longer than any other president who
had retired from the White House since
pass away until
therefore, lived 11
years, 10 months and 13 days after relin-
quishiug the office.
Grant died at Mount McGregor July 23,
1885, 8 years, 4 months and 19 days after
his successor was inaugurated. —‘Lancas- |
ter Inquirer."
Great Find in Wyoming.
rm
New light upon the prehistoric inhabi-
tants of the United States, a« well as sar-
prising evidence of a northerly habitation
by tribes which alwaye have been regarded
as confined to the southern edge of the
United States, is expected from a discovery
just made in northeastern Wyoming by
Harlan I. Smith, assistants ourator of an-
thropology of the Ameyican Museum of
Nataral History, says the New York
Herald.
In a letter to a friend here, Professor
Smith announces that he bas found and
partly opened a quarry, five aores in ex-
tent, fall of evidences of its use as a supply
source for the manufacture of flint weapons
and implements by the long-forgotten in-
bahitants of North America.
Iu addition to the unasoal size of this
quarry, its discovery is remarkable in lo-
cation. Many hundreds of miles to the
south of it is the nearest similar quarry, |
and students of the American ethnology
never have found evidences of #0 northerly
a habitant of the tribes to which the imple-
ments found hy Professor Smith are as
signed. He bas shipped to the muesnm a
large quantity of the various articles of
flint be bas dug out of the quarry and their
arrival is eagerly awaited.
One wiieeast of the janction of Old
Woman Creek and Hat Creek is the loca-
tion of the quarry found by Professor
Smith, who writes from Arvada, a point
many miles distant from his camp. He ie
enthusiastic over bis find, bat gives few de-
tails, evidently realizing that the mere
fact of wuoh a discovery in that country
will attract intense general interest among
scientists. Large hammers of stone, used
to quarry out the flint, were found in
quantities, be eays, and many of the imple-
ments fashioned from the flint also.
Though the greater part of this continznt
has been raked over hy the various explor-
ing parties of the United States Geological
Sarvey, which would be gnick to take note
of sach a quarry, and similar searches have
heen made by parties sent after fossils and
ethnological specimens by various educa-
tional and scientific institutions, it so hap-
pens that the northeastern portion of
Wyoming never had been explored for such
parposes until last month.
Cowardly Women.
A great many times a woman is regard-
ed as cowardly hecanse she fears to he
alone at night, starts at unusoal noises and
faints if startled or shocked. It’s not cow-
ardice but sickness. There is a nervous
condition which in ite extreme sensitive-
ness renders life a daily torment, If she
door slams, “it seems as if the sound goes
right through me,” cries the startled suf-
ferer. Behind the nervous condition will
generally be found a diseased condition of
the delicate womanly organs The func-
tions are irregular, or there may be an en-
feebling drain. Inflammation may be
scorching or ulceration eating into the del-
icate parts. Soch conditions are promptly
relieved and permanently cured by the nse
of Dr. Pierce's Favorite Prescription. It
heals the diseases which cause nervonsness,
backache, headache, ete. It works won-
ders for nervous women. ‘‘Favorite Pre-
scription’’ containn no aleohol, and is abso-
lately free from opium, cocaine and all
other narcotics,
———————————
Birds as Weather Prophets.
It birds in general peck at their feathers,
wash them«elves and fly to their nests ex-
pect rain. Panots aod canaries dress
their feathers and are wakefa! the evening
before a storm. If she peacock ories when
he goes to roost it is a sign of rain. Long
and loud singing of robbins iv the morning
denotes rain. :
—— ‘Divorce is almost as easy an ac-
wou plishment an marriage.’
‘Yes. You will observe that only a
transportation of two letters is needed to
make ‘nnited’ ‘untied.’
~—*‘Ah,’’ remarked the great musician
as be walk:d the floor with bis howling
offspring in his arms, *‘it is much easier to
compose a grand opera than a wakefal
of the windows.”
baby 1"?
Pewter,
Antique pewter is on the high road to
popularity, notwithstanding the fact thas
as a commodity it has listtle intrinsic
worth. Yes this quality makes it valuable
to the collector, for, formerly being of
small value, it had little care, and while
much pewter shaply wore out with bard
usage, mavy hundreds of nde were
melted for ballets in the olutionary
war, and many more pounds were thrown
out for the junkman to carry away. Thus
pewter today is comparatively rare.
This metal-mixture of colonial days
stands alone. It possesses a sheen peculiar
to itself, and its unpretentiousness is its
most valuable recommendation,
Nearly every domestic utensil is repre-
sented in pewter, incloding jugs, flagons,
spoons, forks, plates, tankards, teapots,
mustard pots, snuff hoxes, money boxes,
ladles, coffee urns, tobacco jars, buckles,
sugar bowls, trays, cups, and porringers.
Historically, anique pewter is valuable
aod interesting, as certainly the larger
share of it has seen the “‘light of other
days.” There is a considerable amouns of
‘faked’ antique, but these pieces are com-
paratively rare, as the process of manafac-
tare is long and the demand small.
Occasionally pewter is found bearing the
trademarks of the maker—a castle ou a
rock, a rose, a thistle and crown, a tree,
bird, or bell,but practically there are no
hallmarks. One must learn by experience
what pieces are really old and what are
spurions.
We are told that the knowledge of the
manufacture of this ware goes back to the
tenth century, and that is has been made
in China, Japan, France, Spain, Germany,
Switzerland, and Eogland. In America
it is the eighteenth century pewter which
is most prized, as it was this outpot that
was especially connected with Colonial his-
tory. Not only was pewter used for do-
mestio service, but during these pioneer
times the communion wine was passed in
heavy taukards. Such pieces are greatly
valued as heirlooms by old New Eogland
families.
The care of pewter is something that re-
quires both patience and persistence, as not
as first can ove get the desired sheen or
glow of its metals. Some allow pewter to
retain its dail appearance, bus then one is
missing the beautiful luster that is its chief
charra. Rubbing by band is the only way
to bring out the power of pewter, and this
is only obtained after long and continued
manipulation.—[G. H. H., in New York
Evening Post.
Rais and Leprosy,
—
Whether it is possible for rats to trans
mit leprosy to haman beings is a question
which, says a San Francisco special in the
New York Herald, has come up pointedly
here, followiug a report made by Dr. Geo.
McCoy, past assistant surgeon of the
Marine Hospital Service, to Surgeon Gen-
eral Wyman. A peculiar disease similar
to leprosy bas been discovered among the
ats in San Francisco, and experts are now
considering whether it could be transmitted
to persons. The reports of Dr. McCoy say:
‘‘Soon after being assigned to the exter-
mination of rats in San Francisco I was in-
formed hy the city bacteriologist that he
bad observed the leprosy-like disease in
one or two instances. He also showed me
grossa and microscopic epecimens of the
lesions.
*‘I therefore, hegan to look for the eon-
dition and to keep notes on its ocourrence.
‘‘Daring the period covered by this re.
port 13.500 rats were examined and 20
cases of the disease observed. It is believe
ed, however, that the condition is more
frequent than these fignres indicate, as all
of the cases observed have heen made in
fall grown, lage rats, and the lesions very
well marked.
‘*48 to the relation of the disease to lep-
rosy in man, Dr. W. R. Brinckerhoff, di-
rector of the leprosv investigation station
at Molokai, Hawaii, states in an article
which appeared in the transactions of the
fifteenth annnal meeting of the Hawaiian
Territorial Medical Society, ae follows :
‘* “The question immediately arises as to
whether this disease of the rat may not be
human leprosy occurring in that animal.
Ot course, with the data now available, it
is impossible to give a categorical answer
to this question, but the geographical dis-
tribution of the disease speaks against an
affirmative reply. It seems more probahle
that rat leprosy is to human leprosy as is
hovine or avian tuberculosis to the human
disease, rather than that it is like plague
or glanders, a disease common to and trans-
missible between two species.’
The White Birch.
The white birch of our northern woods
seems to hold within its veins more of the
elixir and auvcient Pagandom than “oy
other of our impulsive, untended wood-
growths. Its waving elegance, its white
smoothness of limb, the misty inefficiency
of its veil of green, even its shy preference
for untrodden earth and uvappropriated
billsides, gives it a half fleeting suggestion
of the fabled days when nymph and fann
dannced with the shadows of the song-
baunted forest. ’
Coleridge calls the white birch *‘the lady
of the woods,”” hut beyond the poetical
suggestion of sex and award of beauty
given by such a phrase from such a source,
there is a hint in the young white biron-
tree of something far apart from the present
of simple, perfect tree-life. One is haunt-
ed by visions of slender nymphhood always
young aud always beautiful, dancing joy-
ously through rainbow-colored days and
sleeping lightly through mists of star-
threaded darkness, waiting for the golden
call of the sunbeams to begin again the
rhythmic waltz of motion. One has only to
sit long enough with a birch-tree io the
bewilderment of summer hours, to hear
and see and feel its relation to the dreams
which long ago peoples have dreamed —its
relation to a life withoat well-made law,
lived as the birds live, with their only code
written within their natures by the hand
which made them.— [Candace Wheeler, in
the Atlantic.
Life is a ceaseless struggle hetween the
bad and the good, and it must be alwa
remembered that the good ir inherently
stronger tha the bad. All Nature is on
the side of the good and whenever a man
| pute himself in line with Nature to fight
| the bad within or without him, he is prac-
, tically invincible. The struggle of health
| 1% a struggle between blood and bad.
| Dr. Pierce's Golden Medical Discovery has
helped thousands to health because is
works with Nature. It cores diseases by
snpplying good hiood in place of bad, the
aly ay in which permanent cures can be
ect
~—Mr. Bansby—*'If that young man’s
coming here to see yon every day in the
week, yon bad better give him a hint to
come after supper.’’
Miss Bunshy—*'I don’t think its neo.
essary, pa. That's what he comes after.”