Beran. Belletonte, Pa., April 24, 1914. LIFE. Life istoo brief Between the budding and the falling leaf, Between the seedtime and the golden sheaf, For hate and spite, ‘We have no time for malice and for greed. Therefor with love make beautiful the deed, Fast speeds the night. Life is too swift Between the blossom and the white snow’s drift, Between the silence and the lark’s uplift, For bitter words. In kindness and in gentleness our speech Must carry messages of hope and reach The sweetest chords. Life is too great Between the infant’s and the man’s estate, Between the clashing of earth’s strife and fate, For petty things. Lo, we shall yet who creep with cumbered feet, Walk glorious over heaven's golden street Or soar on wings! —Margaret E. Sangster. THE BURYING OF LIL. “You, there! You! Take off your sky- piece, you saddle-colored—" And Cheese Charley struck the braided hat from the Mexican’s head with the butt-end of his stick. A few desultory chuckles greeted this, but were quickly drowned in the rhyth- mic clinking of many spurs. The men shuffling to line themselves, hat in hand, in two rows on either edge of the side- walk. Between the lines walked a comely middle aged woman, leading a child. She bowed to the men and smiled; it was a sweet, comfortable smile. The lines moved together as she passed on. No one spoke of her. Mode, standing beneath the awning of the Stag Saloon, bared his head as did the others. He had staged it to Yuma from the Picacho mines that morning, and in Yuma he followed suit. Much ex- perience in the Arizona deserts teaches wisdom. Swept in with the guffawing surge of miners and loungers, a bit later, he stood at the Stag bar. Outside on the sidewalk two Mexicans jabbered in broken American. One held a dusty sombrero. “No sabe why man knock off hat,” he said, carefully dusting the desecrated braiding. “Damn fool, you! Don’t you sabe ain’t but few good women in town? When they go by, off go all hat!” Inside, against the bar, Cheese Charley was talking. He stopped abruptly; then, “Aye God! a stranger! Where you come from, Skinny?” Mode indolently tapped the ashes from his little French cigarette. ‘‘Mines,’”’ he replied, with a slow motion of his head to the north. “Picacho?” Lengthy’s bass tones were like the chug of bricks dropped slowly into a deep well. . “So!” with a quick puff of smoke. Bill dropped a five on the bar. “What for you, Mode?” “Three S., with about three-fourth absinthe.” Sliding the drink on the bar, the bar- tender mumbled. “First man, ’cept one, ever ordered Three S. here. He was a good old buck-nun. His name vas Snitz- ner.” The green, close-set eyes sparkled with memories of that same priest, Snitz- ner. “Have a young ieeberg, Clara!” Lengthy was the first to see the slender woman entering the saloon door. “Aw Lengthy, quit your sputtering; Clara’s going to have a drink witk her old friend Cheese.” “I'll be hanged if she is. Clara, me girl, trot your little self right down here.” Bill signalled with a gracious hand. “What ’ll you have?” The woman folded her slender, perfect- ly kept hands on the polished bar. “Shasta water.” The dregs of the swig in Cheese Charley’s hands spilled on his flannel Vie “Shasta water for Clara? Well, “No you won’t. You don’t know it, but Lil’s mighty sick—" The men at the bar were suddenly silent; and the players in the rear of the saloon turned their cards face down on the table, with their hands over them. “Yes,” in the monotonous voice of the woman, “she is not as well as she was yesterday—perhaps she'll die.” The frowsled, blondined head went down on the bar and the Shasta water tipped and fell to the floor. “There now—there now, Clara, me girl.” “Bill dropped his big hand on her sooulder. “There—there.” “Only the good die,” came from the tables. “Shut up! Or I'll knock every tooth you've got in your head down your neck!” Cheese’s heavy stick dented the brass rail. “Lil’s a pretty good girl—" “Indeed she is!” The newcomer was a handsome girl, a little gawky; “Aws- strich” they called her. “Small bottle, please, bartender.” Clara raised her head. The tears had made little gulleys in the rouge of her cheeks. “Grace said that Lil”’—from the far end of the bar Mode was looking at her with half-closed eyes; she met them; a little tremor shook her faultless hands; “Grace said that—” Her eyes opened wide as Mode yet watched her—her face grayed; and her red lips—too red —quiv- ered piteously. “Yes Grace said,” the woman called Ostrich went on, “that Lil coughed all the night, doubling up in bed, and clutching that little locket with both her hands; and that maybe she won’t last the day.” “But she’s better now. I've just been up to take her some fruit, so I do know, truly.” The speaker was coming in through the back door, leading from the staircase; a slender little thing, possess- ing no name of her own, being called just “Jac’s Sweetheart.” “I've got some new songs—Jac sent them from Tucson. Come on.” Stepping over the rail of her piano platform, she unrolled her music. Her voice was very sweet and high, rising above the tobacco smoke and the murmuring conversation of the tables. After the second song she stopped. “Pretty, ain’t it?” she said, fanning her- self quickly with her handkerchief. “Old Poetry—he was a gay duck, a la! Old Poetry composed it for me—for me—hear that? It was last—" Mode still leaned by the bar. Clara, her fascinated eyes on his face, walked slowly over to him. “How—I don’t un- derstand—" Unconsciously her voice had lowered a little. In her heart, un- known, unfelt, was a struggling little ; just twice that, my son.” goodness: today, in an instant, it had | One of the Mexicans threw down his quivered into white flame. Her lowered words sparkled in the unaccustomed bril- liance of it. A strange subtlety of hatred, of loath- ing, of contempt, flashed in the man’s lowered eyes. Then, quietly, he raised his head and looked at her slowly, silent- ly; and, not even removing the cigarette from between his lips, he shrugged his shoulders and went out through the swinging doors. II “Well, damn it, anyway!” Bill mopped his hot forehead. Clara answered never a word, but poised her foot, with its high French heel, carefully on the brass rail of her piano platform. “I swear I’ve been to every sky-pilot around.” “Did you talk to Waters about it?” Clara’s voice sounded thin and far away. “Yes; he said—” Bill looked at her; his eyes shifted uneasily to a spot on the wall near him. “Yes. He said he would, but back East somewheres he’s got a wife; and—" The woman's eyes suddenly looked dry and glazed. “And Borodo?” “Borodo—Borodo! He’s a damn fool! Said he was a Catholic, and she was a Protestant, else she wasn’t nothing at all.” Mode, entering, caught Clara’s eyes for a second. She moved a little; her per- fect, pointed hands touched her yellow hair restlessly. He looked at her again carelessly, and her foot slipped slowly from the rail. “Clara, if I was a preacher, I'd try and say something over poor Lil—skin me if I wouldn’t. I hate to see her buried with- out a thing done or said.” “Something will be done; something must be done.” The tears trembled in her strained, glittering eyes. She swung around on her piano stool and leaned her head on her hands. “Let me think; let me—" Bill, hot and tired, kept one hand on the rail. “Bill—Bill, will you do it?” “Do it? Do it? Yes, Clara, me girl, I'll try it.” “Bill, you know Snitzner?” “He’s the one, the Catholics—'’ “Yes; he used to be the Father here— hes ip Silver Bell. You have got to get im!” Bill stared at her. Her face looked very old, and her frowsled hair seemed dead and dry. “Bill, you wouldn’t refuse me?” He straightened quickly. He forgot all about the-hundred miles to be made on horseback, and the fact that the preacher might not come. “No, Clara, me girl—I wouldn’t. You've been—" “Bill, I'd like to kiss you! I would. But somehow today—" “Oh, that—good-by, me lass; that’s all right. Good-by!” . A tall man, waiting indolently, slouch- ed up to her, “Give us a rag, gal; give us a rag.” A white fury blazed into her face. She turned on him. She would have given her life to strike him. “Give us a rag! Give us a rag! Fool—not a piano in a house is to be touched today! Fool— don’t you know Lil’s dead?” Under her blazing wrath the man grin- ned sheepishly, awkwardly—drew up his | be shoulders with a shifting uncertainty, and slouched slowly back, feeling in an unintelligent way almost ashamed. In the rear of the saloon, Jac’s Sweet- heart was leaning across a table, her lit- tle pointed face very serious. “But, Grace, my God, ain’t it awful!’’ “Awful. It’s the most awful thing in the world.” “How many men have they asked, Grace?” She said the words hesitatingly. “Nearly every man in town I think, fess,” Their voices had dropped very ow. “Did Lengthy—" “Yes. I asked Lengthy myself. He looked awfully miserable, awfully. But he drew himself up slow and said, ‘Grace, I'd doit if I could. I would. But up in the north of the Territory there's a little gal—and I'm going to marry her one of these fine days. She's good, Gracie—she wouldn’t want me to be pall-bearer at, at—?"” . Jac’s Sweetheart seemed to shrink with- in herself, and her lips were blue. “Oh, Grace—Grace! we're going to die like this—too.” Her words trailed off into a hopeless moan. Grace’s long, thin hands clenched. “Please God”—her voice trembling pite- ously—“please God, I’m going to throw myself into the river—some day when I get old and they won’t have me any more —then—then—all the men that drink with me and kiss me—won’t refuse to help carry my coffin—they won’t need to—" Jac’s Sweetheart looked a long time into the quivering face before her; then her little pointed face dropped helplessly into the circle of her arms. She was afraid of the river—she would die-_ah, merciful God, that she had not been born —that she could have died before this misery. She sobbed brokenly. The woman called Grace leaned over and touched her shoulder. “Dear—" A gawky, handsome woman came in the rear door noisily; she walked over and sat down clumsily between the two women. “Girls”—the strident ring of her words carried assurance—*“girls, I've been think- ing—" “But did you know—did you know that not a man in town will help carry Lil’s coffin? Poor old Lil—" But listen. We'll carry “Yes. Down the street we’ll march—" A light, half fear and half hope, stole into the face of Jac’s Sweetheart; and then she slipped softly over to Clara. “Clara, come over here.” And the four of them sat close togeth- er at the table. They whispered to one another very softly; and the little one called Jac’s Sweetheart held tightly press- ed between her dry hands the warm, moist palm of Grace. Their faces were strangely dead and white, save for the red rouge spots; and an humbleness, not without an awe, hovered in the slow glances that passed between them. An hour later they walked quietly through the saloon to the swinging doors; and not a man lounging at the bar utter- ed a word as they passed. “Sorry, damn sorry, Sky-pilot, that I had to bring you right on out here. You ain’t had a bit o’ rest.” The old priest turned slowly. “That is all right, Bill.” “Yes, I know. But damme, I know that after riding all this blessed day on that stiff old horse you are tired—" “If I rode one and a-haif days, you rode An shovel. It’s night.” Bill twisted his hat awkwardly. “Some- how, thought Clara would like to have the grave dug up here. Down through there, in the green trees, it looks cool, and you can see the long white road.” “Who is that coming down the road now, Bili?” _ Bill’s hands doubled up swiftly. “You ain’t ashamed o’ being here? You ain't sorry you came?” Snitzner laid his hand on the younger man’s arm re-assuringly. . Lengthy and Cheese stumbled on some loosened clods of earth. “Aw, Lengthy —" Bill swung around to face them. He felt a queer moisture in hiseyes. He felt a sudden desire to shriek aloud or do something womanish. “Hi, padre! Thought we would walk out and—" “Aw, truth is, Lil was a good gal. Wanted to buy a pair of white gloves and help tote herout.” Cheese struck at a clod with his stick and pulled his hat a little more over his eyes as he turned. Something big and choking in Bill's throat gave away. “I—I—” Cheese shifted nervously. “Aw, devil take my hide if there ain’t Skinny!” An evident relief was in his words. “The darn blithering idiot. The blasted fool has got a little black box—" “Damme if it ain't a fiddle!” Mode neared them slowly, and even more slowly placed the violin-box on the warm, new earth. He lighted a cigarette and poised it aloft between his fingers. “So. I stopped in the saloon; and the bartender will soon come here. This he said when he learned that the Padre Snitzner was here.” And delicately blow- ing the ashes from the cigarette, he placed it again between his lips. . “See it! Good God!” cried Cheese suddenly. Bill's hand, pointing down the white road, quivered, and the faces of the five men grew humble. Winding slowly up the road to the still little cem- etery they came, a long, zigzag proces- sion. Leading it were two women with blazing torches held over their heads. Then followed the long black coffin, borne on six women’s black-clad shoulders. Clara and the woman called Ostrich were the two that led, staggering a little under the weight of the heavy box. They were women unaccustomed to burdens made only for the strength of men. In the centre trudged two more; and bearing the end of the black-draped coffin were Jac’s Sweetheart and Grace, saying never a word and walking softly in the thick yellow dust. Behind them, a broken line of scattered carriages trailed into the dusk, all filled with women—women with blondined hair and coarsened features; women with thick red lips and swollen eyes; and, every once in a while, hud- dled close into the corner of a dark car- riage, was seen some pitiful little slip of a girl, her eyes wide vith the terror of it all; again, a great, coarsened woman with a face bloated and brutal. Yet today, somehow, there was a difference among them; an intangible difference. The coarse, roughened hair was straggled back into more unpretentious coiffure; the rouge-eaten cheeks were sallow and a vague fear was in their white faces. Fear, and yet a great shame and pity— pity for themselves and the one who had en. : It was an humbled group awaiting them. The black-garbed priest stood at the head of the new grave, his head bared; aud on either side of him were Bill and Lengthy, hats drawn low on their fore- heads. Cheese Charley was at the foot of the grave. The pall-bearers knelt in the fresh- turned earth and carefully put the coffin on the ropes. The priest raised his hands over the black box swaying over the grave. “Our Father—” Into the stillness, and as from a great distance, soft music stole. It sobbed be- neath the service, a plaintive, pleading C “Grave is dug. We go. ry. The long box was lowered. The music was sweet with pardon, with love, with universal, tender forgiveness for all those who sin. The two leaders of the procession stood over the grave, one at the head and one at the foot, each holding high above her head a blazing torch. The other women pressed closer, sobbing softly. They were pitiful in their grief, these shuddering, blain-faced women; pitiful in their utter hopeless- ness. . One would reach out a trembling hand to touch another; one would whim- per aloud. Children beside a mother’s coffin have felt the same things that stir- red in these women’s hearts, and have told it in the gestures of their helpless, childish hands. And always beneath the ceremony drifted the music. The service over, the priest stood swaying a little with fatigue, his tremb- ling hand pressed against his lips. The pall-bearers, tired and sick, reach- ed for the shovels. But, thrusting them aside, Bill grabbed a spade. Lengthy reached for the other, and under the quivering, wriggling light o the sputter- ing torches the two of them filled the dark grave. Some tears dropped on Bill's hands. “Poor Lil—" Lengthy, dazed and embarrassed, stop- ped to brush his hand across his eyes. “She—" And at the head they drove a small cross. The music sobbed in the distance; then softly it died away into the night. Silence; then a few loosened clods roll- ed noisily down the sides of the new grave. The carriages were leaving slowly. The two torch-bearers stamped out the lights. “She died with that locket ir: her hands—held close.” “Whose locket?” “Didn’t you know? Didn’t you know?” --listlessly; “it was his pictur’--the man that made her what she was”---and they passed on into the crowd. Clara and the tall woman called Ostrich were the last to go. They were stand- ing, silent, close beside the damp mound. “I'm so tired---so tired of it all,” Clara moaned, helplessly, and staggered, her hands against her closed eyes. Mode, in the shadow of the trees, clos- ing his violin-box, heard the words. He waited a moment, walked slowly toward her---stopped and looked at her---looked at her standing fhere ith her hand bow- ; he step orward; stop, again, his hands unsteady. Then he neared her and touched her: “If you will per- mit, I will assist you. So.” Slowly, in the white moonlight, the three walked from the silent cemetery. —By Jane Anderson, in Harper's Weekly. ——Everybody likes the best they can get for the money. That's the reason nearly every one is having his name Placa upon the WATCHMAN subscription is ; FROM INDIA. By One on Medical Duty in that Far Eastern Country. A Marriage of India Servants, Who Live on $6.00 2 Month. The Glare and Wind and Heat of Summer. Visit to Poor 0ld Eng- lish Woman, Etc. JHANSI, MARCH 18th, 1913. Dear Home Folk: This morning our household is being entertained by a marriage. One of the vants, your nurses or your teachers wish to get married they tell you about it and, instead of relatives doing it, you go to work and write to all the missionary folk you know, telling them about the man or woman and if they know of any one that will do in the least, they send his picture, and you then make all the arrangements, until, as this morning, the man arrives and they are driven off to the church to be married. No courting, no “spooning,” but everything nicely arranged and in ship-shape order for them. After they are married they keep on working just as they did before and in- stead of a man living on ten rupees, his wife will be earning eight, and eighteen rupees is considered a large amount for them to have here—(three rupees are equal to one dollar.) As this is monthly wages you can readily see that living for servants is rather low; six dollars a month for two people to live and dress on. Of course, the dressing requires the largest amount as none have any furni- ture, and their food costs so very little. Not one single soul in America would ever think they could even exist in the houses in which these people live. The warm weather with its high winds and blinding glare has arrived and al- though as yet we are not needing “pun- kahs” very soon they will have to be put into place, and the moveable things on your desk will be weighted to prevent them from flying away. Already when doors and windows are open things go hustling across your face, like live things. This wind is something we never have at home and so is much more unusual to me. One gets up in the morning and not a breath of air is stir- ring and so it stays until about ten or eleven o'clock, when suddenly doors be- begin to bang, windows are flung violent- ly open, pictures float gracefully down from the walls, curtains flop and stand straight out from their poles, and any light thing is liable to sudden departure into outside space did your wire doors stand open. Outside blinding clouds of dust greet you wherever you turn, and your trees and the plants on the veran- da’s are tossed and twisted to shreds. This will keep up until four or five o'clock, then usually quiets down, but of course, occasionally it comes up again at ten o'clock at night and blows all night, so that you must be a good sleeper or stay indoors. The roses go on blooming, the gardens are full of hollyhocks, nasturtiums, sweet peas, pansies, etc. But it surely is a fight and a big one, to force things to grow in this yellow clay soil. The poor “bisthis” have more than their share of work, since water is the big factor in India’s productiveness. For the past two days we have had two people from New York as our guests, Mrs. A. and her husband. Mrs. A. is a vice-president on the Woman’s Union Missionary Board and is seeing all the work done here and elsewhere. We have displayed and talked and put the “best foot forward” in the usual manner and I have to grin for again, the wide world over, there is a “good foot” and when any inspection is due India might as well be in Pennsylvania or Massachusetts. Missionary representatives and Legisla- tive committees are all the same, so they g0 away with a good impression of the “doin’s” here. ! Should you like to hear of a call I made on a poor old English woman two days ago? She was born in India seven- ty years ago and has had a hard, hard life. Her husband died in seventy-five, leaving her with three small children in this crude, heathen Jhansi. In order to keep body and soul going she started a little truck patch, and raised those three children, and she is by far the best of them all. It was late in the evening when we started and although the “mali” directed us just how to go, it took us some time to find the place as it is right in the midst of native life, but we found her sitting in a chair awaiting us. She was little, wizened and old, and had no teeth, but was cheerful and seemed hap- py. She told us of how she had lived at Lucknow during the mutiny and later coming to Jhansi, where her husband died and she started raising vegetables. It was a curious place; this English wom- an’s, surrounded on all sides by natives. Al- though she wasliving in their midst, every- where about her home was cleanliness and thrift and considering the number of years she has lived among them you are surprised to hear her speak the English language and her ways are our ways. Every native who came near spoke to her in the most respectful manner. She had sent a servant to the garden to bring the vegetables which Mrs. S., who was with me wanted, and this In- dian, when he came in, spoke the Eng- lish language well. She told us she had all her servants taught to read and write, although she herself had had no school- ing. We bought peas, gooseberries, cab- bage and parsnipsby the pound. Itseems so strange that here there are no meas- ures except weights. The only regret I heard this woman utter was because her eyes were growing dim, and her teeth did not permit of her funny things in India is, when your ser- | case I know of here for oi all the world : India, I think, must be the worst for peo- (ple to be in want. The Eurasians are the | most abject, pitiable humans I know. | They are never taught anything that {could benefit or help them, so when i thrown upon the world, and this Indian {world at that; truly I should long for i death. For some time past we have been hav- ‘ing a great deal of trouble, since the i rules say, “Indian women only,” and yet these same Eurasians seem to need the care and help as much as any native woman -and although for a bit we did help and treat them, although we refus- ed those who had friends who could help them, now a rich man has commenced to make trouple and the rules are to be more rigidly enforced. I am very sorry for somehow a human is a human and should have care, whether of brown skin or only half-brown color. This man, although very rich, wants this hospital open to ‘“all women, native of India.” He could easily build a hospital himself but like most Englishmen, he thinks he can run the American people, their coun- try and their money much better than they can themselves. It is too bad this should have happened, but we cannot help it. Already the girls are planning when they will leave to go to the hills and it seems but a little time since we all got ! back and settled down again. There is no rest in this missionary living. One goes hurryingly from one thing and place | to another and time will not stand still, so it will be but a short time, if nothing happens, until I will be leaving. The two years that looked so long will be a thing of the past, and India and all its interests and curiosities a thing to dream about. (Continued next week.) How Important is Sleep? Sleep is a fine medicine. True, says the gentle reader, but why bother me about such an axiomatic proposition now when I am busy with much more impor- tant thing? Why, sir or madam, you have answered your own question in the very asking. It is because every one of us dwellers in cities is so perpetually en- gaged with something “more important” that we have whittled away our sleeping- time to mere shreds and remnants of hours instead of the full allowance that nature demands and will punish us for failing to secure. In the country and in small towns early to bed and a full eight ‘or nine hours of rest is still the saving rule; but in our cities, from coast to coast, and from the St. Lawrence to Tampa, the practice of starving ourselves in the essential matter of sleep is the well nigh universal habit. Learned men and the casual observer have waxed eloquent about the awful strain of city life, the wear and tear of its tremendous and incessant activities upon the nerve force of men who have not yet keyed up their resisting power to withstand the demands of the vast commercial and scientific machine they have built up. Fudge! They say that the noise and rush and bustle, the excite- ment of being in the midst of the seeth- ing throng, exhausts one’s vitality. More fudge! Man adapts himself to his en- vironment so swiftly, so almost instan- taneously, that the denizen of the deep- est forest or remotest mountain peak can become thoroughly city broken in a few weeks. Why, then, do we find in the great cities so many cases of nervous breakdown, which it is the polite and merciful fashion to ascribe to irritating environment and over-work? Chiefly be- cause of lack of sleep. If, besides rob- bing himself of sleep, a man eats too much, drinks too much, and otherwise dissipates his energies, the breakdown will come all the sooner and be all the more severe; but sleep robbery alone is enough to make a weakling of the strong- man. Moreover, even the dissipated person who averages, say, sixty hours of sleep per week will long outlast the sober one who averages but forty. Is it possible to obtain eight or nine hours’ sleep every night in the great and noisy city? Surely it is. The man or woman who pretends that this is impos- sible is either a victim of self-deception or a very rare invalid. Let us consider a few cases in New York, the biggest and noisiest city in America. There are living in that city some half-million or more of men who work as day laborers, mechanics, etc., and who sleep as sound- ly in tenements in the most congested districts as in the equally noisy outskirts of the city. Any cases of neurzsthenia or insomnia among them? Not to any great extent. Of course their hard man- ual labor gives them a fine appetite, their means are small, and there diet therefore plain, and the good, honest fatigue resulting from a day of physical toil sends them swiftly into sleep that Zestores to them abounding vigor next ay. But these, it may be said, have not been exposed to the exhausting mental strain of the business or professional man. More fudge. Mental strain is the excuse, the stalking-horse, behind which lurk endless dissipation and sleep rob- bery. Take the army of policemen and firemen in New York, for example. Even the busiest man in Wall Street or in the greater mental strain than the policeman or fireman whose life may be sacrificed at any moment in the performance of duty. But the men in this municipal army, al- though their hours for sleep are often most irregular, and the sleep itself is broken in upon by alarms, go calmly without a trace of insomnia. : It is not sé long since the eight-oared crew of Columbia University won the in- tercollegiate championship of all Ameri- ca at Poughkeepsie on *the Hudson, and several times since then the crews of this university have finished second in the great struggle, so close up with the leaders that spectators could not tell who had won, Yet these young athletes lived during nearly all the period of training in the busiest, noisiest city in America, and if they had not taken plenty of sleep they could not have made such a splen- did showing against the crews of Cornell, Pennsylvania, Syracuse, Wisconsin, Georgetown, etc. Moreover, the cham- pian amateur eight-oared crew of Ameri- ca today is that of the New York Athlet- ic Club, made up of young men most of courts or counting-houses is under no |: about their business in robust health and | I —, i eating any but soft food. Certainly a ! whom were born in or near the big town {lesson in independence; but jthe only | 2nd who earn their daily bread by hard j work in the sky-scraper district. At | every national regatta for years the i crews of this club have won one or more | championships, competing against the ; ablest crews from all parts of this coun- try and Canada. Does the strain, the noise, the bustle, the crowd excitement of the metropolis afflict these young ath- letes with insomnia or neurzsthenia? What a joke! City Yorn, city-bred, city workers, they are splendid types of the clean, normal, well-balanced athlete. And whether they are living at home in | the noisy city or for a few weeks preced- | ing a race at quiet Travers Island, Coach Giannini always sees to it that they sleep eight or nine hours every night, varying the amount to meet the need of each in- dividual. But, says the self-deceiver, these exam- ples are all of persons whose daily pro- gram includes some hours of physical ex- ercise every day, and neither laborers, mechanics, policemen, firemen, college students or athletes have to endure the strain of mind and nerves incidental to business or professionali life. Even if this were so, we have still to reckon with the great army of successful men who keep themselves fit for the hardest and most trying mental effort by making sure of eight or nine hours’ sleep every night in the year. and by finding time for phys- ical exercise, if only three or four times a week, at some game which will not only amuse and refresh the mind, but will give heart, lungs, and muscles plen- | ty of work. You will find these men at play in the most luxurious or the humblest athletic clubs, or in the public gymnasiums, or in the tennis-courts, or along the bridle- paths in the parks. One of the greatest railroad kings in America not only keeps a fine stable of hunters, but has a rac- quet-court, a gymnasium, and an indoor ring for riding. A man several years his senior, often called the ablest corporation lawyer in the country, is out for one hour’s trot and gallop every morning, sun or rain, f®st or snow. Many of the most eminent clergymen and judges keep fit by riding or playing golf. But no matter what form of physical exercise these leading citizens affect, they are all alike in one thing—they make sure of about sixty hours of sleep every week. Probably no historic fiction has ever done more harm than the legend that Napoleon required only four or five hours of sleep in each twenty-four. The truth is that, while he was in good health and doing his most wonderful feats, he habitually took eight hours’ sleep every night. In later life, when his energes had been depleted by luxury and the long, fierce gamble for power, his health gave way and his sleep was brief and fit- ful. This, however, was a symptom of decay, not an evidence of great strength, and it led most logically to defeat, eclipse, early death. No man can be great or successful or even tolerably decent unless he sleeps enough and with regularity. During the hours of sleep the heart-beats become about ten to the minute slower as well as less forceful, and that busy organ en- joys at least a partial rest from its in- cessant labors; that invisible but useful agent in the blood that floats away the broken-down tissue resulting from physical and mental effort is constantly engaged in carrying down all the waste products of the preceding day to the organs of elimination which rid the body of them. In one word, the ashes are dis- posed of and the engine is cleaned and oiled for its next day’s work. It is only during sleep that this process can be fully and properly carried out. Curtail the sleep, whether for purposes of study, work, play, or dissipation, and the inevitable result is a slow poisoning of the individual by an accumulation of waste products. If the condition is not relieved the individual suffers loss of energy and his life is shortened. It is a curious thing that while deprivation of proper food quickly brings on warning pangs of hunger, deprivation of sleep— equally fatal in the end--gives warnings not nearly so sharp and emphatic. The duty we owe to ourselves is obvious---if we would really live, take eight or nine hours’ sleep every night, always with an abundant and unfailing supply of fresh air.---By William Hemmingway. “A word in season how good it is.” That word in season is just whatis spok- en by Dr. Pierce’s Common Sense Med- ical Adviser. The word it speaks may be a word of counsel or of caution, a word of wisdom or of warning, but it is always a plain word and practical. This great book of 1008 pages and 700 illustra- tions is sent free on receipt of stamps to pay expense of mailing only. Send 31 one-cent stamps for book in paper cov- ers or 31 stamps for cloth binding. Ad- dress Dr. V. M. Pierce, Buffalo, N. Y. Friendly Warning. The young Englishwoman had be- come very fond of American seaside hotels, with their rockers and cool piazzas, but in one respect she was icritical. The story is told in the ‘Wide World Magazine. “If only they would clean our boots once in awhile,” she cried, “instead of sending us out to have a ‘tencent ‘shine’ at a ‘shoe parlor!’ I have left .my shoes outside my door every night for a week, and they have not been touched.” Her new acquaintance looked at her ia few moments pityingly, and cleared this throat. “I am afraid,” he said, “you can hardly count on finding such thonesty everywhere.” ; She Was No Easy Mark. ! Martha is seven, and has shown ‘more than ordinary childish aversion ito learning lessons, being washed and jhaving curls made smooth and shiny, and less than the ayerage delight in | fairytales. One day upon her return from Sun- 1day school she was questioned as to 'what she had learned from her nice iteacher this time. She cried out with {flashing eyes and an indignant toss of her pretty head, “Why, mamma; my teacher told me today that story about the Children of Israel walking across the Red sea and not getting their- selves wet one single /bit—and sho ‘es-pected me to believe it!” — And She Needed Checks. Teacher—“Did you ask your mame ma why the pen was mightier than the sword?’ Small Eloise — “Yes, ma'am. She said it was because papa couldn’t sign checks with a sword.
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers