3 v longed light Phineas and his comrades | - “And that is where I was captured,” FROM INDIA. h . The Old ‘“Amen Corner’’ Demorvahi atc Belletonte, Pa., March 5, 1915. Ee ————————————— er THE LUCK OF E. HECOX. rei. Phineas Hale, a native of Uxbridge, Massachusetts, and late first sergeant of So the Twentieth Bay State Regiment, ' hav- ing acquired title to, and taken posses- * sion of, his Virginia farm, like a thrifty husbandman gave his first attention to the deplorable condition of the fences and hedges. Of the former little remain- ed save a few scattering rails and hard- - wood gate-posts, a stone here, and there a rotting log imbedded in the turf, all of which just served to indicate the original demarcation of the Along the road the cedar hedges had been burned . into the sod, so that the old house on his - newly acquired demesne d over what was practically a rolling prairie. It was on the first Sunday after taking possession, an unusually warm morning in the month of March, 1866, that Phineas set out to explore more minutely his . new possessions. He was young and energetic, and as he took his way across the old fields he pictured to himself the happy transformation his thrift and in- dustry would bring to pass in the years to come. The objective of his walk was the timber lot which lay at the back of the farm, and, while his critical eyes rested on the gray tree-tops, not yet leaved out, he was speculating on the - proportion of oak and hickory available for fence rails. A week of hard labor on the walls and "roof of the old stone barn served to make the sacred day of rest peculiarly attractive to Phineas. He keenly ap- preciated the privilege of wandering about in the soft indolence of the spring sunshine. Moreover he was well ground- ed in the austere New England theology, so that it was with a God-fearing as well as a complacent frame of mind that he picked his way down a rock slope on the eastern border of the woods, and stop- ped to look about him. The warm sunshine penetrated into this small glen, sheltered from the wind that had fluttered his shirt sleeves on the uplands. The fresh green grass was sprouting in the hollows along the edge of a tiny brook, and the earth, newly re- leased from the winter’s frost, sent up faint odors that suggested the advent of spring plowing. Blue shadows lurked behina every stump and stone and lay in small flecks under the loose gray leaves lifted softly by the eager grass blades; against the shadows salient objects stood revealed with unusual precision and ‘ sharpness. A gleam of light on a peculiar some: thing before him caught Phineas’s eye. At first glance it looked like a slender gray root, protruding in such odd shape that it seemed to beckon him nearer. He stepped indolently at first, until he halted suddenly at what he saw. He was not horrified as a civilian might have been, just surprised and interested, as an old soldier might be by a comrade calling to him out of the ground. The skeleton hand whose bleached joints curved forward, the forefinger ris- ing above the others, was certainly in the act of beckoning. The double bone of the forearm, which upheld the hand, stood stiffly out of the bare, red soil, and a remnant of ragged blue sleeve lay on the surface of the shallow grave. It was by no means a startling discovery to make on the border of a great battle- field. But peace had lasted a year now and this was not what Phineas regarded as Christian burial. A little freeing of the remaant of blue sleeve from its earthly surrounding brought to light a thick brass button which bore on its sur- face the shield and device of the State of New York. : “Poor fellow,” said Phineas; “it looks like he’d been beckoning for a coffin for four years—maybe five, according to which battle he was killed in. It’s likely he don’t lie any too easy. He shall have the coffin that he wants so badly and decent Christian burial this very day.” With this inward expression of sym- pathy, Phineas began to bestir himself. “There is that long packing-box I brought the books down in,” he thought to him self as he hurried back to the house; “it will fit him like a glove. If I knew his name I'd set him up a head-board.” The carpenter who had been helping him on the barn the day before had gone to Manassas. Phineas felt quite equal to the work himself, however, and after hitching one of the horses to the stone- boat he brought out the box and nec- essary tools for digging. As he made his way back to the scene of his dis- covery his mind was occupied with specu- lations about the life and death of this unfortunate compatriot who had been mutely holding up his shriveled hand through so many years, for want of a better tombstone. Phineas hitched his horse on the oppo- site side of the branch and carried the pine box over on hisskoulder. The light sandy soil yielded easily to the spade, whose grating sound in the quiet glen on this still Sabbath morning struck omin- ously on his ears. Old ‘soldier that he was, he stopped in his work now and then to look about him and listen to the reassuring notes of the early robins in the woods. When patches of the mil- dewed blouse began to show under the red soil, he worked more carefully, hav- ing recourse to his fingers to remove the earth. Presently he uncovered a bit of tarnished metal that had rusted away fyom the cap front. This proved to be a pair of brass cross-guns, and holding them in his hand he straightened himself and swept the field with military eyes. “The battery must have been on that knoll,” he said half aloud, “and the cais- sons over here in the hollow.” He had himself been engaged at the second bat- tle of Bull Run; the preliminary skirmish at Groveton had overrun the very ground on which he stood, and had continued until dark. His ideas of the tipography of the ground were a little vague, but he felt pretty sure that his regiment, which had been on the skirmish line, must have been somewhere in the low land on the opposite side of the knoll. It was not quite four years since the happenings of that summer's night,. and one peculiar effect in the darkness, which no soldier could ever forget, came vividly to his mind: All had been quiet for some min- utes along the front of his regiment, and the men were lying on their guns, listen- ing with satisfaction to the scattering shots, receding and fitful. Above them the stars were glittering in the moonless sky and behind them a dark mass of woods rose back against the overarching canopy of countless worlds. "Suddenly the stillness was broken by the roar of a field-gun, and in the pro- ad seen the Union cannoniers braken back in the act of firing—each number in his place, and behind and above them are arms of the gunner thrown up at the command to fire. He remembered them fixed for an instant like fiery statues, and i then, as the halo which encircled them paled, he saw the gray silhouettes of the men spring on the wheels in the act of rolling the gun forward from its’ recoil. startling was this momentary vision that he had scarcely heeded the howl of the shell which sped high over his head. The same scene was quickly re- peated by another gun a little to the left of the first, and then alternately, until four shots had been fired. The regular- | ity of the firing was such that Phineas, keenly on the alert after the first dis- charge, could almost distinguish the lineaments of the men. He remember- ed the writhing landyard flying through the air like a fiery snake, the black sponge-staff held aloft by number one, and then whirling vaguely as the man who held it sprang in to reload against the fading mass of number three, with his thumb-stall pressed on the vent. “Well, I declare,” exclaimed Phineas, looking down at the poor skeleton half unearthed, "I shouldn’t be sursrised if I'd seen you before.” And then he fell to work vigorously, thinking at the same time of that phantom section on the hill. When the dirt had been sufficiently removed and loosened about the sides, Phineas lifted the poor burden out on warm ground. It was plain that the man had been a cannonier. Phineas bent over and looked carefully for some indication of a bullet-hole. The coat had given away in so many places that he could determine nothing externally, but as he passed his hand over the left breast he heard a sound like the crinkle of paper. When he had loosened the two or three buttons which still held to the rotten fabric, he thrust his hand into an inner pocket and drew out a letter, yellow and mouldy, and, strangely enough, through the center of this letter was the hole traversed by the bullet. Then his quick eye caught sight of a black object dangling between the ex- posed ribs of the skeleton. He dropped the letter on the ground in his eagerness to secure this other property, which swung at the end of a leather thong. Phineas’s eyes fairly bulged as he caught another view of the work of the bullet, which had cut its clean way through the rim of this cheap silver watch, which must have been in the same pocket and behind the letter. It was corroded and eaten with rust, but the hands were im- movably fixed on the enameled face. “Five minutes of nine!” exclaimed Phineas, his mind going back to that sul- phury summer night four years before. “That must have been the" time, and a finer mark for a sharp-shooter I never saw. [I've certainly seen you before, Mr. ——. Ah, where's that letter?” The stained envelope bore on its left- hand corner an unfurled flag with the words below, “shoot him dead on the spot.” The colors from the flag had run and the bullet had pierced the center, but it was written in a fair round hand, and with a little study Phineas made out “Hecox” for the surname, and of the Christian name he could only be certain that the initial was E. The letter was further addressed to “Battery L., First New York Artillery Camp of First Corps, near Culpepper, Virginia.” Tenderly lifting “E. Hecox of Battery L,” he laid him reverently in the pack- ing-case, composed with some difficulty the skeleton hand which had been beck- oning to the outer world so long, and carried the light coffin across the branch and placed it on the stone-boat. He de- cided to bury E. Hecox, temporarily, at the foot of a certain plum-tree in the old en. It would be hard to imagine a more quiet and decorous funeral procession than this progress across the fields in the stillness of the Sabbath noonday. Phineas walked gravely at the horse's bridle, and the stone-boat with its unconscious bur- den glided noiselessly over the turf. “Maybe those four shells balanced his account with interest,” reflected Phineas, “and maybe they didn’t—all the same, it was hard luck for E. Hecox.” It was late in the afternoon before the self-appointed sexton found to examine the letter. The postmark was oblit f- ated, but fortunately the name of the town where the soldier had lived was plainly written in the upper right-hana corner on the first page of the letter itself, “Allen’s Hill, May 15, 1862.” As far as Phineas could make out, the letter related only to domestic affairs. It was neatly written, well expressed in terms of patriotism and devotion, and neither the cruel bullet nor the mildew had en- croached on what were probably the last written words of conjugal love E. Hecox had ever read. “I pray hourly for your preservation, for the success of the Union cause, and for your restoration, dear Eben, to the arms of your loving wife— Letty.” : “She has given him up years ago,” mused Phineas; “information as to his Wheteabonts will be a relief instead of a shock.” When he had written his letter he discarded “Letty” and addressed it to Mrs. E. Hecox. Week after week passed. It was Sun- day again. It had come to look quite | th homelike about the house and garden, the air was already perfumed with the luxurious blossoming of the spring. Under the plum-tree a plain head-board with the name of the deceased soldier had been erected over the grave. The old colored mammy who was at the head of Phineas’s domestic establishment was moving about the yard gathering dande- lion roots for greens, while Phineas him- self was enjoying his morming pipe on the gallery. No reply had come to his letter. Aunt Phillis’s old ears first caught the sound of wheels, and, straightening her- self, she shaded her eyes and looked down the road. Then she planted her hands firmly on her broad hips. “Ef 1 got any sense left, Marse Hale,” she said, “dat’s Tom Little’s wagon from 'Nasses Junction an’ he ain’ cyary- in’ none o’ de ladies aboot yer.” The carriage stopped at the veranda steps, and five minutes later the pretty widow Hecox was comfortably seated in the gallery glancing over the exterior of the bullet-perforated letter. The half- minute so spent im: Phineas with a new sense of the hard luck of the man in the garden or any other man who had lived so short a time with such a wife. Ted ot 2 ondof the Sumit of thoughts si y that ra ullet- hole, and when she raised her glistening eyes to Phineas’s face he rose and silent- ly offered his arm. In silence they walk- ed across the yard and through the gar- den until they stood before the grave marked “E. Hecox.” A few pink blos- Ir mde Essen. eet sens et i Sete een ernest. You ask me why I look so sad, a saying not a word: Why, Becky, thoughts of long ago my memory have stirred. I'm thinking of the meetin’ house where preached old Father Horner; But mostly I've been thinking ’bout that dear old “amen corner.” Them days long since have fled and gone, dear friends have passed away; And that old meetin’ house is going to decay. I looked around among the folks, if any I may see; But all are gone it seeme to me, but Becky, you and me. I see the dear old corner yet; ‘twas close beside the altar; Them good old souls whose seats w<re there, had faith that would not falter. Their hearts were all aglow with love ; their shouts would awe the scorner; Like thunderclaps, their loud "amecas” would shake the “amen corner.” Indeed, it seemed sometimes we sat by cool Siloam’s fountain. And then, again, we seemed to stand on Sinai’s awful mountain. No matter what the text may be—for sinner, saint. or mourner,- There always flamed the Spirit's fire around the “amen corner.” It was as if the Pentecost, with flaming tongues of fire, ; Was still a bringin’ heaven down and lifting souls up higher; And loud as was the earnest voice of dear old Father Horner, Far louder were the grand amens that shook the “amen corner.” That dear old spot was holy ground, the very gate of heaven; The glory cloud seemed resting there, by mercy’s shower riven; The manna and the smitten rock, our hungry souls sustainin’, Along the road beset with foes from Egypt up to canaan. Sometimes, I well remember yet, things seemed a little dreary; The meetin’s ‘peared a little slow, the people dull and weary; Then victory would seem to be with Satan and the scorner Until a “Hallelujah” broke out from the “amen corner.” Then quick as lightnin’ things would change; the foe would flee before us, And shouts of “Glory!” “Praise the Lord!” would blend in mighty chorus. I tell you, Becky, ’tis a truth, it cheered the weakest nourner; Old Satan never would prevail against that “amen corner.” The tears will dim my failin’ eyes, my heart gets almost broken, Whenever I'm in the meetin’ house with not an “amen” spoken; Our preacher is a learned man, not much like Father Horner, He preaches while the people snore in that old “amen corner.” They’ve got a bran-new meetin’ house with cushions for the people, And windows made of painted glass, and on the top a steeple. A paid choir does the praisin’ (?) now they’ve no bench for the mourner; They’ve Brussels carpet on the floor, but where's the “amen corner?” I tell you, Becky, I believe that’s why we keep retreatin’; The world and Satan have combined to give the Church a beatin’. They say they have found a better way: “religion has no mourner;” And so they've smashed the mourners bench and killed the “amen corner.” But wife there’s one thing comforts me, the Church will be a standin’, When Satan and his scoffin’ crew have made a final landin’, The Church is built on solid rock, and proof against the scorner; We'll find the New Jerusalem much like the “amen corner.” —Selected. soms were fluttering down from the over- | heavily hanging plum-tree, and every cup, like a | the end cavity in the dry earthen mound, held a tender fleck of color. Phineas smelled a | faint odor of warm cloth, like the cumu- lative aroma of Sunday clothes in church, ' far sweeter in his nostrils than the per- fume of the plum blossoms. He felt a slight tremor in the slender form at his side; ! a half-stifled sob, hardly louder than the buzz of the honey-bees in the lilacs, and | then, in obedience to the pressure of the | brown glove on his arm, he turned back to the house. : | The ample form of Aunt Phillis filled the doorway, and her voluble welcome | made up for any amount of sympathetic i silence as she took authoritative posses- sion of the widow and led her away into the darkened house. Left thus alone, Phineas was over- whelmed with more thoughts of the ill luck of the man who had exchanged his life for the problematic execution of four shells, and wondered how many other widows’ tears had gone into the unsolvable balance. ~ Later in the day Mrs. Hecox and Phineas found themselves together again on the gallery in the soft May evening. The fair Northerner by this time had re- garded that composure and even vivacity which is perfectly proper in a widow of four years. Phineas asked questions now and learned that, but for a little daugh- ter whom she had left in Washington, she was quite alonein the world. Phineas heard with more than indifference—he was not even sorry. That she was going back to her part of the world in the morning, which was not his part, struck him as a misfortune more in the line of his sympathy. 3 : “Not if I can help it,” he said to him- self, and as soon as he had formed that nebulous resolution a great fear of this kindly little woman who had so strange- ly become his guest sprang up in his heart. Never had he felt such terror of the volley of a regiment. Never before had he realized what abject moral cow- ardice was. As his eyes devoured the vague outline of her figure, half lost against the bushes that shut in’ the porch, he felt compelled to say some- ing. “Courage—forward now,” he muttered and began. 4 The commonplace sentences, however, which he heard himself utter, nearly broke in two in the middle, of their own heaviness; he rolled the last lumbering half over his dry tongue as if the words were leaden. : There was nothing in the character or conduct of Phineas Hale that would justify describing further that painful in- terview. But he had to do with a sensi- ble widow, who knew the value of a good home, and who was not like to mis- understand the haltering utterance of an honest man. She asked time to think— a week and she would write him—and write she did in exactly seven days a let- | gu ter that sent Phineas to the seventh heaven of delight. She might not be able to love him just as she had loved her first husband (who she could never forget was the father of | her little Emily), but she was sure she could be a good wife to him—and with that Phineas was satisfied, as any reason- able man should be. As for staying at Allen’s Hill, she had no desire or occasion to do so, as the ill luck, which had con- stantly pursued poor Hecox, had left no substantial possession in that small vil- lage which required her attention. Phin- eas went on there and brought his bride and little Emily back. Having left nothing but a memory, it would seem that the ill luck of E. Hecox had descended to his widow by a sort of . the first on which invisible entail, and that the co-jointure of evil portent had borne even more upon her second husband, for at of five short years in her Virgin- ian home Mrs. Hale found herself again a widow, and all that was mortal of poor Phineas lay beside the remains of what seemed to have been his good and evil ‘genius. This time, however, the widow of two "soldiers was left in comfortable circumstances, for the Hecox blight had not affected the material fortunes of the last deceased. : At this time Decoration Day had scarce- ly been heard of in Virginia, and the widow of the two soldiers, to lay some fresh floral offering on the graves of her dead, chose her own days and chose them frequently during the season when flowers were to be had. Easter, however, being a festival, was the day in all the year which the widow had adopted for a special day of memorial of- ferings, and, this particular Easter being she had had a double duty to perform, her tribute had been more lavish than ever, and so impartially distributed that only the fact that the stone marked “E. Hecox” occupied the right of line could by any critical military person be construed as indicating the slightest preference on the part of the widow for one husband over the other. There was no one in the garden when little Emily, now ten years old, came up the graveled walk leading to the two graves under the plum-tree, which was itself covered with blossoms. The air was heavy with the perfume of flowers everywhere. The soft south wind wand- ered out on the spring fields and she stopped and listened to the echoes of all the rapturous spring melody. Suddenly she looked forward and saw a figure on Sraiches just disappearing over Battery ill. An hour later Emily and the man with the crutches came together in the very glen where E. Hecox had first been buried. When she found that he had been a soldier they sat down on the rocks in the cool shade and he told her that on the night of the battle of Grove- ton he had helped to bury a very dear comrade in that little glen where they were, and that the work had been so hurriedly done in the haste of retreat that, whatever else he had forgotten, he : had not forgotten the shallow grave of his friend. Now that he at last had found the’ place and had ‘come back, somebody had been there before him; ‘ and he pointed sadly to the grass-grown hollow from which the poor skeleton . had been taken, and showed her an over- ground wound in the bark of the tree which he had scored with his own hand to mark the place. “The name is gone,” he said, “and I can’t recall it now. I've forgotten many things, my dear.” ‘Then little Emily told him what she had heard about the battery that fired in the night and lighted up the hill with its ns “Yes, that was it,” he said, and he told her how he had pulled the lanyard on the same gun where his poor friend had sponged and rammed, and how his friend threw up his hands and fell back into the arms of the man who thumbed the vent before he could get to him, and how, if he had not been captured on the second night thereafter, a great many things that had happened in his life would have turned out differently. He looked very grave and paused for a long time to think, and Emily was silent, too, out of respect for the memory of his comrade. “I suppose, my dear,” he said present- ly, “that you have often been on the road that leads from the stone bridge to Centerville. Isn’t that the name?” “Oh, yes,” she said. That was the “pike,” and her father Hale had told her all about the retreat. said the soldier, speaking slowly, laying his crutches together on the grass along- | side the rock where he sat, “and but for the nights we had been marching and i the hard work at the guns, it never would have happened, never happened at all.” : i “It was twilight,” he went on, “when i we crossed the hill where the bluecoats {lay so thick and still, and then we went | splashing through the creek, where the | bridge is now, the strong wheels | ing over stones and ammunition-chests, i and so out into that very road. It grew {dark at once, and the stars came out | among the broken clouds and shone down | on two and sometimes on three columns of batteries rumbling abreast, and flash- | ed on the bayonets of the infantry mov- ling in the fields alongside. What with the clouds scurrying above us and the stifling dust in which ‘we moved, we : could hardly see the batteries posted on the hills to cover our retreat. We were So weary and spent that the men fell | asleep on their horses, and the great | | sweaty horses themselves dozed and reeled about ‘in the halts. I remember | now, men-crawled up on the carriages ' and slept; slept with hands against the | big saddles; slept on the very road itself, | trusting to be kicked into wakefulness ; by their comrades whem the column . moved. I must have dropped down in a fence-corner from sheer exhaustion. Neither ‘the rumbling wheels nor the tramping men nor the falling rain could ‘ waken me, and I slept on until all the army had passed, and I was found before daylight by the cavalry of the enemy. I tried to run, and they shot me, here and there.” He pointed to his head and swinging trouser-leg. “And since then I began to forget—but now things begin to come back, all but names—names I can’t get.” i Just at that point of the narrative he stopped and pushed himself to the one good foot, then turned away on his crutches with a sigh to look across at the hill. i When they walked on again, Emily re- | minded him that he had not yet told her | the whole of his story, to which he made | answer that there was a great deal to tell | if only he could remember it all just as it | happened. Being on the old field again helped him to remember things wonder- fully. He had been somewhere where he had been sick and hungry and cruelly . treated, and afterward he had been taken | some place else, where he had been bet- : ter treated, but from which they would | not let him go away until just lately, when he began to remember better. i “There are lots of men like me there.” : he said—“lots. I'm going back, but Ii thought if I came here perhaps it would ; help me find out what I want to know.” As they neared the house, little Emily | would have taken the soldier's hand, if ! both hands had not been occupied with | his crutches. The simple story of his own misfortune had completely won her | childish heart. “There lies the father whom I never saw,” said little Emily softly, pointing to the oldest stone and looking up into the soldier’s face. Then the soldier raised his €ges for the first time to the marble slab. “Ebenezer Hecox!” he gasped, taking a step back on his crutches. And then he looked up at the sky and around on the trees in the low evening light with a weak sense that he had just been dream- ing—and then his eyes came back to the hard staring letters cut into the stone— and then he heard the sweet voice of the child at his side. “Remember all—everything now,” he said, speaking hoarsely, “Hecox—Allens Hill—home! Garlinghouse—that was his always eager ) buried him, the Colonel Jones, Battery name; he wore my coat that night—we L, First Corps, Sergeant Cross—the names—the names! Forsyth, Banks, Keller, Moore, Petrose”—he called the stations at the gun. “Hecox! Hecox!— thank God! Thank God!” Then the soldier looked down into the eves of the child, shining with tears, and for answer he took her to his arms and kissed her. “I've found myself—I knew that some- thing would happen if I only heard a name cried. I felt it! I have come back.” Little Emily looked up. “Here comes mamma,” she said. “She's calling me— won’t you come into the house and rest a while?”—By H. W. Shelton, in Harper's Weekly. $6,600,000 Needed Monthly to Supply Belgians’ Food. All agencies engaged in Belgian relief must occupy themselves with the im- mediate tasks of providing bread for the total population of Belgium and of sup- plying all food for one-fifth of that popu- lation, according to the second report of the Relief Commission sent abroad by the Rockefeller Foundation. This re- port, given out Monday night, states also that clothing must be supplied to certain communities, temporary shelter must be provided and employment must be given to the unemployed. These relief mea- sures, the commission estimates, will necessitate an expenditure of about $6,- 600,000 a month. Of the total Belgian population of 7,000,000, the report states, 80 per cent. are able to pay for their bread; but the grain from which to make the bread must be purchased in foreign countries and distributed under the protection of the American government, Fetichism marks the lowest point of a gross and degraded superstition. It be- longs to savages and not to civilized peo- ple. Yet there are social fetiches to which mothers sacrifice their daughters in this enlightened land. And these suc- rifices are no less horrible than those of the degraded African who throws his writhing child into the fire. The name of the great social fetich is Ignorance. Mothers see their daughters “standing with reluctant feet where womanhood and girlhood meet,” see them take the step beyond and assume the stupendous responsibilities involved in marriage and motherhood, and yet they say no word of warning or enlightenment as to the great physical change which marriage brings to women. For those who have suffered through ignorance, and have al- lowed disease to develop in the delicate organs, Dr. Pierce’s Favorite Prescrip- tion is a true minister of mercy. It stops drains, heals ulceration and inflam- mations, relieves bearing down pains, migkss weak women strong and sick wom- en well. ; Her Two Steady Jobs. When a woman really loves a man she takes equally great delight in making him comfortable when she thinks he is miserable and miserable | dianapolis Star. when she finds him comfortable.—In- ind- | | the Western continent; m— | By One on Medical Duty in that Far Eastern Country. Christman as It Was Spent in that : Far-off Foreign Land. i i JHANSI, DECEMBER 25th, 1913 : Dear Home Folk: | Here itis, 11.30 on Christmas night {and I have just gotten in from a very nice dinner party so remembering, as I - passed my desk, that tomorrow was mail : day and also a day upon which I was to i visit a mission farm some distance away, | my steps bedward stopped and I am try- ing to tell you about it all; but the thought came to me, I wonder whether I'll have time to die properly when the time comes, or will that, too, have to be sandwiched in between other events, My day has been a nice one and there were many nice things happened but I was a wee bit disappointed in not having even a catd from home to read, The WATCHMAN gave me the news, so I wasn’t lett entirely desolate; but I know if I stay here much longer Saturday mails won't matter so much, even now a mail that brings no letters is not the horrid blue thing of a year ago. The rest of the household were invit- ed to the H’s to dinner so our house took care of itself, and the servants had an evening off. Itis more like Christmas weather tonight—clear, crisp and cold and the stars hang down from the sky just like they do on a wintry night at home, and our hostess had a grate-fire tonight and it did look inviting. Then, too, her cook did know how to roast tur- key—it just melted in your mouth, and she had little mince-pies, another thing that was more than good. But the table decorations were all pink and white, and they should have been red and green, but all the good things were there, even to the plum-pudding. Those foolish lit- tle crackers ended up the feast, and we all looked most foolish with the little caps and masks perched upon our heads, I started rightly by going to church this morning and then hurrying home to allow the nurses to go to their church an hour later and had'I had any brains this should have been written at that time, and not now, for I had to sit there for two hours waiting for those foolish vir- gins to make their toilets and go to church. Now don’t ever tell me that the only maidens who “prink” are found in these dark skinned sisters of theirs, with only half the clothes, have them all “skinned a mile” as to time required for dressing, I then came to the bungalow and hay- ing lost hours and hours of sleep, just calmly went to sleep at the table, so crawled to bed as soon as breakfast was over and then couldn’t pull myself awake again except when a servant would call to me here was a “chitty,” or a “doly,”- and up I would have to get and answer the letter, or tell the sender of the “do- ly” that they were the “nicest souls on earth,” in a dozen different ways, and then I went back to bed and slept some more. It was then tea-time, hospital time, time to dress for dinner, and then £0; and here I am again. . The samples came correctly and I think they are beautiful both in quality and price but horrors, we are not Pitts- burgh millionaires out here so guess the lady in question had best stick to Eng- lish stuffs; they are a bit cheaper, if not so beautiful. I wonder if my brains are leaving me, I surely don’t seem to have any for use tonight, so do forgive me, but I'm going to bed. (Continued next week.) , Little Talks on Health and Hygiene. BY SAMUEL G. DIXON, COMMISSIONER OF HEALTH. WORRY—to choke or strangle says the dictionary. It is not necessary to seek for the further definition for that is truly the physicial manifestation of mental torment. Worry strangles our mental powers and chokes the bodily functions. There are innumerable instances in which phys- ical decline and death are directly trace- able to worry. It is true that in everyone’s life, force of circumstance, bitter experiences and trying problems must be met, considered and conquered. No matter how vital these may be or how much real thought is required in their solution, worry will never aid and it inevitably handicaps all effort to obtain a clear point of view and the establishment of a true perspective toward life’s happenings. The ancient philosophers deemed wor- ry unworthy of men of true mental at- tainment. Our physicial makeup is so finely adjusted that any distress of mind reacts upon the bodily functions. Ex- cessive anger is often followed by illness and worry with its accompanying mor: bid thoughts has a like influence. There is a close relation between our physical and mental selves and a sound body is a reserve force behind the mind. When you are tempted to worry bestir yourself physically. Exercise in the open air, a long tramp or some similar diver- sion will often times prove a sufficient stimulant to aid materially any mental effort you may make to cast off the burden. Another and even more effective meas- ure is to keep busy at one’s daily tasks, Occupation, if it be of a nature to require close application, is one of the most effective cures for worry: Luck Vs. Brains. Luck counts once in a while. brains count all the time.—W. H. Lou_..
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers