Belletonte, Pa., September 8, 1916. sm “BROWN-EYED DICK.” He is just a common mongrel, But has eyes of silk brown That are scintillating magnets As he goes around ike town; He is always kind and friendly To the children when they meet, And they hail him as a comrade As he passes on the street. He is neve: in a hurry, Never chases cats around, Never lounges in the places Where contentious dogs are found; Has nn master, has no kennel, Has no home to call his own, Has no pedigree to back him— Just as “Brown-eyed Dick” is known. But to know him is to love him As you would a human friend; For the clightest act of kindness He is grateful to the end: His expression is enticing And his courtesy is grand, For those brown eyes speak a language That all hearts can understand. Not a dog in town molests him As he goes his quiet way, Charming all with gay good humor, But too dignified to play : Those brown, scintillating magnets And his gentle nature blend In a pleasing combination, That has made the world his friend. —By Jake H. Harrison. CHILD OF THE HEART. I had been out of the hospital a month, and had taken the children from St. Mary’s Home and was set- tled with them at last in the few _..xooms I'd hired on the ground floor of a poor cottage at the end of the town before any consciousness that I’d had another baby came to me; and then it was in a sudden, odd kind of way. I was sitting on the edge of the » my gown partly off and my hair hanging down over my shoulders—I was as thin as a rail—feasting my eyes on my four little cnes rolling on the floor; my big boy, Louis, who was eight, and Pauly and Marie and four- year-old Catherine; no one, not if they were worth Millions, could have had grander children! with their beautiful, clear, rosy skins, their blue eyes and light wavy hair, and their lovely sturdy legs. They were all fair like me; their father was French and dark. When I took them out peo- ple’s eyes always followed them; they had a way of walking like him, with their shoulders thrown back and their heads held high, as though they came of the lords of the land, instead of having only a working-man for their father. And while I sat there now looking at them, I found myself with my arms folded as if I were holding Something; and I rocked to and fro with that feeling of a little round head on my bosom. . . and it came over me that I had a baby and didn’t know where she was. And the thought was as sharp and terrible as a cut with a knife, so that I gasped with the pain and ran out of the room. But in a minute it was gone, That was the only way that I remem- bered, for well over a year, at odd times like, when I least expected it, when I found myself rocking and ‘crooning, with empty arms, to the ba- by that wasn’t there. But for the most part of the time I never thought of her at all; I had given her away before I ever felt that she was mine. It was all like a bad dream, It was this way, you see: When Antoine,—I had married him at sev- enteen, out of the high school,—my lovely, brown-eyed, merry, warm- hearted Antoine, fell from the scaf- fold,—~he was a builder,—he was dead, they say, before he touched the ground, But I never saw him again after he kissed me good-by that morning, when I didn’t know it, was for the last time. It was three weeks before the baby was born, and I went sort of wild with longing to see him once more, just once was all I'd ask! And with that was the thought, drumming over and over in my mind, how I Was ever to earn a living for the children with yet another to ham- per me. It didn’t seem now as if the one that was coming were mine; all feeling had been killed in me, When I talked to the matron at the hospital she was very kind. She told me she knew of some good people who would be very glad to have the baby and bring it up, if I were will- ing to give it away entirely. And it seemed in my weakness, as if a great weight had been taken off my mind— oniy I cried. I didn’t know why. I was 30 ill afterward that everything was a haze. They told me the baby was a little girl." I never even saw her, to realize it; I seemed as I look- ed back, to have been conscious only once, propped up with pillows and seeing a strange gentleman with black eyebrows looking at me, I heard him say: “What eyes she has!” Wid Somdlody asked, “Are you still willing to give away the i Mrs. Blanchet 25 ye oil And I said “Yes,” and I signed a baper with the pen they. handed me. en | went down and out again for a long time. Antoire had belonged to a benevo- lent order, and their money buried him and kept me for awhile after I got back. Mrs. Hallett, the clergy- man’s wife, wanted me to keep the two younger children in the Home and send Louis and Pauly tc a farm In the West, : } “And in tha; way,” she said, “you will be free to learn to do Sometiing worth-while.” She was one of the nicest ladies, and one of the least un- derstanding I ever knew. She never seemed to think with her heart. I looked pretty weak and thin, but - I knew I'd make out someway. Why, it was life for me to touch and han- dle the little darlings and bathe and dress them, it was like taking in life at my fingers’ ends. Miss Lily, though she hadn’t any children of her own, understood! : ATR RR I went out for day’s work at first, sending the children to school and running back at lunch time to give them a hite, and I went without my own; but after a while I got a little trade at home. I did up curtains and laces and fine dresses. One lady told another about me. But one day, when my tall, Miss Lily came in from the Settle- ment to the room where I smoothing out a lace collar in my fingers, she kept looking at me while she talked, and all of 2 sudden she got up and took the collar from me and held my hands close to hers. “You poor thing!” she said. “What is the matter?” For a moment I couldn’t speak, and then I said in a whisper: “It’s Antoine’s—it’s my husband’s birthday. If I could only see him once more—it’s all I'd ask, ever. . . . Just once! You see, I didn’t know it was for the last time when he went out of the door.” Well, that very afternoon I was taking back a bundle of laces, as it happened, alone; I usually had one of the children with me—when you haven’t your husband you have to hold on to a child’s hand, it’s like linking you here to him where he is, above. And down the road from the big house on the hill into which the new rich people had just moved came a nurse ina cap and a long white apron, and a long, flying-back dark cloak. She was pushing a white wicker baby carriage. There was an eighteen-months baby sitting up straight, inside, with pink bunches of ribbon on either side of her cap, her little hands beating the pink, lacy coverlet, and as she came nearer I looked straight into Antoine’s big brown eyes, his eyes, with the long curling black lashes, and the dark curved eyebrows with the ilttle up- ward twist to the corners; Antoine’s dark curls were on her forehead, his dimple at the corner of her mouth, that little mole of his in front of her left ear, and as she smiled at me—for she smiled!—the little red lips went up at one corner just as his had done. knew, and it was as if my heart turned over within me; I knew, past anybody’s telling me, that this was my own child. I'd promised the things and I hur- ried on with my legs shaking, and the earth and sky whirling around me. . . . Icouldn’t think at all. But as I came back over the hill I caught a glimpse of the carriage in the pine grove by the lake, and I turned off down there and dropped myself on the other end of the bench on which the nurse sat. The baby was asleep— but she was my child. “That’s a beautiful little girl,” I said. My voice sounded strange. “Yes, everybody says that,” she answered, straightening herself up and as I saw, wild to talk to some- one, the way all nurses are. “But it’s a lonesome job taking care of her, though I'm well paid. She's brought up modern and hygienic!” “What’s that?” said I, without tak- ing my eyes off that little sleeping ace. “You’re never allowed to talk to her or play with her, because it inter- feres with her developin’ herself ; and out of doors she has to be, winter and summer, day and night; she sleeps in a crib on the porch with curtains that are drawn if it rains or snows, be- cause she’s delicate like her mother —that’s why I have her out here un- der the pines. They have the grand- est doctor's for her. We have a trained nurse now that’s like a eagle, she spies on you so fierce; everything goes by her word. It would make your heart ache sometimes to see the mother look at the child when she’s brought inte the house and longing to have it for a while to herself, and to kiss it and fondle it, and not dar- ing to.” “Why not?” said I, turning hot and cold. “It’s not hygienical,” said the nurse, geing on like a mill stream. “The baby never allowed to be near other children, for evrey one of ’em’s contagious but her; and no chanst do I get to see my own friends for fear of the germs I'll be bringin’ off ’em. If the head nurse knew I was talkin’ to you she’d fire me. The father, maybe he has other notions, but he’s that crazy about the mother he'd do anything in life to please her. The child’s to go to the finest schools and learn all languages; and travel in kings’ countries, and if she’s after having what they call a genius she’s to use it in any way she fancies, op’ra singin’, or play-actin’, or marryin’ a prince. Every night hen himself comes in the first thing he says is: “‘And how is our little Toinette to-day?’ She’s christened Antoinette after her mother.” Antoinette! Did you ever in your life hear anything like that? I fell to trembling worse than ever. My head was swimming with all the talk of “her mother,” and “her father”’— Antoine’s child! She opened her eyes and looked up at me, and I got up and ran home b2fore I should scream, and when I got there I sat on the side of my bed, and rocked and rocked—I wanted to hold Antoine’s little girl tight in my own arms, to kiss her, to feel her mine. Why, it was just as if he had sent her to me from out of heaven! The next day I went up to the ma- tron of the hospital in the city, but I got nothing from her. My baby was legally the child of other parents who loved her and I had no right to her any more. She wouldn’t even tell me their name, but she started and changed color when I told her that I knew it was Carrington. Oh, I knew well they’d never give her up! It roused something wild and fierce in me. I went home clean beat out, and the next morning I couldn’ raise my head frem the pillow, and my big nine-year-old boy Louis came to my bedside anc said: “You just stay in bed, Mummie,”— that was what they called me,—“and we'll bring your breakfast in to you.” Ard so they did. My children ‘were all the handiest little things! They were like Antoine that way! There wasn’t one of them, not even little Catherine, who couldn’t fry an egg or turn a pancake or make a piece of toast; they cooked for each other often, and it was pretty to see their REE : and start up the hills fair little faces, over the pan. so wise and eager, Well, I got so that whenever I saw | | the baby carriage going over the hill . to the pines, I'd let everything else go | to the pines, myself. And every time I looked in. i pretty was | hands. | to touch her. i to the brown eyes of my heart jumped so I thought baby my Rose must | hear it. She was glad to have me to talk to for a few minutes. Toinette grew to know me, voice. her lap, the dolly and the Teddy Bear, and stretch her hands to the birds and the squirrels. But I never dared I didn’t know what I : might do or say if I touched her. For oh, beautiful as she was, she hadn’t and clapped her | She had the dearest little | She would talk to the toys in | the look of the child that’s warmed i and fed by love, she wasn’t hardy, | for all her grand nursing. Once I got a little cap of hers to clean, the darling little cap, with the pressure of her head in it. And when I took it back I saw Mrs. Carrington. ! She was a slender lady, with all sorts of lacy things falling over her | € ‘and neck, her bare legs and dimpled gown; she had pretty fady blue eyes, and a little half smile around her pale mouth, ard something drooping, | yet sweet, about her as if she knew | everyone was going to be good to her; you couldn’t help wanting to your- self. In one way I liked her, and 1n | another I hated her. I had been taken up the back stairs to a small room, and as she took the | cap out of the paper she said: “You have done this very nicely. Step in here and I i more of my baby’s things to do up!” She opened a door as she spoke, and I walked after her into the nursery. It was the most wonderful room I had ever been in; it was full of broad i windows, and everything in it was a | satiny, creamy white, the floor, the furniture and half the walls—the up- per part was all pictures in blues and greens and pinks and yellows. There were a great many playthings, dolls sitting on chairs or lyirg in beds, and all sorts of animals. “It is a pretty room, isn’t it?” said Mrs. Carrington, and smiling as if she were pleased. “You see there’s no bed; m:- baby sleeps on the porch outside her “urse’s room.” She walked over to the cup- board and took out a couple of lace coats. “I will give ycu these to do up. Ah, here comes my baby now!” And, sure enough, the little thing ran in—Rose and the trained nurse, the stiffest thing! behind her,—turning her sweet eyes on me. . “She’s a lovely baby,” T said. My voice sounded thick in my ears, bat the lady didn’t notice. “It’s time for her bath, ma’am,” said the nurse, “hefore she has her supper.” “Oh, dear, it’s always time for something!” -said Mrs. Carrington, smoothing the baby’s hair; but she didn’t kiss her, Rose was right thare. “So many rules and regulations for my darling.” As we left the room I looked back to see a door opened to a little white porcelain bath beyond, and a white | weigh-scales, and what not, all fit for a little princess. “You have children?” she asked. “Five,” I said. 4 “Five,” she repeated, but not as if she really heard ine. “You must have vour hands full. I have only one, you see.” She smiled proudly, yet wist- fully too, and my heart suddenly ached for her. She took out her purse and paid me the quarter for the cap. She was so sweet and gentle it puzzled me what it was I missed in her. Her husband came in just before I went; he was a tall man, with heavy black eyebrows and a straight mouth. When he stopped still he seemed to stand very quiet, without an eyelash moving, and I knew that he was the man I had seen in the hospital. I heard him say, “Who is that?” And his wife’s vcice answered: “It’s Mrs. Blanchet from the village. She’s doing up some things for Toinette. I turned at the foot of the stairs to see him smiling at hic wife, and he looked quite different. But if I had needed to know any more, I knew it then. And, oh, my child was well off; she had all the care that money could buy, there was nc lack there—though there was a lack. . But if I couldn’t have her openly for my own, I could at least feast my eves on her every day, and for once, if for once only, I would have her secretly for my own—I had a plan. When I got heme, I can’t tell you how poor and bare 2nd dark my rooms looked, no place for her! The children ran to meet me, helter-skel- ter, their hair flying, and I kissed them and listenea to their talk, and got the supper and put them to hed. And when they were fast asleep I went to the cupboard and took out fresh white covers for my bureau and the table, and I got all the candles I had and stuck them in candlesticks or anything I could find, and put them on the mantel and on the table below it, and I hunted some flowers out of the garden, tall, pearly white and golden flag lilies, and set them in be- tween the candles. Antoine was Catholic though I was Methodist, and sometimes I had gone with him; ’twas somekow to me as if my little dark bedroom was to be made like the High Altar. And when all the village was still, and the lights mostly out, only for the rising moon, I lighted my candles and went my way, silently up the hill, a dark shawl over me. The house was built on a slope and the porch where the baby slept, that was the second story from the front, was not far above the ground in the back. With a bench and a box from the area way I managed to get to the top of the brickwork and then climbed over the stone railing, and pushed aside the screen. Oh, my God, there lay my little Antoinette, her face white like a flower toward the moon, the dark curls brushing her cheek. I slipped my arms under her—she was in a sort of white, wooly sleeping bag—and lifted her to me, so gradu- ally that she didn’t know that she was being moved. And still holding her close on one arm I managed slowly to edge myself over the railing again and reached the From, and went swiftly, yet holding her steadily, down the hill. But of a sudden she will give you some | 1 i stirred and opened her eyes and be- gan to whimper. The voice of her! I was mad with joy. And the feel of her—“You darling! You darling!” I whispered. “You're with Mummie now, youre with Mummie—” And when she heard my voice she stopped crying and put up her little hand to touch my face. And so we came into my altar room, all set with the can- dles and the pearl and golden lilies, and my baby raised her head and stretched out her arms and said, “Pretty, pretty!” Oh, the darling, the darling! And I took off all the things she was bundled in. And then I went and waked the sleeping chil- dren and said: “Come and see what Mummie has for you!” So they came stumbling out one by one, Louis and Pauly and Marie and | Catherine, the hair falling over their sleepy éyes, and then they all scream- ed at once and ran forward. There on the table, in the midst of the flowers, with the altar lights be- hind her, stood my baby in her little white shirt, with her lovely bare arms feet, her head with the brown curls thrown back, and her big brown eyes shining solemnly; but at the sight of ithe children’s faces she began to laugh, her red lips parting to show the tiny white teeth. “Oh, Mummia, cried Marie. is it an angel ?” And I said, “Yes, she’s come down ! to play with you.” And then I set her on the floor and they all danced around her, she laughing with delight and plucking at them, and each one had to touch and hold her, her little pink toes curl- ing up when they kissed them. Oh, she knew her brothers and sisters that she was born toc, and that I had cheated her of! When I looked in the glass I didn’t know myself, my cheeks were so red. When I packed them off to bed again I said: “Mind you, there’s not a word to pass your lips to any living soul about our little angel. Remember that, Louis, and Marie, and Catharine as if I had spoken, | and Paul.” Then I put out all the lights but one and took my baby into my own narrow bed with me. I kissed her from her curls to her little warm feet, and she went to sleep, sighing and cooing with content, as I kissed her— she was mine, mine, mine! I lay awake while she slept so as not to lose a minute of her. I can’t tell you of my joy and my pain. God lets love hurt us so much, dosen't He! But before it was light,—and oh, the dawn comes so early in the spring!— I was up the hill with her, still \sleep- ing, ir my arms, and put her in the crib on the porch outside of the room where the trained nurse slept—I’d outwitted her for all her training! But after that, if I'd thought I’d be satisfied, I was mistaken, I wanted my baby more than ever. I kept watching to sce Rose wheeling the carriage over to the pines, and then I'd leave everything and run. How is it that you can’t keep what you're thinking out of the world? My children never tcld about that night when I stole their little sister for them, small as they were they never told. But one evening Louis began to cry, sobbing with his face in his hands, turned away from me, and though I asked him why, he wouldn’t speak. Children are so much wiser than we. Sometimes I was afraid of Louis. It isn’t what you do or say, it's your thoughts that you can’t guard, that slip away from vou, and find their way into the minds of oth- ers. It seemed to me that people be- gan to look strangely at me. One day I met Mr. Carrington in the town, ard Rose didn’t come to the pines the next day or the next, or the next. The day after that, Miss Lil, came in for a China crepe shawl of her mother’s. She’d brought a choco- late apiece for each of the children— sweet thing, the mother’s heart of her!—and they’d thanked her pretti- ly, they had nice manners, and she said, looking at Marie, “Do you know, Mrs. Blanchet, Mrs. Carrington’s lit- tle girl always reminds me of your children, though her coloring is so different! She has the same way of holding her head, and there’s some- thing in her smile. She’s such a dear little thing; I'll miss her when they 0. ” “When they go!” I repeated, star- ing at her. “Yes, they sail on Saturday. Mr. Carrington has business in France, so they're going there to live. Mrs. Blanchet, you really must not work so hard, you look terribly!” “Oh, I'm all right, Miss Lily,” I said. Giong away, going to take my child away, and to France, her father’s country! T That night I went up the hill, it was black dark with no meen, and I crept over the railing of the porch and stole my baby once mcre. So I brought her home to have her in my arms for the few hours that I might—anc what I would have done or not have done the night decided for me. It rained. The heavens opened, and the waters fell down in torrents; the thunder crashed, the lightning flared; the drops rattled on the roof with a noise so loud and ccntinuous you couldn’t hear yourself speak, and the wild wind hurled them at the window panes so that they were like to break; did one storm seem as if it would die down, another followed it. The chil- dren were frightened and came run- ning out of their beds to me—little Toinette cried; I had to walk the floor with her. I couldn’t have taken her back again if I would. And I was frightened at what I'd done—and afraid of Mr. Carrington—but I knew I'd have done it all over again. It was seven o’clock, with the chil- dren up and the rain stopping at last, that Mrs. Barns, a woman who lived above me, put her head in at my door, and says, “Have you heard the news? The Carrington’s baby has been stolen? She disappeared in that awful storm last night! Ain’t it terrible! “Stolen!” said I, with a quick glance behind me. The children were all in the inner room. “Have they— any clue?” “I don’t knew. Mr. Carrington was ' | away last night, but they’ve sent for him. Mrs. Carrington is wild.” It was only what I expected to hear, and yet—there’s such a strangeness in it when bad things come true! But I went back to the children when she left, with the baby running around among them or the floor and laughing, with her little head thrown back and her eyes, Antoine’s big, brown eyes, shining. She ate all her breakfast of bread and milk with the rest. She had a iook about her she'd never had before, the look loved chil- dren have. The others had their breakfast and went to school—only Louis looked at me strangely. And after I bathed the darling in the green tin foot tub, and dressed her in some old things of Catherine’s I was waiting all the time for the moment to come when she’d be taken from me. And it came! When I heard that knock on the front door I opened it to Mr. Carrington. He was alone. He strode in, his face black and stern. and when he saw the child in my arms he put out his and pulled her from me, thongh I tried to hold on to her, I screamed, and he said sternly, “Why not? She’s mine. Oh, I knew where to look for ner all right! I've been watching you ever since I recognized you at the house. Now I want to tell you, you've got to stop this game. You won't make anything by it.” “Make anything by it?” What did he mean? “But she belongs to me!” I stammered. “She belongs tc my wife and my- self,” he said. “You can be sent to prison for stealing her. Don’t you know that? If we weren’t sailing to- morrow morning I’d have you put where you couldn’t do any more harm. Your child! What kind of a mother were you to give her away? What kind of a mother are you now to want to take her from all the comforts and luxuries of life with everything to make her good and happy, when she’s growing up, and drag her down in- stead to”—he glenced around—“this! If you were to die, what’s to become of her? Do you want her to go to the poorhouse? You're a wicked, selfish woman, and when you talk of mothers —you don’t care whether you break her true mother’s heart or not!” > He saw her sleeping bag and pick- ed it up from a chair and wrapped it around her all wrong, like a man does, and strode out the door with her in his arms, and off up the hill, me hur- rying along behind him, wringing my hands as I went. I saw people star- ing, but I took no heed. Once he look- ed back to see me following; the baby was laughing at me over his shoulder. I went into the house after him to where Mrs. Carrington was sitting in her drooping laces, and she gave a cry when she saw the little thing in her husbarnd’s arms and ran and snatched the child to her. “Oh, Hubert! I knew youd find her, I knew—Why—" She stopped, for she saw me, my hair in wisps against my face, my lips twisting, and my hands twisting, too, against my apron. : “What eyes she has!” she said, drawing back as if in terror. She turned questioningly to her husband, and he nodded. : “ Twas as 1 thought,” he said. “This is the woman. You’d better go,” he ordered, not roughly, but I knew I had to obey. Yet first. . . “Madam,” I said, “it’s only a word I have te speak. Your husband’s been telling me how cruel I was to give my child away, and how cruel 1 am to want her now, cruel to you, and to her. I'd tell you what I went through before she came, if I could make you understand all my trouble—if I could make anyone understand what it is to have your husband die and leave you! And it’s true all Mr. Carrington says —DI'm selfish to want her—yes—if she were my baby alcne. I'd give her up to you again, yes, I would!—But she’s her dead father’s child too ! She’s a part of him, come back from heaven to me! There's something in me that’s stronger than I—God put it there! And I can’t let her go, T can’t, I can’t, I can’t!” I had fallen on my knees with sob- bing. “You may take her away to the ends of the earth, but you can’t take her from my heart’s longing, and it will come between you and her till I die!” I heard the lady’s voice saying, “Oh, Hubert!” as if faint-like, und I found myself at home more dead than living. : Late that evening, a carriage stop- ped by my gate, and Mr. and Mrs. Carrington got out. He had my baby in his arms. His wife was clinging to him, very white, but cold and proud-looking. “We have come to give you back the child,” he said in that stern voice of his. He put up his hand imperiously. “Don’t speak, please. My wife and I have made up our minds. My wife feels that knowing of Toinette’s par- ents makes a great difference in her own feeling of possession-the thought of another living mother is unpleas- ant to her. And she is very tender- hearted.” . His voice broke a little; that the man loved his wife was plain to be seen! “To think of your longing for the child would take all her own pleasure and comfort away. So we give Toinette back to you.—Wait. One thing is tc be clearly understood. One such trial is enough. We will never take the child back under any circumstances. You are never to make any appeal to us!” His voice wasn’t as hard as his words. He was looking at his wife. “Never!” I whispered, but I only looked at the lady, our eyes hung on each other for a moment. I tried to say, “May the Lcrd bless you,” and she came close to me, ard I put up my lips, and we kissed each other, as if we might have been sisters, each so sorry for the other. Then they left me with my darling child, Antoine’s and mine. . .. “Mum- mie, Mummie!” she cried, and patted my face with her little hand. But wouldn’t you think it strange! That other woman loved the child, yet she never sent one of the baby’s little clothes down to her when they left. Christmas or a birthday, since, never anything has-come. Kind she was, but I knew from the first that she hadn’t the real heart of a mother! Sometimes I'm frightened that I won't be able to work as hard as I ought. Louis says: “Motl er, I'm going to begin and earn money soon for my little angel sister,” for I'd told him all. But oh, will she judge me when she grows up, and finds what I’ve kept from her ?— By Mary Stewart Cutting, in “Wom- an’s Home Companion. mia FARM NOTES. —The Pocrest notaties in the bas- ket set the price for the entire bushel. —Philadelphia “Record.” : —Preparedness in industrial train- Ing and in practical farming is just as essential to the country’s welfare as military preparecness, —A good, reliable, intelligent farm hand is worth keeping, even if you have to pay several dollars 2a month above ordinary wages for his serv- ices. —Farmers of today face different problems to those that confronted our fathers and grandfathers, The day of cheap lands has passed and we need hardly remind ourselves that it has passed for all time in America. —It is now announced that saddle horses are again coming into, style and that a really handsome animal may be purchased anywhere from $150 to $300. This is strangly con- firmatory of a belief prevalent among a very large and important section of the public that just as soon as auto- mobiles began to promise to come within reach something would hap- pen. —That green forage crops lower the cost of pork production material- ly is demonstrated by experiments at the Ohio Experiment Station. Alfal- fa, clover, rape, soy beans and blue- grass are adapted to hog pasturage. In one experiment lasting 11weeks in midsummer clover Pasture replaced 71 pounds of corn in every 100 pounds gain made by the hogs. Rape re- placed 64 pounds, and soy beans, 54 pouncs. All these hogs received corn in addition to pasture. They made cheaper gains than {hose fed only grain in dry lot. Rape makes an abun. dant, platable growth and has a long orazing season. An acre will usually supply green feed for three months for 30 hogs weighing about 100 pounds. Soy beans may be graz- ed from July 1 for a period of about 10 weeks. Since bluegress is suscep- tible to drouth, it has its greatest val- ue for early spring use. —Spinach is an annual plant used as “greens,” for which there is a great Jemand very early in spring, and late fall. The leaves are succulent, and rather large, the seed stalk growing about two feet in height. Spirach is a rapid grower when planted In a soil that is rich in humus and in fine tilth. This quick growth makes the leaves and stalks tender. It is of easy culture, and thrives best in cool weather. The best market is in spring, and for this purpose the seed should be sown not later than early September. In the Middle and Northern States the plants should be protected during the winter with leaves of straw. This cover should be removed very early in spring. As the crop is a rapid grower, it an be gathered very early in spring. In market gardening, the application in the spring of nitrate of soda has been advertised, but ncw, instead, owing to the scarcity of that article, a dressing of hen manure, or well-rotted barn. vard manure, is substituted. The crop should be ready for market in April or May, and be all gathered by early June. Being hardy, spinach endures se- vere winter. The spinach field should be made into slightly raised beds six to nine feet wide, so that water will not stand on the plants. The rows should run lengthwise of the bed. The plants should be thinned out when the leaves are an inch wide. An ounce of seed will sow 100 feet of drill; 12 pounds to the acre. There are two races of spinach, the prickley seeded and the round seeded. The prickly varieties are hardiest, and more generally used for fall plant- ing. For early sprirg and summer use, the Long-Standing Spinach is desired by many growers. The Round-leaved is a good shipping variety. Prickly or winter spinach is valuable for fall seeding; the Bloomsdale is also a good one. The New England spinach one sees frequently in market is not a spinach at all, but is one of the best substi- tutes for it. The enemies of spinach are mildew, anthracnose, leaf blight, white smut and black mold. Mildew can be detected by the gray, velvety patches on the under side of the leaves, with corresponding yellow spots on the upper side. Anthracnese shows itself in gray spots on the leaves, containing brown postules, which may be found: on either the upper or under side of the leaves. Leaf blight forms numerous small pimples on the lower part of the leaf. In white smut the spores are color- less, giving a frosty appearance to the leaves. Black mold occurs as dark blotches on old leaves, but seldom attacks young, vigorous plants. Treatment of any of the above dis- eases consists in rotation of crops and destruction of affected plants. A mix- ture consisting of equal parts of sul- phur and airslaked lime, raked into the bed before . planting, is recom- mended. As a rule, spinach is free from in- sect pests, although at times the leaf maggots become troublesome. They deposit their eggs on the under side of the leaves and the larva mines in the tissue of the leaf, resembling a blis- T. The leaf maggot not only feeds on spinach, but also on beets and such weeds as lamb’s quarters. These weeds in the neighborhood of the spinach and beet fields should be de- stroyed. Deep, early spring or late fall plow- ing, followed by rolling, is recom- mended. SO ———————— ——They are all good enough, but the WATCHMAN is always the best.
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers