————————— THE SAND-MAN. flo! for the Sand-man! jolly old fellow, With twitkiing eyes and a gleesome smile; He comes when candle flickers yellow, And he does his work In jauntiest style, For be lightens his cumbersome bag of sand With alight and a brisk and a generous hand. Ho! for the Sand-man! merry old codger, His sim 1s firm and his shot Is crack, And the sharpest wiles of the nimblest dod. r Can Dalle him never, nor hold him back; Blue eyes, gray eyes, black eyes, brows, He pola tm soft—and the lids drop own. Ho! for the Sand-man! funny old rover, He stops the playing snd balts the fun; He doesn’t wait the games are over, He doesn’t care whether romps are done, His shaggy old head pokes in, and lo! Mouths gape widely and feet lag slow. Ho! for the Sand-man! blithesome old caller, Mothers esteem him and nurses ado For he gathers the children, the big an sm , And hurries them swiftly away before They know it's been done, to the babbling streams And the singing birds of the Land of Dreams, —Emmas A. Opper. A STRANGE STORY. Last summer, the schooner William Haley, of Galveston, trading among the West Indies, was becalmed near the Gulf Stream. The second day the captain’s curiosity was aroused by a strange floating mass, and he ordered the mate to take a boat and examine it. The mate returned towing a log, from which the men had cut away the marine growth which had made it seem at a distance like a sea-monster. The captain ordered it to be hoisted to the deck, de laring that in forty years spent at sea he had never found any- thing like it. When laid on the deck, it was seen « be about twenty feet long and two feet in diame er. It was of some very bard, dark-colored wood, like palm, charred in places, and worn and bro- ken, cut and torn, as if it had been whirled through torrents and mael- stroms for hundreds of years. The ends were pointed, and five bands of the On closer examination, the log was bands were to bind If together. captain had the bands cut, and in the exact centre, fitt d into a cavity, was meter. The rest of the wood was solid. The captain, more disappointed at picked up the stone and was greatly astonished at its lightness. Examin- that when a boy on the stones with crystals in them-—geodes, as he afterwards heard them cal ed. This was probably a geode, placed in this strange receptacle for some un- known purpose. his cabin and put it into his chest. returned to his cottage on Galvesion Bay, and placed among his cariosities the geode he had so strangely found in the Gulf Stream. One day he studied it again, and the sunlight chanced to fall upon a narrow, irregu- lar line. «] declare,” said the old man; it patched together!” He struck it with s hammer and it fell apart, and proved to be filled with small pieces of yellowish-brown wood. The shell of the stone was about an inch thick, studded over inside with thousands of garnet crystals. It had been broken into three parts and fas- tened together again with some sort of cement which showed plainly on the inside. The old captain poured the pieces of wood on the table. They were per. fectly dry and hard. They seemed almost like stripe of bamboo, snd were numbered and covered with writing, made by pricking marks with some sharp instrument like sn awl. He found the first piece of wood and be- to read, for it was in English. The work of deciphering the tiny dents on the bits of wood soon became the captain's chief occupation. He copied esch sentence off in his old log-book as fast as it was made out. Five or six sentences were about all his eyes would stand without a rest, so that it was » long time before the narrative was all complete. This narrative runs as fol lows: Heart ov Tue Rockies, about Sept. 17, 1886. 1 am an American, Timothy Par sons, of Machias, Maine. 1 have no living relatives. I write this in a vast vaulted chamber, hewn from the solid granite by rome pre-hisioric race. 1 bave been for months a wander- er in these subterranean spaces, and now I have contrived a way to send my message out to the world that I shall probably never see agmin. If comes upon a vaulted chamber, with heaps of ancient weapons of bronze, bars of gold and precious stones that no man may number, let him give Christian burial to the poor human bones that lie in this horrible treasure- house. He will find all that is left of my mortal frame near the great ever- berning lamp, under the dome of the central hall. That lamp is fed from some reservoir of natural gas, It was lighted when I came, months ago. For all 1 know otherwise, it hss burned there for thousands of years. The entrance to this sub-montane river is in the Assinnaboine Moun- tains, north of the United States line, wis & Brospector there for several | whose life 1 had once saved, told me that he knew how to get to the river, and he took me to & cave in a deep gorge. Here we lived for a week, ex- ploring by means of pine torches, and at las: found a passage which ran steadily downward. This, the Indian told me, was the path by which his ancestors, who once lived in the mid- dle of the earth, had found their way to the light of day. 1 think we were about three hundred feet below the entrance of the cave, when we began to hear the sound of roaring waters. The sound increased, until we stood by an underground river, of whose width and depth we could form no idea. The light of our torches did pot even reveal the height of the roof overhead. My guide told me that this was the mother of all the rivers of the world. No other person except himself knew of its existence. It flowed from the énd of the north to the extreme south. It grew ever warmer and warmer. There was a time when people lived along its channel, and there were houses and cities of the dead there, and many strange things. It was full of fish without eyes, and they were good to eat. If [ would help him build a raft, he would float me down this river. The old stories said that one could go upon it for many miles. It ran down a hollow under the mountains. ‘We built and equipped our raft and launched it on the most foolhardy ad- venture, I do believe, that ever occu- pied the attention of men. We lit torches, and set them in sockets on the raft, and we were well armed. For two weeks we moved down the high archway, at a steady rate of only about three miles an hour. The average width of the stream was about five hundred feet, but at times it widened out to almost twice that, It swarmed with many kinds of fish, and they were very easy to secure. The rock walls and roof seemed to be of solid granite. We were below the later formations. As nearly as I can calculate, we were about a thousand miles from where our voyage began, and nothing had vet happened to disturb its monot- | ony, when we began to find traces of | ancient work and workers. An angle i in the wall was hewn into a titanic figure; at another point there seemed to be regular windows, and a dwelling | was perched far up in the granite Suddenly we found t at the river { was fl wing much faster, and we | failed to check our raft. We went over a water-fall, perhaps seventy feet high, and were thrown on a shelf of | rock at the side of the river below. 1 | was unhurt, but my companion was so badly injured that he died in a few | hours. 1 repaired the raft after a | fashion, and continued the voyage, find- | ing it impossible to contrive any way to scale the sides of the water-fall and at- | tempt a return. All our torches were | jost, and the attempt to proceed fur- | ther seemed but the last act of despair. A few hours later, I saw a light gleam over the river in a very remarkable way, shining clear across, as if from the head-light of a locomotive high up on the wall. This aroused me some- : what from my stupor and misery. 1 sat up on the raft and steered it close | to the edge of the river to see what { wonderful thing bad happened. i As I came nearer, I saw that an ir- regular hole was in the walls thousand feet above the water, and the light shone out through it. It was a cheer- ful thing to lvok at, and I hung to the granite and shouted, but to no effect. Then I saw a broken place in the wall a little further down, and let the raft drift along to the base of a broad though much worn snd broken sigh of steps winding up the cliff. brought me at last to the place of the light, s domed hall overlooki the river, hewn out of the rock, hav- ing in its centre a metal baisin with » jet of natural gas. I have had to cut off a part of this metal basin since, but I have not harmed the inscriptions. There are many gas-jets, but in the attiee chambers I have had to light m. { Ihave lived here for months, and I have explored all the chambers of the . » is no escape, so far as I can see. The river, twenty miles be- {low, plunges down vaster descents, { and the water gets so hot that I should | be boiled alive if I tried the voyage. 1 | have discovered a log of tropic wood | like palm, and a geode in which I can send a message to the world of sun- light. Perhaps this will get through the fires and float to the surface some- i where. Iam convinced that the river | which brought me here flows on into . the Gulf of Mexico, and that, sooner (or later, my log will be picked up. | Perhaps this river is really the source ! of the Gulf Stream. From a sort of a map, painted on one of the walls, 1 obtain the idea of many and thickly populated communities which used this place as the sepulchre of their crosen | few, Evidently that was before volcanic , outbursts made the channel of the river like a caldron boiling over endless fires, All along the course are towns marked, j groups of rock-hewn rooms on the cliffs, populated islands on the river, promontories from whose sides foun tains of light seem to spring. Did | thousands of people once live and find happiness in the<e vast vaults of death? Things must have been very different then from now. They must have had many reservoirs of natural » The animal life in the river must have been ‘ much more varied. Indeed, there are pictures in the Hall of War, as 1 have , named it, that show two thi plainly | ==that there were thousands of caverns extending over hundreds of miles, and animals with which the and that the river was existence. | 1 have tried to together sll I can | of their picture- Pa and sort of men and women they were. 1 confess that I have learned to admire them greatly. They were a strong, brave, loving and beautiful people. 1 am sorry they are all gone. I never cared half so much about the dead Etruscans or Carthagin- jans. The earliest chapter in their history, so far as I discover, is a pic- ture of a lineof men and women de- scending into a cave, and a dragon pursuing them. This seems to point to a former residence on the face of the earth, and to some dlsaster——war, flood, pestilence or some fierce mon- ster—which drove the survivors into the depths of the earth for shelter. Bu all these thoughts are vain and foolish. 1 have explored the cliffs of the river and the walls of the mighty halls which shelter me. I have at- tempted to cut a tunnel upward past the water-fall, using the ancient weapons which lie in such numbers on the floor. The bronze wears out fast, but if I live long enough, something may be done. 1 will close my record aud launch it down the river. Then I will {ry to cut my way out to the sunlight. Here the story closed. Some day, perhaps, an old man, white-haired and pale as one from the lowest dungeon of » Bastile, will climb slowly out of some canon of the Rockies to tell the world more about his discovery of a lost race.—Charles Howard Shina. ———— In Fort Worth, «I've been in every city inthe United States,” said a well-known man recent- iy, ‘and P've been in some pretty tough laces: but I have yet to sec & man shot or stubbed. After all,” he con- tinued, ‘there's a deal of rot talked about the danger ome encounters in plains towns. However, 1 remem- ber one fanny thing apropos of killiug. 1 was in Fort Worth, Tex., s number of years ago, waiting to meet a Mexi- can capitalist, got bored, hunted up a faro bank—it was upstairs over a sa- loon, I remember—and started in with very good luck, which stuck to me. I made three plays against the bank on as many evenings, and on the last oc- casion the man on the high chair, who happened to be the proprietor, came over at the end of a deal, and, tapping me on the shoulder, whispered: « «Yer kin go on playin’, stranger, but y'll hev ter wait till tomorrer fer money ef yer win. We're on the sec- on’ bank roll, and we're eight hundred short uy you'uns chips, now.’ +] had broken the bank and $800 over. I quit playing, of course, snd went out to find myself famous as the feller from the No'th what broke Jem's bank.! Every one did me hon- or, and the next evening a number of citizens took me to the theatre to occu- py & box with them. During the pause between a bad song and a dance and an awful serio-comic ballad one gentleman commenced pointing out lo- cal celebrities: t+ +See that long fellow yonder in a sombrero snd calzeronzas,' and he pointed out a semi-Mexican with a villainous face and a long knife. ‘Well, he's killed his man; end the other one with the shiuy hat, three rows in front, has two graves for his record. Then over near the pisno is Sleepy Bill, of Dallas: he’s put out anyhow three lights, and his pardner, who just went out for a drink, has done full as well” Thus far my ‘lecturer on life’ had spoken in an ordinary conversational tone, and with- out any apparent awe in tone or look. Suddenly his voice dropped to a low whisper and his eyes fairly bulged ss he muttered: ¢« «Great snakes! Look over in that box opposite. See that sallow-com- plexionel man with the broadcloth frock and diamond ring? As I live that's Brownsville Charlie. He's croaked six and has it in for me. He's Jooking this way. Guess I'll say good evening.’ “I'll never forges the piano drop in the man's voice, and I'm likely to re- member that I didn’t wait for the salutation but skipped to my hotel, and thence, on the first train north- ward, Maybe I wasn't in any danger, but I n't tell how straight the fellow could shoot, nor how soon and how suddenly he might open the fusillade.” ———— IIA HS A Killen Tons of Ralls. A leading steel rail manufacturer of Pittsburg gives some interesting data rding the additional trackage de- ci upon by the Trunk lines of the country this year. He said: “There will be needed a million tons of steel rails. This quantity of material, de- livered, will cost about $35,700,000. Add to that the cost of fish bars, frogs, switches, ties, grading and laying of material and the total amount which will be spent will not fall short of £100,000,000. «The Pennsylvania company lines will need about thirty thousand tons. Other roads, including the Baltimore and Ohio, Lake Erie, and Pittsburg and Western will need fifty thousan or sixty thousand tons more. Add to that the amounts needed by other East- ern roads, the Vanderbiit system, Gould's lines, Southern and Western roads and you have the million tons. “The Lake Shore between Buffalo and Chicago will use twenty thousand tons. Every road will this year in- crease its trackage facilities. The ex- periences of last year bid fair to be re- ted this year in the way of the emt Po upon the movement of freigh- which every shipper so well remem- bers, and every r ilroad manager is do. ing his utmost to obviate the trouble. anim TRICKS OF THE TRADE. HOW SHARP CLERKS BEGUILE INNOCENT PURCHASERS, Noat Stratagems Which Are Usually Successful in their Result. The shrewd business man leaves something to the intelligence of his customers. As long as a thing is not misrepresented let them find out defects for themselves. But the day of sand- ing the sugar and wetting down the tobacco is over. There is an inveigle- ment of another kind now. Chromo cards and gifts have had their day, but there is the quarter-off and the half-off sale. Can any one outside of the business tell how the accomplished clerk holds up & piece of dress goods in that little pyramid on the counter where the light strikes it so as to bring out in bold re- lief all its best colors and make it look as if it were the labeliest fabric in the store? One clerk will say, with his bead over on its side like a little bird: «It looks like you, Miss — . It'sa fact. 1 thought of you as soon as I saw it. I said to myself Miss — will want a dress of that piece.” Another will remark incidentally under the same circumstances: ‘Your friend Mrs. Col — bought a dress from that piece.” The customer hesitates—and is lost. In other words, she buys the goods, being helplessly enshimmered in the science of delusion by those clerks who know their business. A lady went into a dry goods store and asked to see some goods dieplay- ed in the window. «You don't want that style of goods said the clerk, who knew his customer ; “you wouldn't wear it.” Then he took down dress after dress A Learned Frnglish Woman, Amelia B. Edwards, the famoas Englishwoman now lecturing in this country, divides wita the Princess d’1stria, of Italy, the honor of being the most learned woman in the world. Her literary career began at four with a short but picturesque ittie story, and at seven she was in print wih a poem entitled The Knights of Old, which her proud mother lad sent to a local jour. sl. At twelve she contribu- ted a long historical novel of the time of Edward 111. to the London Pioneer, a penny paper which did not long sur- vive the contribution. Next she sent caricatures to Cruikshauk, who wan - ed to train her for illust:ated work, but another mental tangent took her to music, thence again 10 fiction, and finally as su old-world traveller she passed the masculine h'storical schol- ars, and as a pedestrian threatened the reputation of the Wandering Jew. At the age of twenty-one Miss Edwards literally went fo the literary life. Her first short-story check came from Chamber's Journal, Her first novel, My Brother's Wife, was pub- lished in 1855; then followed The Lad- der of Life in 18567, Hand and Glove in 1858, Barbara's History in 1864, Half s Million of Money in 1865, De- benham’s Vow in 1870, In the Days of My Youth in 1873, and Lord Bracken- bury in 1880, eight novels in twenty- five years. Two volumes of short sieur Maurice in 1873—help to fill the vacancies, Some of her earlier as well as later ventures in poetry were brought together in a volume of Bal- lads in 1665. Among her first efforts were a summary of English history in 18566, a summary of French history in 1858, and a translation of A Lady's Great Head, Mrs, Hen. Frank W. Miner of Salem, 8 wild town ten miles west of Norwich, has a very canny old hen. The hen isin the habit, sanctioned by her owner, of roosting under a coop, one end of which is uptilted on the edge of a large tin plate, and a very big owl, also of Salem, has been in the habit of visiting Mr. Miner's homestead =nd stealing his chickens. The two habits impinged on each other one night this week, and the result was detrimental to the owl. The big owl had come out of the woods and was strutting about Mr. Miner's front yard, when be espied the hen cosily dozing in her aked cot- sage. In the heavy shadow of the coop he could not estimate her age with any accuracy, and so he went into it to get her. The hen saw him coming, but she made not a sound until he had passed beneath the impending portcul- lis, and then she gave a wild cackle and darted out of the coop. She was smart enough in going out to take the tin plate with her, and the portcullis came down. The hen wheeled about and gazed at the situation. Act II. was now on the boards and the positions of the actors had been shifted. The hen was no longer at home to nocturnal callers, but the owl appeared to be very much st home. The hen was out in the chill and humid night, and the owl was sequestrated of the coop. The hen was in ecstacy, the owl evidently was astounded and displeased. But he did not realize the extreme gravity of his situstion until the vociferous cackling of the hen had alarmed her master, who strolled out of the house smoking. The delighted and exulitant fowl led Captivity amcng the Chinese Pirates, also in the last-named year. The Story of Cervantes in 1863, and a volume of selections, A Poetry Book of Elder Poets, in 1879, count among from his reserve stock and as he did so remarked casually : «You wouldn't wear a window dress. This one has not been shown before. Of course the customer was flattered into buying & dress, and the clerk was right. He knew that the goods re- moved frown the illusion of plate glass would not please her. A clerk soon learns that a lsdy is never offended when her tastes are remembered and alluded to with graceful tact. A customer sees a sale of half off advertised at a clothing store where a month ago he bought a suit for $30. He tells a friend who has admired his suit that he can get one just like it for 15. and hurries him off to the clothing slore., Show mine-—the same thing.” «Certainly, sir! This way, They are marked down now with the rest, $25, sir.” “But you are advertising all your goods at half price. What does that mean 7” «Oh not such goods as those sir. impossible. Why, look at the quality. We are selling our regular stock at half price, but these—" and words fail him to do justice to the subject. And very likely the man buys a suis which cost originally less than $154 and is perfectly satisfied in getting it $5 cheaper than his friend bought his, merely recognizing commercial acumen in the little trick of half off. this gentleman a suit like mir. did. They make their goods speak for themselves. It is a fact that the dry goods store is the principal attraction of the busi ness street and a fertile spot in the desert of commerce. It has color, variety and an attraction that no other place can possibly have. The common- of velvet stacked to catch his eye. inquired who had arranged it in that way, sent for the man, who Was & new hand, and told him it was wrong. The man answered Mr. Stewart that it was the proper way to display that class of goods. Mr, Stewart said no more, but he watched and saw the velvets managed in this vy for some months, Then he sent tor the man and promoted him to the velvet depart- ment of the wholesale store. «] saw that you knew more about velvets than I did myself,” was the only explanation he gave. The best clerk is the reader of human nature. He. coerces one into buying and intimi- dates another. The merchants have a proverb that any salesman can sell a customer the goods she came to pur- chase, but he is a good salesman who sells her what she does not want. Every clerk has his particular friends who like to trade with him because he is obliging, or courteous, or entertain- ing. It is his trick of trade to be all these to his customers, SAS 5 AI have enjoyed for a long time. indications point to equal All the he utp | her miscellaneous literary work. So | early as 1862 she had written a volume | of travel, Sights and Stories: a Holi- § | dsy Tour through North Belgium, | Peaks snd Unfrequented Valleys, | appeared in 1873, and her Egyptian | in 1876, innumerable to the London Times, the Academy, and other English periodi- | cals and the record tells mot only of | great capacity but of almost unlimited | endurance. Her best books are those of travel An enthusiastic Egypto'ogist, she him straight to the coop, and as Mr. Miner, having tsken his pipe from his lips, squared himself before the cage, | the mien and jaunty carriage of the old | hen seemed to express the boastful | jibe: ‘Well, old man, how does this | affair strike you for & melodrama, en- | titled ‘The Consummation of Cuteness; { or, The Doleful Dole of the Unbidden | Guest?” Mr. Miner took charge of the pris- | oner, set the coop again, and the old | hen retired into it to doze and wait for another woods chap to come fooling around her. In recounting the inci. dent Mr. Miner said that in all his wide | experience with owls be had never before seen an owl whose eves were so big with wonder and bedazzlement owl the oid a8 were the eves of the wen { caught in the coop. ————————————— preparation of Egypt of the Past, and is to-day perhaps the Lest informed of scholars as to the far-away history of this mysterious land She is very friendly to Americans, especially U the Bostonese. Columbia Col ege has made her a L. H. D., and Smith's Fe- male College, Massachusetts, has added an LL. D. She is a member of all the | learned English societies with honors innumerable. Miss Edwards is a Lon- | doner by birth, English military fath- er. and Irish literary mother, and on the authority of the family Bible is fifty-eight years of age. Her favorite recrestion is walking, | leave ber distinguished foot-prints on many ap American mile. a Hunting on Cape Cod, How little we know of the resources | and advantages of our own neighbor | hood ! | and the wilderness of northern Canada in search of game, Capt. Perry Jones, who, though an enthusisstic New Yorker, has strong predictions for New England, said to a New York Star re- porter: “One of the best territories for shooting deer is on that long and curious peninsula, Cape Cod. Al though the distiict was settled far back in the 17th century, the popula tion bas remained stationary. «The climate is too severe in winter for people of weak constitutions, and the soll is too sandy to ever reward the farmer to any liberal extent. While much of the land is improved, a large portion is wild and covered with forests of pine and scrub osk. There is a heavy, and, at places, a dense, underbrush. In some spots it is so thick as to almost defy a woodman. In these old woods the deer thrive al- most as well to-day as they did two centuries ago. Last season over 120 | were shot by the natives and summer | visitors. The venison is delicious, and, | owing to the salt air, the ocean w.nds, | the inexhaustible supply of food and | the freedom from wolves and dogs, | has a different flavor from that which | comes from the far West and North. | “The people there are very conserva- | tive and quaintly old-fashioned. In summer the climate is delightful, but during the rest of the year, as 1 inti- mated, it is not. There is an enor mous supply of fish of every kind, but the meat and vegetables are not up to the New York mark. There is good shooting besides the deer there, includ- ing snipe, partridge, duck and wood. cock. Unless overrun by pot hunters, the cape promises to remain for many years a lovely land for all whose fancy turns to the rod and gun.” AAI Abject Worship of Royalty. To show how abject is the worship of royalty in India, the following ex- tracts from a poem, written in me bay to welcome Prince Albert Victor of Wales, are pertinent: “A prince high in beauty Preservation of the Evesight. The best preservative of evesight is 3 outdoor exercise. A cold bath every morning stimulates the circulation, and with an active bounding of the blsod through the arteries assimilation and elimination bring about good rescits. Heated rooms with poor illumination are a prolific source of weak e) leading or writing with the light falling on the page and reflecting ite | rays into the eyes often brings about | a spasmn of the little muscles which | govern the accommodation, and the re- sult is to exhaust the eyes. People who indulge in overfeeding, are careless about clothing, travel with damp feet, or dine irregularly, all suf- | for sooner or later from defective vis- | jon. See that the tear ducts are kept | healthy by proper means and nature | \will then do her duty.—New York | Commercial Advertiser. es. Swiss Labor Conference. The Swiss Government has issued the programme which is to form the basis of the labors and inquiries of the labor conference. It includes the fol- lowing points: 1. In what , if at all, should the State restrict Sunday work? 92. What is the minimum age below which the employment of children i» factories should be prohibited? 8. What should be fixed as » maxi- mum day's work for work men or women under full age? 4. Should the hours of compulsory attendance at school which are now re- quired by law be counted as part of a day's work for juvenile workers® 5. Should the maximum length of | a day's work for juveniles vary sc- cording to the ages: and during what hours should the working time be fixed? 6. What restriclions are nDecossary in the employment of women snd children in unhealthy and dangerous occupation ? 7. Should the State permit the em- ployment of women aud children in occupations carried on at night time? 8. How can the State best put into effect and enforce the labor regulations it makes? Finally, the pr gramme submits to the conference that proposition for periodical labor conferences, which will become an established institution if this conference approves th: ides. a I A Banguet on a Large Scale. The directors of the De Beers Com- pany in the Kimberly (South Africa) mines gave a Christmas picnic to their 8000 employees, at which were eaten 1200 fowls, 400 turkeys, 150 geese, 100 hams, 1000 pounds of spiced, roast and boiled beef, and 1800 pigeon, veal and ham and chicken and ham pies, washed down with 5000 bottles of English and German beer, 100 cases of pagne, 200 cases of claret and Bertie—And do sll angells have wi Uncle Charles? nele Charles— Yes, Bertie. he Big angels and little ange. a Uncle Charles—1 told you yes, Bere tie. Bertie—Say Uncle if you were me wouldn't you go into the wing business ws soon a you got old ign
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers