—————————
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