SULLIVAN REPUBLICAN. W. M, CHENEY, Publisher. VOL. IX. According to the Chicago Weies, the leading newspapers in Havana, Cuba, advocate reciprocity with the United States. Italy has ordered the study of English to be added to the ouriculuin of all Ital ian universities, and has endowed the necessary professorships for the purpose. It is estimated that the railroads of the United States lose $2,000,000 yearly by landslides, $3,000,000 by floods, 81,- 000,000 by fire, and $9,000,000 by col lisions. At a banquet in Sheffield, England, the other day, Lord Wolseley, in address ing the yeomanry cavalry, advised them to make themselves good shots and effi cient to fight on foot, because the days of fighting on horseback in England were past and gone. It seems to be a fact, states the New Orleans Timea-IJemoerat, that as the ur ban population increases, marriage de crease. The iucrease in the urban popu lation of the United States during this century has been from four to twenty two per cent. "The romance of diamond mining is all gone," laments the St. Louis Star Sayings. "It is now a matter of excava ting vast beds of blue clay by machinery, wushing it and sifting out the diamonds, which, after being roughly sorted for size, are sold in bulk by weight." The number of tramps has decreased seventy-five per cent, in the last five years, and it is the laws passed by the different States which have done it, opines the Detroit Free Pres». When you make tramping a crime you oblige a tramp togo to work and make an honest living. Statistics show that there are some two million people in this couutry de pendent upon the railroads for support. The number of employed is put at 704,- 743. In case of a general strike, re murks the CalCicator, the number of people to sutler direct loss is thus shown to be very large. The salary list of the staff of the great Word's Pair is interesting. It is as fol lows: Gage, President, $6000; Bryan, Yice-Prcsident, $12,000; Butterworth, Secretary, §10,000; Seeburger, Treasurer, $0000; Palmer, National President, $12,- 000; Davis, Director General, $15,000; Dickinson, Secretary, SIO,OOO. This makes a snug total of $70,000. The following figures ara published in a German publication that stands high as an authority on railroad matters. The table gives a summary of the world's railroad mileage last year as compared with the figures of four years ago: Dec. 31, 'B4. Dec. 31, 'B9. Miles. Miles. America 140,600 191,000 Europe 116,600 138,90 C Asia..* 13,201) 17,800 Africa 4,600 5,200 Australia 7,600 10,500 Total 303,000 357,400 In San Francisco the sewing girls have to compete with Chinese labor, asserts the New Orleans Picayune, and their wagej amount to $4.50 a week. In New York the American girls have been driven out of the clothing shops altogether by the Polish, Hungarian and Kussian wo men, who work ten hours a day, seven days in the week, for $4. The average wages paid the factory girls by suit, cap, cloak, feather, flower and underwear manufacturers is $3.70. Perhaps 300 forewomen get $25 a week, and a num ber are able to earn sts after ten years' service, but there are thousands of little girls and young women who begin on $1 and are raised at the rate of seventy-five cents a year. There is a prejudice in the rural dis tricts of this State against bachelors, says the Portland Oregonian. People in every out-laying settlement are opposed to bachelors taking up claims in their vicinity. An exchange says: "There are some splendid claims on Deadwood Creek not yet taken, as good as any on the coast. The citizens want men with families to settle on them. Three of these claims were taken by bachelors last fall. The ladies of Deadwood passed a resolution placing a three years' limit on celibacy in that district, and provid ing all bachelors not married a', the end of that time be run out vf the settlement or hanged." Five bachelors moved out, one got married and two have gone into the sparking business. THE SHEKhiLS AND THE CUP. THANKSGIVING T.INES. Our grateful songs in rapture rise, For blessings from propitious skies, For golden harvests gathered here, Where plenty's purple bauner flies Unchallenged through the circling year. For bread the toiler need not lack, If at the plow he looks not back. And wiauows from the seed the tares. He'll find the shekels in his sack. As Jacob's anxious sons found theirs. is the loaf the harvest brings, Feast for a continent of kings. Are we not sovereigns lifted up? Our nation's (as the youngest born), Like Benjamin's filled sack of corn. Contains the shekels and the cup! Summer on rapid wings has fled, Leaves that were green are turning red, The cheerful swallows southward soar; But He who gives us daily bread Has filled our basket and our store. From teeming fields bronzed labor tilled Our vaults and bins and barns are filled, And we have learned to toil and trust. The rain, in plenteous showers distilled, Fell on the just and the unjust. —Gcorye W. Bungay. A THANKSGIVING PIG. BY ISABET, HOLMES MASON. .i LIVE stood at the kitchen tabic getting ~takr.. 1 Thanksgiving dinner lifeSfe I under way, while Lolly , E handed her things from the clo»et, humming W§tj£l& l &g p meanwhile in an uti dertone: "Four-and twenty blackbirds bak in' in a pie." Tlic racing pell-mell overhead might have sounded like colts let loose but for girlish shouts and laughter. "Goodness, what a uoise!" Olive said, ns Lolly handed her the box of summer savory. "Dan will be torn to pieces unless he turns upon them." "He said the letter I brought him was from his best girl and they're tryin' to get it away from him," explained Lolly. Olive was preparing her stuffing with keen housewifely instinct as to relative quantities of "seasons" required. The creature to be stuffed stood on all fours on a table. Not a commonplace turkey but a'pink-uosed little pig was to grace ' the occasion of her nephew Dan's unex pected return home after "sailing the seas over"' seven years without a word to his relatives. "Won't roast a lovely brown!" Lolly naiil, as she watched the stuffing disappear. "Yes, Dan will have a Thanksgiving feast this year," asseuted Olive. The racket overhead increased. "If they could always keep heart-whole," Olive thought with a little sigh. "Hut we get our growth through suffering, I suppose." A concealed regret, which had a fashion i of working to the surface on festive I occasions, was uppermost just now. But | she was a blithe, cheery little woman | with a talent for battling off dull , thoughts, and so she laughed and said | lightly: "Those girls make me think I urn young again. Lolly." As she spoke her eye wandered across ; the brown meadow to the Ellen wood j homestead and then beyond it to the | white house on the hill among the 1 larches, where Squire Ashtou lived, whom her friends wondered she did not marry. What was she waiting for? She was thirty-six now, fair and comely in com- ' parison with tome of the faded married i women around her who had been her schoolmates, but it would not always ; be so tine to live alone ou the old home- ; stead as she had done since her father's • death. Offers of marriage would not I come to her door always. Her own view \ of the matter had begun to coincide with ! that of her friends. Squire Ashton was j a widower of tifty, of kindly, noble I nuture, whom she liked cordially. He j had wooed her two years, until now she was losing patience with her own iu- I decision. Why was she hesitating; To: be sure his presence never quickened her even pulses, but why should she expect the tumultuous expression of an earlier 1 love? She had been on the border of saying i "yes" to his pleading at the very mo ment Dan's vigorous summons with the old-fashioned knocker on the front door had brought her out. from the parlor in a hurry, to be caught, in the arms of her roving nephew in a regular sailor "hug." "Wait until Thanksgiving," she had said to Squire Ashton, removing her de cision a week ahead. Meantime, the six girls were chasing Dan round under the brown cobweb hung rafters, he holding the letters aloft. "Catch him! ITead him off there!" they shouted. Presently Dan. mg, brown and full of true sailor jollity, changed from de fensive to aggressive tactics. He set Bess on top of the spider-leggwl bureau in a bed of dust, tied Clara by the waist to a tall, four-posted bedstead with his handkerchief and seized a pair of old quiltiuir frames to defend himself against Sue and Kate. His free motions with the -'bclayiug pins" brought a swinging shelf of books to the floor, and "Robin ,-nii Crusoe." "Gulliver's Travels," '■lVntdise Lost" ami ot.her clu-wies sniawled amitl 11 heap of dog-eared suiiuolbooks iu the dus>t. LAPORTE, PA.., FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21. 1890. "I see a letter slipping out from Robin son Crusoe!" Bess cried from her perch. Sue picked it up and turned it over. "Why, it's addressed to Miss Olive Blossom and it's never been opened I" she exclaimed. "It looks awful old and yel low." Dan examined it, then compared the haudwriting with that on his own let ter. "The same, or I'm a landlubber," he muttered. "Likely it's an old love letter," Clara suggested from her bedpost. "And she never got it, just as happens in story-books," added Kate. "Let as put it under her dinner plate." "No! no!" was Sue's veto. "Give it to me. I have an idea. Quick. She's coming up." "Oh, it was the bookcase. I thought some one was hurt," said Olive, entering as Sue dtwhed out past her. "Poor father! mw he used to pore over these books," she continued as she stooped to pick them up. "He had 'Paradise Lost' and 'Robinson Crusoe' by heart, I be lieve." "Did he ever use them for letter boxes!" Bess called from the top of the bureau. "Hush!" said Kate warningly. "What do you mean?" asked Olive. "Nothing," said Bess as Sue came back with an unconscious face. She had been down in the kitchen prospecting around the pink-nosed pig still on the table with stuffing incomplete, while Lolly, out. of sight in the back porch, kept hummiug— Four and twenty blackbirds Bakin' in a. pie. "I must hurry down," said Olive. "Pick up the books, wont you, girls, and don't loosen the rafters?" she called back from the stairs with a wholesome recollection of her own romping days. "What did you do with the letter?" they queried of Sue. "That's my business." "You might tell me," coaxed Dan. "You after leading us such a chase after your letter." "There's nothing in it," said Dan, tossing it toward her. She pulled the letter out of the envel ope and read*- Yours at hand. Thanks for information. Shall see you later. P. "No 'best girl' wrote that" said Bess. "Its from a man. "HERE'S YOUR LOVE LETTER, AUNT OUVE." "Not it duck uor a darling iu it," nddod Sue in disgust; "but I'll tell you now what I did with the other letter just the same," and she whispered iu his ear. After freeing the captives Dan went down stairs,three at a time,to the kitchen, the girls trooping after him as their law ful prey. There was a steam concert on the kitchen stove. Pudding, chicken, squash and cranberries, stenming, stewing, bub bling, "gurgling" with a harmony of sound truly inspiring. Lolly was heap ing a glass dish with red and russet apples, Olive beating eggs and butter to a froth. "llow is the pig?" inquired Bess. "Ready for a basting," letured Olive. "Let me do it." Sue, spoon in hand, had opened the oven door. "Oh, oh! how nice he is browning!" they all exclaimed. "He looks fit for a marriage feast," Dan commented, with a sidelong glance at Olive. "Do you want to furnish a bride?" in quired Olive. "No a bridegroom," rejoined Dan, concisely. "Squire Ashton is only waiting," Sue spoke up pertly. "Hush," said Olive. "Sue, shut the oven door and let the pig sizzle to its , heart's content." "I could furnish a better bridegroom than Squire Ashton," Dan said, mean j ingly, with his weather eye on Olive's ! face. ! "I wish you could head him off in ! someway," said Bess, inelegantly. "He | wants to carry Aunt Olive to the house on the hill, and then good-bye to our fun." "I'm not iu the white house on the hill yet," said Olive shortly. "I'll bet you never will be," declared Dan. boldly. | "Here's the summer savory all turned ! out on the table," said Olive, unheeding ' his remark, as she sat down her bowl of froth. "Lolly, what have you done with the box?" "Never touched it," said Lolly. Dan was regarding Olive with a mix j ture of admiration and affection. "1 tell you what, girls. Aunt Olive is prettier than any of you," he said. | "Squire Ashton thinks she is the pink i of perfection," spoke up Sue. "Bother Squire Ashton!" Dan took a step toward Olive and kissed her cheek. "You were always my boy, weren't you, Dan?" Olive said fondly. "Always! You stood by me in many a scrape," returned Dan. "Aunt Olive," he continued, "if a chum, a particular friend of mine, should happen along about dinner time would you give him a welcome and a seat at the table?" "Certainly I should," she returned. "Your friend would be my friend, of course." Dan gave her a queer, searching look. "Oh, that's it. The letter said, 'l'll see you later,'" commented Clara. "I thought your letter was from your best girl," queried Olive. "From my best friend," Dan corrected. " I want you to like him. He's a big hearted fellow. Pulled me through a hard place when he was an utter stran ger to me. We got to be chums after wards." "Then he is welcome on his own ac count," said Olive. "I hope so," returned Dan. "Baste! It's time to baste!" cried Sue as the oven door swung open again. The girls were detailed to look after the parlor and dining-room fires and to set the table. They set up a lively chat ter, getting in each other's way contin ually, but what would Thanksgiving be worth without a pleasant hubbub all round! You should have seen the table about 3 o'clock, broad and inviting, dinner dishes with green turbaned groups under blue palm trees spread over the damask cloth, and blood-red beets, cranberry sauce and apples, making dishes of color all over it. Potatoes, changed from pink to brown, stood on the platter, garnished crisp and toothsome. Dan's coining friend did not appear, though a phce was set for him. But everything was done to a turn and it was voted they should sit down. Dan attacked the four-footed dainty with carving tools, plates were passed round and filled and dinner went on swimmingly. Olive felt uneasy. The moment of decision was drawing near. Her word once passed to Squire Ashton, there could be no backing out. She wished she might remove the day still further. And yet if she was going to marry him, why delay? ' 'A young porker is better than a turkey any day," said Dan unctuously. "Aunt Olive is in love,'' said Sue, as she passed her plate down to Dan to be refilled. "She isn't eating a mouthful, Dan; scoop out some stuffing that is nice and hot, please." "What in thunder is wedged in here?" exclaimed Dan, as he proceeded to "scoop," and a small tin box fell from she porker upon the platter with a jin gle. "The summer savory box," said Olive. "Whose trick was that? I might have known—" "Please send the box up on my plate," interrupted Sue. Four and twenty boxes Baking in a pig, Bess chanted merrily. She wrenched the cover from the box and took out the letter she had hidden there. "Here's your love letter. Aunt Olive," she said, passing it up to the head of the table. Four and twenty love letters Browning in a porker, cried Clara. "We found it in Robinson Crusoe's clutches." explained Sue. With a puzzled face Olive slipped her knife through the browned envelope and took out the letter. They taw her face change as she glanced over it. This was the message that came to her from the past: DEAK OLIVE— Must the unkind wor Is of last evening be our last ones? I am hot tempered and you are proud,- but if I could see you once again before I sail you might reverse your decision. If I may come this evening hang your red shawl from your chamber window as a signal. If I cannot part from you as a lover 1 shall never come back again. PHII.II'. The look in Oiive's face as she read the message hushed the voluble tongues of the girls effectually. "A letter," she said to Dan with the ghost of' a smile, "that I should have received ten years ago." "Perhaps it reached you in the nick of time after all," he suggested cheerily. Olive shook her her negatively. This was the word she had longed for after her quarrel with Philip Ellenwood lone; ago. She had been anxious to reverse her decision, but she was too proiul to make the first venture. She had thought bitterly he did not care, and now here was his letter giving the lie to her doubt. She recalled the long, lonely tramp she had taken to battle do .rn her feelings Terms—sl.2s in Advance; $1.50 after Three Months. the day before he sailed. A messenger must have brought the note in her ab sence, and her father had slipped it be tween the pages of "Robinson Crusoe" and forgotten it. What a mockery it was now. In proportion as Olive became grave Dan grew hilarious, and with his eye on her face told sea yarns in such happy style that the girls giggled until their sides ached. The November evening closed in with a snow storm, and a lamp was brought before they got through with the nuts and raisins. "I wonder what keeps—" Dan was be ginning when the knocker sounded. "There he is now," he finished. "No, it is Squire Ashton's knock," said Bess with conviction, as she rose to open the door and show the Squire into the parlor. His arrival was a shock to Olive. The past had claimed her. The reading of the letter had made her heartsick. Dan watched her unquiet face with much satisfaction as she arose from the table. He followed her to the parlor door. "Don't you promise to marry Squire Ashton," he whispered instinctively. "Mind, now, or you will be sorry." She looked puzzled. "Goon," said Dan, opening the par lor door for her. "I can trust you." The Squire stood before the open fire, holding out his hands to the blaze. He came toward her. "You will give me 'Yes' at last," he said persuasively. She could not meet his eloquent, ex pectant eyes. A great pity for him and for herself came over her. The old Love was yet alive. And yet why should rhc not hide in the shelter of this noble heart? Philip was far away—dead perhaps. The old, overpowering loneliness was sweep ing over her. "If you will accept respect and es teem for love—"she began in a trembling voice. The knocker sounded a double rnp, quick and imperative. Dan had opened the door. His voice and another sounded in the hallway. Through the half open door she could see Dan helping remove a snowy overcoat. Ilis friend had come. Had Lolly kept the dinner hot? But the hospitable thought took sudden flight as she saw who it was that Dan was ushering in. Philip was before her, brown, matured, with the same imperi ous manner as of old, the same clear, flashing eyes. "Miss Blossom, my chum, Sir. Ellen wood," said Dan in high good humor. Their hands met; their eyes read each other's hearts, as they stood in the fire light glow. Squire Ashton extended his hand. "So you have come back to us, Philip,'' he said, with a brave smile covering the pain in his heart. He had seen in Olive's face the reason why he had failed to win her. "Yes, homesickness got the upper hand of me at last,' - returned Philip, cheerily. Olive followed the Squire into the hallway. "I am very sorry, 7 ' she began. "And lam glad for you," he said hastily. "I hope you will be very hap py," and he gave her a brave, warm hand grasp. You may guess how they all gathered round the table again while Philip ate his dinner. The finding of the letter was recounted, and Dan confessed that he and Philip had talked the matter all over before, and that he had been "prospecting 1 ' and reporting accordingly. Iu the Land of the Turk. "Take iue in out of the wet." A Thanksgiving Cry. '•I wish they'd hurry up that turkey." NO. 6. INSPIRATION. Warrow and steep the pathway we must tread. And even then the crown may be of thorn. Which all the years thereafter must be borne, Till silence numbers us among the dead; Hard must we toil to win this bitter bread. And through the clear flash of the radiant morn, Oft see the clouds, with edges tempest torn, Rise in dense gloom, by disappointment led. Yet is not all this strife a better gift Thau aimless wanderings through sunlit days? Does not each upward struggle serve to lift The soul to where God's clearer radiance plays. Till through some stern and rock-embattled rift, We reach at last life's firm and level ways? —Thomas S. Collier,in Youth's Companion. HUMOR OP THE DAY. Unless a man is agreeable to all the women he meets they go around pitying his wife.— Atchison Olobt. U—"What makes Smith so straightl" I—"I don't know, unless it is his circum stance?."— Texas Siftingt. Austin has a very precise business man who never pays a visit without demand ing a receipt for it.— Texas Siftingt. Marriage is not a lottery; it is a raffle. One man {jets the prize, while the others get the shake.— lndianapolis Journal. Book Agent—l have just the kind of work you waut." Chappie—"But my deah fellow, I don't want work of any kind."— lndianapolis Journal. First Girl (proudly)—" Our baby can say pa and ma." Second Girl—"Dat's nuffia. My cousin, wot's rich, 'us got er wax one wot kin do dat."— Life. Of all the queer men of the times And unto cranks the nearest, The man who asks you questions is Undoubtedly the querist. —Munsey's Weekly. Mrs. Dobbins (reading)—" Countess Maria von Kensky, of Bohemia, has bagged 138 hares in one day." Dobbins —"Her husband will soon bo baldheaded at that rate."— Epoch. "Kitty," said the lover, as they sat in the dark corner of the piazza—"Kitty, close your eyes." "Why so, George?" "If you don't everybody will be able to sec us."— Harper's Bazar. An exchange says there are 250,000 women married anuually in London. The average Seattle woman thinks her self lucky if she is married four times in a lifetime.— Seattle Press. "Dream on, dream on," tbe singer cried. And roused him from his trance — "Oh, how I wish that you," he "VVould give me half a chance. ' Washington Post. A Canadian doctor has just been testi fying that a murdered man's heart stopped "right in the middle of a beat." That's nothing; policemen often do the same thing. Utica Herald. She—"There goes poor Miss Price with her fiance. Why, the man is old enough to be her father and ugly enough to be her brother!" He—"Oh, but he is rich enough to be her husband."— Life. A student who acted as a waiter at a White Mountain hotel the past summer is nbout to marry the daughter of a family at whose table he served. All things come to him who waits.— Boston Pott. Silver and gold bands for the hair are very popular among fashionable ladies, but the brass baud makes more noise in the world—especially if it contains a bass drum and a bassoon.— Jewelers' Circular. He's surely a difficult person to kill, His frame seems of adamant; He's dying each day, but remains with us still, The "oldest inhabitant." —Boston Courier. Miss Passce (examining the medal of a recent graduate)—"l have a medal, too." Young Friend—"You have? Why on earth don't you wear it?" Miss Passee (with a sigh)—"l would, but I can't get the date oil of it."— Uarjier's Bazar. He—"Shall we marry in October or April?" She (carelessly)—" Really, I don't know. Let's toss up and see." He (feeling in his pockets)—"By Jove, I haven't a penny." She (frigidly)—"Ah? It isn't necessary to toss."— New Tork World. Smithers (who had just proposedl— "Why do you smile? Is my proposition so utte. ly ridiculous that " Lizette —"Not at all, Mr. Smithers. lam only looking pleased. I bet Mr. Hicks a box of candy I'd have the refusal of you with in a week."— New Tork Sun. A young man had been talking to a bored editor for quite a quarter of an hour, and at last observed: "Thero are some things in this world that go wituuu. saying." "Yes," said the editor, "and there are still more persons in the world who say a good deal without going."— London Globe. Miss Terriut—"When mommer and I were in Yurrup, oh, the awfulest thing happened ! There was a princo—and a count—and—and they fought a duel— about poor me—with pistols." Yabsley —"Ah! were they loaded?" Miss Ter riut—"No, they weren't! They were just :is sober as could be."— lndianapolis Journal. Mils Flora (forty-five aud homely)— "Oil, Mr. Blunt, I had such a strange dream Inst night." Mr. Blunt—"What was it, Miss Flora?" Miss Flora—"l dreamed that we were married and on our wedding tnur. Hid you ever have such a dreaiu?" Mr. Blunt (energetically) —"No, indeed. I never had the night mare in my life.''—ZVftM bifLings.