Baltimore has the largest colored population of any city in the world. The census is expected to show a* least 125,000. Capitalists are tryin-g to get Florida farmers togo into Cassava raising. Starch can be manufactured from it. Three tons to an acre at S2O a ton is the golden promise held out. There is a faith healer in New Yorl who offers to cure poverty for sl. And such is the gullibility of mankind that it is safe to guess that at least one case of poverty will be cured as rap idly ss ths dollars can tumble in, thinks the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Palph Waldo Emerson welcoming Lo :is Kossuth to Concord forty-seven fears ago made this remarkable proph esy: 'The shores of Europe and America approach every month and their politics will one day mingle." It l-.as now come true—at tho Hague and in the Philippines. The consular reports from Ireland 6lio\v a great increase in prosperity the' e. The people are in better con dition than has ever been known. The tenants are paytng rent promptly and the land owners are paying their taxes. The deposits in the savings banks are larger tlinn they have ever been, according to tho records. The rurales who have been organ ized to repress brigandage in Cuba are doing good work. They have made several captures and have com passed the death of the notorious highwayman, Garcia. These rurales were organized from the best class of Cuban soldiers by General Brooke and are serving under American officers. They will doubtless become the per manent constabulary of the island. That was a very pleasant tea party in the harbor of Colombo tendered to Admiral Dewey and the officers and men of the Olympia. The British cheers that greeted the Hag of the United States as it entered that bay, and the response of Admiral Dewey, expressing the new era of concord and amity between his country aud Great Britain, are in pleasant contrast with the raucor of which that other tea party in Boston harbor, on Dec. 10, 1773, was a symptom. In that case the tea was thrown overboard from a Lritish ship. In this case the tea is put on board an American ship by friendly hands. Statistics have lately been prepared touching the amount of the obligations of debtors discharged under the fed eral bankruptcy law up to tho present. One table which has appeared puts the total liabilities of discharged 3ebtors at $05,000,000. The numbers of the petitioners in the different cities vary very considerably, as do the amounts of liabilities set opposite each city. Some of the smaller cities in the country find a place in the ta ble, while some of the larger ones are jouspicuous by their absence. It will' occasion no surprise to learn that New York, the largest city in the country, (. ads as regards the liabilities of'the discharged debtors. Nothing is plainer from statistics than the fact that the ranks of the habitual criminals are being abun dantly recruited by young men, ob serves the Loudon Law Magazine. This class is not tho product of past causes, merely continuing in the pres ent as a survival of conditions no longer existing. It is still being pro duced freely. An extremely large pro portion of the burglaries,house-break ings and the like, are the work of offenders under twenty-one. No less than thirty-four per cent, of the per sons convicted for these offenses in 1897 were between sixteen anil twen ty-one. It is clear, therefore, that young men take to professional crime very readily, in spite of a'.l deterrent influences. The house-boat seems to have some difficulty iu becoming domesticated iu this country. There is more truth in this statement than appears on the surface, observer a writer in Harper's Bazar. House-boat i wo have, to be sure, but they are of atf untamed and roving disposition, quite unlike the really domestic English species. A Thames house-boat is one ef the most conservative institutions of that emi nently conservative country. Year after year it clings to its own particu lar section of bank, with as little ap parent ability to move with the stream ts if it were tho bank itself. The American species is different. Some times it has a motive power within it self. Sometimes it hires "a tow." But in one way or another it manages to satisfy the national yearning for movement —for getting up at morn ing in a different place from the one iu which one went to sleep at night. The harder Sir Thomas Lipton and his crew try to take the cnp with them the greater glory there will be in keep ing them from doing it. Oklahoma has an acreage of wheat aqual to two-thirds of the area planted to that crop in the United Kingdom of Great Britain, and, what is better, raises more wheat on the two-thirda than do the Bri ishers on the whole. Of the world's total railway mileage of 454,730 miles, North America has 209,556 miles. The Old World will have to yield first place to the New before many years have passed, to say nothing of coming railway enterprises in South America. Nebraska keeps a state record of mortgages filed and released. This record sows for the last three years $53,000,000 of laud mortgages filed, and $!58,000,000 released, a reduction of $15,000,003 apparently in the total mortgage debt of the state. Each of the last three vears thows a reduction. Tea after evening chttpel is the lat est innovation introduced by the pres ident of the Chicago university. This is not quite iu line with college tradi tions. But as a novelty it is inter esting. The young men of the mid dle West are to be putin training foi the social martyrdom which is to come later on. Perhaps no scientific use to which photography has been put equals its service to astronomy. Twelve years ago an international astronomical con ference held at Paris adopte 1 it as a means for charting the heavens and cataloguing all stars up to and includ ing those of the eleventh magnitude. Eighteen observatories have since been co-operating iu this work, aud when finished tho catalogue is expect ed to give the true position of three million stars. The Japanese scheme of emigration to.Mexico is a failure. Thirty-seven Japanese were sent thither and an area of 12,500 acres of land was taken up, but the soil proves to be hopeless ly unproductive, and thirty-five out ol the thirty-seven immigrants have made their way to the Japanese lega tion, 250 miles, in search of aid. Un less the families of the immigrants join them by next spring the land will be forfeited. The matter is causing much anxiety iu Japan, especially tc Viscount Enomoto, who has engineered Uae enterprise. A recent writer finds one of the signs of Anglo-Saxon superiority in the way the Anglo-Saxon "'bounds out of bed like a cannon ball," while the Latin crawls out as if life were a bur den. It is true that a good mauj Anglo-Saxons bouud out of bed wit! just about the degree of buojaucy o' a cannon ball; and if they do not fee' that life is a burden, they certainly feel that getting up is one of its great est troubles. If the real Anglo-Saxor finds a pleasure in leaving his bed at the time he ought, the.i much Latir blood has insidiously crept in amongst us, even into families that count theii descent pretty purely English. The English, as a race, are truthful aud so are Americans, but so at va riance are their conceptions that they seem to stand ou different planes,says the San Francisco Argonaut. The ele ment of humor, lacking in one am 3 marked in the other, accounts for this An American paper will print as • roaring jest something the journalis' across the water will iu all solemnit3 accept, and when there follows the in evitable exposure, refuse to join iu the laugh, but express amazement, not de void of horror. Notwithstanding this, American papers, iu relation to the great events of the world, are as ac curate as others, seldom printing that intended to deceive, aud even thet erring no more grossly than the cen sor, who would suppress facts oi render them inaccessible. The country is fairly well supplied with railroads, but the commodities which they transport are not all o) chiefly produced ou their lines. W« need roads over which to transport to railroad stations the commodities pro dnced within a reasonable distance ol them. We also need such roa ls tc lead to landings on navigable rivers, and for various other neighborhood uses. The cost of getting produce tc a station is ofteu greater than that o : getting it from the station to market, The cost of getting commodities ti the great avenues of commerce variei with the character of the roads. It it easily demonstrable that bad roads ar< more expensive than good ones in an} place where there is any great need & a road at all. Hence a community must either pay for having good roadi or pay for not having them, reasoni the Louisville Courier Journal | THE TRUTH ABOUT | ? The Blue-Diamond Robbery. J Those who pay attention to the rec ords of criminal cases, as reported by the newspapers, and who have a good memory for such matters, will recollect the interest aroused, now several years ago, by the trial of one Robert Morris for what was known as "The Blue-Diamond Bobbery." In the minds of some, perhaps, the details of this crime may be still fresh. But for the benefit of that infinitely greater number of persons whose memorial faculty is only a nine days' aflair, it will be as well to recapitulate all the facts of the case before proceeding to the elucida tion of one very mysterious point, which at the time battled the clever est detectives in London. First, then, for the recapitulation of the facts, as disclosed before the Bight Honorable the Lord Mayor at the Mansion House and subsequently before the Becorder of London at the Old Bailey. The victim of the rob bery was one Jacob Blumefeeld, an Anglo-German Jew and a well-known diamond merchant in Hatton Garden. This gentleinent, in the course of a visit to the Dutch East Indies, with a view to the purchase of pearls (in which also he doalt) had picked up from a native Sumatran, for a song, six stones, which the vendor supposed to be small, pa'e and therefore com paratively worthless sapphires, but which Blumefeeld's practised eye told him at once were those rarest and cost'iest stones in the market, viz., blue diamonds. It was stated in court, I recollect, by expert witnesses, that there were not more than 30 blue dia monds known to exist and that the ratio of their value to ordinary dia monds of the same size and water was at least 100 to 1. On this basis the six stones referred to, despite their insigniticant size, were worth fully. i' 20,000; indeed, at the time when they were stolen Blumefee'd was ne gotiating a sale of them to Messrs. Bostron, the Bond street jewelers, for a sum several thousands in excess of that amount. It may be readily imag ined, therefore, that the theft of such gems excited no small sensation. The circumstances of the theft were, or appeared to be, sufficiently com monplace. On the day of the robbery Blumefeeld had carefully locked the diamonds in his safe when he quitted his office at (i o'clock. At about Bor 9 the watchman who was on duty, aud who had received particular instruc tions to keep an eye on Blumefeeld's office, happened to catch the flash of a light through the keyhole, and push ing open the door, which he found unfastened, made his way ius : de and actual y caught the thief red-handed in Blumefeeld's room. He at once collared the fellow—a small,weak man, who made litt'e resistance to his stal wart captor—aud raised the alarm. In a minute or two several constables were on the scene,aud a little later an inspector arrived, who lost no time in despatching a special messenger to Blumefeeld's private resideuce in I'embi iilge square. On the diamond merchant's arrival a thorough examination of the prem ises was made, disclosing the fact that his safe had been opened villi a duplicate key, which, in fact, was still iu the lock,ami that, wlii'e every thing else had been left untouched, the most valuable contents, name'y, the blue diamonds, had been ab stracted. The thief, of course, was then conveyed, without de'ay, to the nearest police station and duly charged by Blnmefeekl, who now rec ognized him as a man who had called upon hini at his office a few clays pre viously in reference to a proposed purchase of gems, which had falleu through. He recollected, also, that he had had occasion to leave the stranger alone in his office for a min ute or two, when, probably, the latter had managed to get an impre B on of the lock of his safe. The prisoner did not deny this. Nor, iu spite of the usual caution, did he make any secret of the fact that he had broken into the ollhe for the purpose of steal ing the blue diamonds. But that he had stolen them he stubbornly denie 1. "Someone else had forestalled me," he said. "I found the safe open and a key already in the lock. I'd got my own duplicate, but I didn't have t > use it. If you search me you'll find it in my waist -oat pocket." In confessing he had entered the office with felonious intent he was, of course, only admitting as much as the circumstances of his capture rendered obvious and incontrovertible and, so far as that went, was doing himself neither harm nor good. But his state ment tliat he had been forestalled was so clearly of the co.-k-and-bull type that no credence whatever was nat urally attached to it. He was subjected to the usual rigorous search. The du plicate key, as he had said, was in his waistcoat pocket,and in his coat pock ets there were one or two other felo nious instruments. Yet not a sign of a blue diamond, nor any other jewel or valuable, was found upon him. His clothes, his boots, his hat, his person, even to the inside of hi& mouth, were again and again examinee l . Not a trace of the missing stones! And this was the more remarkable because ha had been collared red-handed,and from that moineut bad no chanee whatever allowed him of throwing away or other wise disposing of the stones. "I tell yoa I haven't got them," ho kept persisting. "I'd have prigged 'em if I'd had the chance,l don't deny, and it would l:e no use if I did. But I was forestalled, I tell you. Some other chap must have got in just be fore me and lifted 'em. You're only wasting time and trouble in searching we. You are, indeed," Of course, no attention was paid to this ridiculous assertion,and after the process of search had beeu repeated again and again, Blumefeeld returned with two,of the police to his office in Hatton Garden, where it was thought possible that the thief might have managed to drop the stones. But the most careful scrutiny of every nook, cranny and corner failed to discover them. Blumefeeld, very naturally,fell into a fine state of mind. In the interval between the arrest and his trial Blumei'eeld obtained leave to see the prisoner in Newgate. "Look here," he said to him (I am condensing the evidence subsequently given by a warder at the trial), "I'll make you an offer. If you'll tell me what you've doue with those dia monds, und enable me to recover them, I'll pay £2OOO to any representative of yours you like to name. The money shall be paid to him in cash here, in your presence, and then you can have it when you come cut. You're not making matters a bit better for your self by sticki ig to that absurd and in credible story. If anything, rather worse, for you'll get dropped on more heavily by taking that line than if you do your best to restore me my stolen property. Now, then, you'll be a fool if you refuse; you will, upon my word." "If I had stolen the diamonds, or knew where they were, I'd close with you like a shot, Mr. Blumefeeld, for I know very well that I'm in for five years, anyhow. But I didu't steal them, and I dou't know where they are any more than you do," answered Morris. "My story souuds unlikely enough, I'm well aware. Maybe the judge and jury won't believe it,either; but it's true, and that's all about it." From this position—true or fa'se— nothing could induce him to budge. The day of his trial arrived. The case excited great interest, and tho recorder's court was packed. There were two counts in tho indictment, the one (I'm not a lawyer, aud I only quote from memory, therefore I will crave indulgence iu case my legal phraseology be incorrect) —the one of "feloniously breaking into" Blume feeld's premises in Hattou Garden; the other of "stealing therefrom diamonds to the value of £20,000," To the for mer the prisoner pleaded guilty,to the latter not guilty, and the prosecution, in tho hope of procuring a more ex emplary sentence, proceeded with the charge of stealing the jewels. But this was a difficult matter to prove. Everybody, of course, was convinced that Morris had stolen the diamonds; but to establish it by the technical rules of evidence was another affair. Against the fact that he was canjht on the premises, admittedly with the in tention of stealing the diamonds, had to be set the fact that no sign of a diamond, or any tL.e; stolen article, was found upon him when caught. Furthermore, the circumstance of his having refused Blumefeeld's offer of £2OOO, which was elicited by his coun sel in evidence, weut to some slight extent in his favor. But this the prosec ition tried to discount by ad vancing Ihe theory that he must have had an accomplice who had made off with the jewels and that the prisoner would be hardly likely to give away £20,000 for £2OOO. On the other hand, the defence urged that there was ab solutely no evidence of the existen e of any accompli, e; aud, besides, after tho manner in which the theft of the blue diamonds had been bruited abroad aud advertised, it would be impossible for the thief or thieve 3 to dispose of them for a quarter of their real value, if iudeed at all. In which contention, of course, there was some truth. Th 3 recorder summed up at consid erable length—a careful, equipoised summing up, as I remember thinking at tho time, balanced, like the sen tences in a Greek dialogue, with j er petual "on the one liana" and"on the other hand;" impartial, no doubt, but colorless, and affording no assistance whatever to the jury. The latter,after considering their verdict for an hour or so, at length brought the prisoner in "not guilty" ou this iudictment. He was then sentenced on the other in dictment to 20 months' hard labor,tho recorder observing that if anything previous had been known against him, which apparently there was not, he should have sent him into penal servi tude. Such is a brief—a very brief—re capitulation of Bobert Morris's trial and sentence iu conuectiou with the theft of the bfue diamonds. I now come to the important point in my story, the only part of it which is not mere recapitulation, namely—the elucidation of the mystery as imparted to me only a few weeks ago by Morris himself. I may take this opportunity of saying that 1 am the doctor who at tended the ex-convict in his last ill ness, cf which the fatal termination came so recently as a fortnight since. He died in a lodging in Bloonis'mry, in miserably joo. - passing along the street we noticed tho :rape on tho door of a small cottage. Ah, we knew of the sorrow within. A beloved mother had been token. She had lived to a good old age. Children and grandchil dren had grown up about her. As wo were walking along,.n middle-aged man drew near. He was talkative, very much so. His brain was crazed with liquor. His language was punctuated with jaths. Judge of our surprise when he te can to talk of his mother lying dead in the tiouse. Not words of filial affeotlon or of sorrow dropped from his lips. Oh, to what lepths of even brutlshness drink will bring l man. How it will change a loving son to * heurtless wretch even In the presence of leath itself. Such scenes are unanswerable arguments for the banishment of the drluk curse from )ur land.—Northwestern Mail, An Old Law Still In Force. Wo learned the other day of a man who ooasted that he had taken a bottle of wine every day for fifty years and had never been"lnjured by It. But of Ills twelve chil dren, six died In infancy, one was idiotic, one became Insane, and the other four grew up to be nervous invalids. Men find It imposslblo to get away from the old law laid down thousands of years ago that "The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon theirchlldren." It Is a terrible thing for fathers to commit sins for which their children will have to pay the penalty, hut men are doing so on every hand.—Herald and Presbyter. Questions Easy to Ansner. Who with healthy, untainted blood wishes to have a body like that of the sots whom he meets? Who with a vigorous, clear brain cares about exchanging it for the mental Incapacity which they exhibit? Who with a clean, pure heart would like to have his filled with such obscenity, pro fanity and vileness as come forth from theirs? "Be not among winebibbors." Choose better companions. P. T. Barnuin's Advice. In one of the last letters written by P. T. Barnum, just discovered, he thus advised young men: "Keep your brain free from the fumes of alcohol, your blood free from Us taint. Avoid tobacco as the poison It really Is. Keep yourself clean, physically and morally. Give your body tho care you would give to any machine of which you require much good work." The Crnsade in Brief. By order of General Wood saloons in Santiago are closed on Sundays. The social glass is the doorway to the drink habit, and that habit is the doorway to poverty. Benjamin Parrot was hanged at Hamil ton, Out., for the murder of his mother, whom he had killed when she rebuked him for ooming home drunk. Intemperance Is the souroe of much of our crime and misfortune. Thousands of premature graves tell of its ravages. Our workhouses are thronged with victims. Its baleful tyranny is cramming our jails with orlminals