JThe opeu secret of good health and enduring vigor is simply to "keep in condition." The fact that the telephone was laughed at as an impracticability will probably be used all next century as in argument with reluctant investirs by people who have chimerical schemes to flout. In one week just before his death Cornelius Vauderbilt received 1500 begging letters. The total amount asked for was $500,000, and the least wanted by any of the supplicants was $25. Ah, what a terrible hardship it is to be rich—if one has a tender heart. The Manufasturers' Record shows that since 1880 the capital invested in southern cotton mills has increased from $21,900,000 to $125,000,000, while the sum invested in all southern manu actures has grown from $257,- 200.000 to $1,000,000,000, and the value of southern manufactured prod nets from $457,400,000 to $1,500,* OOd,OOJ- One reason for the scandalous ver dict of the court-martial at Rennes — the most shamelessly unjust ever rendered in a civilized country — doubtless is that a military court pre sided over by "my colonel" and com posed of other subordinate officers dare not convict of lying, fraud, forgery and couspiracy a cabal of their generals, though these were shown to be guilty by their own testimony aud by unimpeachable evi dence,says the New York World. We in the United States have been born and reared in a land of plenty, and we seem to feel that nothing is fit for the human stomach which has not cost human effort to raise or pro cure. We feel that we are mortifying the flesh if we do not eat meat at least once a day. The result is that we have become known as a nation of dyspeptics. Experience, however, is forcing on the American people the value of light and simple diet, and a marked change in American habits in this respect is likely to be seen in thf future. Bicycle riding in some portions of the world is considered incomplete in joys until a patented tow rove has been added to the rider's outfit by means of which the woman rider may make a sure and tireless journey up hillsides at the expense of the man of the party. That dropping out of a line for her to cling to is an old idea but the line is perfect now with springs and coils and all that sort of thing. No wonder that bicycle riding is losing its popularity. It is getting to be a rather onesided sort of proposition. By careful computation the Finan cial Chronicle fiuds that the cotton crop for the year ending Sept. 1, 189.),. amonnted to no less than 11,235,383 bales. At average present prices this £ieans a wealth of $337,061,490 taken from the soil in the form of a single crop which is grown only in a part of the country. Wo are becoming a great manufacturing nation. We are espe cially multiplying and extending our cotton mills. Yet of our 11,235,- 383 bales of cotton we have manu factured only 3,047,118 bales, while we have sent abroad 7,302,788 bales for the workmen of other countries to convert into cloths. Obviously our cotton-spinning and cotton-weaving industries are still in their infancy. Think of the millions in wages that will be paid to American workmen when we come to manufacture all our cotton! One of the most astonishing changes which has come in the latter half of the 19th century appears in the new moral attitude of all classes in relation to possessions of all kinds, observes the Chartered Register. Fifty years ago it was considered an admirable thing for a man to fill himself with stores of wisdom which he kept for his own use. Now a learned man is despised if he does not let his light shine. Fifty years ago it was con sidered desirable to cultivate all manner of gifts and graces for the adornmeutof the mind and the incrense of persoual pleasure. Now one who hoards the blessings of culture with out imparting them to those who are less fortunate is considered selfish and unlovely. Fifty years ago it was con sidered honorable to regard great possessions as the perquisites of the fortunate individual who controlled them. Now no rich man has honor who does not make his wealth a blessing to the community in which he lives. It is now accepted as a rule of conduct that privilege always im plies obligation, and ownership al ways carries with it the idea of in debtedness to the community which has made ownership possible. The Boston Transoript wants to have reading cars substituted for smokers on the railroads aa being more civilized. If the increasing fondness for the automobile continues we shall find the horse show with a dangerous rival the first thing we know, and it will be "beauty and the machine," instead of "beauty and the beast." England's queen has given another illustration of her good heart and common sense. A few weeks ago she set a practical example to the lauded proprietors of the United Kingdom by having her herds tested for tuberculo sis and ordering all infected animals to be slaughtered. According to the Canadian Engi neer, the last relic of the first epoch of railway engineering in Canada is passing away in the form of the tubu lar bridge which spans the Ottawa river, near its junction with the St. Lawrence, and a truss bridge is to be erected in its place. The old bridge is not only the last of the tubular bridges iu Canada, but is also the last on this continent, so that its re moval is really a historical event. The Massachusetts statistical bureau reports that there is a steady increase in the amount of work done on Sunday. This is not strange. It is due largely to the action of working people, especially in cities, in convert ing Sunday into a secular holiday. They use tliiß day to visit neighbor ing pleasure resorts or to make ex cursions by rail or water, and this creates a demand for the services of car conductors and motormeu, steam boat hands, waiters, bartenders and a great variety of employes. Within the last few months Nan tasket beach has been added to the park system of Boston, a system al ready so extended and well organized as to excite the admiration of the rest of the country. It has already cost the commouwealth some six million dollars. The late Mr. Charles Eliot, sou of President Eliot of Har vard, has been largely responsible for the broad-minded aud enlightened policy pursued, states Harper's Weekly. The beach at Nantasket is two hundred feet wide at low tide, is broad aud hard, and within only a short ride of Bostou. Tree planting by farmers is being encouraged in a practical way by the division of forestry of the Unite.l States department of agriculture. A circular has recently been issued stat ing that the division is prepared, as far as a limited appropriation will per mit, to render practical and personal assistance to farmers aud others by co-operating with them to establish forest plantations, wood lots, shelter belts and wiud breaks. An expert tree plauter has been placed in charge of a section of the divisiou which has been organized for this work, and he will be assisted by collaborators in the different states who are familiar with local conditions. Massachusetts now has two associa tions for providing annuities for retired public school teachers—one for Bos ton teachers only, the other and the youngest for the teachers in the cities and towns. The last is believed to be the only guild organized by tlie union of small cities and towns. Though scarcely six years old, the Teachers' Annuity guild has a permanent fuud of over $51,000 and an annuity fuud exceeding SIO,OOO. It is provided that annuities shall be 60 per cent, of the annual salary at the time of re tirement, with a limit of S6OO. The present assessment is one per cent, of annual salary, with a limit of s2o per annum, which it is proposed to reduce to $lO. A similar plan has been adopted in a number of large cities in the country. Careful estimates made during the year 1896 indicated that no less than 120,000 horses were required for the propulsion of the street cars in actual use in the various cities in the United States. Recent estimutes indicate that about 15,000 horses are all that are requisite today for the horse-car service throughout the entire United States. This surely is a remarkable evidence of the emancipation of the street car horse. Thirteen years ago it was estimated that over 20,000 of these patient and noble servants of man were rendered useless from the excessive strain and overwork to which they were subjected. So soon does the public mind adapt itself to changod conditions that comparatively few peo ple appreciate fully the beneficial effects which the elimination of the street car horse from our public thoroughfares and the adoption of th« cable and electric systems has se cured. WAITING. Serana I toll my hands and watt,. What matter It I stand alone ? Nor care for wind, or tide, or gta; I wait with joy the coming years; I rave no more 'gainst time or fate, My heart shall rest whore It has sown, For lot my own shall oome to me. And garner up its fruit of tears. I May my haste, I make delays, The waters know their own and draw For what avails this eager pace ? The brook that springs in yonder height; I stand amid the eternal ways, So Sow the good with equul law And what Is mine shall know my face. Unto the soul of pure delight. Asleep, awake, by night or day, The stars come nightly K the sky, The friends I seek are seeking me. The tidal wave unto the sen; No wind can drive my bark astray, Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high. Nor change the tide of destiny. Can keep.my own away from me. —John Burroughs. i BROTHER TO NECESSITY. J J BY HELEN HICKS. Alec McPherson's mother was never tired of showing little Alec the picture in the album of Aunty Morse, whose son had become a millionaire in New York, or of talking of her cousin, who was a senator at Ottawa, and her sis ter-in-law's brother, who had been appointed lieutenant-governor of a province once, but who had died in advertently before he was sworn in. Little Aleo looked upon these distinc tions, and he saw that they were good. He saw that the men who got lespect and consideration when they came to his father's house were not farmers like his father, but the doctor in the black coat, who ordered some body to hold his horses and asked ap prehensively if the dog bit, or the minister, who kept the men after a hearty dinner from the hay, while he was praying, and a thunder cloud was gathering overhead. It was for men like these that the silver and the best table napkins were brought out, and the household routine set aside as a thing of small consequence. The boy began to be ashamed of an occupation that compelled a man to wear rough clothes and carry rough hands, and the town made him shy and ill at ease. Mrs. McPherson's remedy for the disadvantage uuder which her son had been born was education. She told him what it could do. Education could make him a gentleman, give him money and clothes, and respect and power, and put his heel on the neck of men who otherwise would have their heel on his neck. So it came about that by the time Alec was 24 and his father laid safely to rest under the sod, the boy had taken his bachelor's degree at college, spent a year abroad and was plunging into the study of Black*tone and the civil code. It was on an evening in early spring that he came home. There was ou'ii frost in the air, and night was coming on windy with a moon that was no more than a tilted horn wracked with clouds and insignificant beside the lights beginning to come out iu the houses. After 10 miles in a stage over this bare country, sole passenger, bud died i'lto a cornet-, witb a rug wrapped round his knees and his hands thrust deep into hit overcoat pockets, the gnsh of yellow light from his own door was the welcomest of sights. Tbe low-ceiled room, the familiar en gravings ou the walls, his mother's lined face uuder the grnv hair, uere furniture of bis earliest recollections. "Mother," he said, "my health is broken down. If I don't get help Bom-'where I'm useless for life!" He told his storv, his nervousness, his sleeplessness, all the long months ho had speut trying to work and doing nothing. "Ever since that hot day last summer when I was overcome by tbe heat, I've never been tbe same since. When I went back to lectures," he went on,"I couldn't work. There was a doctor I knew, a young fellow. He thought he could fix me up. Bro mide, morphia, chloral—l tried them all. Tnen I went to a specialist, and he told me everything. It was a shock to the braiu; I was a victim of neurasthenia. Mother, I may live to be au old man, but I'll never be good for anything, so far as head work is concerned, agaiu." Mrs. McPherson stood up indig nantly. "Alec! With your constitu tion! A little thing like that can't break yon down. Your father was a strong man, and I'm ture there's never been much sickness ou my side of the house." "Yes," he said, "that was what the doctor said. He said it was in my favor that I came of conutry people and hadn't inherited the hysteria and debilitated nerves that are the common enrse. He said, mother, that coming back to the farm was my only hope." He sat fcilent, with his cleuched hand holding his head; then looking round him, '.'l wns in a hospital for a while," he said. "Thank God, I'm home!" One day in the middle of the fore noon Alec came downstairs with the unusual feeling that he was a slug gard. The suu was strong, and just outside tbe door a turkey cock dis tended himself in its warmth; the bees were busy in the flowers, the meu were hayiug. He to >k his hat and went out, walking past the barns nnd a'ong a lane where beside him lay a field of potatoes, their regularly spaced clumps of green radiating like the spokes of a wheel from whatever point the eye chose as a begiuuing. An unremarkable man was walking between two rows that ran parallel to the fence. In one baud he held n pail filled with green-tinted water, and in the other a whitewash brush. He dipped his brush in the green water and flounced it over the potato tops on either side, and talked aloud to himself as he walked. "Saul has slain thousands, au 1 David tens o' thou sands; but I'm slayin' millions of 'em —millions!" "Hello, Henry," Alec called lean ing over the fence; "paris-greening the potato bugs?" The man set down his pail and stood erect. "Yes, but it does mighty little good," he drawled. "This new man Crawford that's just bought the old Garrison place has got a potato patch over there, and his bugs believes in reciprocity. Line fences is no obstruction to them fellers." "Doesn't Crawford believe in paris green?" he asked. "No, nor in hoein', neither, I guess." Alec laughed. "Mr. Crawford doesn't seem to be a thriving farmer." "Well now, Mr. McPorson," Henry said, briskly, as if entering on a topic that interested him, "Mr. Crawford, he thinks himself a gentleman, but he don't own that farm no more nor I do. The company owns it what holds a mortgage on it, and he's really just workin' it for them. His crop ain't his'n; it's got togo to pay the interest, and some says his horses and cattle and implements is all chatteled for moreu't they're worth." "That's a lie!" Both looked up. The mau they were discussing had risen from beneath a clump of elder bushes and was leaning over the fence with battle in his eyes. He was lank and cadaverous, with a thin, goat's beard, protuberant blue eyes, and wiry yellow hair. The man was plain ly not iu robust health, and he had the look of having reached that point jin his cups when amiability is swal lowed up in a growing desire to be quarrelsome. "Well, maybe it is, Mr. Crawford," Henry said, soothingly. "Maybe it is." "And they say you're a reg'lar gentleman," Crawford re marked, turning to Alec and looking him up and down with scornful amusement. "A reg'lar gentleman that never had his nose to the grind stone and keeps money in the bank all the time. Is that so?" "No-o, I guess is isn't so," Alec answered, i mildly. With surprising quickness the man got over the fence that sepa rated them. "And you don't think I'm n iLrivin' farmer,eh?" he queried, thrusting; forward his white,impudent, face. "Take that, young upstart!" And suddenly raising the switch in his baud he laid it smartly across Alec's face. The next instant he bad fallen forward with his face iu the grass, and his thin hands grasping convulsively before bim. They turned him over, but though the muscles of his face moved, his heart was quite still. The two men looked at each other in consternatiou. "This is hard on Lyddy," Heury said at last with a great sigh, pointing to the prostrate form. "He's a widower, and Lyddy keeps things together, and there's two little uns." They carried the dead man up to his house, where little Blanche Mary was helping Lyddy get dinner, and Tony, the six-year-old, stood washing himself with legs set very wide apart at a big basin on the outside stoop. They were all thin, elfin creatures with bright hair and radiant eyes of corn-flower blue. "Well," said Mrs. McPherson, when the funeral was over, "Lyddy Crawford's got a hard row to hoe. She'd like to stay on the farm; it's like home to her now, and they've got to have a roof over their heads some where." "But the mortgage," Alec objected. "They can pay the inter est, and that's enough just now. And she's going to make real,old-fashioned preserves out of wild raspberries and huckleberrries and long blackberries, and sell them on Buxton market. Oh, she may get quite a trade!" Alec was pleased. Gradually it be came his chief interest to watch Lyddy's undertaking. Sometimes he met her in the woods with the children, gathering berries, Tony trailing a long, dead branch as a protection against bears. He never saw Lyddy now without a sharp sense of the beauty of her hair, her small woman's figure, her brown, small hands. It seemed to him that she embodied all sweet, country things—light and breezy days and the fragrance of little underfoot flowers. As for Lyddy, at night, at bedtime, she wrapped a thin, black shawl about her head and shoulders, and slipped out of the house and down the hili to the bridge, to see if the lights were still burning in Alec's windows. She did it every night,and it had assumed for her the sacredness of a rite. When fall came. Alec was better. He was less thin, his hand had a firm giasp, his skin was a healthy brown, his eye was steady. He had almost forgotten his languid days and sleep less nights in the buoyant pleasure of rising up early in the autumn dawn to feel himself the director of all tbe activities of the farm. It was at supper one night that his mother spoke to him. "Alec, you have been at home close on eight months now," she said, and waited for an answer. "Yes," he said,brief ly. "And your health is ever so much better than you ever thought it would be again. You're almost as well as you ever were. Isn't that so?" "Yes," he said again. "When are you going back to tbe law?" He went on crumbling his biscuit,and did not meet her eye. "I am not going back, mother." he said at last "I am determined to stay here." "This is no place for a youug man of your education," she expostulated. "That's what I thought once, mother, but everything seems differ ent now. I can be just as useful here. It's better to be a good farmer than a poor lawyer." "Yon needn't be a poor lawyer. Besides I'd rather be that than a farmer. I hate the name of farmer. None of my relations were ever that. There isn't any excuse for such low tastes." He was nettled. "Let us take so.ne cases we know of," he said qnietly. "There's Wnlters, the sharpest young lnwyer in Buxton, and the best pleader; he was in jail 24 hours for voting twice at an election. There wns Barr, who started poor and died rich; he lost his seat in Parlia ment and was disqualified for open bribery, and there was things in his private life far worse. No profession is going to make a man's life honor able. I'd rather be a man like my father, mother, than be Barr or Wal ters." He had the impulse to burst into contemptuous laughter,but something checked him. He leaned forward, in stead, and placed his hand on hers, "Mother, I disappoint you, but don't drive me away. This is the dearest place on earth to me. I can understand Horace now! 'Happy is the man who. far from business, like the ancient race of men, works his paternal fields with his own oxen.' I can under stand that now." Mrs. McPherson picked np the teapot and set it down with fierce emphasis. "Then I sup pose the truth is it's that girl that'? keeping you here," she burst out. "What do you mean?" he asked hotly. "I mean," she said, without qnailing before his angry eyes, "that I suppose it's that Crawford girl your hanging after. The dear knows whal else keeps you here. You don't seem able to tell. 1 think you must b« pretty soft. To see her eyes following me round like a tame cat would ba enough for me if I was a young man. It makes me sick. I should think she'd be the laughing stock of the neighborhood." Her son looked at her iu blank amazement. "Oh, she kuows which side her bread is but tered on. You'd be a pretty good catch for her, wouldn't you? I'll tell you something, too," she went on, hoarsely. "If you take up with such trash as that, don't come here again. As long as my head is nbove the sod this house is mine, and if you go against me, keep out of it. God knows I've slaved to give you chances to make yourself somebody! Yes, you've been dearer to me than the apple of my eye t but unless you make up your mind togo back, I will never own you for a r,on again." She tnrned her back upon bim and marched away with her usual soldier like tread, and he heard the kev turn iu tbe lock as she closed her bedroom door. He flung out of the house in a passion of opposition. O tbe shoddy pride, the vulgarity of rt all! Some words of Tolstoi recurred to him, priuted without flaw on his memory: "Everything which I used to think bad and low—the rusticity of tbe peasant,the plainness of lodging,food, clothing, manners—all this has be come good and great iu my eyes." He leaned against the railing of the little wooden bridge and listened to the hurry of water underneath. There was a watery, intermittent moonlight, and every now and then a snowilake, damp and adhesive,touched his cheek. He looked up and saw Lyddy stand ing iu the road, her startled face peer ing at him from its framing of black shawl. With an exclamation of joy he went quickly to meet her.—New Eng land Homestead. Wooiiuj a School Teacher. "Yes," said a young man, as he threw himself at the feet of the pretty school mistress, "I love you and would goto the world's end for you. "Yon could not goto the end of the world for me, James. The world, or the earth, as it is called, is round like a ball, slightly flatted at the poles. One of the first lessons in elementary geography is devoted to the shape of the globe. You must have studied it wh n you were a boy." "Of course I did, but " "And it is no longer a theory. Cir cumnavigators have established the fact." "I know, but what I meant was that I would do anything to please you. Ah, Minerva, if you knew the aching void " "There is no such thing as a void, James. Nature abhors a vacuum. But, admitting that there could be such a thing, how could the void yon speak of bo a void if there were an ache in it ?" "I meant to say that my life will be lonesome without yon; thatyouare my daily thought and my nightly dream. I would go anywhere to be with you. If you were iu Australia or at the north pole, I would fly to you. I " "Fly! It will be another century before men can fly. Even when the laws of gravitation are successfully overcome, there will still remaiu, says a late scientific authority, the diffi culty of maintaining a balance " "Well, at all events," exclaimed the youth, "I've got a pretty fair balance in the bank, and I want you to be my wife. There!" "Well, James, since you put it in that light, I " Curtain.—Wichita (Kan.) Eagle. Worse Meat Tlian Goat. The big packeries are now slaugh tering thousands of Texas goats and selling the flesh for mutton. The de ception is reprehensible, but the meat is all right. A juicy Text, angora is about as toothsome to a white man as a rat is to a Chinaman or a baked dog to an Indian. The angora is all right. What we object to is the gutta percha beefsteak and the papier mache sau. sages.—Memphis Commercial Appeal, A TEMPERANCE COLUMN. THE DRINK EVIL MADE MANIFEST IN MANY WAYS. Whleli Shall It Be?—The Wrecking or a Prosperous Business House—A Refusal to Drink Lost a Sale, But Made a Savins In the Lone Kun. Which shall it he, lads? whioh shall It be? Ood, or the ody politic. It Is, In a word, the cnuse Jr the occasion of four-flfths of the crim« ay whioh our national life Is disgraced."