Republic __/rtTE STAMPS OF DIFFERENT COUNTRIES. How International Franking is Done. pa? mif k.5 jll-BX * jjj jft[ r> U4 2j| Ifn KSSSjiIP K TOW:. '®w | fp at^^ 9 I I iID M-04J1M, g IA jPSesr 4 f?j (j|§t I SC'JADOP 1 ' ..l| Mi CiM/apil." * r I flra 3&3t**«*«un» * iMSm&QSMnVmmi&iam TJIOOO c : ' I lirSlta ;H*£.t.33S | Ue^mggggg^^i te w y w rag £ I insna n IJSI : ',, A * QigiS s In civilized countries to-day govern the mails and bear stamps showing t li to them. On each of these stamps app "where it is issued, the number of the d the initial of the French word "Iteconi u the document is franked, or, in other \\ •charges. The stamps are issued in the Finland, Japan. Roumanla, Mexico, Sp Sweden, Ecuador, Germany, Austria, I Holland, Hungary, Persia, Great Brit a Rica, France and Uruguay. As graph of every human being Is revealed in h it hat national character is In each case i daily In the manner in which the cap it of this letter is not the same on all the!■ some it is strictly regular, while on ot li graceful curve of its tail shows.—New 1 ."sCOCOOCCOOQOOOCOOCOOOOCvOC: 3 . following countries: Russia. Italy, pain, Portugal, Belgium. ({recce, Chile, 1 11 ited States of America, Colombia, nin. Switzerland, Montenegro, Costa hologists maintain that the character his or her handwriting, so it is claimed revealed in these stamps, and cspo Ital R is formed. That tin- formation stamps can lie seen at a glance. On hers it is more or less artistic, as the York Herald. For Western I'armerx. The up-to-date farmer with a large acreage linus it slow work to plow his tields with the old 11uprlt? plows of the past, and so lie utilizes the electric current and multiplies the number of plow shares to suit him self. In the West this is practically a necessity, on account of the large size of the tields and the cost of labor and teams. Our illustration shows a convenient form of motor plow which lias been designed by Conrad Meiss ner, of Fricdriclisburg, Germany. It consists of two electric motors oper ating winding drums on separate car riages, which may be placed at any required distance apart, only one mo tor being connected with the main feed wire. To supply power to the second motor a feed cable lying paral lel with the traction cable is readjust ed at every trip of the plow to follow the latter down the field. The meeh ELECTRICALLY-OPEISATED PLOW. anism is so adjusted that when once set in motion the apparatus practically operates itself, moving the carriages forward at the beginning of each trip to bring the plow-shares In position for the next row of furrows. The plows are attached to a two-wheeled truck, which is pulled back and forth across the field, moving forward at the cud of each set of furrows as long as the power is turned on. KiiKliinil's .Scottish fJardeuem. To a Scotsman a Scotsman succeeds as head gardener to the king at San uringham. Mr. Archibald McKellar. who has held the position for many years, has been promoted to Windsor Castle, and his place at His Majesty's Norfolk establishment has been tilled by a fellow countryman, Mr. T. II Cooke. Mr. McKellar belongs to Llch gllphead, in Argyllshire, and before coming to Sandrlnghaiu he had charge of tlie beautiful gardens of Floors Castle, the seat of the Duke of Rox burgh. The gardens at Sandriughan are not very extensive, but they are charmingly laid out. The garden a I Windsor is historically more interest- in£. for it was there in ii "gardyt faire" that .lames I.of Scotland,"aT though a prisoner, wooed and won his liride. Lady Jane Beaufort.—Londot Chronicle. The unsuccessful man realizes tha: there is plenty of room at the bottoiu | jNEW " £ % SOIL EXPERIMENTS. | rf» 4, United Stages Govemm«r* U-:n3 Ingarvous •J 1 ) Instruments. ti9¥iF¥W99999999999999999V& The division of soils of the United States Department of Agriculture has just described a new instrument now in use for investigating the properties of soils. Tliis is a great time and labor saving apparatus, giving accur ate and reliable results, which other wise-would require n» .nths to obtain. The physical properties of soils are recognized by plant physiologists to lie of the greatest importance in plant economy. Even in the consideration of climatic conditions it is now gen erally considered that for most plants the conditions of the soil hold equal rank with atmospheric conditions. A high temperature in the soil under fa vorable conditions promotes extensive root development: a high atmospheric temperature under equally favorable conditions favors a heavy growth of foliage. A deficiency in water of either air or soil is attended with dis tress. The new apparatus as devised by the division of soil is an electric affair. It registers a half dozen or more va rious soil properties. This method de pends upon the principle that the re sistance offered to the passage of an electric current from one carbon plate to another buried in the soil depends upon the amount of moisture present between the carbon plates or elec trodes. This resistance is measured. The illustration shows the instru ment as used in the field, with the car bon electrodes and temperature cells in place. The carbon electrodes and temperature cells may be buried in the soil at the beginning of tlie season and remain undisturbed throughout the year. The moisture record ob tained consequently deals with the variation In moisture contents in the : ime portion of soil. This Is one of the advantages of the method, since it has been shown that the moisture con tents of a seemingly uniform soil may vary as much as four per cent, within an area of one square rod. Conse quently, in order to obtain a consist ent record of the change in water it I Is necessary to deal with the same sample of soil, which can only be | done by this electrical method. The scale of the instrument is ar ranged on a decimal plan, so that the various soil properties can be deter mined directly from the scale of the instrument. It was observed by Professor W that soil areas of the Connecticut Val ley were practically identical as re gards texture and water content with certain areas in Florida upon which the finest of cigar wrappers are being raised from Sumatra seed. Experi ments were accordingly made on one of the Connecticut areas, using the same seed and methods of cultivation and curing employed in Florida, with the most satisfactory results. Should the more extensive experi ments now in progress support the earlier work, as there is every reason to expect, the result will be to incrense greatly the area adapted to the growth of the finest quality of cigar wrap pers known, and there will be raised in this country tobacco now imported to the amount of $(>,000,000 apnuallv. —New York Herald. The Gate-I.eR Table. The gate-leg table Is an old-fash ioni d institution just returning to favor, it has manifold uses. It does I service at a tea or a card party and is convenient to hold a bottle or glass of lemonade, besides a reading chair. When not In use it folds up out of the way and takes a place against the wall. The interest on the national debt for last year cost each person forty-four cents. A white disc a foot across can be seen with the naked eye at a distance o! 17,250 feet. »»^^IOIDKSK:^Xr^£>K?!Oi©»OKSICsICSfSf^OIO(©I©^» I THE ROUND TABLE | OF KIM ARTHUR. | The famous Hound Table of King Arthur is still preserved in the great hall that was attached to the ancient castle built by William the Conqueror at Winchester in r_':r>, and it is one of the most interesting relics in all Eng land. The castle of Winchester was destroyed by lire several years ago, lint the lmll in which Parliament sat for 400 years is still preserved in its original condition, and a secret "trough," as they call it, which was bored through the wall and enabled the king to hear what was going on in Parliament as he sat in his cham ber, is still pointed out to visitors. | The castle was the residence of all the early Norman kings. Richard Coeur de Lion was received there by his no bles when lie returned from captivity. A.l thu Edwards resided there, there Henry VIII. entertained the great em peror, Charles V.of Spain; there Queen Mary entertained Philip 11. of Spain until they were married in the an cient cathedral near by. and there Sir Walter Italeigh was tried and con demned to death after his return from his fruitless explorations in South j America. Winchester is one of the most an- ; cient cities of England, and was set I tied in the year 000 B. C. Julius Caesar lived there while he was in England, and the Roman emperor Yes paslan made it his capital. Five bun ; dred years after the birth of Christ the city was captured by Cerdic, wlic made it tin; capital of the Saxon dyn asty, and in 527, in tlic cathedral, Eg bert was crowned as the first king ol all England. The round table Is in an excellent state of preservation and Is fastened against the wall at one end of the great room where John Harding, the chronicler, who lived from lU7S to TOP OF KINO ARTHUR'S ROUND TABLE, 14(55, described It. Henry VIII. re paired it, and placed an iron baud around the outside like the tire of a wheel, to keep it together. It.was a great curiosity In Ills day, when ii must have been at least 000 years old. The under part of the table is a net work of braces; the upper part is laid off into twenty-four sections, each bearing the name of the knight who cccupled It, and you can see the nanuv of Galahad, Launcelot and others men -1 t ioned in Tennyson's poem. The chron iclers say that the table lias been hanging In its present place since the year l£8:?, but lias been taken down on several occasions. The last time was when the castle burned. The citizens of Winchester were determined to save it, and a hundred men were en gaged In removing it from the wall, but when they got It to the lloor they found that It was too large to be taken out through the doors and the fire was extinguished before they could take it to pieces. A Juvenile Bunko Man. Tommy had been quiet for fully five minutes. He seemed to be engaged with some deep problem. "Papa." he said. "Well?" "'Do unto others as you would have others do unto you'—that's the goldeD rule, isn't It. papa?" "Yes, my sou." "And It's puttickly right to follow tli« golden rule. Isn't it, papa?" "Yes, Indeed." Tommy rose, went to the cupboard and returned with a knife and a large apple pie. The latter he placed before his astonished sire with great solem nity. "Eat it, papa," he said.—San Fran cisco Bulletin. DE. TALMAGE'S SERMON SUNDAY' 3 DISCOl ,r " E EY THE NOTED aulijcrt: Tim Sin of FSorrowinsr Trouble— A Bad Habit That Unfits Many to Proper ly I>lßclnircro Iho IMItIPH of Life—(iod Will nioct Our Indigencies us riiey Arise ICopyrlirht 1901.1 WASHINGTON, 1). C. —In this discourse Dr. Talmage shows the folly of allowing forebodings to influence us and how ex pectation of evii weakens and destroys; text. Matthew vi, 31. "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." The life of every man. woman and child is as closely under the divine care as though such person were the only man, woman or child. There are no accidents. As there is a law of storms in the natural world, so there : , a law of trouble, a law of disaster, a law of misfortune, but. the majority of the troubles of life are imag inary, and the most of those anticipated | never come. At any rate, there is no cause of complaint against God. See how much He has dor.e to make you happy— His sunshine filling the earth with g'ory, making rainbow for the storm and halo for the mountain, greenness for the moss, saffron for the cloud and crystal for the billow and procession of bannered flame through the opening gates of the morning, chaffinches to sing, rivers to glitter, seas to chant and springs to blossom and over powering all other sounds with its song and over-reaching all other splendor with its triumph, covering up all other beauty with its garlands and outflashing all other thrones with its dominion —deliverance i for a lost world through the Great Re deemer. I discourse of the sin of borrowing trouble. First, such a habit of mind and heart is wrong because it puts one into a de spondency that ill fits him for duty. 1 planted two rose bushes in mv garden. The one thrived beautifully; the other perished. I found the dead one on the shady side of the house. Our dispositions, like our plants, need sunshine. Expec tancy of repulse is the cause of many sec ular and religious failures. Fear of bank ruptcy has uptorn many a fine business and sent the man dodging among the note shavers. Fear of slander and abuse has often invited the long-beaked vultures of scorn and backbiting. Many of the mis fortunes of life, like hyenas, flee if you courageously meet them. How poorly prepared for religious duty is a man who sits down under the gloom ; of expected misfortune! If he prays, he j says,"l do not think I shall lie ati j swered." If he gives, he says,"l expect | they will steal the money." Helen Chalm ers told me that her father, Thomas i Chalmers, in the darkest hour of the Free Church of Scotland and when the woes of the land seemed to weigh upon , his heart, said to his children, "Come, let | us go out and play ball or fly kite," and j the only difficulty in the play was that ■ the children could not keep up with their | father. The McChevnes and the Summer -1 fields of the church who did the most good toiled in the sunlight. Away with the horrors! Thev distil poison. They dig graves, and if they could climb so high I they would drown the rejoicings of heaven j with sobs and wailing. You will have nothing but misfortune in the future if you sedulously watch for it. How shall a man catch the right kind of fish if he arranges line and hook and bait to catch lizards and water serpents? Hunt for bats and hawks, and bats and ; hawks you will find. Hunt for robin red breasts, and you will find robin red breasts. One night an eagle and an owl got into fierce battle. The eagle, unused to the night, was no match for the owl, which is most at home in the darkness, and the king of the air fell helpless, but the morning rose, and with it rose the | eagle, and the owls and the nighthawks | and the bats came a second time to the i combat. Now. the eagle in Ihe sunlight, j with a stroke of his talons and a great cry | cleared the air, and his enemies, with , torn feathers and splashed with blood, ! tumbled into the thickets. Ye are the children of light. In the night of despond ! ency you will have no chance against I your enemies that flock up from beneath, j but trusting in God and standing in the ! sunshine of the promises vou shall "renew t your youth like the eagle." I Again, the habit of borrowing trouble is wronjj, because it has a tendency to make us overlook present blessing. To slake man's thirst the rock is cleft, and cool water leap into his brimming cup. To feed his hunger the fields bow down with bending wheat, and the cattle come down from the clover pastures to give him milk, and the orchards yellow and ripen, casting their juicy fruits into his lap. Alas, that amid such exuberance ol blessing man should growl as though he i were a soldier on half rations or a sailor ! on short allowance; that a man should j stand neck deep in harvests looking for ward to famine; that one should feel the stronct pulses of health marching with reg ular tread all the avenues of life and vet : tremble at the expected assault of sick ness; that a man should sit in his pleasant i home, fearful that ruthless want will some 1 day rattle the broken window sash with tempest and sweep the coals from the I hearth and pour hunger into the bread ! trav; that a man fed by Him who owns I all the harvests should expect to ftarve; that one whom God loves and surrounds with benediction and attends with angelic escort and hovers over with more than motherly fondness should be looking for a heritage of tears! Has God been hard , with thee that thou shouldst be forebod ing? Has He stinted thv board? Has He j covered thee with rags? Has He spread traps for thy feet and galled thy cup and rasped thy soul and wrecked the» with storm and thundered upon tlice with a life full of calamity? I If your father or brother come into your j bank, where gold and silver are lying ! about, you do not watch them, for you know they are honest, but if an entire ' stranger come by the safe you keen your { eye on him, for you do not know his de ! signs. So some men treat God not as a | father, but a stranger, and act suspi i ciously toward Him. It is high time you I began to thank God for present blessing; thank Him for sour children, happy buoy ant and bounding; praise Him for your home, with its fountain of song and laughter; adore Him for morning light and evening shadow; praise Him for fresh, cool water bubbling from the rock, lean ing in the cascade, soaring in the mist, falling in the shower, dashing against the rocks and clapping its hands in the tem pest; love Him for the grass that cushions the earth anil the clouds that curtain the sky and the foliage that waves in the for est: thank Him for a Bible to read and a Saviour to deliver. I Many Christians think it a bad sign to be jubilant, and their work of self-exam ination is a hewing down of their brighter experiences. Like a boy with a new jack knife hacking everything he comes across, so their self-examination is a relia'ous cutting to pieces of the greenest things they can lay their hands on. They im agine they arc doing God's service when thev are going about borrowing trouble, and borrowing it at thirty per cent., which is always a sure precursor of bank ruptcy. Again, the habit of borrowing trouble is wrong because the present is sufficiently taxed with (rial. God sees that we nil need a certain amount ot trouble, and so He apportions it for all the days and years of our life. Alas for the policy of gather ing it all up for one day or veer! Cruel thing to put upon the back of one camel all the cargo intended for the entire cara van. I never look at my memorandum book to see what engagements and Jutie* are far ahead. Let every week bear its own burdens. The shadows of to-day are thick enough. Why implore the presence of other shadows? The cup is already dis tasteful. Why halloo to disasters far dis tant to come and wring out more gall in the bitterness? Are we such champions that, having won tile belt in former en counters, we can j ;o forth to challenge all the future? Here are bus inc.'a men just able to man age a flairs as they now are. They can pay their reat and meet their notes and manage nfia:rs as they now are, but how if a panic should come and my investments should fail? Go to-morrow and write on your daybook or on your ledger or on your money safe. ''Suflieient unto the day is the evil thereof." J)o not worry about notes that are far from due. Do not pile up on your counting desk the financial anxieties of the next twenty years. The God who has taken care of your worldly occupa tion, guarding your store from the torch of the incendiary and the key oft.'is bur glar, will be as faithful in 1910 as in l!K)l. God's hand is mightier than them a china ations of ~tock gamblers or the plots- of political demagogues or the red right arm of revolution, and the darkness will tly and the storm fall dead at His feet. So there ifrc persons in feeble health, and they are worried about the future. They mal;e out very well now, but they are bothering themselves about future pleurisies and rheumatisms and neural gias and fevers. Their eyesight is- feeble, and they are worried lest they entirely lose it. Their hearing is indistinct, and they are alarmed lest they become entirely deaf. They felt chilly to-day and are ex pecting an attack of typhoid. They have been troubled for weeks with some per plexing malady and dread becoming life long invalids. Take- care of your health now and trust God for the future, lie not guilty of the blasphemy of asking Him to take care of you while you sleep with your windows tight down or eat chicken salad at 11 o'clock at night or sit down on a cake of ice to- cool off. Be pru dent and then be confident. Some of the f-ickest people have been the most useful, it was so with Payson, who died deaths daily, and Robert Hal!, who used to stop in the midst of his sermon and lie down 011 the pulpit sofa to- rest and then goon again. Theodore Frelinghuysen had a great horror of dying till the time came, and then went peacefully. Take care of the present and let the future look out for itself. "Suirieient unto- the day is the evil thereof." Again, the habit of borrowing misfor tune is wrong because it unfits us for it when it actually does come. We cannot always have smooth sailing. Life's path will sometimes tumble among declivities and mount a steep and be thorn pierced. • ludas will kiss our check and then sell us for thirty pieces of silver. Human scorn will try to crucify us between two thieves. We will hear the iron gate of the sepul cher creak and grind as it shuts in our kindred. But we cannot get ready for these things by forebodings. They who tight imaginary woes will come out of breath into conflict with the armed dis asters of the future. Their ammunition will have been wasted long before they come under the guns of real misfortune. Boys in attempting to jump a wall some times go so far back in order to get impe tus tiiat when the}" come up they are ex hausted, and these long races in order to get spring enough to vault trouble bring us up at las', to the dreadful reality with our strength gone. Finally, the habit of borrowing trouble is wrong because it is unbelief. Hod has promised to take care of us. The Bible blooms with assurances. Your hunger will lie fed, your sickness will be alle viated, your sorrows will be healed. God will sandal your feet and smooth your path, and along by frowning crag and opening grave sound the voices of victory and good cheer. The summer clouds (hat seem thunder charged really carry in (heir bosom harvests of wheat and shocks of corn and vineyards purpling for the wine press. The wrathful wave will kiss the feet of the great storm walker. Our great •Toshua will command and above your soul the sun of prosperity will stand still. Bleak and wave struck Palmos shall have apocal.vpti • vision, and you shall hear the cry of elders and the sweet) of wings and trunnels of salvation and the voice of hal leluiah unto God forever. Your way may wind along dangerous bridle paths and amid wolf's howl and the scream of the vulture, but the way still winds upward till angels guard it and trees of life overarch it, and thrones line it, and crystalline fountains leap on it, and the pathway ends at gates that are pearl, and streets that are gold, and tem ples that are always open, and hills that quake with perpetual song and a city mingling forever Sabbath and jubilee and triumph and coronation. Let pleasure chant her siren song; 'Tis not the song for nie. To weeping it will turn ere long. For this is heaven's decree. But there's a song the ransomed sins To .Tesus, their exalted King. With joyful heart and tongue. Oil. that's the song for me! Courage, my brother! the father does not give to his son at school enough money to last him several years, but as the bills for tuition and board and clothing and books come in pays them. So God will not give you grace all at once for the future, but will meet all your exigencies as they come. Through earnest prayer trust Him. People ascribe the success of a certain line of steamers to business skill, and know not the fact that when that line of steamers started the wife of the proprie tor passed the whole of each day when a steamer sailed in prayer to God for it# safety and the success of the line. Put everything in God's hands and leave it there. Large interest money to pay will soon eat up a farm, a store, an estate and the interest on borrowed troubles will swamp anybody. "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." The Mountain Creation. Mopes was to build the tabernacle after ie pattern he had received in the mount. God was the architect, Moses only the builder. That method saved much discus sion and trouble with the workers about the tabernacle. There are some things the world eaniitft change; God's plan for a human life is never out of date: the mountain architecture is perfect, ft w neither Grecian nor Roman; it does not follow any human school; it is after the heavenly design. See that you make your architecture after the holj pattern, per fected from foundation to capstone. Strange to say that while there is wide difference of opinion as to what is artistie and beautiful in human workmanship, men are of one mind when they stand be fore the mountain-creation. The sermon on the mount is the pattern of the mount, the architecture of a right life. When men cry: "Back to Christ," urging us tn <'