SPANISH WAR MEDALS || FOG THE NAVY, g mwmmmmsad IN expectation of a ceremonial pre sentation of a part of the medals won in the late war with Spain, the Philadelphia mint is now going right ahead with the work of fashion ®EVERSE OP THE MEDAL. SHOWING THE MEN BEHIND THE GUNS. Ins the several thousand medals to be given to the meritorious :uul the val orous of our navy during the campaign In the West Indies in 18!)8. These medals are to commemorate participa tion In certain naval engagements, principally on the coast of Cuba, and to distinguish those officers and men whose specially meritorious service other than the battle is particularly deserving of recognition. From the man behind the gun to the man be fore the blazing furnace in the fire room, every one on a ship in battle will receive a battle medal, and, if in more than one engagement, au added bar, in stead of another medal, for each addi tional action —the bar to bear the name and date of the subsequent fight. The obverse of the battle medal will bear the head of the commander-in chief of tile whole campaign, encircled by the inscription, "U. S. Naval Carn- MEPAL FOR SPECIALLY MERITORIOUS SERVICE. liaign in the West Indies, 1808," while the reverse will typify the men behind the guns—the young officer and the youth of the blue jackets and marines. The three figures are shown in the fighting-top of a battle ship. The blue jacket who has just moved his body from tiie shoulder piece of his still "smoking one-pounder, is watching the result, of his last few shots, while the medal will be a wreath-encircled star. Tiie wreath will be of laurel, and the star will bear in prominent relief the badge of the service—the anchor. The bands that bind the relief will bear the descriptive title of the decoration, and encircling the anchor will be the campaign designation. On the plain reverse side of the medal will be stamped the name and rank of rating of the recipient, together witli a brief statement of the service for which tiie medal was given. Tiie ribbon in this case will be red or crimson and Unrecorded History—The Top of a Boer Kopje, A. D. 1950 (PICTURE REPRODUCED FROM LONDON" PUNCH ALMANAC.) Aged ! The only survivor 'coming in' at Inst:" Tlic Lust of the Boers—"Vaid a mouiond! Vod derms you gif me; meia gom bleed lntebendenceV—oddervlse I bleib always cn sommando." young officer, catching sight of a chance for the rifle, is pointing to an opening for the alert murine. In the distance, over the rim of the fighting top. are seen the Brooklyn and the Texas, partly c'oiided In tiieir own smoke, while against the extreme left shore line lies the blazing wreck of a Spanish craft. The sea In the mid dle distance is dashed with plunge of hostile shot. The "specially meritorious service" will fall straight, down Dehind the medal so that the color will show through the openings between the star points. The design has been made pur posely simple. Automatic Kettle I.lil. Among the kitchen novelties just placed on the market is a tea kettle of alumnium, provided with a very at tractive feature in a method of raising the lid for filling the kettle, without -ffflL AUTOMATIC KETTLE LID. the necessity of touching It. On one side of the lid is a projecting arm, so that a downward pressure of the handle raises the lid. When the handle is raised the lid falls back of its own weight. Tli» Great Staple. liice forms a larger part of human food than the product of any other one plant, being the diet of India, China and the Malayan Islands, and occupying a place on the tables of nine ty per cent, of the inhabitants of the civilized world. One may safely ven ture the assertion that 800,000,000 peo ple eat rice every day in the year.— New York Press. Fishing: With Sawß and Axes. At the St. Mary's reservoir the re cent cold snap has made the ice about nine inches thick and on account of the low water thousands of nice black bnss have been frozen in the Ice. People come in large numbers and saw or chop out small blocks of Ice containing the fish and take them home.—Colum bus (Ohio) Dispatch. Very Good, Indeed. "Who says automobiling is not ex- I erclse?" gCOOOOOOOOOOOOOCOOO OOOQGO I WHERE AMERICAN | | SCHOOLS EXCEL. I 3 8 0 Particulars In Which Kuropcan J:' g Solioult Are l>cflclent. A OOCOO OOOCJOOOOOOGOCCOOCCOD THE American schoolboy is two inches taller than the aver age European schoolboy of a like age. lam positive in this declaration after a tour of inspection of the various schools of Europe* and 1 place the usefulness of the instruc tion imparted, from an educational and a hygienic point of view, as fol lows: First, the United States; second, England; third, Germany, closely fol lowed by France and Russia. There is a great difference in the school systems, but in two ways is this more noticeable, viz., inspection of school work and its results. The system of inspection abroad has been developed to such an extent that it Is more of a science than an ord : uary routine, as in this country. The in spector spends at least a day a month in each room, making copious notes of both teachers' and pupils' work, criti cising in open class tlie deficient stud ies and commending those that are satisfactory. One report that I saw in Kcnmare, and prepared by the regular govern ment ofHcer, had the results carefully tabulated. One copy was handed the teacher, another was sent to the Board of Education, and another was retained' by the inspector to aid him in his fu ture visits, thus leaving something tan gible for the teacher and pupils to work on. The report set forth that the deportment of the pupils was prop erly maintained, but that the reading of the class was away below par; mathematics was fair, spelling excel lent, penmanship could lie improved on, history was excellent, but geogra phy of the Western Hemisphere was very poor, and grammar was oil that could be expected. With such a report the teacher had some tangible basis to work 011 before the next appearance of the inspector, before which time it was expected the deficiency in studies would be made up. The inspection of class work in our Chicago schools forms quite a con trast with this. Here the assistant superintendent rarely spends over a half hour, and no report is made to the teacher that would aid in remedying defects, but she is left in ignorance of how her work compares with othe: teachers' efforts. At the same time I am willing tc concede that it is possible to be more definite abroad than at home, owing to more specific aims in the minds of both the educators and text-book writ ers. Text-books are rarely changed abroad, and a student is taught rather to grasp and retain detailed informa tion than look for it himself. Blinders, as it were, are placed on his eyes, so that lie is unable to look sldewlse. Certainly these schools are more ad vanced in theory than ours, but we surely excel them from a practical side. Any one of the foreign schools is better equipped, more expensive to maintain and better fitted to exert in influence In the student body than jurs, but the medieval practice of re AMERICA. ENGLAND. GERMANY. FRANCE. 6tri<'tions places them beyond the pale of our work. Omitting the English schools, any one of the others has a distinct advantage over our schools from the fact that reading and spell ing are mastered in three years, lie cause words are spelled as spoken. Many of our pupils are uuable to read English after ten years' steady appli cation. Arithmetic is much easier abroad, because the tables are founded on the decimal system, like our money, and require very little memorizing. It is conceded that a boy coming out of the preparatory school on the Con tinent is about two years ahead of our boy of the same age who is gradu ating from our high school. While this is true, our boy has done at least three years more work in mastering the reading, spelling and grammar of our difficult language with its barbar ous spelling and numerous irregulari ties of grammar. The opeunessol" mind so noticeable in the American youth is totally lacking in the foreign student, and lie is held tt> the facts in his books until lie has no breadth of range. He spends much less time in 1 lie open air and takes less exhilarating exercise than our boys. Add to this the scientific ventilation of our school rooms, the dash of our methods, lack of desire to cram book knowledge, shorter hours of instruc tion. more cheerful methods, periods of relaxation more frequent, and it is no wonder our boys grow two Inches taller than the foreign boys when taken age for age. We aim as nearly as possible to de j velop the mental and physical natures jof the student at tue same time. The I success of this plan, I think, is evident I from the number of young men at the head of the many large Industrial es- I tablishments in America successfully , competing with the product of the world in every line.—W. E .Watt, in the Chicago Itecord-Herald. [ No Shoveling Required. I The apparatus shown below almost i speaks for Itself as a time and trouble saver, for nearly every one knows by experience the unpleasant work ot cleaning out the furnace several times a week in winter. One great annoy auce Is the scattering of dust in the air. to settle later all around the base ment, some even being carried through the flues into the living rooms above, to be deposited on furniture and car pets. George Adams and Walter How land have conceived the idea of pro viding a receptacle into which the ashes may be shaken direct from the furnace, inclosing the receptacle in ail air-tight chamber, except for the one passage leading through the furnace into the chimney. Of course the re ceiving can may be of any desired shape and size, and it is possible with ANTI-DUST ASHES REMOVING ARrARATOS its use to allow several days' shakings to accumulate wiriiout interfering with the ordinary working of the fur nace. As it would be impossible to lift a full receiving can out of the well beneath the furnace, the inventors make provision for rolling it to the opening on a car, and a lifting pulley is suspended directly above the trap door to raise the can to the surface. If several cans are provided the ashes may easily be stored in the basement until the ashman comes to collect, and as the cans are emptied directly into the wagon there is 110 occasion for the use of a shovel or raising a dust in IN'» house. The Kncl of a Capital. A report from Paris is to the effect that General Gallieni, the Governor- General of Madagascar, is about to make the port of Tamatave, on the eastern coast of the Island, the capital, instead of Antananariwo. the present capital of Madagascar. The reason for this transformation is said to lie in the fact that the country around An tananariwo is not fit for any agricul tural purposes, while the coast dis tricts are reported to be fertile and rich in mineral deposits, two facts which will no doubt induce immigrant" to settle down there. Molasse* an Animal Food. Many agriculturists in Europe have, long been convinced that molasses is ail admirable food for horses and cat tle. and their conviction is now stronger than ever owing to certain experiments which have recently been tri tl, and which have proved eminently successful. Obituary Cynicism. Lltert>. vy Traveli• r (Iti> .le]pres;sod-l<o«■ k ing resident outside country church yard!—"lnteresting old place this, sir. Any folk-lore or fairy tales connected with It?" Grumpy Resident (who has evidently been left out of a will)—" There Isn't any folk-lore in this neignborliood, and the only fairy tales you'll find are in the churchyard—on the tombstones." —Moonshine. DR. TALMAGES SERMON SUNDAY'S DISCOURSE BY THE NOTED DIVINE. Subject: God Daps tho Impossible—Seine Wonders of lHvine Tower—Superior to Every Law of Nature Which Ho lias Made For Mankind. WASHINGTON, I). C. —In this discourse Dr. Talmagc makes practical use of an oc currence in the Orient which has seldom attracted particular attention; text, II Kings vi, 6, '"l'he iron did swim." A theo'.ogionl seminary in the valley of palms near the River Jordan, had become so popular in the time of Elisha, the pro phet, that more accommodations were needed for the students. The classrooms and the dormitories must be enlarged or an entirely new building constructed. What will they do? Will they send up to Jerusalem and solicit contributions for this undertaking? Will they send out agents to raise the money for a new theo logical seminary? Having raised the money, will they send for cedars of Leb anon and marble from the quarries where Ahab got the stone for the pillars and walls of his palace? No; the students propose to build it themselves. They were rujtged boys, who had been brought up in the country and who had never been weakened by the luxuries of city life. All they mk is that Elisha, their professor and prophet, go along with them to the woods and boss the job. They start for the work, Elisha and his students. Plenty of lumber in those regions along the Jor dan. The sycamore is a stout, strong tree and good for timber. Mr. Gladstone asked me if I had seen in Palestine any sycamore tree more beautiful than the one we stood under at liawarden. I told him I had not. The sycamores rear the Jordan are now attacked bv Elisha's students, for they must have lumber for the new theo logical seminary. I suppose some of the students made an awkward stroke, and they were extemporized axemen. Stand from under! Crash goes one of the trees and another and another. But something now happens so wonderful that the occur rence will tax the credulity of the ages, so wonderful that many still think it never happened at all. One of the student?, not able to own an axe, had borrowed one. You must remember that while the axe of olden time was much like our modern axe, it differed in the fact that instead of the helve or handle being thrust into a socket in the iron head the head of the axe was fastened on the handle by a leathern thong, and so it might slip the helve. A student of the seminary was swinging his axe against one of those trees, and whether it was at the moment he made his first stroke and the chips flew or was after he had cut the tree from all sides so deen that it was ready to fall we are not told, but the axe head nnd the handle parted. Being near the riverside, the axe head dropped into river and sank to the muddy bottom. Great was the student's dismay. If it had been his own axe, it would have been bad enough, but the axe did not be long to him. He had no means to buy an other for the kind man who had loaned it .to hinj. but Cod halps through some good and cov.!, ar.d in this case it •vras Elisha who v.as mine woods and on the river bmk at the time. He did not see the axe head fly off. and so he naked the student where it dropped. He was shown the place where it went down into the river. Then Elisha broke off a branch of a tree and threw it into the water, and the axe head rose from the depths of the river and floated to the t ■•:, so that thf: student had just to stoop down and take up the restored property. Now you see the meaning of my text, "The iron did swim." Suppose a hundred years ago some one had told people the time would come when hundreds of thousands of tons of iron would float on the Atlantic and Pacific— iron ships from New York to Southamp ton, from London to Calcutta, from San Francisco to Canton. The man making such a prophecy would have been sent to an asylum or carefully watched as incom petent togo alone. We have all in our day seen iron swii.. Now, if man can make hundreds of tons of metal float, t am disposed to think that the A'.nnightv could nvake an axe head float. "What," says some one. "would be the use of stish a miracle?" Of vast, of infi nite, of eternal importance. Those stu dents were preparing for the ministry. They hr,d join;;'. t>"; l!\eo!';,zical seminary to get ail its advantages. They needed to have their faith strengthened; they needed to be persuaded that Cod can do every thing; they needed to learn that God takes notice of little things; that there ia no emergency of life where He is rot will ing to help. Standing on the banks of that Jordan, those students of that day of the recalled axe head had their faith re-enforced, and nothing that they found out in the class rooms of that learned institution had ever done more in the way of fitting them for their coming profession. I hear from different sources that there is a great deal of infidelity in some of the theological seminaries of our day. They think that the Garden of Eden is an alle gory, and that Moses did not write the Pentateuch, and that the book of Job is only a drama, and that the book of Jonah is an unreliable fish story, and that water was not turned into wine, although the bartender now by large dilution turns' wine into water, and that most of the so called miracles of the Old and the New Testaments were wrought by natural causes. When those infidels graduate from the theological seminary and take the pulp.ts of America as expounders o* the Holy Scriptures, what advocates they will be of that gospel for the truth of which the martyrs died. Hail the Polycarps and Hugh Latimera and John Knoxes of the twentieth cen tury, believing the Bible is true in snots'. Would to God that some great revival of religion might sweep through all the theo logical seminaries of ihis land, confirming the faith of the coming expounders of an entire Bible! Furthermore, in that scene of the text God sanctions borrowing and sets forth the importance of returning. I do not think there would have been any miracle performed if the young man had owned the axe that slipped the helve. The young man cried out in the hearing of the pro phet. "Alas, master, for it was borrowed!" He had a right to borrow. There are times when •we have not only a right to borrow, but it is a duty to borrow. There ire times when we ought to lend, for Christ in His sermon on the mount declared, "From him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away." It is right that one borrow the mentis of getting an education, as the young stu dent of my text borrowed the axe. It is right to borrow means for the forwarding of commercial ends. Most of the vast for tunes that now overshadow the land were hatched out of a borrowed dollar. Tho-e students in the valley of pa'.ins by the Jordan had a physical strength and hardihood that would help them in their mental and spiritual achievements. We who are toiling for the world's better ment need brawn as well as brain, strong bodies as well as illumined minds and con secrated souls. Many of those who are now doing the best work in church and state got muscle and power of endurance from the fact that in early life they were compelled to use axe or plow or flail or hammer, while many who were brought up in the luxuries of life give out before the battle is won. They are keen and sharp of mind, but have no physical en durance. They have the uxe head, but no handle. The body is the handle of the soul. Do not feel lone'.y because your nearest neighbor may be miles away, because the width of the continent may separate you from the place where your cradle was rocked and your father's grave was dug Weakened though you may be by lion's roar or panther's scream. God will help you, whether at the tim? the forest around you raves in the midnight hurricane or you suffer from something quite insignificant, lilre the loss of an axe head. Take your Bible out under the trees, if the weather will permit, and after you have listened to the solo of a bird in the tree tops or the long meter psa'in of the thunder, read those words of the Bihle, which must have been written out of doors: "The trees of the Lord are full of sap, the cedars of Lebanon which He hath planted, where the birds make their nests; as for the stovk, the fir trees are her house. The high hills are a refuge for the wild goats and the rocks for the conics. Thou makest darkness, and it is night, wherein all the beasts of the forest do creep forth. The young lions roar after their prey and seek their meat from God. The sun nrUeth, they gather themselves together and Inv them down in their dens. Man fioeth forth unto his work and to his labor until the evening. O Lord, how r. l anifold are Thy works! In wisdom hast Thou made all. The earth is full of Thy riches." How do you like that sublime pastoral? My subject also reminds us of the im portance of keeping our chief implement for work in goo 1 order, T think that young theological student on the banks of Jor dan was to blame fo- :>ot examining the axe before he lifted it that day against a tree. He could in \ moment have found out whether the 'lt'.vc and the head were firmly fastened. ' r hc simp'o fact was that the axe was n in good order or the strongest stroke ihat sent the edge into the hard sycamore would not have left the implement headless. So Go] has given every one of us an axe with which to hew. Let us keep it in good order, having been sharpened by Bib'e study and strengthened by prayer. The reason wo sometimes fail in our work is because wo have a dull axe or we do not know how aright to swing it. The head is not aright on the handle. At the time we want the most skill for work and perfect equili brium we lose our head. Wo expend in useless excitement the nervous energy that we ought to have employed in direct, straightforward work. Your axe may be a pen or a type or a yardstick or a scales or a tongue which in legislative hali or business circles or Sab bath class or pulpit is to speak for God and righteousness, but the axe will not be worth much until it linn h"cn sharp ened on the grindstone of affliction. Go right throuch the world and go right through all the past a<:es, and show me one man or woman who has done any thing for the world worth speaking of whose axe was not ground on the revolv ing wheel of mighty trouble. It was not David, for lie was dethroned and hounded by unfilial Absalom. Surely it was not Paul, for he was shiowrecked and whipped with thirty-nine stripes from rods of ekn woo'l on hi 3 way to beheadment. Surely it was not Abraham Lincoln, called by every vile name that human and satanic turpitude could invent and de picted by cartoonists with more meanness than any other man ever suffered, on the way to meet a bullet crashing through his temples. Hut I have come to the foot of the Alp?, which we must climb before we can see the wide reach of my subject. See in all this theme how the imt>o3sibilities may be turned into possibilities. That axe head was sunken in the muddiest river that could be found. The alarmed student of Klisha may know where it went down and may dive for it f.nd perhaps fetch it up. but can the sunken axe head be lifted without a hand thrust deep into the mud at the bottom of the river? No; that is impossible. I admit, so far as human pow er is concerned, it is impossible, but with God all things are possible. After the tree branch was thrown upon the surface of .Tordan "the iron did swim," i Some one asks me, "Did you ever see iron swim?" Yes, yes; many a time. I saw a soul hardened until nothing could make it harder. All styles of sin had plied that soul. It was petrified as to all fine feeling. It had been hardening for thirty years. It had gone into the deep est depths. It had been given up as lost. The fathqr had given it up. The mother, mo last to do so, had given it up. Hut one day in answer to some prayer a branch of the disfoliaged tree of Calvary was thrown into the dark ar.d sullen stream,' and the sunken ccy.l rc:"or.dcd to its pow er and rozc into the light, and, to the as tonishment of the church and the world, "the iron did swiri" 1 have sfen hue.-, dreds £.a.:a like tnat. \Yh;p. the dyir.j j"."alt 0:1 the cross beside uhrist v.'a.? con verted. When Jerry MeAuley, a rv.Snn graduate of Sing Sing prison, was changed into a great evangelist, so useful in recla mation of wandering mep and v. xaen that the merchant princes 01 New York estab lished for him the Water street and Cre inorne missions and mourned at his burial, amid the lamentations of a city. When Newton, the blaspheming sailor, under the power of the truth was brought to Christ and became one of the mightiest preachers of the gospel that England ever saw. When John Bunvan, whose curses shocked even the profane of the fish mar ket, was so changed in heart and life that he could write that wonderful dream, "The Pilgrim's Progress," in such a way that un counted thousands have found through it the rqad from the "city of destruction" to the ''celestial city." In all these eases I think iron was made to swim. 1 worship the God who can do the impossible. You have a wayward boy. Only God knows how you have cried over him. \ou hare tried everything l'ot his reformation. Where is he now —in this city, in this country, or has he crossed the sea? "Oh," you say, "I do not know where he is. He went away in the sulks and did not say where he was going." You have about made up vour mind that you will never hear from him again. Pretty hard pay lie gives you for all your kindness and the nights von sat up with him when he was sick. Perhaps he struck you one day when you were trying to persuade him to do bet ter How different was the feeling of that hard list against your face from his little hand in infancy patting your cheeck! Father! Mother! That is an impossible that I would like to see God take hold of, the conversion of that boy, for he will never be anything but a boy to you, though you should live to see him fifty years of age. Did you say his heart is hard? How hard? Hard as stone? "Yes," you say. "harder than that. Hard as iron." But here is a God who can lift the soul that lias been deepest down. Here is a God who can raise a soul out of the blackest depths of sin and wretch edness. Here is a God who can make iron swim, the God of Elisha. the God of the voung student that stood in dismay on the banks of the Jordan at the time of the lost | axe head. Lay hold of the Lord in a pray er that will take no denial. Alas, there are impossibles before thou sands of people—called to do work that it is impossible for them to do, called to bear burdens that it is impossible for them to bear, called to endure suffering that it is impossible fo? them to endure. Read all the gospel promises, rally all your faith, and. whi'e you will always be called to worihip the God of hope, to-day, with all the concentered energies of my soul. I im plore you to bow down and worship the God who can turn the impossibles into the possibles. It was no trivial purpose, but for grand anil glorious uses I have spoken to you to-day of the borrowed, the lost and the restored axe head. fCovTTlcbt. IKS. L. Klopsch. 1
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers