Japanese capitalists have Wboaght
« 100,000 acres of land in southern
Mexico, upon which they will eptab-
lish an extensive colony. .
" According to the statistics of the
State Board of Charities more than
half of the people of New York city
receive free medical attention. In
other words, persons who are scrupu-
lous in the matter of paying their
own way have to help to pay for those
who are able to pay for themselves.
Speaking of Walt Whitman, the
London Critic describes him as ‘‘the
one great American poet.” There
can be no doubt about Whitman’s
greatness. But here it may be re-
marked that Tennyson,though a warm
admirer of the ‘‘good gray poet,”
gave Poe the foremost place among
our poets.
Dr. Johnson of Brunswick, Cal,
himself a colored physician, has col-
lected the figures of the vital statis-
tics of nearly 300 towns in the south-
ern states, which show that the
death-rate of colored people is double
that of whites in the same country;
and not only this, but that the birth-
rate is smaller among the colored than
“among the white population.
A theosophist of Washington avers
gravely that Joseph Leiter, the
Chicago wheat king, is a reincarna-
tion of Joseph, the son of Jacob, and
has the same bent of mind that made
the latter such a ZIavorite with
Pharaoh. He admits that the modern
“Joseph is not quite up to the level of
his previous incarnation, but says he
is young yet and should be given a
chance to grow. -
Word comes from Paris of a curious
and successful experiment that a flor-
ist there has made. He has managed
to give the chrysanthemum the scent
of the rose, the sunflower that of the
jessamine, the calla lily that of the
violet. A rose by any other name
fray smell as sweet through this ex-
periment, but it is to be hoped that
the French florist will not try to im-
prove on nature when it comes to the
perfume of the real rose.
‘Put it in any way you choose,”
#aid a recent speaker, herself a
woman, ‘‘to the vast majority of man-
kind home means cookery. A woman’s
domestic power and infinence are in
most instances in exact proportion to
her ability to cook or to command
good cooking. The old phrase ‘anota-
ble woman’ means, above and beyond
everything else, skill in housewifery,
and it means this just as much today
as it ever did. It is a very democratic
standard, for it applies no less to the
tenement-house woman than it does
to the mistress of a score servants,
but it is none the less forcible for
that. Like love, housewifery levels
all ranks. It is common ground
whereon all women, be they high or
low, rich or poor, must meet, the only
aristocracy that it admits being based
upon excellence.”
An English physician thinks that
the example of Sandow, the strong
man, is not altogether a desirable
one for boys. While he admits that
it is a worthy ambition for a boy to
become well developed and a strong
man, yet when physical culture is
carried to the extreme, as by Sandow,
it becomes pernicious. He says that
two dangers confront Sandow, and
they. are, first, death at early
period after complete suspension of
the athletic strain, and second, death
at middle age, or soon thereafter,
from a continuance of his work. When
Sandow, it is argued, rests from his
muscular exertions he will not be able
to bring about a corresponding in-
volution of his heart and lungs. San-
dow, while a wonderful athlete, has a
dangerous system of muscle-building,
and one that should not be imitated.
an
Says the Philadelphia Ledger: ‘“We
don’t want to fight,” but the figures
of Adjutant General’ Brocke’s report
show that we can #f we must. * In the
five states of New York, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, Maryland and Dele-
ware, forming a very small section of
the Union, he finds a total of 2,233, -
747 men available for military duty.
Compargtively few of these are trained
“in military tactics, but most of them
‘are familiar with .arms and intelligent
enough to use them properly without
much drilling. - In this connection it
. is well to remember that of the large
number of foreigners included in the
report by far the greater part re-
ceived a thorough military drill at
. home before coming to this country,
and are, in reality, trainel soldiers.
Bhould they take up arms in defense
of their adopted country they would |
selves be a formidable fight
$ ore: 3 . 0) ~ 5 &
ee eee:
90
Down on the meadows of the Passaic,
on the shore of Newark Bay, and
within the bounds of the city of
Newark itself, says the New York
Herald, men are working day and
night*on guns for the Government.
The complex and exquisitely adjusted
machines that turn and bore ‘‘jackets”
and ‘‘tubes” never stop, except for a
crest” of an hour or so or the replac-
ing of a cutter dulled by hours of slow,
steady ploughing through the hardest
and finest steel.
Steel is everywhere, in almost shape-
less, oblong ingots, fresh from the
casting room; in forged lengths, in
cylinders, now bearing some resem-
blance to a ‘rapid fire,” and in chips
and shavings. There are strange and
interesting scenes in these gun shops
and the pictures presented each hour
are dramatic in the extreme. Here in
these processes is to be seen the acme
of American manufacturing, the great
essential fact being the machinery,
that is almost automatic in its work,
and the few men needed to control and
guide it.
Except in the forging room scarcely
a blow of a hammer is heard. The
shops are almost as silent as the grave.
Wheels revolve, cutters turn, men
stand placidly by the side of machines,
moving softly here and there. All
this time, each second, the gun that
some day will belch forth fire and
steel of its own is coming nearer com-
pletion. Chips fall as the bars re-
volve, Jout the cutters are not heard.
The guns, it would appear to the
onlookers, are almost making them-
selves.
Ofithe sturdiest type of American
mechanics are the men employed.
They-are workmen who think and who
know, men who can judge when a cer-
tain instant has arrived, knowing its
MAKING BIG GUNE.
How the Governmerst Hurry-Orders For Great War 3
Weapons Are Being Executed.
approach by intuition, rather than
long since relegated to the scrap
yards. :
Here is the first stage of the modern
gun—ragged and rusty metal that is
carted in wheelbarrows up to the fur-
nace doors. The maws of blazing
heat, several thousands of degrees in
intensity, stand open toreceive it. So
overwhelming is this heat that even
the master melter has to put on blue
glasses to peer into the flames rising
ROUGH CASTS.
over the bubbling sea of metal when
the doors are open. When the doors
are dropped down—that is, shut—
there is only revealed a single spot of
brightness, an eye that looks into the
furnace’s flame, and even this cannot
be approached too closely with the
naked eye.
Beginning the Gun.
The gun is under way. Ten tons of
metal are "already in the furnace—a
lake of molten, seething metal held in
by banks of. sand. Other things of
steel are to be made of {this mass, the
gun works being only a portion of the
Atha & Illingworth plant. Whether
used for peace or war, steel is steel,
Sr
——
———
BORING MACHINE.
men of brawn and muscle. The latter
ualities are not so much needed in a
un shop of to-day. Should a partially
inished tube or jacket have to be
oved there is the electric traveling
rane overhead, that, at the jerk of
a cord, swings over its grappling irons,
and these need only to be attached.
The gun man of to-day needs only to
guide and to know.
These works are of the Benjamin
Atha & Illingworth -Company, one of
the three concerns in this country
that have the plant and the skill to
turn out guns of size. Their main
shops are at Harrison, the next station
to Newark, and their casting shops
across the Passaic, on the ‘Island.”
Dozens of pieces for the navy and for
coast defence are being made here,
Work of Great Care.
Six weeks 1s practically the minimum
of time for the making of a modern
gun, and to finish one within that
space everything would have to go
marvellously well. The ‘‘treatment”
of the steel would have to be a success
at the very first attempt—something
that does not often happen—and the
first tests would have to show that the
Government standard had been
reached. Oftener than otherwise these
results can only be obtained through
much trying and the expenditure of
time. ' A batch of guns may thus take
months in the making, while good luck
may bring it dowz to weeks. ;
Itis in the casting shop, of course,
that the process. of gin making has its
very beginning, in the furnace wh
ss
get into its moulds, and ‘that in short]
Sore
of old iron, pig iron lengths, broken |
| bitwand olds and suds of castings, | @
ds
differing "only in quality: - It is all
“boiled down” in the same way.
In shadow is the casting shop, ex-
cept when the doors are raised, when
a flood of light, a wave of extreme
heat, is thrown out. In the dusk of
the shadows grimy men raise the sea
of metal with long bars. The master
melter, never still, steps now and then
to his wheels, set at one side of the
furnace and looking like the brake
wheels on a freight car, and gives one
or the other 3 sharp twist. By this
he regulates his fire—flvehundred de-
grees at a twist. The silica Lbricks
with which the furnace fis lined can
stand four thousand degrees of heat
and more before they commence to
melt. The master melter runs ap the
heat to the extreme point and then
lets it down.
There are three ‘heats’ a day in the
casting shop. Three times metal is
heated, three times it is let go with a
mighty rush into the casting pot. The
last few moments of each heat are the
dramatic instants. It is then, at the
judgment of the master melter, that
the furnace is fed with ‘“medicine,”’
shovelfuls and blocks of metal being
tossed in. On this depends the qual-
ity, the strength, the elasticity of the
steel, essentials of the most vaet im-
portance of the gan of to-day.
Into the Casting Pot.
Two hours is ususlly safficient for
the boiling of this steel in its cradle
of sand. At last the one moment ar-
rives. The bar at the furnace’s back
is worked through the sand to make
an opening. An instant, and into the
casting pot below the mass runs, scat-
tering millions eof sparks, a glowing,
golden torrent that foams-and%hisses
a8 it plunges down.
The 'picture of the gun's second
stage is superb. On every hand fly
hese spatks, and the maees bubbles
and seethes in the casting pot. Oa
its top, through the glow, éan be seen |
a dirty mass—the slag or the scum
that is of no use or valwe. But the
picturesqueness of the scene has nob
ended. The casting process is only
half through. The liquid metal must
order. : f
On a track the casting pot rests. It
is pushed along this track until a gi-
gantic crane overhead seizes it, swing-
ing it aloft. Over mounds of sands it
is swung, and the metal, by the move-
ment of a Mar,is allowed to drop down
in a thin stream. JAgaia shirwer | upon
floor of sand, its unrelenting dust and
and its dreariness, is made into a
brilliant cavern for the moment, and
the toiling men are supernatural in the
light. ; :
: In the Rough.
A prosaic time follows, when the
metal in the moulds must cool.
the sand is finally knocked away the
gun that is to be is only a rough mass
of cast steel, indicating only to the ex-
pert its fine quality, and not even to
him in any degree, for the tests muss
come to prove that. In the forging
shop this massis hammered and worked
until it becomes an octagonal ingot of
just twice the weight it will possess
when it is finally turned and bored in-
to a ‘‘jacket” or a ‘‘tube.” The hoops,
the third part of a gun, are cast and
forged hollow, not in solid cylinders,
as the jacket and tube are.
With the carrying away of the rough
ingot of steel from the forging shop
the special work of gun-making com-
mences. The boring and turning
factory is the scene of the first step in
this process.
Completed guns, ready for mount-
ing and for fire, are not turned out in
these gun shops. The finishing
touches, the actual putting together
of the parts of the gun, the rifling it-
self, are done at the ordnance works
in Washington. It is the business
alone of a gun shop to make the steel
and to hand over to the army and the
navy the three parts of a great gun—
the ‘‘tube,” the ‘‘jacket”’ (which is
slipped on over the tube and then
“shrunk on” by contraction) and the
“hoops,” two in number, which, for
the purpose of strengthening, are fit-
ted on tightly over the muzzle end of
the tubes. Once these three parts are
together the metal becomes, practical-
ly, one piece and it would be very
nearly impossible, by any art or sci-
ence known to experts, to get the
jacket off.
Finished by the Government. '
Only the “rough machiging,” in tech-
nical phrase, is done on these guns,
this meaning that the final finish and
the rifling is put on by the Govern-
ment itself. ‘“Rough machining”
seems, however, a strange term, for if
delicate work requiring the utmost ac-
curacy and preciseness is not done
here it never was anywhere.
A Checkerboard Fish.
Joseph Evans, of Thirteenth street
and Snyder avenue, is the owner of a
very queer looking fish. It is four
feet long and has a tail tyo feet in
length, which is spotted and striped,
like a snake. Evans caught the fish
in an oyster dredger while at work on
the oyster boat Mary Colman.
ally collapsed. The skin of the strange
inhabitant of the deep resembles a
checkerboard, being uniformly colored
with black and blue squares. Mr.
Evans intends having a glass case
made for the pretty creature and will
exhibit it in his parlor. Several scien-
tific men, who have seen the fish, are
at loss as to how to classify it, and all
of them agree that a ‘‘what-is-it” fish
would be the proper name for it.—
Philadelphia Record.
Water a Cure For Indigestion.
© “We must give special attention to
the outside of the body as well as the
inside,” writes Mrs. S. T. Rorer, on
“What to Fat When You Have Indi-
gestion,” in the Ladies’ Home Jour-
nal. ‘“The skin must be bathed every
morning with tepid water, followed by
a brisk rub. This is equally as im-
portant as correct diet. A good rule
is to use water freely inside and out.
At least two quarts of water daily
should be taken; half a pint the first
thing in the morning and. the last at
night, a cupful of warm water before
each meal, and the remaining quan-
tity divided and taken before meals.”
Centennial Celebrations.
This year’s crop of centennial cele-
brations includes observations of the
four hundredth anniversaries of Vasco
de Gama’s discovery of the way to
India by way of the Cape ‘of Good
Hope, at Lisbon, -in May; of the burn-
ing of Savonarola at Florence, also in
May, and of the birth of Holbein at
Basil, in Switzerland. Montpellier
will celebrate the hundredth anniver-
sary of the philosopher, Auguste
Comte; Ancona that of the poet Leo-
pardi, who was born at Recanati, close
by, and Paris that of Michelet, the
historian. ¢
Old Bank in] Nebraska.
The building in which the oldest
bank in Omaha is located is in a very
dilapidated condition. The porches
N
NEBRASEA’S OLDEST BAXK.
are tumbling and its windows and
tops of the doorways have been taken
posession of by the sparrows.
. Not only or this the first bank of
the town, bat the first financial
institution under the charter of the
Territory of Nebraska. Its president
was Thomas H. Benton, son of the
Senator. Eeroy Tattle was cashier,
and A. N. Wyman teller. In the
panig of "57 the doors were clased.
. The ancient structure is decidedly
x $1; de in its pidation and Has
i ty been put info pictures by
When | og
It |
lived nearly a day out of water and |
caused no end of trouble before it fin- |
©
Hints About Halrdressing.
Modern coiffures are truly ‘‘féar-
fully and wonderfully made.”” The
bair is either crimped to excess or
worn so smooth that it causes dis-
comfort even to look at it, A certain
VS ts
A FRENCH COIFFURE.
set of young girls has adopted the
most impossible arrangement of the
hair, which is made only more gro-
tesque by the fact that the most cas-
ual observer can discover that it has
been curled on a hot iron. What the
foundation of this particular coiffure
is, itis not feasible to state, as it looks
like a bird’s nest and seems to be a
succession of waves and curls that
stand out about the face, forming any-
thing but a becoming frame. The
o o'
in a cluster. Doubtless by next sea-
son the hair will be powdered, and
even diamond dnst.may sparkle in the .
locks of our fashionables. :
Latest Styles in Ribbons.
Among the latest styles in ribbons
are the colored failles and grosgrains,
satinback velvet, with either violet
or mode backs, and black double faced
satins, with rs¥sed . lowers on one
side. Otter, emerald, ruby and tawny
brown lead in colors, and are much used
for dress and blouse trimmings. Har-
lequin blacks and printed fallies are
also much in favor. The demand for
taffeta is unabated. The favorite
shades are cardinal, ox-blood and
cherry, and they are a trifle more ex-
pensive than other colors. The na-
tional blues, violets and greens are
also popular tints, and plaid taffeta is
appearing.
Novelties in Dress Fabrics.
Among the novelties in dress fab-
rics are the new cashmeres wove in
two colors. They are beautiful and
will make lovely gowns. Silk faced
serge is a handsome material for tailore
made seaside and country gowns.
Attractive Suit For a Little Boy.
Navy blue cloth, says May Manton,
aade this attractive, suit, the broad
sailor collar, cuffs and shield being of
white serge, decorated with rows of
narrow blue braid. The blouse is
fitted with shoulder and under-arm
seams, an elastic being inserted in the
hem that finishes the lower edge to
adjust it in true sailor style. The
fronts are closed .invisibly, but bute
tons and buttonholes can be used if so
perferred. The broad sailor collar
ends in pointed lapels that are joined
to the cut-away neck in front, the
LADIES’ WAIST.
measurement from the tip of the chin
to the top of the pompadour is literally
a foot. Consequently the lines of the
head and face are lost and the fea-
tures dwarfed. Crimping irons are
not to be scorned. In fact, they are
a most useful accessory of the toilet.
But they should be used with judg-
ment. Individual styles should be
studied. © ‘Women with broad faces
hould avoid both 400 narrow and too
road effects. Both are fatal to a
round face. Ifthe woman with a nar-
row, foval face, with a head well
poised on a slender throat looks rav-
ishing in a broad, loosely arranged
coiffure, with high puffs on the crown
of her head, it does not follow that her
sister, with the short neck, wide
face and high brow will find the same
mode becoming. Individuality is the
keynote of a graceful coiffure, as it
is of all other fashions.
* Lovelocks, or “‘beau-catchers,” have
reappeared, and the smartest women
in the East do not consider that the
hair is properly coiffed without them. {
The genuine lovelock is worn just by
the ‘ear, where it was placed by the
beauties of past centuries. Few wo-
men can stand extra breadth at that
point, however, and unless they wish
to be extreme, they permit a lock or
two to turn on the forehead or temple.
The lovelocks predict a revolution in
the® styles for coiffures. They even
suggest that women of fashion mayal-
low their hair to be white. Every-
thing points to modes. that were fol-
lowed in the luxurious days of the
French court in Marie Antoinette’s
reign. : The pompadénr remains the
favorite style for arramging the hair,
but great effort is being made to re-es-
tablish long and short curis. For
evening the hair is worn quite high,
and when the aigrettes, feathers or
ribboiis are added, the arrangement is
quite eight inches tall. The wearing
of flowers in the hair is one of the
newest fads, and exceedingly dainty
are some of the confections the mil-
liners are making up. ~ Roses are the
favorite flowers. The prettiest ar-
rangement eonsists of one rose and a
.} few leaves, which are put close against
the knot of hair at the left side, and
from this stands up a straight spray of
one rose, some fn buds and the
pa
is of red roses
shield portion being simulated by a
facing on the underwaist, which is
disclosed between the lapels. A
pocket is inserted on the left front.
The sleeves are gathered top and pot-
tom and finished with round cuffs at
the wrists, neatly trimmed with rows
of braid. The knee trousers are
shaped by inside and outside leg
seams, small hip darts fitting them
closely at the top. The closing is at
the sides, where pockets are made,
and a hip pocket: can be inserted on
the right hip if wanted. Buttonholes
are made in under waistbands, and
placed on the top to attach the trousers
to the under waist, or buttons for
suspenders can be put on if so pre-
ferred. Pretty suits are thus made" i
up in various combinations of materials
and colors, black and red, brown and
fawn, or tan with cream being very
stylish. The mode ia suitable for
wash suits’ 6f pique, Galatea, duck,
grass linen, or flannel; braid, em.
BOER’ SAILOR BLOUSE SUIT.
broidery. or insertion all being used
trim suite in this style. or
The quantity of material 27 in
wide reguired to make this ‘suit
boy eight years of age is 3} yards,