FREEUIB TRIBUBE. F.STAULISIIUD PUBLISHED EVEIIY MONDAY, WEDNESDAY AND FRIDAY, !Y TIIE IRIEDSE PRINTiNS COMPANY. Limited OFFICE; MAIN STKKET A HOVE <*F.NTKE. LONG DISTANCE TELEPHONE. SritSC K! PTIOV HATES FREELAND.— fhoTItiHUXE Is delivered by cari lers to subscribers in Freeltitid at tho rate of l-Jifj cents per month, paynbl • every tw.i months, or $l "-"a year, payable in advance Tlie Till HUNK may be ordered direct form the carriers or from the office, t'omplaints of irregular or tarfi • delivery service will re ceive prompt attention. BY MAIL —The Trikunb is sent to out-of. town subscribers for $1.5.1 a year, puyable In advance; pro rata terms for shorter periods. The date when the subscription expires is on the address label of each paper. Prompt re newals must be made at ttie expiration, other wise tho subscription will bo discontinued. Entered nt the I'ostofflco at Freeland. I*a., as Second-Class Matter. Make aV money orders, checks, etc ,piy hie the Tribune l'r.nting Company, Limited. MINES AND MINERS. Salt Mining in British Columbia.—Avorago Cost ot Coal in the United Stater. The Coal Production. It is likely that salt mining may in the early future be added to the indus tries ot British Columbia. A Vancouv er syndicate has properties on Salt Spring island, in the Gulf of Georgia, which not only show good indications ; of coal, for which borings are being ! made, but also contain valuable salt springs. Ihe average cost of coal per ton at the pit head in the United States is giv- j en on a computation based on the re- i turns for 1890 as 45 per ton, a-i i compared with 5s iuj jd in the United Kingdom, Os nd in Germany, 7s yd in j Belgium, Ss 8d in France, 5s 91! in New South Wales, 10s in New Zeaiand and a j fraction over 5s in Japan. If, therefore, American coal owners can scarcely yet I hope to break, with any profit to them- : selves, the proverbial record of "sending coals to Newcastle" they have still oth er countries open to them. As competi- British coal sellers arc already be- ' ginning to feel more severely than may lie pleasant the presence of American 1 coal in markets in which English coai I lias hitherto been supreme. in spite of continued effort to in crease the efficiency of engines and boilers the progress of invention is such that coal is becoming each year a more and more important article of com merce, says the Chicago News. So short a time ago, viewing the history of the world, as 1831. the annual coal pro duction of Great Britain was 24,000.000 tons; for the year 1901 the coal produ.;- ■ tion will probably be 240.000.000 tons, an increase of 1,000 per cent. In 1831 the population of Great Brit ain was 24,000,0 >0 and the next census, 1901, will probably show about 40.000,- ono in that country, an increase of 66 2-3 :er cent, in 70 years. Therefore the 1 roduction of coal has increased from ' 'e ton per capita to six tons, and the rate of increase has been fifteen times as great as the rate of increase in popula te ■;!. In IS4O the pn duction of bitumin ■ us coal in the Ui it< d States was be uv en 1.000.000 and 2.000,000 tons, and the production of anthracite was 1,000,- coo tons—say a total of 2.500.000 tons, says the Engineering Magazine. At that time the population of the country was 17.000.000, so that there was prob ably less than one -ixlh of a ton used per capita. Compare that with the present ton nage of 220.000,000 and a population ap proximately 75.000,000, and it will he ! seen that America is now using per cap ita eighteen times as much coal as she did 60 years ago. In fact, since 1890 the per capita increase has been 50 per CYCLING NOTES. The bicycle tax in France last year was collected 011 838,856 wheels. One firm has turned out a convert 1- : ble bicycle which may be used with or ' without a motor. Forty miles in an hour on a bicycle is a record made at Brockton, Mass., by Will C. Stinson. Little lias been said so far by manu facturers of bicycles as to the* output, ■ price and models for next season. Some people arc of the opinion that the ideal bicycle has been made, ami that material improvements are out of; the question. The agents of the bicycle manufac- j turers returning from long trips over j the country report that trade is good , along the line. One manufacturer has already ar \ flounced his prices for next season, j His chainless wheel will retail at S6O, the racer at SSO, light roadster at .S4O, and ordinary roadster at $35. Jimmy Michael, the cycler, has de feated Eddie McDuffee at Chicago. Be sides riding all around his old enemy, Jimmy broke five records. The broken records were those made by Johnny >< -on for the second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth miles. Probably the majority of makers will strive to reduce the weight of the'r wheels for next year. Many of the makers, however, are giving more at tention at this time to the perfection of their motor tricycles than they are to the regulation bicycle. A rider who has experimented with different sizes of tires in relation to cyclometer accuracy has figured that with , tire one and three-eighth inches in limeter there is a shortage of a fifth 1 one mile in every ten, and with an h and a half tire there is two fifihs of a mile shortage in ten. while with a otic and a quarter tire the cy clometer measures accurately, provid ed the rims arc of the correct diameter, AS lu> were In China the silver tael is the mone tary unit, but its value varies in the different cities. For instance, at Che foo, on July 1. 1900, it was worth 67.8 cents, while at llnikwan it was worth 72.1. The Ilaikan tacl is that used in the official statistics. The Chinese boy's ambition is to be come a civil magistrate. Even servants save money to educate/ their sons with this aim. ANY TIME-BUT NOW: Twr.s his delight, Then time stole on By day and night, Till years were gone. On cent per cent, to dwell; And lie kept growing old. And then his dreams Jlis lack in life— Were filled with schemes, No love, no wife— To better buy and sell. At length made vain his gold. "There's time enough Though now he sighs, To think of love The fair one flies, W hen business will allow. Nor heeds his fervent VOT. I'll take a wife, "The time to mate." To bless my life. Says mocking Fate. Oh! any time—but now!" "Is any time -but now!" —Hunter McCidloch, in Puck. |1 The Courage of a Coward. 1 sjS-3 By Edwin J. Park. eroS "j- ERIIY ROBINSON, took on in I the navy iu 1898, partly be pl cause lie was and partly because he had got tired of packing up and down from Portland to Philadelphia in a coastwise schoon er which ear. 1 coal iu one direction and lime in the other. Jerry had been on the coastwise hookers three years, long enough for the habits of tho farm from which he came to bo superseded by those of the deep sea sailor man, and to get him shipped as an ordinary seaman when lie appeared before the recruit ing officer. We got Jerry at Newport, when he and a miscellaneous assortment of am ateur and professional tlatfeet came over the side of tho Columbia, which, with the Minneapolis, was cruising off the Massachusetts coast, looking for j an often reported but never seen Span ish squadron. | Some of the outfit we took aboard ! were ordinary landsmen, and didn't | j pretend to be any thing else; a few of j tlieni professed to have been sailors, ; 1 and then gave themselves away by | talking about going upstairs and down- | stairs, aild referring to tin "front" and I 1 "hind" ends of the boat instead of I ' saying "fore" and "aft," and it took j 110 time at all for the sh'p's company, ' ! especially that part of it composed of Mulligans, and most of the Columbia's crew was made up of Mulligans, to | rate the recruits for just what they ! were. Mostly they were of that de -1 gree of inexperience which classed them as "farmers," and a "farmer" aboard ship is tho "'rookie" of the i ranks of the army, a thing to despise and be picked on and generally liial- j treated by the rest of the outfit, and ■ especially the Mulligan part of it, un til after great humiliation of spirit and countless hard knocks they have been ' haltered into a semblance of real sail- J ors. Jerry Robinson, as I have said, had learned enough of the sea 011 the hook ers to distinguish port from starboard; he could coil down a rope as neatly and snugly as the chief bo'suu's mate himself, and he cou.d splice a hawser until it took an expert to tell when l the work had been done; and still he ( was woefully ignorant, of a whole lot j of things that bad to be done on a j warship and of the tenets of the eti- j quette which prevailed on the beixli deck. One of the unwritten rules forward is that a recruit aboard ship can never have a good standing with his ship mates until he has whipped the first one of them who tries to give him or ders, or, failing in that, has given him as desperate a light as his strength j and science will allow. It is equally its important that a new man shall refuse to obey orders given by any member of the crew who in not a warrant officer or who has not I a rating, because the old shellback | have from time immemorial, an.l j ; doubtless will always continue it, had j a habit of issuing orders to new men, ' : and making tlieni do the extra work 1 which falls to the part of the old i ! hands. It being a time of war, and every body being keyed up to the fighting l pitch when the draft came aboard tli • Columbia, made 110 perceptible dif ! ference in tho treatment of the new crowd received. j Some of tlieni, of course, refused to obey the orders of tlioir equals iu rank, and fought them down in coal bunk ers with so much willingness and eu • thusiasm that they speedily estab lished themselves in good and regular standing with their shipmates, al { though they did not know enough j about the ship to hurt them any. Prac | tically every one of the draft, except Jerry Robinson, had had his light or, maybe, several fights, before the end of a month, and had been assigned to his special class; but Robinson had not fought. He was a close mouthed, quiet fel low who had nothing to say out of the way to any one, and not much to say at nil, and Mike Brady, one of the most obstreperous of the A. TVs gave it out one night that he had made Robinson polish his share of the brass work that morning, and that there after he, Brady, was going to take life easy and let his hired man do his work. That was an invitation to go down in an empty coal bunker and light it out with fists, for Robinson heard it, and he knew what it meant; but he wouldn't fight. "I don't want any trouble with you," he said, as he looki d out to sea; and so Mike Brady told him that he was a coward, and the rest of tho mess set Robinson down as a quitter ,and avoid ed and looked down en him accord ingly. Thereafter he was rvoided, and 1 though be attended to bis duties faith fully, and improved i his usefulness so that he was rated an able seaman at the end of a year, he had no friends aboard. ; The Columbia saw no fighting during 1 the war, and when Dewey, ut Manila. .'iiid Sampson, at Santiago, liad sent the Spanish warships to join the sub i marine fleet of war vessels, and the crews of our own vessels began to get shore leave, there was no one in the l each parties to chum with Robin son, and he was left alone when he hit the beach to look out for himself. Long confinement aboard ship had made the crews feel like making pret-! ty free with themselves when they were on the beach, and most of the men were entered on the liberty boo* j as "D.and D.,"v hicli means drunk and dirty, when they tumbled over the rail, and also got them marked down for close quarter fo* six months. Robin son had a "clean and sober" after his name every time 011 the liberty book, and the men hated him for that, too. They liated him worse than ever when they found him in a draft for the Oregon, which was going out to 1 Manila, and the hatred was deepened ! when he got a rating as gunner's | mate. | Robinson showed no airs when he got his rating badge, but attended j strictly to business, as he always had j done, and still the other men would ! have nothing to do with him. He was j easy to get along with, too easy to I suit the rest of the crew, for he ' wouldn't fight, and they felt he was a coward, but in some way most of them had a certain feeling of respect for him which they couldn't define. Some of this feeling crystalized when rat Flaherty, a coal passer in the second watch, came 011 deck for a breath of air and fell overboard from th'. rail, 011 which he should have j known better than to have seated him j self, especially when there was a J swell 011 that had made it necessary : to lash down the guns in the turret, j Mike Brady saw Flaherty fail and 1 ho shouted "Man overboard!" so loml ! l.v that the captain heard him in tin 4 | chart room: but Mf.ke Brady did not j make any further si - ps to rescue Flah- j orty. who was his "buddy," except to i jump up and dowv and get excited. | Jerry Robinson, isolated from his i shipmates as over, was smoking his I pipe 011 the berth deck forward when ! he heard the cry. Before a bell could ! \ b rung, or anything else done 10 stop I j the hip he had seen Flaherty rise on i | the crest of a swell and going astern, and he rolled him elf overboard, pipe still in mouth, and struck out for the coal passer, Who was already in a bad | way, and steadily getting worse from j •i v cramps engendered by the cold v>a r 011 his superheated body. Robinson got hold of the coal passer, nunchod him in the jaw until he was j aeuseh-Fs, and therefore tractable j enough to be turned on his back and 1 don t ed, in which posit ion he kept him until a boat was lowered to bring them ' both back to the ship, j Flaherty was grateful, of course, and ; ! oven Mike Brady offered to shake i hands and call everything square, | i which was his way of apologizing to I | Jerry; but the latter said he hadn't : and without any protection from their s bullets.- He was well ahead of the machine 1 gnu, which was spitting a steady t stream of bullets for the benefit of the . enemy, when Jerry saw him. It ap peared to be certain death for any one to go out in the face of that fire and got liim, but Jerry passed up a new belt of ammunition to the gunner, 1 jumped over the hastily improvised 1 breastworks, and went out. He picked up the wounded man and had started hack with him. when he went down with a bullet in his leg. Then he shifted his burden to his back, and with one leg and his arms only s to crawl with, lie worked his way i back to the gun and comparative safe s ty. What a elieer there was then! It stopped the attack of the enemy for a 4' minute, and in that minute the ma i. j chine gun became jammed. The gun- ner tv .s trying to get it at work again, when he fell with a bullet through his head, and the insurgents started a rush for the diminished laud ing party, now practically helpless. Weak as he was from the loss of blood, Robinson realized he was the only man in the party who could re pair the gun if it could be done at all, and dragging himself to it, ho pulled himself up 011 the one leg which would bear his weight and went to work as • calmly as though at practice drill. Still the enemy came on. They were within one hundred feet of the gun and in the open when he got the plug : out and the gun ready to work. Then he turned it loose into the crowd of half-naked savages and mowed them 1 down in swaths. Demoralized by the fierce fire which 1 was decimating their ranks, the iusur- j gents broke in confusion. "Charge them!" yelled Jerry, and the ; little party did so, taking Mike Brady with them. Tliey emerged from the ravine in chase of the Filipinos just as a company of the Twenty-sixth Regi ment came up to complete the work of clearing out the enemy, who ran into i the tangled brush and defied pursuit, and then the rescued party thought of Jerry Robinson. They went hack and found him ly ing across the gun, dead, a stray bullet having struck him just over his right ear. They buried him where he fell, and one wrote on a piece of wood j which they put up to mark his grave, ! "He was a brave man." "You bet your life!" said Mike Brady, when they showed him the board, "and you can put 011 that there board that Mike Brady says so."—Waverley Mag aziue. An l nnji ration. "It's a go." announced the young man with beaming face, "and the hap- i py day has been set!" "So you got your courage up to the point at last?" said the friend who un derstood the situation. "Yes. Say! it isn't hard when you get started. But it Is a wonder I didn't get nervous prostration before I made the plunge! I was six months I trying to get, courage enough to ask ! the all-important question. But every i time that I opened my mouth to speak j I simply broke out into a cold sweat j and couldn't say a word for the life 1 of me. 1 would have retreated a dozen times, hag and baggage, if I could have done so gracefully. Not that I didn't want the girl, but simply for the reason that I despaired of ever being able to ask her to bo mine. The , girl acted, too, as if she had a right to hear something to the point. But 1 could only sit there like a chuckle headed idiot and abuse the weather. I would have been right there in the same horrible situation if something hadn't happened to break the ice. "One night last week we were sit ting side by side 011 a sofa, and dur ing one of those blissful moments, when nothing was being said, I chanced to notice the girl's eys intent ly fixed upon a motto that hung 011 the wall opposite, and which read: 'Low One Another.' I'll ho hanged if ( ever saw that motto before, but it gave me an inspiration, and I leaned ov >r and murmured: 'Shall we?' and she murmured: 'I don't mind,' and it was all ovi r but the shouting!"—De- j troit Free Press. Hardly tho llight Thing. "That was what 1 call an exhibition of blamed bad taste." "What was'.'" "Joe llarkins was married to Maud Vernon, last tyight, you know. I was ! one of the guests. Well, old man Ver non is always anxious to do such things up in good style, so he hired a male quartette to stand behind a lot of palms and other potted plants and sing songs while the guests were as sembling. Joe used to belong to the ! militia and has a fine soldierly bear ing. His falher-iu-law is very proud of him, too, and I suppose it was at his suggestion that military songs wore scattered pretty freely through the programme. 'The Star Spangled Banner' was rendered with telling ef fect, and 'The