HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1915-9-30, Page 6r'''u_rSirl�,lTiTAr11TT�nT'I'T'
1 The Terror by Sea
John Renfrew, sauntering up Fifth
Avenue, New York, in the hot glare of
St June afternoon, suddenly made up
his mind to go home,
He had been out of England just
three years, and had never felt home-
sickness so acute, so overwhelming,
so unbearable, as now, ;
He was one of those persons whom
the novelists leve to describe as a
strong man, and his looks did not be-
lie the part. He was not very young,
though he had taken same pains to
preserve the youth which accom-
plishes so much in the world with so
little apparent effort.
His actual age was thirty-nine, and
he had looks of a kind, a well -knit,
alert figure, of which, catching a sight
in the long mirror of his hotel that
morning, he had suddenly pictured in
uniform 'with an odd thrill at his heart.
He was not a soldier, nor had any of
his family ever done anything in the
soldiering line. But now they were
all at it. Even his old father, who
had been retired for six odd years in
a Sussex manor -house, had got into,
some clothes approved of for the Vol-'
unteers, and was doing Sunday route
marches of fifteen miles a day.
His brothers? Already one had
helped to dye red the Dardanelles sand
with his blood, and it was because of
that the call had come to John Ren-
frew—a call so loud and insistent as
to be almost startling.
Hitherto he had heard it only dimly
and in secret places, chiefly because
he believed that he was doing his
duty where he was, and indirectly
helping the cause of the Allies by
means of the great commercial ma-
chine to which he was attached, of
which, indeed, he was already one of
the honored heads.
The deciding factor, though perhaps
he would not have admitted it, was
a few lines in a woman's letter he had
received from England that very clay.
He took it out presently when he step-
ped into Sherry's for the cup of tea
which his English habit made his in-
ner man call for at a given hour each
afternoon.
"You ask what I am doing? I won-
der whether you will laugh when I
tell you. I have no gift for nursing,
besides I could not be equipped in
time to be of any use, and you know
that whatever I try to do must be
'top -hole,' as Billy says. By the by,
the latest about Billy is that he went
to a recruiting office miles from Cray-
ford Heath and lied about his age.
They suspected him, however, and he
has been rejected again. Mother lives
in daily terror lest he repeats the ex-
periment and comes back a soldier. I
am writing this from Erith, so per-
haps you can guess I'm making shells.
Yes, honestly, and very good shells,
too. I know that I am of use. If I
did not believe it was any good noth-
ing would keep me here. There are
some to whom it is merely a new sen-
sation, and who won't keep on, but
to me it is work—God-given work—
which is going to help the great sum
we are going to reckon up soon.
"Soon! Oh, John, if it could only be
soon. We are so tired of waiting, and
so many are going every day, going
for good, I mean, `west' as they say in
the fighting line. When they told us
it was going to be a three years' war
none of us realized just what that
would mean. I don't believe that we
shall be able to stand it for more than
half that time..
"Yes, I'm making shells, and the
work is interesting, and my hands are
ruined. But all the time I keep think-
ing what an occupation for a woman,
whose first business should be to pre-
serve the life men don't prize half
enough. Oh, if only I were a man!"
Here she left off abruptly, and be-
gan to write on another and quite
irrelevant theme.
There were others to step into that
breach, He had a lighting arm,
which he had been taught to use, and
his place was in the trenches. To the
trenches then he would go,
Tho rest of the clay was spent in
calls a steamship and other offices
connected with his journey. There
was a boat going out next day, but
he could not be ready, and trust wait
till the following Wednesday. Late
that night, in his luxurious bedroom
on the fourth floor of the Astoria, he
wrote a letter to Grace Babbacombe,
"Sixty hours after you get this,
my doer, you may look to see me face
to face. I will come straight to Erith,
because nobody except you will know
I am in ;England, Doyou understand
what that means, Grace? It means
that I want you. Heavens, how de-
sperately I want you! I can't set it
doWn in words, But before I dare ask
you for the word which will make
heaven for me out of a very troubled
and, up to now, unsatisfactory earth,
I shall have to be at your feet. I' have
been wrong, my dear, wrong all
through, What I ought to have clone
was to beg you to come here with me
to help build up the new life which is
as dust and ashes in my mouth at the
moment when I write.
"I know now that it has been dust
and ashes all through. I've missed i
the best. God send it may not be too
late to come up with it yet. Couldn't
you have done something to show me
the appalling magnitude of my folly
and selfishness? It is greater be-
cause I have loved you all along, and
only waited the convenient season.
' What happened to the man in the
Bible who kept on waiting the con-
venient season? I seem to remember
something about him, but you who
read it so constantly will be able to
put me right. Side by side with this
overwhelming desire to see you, to
hear your voice, to beg a crumb from
your rich store, there is the other call.
'I've been among the slackers, dear
woman, though I have called myself
by a higher -sounding name. And I
know that you have thought so, too,
and itt
gives me courage to face you,
A strange look came on John Ren
frew's face, for Grace Babbacombe
was the only woman who had ever in-
terested himself, the one thought he
might one day marry when every-
thing had straightened out and the
way was perfectly clear.
If there is .one thing in the world
which proves that a man's first youth
is past it is when he begins to reckon
andcalculate to determine to clear the
path before he does this thing or that.
Youth, thank God, has nought to
do with such reckoning or calcula-
tion in the office and affairs of love,
therefore is there still some remnant
of the happiness of Heaven left upon
a dreary earth.
He had left England without saying
the decisive word to Grace Babba-
combe, and had kept on writing dila-
tory letters to her right through, pay-
ing just sufficient attention to her
to keep her heart stirred and her
mind diverted from others—in a word,
he had stolen and kept her youth with-
out giving her anything in exchange.
Some poignant note other than that
struck by the poignancy of the fate-
ful hour which had struck in Brit-
ain's destiny went to the man's heart
at the moment, and he saw himself,
but only dimly, as he was—selfish to
the core.
It was not a pleasant revelation;
the truth has no time for embroidery
when it really comes out to slay the
unworthy and the•+false.
His clean-cut,, brown, resolute face
paled a little, and his eyes became
troubled. The call had comet He
knew that he ought to be at home, that
there was work for him to do there,
grimmer war than manipulating
great army contracts which were put-
ting money in his purse,
that before I come I'll have fallen into
line.
"I won't write more, because if I
once let myself go there will be no
damming of the flood. Love you—
how I love you! If only I could see
you at this moment! I should make
you know and believe it.
"I am sailing on the Minotaur next
Wednesday. They are warning us,
of course, on this side, but there is
no terror of the sea big , or cruel
enough to keep me from you. Good-
bye, my love, my dear! If it is any
satisfaction to you to hear it on pa-
per there never has been any other.
It is my wife I'm writing to, the wife
God gave me, though I have been so
slow at awakening to the pricelessness
of the gift.
"Good-bye, no, not good-bye, it is
a loathly word which ought to be
wiped out of the book of remem-
brance.—Your faithful and repentant
lover, John Renfrew."
The boat sailed duly at the schedul-
ed hour after the company had shorn
themselves of all responsibility by is-
suing explicit warning.
She had an uneventful voyage
across the Atlantic, which for once
was kind and sunny to the verge of
extravagance.
It was when the low green shores
of Ireland hove in sight that the ter-
ror came. It was in the full light of
a glorious afternoon, when suddenly a
few hundred yards away, up popped
the wicked little periscope of the sub-
marine, and the deadly torpedo was
launched.
It was all over in ten minutes, and
as John Renfrew struggled in the wa-
ter a shot from the submarine de-
stroyed his last chance of life.
It was all over, then, he thought
confusedly as he sank into the great
nothingness, but, thank God, Grace
knew!
He had partly redeemed himself,
given his life, such poor stuff as it
was. Perhaps somewhere God, who
knows all of human weakness, would
be pitying and kind. Her face, like
an aureole, shone upon him as he went
down.
4, d * * 4 ,5 *
Grace Babbacombe is still making
shells, and if those who work by her
side have noticed any change it is
only such a change as makes her more
and more a miracle of sweetness and
indomitable industry and high re-
solve.
They do not know that inside the
bodice of her gown there is a talis-
man, the letter John Renfrew wrote
in the silent night watches in the
Hotel Astoria at New York. Her
lover's letter, the lover who is nearer
to her now than in all the years she
had known him, the lover she will
meet again where all the terrors and
alarms will be forgotten—on the other
side.
'1
Not Likely.
"Was it your craving for drink
that brought you here?" asked the
sympathetic visitor at the jail.
"Great Scott, ma'am.! Do I look
so stupid as to mistake this place for
a saloon?"
In Shakespeare's time the parts of
heroines were taken by boys, there be-
ing no female actors. That is why the
poet makes so many of his heroines
disguise themselves in male attire,
Canaries came originally from the
Canary Isles, where, in their wild
state, the birds were not yellow, as we
generally know them, but a dark
olive green.
•
Rumania's Queen is CARTERS BROKEN BY THE WAR,
,dolled by Subjects Most Young Ms3n have Abandoned.
Their Civil Pursuits.
How much of a man's soeeeso is
due to himself, and how much ought
to be credited to good fortune is al-
ways a difficult problem, says !British
Engineering. Doubtless there are
some men who are entirely self-made,
but they are not numerous, That most
aro the creatures Of circumstances is
shown by the way that families re-
main in the same social plane goner -1.
ation after generation, Occasionally;
r ..,k... a member goes under and disappears,1
and sometimes ane rises to become a
source of pride and envy to his rola
tives; but generally speaking they;
all maintain about the same position,
allowing for the variations in the
standard of living, which affect the
whole country. Every parent shows
his belief in the immense influence
which circumstances have upon a 1
career by the sacrifices he makes to
give his children a good education.'
The man who has been to a public!
school will pinch himself to send his
son to the same school or better, while '•
an acquaintance with undergraduates
at the older universities shows that.
many of them come from rectories
and vicarages of which the stipends
seem quite inadequate to support the
necessary expense. Evidently the fa-
ther had saved for years that his son
may have a fair chance of taking his
place among people of education and
culture. All experience shows that.
the "start in life" largely determines
what the career shall be to a very
great proportion of humanity, and that
a bad start may easily be disastrous.,
These considerations are of special
interest just now, when most young,
men have joined the Army. If con-
scription had previously obtained in
this country, such a course would have
been provided for, and the customs of
trade e
• e and the curricula of colleges
es
would have developed in such a way
as to allow of the military course be -1
ing interpolated between two series of
civil experiences with the minimum of
disturbance. But it is entirely new to
us for middle-class youths to join the
Army for the course of a war. In
the past those who entered it did so
with the idea of making it a profes-
sion for life, the only exception be-
ing during the South African War,
when the Yeomanry attracted a num-
ber of adventurous spirits for a time.
The numbers, However, were compara-
tively small, and when they returned
they made their way back into civil
life without much difficulty. The con-
ditions are very different naw. There
are very few young men of education,
between the ages of 19 and 26, that
are not with the colors, and every day
the pressure grows stronger on those
who have hitherto resisted the coun-
try's call. Now it is just the period
between the ages of 19 and 26 which
gives direction and stamp to a man's
career. The school age is past, and
has been replaced by university, col-
legiate, or practical training.
The above picture of Queen Maria
of Rumania was taken when she
was riding her favorite horse at a
recent military review In Bucharest. ,
Queen Marie, accredited' one of the
most .beautiful women in all Euro-
pean royalty, is one of the grand- !
daughters of the late Queen Victoria'
of England. She is idolized by all
Rumanians. Her mother was a
daughter of the late Czar Alexander;
II., of Russia and she 1s a first j
cousin of King George of England•
while her husband, Bing Ferdinand,
,is a HIohenzollern prince.
SOME MILITARY TERMS.
How the Many Distinguishing Names
Originated.
Has it ever occurred to you to ask
why a soldier is called a "private"?
It is not difficult to see the reason.
The name owes its origin to the fuller
term "a private soldier," as opposed
to a more public soldier who holds
other military terms is, however, not
so easy to discover. The name cor-
poral is connected with corps, literal-
ly a body, and then, of course, a body
of men. The corporal is the man in
charge of a small body or squad of
men. The lance in lance -corporal and
lance -sergeant refers, as one would
expect, to the weapon of that name.
"Sergeant" is really the same word as
"servant"; its origin dates back to the
time when noblemen kept their own
retainers to fight their battles. A
color -sergeant is one who has charge
of the colors; a staff -sergeant is one
that is on the staff of the regiment.
The names of commissioned officers
are rather more interesting. Few
people will have reflected that the
word lieutenant is practically identical
with the expression "locum tenens."
The French language is developed
from Latin, and the Latin "locum ten -
ens" (holding the place) has become
lieutenant in French. A "locum" is
one who acts as a substitute for some-
one else, and a lieutenant was origin-
ally one who also acted as representa-
tive or deputy. The original use of
the word is still preserved in the com-
pound lieutenant -colonel, which means
an officer next in rank below a colonel
who is acting as a colonel.
Just as corporal is connected with
French corps, "a body," so captain is
derived from Latin "caput" (a head),
which is related to capital and other
words. A captain thus means one
who is at the head of a number of
men.
The origin and history of the word
colonel is rather complicated. It is
connected with the word column. In
Italian, which is very closely related
both to Spanish and French, the word
for colonel is colonnello, and the word
for column is colonna, so that the con-
nection between the two is easily seen.
A colonel is thus originally one who is
at the head of a column.
The word major is short for ser-
geant -major, which means the major
or chief sergeant, A sergeant -major
was formerly a much higher rank than
it now. A general is one who has a
general command over a whole regi-
ment.
Scouts for Seal Hunters.
A novel use of the aeroplane is un-
der consideration by owners of New-
foundland sealing vessels as a result
of the failure of the seal hunts this
year, It is proposed that two experi-
enced aviators be engaged to visit the
East Coast and the Gulf of St. Law-
rence, just before the opening of next
season to discover the herds.
Wise Hobo.
"How
"How is it you always pick out a
bachelor to listen to your hard !bete
story?"
"A married man has troubles of
his own, usually."
Bread made from pine -bark and
moss is sometimes eaten in Finland,
TWO AVERAGE CITIZENS,
One Livee on Easy Street and Other
is Still Working Bard.
Sid Thatcher wanted to !now how
I made my money, IIe says:
"Wo wore boys together and have
lived all our lives in this old burg.
You're on Easy street, and I'm still
working at my job, and it's about all
I can do to hold it down. I'ni a de
cent enough citizen, judging by the
general run of folks, and I don't know
that I've done anything wrong; But
you caught on and .I didn't, Just.
whemiss?"
"Dondid't forgeIt," I sa
a manre something. Is
thinkys;money my'moneycosts
is wc' ih all it has cost me, but when
the bat gain was offered to you, you
passed it up. I'm not saying you
weren't right, but I've never been
sorry that I took the bargain."
" How do you mean," he says.
"Well," I says to him, "when we
were young fellows, you, were a bet-
ter sport than I was. The other chaps
looked to you, when it came to having
fun, more than they looked to me. I
was left out of many a good time
that you made the most of. But it
all cost you money. I lost the good
times, but I kept the money.
"But a man has a right toa good
time," Sid says, a little roily li , "and
he's only young once." j
'That's right," I says. "" didn't
grudge you your good time in the
old days." g
"And so I shoudn't grud e you
your money now," says Sid, etting
a little madder.
"Well, what do you think? and I)
looks him square in the eye.
• "Things ain't right in this orld f'
w •
he says, " or a man wouldn't ave to
ke
I
g
]t
pinch and save at the very time when
he most wants to spend his money,
and then have to go without because,
he finds it hard to earn."
"See here, Sir," I says, "I'm not
running affairs in this world any
more than you are. The rules of the
game may be wrong, but neither you
nor I can change them, and if a man's
going to play at all he's got to play
the rules."
"You didn't save all your money;
you made a lot of it out of the rise
in real estate," says Sid.
"Of course, I did. And I've made a
lot out of other things, too,"
""I could have done lust as well as
you did only I didn't have the money
for a start."
"That's just it," says I, "the money
for a start is what comes hard. You
have to pass up a lot of good times
to stack up a hundred dollars, and
every dollar is so fresh and frisky
it's all you can do to hold it, But
they seem to like one another's com-
pany, and by the time you have a
couple of hundred herded together in
the bank they stay quieter. And they
seem to draw others you enjoy going
to the bank with a dollar when your
bunch is beginning to grow. And a
very few hundred dollars will give a
man a start."
Sid thinks for a minute, and then
he puts his hand on my shoulder,
friendly like,—Sid always was a good
fellow—and says:
"You know my boy Gordon, don't
you? He's a bright lad and has a
good job and fine prospects. But he's
a free spender. I wish you'd have a
talk with him some day. Do that for
me, just for old time's sake, will
you?"
"Not to give him good advice," I
says. "I'm not stuck on myself that
I feel able to give good advice to any-
body.
"No," says Sid, "but you and I have
got pretty far along the road, and I'd
like him to know how things look to
you now. Perhaps what you have to
tell him. and what I have to tell him
may help him a bit."
KITES AID GERMANS.
A Certain Number of Soldiers Have
Been Trained to Fly Them.
Most people are under the impres-
sion that the only aerial machines be-
ing used to -day by the armies that
are at war are aeroplanes and air-
ships. As a matter of fact, ordin-
ary balloons and kites are much to
the fore, and it is recognized by all
the great powers that their uses are
invaluable.
During the last few years the Ger-
mans have recognized the advantages
gained by the use of man -lifting kites
and a certain number of their sol-
diers have been trained to fly them
both by day and by night. It is said
that the passenger of a German war
kite is supplied with a camera cap-
able of taking photographs under al-
most any conditions.
It is declared that the Germans are
photographing some of the positions
of the allies with the assistance of
pigeons. Herr Neubronner, a Ger-
man chemist, some time back invented
a mechanical camera capable of tak-
ing instantaneous photographs which
san be fitted to the breast of a pigeon
by means of an elastic strap, leaving
the wings entirely free. The camera
weighs less than three ounces and is
capable of reproducing objects when
the bird is travelling at a velocity of
twenty yards a second. At regular
intervals a clockwork arrangement
opens the shutter of the camera.
H
A WOMAN HEARSE DRIVER.
A Very Unusual Sight In An English
Town.
Almost every day• our attention ie
caught in tate public street by the
spectacle of women doing work which
has hitherto been done by men, and
the more we see of this emergency
female labor the greater admiration
we must feel for the capable and confi-
dent way that women have tackled
what to them are new oecupat(ons.
They can turn their hand, as the say
ing goes, to almost anything. On the
Ird. inst. I saw, says a correspondent
in the Newcastle, (England) Chron
isle, a very niniart al sight in our town,
It was that of a woman driving a
hearse, then an the way to a funeral.
She handled her pair of handsome
blacks with the sumo ease and eont-
posure as we have sen a circus hand
manipulate the "ribbons" of a team
in the mid-day procession, She was a
woman of mature years, and dressed
in a bleak bowies :hat, which site salt-
ed admirably, and a black costume,
elle adorned tate "box" in quite a
graceful way,
GARLIC FOR LUNG TROUBLE.
Said to .be Greatest Foe of the Tubers
culosis Germ, •
Dr, William C. Minchin, a British
practitioner, announces that he has
achieved •excellent results by the use
of garlic as a remedy for lung com-
plaints,
Dr. Minchin relates that his atten-
tion was first drawn to garlic by pile
case • of a young man who came to
him with a very severe case of tubers
mitosis of the, bones of the leg and
foot. He advised amputation. This
the sufferer refused. Six months
later he met the young man, walking
about, with his 'leg almost: well. The
youth told him he had been treated
by a man whose name he gave, with
a poultice which had been known for
generations as n scrofula euro. The
man in question told Dr. Minchin
that the poultice was composed of
soot, salt and pounded garlie•in almost
equal proportions. Dr. Minchin read-
ily isolated the garlic as the aotivein-
gredient and .began, experimenting
with it. He was astonishing success-
ful.
It seems that the treatment, has
long been a favorite one in Italy.
Tuberculosis is uncommon in. Italy,
where garlic is used universally; the
leading Italian physicians in New
York say it is alarmingly prevalent,
among the children of Italians in
America,: children who do not eat gar •
lie, largely because their school fel-
lows and other associates ridicule
them for smelling of it.
Garlic is allied to the onion family.
Its pungent flavor and acrid smell are
due to a chemical substances called
allyl sulphide. Onions, shallots and
phives also owe their flayor to the
same substance, but garlic has. far
more of it than they have. In a tea-
spoonful of garlic juice there are
about two drops of allyl sulphide.
The bacilli of this disease seem to be
poisoned by allyl sulphide.
No substance is known that pene-
trates the human body 'as allyl sul-
phide penetrates it. You can prove
this for yourself in a very simple way.,
Crush a few cloves of garlic and tie
them like a poultice on the sole of
your foot; after about twenty minutes
ask someone to smell your breath.
The odor of garlic will be pronounced.
This means that the allyl sulphide has
soaked through the skin of your feet,
been taken up by the blood and lym-
phatics and carried by them through-
out the body until the lungs are giv-
ing it off into the air.
It is known that the allyl sulphide
is absorbed principally by the lym-
phatics, that system of tubes and
glands which runs like the blood ves-
sels throughout our systems, carry-
ing the serum that supplies the blood
with its fluid and bathing every tissue
of the body. This lymph carries the
allyl sulphide to the lungs, skin,
muscles, liver, kidneys, bones—in fact,
it impregnates every organ with it.
So, no matter where the tubercle ba-
cilli may be lurking it gets at them.
Our medical authority cites many
cases of various forms of tuberculosis,
from consumption to lupus, which he
has cured with garlic. One case was
that of a boy of 10, the bones of
whose hand were so seriously affected'
that part of one finger had bee i am-
putated and there was free suppura-
tion through three sinuses in the
palm. Once every twenty-four hours
a poultice of crushed cloves of garlic
mixed with lard was applied to the
diseased hand. Garlic acts as a blis-
ter, so at first the boy suffered a lit-
tle from the burning, but he soon got
relief and within•a few days was free
from pain. Within six weeks from
the commencement of the treatment
the boy's hand was entirely healed.
•
y
WITH THE ARTFUL DODGER.
Pilgrimage to Interesting Spots in
Dicken's London.
Dickens knew his London with
wonderful thoroughness. He was ac-
quainted with secret passages and
dark lanes, and among them he found
much romance, Such is the devotion
of his innumerable disciples that
many spent the sunshine on a recent
afternoon in tracing the devious ways
of the Artful Dodger and the in-
nocent Oliver among the byways of
Finsbury and Holborn.
Many of the slums of which Boz
wrote so intimately have (thank
goodness,) disappeared. He did much
himself to cause their disappearance.
But William J. Roffey, the well-known
Dickens lecturer, who knows his
seamy London as well as the Artful
Dodger himself, was able to conduct
a party of members of the Selborne
Club to many landmarks associated
with the career of Oliver Twist.
One of the most interesting spots
to which he led the enthusiasts was
the abode of Mr, Fang—the magis-
trate drawn from actual life, who
sentenced young Oliver to three
months on the false charge of steal-
ing Mr. Brownlow's silk handerker-
chief. Mr. Fang was such a thin dis-
guise for the notorious Mr. Lang that
the gentleman was crossed off the
rolls very soon after making his ap-
pearance in the novel. Mr. Lang's
offices were in Hatton Gardens and
are now occupied by a firm of litho-
graphers,
N
We once heard of a man who never
told a lie—but he was dead long be-
fore we heard about it.
After coaxing a girl to sing, ono
usually has to do something desper-
ate in order to get her to quit.
Flint's Ride
HenryJ
"For the land's sake," cried Mrs,
Dolliver, and her voice testified to het
concern, "what's the matter with you,
Obed? You're as white as a snowball!"
But Mr, Dolliver, instead of answer..
ing her, sank into a chair and let his
head fall weakly backward, while
strange sounds, apparently of laugh-
ter, issued from his throat„
"Have •you turned crazy all of g
sudden?" his wife demanded. "If net
I•wislt you'd quit actin' 'sif you ha
and tell me what's the'matter,"
Mr. Dolliver cackled once more
weakly, before he attempted to speak
"I don't remember ever, feelin any
less' like laughin,' " he said at length,
"but I thought of somethin' that crib -
ter said jest before he went out of
sight, and it sot me off, 's you might.
say."
Mrs. Dolliver shook herself in exas-
peration, "Who said what, when he
went out of sight where?" Her ques-
tion was imperative, and Obed gath-
ered his wandering. faculties,
"It wet Henry Flint," he began,
"and ,I never expect to see him alive
agin. Lucky they'd hauled, away the
last log front the foot of the slide, as
he had a free chance to slide out on
the pond. We was up on the side of
the mountain, where Henry's gettin'
out spruce logs, Henry and Caleb
Peaslee and me. He wanted Caleb
and I should help him to -day:
"That side hill's go steep that it
ain't any use to try td haul logs down
to the pondwith horses, though Henry_'
had a horse there to yard 'em toge.
ther with, and he'd got a big pile of
logs right on the brow of the slant.
Then he'd built a kind of sluice out
of plank from there to the shore of
the pond, and iced it, so all we had to
do was to roll one of the logs into the
sluice, and away it would go, sixty
mile an hour, mebbe, till it got to the
pond!
"The sluice was pretty nigh a half
a mile long, and jest as straight as
a gun barrel, and we c'd see the fog
fern the time it started till it got to
the bottom and went out on the pond.
we worked till pretty well to'rds
leven, I sh'd cal'Iate, and we come tc
an old switcher of a spruce—took all
three of us, with peavies, to roll it in, •
After we got it rolled in, Henry no-
ticed a knot 'bout half way up on it,
and he told Caleb and me to hold the
log with our peavies, and he'd take
his axe and trim the knot off, so tt
wouldn't ketch on the planks and rip
'em off, goin' down.
"So Caleb and me, we held our holts
with the peavies, and Henry stepped
up on the sluice to get a better chance
at the log. He stood with a foot on
either side of the sluice and struck
at the knot with his axe.
"Well, Susan,"—and Mr. Dolliver's
voice shook in spit of him,—"the very
fust clip he made at that knot, the log
turned someway, and fetched loose
from both our peavies and started!
And when it turned, that knot ketch-
es Henry by the pants leg, jest below
the 'knee, and yanked his legs frim
under him. He struck on the log jest
'sif he was a-hossback, and log and
Henry both started clown the sluice.
"Susan," asseverated Obed solemnly,
"I made up my mind that was the last
time I'd ever see Henry Flint a livin',
movin' man, and I tried to turn my
eyes away, but I couldn't. •Slindin''
away fr'm us in a straight line so, we
c'd see what he was doin"bout as well
'sif he was still. He was workin' to
get his jackknife, and pretty soon we -
saw hien lift his leg that had ben
ketched, so we knew .he'd fetched
clear of the lcnot.
" By that time he was 'bout to the
pond, and goin' like a streak, when all
of a sudden he leaned for'ard, and
'parently puthis hands on the log be-
twixt his knees, same's boys play
leapfrog, and Caleb and I' looked at
each other, dumfounded. We couldn't
imagine what he was plannin' to do.
"Jest as the log struck the pond, he
made a spring for'ard on his hands
and a kind of flirt sideways, and we
saw him in the air, spread as flat as
a flyin' squirrel, and off to one side
of the log. The next thing he struck
the ice, goin' like the wind, off to-
'ards Duck Island. It was jest as well
he did get off'n the log, for it slued
and started to roll,' and if Henry'd
been on it, it would have ironed him
out flatter'n a wet leaf.
"To wind up with," concluded Obed,
cackling again, "what I was laughin'
at was what Henry said when the log
started. He must have known what
danger he was in, but it takes a good
deal to jar Henry Flint's composure.
"He turned his head round when the
log started, and while he looked a
little speck sober, I couldn't see that
he looked scart one mite. He hollered
to us•when it didn't seem likely he'd
live more'n a minute longer, and he
says, 'You fellers might's well come
down and get your dinners, I won't
come back again till afternoon!"
"Always aim a little higher than the
mark," says a philosopher: "What!
I{iss a girl on the nose? .bTever!"
Before being milked, cows are clean-
ed with vacuum -cleaners in many
parts of the United States.
A woman may accept a proposal of
marriage, but she always admires the
good judgment of the tnnn who made •
it,
Education, in the Christian sense, is
truly everlasting; childhood preparing
for maturity, maturity for age, and
the whole of life for death and heaven,
TUBE MAIL CARS NEXT.
Have Been Used in Paris for Some
Time.
Parliament recently gave permis-
sion to the post office authorities to
construct a miniature tube railroad
for the purpose of conveying letters
and parcels across London in half the
time formerly taken. In two tubes,
nine feet in diameter, Little electrically
propelled trucks will run, and parcels
and mail bags will be stacked on
them. The first postal tube is to be
constructed between Paddington and
the eastern district office at White-
chapel.
Driven by electric current and con-
trolled by switches at intermediate
stations, the mail tubes will not need
drivers. They will hurtle through the
tubes at about twenty miles an hour,
carrying the mails from point to
point in half the time that motet
vans threading their way through
traffic in the streets above would
take, take,
Two tubes are utilized in the
scheme, one for up trains and the
other for down ,trains. To avoid any
possibility of collisions—for mail
trains will be dispatched along the
tubes every few minutes—the line is
divided up into sections, so that when
the train has passed over one stretch
of rail it becomes "dead" until it has
reached' another section. This form
of postal tube hasbeen used in Paris
with much success for some time.
The cost of the new tubo for London,
which is said to be six and ono -half
miles long, will be -$6,000,000,
Birds of prey generally seek their
prey in the daytime, while beasts of
prey generally seek theirs at night.
Mozart could ,play the harpischord
when four years old, had mastered
the violin when five, and was compos-
ing music at the age of six,