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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Clinton News Record, 1934-12-20, Page 3I'HURS., DEC. 20, 1934 What Clinton was Doing in The Gay Nineties DO YOU REMEMBER WHAT HAPPENED DURING TFC LAST DE- CADE OF THE OLD CENTURY? • From The News -Record, Dec. 19th, • 1894: Not only do our people desire snow for Christmas but they would be delighted to have good sleighing. Last Friday evening the following officers were elected for Clinton Lodge No. 84 A.F. and A.M. for 1895; W.M.: Dr. Shaw. P.M.: Thos. Smallaeombe. S.W.: T. C. Bruce. $. W.; A. J. Holloway. Secretary: R. J. McDonald. Treasurer: O. S. Doan. S.D.: O. Johnston. J.D.: J. Emerton. J.G.: J. B. Hoover. Stewards: T. E. Slacken, 3, E. Kenaedy. Tyler: Joseph Ryder. A. pleasing event transpired at the residence of Mrs. A. Hilien last Thursday afternoon in the marriage of her daughter, Annie, to Mr, James Walker. The -couple were made man and wife by Rev. J. H. Fairlie, the bride being given away by her brother, Robert, Miss Lizzie Hilien, sister of the bride, was bridesmaids while Mr. John Walker assisted the groom. 'The bride wore a pretty brown travelling suit and looked the picture of happiness. Miss Watson of Mitchell, cousin of the bride, played the wedding march.... After the ceremony dinner was serv- ed anil cengratulations extended.. . 'The honeymoon was spent in Strat- ford and Mr. and 1\frs. Walker are pow permanent residents of town I - A hog fed on the farm of Mr, Thos, 'Cook, one year and ten days olio tiresse5'885 pounds. It had been fed on skim milk and peas. WHEN THE PRESENT CENTURY WAS YOUNG From The News -Record, Dec. 23rd, 1909: Mr. and Mrs. C, Hawke are spend- ing Christmas with Exeter friends. Mr. Albert Seeley yesterday in- stalled in his machineshop an iron lathe with a fourteen foot bed. Miss May Rance, who is teacher of .elocution in Moulton College, To- ronto, is home for the Christmas holidays. On Monday Mr. Thos, Jackson, Se., received a letter from a hamlet up north which was addressed as fol- lows: Mr. Thomas Jackson, Fifty Years. Ago a Merchant Tail- or in Clinton, Ont. The letter was signed and enclosed a five dollar bill which the writer said was in payment of a debt con- tracted while in Mr. Tackson's em- ploy fifty years ago. , .: Mr. Jack- son has a good memory but it bears no recollection of the writer of the letter or of some of the incidents mentioned. FromTheNew Era, Dec. 23rd, 1909: The morning train arrived after two o'clock Tuesday morning owing to the loose snow drifting into the fire box, making it impossible for the fireman to keep up steam. Last week Mr. Pr. G. Smyth sold the Standard Elevator to Mr. Louis Snifter of Glencoe, who will take pos- session in May next. I%Ir. Sinter is an uncle of Mrs. T. Hawkins. Mr. Don Ross is home for the holi- days. He is attending Normal in Toronto. Eggs are going up in price as the thermometer goes down. Vie over- 'heard a merchant say the other day —"Tire want eggs, and we want them bad." YOUR WORLD AND 'MINE by JOHN C.KIRKW.'OOD (Copyzaght) Books help us live the lives and have the thoughts of other persons. By the way of books we can have companionship With many. Life for many of us would be very bleak and barren if we had no books. Some books bind us to thein in deep affection. We never want to be with- out then—,even though they may be not re -read except at long intervals. Their very presence in our bookshel- ves is comforting to us. We lend them grudgingly. One such book on any shelves is "Dumb Foxgloves," by An- nie Trumbull Slosson. I do not know much about the writer. She is . or New England origin, and she writes of New Etbgland and New England people. I have three of her books, and if l knew the title of others I_ should try to possess them. "Dumb Foxglove" is make tip of a number of short stories. IIere is how the book begins All the golden October day we had been driving leisurely along through the Green Mountain country, Everything was golden that fall. It had been a very dry season, and the leaves upon the maples and other forest trees, instead of ripening' into brilliant hues of crimson and scarlet, had all taken on tints of yellow. Then, when the' autumn winds arose, suddenly the whole earth was carpeted with saffron, daffodil, amber and gold—a thick .rustling carpet, and for days our horses trod upon it and our wagon wheels rolled over and through it. So the chapter went on. I am re- sponsive to the appeal of such pic- tures . of rural beauty and peace, Their tt'angbility.soothes -Inc, a city - dweller.•, _ They take me away from man -mode highways of cement and stone, away from the noise and ugli- nese of crowded communities, away fromn'artifisalities. . Let inc continue eopyhig from this first chapter of Mrs. Slosson's book: Goldenrod was massed. by the. roadside in tints to imatch every shade of our leafy carpet, snaking for it a gorgeous border of gold colour, and asters contrasted or harmonized, . with their hues of mauve, blue, purple, lavender and white. The . twisted orchid, or lady's tresses, with its spike of frosted white bells, 'smelling of bitter almonds, clustered thickly in damp spots along the road- side; Joe Pye weed, or pink bone - set, stood stiffly erect, with flat- topped clusters of dull -pink feathery blossoms, and some- times a belated St. John's -wort added its yellow to the prevail- ing brightness. The witch -hazel bore on leafless brown boughs its strange flowers of straw Colour with their sickly sweet odour; and, most abundant of all, grew, all along our way, the dark -blue closed gentian. There were many berries! The short, thick spike which: jack-in- the-pulpit wears; the' sapphire blue bear -plums; those of trans- lucent garnet growing like •a bunch of ripe currants on the little similacina;' the crimson fruit of twisted -stalk, hanging singly on slender stenas; the mountain -holly's rosy red; moose berries; bunch -berries; the red eohosh and the white, the last like beads of white en- amel strung upon red coral stalks—all 'these we, saw ,and gathered ere the day ended. Can you imagine anything more idyllic than the slow journey—the un- hurried progress through the moun- tain country beautified by the Su- preme Artist of th universe? I should like to tell about every story in this most enjoyable book, but that may not he. But there is one story, "Davy's Christmas," 'which seems appropriate for this season. Davy, a little lad, is made to tell the story himself. Davy's father. and mother and a baby brother had gone from the East to the West -'the godless West. When Christmas was approaching, Davy wanted to have a Christmas party, and he had invited the boys and girls of the countryside about them, and also the older folk, to name to their farmstead on Christmas. Eve. Davy hacl set ftp a Christmas tree and on it had placed' all his Christmas leftovers csf prior years These he meant to distribute among the children attending' his Harty, On the 23rd of December the horn and barn tof Davy's parents were burned down. The only Habitation left was the original log -cabin,' now wipowimmonavoiamm THE CLINTONNEWS-RECORD PAGE 3 used as a cow -stable,,. Tho Christpsas. time and presents had gone up in smoke. Davy Was heart -broken. But the invitations had not been cancelled, and so do Christmas eve the invited ones began arriving curious and sympathetc, most of them; but one or two lads were cruel —they asked Davy, "Where's your Chris tines now?' It was cold without, and the little company had gathered ' in the cow - stable, where there was a fireplace; also a manger, The another encour- aged Davy to go ahead. So Davy began reciting the Bible verses which told about the shepherds keeping watch by night, the radiance of the stars,time visit of the magi. The while the smother nursed her babe on her lap and crooned :ullabys.- Davy, at his mother's behest,. ' began to sing Rush by dear, lie still in slumber. Soon another was singing witii'hin, sweetly and confidently. The singer was the roughest woman in the 'dis- trict. And as they sang— Vtllen His birthplace was a ' stable. ) • And His softest bed was hay, there was some commotion among the listeners. Witten .the baby had been lulled into' slumber, the mother had risen and placed hien le the manger. --all were an unrehearsed and unin- tended drama of the Nativity. Men and women soiled. and godless and rough --had childhood memories en- gulfing. them, and they wept honest tears. Davy ends his story so— Seems there ain't much more to tell. To this day I don't get it through my head why they begun to have Christmases them- selves after that, in Anderson. If I'd a carried out my plan, and had a tree and all, I could see how it come about. But when we didn't have any Christmas at all that year—no tree, no presents, no refreshments, no nothing* well, as..I said afore, it beats pie how they come to keep Christmas the very next year, and ever seece. I close this contribution to The News -Record with another 'extract from "Dumb Foxglove" --a passage' which,'I hope, will help some of my readers to find both joy and peace In their present place, of residence, I should their habitation be amid fields and woods, where bubbling ,brooks sing sweet and low, and where birds rear their young in confidnee, and where in winter Nature sleeps under' a snowy blanket, resting for the Spring's glad awakening. From the hour .when i took the child into niy arms, out of whose elasp the mother had just slipped away quietly and forever, ..the little girl was all time world to me. There was a strange and wonder- ful sympathy between us two. She understood me always when no one else could, and she told me so. We lived so quietly, far from the busy world, in the very heart •of Nature; anm.ang trees and hills, and streams, with birds and flow- ers and wild free things, and we did not tack nineh. 'When I held her close to my heart, and we looked out upon the shining river, up to the purple bills, into the rosy clouds, or over to the dark deep forest, there was no need of words. And when there came the rushing sound of the wind among the trees, the music of the brook whose white waters ran over the stones, the glad song of the Bobo- link, or the tender strain of the thrush, I looked into her, deep, still eyes, and felt that we were both listening', and that we both heard. (The End,) All For a Practical Education Some Interesting Suggestions "Brucefield, Dee. 7, 1934 Editor Clinton News -Record: I have read with interest of the ad- dress of Dr. C. C. Goldring to the London Teachers Institute, Also the opinion of Principal Eines of the Clinton Collegiate Institute, And al- so the article headed 'Your World and Mine,' by John C. Kirkwood, which is about the most practical and sen- sible ariicle which has appeared for some time. Yes our Educational System needs changing for many of the mystic subjects taught in our High schools and Colleges should be taught in the little schoolhouses on the side roads and back concessions and could be taught if presented to the pupils in simple terms. I re- member when I was a boy we had to take up square foot to pass our En- trance Examinations, also I semen- ber The Master' (Geo. Baird) teach- ing us that the squares on the sides of a right angled triangle are equal. in area to the square on the long side. A little later on in our studies we found this was proved in the 47th proposition of the 1st book of Euclid and had been discovered by Pytho gara who lived nearly six hundred years before Christ and quite probab- ly it was known long before that. However this is the proposition which a carpenter uses to cut the rafters for a house or a barn. The Civil Engineer uses it to lay out a railroad or a bridge. The mechan- ical Engineer uses it to design ma- chinery and the architect to design buildings, also the navigator uses it to find out his position on the Ocean. However the carepnter calls it the run'of the square. The Civil Mech- anical and Architectural Ecglineers call it Trigonometry, and the Naviga- tors call it Traverse tablos.. So that you can see that the Py- ramids of Egypt, the Hanging; Garden of Babylon, the Royal York Hotel, all our Railroads, the latest model Ford car and all other things including the children's doll house and the chicken coop were governedin then constrsse- tion by the 47th proposition of Eu - lid. Some yssu•s ago the concern v✓illi ' l ich 1 was ' n"•loyed hada set of Engineering Instrumerrts in which I' was much interested and highly .e'at- 1 ed when I was able *to snake a trian •gelation. However., a negro carpen- ter did the sante, trianguation with l a common carpenter's square coining very close to my calculation. On look- ing over his world was rather aston- ished to find he was using the sante orincir.les as I was using, but he was figuring in feet and. inches and fractions of an inch while I was using decimal 'tables of sines and cosines. Then he told me he had had no chanee to get en education, only six months with a missionary school and just what he pickedup himself, And I had gene to school, passed the En- theme and taken up a year of High Scisool work, and that illiterate negro was a better mathematician than I was. However the day came when I could take a line of levels run in. a Railway curve in several different ways,' and perform other mystical mathematical things, but I never went to high school or College to learn therm, nor did I get them front College men. , No dear, gentle reader, I learned them from other illiterates like myself. I remember Mr. Wm. Cowan giving a little talk on the tricks that could be done and worked out with a square. Dear friends, I want to say in passing, that Mr. Cowan gave the most interesting talk on the mystic and elusive branch of mathematics known as Trigonometry that I had ever listened to. Now there is an- other line of Mathematics called the Theory of Moments, has a mystic sound, has it nett? but pretty simple some of it. Here is an example: Suppose two boys are sitting on a teeter, one boy weighs 00 pounds and is five feet from the rail, the other boy weighs 50 pounds, how far must he be from the rail to balance the heavy boy? 'Multiply sixty pound% by five and divide by fifty, this will give six feet, which isthe distance of the smaller boy from the rail. Try this out with a board or plank bal- anced across a sharp edge. " Hang some weights on each side, multiply their distances from this edge by their weights and see if the answer is not the sante, this rule governs the weigh scales. IIere is another one. A wheel 20 inches indiameter turn- ing 200 revolutions a minute is belt- ed to a four -inch pulley. flow fast will this turn. 20 multiplied by 200 and divided by 4 gives 1000 revolu- tions, as the speeod of the smaller pulley. Here is another one. Suppose you want to know the distance 'across a field, aid you are using a drill or cul- tivator. Make a mark on the drill wheel and count the number of turns across the field, _multiply the diam- eter of the wheel by 31-7 and mul- tiply this by the number of turns the wheel has made. Here is another one. Suppose you have a building : ,; IL SNAPS OOT1NG CHRISTMAS' Two typical Christmas shots. ,At the left, Big Brother starts off to try his new skates. Right, the youngsters Are all set to grab Santa. IE only trouble with nmaking pis A close-up of theiled-up ogifts, tures' of Christmas doings is before the children—or the n--- that the day goes so Fast. Before we ups, for that matter -attack them. know it, chances Tor rare shots have This will be another photoflood pie - come and gone—gone, some of them,. tore. If there are no people in the never;, to return, next year or ever. picture, you can close down the aper - For babies will grow up and friends ture of your lens and give a longer will move away. exposure t%an usual— haf a minute So piaci now for a few good shots this Christmas, shots that will mean, inescapably, Christmas, 1934. To do the job up brown, you'll probably need to call all of your snapshooting talent into play. For there'll be interiors as well as out- door shots, daytime and nighttime pictures, close-ups and long shots. • For example:• Holly wreaths at the door and in the windows. Shoot therm from the outside, at night, with lights ar- ranged to bring out their full im- portance. A time -exposure from the outside, shooting in through the win- dow at the lighted room, will give you a fine silhouette of the wreath in the window. Ask one of the youngsters to stand very still at the window during the exposure; that will add the necessary "human interest". Trimming the tree, This will prob- ably be a long shot, taken from far enough away to show the whole tree and the busy decorators.' In all like- lihood, a photoflash -type bulb will be yotu best reliance for this one. Hanging the stockings at the man- tel. A photoflash or photoflood type lamp in the fireplace (the fire itself, we hope, being out) will illumine the figures of children as ;they hang up their hopeful stockings. Be sure that the direct rays of the light do not strike your camera's lens. or so, depending. on the amount of" the light and its distance from the centre of the picture, Then, of course, a picture of the beautiful confusion of present -open- ing time. Don't let the tidy house- keeper -deter you from getting the scene' as it actually is. The more littered, time better. If there are children, get a snap, of each surrounded with his gifts.. And there's no reason why every other member of the family shouldn't have the same treatment, - If Sister has a new wrist -watch, see to it that it shows very plainly. If yours is a neighborhood where the folks make much of outside de- corations, with illuminated trees and such, you'll and that time -exposures of a minute or so will give you excel- lent pictures of the various lawn dis- plays. Here, as in practically all shots, a tripod will come in very_- handily. - And if carol singers come your way, get a shot of them busily carol- ling away. A photoflash type lamp, in a hand -battery holder, will make this shot easy. No—you needn't spend the whole tune with camera in hand. But a few, well-chosen snaps will be very much worth the few minutes they require. Far better to spend those few minutes than lose the fleeting, unique opportunities altogether. Right? JOHN VAN GUILDER. forty feet wide and the roof'is fifteen feet high in the centre. How long will the rafter be? Take half of forty which is twenty, square it that will make 400, square the height in the centre, 15 feet, this makes 228, add 400 and 228, this mattes 625 and take the square root of 625 which is 25 feet, the legnth of the rafter. Now to cut the rafter. Lay your square on the edge of the rafter so that the 15 inch mark on the short side comes .fie,•. _ 011•110.01Mr.,..rrI at time end of the 25 feet, put the 20 Iinch mark on the long side of the square on the edge of the rafter and draw a mark along the short side, then go to the other end of the twenty-five feet and place the 20 inch mark of the square at this point and the 15 inch mark on the edge of the rafter and draw a mark along the 20 inch side of the square,. Or it may be done this way. Divide half the width: of the b iikiing which is 20 feet by 20 inches, this gives 12,'and 12 times the distanee between the 20 inch mark and the 15 inch mark on the sides, of the square will give the length of the rafter. Now there are many, many very simple rules for doing things of var- ious kinds, why not teach them in the common schools. I have met many college men and have asked then what trigonometry was, The answer generally was a combination of Euclid and Algebra,, and with all this education they could' not figure out the most simple things.. So their education might be called e. waste of time and money. Why can' this not be corrected as Mr. Itirk-. Wood. so practically points out in his article. As regards Geometry or Euclid one. cannot make even the most simple measurement without using some of Euclid's principles but as the things seem to be an easy way we don't know we are using them, 11 Now as Mr. Euclid worked out and • proved these elements and principles over two thousand years ago it is. practical to suppose that his copy- rights have expired, so why not teach thein out in the schools on the back concessions And I have seen many a college man stumped with a simple problem in Arithmetic that an ordin- arycarpenter would work out and not even hesitate when Ise came to it. Of course it is said that an educa- tion is easily .carried, however if one does not know how to use it, light aa it is to carry it is apt, very apt, to keep hien or her very, very close to the bread line. That is a thorough knowledge ofmanual labor might be more useful at times, and right irk that line you can find a use for them higher mathematics, ' such as will make Logarithm and calculus in- teresting. I suggest that you have Mr. Win. Cowan; give •a little discourse on the things that can be done with a square, Also I suggest that you have Mr, Perdue and Mr. Hawkins give a little practical talk oncutting out patternt+ in tin. - ' And I think Mr. Stong, the Chief Constable, can give an interesting talk on the uses of steam and ma- chinery. Ansi Mr, Relines and Mr, Hovey might give some interesting talks On Chemistry. Yours truly, • —B, VU'AL.DRON.'