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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Herald, 1915-01-22, Page 3r,rrr,� ".,Fgaiv uvrin rr,•rrr "a'i-r-'trarf<7!...4i lAla { ll STORY OF WAR'S IR TRAU E DY lF If the war has not inspired any French artist as yet, it has already. moved rnac4y pens. The following Short story is by Rene Bazin of the French Academy, and was printed in the Echo de Paris: Here is what I have seen in the Vendee I love, Wlien autumn comes the land of hills extends fine burning sheaves toward the sky where hazy clouds pass, driven on by the wind from the sea. There .are thickets on the hilitepei remains of high -treed forests, orchards be- longing to farmhouses or simply trees planted along the banks, among which are found the Moun— tain ash, wild pear trees and a kind of oak whose leaves die in splendor. I know not what crazy owner, long since departed, planted two lines of crab-apples on the brow of the hill whereon the farmhouse of Le, Renandiere is built, looking to- ward the setting sun. It takes many years before such trees give any fruit, and, as the avenue was over two hundred yards long, it was work for the metayer (farmer who works on the basis of sharing profits with the landlord, instead of paying rent) to gather in the crop in October, all the more as that he had but little help, being married to a wife who was not strong. The farmer's wife at La Renan- diere was one of those peasants whose faces arouse pity; pale, not pretty, with features long, drawn downward and 'framed in the Von - dean headdress which compresses the temples. What was best about her was her beautiful teeth, a rare thing in that country. Before she was married, when she laughed more often, there was a brightness in the. corner of her brown eyes which made men say : "She's• not altogether unpleasing ;. it's a pity she's so frail." After being six, years married she became a mother, and her child was two years old when the war began. Almost at once her husband had to leave La Renandiere and join his regiment. No one could speak of having seen Aimee Cottereau weep. Frail of body she was, it is' true, but brave withal, able to bear emotion"s.ient- ly, and trained for centuries to meet emergencies boldly. She ac- companied her husband to the sta- tion, and on her return entered the village church, where were some thirty women, come like,bet to con- xsvocrcuta their •sa•crifice •arid pray for courage. When she had .finished, and she was not long, she entered her house, took her little girl in her arms and murmured: "You are all I have now !" I saw her the next day but one in a field of wheat, so ripe that the ears were letting the grain escape. I caught sight of her, the soldier's wife, cutting•the harvest. She was working .so hard that it was only when I spoke that she stood up, her hair clinging to• her cheeks, satis fled with the. realization of her strength. "I promised him that our share of ,the harvest should not he lost, you see. At the end of Sep- tember I will drive the plough if he is not back. But he will be back." She said this with the assurance that seeks to . be assured. "You have news?" I asked. "Yes, in- deed, and it is good. He has passed through Paris and is going to Bel- gium. Is that far 2" "Yes, rather. And the little one f" "She is sleep- ing in her cradle down there." In spite of the deference which she had always shown me, I felt that the farmer's wife pitied me be- cause I could suppose that a mo- ther would leave her child in the house without anyone to look after her. With a back -turned .thumb she pointed to where at the side of the field a little thing, white and blue, was seated in the ;shade of an apple tree. The days passed, our armies moved down, stopped and began to move upward again. Aimee Cot- tereau continued to work, and at 2 o'olookto watch for the postman at the end of the ,erab-.apple avenue. He eaine on his bicycle, leaning. over the handles, but not moving quickly all the same. "Nothing for me 4" "Nothing. It will be for to- morrow." Until tlhe end of Sep- tember she never failed to come to the same spot, ask the same ques- tion and receive the same . answer. The women of the little town would say to her, "Write to bis captain ! Write to the Red Cross at Geneva! They may know something. She wrote, and then decided. to keep si- lent and wait, busy with her little' one, her house and the farm. Up to a quarter to two each day she felt joy quite near,; ready to enter into her soul and show its face, and yet it never carie. Her. friends among the women soughtto avoid "Meeting her, for i.hey' feared they woad betray thea eelves. The re- port was whrsper"M around that Jean Cottereau: tits dead. A ser- eant had seen 'tile 'farmer of Le The„Scrap of Paper” German Chancellor. "I did not want this war." "We Germans do not eherish hate." "a have labored- steadily. to develop a good understanding with England." These are some of the striking statements made by the Imperial Ger- rnan Chancellor, Von Bethmann-Hollweg, in a long interview on the war, its causes, and its probable results. The ravages of war have not spared even th.e "Re:ictrkanzler," In his uniform of Lieutenant- General, with grizzled, close -cropped beard, he seemed much older than the scholarly, • frock -coated statesman of Reichstag debates. Only recently his oldest son had been wounded on one of the battlefields of Poland. As a reward for his efforts the Kaiser ha,s presented him with an Iron Cross which is suspended from the ribbon in the ,third buttonhole of his coat: The chancellor is firm and.obdur:ate, and,un spite of many reverses is firmly confident of ultimate victory for Ger- many. Renandiere fall in a fight near Na- mur, his arms crossed, losing his rifle. During the latter days of Sap-' tember on the sloping lands the oiie- cy ed farmhand held the plow while the farmer's wife touched up the four oxen with the goad. She did not sing, it is true, asp a real ox driver should, ,but she kept to the right of the team and said the words that should be said in a quiet tone, which, however, penetrated the hedgerows and moved the soul of those an the hills. "Rougeaud Caillard! Nobiet 1" She called her oxen by their names and, • looking at the opened furrows, smoking with mist and dust, she thought: "It is no work for a woman that I am doing, but he will be tired, poor Jean, when he returns, and I shall be able to say : `Rest yourself !' " Sheinterrupted herself quickly, for the spring of hope had weakened under her load of tail. Aimee Cot- tereau persevered for more than a week, and then the metayer from Malabri, her old neighbor, came one morning to take her place. Five days later the plowing was finished, and the metayer from Lachere came to see her. "I)o not trouble your- self," he earl, "I will harrow your fallow land; your farmhand can roll the plowed land, and I, as is only fitting, will do the sowing." No' one. spoke to her about her hus- band, and yet she never, doubted but their hearts were also heavy be- cause of the long silence, I saw them at work about the middle of October. The master of Lachere was throw- ing out the seed; the farmhand led the mare battling the granite roller, While they worked Aimee Cotter - eau could not remain in the house, and, taking a mallet, she broke the elods of earth missed by the harrow in front of the sower. I went for- ward into the field, but, quicker than I, a boy ran toward the farm- er's wife, who did not see biro, .a boy of fifteen: He stopped three paces from the fariner's wife and raised his hat. "If you like," he said, "I am strong; 1 willharvest your crab-apples on the avenue,' With, my sisters to help me I can easily bring tlleni to your house." She made no reply. The two men hard stopped working. She looked at the boy, the farmhand and the old metayer. Herface became whiter than the kerchief round her neck. She seemed to have come out of a dream and not to have strength to say what she had seen. There was silence for a time. At last she said: "They all want 't.o help me ; my husband must 'be dead," No one answered her. She let fall her mallet, took up her little one, who was 'still sitting on the grass by the edge of the field, and clasped her tightly in her arms. Then, with unseeing eyes, she went slowly and with bowed back toward the erab apple trees. She had be- come a widow. She had ceased to believe in life. Through the charity of 'her friends she had become ac- quainted with grief. a�. RANGE FINDING. Two Instruments are Used to Find the Distance. In action, the quick -firing field guns of the opposing European armies are generally concealed from the enemy; the gunners often, never see the .target at all, and the guns are laid by clino' meter elevation. The gunner determ- ines how far to elevate his gun in or- der to reach the target by means of a spirit level on the sight, which can be set at any desired 'angle; the grinner has ` merely to lift the muzzle: of his gun until the bubble of the spirit level is in the centre, The battery com- mander, who, posted at the observing station perhaps half a mile away, is the only man on the battery who can see the target, either telephones or signals the correct elevation to the gunners. To obtain the distance, or range, he uses two instruments. One is the, director. That is a telescope mounted on a circular graduated baser plate, a simple form of theodolite with. which he measures the angle between the guns and the taiget. The other is the range finder, with which he gets the distance, or range, of the guns and of the target. That is a telescope with two' object glasses about thirty inches apart; it gives two half images in the eyepiece, which can be made to coin tide -by turning a drum. When the two images coincide, the graduation opposite • the pointer on the drum. shows the range 'in yards, The hate tery commander now has two sides of the triangle formed by the target, the observing stetter', and the nearest gun, and the angle between them Prom then lie is able to fix the gauge from the guns to the target, and the angle at which the gtnis should be laid, Better one boilil on the stove than two on the neck, • • M With Fhdh. .10 'i'haw i'ozen 1+'ieh.---There are two ways to thaw fish. If they are thawed at room temperature there fs no chance of their losing their fliivur, unless they are allowed to stand after they have thawed ou•t,. lylien they will ''break down” some— what and ,spoil more' quickly than as fresh caught fish; which spoils quickly enough, as everybody. lfllows. A quicker way is to put than in raid water, and as this is the method used by dealers when oustumers demand fresh caught fish, although there rs none in the mar- ket, or those to be had are at pro- hibitively high prices. BOW (I Trout Steak. --put two strips 'of bacon under the. steak and two over it, and then some fresh to- matoes on top, and bake. It is ne- eessary to understand that there is Much gaud in . a fish, like the trout, that is large enough fur steaks, al- thuugh we like that species best in the smaller sizes, To Broil Any Fish Stealth—Do not have your dealer cut the 'steaks too thin A steak an inch thick can be broiled in from twelve to fourteen minutes, about six, minutes to a side, and a fillet frehn the side of a thick fish will cook `"in about the same time. A fillet is a thick, fiat slice of fish without, the bone, just as a fillet of beef is strip or slice of muscle or 'lean meat without, bone. For a single large steak use half a, teaspoonful of -salt, a pinch of pepper, a tablespoon of vinegar and three of oil, Mix these togethei and add some slices of onion and other seasoning if you choose, turn the fish over and over in this sea- soning, and let it lie for an hour if there is time, turning •several times. This is an excellent way to season fish, even if you cannot let it lie an hour. 'You will not taste any of these things, but will know that your fish has an excellent taste, as it will not have unless well sea- soned. Small fish need but little seasoning; those of a coarser grain need a good deal to make them fine. Serve with Hollandaise sauce or plain melted butter and slices or quarters o£ lemon. Dolled Fish Steaks.—Fish steaks may be boiled on top of the stove v!r in a chafing dish, ,A halibut steak of a pound weight can be boiled'and used with a sauce, or be boiled and flaked and used as a salad or for timbales. Cover the steak with• boiling water and add a 'hit of bay leaf, some green pepper, or carrot and onion, and salt and pepper, and cook gently until done. It •may take twenty minutes. Save the liquid in which ib is boiled for sauce or soup. If you want to make timbales flake the fish, add to it about an equal measure of cracker crumbs and what seasoning' you .choose, bind with white of e.gg, • allowing one egg for each timbale cup two- thirds full of the mixture, fill the buttered timbale cups, set them in hot water, and cook until the egg is well set, turn otlt of timbale mold and serve with a cheese sauce: You may decorate the bottom of the mold with strips of green pepper be- fore you put in the fish, or you. Ynay drop in an egg which is poached' in the cooking of the whole. • Cheese Sauce.—This sauce has many names, but is simply a white sauce made by cooking together a large tablespoon of better with one of flour, and then adding to it, stir- ring all the time, a eup of hot milk. When this is well blended, conked, and seasoned, add from half a cup to A, cup of grated cheese. Too strong a cheese taste with fish is not liked by some people If the sauce should happen to be lumpy, by any accident. put it through a strainer before adding the cheese. Butter Sauce.—The old fashioned butter sauce for boiled fish is still in favor, although there is some question about its being.. whole- some ; the white sauce is also ques- tionable. This is made exactly like thewhite sauce, except that boi'l- ing water is used instead of milk, or 'better yet, the boiling liquid in which the fish was boiled. Finally eu•b up one or two hard boiled eggs into the sauce. and rub it over the glass, after sip- in.g down the framework with an oiled cloth: Then proceed to the next window and treat it similarly on both, sides. After that go back to the first one and wipe it dry a large, clean cloth. No real polish- ing is required and the window a:t^ glass will look clear • and shiny, ' Kerosene will clean your hands' better than • anything else after blacking a range or stove. Pour a little in the water,, wash your hands in it, then wash them in tepid wa- ter, and finally with plenty at soap and a stiff brash in hot water. Fin- ish up by rubbing the hands with lemon and rosewater and glycerine. When your kitchen sink is rusty rub it over with kerosene. Squeaks in shoes are prevented by dipping the soles in kerosene. The white spots appearing in the spring on the lining of your re- frigerator will disappear if you rub the zinc with kerosene. Leave the refrigerator ojen se•eraI hours, then wash with water, soap and am- monia. The refrigerator will then be elean and sweet and all spots will have disappeared. To elean painted walls wipe them. first with a cloth wet in kerosene and let stand fifteen minutes Then wash the walls with good, warm soapsuds, but do not rub soap on the cloth or the paint will be streaked. Rub spots of tar or pine pitch on clothing in kerosene before washing them. Uses for 1+;eroselie Oil. Here are nine uses to be made of kerosene oil. Wash out your dust- less mops in kerosene and soak your dusters in kerosene. Let the kerosene dry on your dusters and you will have dustless dusters! A spoonful of kerosene added to a, kettle of very hot water will make windows, looking ,glasses, and pie- ture Masses bright and clear. Use a small, clean cloth, wring it dry, Ail 111 .. AOTIVITIEa 'Di? W01610 ic., !1F a*rui'T ai,.-- lari? 1 4-iiiirrr:.a. iiiiia'�:i4„..„ ,-:,,,ifiii,, Russia has over 3,000 woman phy- SieiaYiti, About 35 ver cent" of the electo)r• ate iri Sweden at present are ege men. ()ver 50,000 working, girls in New York eity attend night schools, Over 50 per .cent. of the f 'males in the United States are • unauer- ried•. Wom w school teachers in Den- mark receive from $304 to $520 a year salary, If Michigan establishes a wo- man's refbrmatory it will ,be con- trolled and operated by women. Mrs. Leonora Z. Meder receives 5,0100 a year as superintendent of public welfare in Chicago. • Mrs. Betsey Story of Carmi, 111,, has never worn a corset in her life and she is now 102 years of age. 'Mme. Sembrich, the opera singer, is at the Bead of the Polish relief, committee in the United States, Three German soldiers taken as prisoners by Russia proved to be women wearing the regulation uni- form. Great Britain is refusing the proffered help of English woman doctors while Russia is gladly ac- cepting, such assistance. Women .are now employed : as cashiers in the Waldorf hotel' in New Ybrk city, because it is claim- ed that they are .sharper about their work than men. Mile. Renaudiere has been award- ed the Order of the Leopold by King Albert of Belgium, as a re- ward for her bravery under fire while serving with the Red Cross ambulance. Among the laws of France which have been suspended because of the war is the one that requires that the banns must be posted in the city hall two weeks before the weddings take place. Emperor William of Germany has. broken his ironclad rule against feminine advice since he now allows his only daughter, Pelmets Victoria Louise, to express her opinions con- cerning the military operations be- ing carried on in that country. Miss Jean T. Moehle, an automo- bile saleswoman, recently showed that she could handle machinery as well as sell oars. In a leather apron and blue jean she stood on a plat- form in aNew York salesroom and dismantled and assembled a motor taken from a oar she had driven over 10,000 miles. DO A KINDLY DEED. Blest be the tongue that speaks no i11 Whose words are always true, • That keeps the law of kindness still, Whatever others do. Household) hints. Tli0 home milliner generally makes the mistake of using too many stitches in sewing on flowers or feathers. "Few but strong," is the rule. Brass polished with oil and rot- ten -stone will have a deep rich yellow tone. The whiter, more brilliant tone is caused by acid polishes. If you have to pack bottles in a trunk, tie in the corks, and wrap them in soft towels, garments, etc., and place in the middle of the trunk. • If the stepladder ,slips, paste a piece of old rubber over each sup- port; this will not only prevent a fall, but it will protect the floors, If you have casters pub on your woodbox, it will be much more convenient to sweep around and under it, or to move it from place to place. When cooking mushrooms ib is safe to put a •silver .spoon in the pan. If the spoon turns dark you can be sure thorn. is a toadstool in the span. • Excellent school sandwiches are made of large ripe olives stoned and chopped fine and spread on bread and butter sandwiches with may- onnaise. Apples pared, cored and set into a dish with sugar and water to hake until tender, but not broken, are delicious served with custard poured over them. SOUND SLEEP After Chance to Postunr. "I have been a coffee drinker, more or less, ever since I can re- member, until a few months ago I became more and more nervous and irritable, and finally I could not sleep • at night for I was horribly disturbed by dreams of all sorts and a species of distressing night- mare." (The effects on the system of tea and .coffee drinking are very similar, because they each contain the drug, caffeine.) "Finally, after hearing the ex- perience of numbers of friends who had quit coffee and were drinking Posture, and learning of the great benefits they had derived, I con- cluded coffee must be the cause of limitation of income owing to the my trouble, so I got some Postuin war. The working classes, on the •, and had it Made strictly .ac:cultla.rg other hand, generally are all well employed, except in certain trades. The editorials urge economy in the. use of foodstuffs with which the Blest be the hands that toil to aid, The great worlds ceaseless need— The hands that never .are afraid To do a kindly deed. ECONOMY IN FOODSTUFFS. Comfort in England Depends Large- ly in Prevention of Waste. The London newspapers are de- voting prominent space to the con- sideration of the steady increase in the cost of foods and other neces- saries, which in many cases are from 20 to 50 per cent_ dearer than before the war. Coal has risen 10 per cent. higher. Flour, which sold in July at 25 shillings ($6), is now 45 shillings; and fish has trebled in price. The middle elasses particularly are feeling the pinch because of the to direetione. "I was astonished at the flavour and taste, It entirely took the place et coffee, and lo my very great.' English households are proverbially satisfaction, I began to sleep peace- prodigal and wasteful. The Daily fully and sweetly, My nerves inn- Telegraph says: proved, and 1 wish I could wean TIie war •strould teach. us that every man, woman. child - e.rynlfort depends lea^geIy on tlu:epre- velation.otf waste, We shall do well to reform the, internal economy of our homes wherever it, is ipossible. This war will increase the -cost of living throughout the world, in neutral as well,as belligerent conn - tries." The Chronicle has thii t{:i say : ``Despite the increase, bread and many other articles• aro cheaper iar England than in any other conr:try in the world. Therefore, 'we can- not expect ;amelioration of the in. crease, due largely to the -high stripping rates, which have spiarl- dupled in five months." the unwholesome drug-drink—cof- fee. "People do not really appreciate or realize what a Powerful drug it is and what terrible effect it lues on the human system. If they did, hardly a pound of coffee would be sold. I would' never think of going back to toffee; again. I would al- most 05 soon' think of putting my hand in a fire after I had once been burned. Yoaura for health." Postunr comes in two forms: Regular Postt= ---- must be well boiled. 15c and 25e p•aeltaaes, Instant Postern --ifs a soluble pow- der, A teaspoonful dissolves quick- ly iii a tuip of hot water and, with cream •aencl sugar, makes a delicious beverage instantly. 30e and 50e. tins, The cost per •cup of boi•h kinds is about the same "There's a Reason" toe Poston,. ---sold. by Grocers. 44. Strength to Stains Grateful' Patient --"13y the way, I should be glad if ynu would send in your hill soon," Eminent Physician- -"Never naiad. about that, my dear madam: you moat .get quite strong first."