Decatur Democrat, Volume 35, Number 28, Decatur, Adams County, 2 October 1891 — Page 2

®he democrat DECATUR, IND. »XZSZKZ\ZXZSZ>^- I *. BLACKBURN, - - - Publisher. Mbs James Brown Potter cannot get a theater in London. This will probably spread sorrow and Mrs. Pouter over America once more. An umbrella-stealer was brought to trial in Pittsburgh the other day. He had txfput up $25 and the umbrella before justice was fully satis<ed. ‘ A Memphis editor recently counted forty shooting stars in an hour One •fJack Haverly’s forty-star variety shows must have got on a drunk down in. Memphis. Mr. Vanderbilt and his party recently went through that portion of Bulgaria which is thickly inhabited by bandits, and not a bandit, so far as heard from lost a thing.

A jury in New Jersey has decided that a man has an undoubted right to whip his wife. Husbands are warned to exercise some caution in attempting to carry this principle into operation in other States. A correspondent in the New York Herald, writing from Aux Cayes, Hayti, says there rich agricultural island in that vicinity that can be bought for $50,000 by the United States as a coaling station. If it is near Aux Cayes it must be about O. K. Jay Gould says he looks forward to an era of great prosperity. That, is one of Jay’s peculiarities; and it doesn’t make much difference-whether Ae looks backward or forward, he almost always sees an era of great prosperity. Some of the most refined people of Pennsylvania have caught the itch by handling money that had passed through the hands of foreign laborers. In times of money stringency, however, we must take great chances, and we are willing to. Starvation in Bussia! The news Bounds like retribution for the unutterable barbarities perpetrated by the nation on its unfortunate subjects who have fallen under the ban of the Czar from political and religious motives. The man who wrote to a New York paper, complaining of certain ballet lithographs as representing “scantily clothed females profusely parading physical proportions of preposterous protuberance” seems to mind his “p’s.” A cool pillow for invalids is said to be made by cutting old letters and such material into thin strips, curling them on ‘ a knife, and then stuffing a pillow-tick with them. We presume that old love-letters should be avoided studiously. The World’s Fair people have violated the first principles of their classification by granting permission to erect aspecial building on the grounds. The paper should have been installed in the forestry building with the chestnut trees. There are no less than eight different persons in the United States at the present time who claim each to *be the true Messiah and who all have considerable trains of followers. It is believed, however, that Old Nick will continue single-handed to draw the bulk of the crowd.

A New Jersey toiyn became excited over the marriage of a well-to-do man of 70 with a young lady of 28, whose sister was already married to the old man’s son. Such a wedding, it is true, will mix the families up a little, but there is no trace of intermarriage about it, and as for the rest, weddings are, or should be, affairs not at all the business of the public. has its practical uses. For example, a very profound scientist—he must be very profound to have gone so deep—tells us that at a distance of 200 miles beneath the earth’s surface the temperature is 28,000 degrees Fahrenheit. This will be exceedingly useful information to anybody who may happen to be looking around for an auspicious location for an ice-cream saloon. When a person points what he supposes to be an unloaded pistol at another and snaps the trigger; when he does this in spite of protest and entreaty from the other, and, the weapon proving to be loaded, -death ensues, how much of an “accident” is that? It lacks—no possible motive being shown—the essence of deliberate intent, that would make the killing an act of murder. But it is certainly reckless, criminal carelessness that deserves severe punishment at the hands of the law.

Within the last ten years the Average reduction in the time consumed in crossing the Atlantic has been two hours and thirty-six minutes per year. If the same average is maintained for the next ten years the ocean greyhounds of. 1901 will go across in about four days and fifteen hours. The cost of increasing the speed will be offset, it is believed, by the saving effected in the stewatd’s department. By the time the seasick' passengers have got over their woes and acquired an appetite for something to eat their journey will be -over. , - The experiments in Bellamyism don’t seem to succeed as wdll in real ■. . • . - ■ v •,?

life as they do in Mr. Bellamy’s boot For instance, the Decatur Co-operative Housekeeping Club has just collapsed. The club consisted of ten or twelve families, who rented a dining-room, hired a housekeeper to take charge of the servants, and paid the expenses of furnishing board to the inembers of the club. It was a success for a year and a half, but the novelty wore off, and this fall so many of the members concluded to set'up an establishments of their own that the few who were left did not care to keep up the club, so they disbanded. The keeper of the Jefferson Market New York jail must be a bright light. A prisoner recently escaped from that place of confinement' by the simple process of cutting through the bars of his window with a saw eicht inches long, which he had been allowed to take into his cell, and letting himself down from the aperture thus formed. The authorities not only did not replace the bars, but they did not even lock the cell. The next prisoner who attempted to escape did so with no other provision than two sheets tied together, in addition to that which his predecessor had made and the keeper had kindly left at his disposal. In Chicago a notorious criminal recently walked out of the station and left the astute door-keeper agape with wonder, but he did not damage the windows or tear up the bed clothing. This is at least “a horse” on Gotham in favor of Chicago. The tunny man is of all grades, from the one who, like Holmes, never dares to be as funny as he can for feai of fatal consequences to his readers, to him who tries so hard to be funny without being so as to be the funniest mam of all. A profound and inextinguishable melancholy afflicts the funny man. Some attribute this to remorse at the fossil and fraudulent jokes he occasionally foists on a confiding public; others are of opinion that he thinks his true sphere tradegy and revolts at being a mere literary clown. But neither supposition is correct. The funny man is a man of infinite compassion. He sorrows for those who are compelled to read his productions. He rises up with a pun and comes down with a pang. He sledgehammers together a witticism, and when it is laughed at goes off into a corner and gives himself up to grief. Philanthropy, not facetiousness, is the funny man’s strong point.

It is an old joke to say that dentists punch holes in people’s te£th so that they may have the profitable job of filling them, and that plumbers make work for themselves by purposely creating new breaches in the plumbing Which they are hired to mend; but the humor of the allegation has depended upon the popular acceptance of it as an exaggeration. New York City, however, contains a plumber who has proceeded- from jest to earnest, and systematically made a leak every time he mended one. The ingenius fellow not only made leaks, and instructed his employes to do so, but systematically reported them to the health office, so that the owners of the buildings received official notification to have them immediately repaired. The plumber’s name is Bischoff. One of the victims of the .ingenius Bischoff detected the practical and profitable jocosity to which that artisan was resorting, and, deciding that he was carrying his jokes too fsr, had him arrested. The humorist and his confederate employes now languish in jail, and the joke, if there is any, appears to be on them. - . A Traveling Plant. I was sitting in a passenger car looking out over a stretch of prairie land in the great Arkansas Valley, says a writer in St. Nicholas. The day was windy; indeed a ship captain, who sat next to me, said it was “half a gale,” though, judging from the way the wind shrieked past us, I should not have thought of using a fraction is describing it. Suddenly a number of elegantly shaped, slightly built animals appeared in the distance and rushed toward the moving train. The wind, the such they proved to be—and the train engaged in a race, in which the antelopes for a short time held their own; hut what most astonished me was that antelopes were pursued by great gray balls, some of which were from four to five feet in diameter. i Not one of our party could imagine what these were, never having heard of anything of the kind. We watched the curious sight until the locomotive and the wind left the antelopes and the pursuing balls far behind us. To increase our interest, however, many more such balls could be seen on the windward side of the track, piled up against the wire fences and the rai»vines and gulleys along our onward route.

I afterward learned that what our party saw were known to the plainsmen as “tumble-weeds,” and to botanists as the cycloloma plalyphylium. It belongs to a genus of plants that grow in a thick globe-shaped mass of twigs and small branches, attached to their roots each by a small stem, which in the fall comes dry and brittle, and, as the autumn winds sweep over the prairie, these stems break off and the tumble-weeds go bounding away, scattering their seeds as they go. Antelopes and jack rabbits, grouse dnd prairie dogs are put to flight, cattle are stampeded and the roadbeds clogged by these flying masses of brushwood. “We have home-made pie,” said the waiter lady in the Woman’s Exchange. “Excuse me,” said the pallid young man as he reached for his hat and started for the door, “I was looking for bakers’ pie. I was married only last month.”

FREEWOOLIN ENGLAND HOW FREE WOOL HAS MADE - ENGLAND.GREAT. England’s Wool Duty Removed in 1898— Increased Production and Higher Prices for the Farmer—Free Wool Has Given England the World’s Wool Clip—Who Pays the Ball Tax. Made England Great. We are told that a removal of the duty on wool would result 4n destroying our sheep-growing industry, but the experience of Eng and with the wool tax does not bear out this claim. In 1800 England had a wool duty of 13 cents a pound, and in that year produced 92,544,000 pounds of wool. This tariff was continued till 1828, when the product amounted to 111,623,729 pounds, a gain of only 19,079,727 pounds in twenty-eight years. Then came free wool, and already in 1850 the production of wool in England had risen to 375,000,000 pounds, or a gain of 163,376,271 pounds in only twen-ty-two years. Since that year this production of wool has declined, but it is still greater by 26,000,000 pounds than in 1828. But the rapid increase did not cause a decline in prices. In 1828, under protection, the price of one of the standard grades of domestic wool, that known to the English trade as “Lincoln half-hog,* was 22 cents a pound, and the average price from that year to 1850 was 24 cents. During the twenty years, 1857 to 1876, the same wool brought the English farmer an average of 40 cents. The price last year returned once more to 32 cents. So the British farmers are no worse off, in the matter of price, for free wool; and they had more to sell, too; but they had an enormous gain in the cheapening of woolen clothing. But England raises sheep for mutton rather than for wool. Four-fifths of all lambs are slaughtered for market; and for twenty years the number of sheep nas kept pretty closely to 30,060,000, sometimes a few millions above or below. Wool is little more there than an incidental product of the mutton-grower. Free wool has made England the great wool market of the world. In 1850 that country imported on y 77,000,000 pounds of wool, but importations had risen in 1889 to 721,000,000 pounds, of which about half was exported and resold in other countries, thus making an enormous trade for English shipsand English merchants. In the meantime England's consumption of foreign wool has increased enormously. In 1844 it was 1,942,000 pounds; in 1889 it was 363,435,000. It is our tariff, and it alone, that keeps us from rivaling England as a great wool-trading and woo;-manufac-turing nation. England could never have reached her present position in the control of the world’s wool supply if she had adhered to the policy of protecting a few country squires who wanted to breed sheep at public expense; and if she had persisted in her attempt to shut out foreign wool our own manufacturers would never have needed to besiege Congress so long and so invariably with their ta’e of ruinous competition from English competition. As it is, the bulk of the world’s supply of wool goes to London, and English manufacturers, as a general thing, get the pick of the clip from all lands. Free wool would give the American manufacturer an equal chance; it would not necessarily hurt the American wool-grower.

DIVIDING OUT TARIFF SPOILS. Steel Rail Manufacturers Meet to Make “Allotments. ” The Steel Rail Association, otherwise known as the steel rail trust, has recently held a meeting and appointed a committee of two, representing Eastern and Western mills, to report on a new “allotment” of percentages. A large new rail mill has been started near Baltimore, and it is necessary for the trust to give it an “allotment” in order to avoid “ruinous competition. ” Under the present arrangement all orders for rails are divided up among the trust's mills upon the following basis: The Pennsylvania Company, 9 per cent.; the Lackawanna, 18; tho Bethlehem and the Columbia, 8 each; Andrew Carnegie’s Company and the Illinois Steel Company, 57 per cent jointly. This little coterie of rail manufacturers can safely make their “allotments” and divide up among them the spoils which the tariff puts into their coffers. The duty is $13.44 a ton, which is equal to 65 per cent of the price' of rails in England to-day. At the beginning of this year the rail trust met and put up prices, and these have been firmly adhered to ever since. The price at Chicago is $31.50 a ton in large lots, or $32.50 in small quantities. The price now quoted at Middlesboro, England, is £4 ss, equal to $20.64 per ton. This is a big tariff difference. But oh, says the high-tariff wiseacre, don’t you know the foreigner pays the steelrail tax? Let us see: We imported during the year ended June 30, 1891. just 134 tons of steel rails, valued at $3,479, the duty on which, at $13.44 a ton, would amount to $1,800.96. On the other hand, our rail mills turned out during the calendar year 1890 about 2,”00,000 tons of rails. This quantity at the present Chicago price would cost $69,300,000; at the English price $45,518,000, a difference of $23,782,000. Do the English manufacturers pay our steel-rail tax, or do our railroads pay it? The “American System.” When Henry Clay, in 1828, wanted to make his high tariff policy popular he cast about for a name that would appeal to the people; he, therefore, called his high tariff bill the “American system,” saying that it was “to lay the foundation of a genuine American policy. ” The cheap folly of this clap-trap was at once pointed out by Daniel Webkter. “Since the speaker denominated the policy he recommends,” said Webster, “a new policy in the country, one is a little curious to know why this imitation of other nations Is denominated an ‘American policy,’ while, on the contrary, a preference for our own established system is called a ‘foreign policy.’ Sir, that is the truest American policy which .shall most usefully employ American capital and American labor, and best sustain the whole population. He seems to me to argue the question as if all domestic industry were confined to the production of manufactured articles, as if the employment of our own capital and our own labor in the occupation of commerce and navigation were not as emphatically domestic industry as any other occupation. “One makes a yard of cloth at home; another man raises agricultural products and buys a yard of imported cloth. Both these are equally the earnings of American industry. There is ntf foundation for the distinction which attributes to certain employments the apr pellation of ‘American industry.’ ” A Problem for the Rain-Makers. If Uncle Jerry Rusk’s “heaven-bust-ers” do succeed in making it rain whenever it Is needed, what is ever to become of our great and flourishing irrigating industry on the far Western plains? Hera are people who evidently need “protection." They are American cittNns, good and true, have invested American capital and employ American

labor at living wages. What ts th. whole heavens are tp be turned loose upon the irrigators with copious showers of pauper rain* Will it not ruin an American industry, wipe out American capital, and deprive many a faithful American ditch-digger of his employment? This “curse of cheapness* is leading us to sacrifice the interests of the poor hark-working ditch-digger in a most unpatriotic, most un-American way. And all to save labor for the farmer and make his wheat and corn grow! HIGH-TARIFF ABSURDITIES. A Muddle-Headed Protection Editor Whom a Low Tariff Will Hurt. It is impossible for the high-tariffites to escape the absurdities of their position. How often, for example, have they assured us that protection cheapens commodities? Only put on a high protective tariff, they say, and we sha 1 very soon be buying the very same article of better qua ity and at a lower price; and the higher the tariff, some even claim, the lower you will make prices A very pretty fable, only the hightariffites are not able to be ieve it themselves. If they do, why these pictures of the ruin and desolation that will follow if the tariff is removed or even reduced to 40 per cent? Here, for example, is the Boston Commercial Bulletin, which is reputed to be one of the ablest of high tariff organs. This journal, in trying to break the force of the argument that since sugar has been so greatly cheapened by the removal of the duty a similar result would follow in the case of goods imported from Great Britain, Germany and other European countries, says: “Their manufacturers have the advantage of cheaper labor, and can undersell Us on that account. To throw down the protective barriers, which alone keep out these competitive goods, would simp y result in depriving our people of occupation or compel them to labor for reduced compensation. * Yet the blessed tariff, as all orthodox protection organs assure us, cheapens the things made by our manufacturers and does not guarantee them artificial profits. But this specimen protection organ commits another specimen absurdity. After painting the universal misery which would follow a reduction or abolition of the tariff, it assures the consumer that he would get little or no advantage. “A small reduction at first hands would in many cases mean nothing but additional profit sci the reta ler, and where a concession was vouchsafed the consumer it would be too insignificant to figure in the total expense of a family’s support. ” Confusion worse confounded! The consumer will not get lower prices, and yet he will go off and buy for; ign goods and ruin the domestic manufacturers! How could the home market for home goods be ruined unle s the consumer himself could buy foreign goods cheaper? A market for goods is not made by accident or caprice; it depends upon the intelligent choice of the consumer in seeking for the best goods at the lowest price. Unless he can get this in Europe our American manufacturers have nothing to fear from the freest competition; and if he can get it, then our manufacturers are now enjoying the benefit of an artificial price made possible by the restrictive tariff. But our manufacturers are afraid, very much afraid, of such competition; and this fact is conclusive proof that they are squeezing tariff prices out of the domestic consumer! Two Effects of the McKinley Law. Another triumph for the McKinley bill is recorded in the price of linseed oil. A merchant in this city bought in Chicago last week at 42 cents per gallon. The quotation of the city oil here has not declined so far as yet, though the market is demoralized by largely increased Western production and Western sales. Bnt at the current quotation, 47 cents per gallon, the fall since October has been 15 cents, for the quotation was then and for months had been 62 cents for city oil Ip this market. —New York Tribune, in July. The New England Homestead estimates that about $3,000,000 will be paid to the farmers of the Connecticut and Housatonic valleys for this year's crop of tobacco. It is stated that this is double the amount which they received in 1889, and that it is due to the exclusion of Sumatra wrappers by the provisions of the new tariff. Whoever looks at the statement of imports will observe that there has been a great decrease in this kind of importation, and it appears that the farmers of Connecticut are getting part of the benefit. Nor are they alone. Farmers in Central New York in large number, and in many other Northern States, share the advantages which the new tariff has justly given them wit!/ respect to the production of tobacco for wrappers.—New York Tribune, in August Beating Pauper Labor. Our high tariff cranks are quite sure that the American labor cannot compete with the “pauper labor” of the old world. The “fellahs of Egypt” and the “ryots of India” are to their minds the most formidable competitors in the whole world because the most poorly paid. But our farmers do compete with the fellahs and the ryots and beat them in a free market , In 1890 our cotton growers sold England 4,480,203 bales of co. ton, weighing 400 pounds each, against only 1,086,376 bales sold there from Egypt and India together. This was done last year, and the present year will make a still better showing; and all this in the face of what Uncle Jerry Rusk calls “a well nigh ruinous competition with the labor of * * * the miserable fellah of Egypt and of the unfortunate, half-starved Indian ryot, working for panper wages, neglecting all the amenities of life in order that women and children as well as men may work in the fields. ” Yet it is against this labor that our Southern cotton-growers compete successfully without any help and with harm alone from our glorious system of “protection for American labor.” If they do it, why cannot some other people? “Legitimate Fruit.** The American wool clip this year is 5,000,000 pounds less than it was last year. The New York Tribune has made the impudent claim that the enormous crops of wheat and corn raised by our farmers this year are in part to be credited to the McKinley tariff law, since “the principal object of the new tariff was to afford better protection to agriculture." The large crops appear to this blind leader of blind protectionists as “the legitimate fruit of a tariff Intended for that purpose;” for the farmers, thus encouraged, increased their production in every direction. Will the Tribune tell us whether that 5,000,000 pounds shortage in the wool clip is another “legitimate fruit of a tariff intended for that purpose?” The protectionists in their public utterances profess to hold that the policy of “buying in the cheapest market” is all a free-trade delusion; but the cheap, untaxed sugar, that they are now making so merry over, is ciheap for the simple reason that it was bought in the cheapest market in the world, in Cuba, Germany, and the Sandwich Islands. “Buying in the cheapest market,” and paying no tariff tax works beautifully with sugar, as every protectionist is now claiming.

THE ARIZONA KICKER. RUNNING A NEWSPAPER OUT WEST. Bin Chndao Allowed a Timely Warning to Paw Unheeded— Bill’s Fate t- The Arlsona Kieker’s First Night Out—Letters from Interested Eastern Culled from the Kicker. A shears editor Tof the New York I World gives the I following interest- , ing items from one 0 of his most valued exchanges, the Ari- ”” - zona Kicker: f*| I The Right B J B Thing.—We told 9 I * Bill Chudso in I - wRI these columns over I I ff P mon ths ago Vff “i that the climate ™ of this locality would wear him out, and strongly advised him to travel. He thought he knew the town better than we did, and the result was a hanging last Friday night. Bill kept on drinking and fussing until he put a bullet into Indian Mike. No doubt Mike ought to have been shot long ago, but the boys concluded that Bill Chudso was getting too careless with his gun, and he was invited but to be hung. We were early on the spot, of course, while our contemporary never even heard of the case until next day. We expected Bill would be a little sore on us, but he wasn’t. He wanted to shake hands with us before he was tied, and during the fifteen minutes allowed him on the head of the barrel he spoke in the highest terms of us as a citizen and as the editor of a great weekly paper. He called direct attention to The Kicker, declaring it worth five times the subscription price ($1 in advance,) and added that if he had heeded the good advice found in every issue he would not have been standing where he was. In fact, Bill talked so fluently that we were al-

/ fn ill? BILL CHUDSO’S FATE. most a mind to ask the boys to spare him and let us try him as an advertising solicitor. We reflected, however, that the crowd had been put to a great deal of trouble and would probably be disappointed, and therefore held our peace while Bill was swung off. The very last thing he did was to hand us his gun as an equivalent to the cost of ten years’ subscription to The Kicker for his mother. That’s No Way.—Two or three weeks ago we had an item to the effect that the County Clerk of this county was drinking so much tanglefoot that public business was being sadly neglected. We meant it in all kindness, and hoped he would take it that way, but it seems that the iron strtick home. Instead of coming to this office and talking the matter over in a friendly way, he banged our sanctum door open last Monday and began blazing away at us with an old revolver as long as a rail and as noisy as a cannon. He shot a hole in our office clock, perforated a State map ot Nebraska, and knocked the end off a horn of plenty we had hanging up for an ornament. The rest of his lead went wild. We don’t want to be captious about these things, but we have feelings to be hurt. After the blithe young man had got through we rose up and liced the lobe of his left ear off as a souvenir and then threw him into the street. We were somewhat riled for a minute, but when he broke down and cried we went out and stuck the lobe in place and made friends with him. His ear will be as good as ever in a couple of weeks, and we hope the matter will prove a great moral lesson to him. It’s the Climate —We are in receipt of letters every week from par-

- THE “ARIZONA KICKER’S” FIRST NIGHT OUT.

ties in the East, asking about business, the climate, chances, etc. There are some good things about this country, and we don’t deny that they are some bad ones. The better way is to come out and personally investigate. As far as the climate is concerned we declare it the best on earth. Our own case is a proof of

whatitcando. We arrived in thia town three years ago with one lung gone, lame in both knees, dead broke for cash, and having a cough on us which made everybody think a thunderstorm was coming up when we let loose. Our eyes were so bad we couldn’t see a Digger Indian fifty feet away, and our hearing had run down until a man would have had to ask us four times to drink with him before we CQuld have suspected what was up. The first three nights here we slept under a wagon on Kit Carson Square, and we distinctly remember of old Bill Parker kicking us across the street when we asked him to lend us a dime to buy breakfast. Old Bill is dead now. We took somewhat of an active part in his hanging. To-day we are the richest and the healthiest man in the country. Feel like a Texas steer all the time, and have got a hole full of money. Before the climate took hold of us anybody could boot us around and slap our jaws. The worm turned one day, and since that time we have shot ten men and discouraged about fifty others. The man who kicks us has got to be chainlightning. We lead the social swirl, will shortly be elected Mayor, and whatever we say goes. Gradually, as the climate has and developed us, we have introduced the style of eating with a fork, wearing white shirts and encouraging Chinese laundries, and we are considered authority on grammar, prizefights, ancient history, poetry, the business outlook and the grizzly bear. Wine.

Students who are entering college this fall should reflect seriously upon the question of wine drinking. They will often be invited and expected to drink wine, and they will occasionally see their elders drink it at college festivals. They are likely to hear those who drink speak disparagingly of those who decline drinking, and they will read descriptions of banquets in which wine is represented as figuring honorably. For many other reasons it would be well for students to come to a clear understanding with themselves upon the matter, and make up their minds what is the proper thing for them to do when they are asked to drink. No one likes to be thought a milk sop. But even that can be borne, if the accused person knows he is right and knows why he is right. Clear and certain knowledge is a wonderful help at the moment of temptation, though it is not always sufficient. To get light upon this subject it Is not necessary to go into a library and pore over a heap of books. A healthy young man who drinks wine or any such fluid need not be long in doubt whether he has taken into his system a friend or foe. He cannot help knowing, if he observes himself closely, that the wine is an enemy. He perceives that it increases, not quenches, thirst; that it raises his spirits for half an hour or more, according to the amount used, and depresses them for several hours that follow; that it flushes, excites, disturbs, perverts, and therefore injures him. If he conscientously watches its effects, he knows this, and all the sophistery of all the sophists cannot disguise the fact from him. He knows it as well as Sydney Smith knew it when he wrote to Lady Holland that, without abstaining from wine, “London was stupefaction and inflammation.” Nothing has been more certainly demonstrated than that the use of alcoholic drinks by young persons in our keen, exciting climate is a mistake, and is to no class so injurious as io students. To them, more than to any other class, wine increases the difficulty of every duty and adds alluring force to every vice. , This is not preaching; it is simple fact, and known to be such by all honest investigators. Students need the best food that civilization can supply, and that food should be eaten in the best manner known to civilized life. But when it comes to intoxicating drinks, there is only one safe and wise rule, which is expressed in one word: Abstain.—[Youth’s Companion.

Tho Salary Problem. “If any provide not for his own he is worse than an infidel,” even if he neglects his family to make laws or to interpret them for his country. A man who is dependent upon what he earns, and who can earn SIO,OOO or $15,000 of $20,000 a year outside Congress, is going to think twice before he sacrifices that income for a salary on which he cannot have a home in the city where he must live more than half the time, and cannot give his children the education which he had planned for tnem. And if he thinks twice, the chances are greatly against his going to Washington, or tying himself down to an even smaller salary if he be a lawyer and the path opens for him to a seat in a Federal Court The present system operates to fill Congress with men whose wealth is so great that the size of the salary is a matter of indifference. The tendency to elect to the Senate and the House men who are rich, and who would never have been thought of for such office except for their riches, is already so strong as to be alarming, and yet the nation goes on year after year neglecting one perfectly obvious way to resist it. Make the salary of a Congressman large enough for one to live as well at the close of the century as a Senator or a Representative lived at its beginning, and seats which now often go without a contest to unqualified millionaires will again be sought by men who are capable o! rendering the best service to the State. —[Century. Mra. Astor’s dowels. Mrs. William Astor has a wonder•ful snake ring which literally writhes in constant motion on her finger. It is constructed of flexible gold wire, each scale being represented by a loop of wire in which a ruby, an emerald or an amethyst is firmly set. The slightest movement of the fingers sets the wire a-quiver, and the ring scintillates and seems to go round and round the finger with a serpentine movement that has something eerie in it. It was made ip Egypt. The same lady has a marvelous necklace, composed of six strings of magnificent diamonds, al? the stones being invisibly set, so that they look as though they we*» simplv strung together like beads. 'v/'iV-• ••• •'i•**s

LAND OF PERPETUAL FIRE. Btn*c« «■<» Interesting Faaturus «f Terra Del Fuego. “The most interesting and the' strangest people in the world who ever came under my notice are the natives inhabiting the great Island of Terra del Fuego,” said Capt. Terre nby Jameson of the British army when at the Palmer House. The Captain’s regiment is stationed at India, but the soldier is away on a three months’ furlough. He is returning home from a trip through South America. “The island, which is situated at the southern end of the continent, is called the ‘Land of Fire, ’ because of the fires which the natives never permit to go out,” continued Capt Jameson. “In every hut or hole in the ground along the coast where the natives live a fire is kept perpetually burning, and on a calm day, when viewed from the ocean, hundreds of streaks of smoke can be seen circling toward the sky. The fires are kept burning, some say, on account of a strange religious belief of the Fuegans, as the natives are called, but the real reason I think is because they have no way of making fire if the blaze becomes extinguished. It is supposed the fire was originally brought from a volcano in the Cordilleras centuries ago. “The Fuegans are the most brutal tribe in the world, and are as fierce and savage as tigers. They have no forehead to speak of, their hair growing down to their eyes. They are large people and no other tribe ever ventures too close to their territory. They live like beasts, however, always eating everything raw. Their chief diet is the fish that are washed upon the beach during storms, and frequently they secure the carcass of a whale that becomes stranded on the beach. The bodies of sailors also furnish them with food. Shipwrecks are frequent along the coast there, for some of the most severe hurricanes pass over that part of the country. “The fires the Fuegans keep burning are only used for warmth. The climate is quite cold, but the natives are thinly clad, the only garment used being a cloak of some kind -Of skin. This they always wear over the shoulder on the windward side. But even this they will sell for a cheap ornament or a choice piece of food. When I was there I saw, a Fuegan woman sell a, sailor the cloak off her back for a string of beads, and she walked away in a snowstorm in a nude condition, content with her bargain. “I visited the country with a party of miners from the Argentine Republic, who were there prospecting under the protection of Government troops. It was necessary to kill fifty or sixty natives in order to protect the prospectors, but the strange people could not be subdued. “The island is claimed by both Chili and the Argentine Republic and I suppose it will be necessary some day for the latter nation to kill off a few thousand Chilians in order to settle the dispute.”—[Chicago Tribune.

Admired, Franknena. A man stood thoughtfully leaning against a lamp post. A stranger approached him and after a moment’s scrutiny said: “Excuse me for this intrusion upon your apparent meditation, but I wish to ask you a few questions.” “Certainly,” said the man, bowing and regarding the fellow with a kindly eye. “I thank you for your consideration,” rejoined the fellow, bowing with equal courtesy if not with equal grace, “I wish to ask yon if you do not admire that quality -which we term frankness?” “Yes, of course Iffo.” “I am delighted to hear you say so, c sir. Now,” he added after at short pause, “you may think me very peculiar and doubtless I am, but something impels me to be frank with you.” “All right, sir, go ahead.” ‘ ‘Thank you, I’ll do so. Now, just a few moments ago, as I stood over there, regarding you, it struck me that I did not like your looks and I debated with myself the question whether or not I should tell you. The delicate consideration, the bright hue of reason that sometimes lights up the dark ground of impulse, suggested that I should first discover whether or not you were an admirer of frankness. lam glad that you are, for it gives me the opportunity of telling you without malice that I do not like your appearance. See?” “That’s all right,” the man quietly replied. “You have a right to express your opinion.” •‘You are a considerate man,” said the fellow. “Now, still believing that you are an admirer of frankness, I should like to tell you that I would not trust you ten minutes.” “That’s all right,” the man rejoined. “And furthermore,” the fellow continued. “I feel that you are a pickpocket.” “A man has a right to express his feelings. You acknowledge that, don’t you?” “Assuredly, sir. I have expressed my feelings, and why should not you express yours?” “I should express mine, and shall do so, but before I give you an expression of those feelings you must promise to treat me with as much consideration as I have treated you.” “O, I promise that.” “All right, here goes,” and picking up his toot with an electric jerk he kicked the fellow into the street. “That is myopinion of you.” The fellow rubbed himself for a moment, and then through a horrified, grin said: “Look here, I do like frankness, but I don’t care to see a man so blamed outspoken.”—{Arkansaw Traveler. Lot* in th* Hom* Lif*. We ought not to fear to speak our love at home. We should get all the tenderness possible Into the daily household life. We should make the morning good-bys, as we part at the breakfast-table, kindly enough for final farewells. Many go out in the morning who never come home at night; therefore we should part, even for a few hours, with kind words, a lingering pressure of the hand, lest we may never look. again into each other’s eyes. Tenderness in the home is not a childish weakness, it is one that should be indulged in and cult!-’ it will bring the sweetest returns.