Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 January 1882 — The Weigh of the Transgress. [ARTICLE]

The Weigh of the Transgress.

By almost universal consent, the lightweight championship is conceded to dealers in coal. As water unto milk, and glucose to the lager beer, so are the platform scales to the coal cart. It would be unjust to large numbers of honest and reputable dealers to sav that their coal is like the fellow who said that when he was mad he weighed a ton, but the conduct of disreputable and dishonest dealers has a tendency to throw suspicion upon all of them. ' According to the statement of one who has tried it, it requires the spirit of a martyr to be an honest dealer, at least in New Tork. He tells a doleful story of the difficulties, not to say the dangers, he encountered in trying to deliver 2,000 pounds for a ton to his costumers. He began by announcing that any one buying coal of him could test its weight at any of the public scales. The result was astonishing. Orders came in from all directions and not more than one in ten ever* wanted to test it. When cartmen camefrom other yards he had to* enlarge tbeif' carte. For these offenses he was setupon by a member of the Goal Associa* tion and beaten ; his cartmen were goV away from him; they tried to prevent his vessels from landing ; broke his derricks, and he had good reason to think that they either shot at him or had him shot at. So that it is not the weigh of transgressor, but the other man’s, that is hard. One of the greatest pleasures of childhood is found in the mysteries which it hides from the skepticism of the elders, and works up into small mvthologies of its own. ’ Do st thou love life ? —Then do not equan der valuable time—for that is the stuff life is made of—but procure st once a bottle of p r . Bull’s dough Syrup for your Cough au4 be cured. Your druggist keeps it, '’'

What Volcanos Are Net. . “Khat ie, a.rnlflHMwr „ Thifi familiar question, often addressed wns oar youth, which “Catechisms cAi Universal Knowledge” and similar school manuals have taught us to reply to B tome such terms as the following : . I “A volcano is a burning mountain, ’rom the summit of which issues smoke' and flames.” This description, says Ptofessor Judd, fa not merely Incomplete and inadequate is a whole, outeach individual proposition of which itds made up is grossly inadequate and, what is worse, perversely misleading. •• . I In the first place, the action takes place at volcanoes is not ** burning,” or combustion, and bears, indeed, no relation whatever to that well-known process. Nor are volcanoes necessarily “mountains” at all; essentially, they are just the reverse—namely, holes in the earth’s crust, or outer portion, by means of which a communication is kept up between the surface and the interior of our globe. When mountains do exist at centers of volcanic activity, they are simply the heaps of materials thrown out of these holes, and must, therefore, be regarded not as the causes, but as the consequences of volcanic action. Neither does this action always take place at the “ summits” of volcanic mountains when such exist, for eruptions occur quite as frequently on their sides or at their bases. That, too, which popular fancy regards as “ smoke” is really condensing steam or watery vapor, and the supposed raging “ fltunes” are nothing more than the glowing light of a mass of molten material reflected from these vapor clouds. The name of volcano has been borrowed from the mountain Vulcano, in theLapari Islands, where the ancients believed that Hephmstus, or Vulcan, had his forge. Volcanic phenomena Eave been at all times regarded with a superstitious awe, which has resulted in the generation of such myths as the one just mentioned, or of that in which JEtna was said to have been formed by the mountains, under which an angry god had buried the rebellious Typhon. These stories changed. their form, but not their essence, under a Christian dispensation, and Vulcano became regarded as the place of punishment df the Arian Emperor Theodosius, and /Etna as that of Anne Boleyn, who had sinned by perverting the faith of King Henry lll.— Popular Science Monthly.