Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 December 1895 — FOR THE YOUNG FOLKS. [ARTICLE]

FOR THE YOUNG FOLKS.

A RtTLS TO REMEMBER. Tommy Bob counted witn fingers and thumbs To find out the time when Thanksgiving day comes. Then L member Tis always on Thursday—the last in November.” r SOME INDIAN* DOGS. Kickapoo Indians are very fond of dogs, both alive and fricasseed. Around their tepees, or wickiups, or Queen Annes, or whatever they call their abodes, there are always half a dozen wolfish dogs. Au Indian dog hates a white man as far as he can smell him. and that is saying a good deal. When a white man, driving through the Kickapoo country, sees a dog by the roadside, his natural impulse is to whistle in a friendly way, for somehow in a wilderness of paririe or forest a dog is a comfortable sight. But the instant you whistle to an Indian dog he turns his tail and is out of sight quicker than if he had been kicked. An Indian never whistles to his dog when he wants his beast to come to him; he places his tongue against his teeth aud hisses. The colored population of Oklahoma have almost as mauy dogs as the Indians. Those who live in the black-jack sand hills are dog rich. These dogs have a deep-rooted aversion for the white man also. When au old colored cotion planter comes to town some of the dogs are sure to follow*, and when the old man walk* uptown the dog stays right between his feet, like a country dog under a wagon. And whenever a white man comes within snapping distance the dog gets busy.

TWO LITTLE KNIGHTS. There are two knights of the ancient and illustrious order of the Golden Fleece who are under ten years of age. One is the nine-year-old King ot Spain, while the other is the eight-year-old Duke of Braganza, the Crown Prince of Portugal. It seems that the King of Spain is always grand master of the eight Spanish orders of knighthood, the principal of which is that of the Golden Fleece— Toison de Oro, as '.hey call it in Spanish. Two years ago the baby king, with due pomp and ceremony, presented the decoration of the order to his young cousin, the Duke of Braganza. The decoration consists of the royal arms, which includes, besides of the arms of Castile, Leon, Greuuda and the lilies of the royal house of Bourbon the arms of Austria, Sicily, Saxony and Brahant. Surrounding the whole is a representation of the Golden Fleece, with the motto, "Ante feret quain flanima micet.” The order is worn on a red aud yellow ribbon, the national colors of Spain. The order of the Golden Fleece is one of the oldest in existence, having been founded in the fifteenth century, by Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, ut the City of Bruges, as a compliment to that town, no small portion of whose prosperity arose from its woolen trade. Indeed, so prosperous had the city become by this means, and such was the magnificence of the Flemish court, that no European monarch could equal or approach it. When the wife of Philip the Fair of France visited Bruges she exclaimed: "There are hundreds here who have more the air of a queen than myself.” Ships of every nation took in and discharged their cargoes at the quays; the warehouses were filled with bales of wool from England and with silk from Prussia, and the argosies of Genoa and Venice came laden with the produce of the ea;.t. In founding an order, therefore, iu this city it seemed that a most suitable name was the classical one of the Golden Fleece: so suggestive, too, as it is of chivalrie and valorous deeds. The Argoimutic fleet, as every boy and girl who has studied mythology knows, was made up of a band of heroes commanded by Jason, who sailed iu the good ship Argo from Thessaly to the farther shore of the Black Sea in quest of the Golden Fleece, which was there guarded by a dragon in a grove sacred to Mars. Many and great were the dangers encountered on the way, and valorous and brave were the deeds of the members of the expedition before they finally reached the dragon and Jason became master of the fleece.

WISE CREATURES. When marvelous stories about the sagacity of animals are once started, there is always Sure to be an amateur naturalist waiting in ambush who has discovered what he considers to be proofs of amazing intelligence in some creature not usually associated with the idea of much mental development. The London Spectator has been the means from time to time of unearthing several good tales of clever dogs and cats, and the assertion has been hazarded by one of its correspondents that the dispositions of animals are as varied as those of human beings. That different dogs have different temperaments can easily be demonstrated by anybody who will try to pat the first twenty stray dogs that he meets when lie takes his next stroll abroad. It has not, however, hitherto been understood that spiders are also endowed with dispositions showing much variety. This is a mistake, as anybody knows who takes “teasing spiders.” A correspondent confesses that members of the family have very different methods of treating the attacks of au enemy. If a small piece of leaf lie thrown into a nice newly-made web, it appears that one spider w’lth a hasty temper will at once rush right at the object and eject it, thereby doing real damage to its own fly-trap; unothcr “of a more reflective turn of mind,” wifi come quietly a short distance, look at the obstruction for a minute, and then thoughtfully retire. Some spiders, too, when tound in the centre of their webs, wifi dart away and hide, while others will remain where they are, * ‘trembling so as to violently shake the web, these last are called “highly nervous insects” by their historian; but it may be, perhaps, open to some question whether trembling is not the result of anger quite as much as fear. Nervousness is hardly the kind of failing of which a spider ought to be rashly accused. He never drinks tea, or sits up late, or subscribes to a circulating library, so that we have a right to expect that his nerves will be in faultless condition. In any case, he must show pity to flies before he can hope to secure much sympathy from the havoc which modern conditions of life may play with his nervous organization.