Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 53, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 March 1910 — Page 3

Opinions of Great Papers on Important Subjects,

STOP FUNERAL EXTRAVAGANCE.

YQUNG business man died unexpectedly, leaving a widow and three small children. For two years he had worked hard to establish a business, which was just beginning to pay well and gave promise of coming highly profitable dtfring the coming spring and summer. But his cash re-

sources were small, his insurance was almost nothing, and, with his ability and hard work taken away, the business he left offered precarious support for the widow and children. All this his widow knew. Yet, with rent overdue, the doctor to pay, and her children and herself to look out for, she buried her husband’s body in a 1150 casket, and the undertaker's total bill ran more than $250. The desire of the living to pay final tribute to the dead frequently outweighs the dictates of common sense' and prudence, even to the point of violating the known wishes of the dead. Extravagance along this line "is encouraged by Undertakers, who suggest expensive funerals and offer long-time credit, as many a family knows to its sorrow. In other countries societies, the members, of which agree to keep all funerals under their direction within a certain cost limit, have done much to check extravagance. There is room for organizations to reduce funeral expenses in this country, and a movement in that direction should be encouraged.—Chicago Journal.

EXPENSIVE ERRAND BOYS.

HE American farmer in 1.909 received $300,000,000 fqrthe egg crop. The American consumer paid $540,000,000 for the same eggs. Who got the difference of $240,000,000? The farmer raised the hens, took care of them, fed them, housed them, and paid about 50 cents apiece for the care of

each one. It cost him not less than $75,000,000 to keep the hens satisfied and prolific. So, all together, his earnings were reduced to $225,000,000. But somebody else got $240,000,000—-which is $15,000,000 more than the farmer received. From the time the eggs left the farmer to the time they reached the consumer the price on them was almost doubled. And the consumer, of course, paid.

Somewhere there is a leech in the egg market and the butter market and the meat market and the grocery market, and all the other markets, that is sucking away at the American consumer’s pocketbook. Until this leech is found and beheaded prices of living will be tremen- > dously high, and will grow higher, just so long as there remains anything in the pocketbook to be sucked out. It has not yet been shown that the leech Is not' the rail

WHAT HABIT WILL DO.

"It was a cold, misty morning in Liverpool, and urgent business required my presence in Sheffield at once, so I was in a hurry,” sa£s a young American girl who lately returned from England.

“I expected the unavoidable delay of the custom house, and sighed resignedly. An official opened my suit case, ran his hand hurriedly about, closed it with a snap, and returning it to me, said politely, ‘Thenk you!’ All in about two minutes! Joyfully I hailed a cab, and was driven to the railway station. As I paid my fare the cabman said distinctly, ‘Thenk you!’ with emphasis on the ‘you.’ When I bought my ticket, the man at the window said emphatically, ‘Thenk you!’

“This time I noted the oddly rising Inflection and long drawn lingering on the last word. The guard who examined my ticket closed the compartment window with a bang, but I caught a faint “Thenk you!’ as the train started.

“Arrived in Sheffield, I registered at the station hotel, and the young man at the desk said ‘Thenk you!’ as I signed my name. I took a tramcar up-town, and gasped In amaze as the conductor collected my fare. ‘Thenk you!’ he said, earnestly, as he punched a little ticket receipt for the half-penny which I gave him. ‘Let me off at High street, please.’ ‘Thenk you, I will,’ he "replied. Presently I thought he nodded as he looked at me, and as I started to my feet, I asked, ‘High street?’ ‘No, thenk you,’ he answered, ‘not yet.’ “I Inquired the way of a passer-by, and as he directed me he said, ‘Thenk you, good afternoon.’ This was really making me dizzy, and my mind reverted to an entertaining habit of my childhood, when I would repeat the same word over and over until It lost all meaning to my brain. “As 1 stepped out of the creeping thing which they call a 'lift' over there, the elevator boy fixed me with a penetrating eye. ‘Thenk you I’ he said softly," and I hastened onward.

“In the shops it was horrible. Entaring a draper’s, the tall man In a frock coat who stood by the door would pounce on me and thank me before I could noeslbiy ask for what I wanted to buy. I don't know what I was being thanked for, much of the time, but those two words were thrown st me so often that it finally got on my nerves, and I felt like shouting, ‘Don't—don’t say it!’ -4 “The salesgirl ‘thenked’ me before I made my purchase, and ‘thenked’ me afterward: the cash boy ‘thenked’ me as he passed me by; and If, as

Editorials

I hurried out, Fijollided with any one walking down the narrow aisle, I might beg their pardon in the clearest tones, yet ever~tEe’answer giyen to me you!’ “It was beyond analysis or explanation, and questioning was utterly of no avail. Once or twice I ventured to inquire as to the wherefore of the thing, but the answer made me shudder, and caused me to forbear. ‘lt has always been the custom, thenk you!’ And coming back across the sea I found relief at home, but sometimes even yet I toss feverishly in my sleep, and waking with a start, I think I hear, as if from some dim •cbo, ‘Thenk you!’’’

QUEER STORIES

England’s first Sunday newspaper appeared in 1780. It has been found in Nova Scotia that the lobster’s chief enemy is not the dogfish but the lobster.

One of the tricks in the fur trade is to insert white hairs in foxes and sables to make “silver foxes.” The industry of making lebkuchen, or honey cake, is worth to the German city of Nuremburg about one million dollars a year. In Louisiana the law permits “a widow to .marry again only provided she has waited ten months after the death of her husband.

Sand is the curse of Portuguese East Africa. It blocks the rivers and harbors and stretches in a vast sea toward the interior, effectually cutting off the coast towns from the highlands. Besides.'lt makes the problem of transportation the bugbear of the planter.

Nearly $1,000,900 worth of timber was imported into Natal in 1908. The country is practically treeless, so far as there is apy commercial value in the timber. . i . Up to 1789 the chief Water works of New York city - was in Chatham street, now Park row. The water was carted about the city in casks and sold -from carts.

It was so cold in New York part of the winter of 1779 that residents tn the vicinity were compelled to cut down the. tall trees that stood at what is now th* head of Wall street to make kindling wood.

Yaddo, the Saratoga home from which Spencer Trask started on his fatal trip to New York, is one of the show places of the spa town. It derive* it* name from the O f a little daughter of the Trask*. When bridge over th* picturesque *h*et of

road and the rexpress companies. In 1909 the traction companies increased their indebtedness by 11,015,000,000. The interest that is to be paid on this, of course, comes out of the public’s pocketbook. And the express companies during the year paid dividends that ranked among the highest on the whole list of industrial Institutions. They’re expensive errand boys, the railroads and the express companies.—Cincinnati Post.

COST OF LIVING.

N THE current number of Vogue is a most pathetic essay by Maria Scott on the successful management of a small Income. Maria admits—though reluctantly—that a young couple may venture to begiff life in a simple manner on $5,000 a year. Realizing that this is a drastic saying and one

that may be received with incredulity by the mass of the people, she goes on to apologize even for hinting that really "nice" people could live on so meager a sum, but is obliged to admit that by dint of a great effort it may be done in a way. She asks what denials are necessary for those who contemplate living on $5,000 a year, and then, seeing nobody rising to answer her, answers it herself by saying that great self-denial will be necessary to keep the wolf from the door. The one consideration that forces itself on the mind after perusal of Maria’s reflections is the tremendous amount of self-denial that is being practiced all over the country by persons who are living nobly on this small amount, not able to have more than one automobile and one short trip to Europe annually.—St Paul Dispatch.

A ROAD THAT STANDS WEAR.

EW JERSEY claims to havq discovered that bituminous roads cost less than macadam and stand the wear of automobile traffic much better. The State has elghty-five miles this road already and announces that it will lay no more of the old-fash-ioned kind. The objection to macadam

is that It is picked up by the wheels of automobiles and scattered to the four winds of heaven. The wear on the good roads leading out from automobile centers like all of the large cities shows conclusively that an Improved material is urgently needed. The bituminous road seems to serve the purpose because it has sufficient resiliency to meet the needs of traffic and at the sam* time is compact enough to prevent the particles from being picked up by rubber tires.—Nebraska State Journal.

water which lies near the home, she pointed and said: “Yaddo,” which was as near as her baby tongue could get to the word “shadow,” and she did not know that the childish utterance had -given a name to the place. “If I had my way,” Dr. Macnamara once confessed to an interviewer, ‘J should be singing in ‘Carmen’ instead of making speeches from the treasury bench. But, unfortunately, the British public thinks a great deal more of a man who can make a bad speech than a man who can sing a good song."—Westminster Gazette. Curious customs are noted among the Mijus, a little known Asiatic race, by an explorer, who writes: “Though living on the borders of Thibet, no trace of Buddhism is found among them. Their religion is animistic and consists in the propitiation of the various spirits to whom sickness, failure of crops and such like calamities are attributed. The propitiation takes the form usually of the sacrifice of a fowl or a pig, a small portion being set aside for the spirit, the rest going down the throats of the offerer and his family.”

Mr. Wu’s Rules for Longevity.

The delightful Mr. Wu Ting-fang, lately ambassador from China to the United States, is described In Miss Juliet Bredon’s book on her uncle, Sir Robert Hart, as having certain theories concerning one’s diet and one’s mental attitude toward life which have had much currency, among Occidentals of late years.

Wu Ting-fang prided himself upon his alert manner, which made him appear much younger than «e really was, and his favorite boast was that he meant to live to be two hundred. Furthermore, he would explain how the feat was to be accomplished.

The first thing, naturally, was diet, The man who would cheat time should live on nuts, like the squirrels. Under no conditions should he touch salt, and he should begin and end eacn meal with a teaspoonful of olive oil.

"I have hung scrolls in my bedroom,” Wu Ting went on to explain, “with these sentences written upon them in English and in Chinese: *1 am young, I am healthy, I am,cheer fuL’

“Immediately I enter the room my eye falls upon these precept*. I say to myself, ‘Why, of course I am, and therefore I am.”’ Was ever simpler or saner method discovered for warding off old age?

As It Struck Pat.

Father Flynn—Your daughter seems far from robust, I notice, Patrick. She look* rather fan-faced. O’Brien—Begorra, yer rlvirence, an’ is it two-faced ye’d want her to be lookin’?—Boston Herald. Even a truth-loving detective gets a shadowy reputation -X

A Mystery Solved.

A new kind of excitement to which dwellers in the country are henchforth likely to be subjected is set forth somffwhat amusingly in the Baltimore Herald. The energetic editor of the Gunawamp Advocate was rudely awakened from his afternoon slumber in his office chair by a violent ringing of the telephone bell. At first he thought it was the jingling of a silver coin, and a smile played over his sunken features; but when he realized what it really was he sprang to his feet. “Hello!” he shouted, and seized a pad and pencil. “Hello!" came the answer. “Is this the Advocate office?” , “Yes. What do you want?” “Well, say, there has been a murder committed out here on my farm, and I want to have you come right out and write it up.” “A murder! What makes you think so?” “Well, I just found a hat, a pair of spectacles and a set of false teeth down in my south medder, and there ain’t another blessed thing in sight anywhere. Oh, it’s murder, all right.” “Have you run down all the clues?” “Yes. Ain’t even a footprint in the grass.” ' “AU right; I’ll be right out.” The editor had jumped into his shoes and coat, and was giving directions to his office bay, when the bell rang a second time. “Hello!” he shouted, nervously. “Hello!” came the answer. “You needn’t come out. An air-ship feller has just come in, ana says ne dropped ’em.”

The Puzzle Craze.

The pretty young woman with a small suit case stepped briskly up the gravel walk and said, “Good morning-” to Miss Eliza Long, who was enjoying life on her south porch. “Would you like to look at some puzzle pictures?” inquired the young woman. "I’d like to,” said Miss Long, frankly, “but I’ve promised Philander—that’s my brother —not to touch another one for six weeks. By that time he thinks the fever’ll be broken up. “No, ’tisn’t any use of opening that case; I can’t look. ’Twas only last night I promised Philander,” and Miss Long turned her head resolutely away. 9 ■

“I think he was unkind to extract such a promise,” said the young woman with a suit case, indignantly. “No, he’s a kind man,” said Miss Eliza, dispassionately. “He’s borne a good deal. He said last night that he was willing to stand irregular meals and silent evenings, and mornings of neighbors dropping in to exchange while the work stood still, and all such.

“He said he and the other men round had agreed that it had got to run its course ,and then ’twould be over and done with; but when it came to having me look at him across the supper table as if he’s a dummy, and when he asked what was the matter, elegant picture he’d make, squared off with the wall behind and the table in front, he saw ’twas time to take measures—and, thinking it over, I don’t know but he’s right.”

Hon They Got Out.

Uncle Ephraim had two hogs, which he kept in a pen in the rear end of his lot They were of the variety, and although they were fed bountifully with kitchen waste, it seemed impossible to put any fat on their attentuated frames. One morning when he went out to feed them they were not there. They had disappeared, leaving no clue to the manner in which they had made their escape. “What’s the matter, Uncle Eph?” inquired a neighbor, noticing the deep dejection with which the old man was looking down into the empty pen. “My hawgs is gone, sah,” he answered. “Stolen?" “No sah. I don’t see no signs dat anybody tuck ’em.” “Did they climb out over the top?” “No, dey couldn’t ’a’ done dat.’ “How do you think they got away?” “Well, sah,” said Uncle Ephraim, “my ’pinion is dat dem hawgs kind o’ raised delrselves up on aidge an’ crop* through a crack.”

Getting Hard to ’Em.

“I have just beard of the arrival of the third child in the Jones family,” remarked the woman. “The announcement of the first born was made by beautifully engraved cards, tied with tiny white ribbon; the second was by telegraph, and this third one, though a much-wished-for boy, was made merely by a postal card.”

“After the Ball Was Over.

Mr. Rabbit—What’s the matter, Porkey, did the banquet break up in a riot?— —,

Porcupine—No, there wasn’t any riot; only the lion neglected to provide toothpicks for the guests.—Judge.

As She Is Spoken.

“English is a funny language, after all, isn’t it?” “Why so?" "I heard a man talking of a political candidate the other day say: ‘lf he only take* this stand when he runs "he’ll have a walk-over.’ ”

Sport Notes.

man,” said Uncle Eben, “think* he’s havin’ a tremenjous big time gs a sport when he is merely goin’ through de imitation of de ‘Down-and-Out Club.’ ” ' > ” We have noticed that a man had rather brag on his kin than to board them. ' :

WOMAN’S PLACE IN CHINA.

Ineceaa of Feminine Doctor)—Miaofanarri Breach of Etlueette. In China, as in other Eastern countries, it is Imperatively necessary if women are to be reached to reach them py women, writes Lady Florence Cecil In the Woman’s Though not absolutely secluded as in Indian zenanas, a Chinese woman is practically unapproachable to men who are not near relatives; she does it is true, turn her back and avert her face when a stranger appears, as a Korean woman does, neither does she veil her face as a Mohammedan woman would do; but nevertheless she is kept apart from intercourse with men, and to listen freely to male teachers, though far more possible in these latter days of emancipation than it ever was before, is still a difficulty and an Impropriety.

A Chinaman’s best friend never thinks of asking after his wife or daughters; they do not appear if he entertains guests; the higher class women are seldom seen driving out, much less walking about’ the streets. A missionary of many years’ experience told me of a breach of etiquette he once made in bowing to a lady whose husband he knew Intimately; she hurried by, blushing deeply, and returning no sign of recognition to so unmannerly a salutation; he never attempted such a thing again, henceforth ignoring any Chinese lady he might happen to meet.

Medical work among them can best be undertaken by women. In point of fact the Chinese women flock by thousands to the women’s hospitals carried on by lady doctors and nurses. One lady doctor told me she had dealt with as many as 5,000 out-patient cases in a month; another lady doctor worked with her, as well as a staff of Chinese nurses under her enxtlrely trained by herself. As their shyness of foreign men and distrust of the motives of missionaries- wear off the women do, Indeed, freely attend hospitals staffed by male doctors, but undoubtedly this particular field of women’s work will always-continue to need many laborers. MUch, too, has been done in the way of training and teaching _ young Chinese women, both as doctors and nurses; they are teachable creatures, very docile and eager to learn, deftfingered, neat and soft-voiced—all excellent qualities in nurse or woman—but no Oriental can entirely believe in the absolute necessity for rigid cleanliness and for antiseptic precautions. A surgeon told me that one of his most onerous duties was to insist on his students obeying the ordinary regulations of an .operating room or to make them understand that they must wash their hands again if they stroked their heads or touched their queues, or again that' they must not open a note in the middle of an operation; consequently the lady in charge of a hospital has arduous work in perpetual supervision of everything, even to the smallest details.

Wit of the Youngsters

Harry, the small son of a young widow, was tired of frocks. One evening when a gentleman called to see his mother he said: “Mamma, will Mr. Green buy me a pair of pants if I let him marry you?”

Little Robert received a wagon on his birthday morning and within an hour he had broken a wheel. After trying in vain to repair tiie damage he called to his father, who soon mended it. "Papa,” he said, “you are smarter than you look.”

“What are you laughing at. dear?” asked a fond mother of a little 4-year-old miss who seemed to be greatly amused. "Oh, at something funny that happened,” was the reply, "but it’s no use to tell you, because it ain’t funny enough for both of us to laugh at.”

Elmer—Mamma, didn’t you say we should always try to make other people happy? Mamma—Yes, dear. El-mer-Well, I know a little boy that I could make very happy if I had 5 cents to buy, candy with. Mamma— Who is the little boy? Elmer—Why, it’s me.

Who Are the Elect?

Two modern statements of the doctrine of "election,” neither of which would quit* satisfy John Calvin or Jonathan Edwards, are given in the Congregationalism

One wa* Henry Ward Beecher’s epigrammatic and convincing phrase: "The elect are whosoever wHI; the non-elect are whosoever won’t.” Good as this is, there i* another explanation that is a star of equal magnitude. It wa* made by a colored divine, who said: “Brethren, it is thia way. The Lord, He is always voting for a man; and the devil, he is always" voting again at man. Then the man himself votes, and that break* the tie!"

Haughty.

"Were you ever arrested before?" asked the magistrate, whose principal business is imposing fine* for speeding. “What do you think I’ve been doing all these years?" asked the chauffeur —“pushing a wheelbarrow?”—Washington Star. ; The thing an old man becomes most thoroughly tired of is grumbling, although he doe* a good deal of it himself.

FACTS IN TABLOID FORM.

A balloon’s life is about eighty flights. An English agricultural society ha* a sparrow extermination fund. Nearly thirty-nine thousand person* visited Shakespeare’s home In 1909. A ten-year-old clove tree will produce about twenty pounds annually. The dated sandwich is an innovation in the railroad station restaurant service. The number of foreign student* in the United States is constantly increasing. Nine of the eighteen expeditions in search of the south pole have been of English origin. Of all European countries, only Holland has a lower rate of. infant mortality than Great Britain. When telegraphs were first employed the speed of transmission was only four to five words a minute.

A Cincinnati man has patented an electric air heater for barbers’ use, compressed ajr passing through a cylinder containing a resistance coil. From- eight thousand to ten thousapd coal slack and pitch briquette* are manufactured and consumed in th* city of Belfast, Ireland, each year. Radio activity of minerals may be tested by their effect upon a photographic plate, which will show shadows of metallic objects placed between it and a specimen of uranium mineral. A building which, it is believed, holds the 'record in this country in antiquity as a Presbyterian church is still standing at Southampton, Long Island. Its erection was begun in 1707 and it was dedicated as a church in 1708. Bendigo, Australia, has started a reform movement to stop the chiming and striking of all-night public clocks, the city being moved thereto by Mme. Melba. The prima donna passed * sleepless night in Bendigo owing to the din of clocks and she has threatened never to visit the city again. The complaint has been discussed by the Bendigo city * council' and it wa* decided to silence the clocks from midnight tp 6 a. m. Switzerland has a total population of 3,500,000 and there are 1,384 periodicals in the country, or one publication to every 2,715 persons. Of th* publications giving special attention to news and politics, 472 are printed in German, 101 in French, 21 in Italian and but one in Romansch. Th* religious publications include 60 German Protestant, 40 French Protestant, 24 Catholic, 9 Missions, 2 Jewish and 3 Free Thought. The Swiss newspar pers have limited telegraph service, as compared with newspapers Id qther countries, but they are, as a rule, well edited.—Consular Report. At thifty-three Napoleon was eraon a foaming steed twenty miles, seized his retreating army and, hurling it upon Early, snatched victory out of the jaws of defeat, sending him, with his hosts, flying up the valley of the Shenandoah; Wolfe scaled the Heights of Abraham at Quebec, dispossessed the French of their possessions in Canada and gave two provinces to England; Correggio had produced his three world-renowned pictures, “The Assumption of the Virgin,” “Ecce Homo” and “The Penitent Magdalen”; George Stephenson mad* his first locomotive; Edison had harnessed electricity to the uses of man; Gray wrote his “Elegy"; Poe his “Raven,” and Thomas Jefferson the “Declaration of Independence." A fine cure for the whooping cough is made of offerings of hair, in Sunderland. The best way there ts to shave the crown of the head and hang the hair on a bush, or . small tree, preferably, and as the birds or wind carry away the hair, the cough will disappear. A still more potent remedy for whooping cough ts had in the Northumberland idea, which is that the cough can be cured by putting th* head of a live trout in the patient** mouth and letting the fish breathe into the latter. A still more strenuous way is to pass a hairy caterpillar through the mouth, after which the worm is to be put into a small bag and tied around the victim’s neck. The cough ceases when the caterpillar gives up this earthly life. Th* whooping cough is not so bad after all, is it?—Chicago Tribune. ' The statistics of trade and industry for the year recently closed, made public by the Canadian government, shows that Canada has recovered in a striking manner from the depression of two years ago. The bank clearing* reached the enormous total of $5,189,994,363, an Increase of 20 per cent over 1908, while the new buildings erected during the season approximate $60,000,000, a gain of $20,000,000 over the preceding year. Daring the year 190,000 immigrants entered the Dominion, of whom 90,000 came from th* United States, most of them with capital. In 1908 the immigrants numbered 151,009, of' whom 59,000 wero from the United States. The crop*, of the prairie province* yielded a total of 343,117,864 bushels of wheat, oat*, barley and flax, as compared with 243,206,915 In 1907. During the last ten year* Ontario has increased In population 447,000; Quebec, 450,000; Manitoba, 215,000; Saskatchewan and Alberta, 510,000; maritime provinces, 145,000, and British Columbia, 115,000, making the total population of Canada 7450,000.