Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 107, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 May 1910 — AMBERGRIS TREASURE. [ARTICLE]

AMBERGRIS TREASURE.

Van la nature's nobleat work, but Ae la often easily worked. Some beef la corned and much Bore scorned in these days of the boycott. * ■ ■ ■ ■= Tbs world will never have a very good opinion of a man who loafs In a barber shop. Ones mors It is reported that Mene11k la dead. He must have aa many lives aa a cat Professor Munsterberg says that lr. this country the woman la the bead of the house. Let's admit it and save trouble. There la a tendency to-day to discuss fanning as a "serious proposition.” Few farmers have found it humorous. A New York actress has been argsstod on a charge of stealing diatnonds. But possibly her press agent can prove an alibi. An expedition of Frenchmen has returned from the antractic regions. They deny Indignantly that they discovered any poles. Mr. Roosevelt rode a camel in Egypt He could have bidden two at once, of course, had he desired to startle the natives. J. Pierpont Morgan goes in for old mastsVs, etc., without counting the cost but It Is too much to believe that he Intends buying a nobleman for a son-in-law. Ex-Vice President Fairbanks says war with Japan is Impossible. ExBecretary Shaw says it is inevitable. It would be hard to find a better chance for an argument. A New York preacher is afraid It will goon be possible for people to secure divorces merely by telephoning to Reno for them. A lot of other people are busy wondering why he is afruid. J A Missouri man Is advertising for a wife with "a good, wholesome smile.” Ladies who answer the advertisement Should be warned that It will be absolutely necessary for them to show him the smile. It Is probable that as soon as the Egyptians get time to think It over thoroughly they will discover that they knew it all along, but did not have the courage to acknowledge it to themselves. The subjects of King George of Greece recently greeted him with a storm of "xitos.” It should be explained that a “sito” is not at all like a machete or a boomerang. The constitution Is to be revised, and their storm of “zitos" Indicated that they were glad. “Preventive astronomy” Is the apt term that has been applied to the work of certain Chinese officials who are educating the people in regard to Halley’s comet. To counteract superstition In this way shows that a knowledge of astronomy may be put to a highly practical use. Now it develops it was an office boy who sold stock short and wrecked the Hocking pool. This recalls the New Jersey’s Senator’s historic maid who mailed compromising stock letters which the Senator had resolved to destroy, but had inadvertently left on the library table where letters were nsually put for the maid to mall. These mistakes of underlings will happen In the most carefully regulated Camilles and offices. Hopkinson Smith, who laments the disappearance of amenity and gentleness from the life of New York, has Incidentally furnished a definition of a “gentleman” which may interest many aho know one perfectly well when tfiey lee him, but would perhaps be put to It to describe his essential qualities In words. Mr. Smith says that a gentloman Is clean, honest, courteous to women, kind to children, respectful to old age, considerate to the poor, and sympathetic toward the “under dog.” With the slight amendment that he should be courteous to other men as well as to women, this seems satisfactory.

▲ correspondent of the New York Times finds new evidence of American extravagance and wastefulness In the articles which American families throw away. He calls attention to the fact that a junk-dealer In New York pays the city more than seventeen hundred dollars a week for the privilege of taking what he pleases from the refuse •oows before they are towed to sea; and that although Be thus pays nearly ninety thousand dollars a year, he receives three hundred and fifty thousand for the Junk which he rescues from the dump. The correspondent's charge may be true, but his illustration does not prove It. The value of old tin cana waste paper and the other things which oome from the garbage heaps Is due to quantity and propinquity. There are millions of the cans, and in such a quantity they are salable. The few cans an average family collects are not worth the space they occupy- ' n-u. ,i : s In accounting for the high cost of Wring PwfiMor LaugUin of the Unlyersitjr at Chicago mentioned several

faatom—excessive duties on raw material, desertion .of the farms by youth, abuse of combination, lack of organisation among consumers, and flagrant extravagance, public and private. The censure of those who live ®p to their incotrie, or beyond It, who apo the rich and give no thought to old age or emergency, was not too severe In Professor JLaughlln’s able leoture. And nothing Is more wholeacme than his hope of “a new aristocracy—the aristocracy of the simple Ufe”—the aristocracy of men and women who “pay less homage to gold and more to the virtues of honesty and right living.” The gospel of the simple life has lent Itself to satire and parody. It has encouraged fads and posing, insincere and costly experiments. But It will survive ridicule and perversion. Extravagance Is folly, and simplicity does not mean the giving up of such comforts as are necessary to cleanliness, to beauty, to economy of effort. The talk of "back to nature” is not all as rational as it might be, but there Is a vital element of truth In it. It Is, indeed, evidence of a healthy reaction against congestion, “whirl” and waste. As a writer in the Atlantic points out, the same forces which have produced the cost of living problem will aid In Its solution. “It seems Inevitable ” ai~ lHr says, “that there should develop some general conversion of material into mental wants, and a partial substitution of culture for wealth as a measure of the value of the individual.” In fact, even the automobiles, clubs and mechanical pleasures may contribute to the revival of slmpllcty and love of nature. Suburban and rural life has profited by the advance of machinery, and the trolley has caused a counter-drift to the open and free spaces. Never was there more interest among men of affairs than now in country homes, outings, rural surroundings. Professor Laughlin’s aristocracy” Is perhaps already in process of creation.

Stoi> of a $30,000 Limp and Some* thing About the Substance. The story of how a Manchester (N. H.) painter found In the St. Lawrence river a lump of grayish substance weighing thirty-eight pounds, and how he has discovered that the solid fatty stuff Is ambergis and Is worth $30,000, recalls the nearest thing to romance that ever entered Into the lives of Gloucester and New’ Bedford whalers, In the old days when American whalers dared every sea. It was like a lottery. Once In a lifetime you might chance on the decaying body of a whale, giving off an awful smell, and Inside that whale would be a fortune enough so that you would never have to go to sea again. Charles Reade, as far as we remember, Is the only writer to Introduce ambergis Into fiction. In “Love Me Little, Love Me Long” David tells Miss Fountain how “the skipper stuffed their noses and ears with cotton Bteeped In aromatic vinegar, and they lighted short pipes and broached the brig upon the putrescent monster and grappled to It; and the skipper Jumped on It and drove his spade (sharp steel) in behind the whale’s side fins.”

It is a matter of record that not far from (he Windward Islands a Yankee skipper In one of the best old whaling years did cut out of a whale ISO pounds of ambergis, which was sold for £SOO. The price quoted for many years was $6 an ounce. Ambergis Is often found floating on the sea, particularly off the coast of Brazil and of Madagascar. The Bahamas send more than any other source to market The stuff Is a secretion of the sperm whale which dies of the disease producing the perfume matter. Chemists find it hard to account for the fact that the smell of the dead whale Is so horrible when the substance taken out is valuable only as a source of sweet smells. —Brooklyn Eagle.