Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 142, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 June 1910 — Page 3

• • • • THE PICKPOCKET AND HIS VICTIM.

MAN from whom a sum of money has A been stolen and who has caused the arrest of a suspect receives an offer of the —return of the money taken If he will drop • UmE the prosecution. Desiring the return of his money more than the punishment of the thief, he consents. The money Is re-

turned and he notifies the police and the court that he has no charges to make. Whereupon the orders the release of the man whose guilt Is practically confessed by the return of the money. What are the moral aspects of such a case as this? The vietlm of the thief Is naturally eager to get his money back, but is he justified In letting the thief go? Is he not, In fact, compounding a felony when he agrees to such a settlement? What right has he to save the thief from Imprisonment and to set him free, so that he may prey on society? Such questions often confront citizens against whom crimes are committed. The temptation to recover the valuables and the repugnance for being mixed in court proceedings frequently lead to such settlements. There can be no doubt, however, that they are against public policy and, In point of fact, indefensible. One may go farther and question the wisdom of the judge who will let a prisoner go under such circumstances. It would seem better to secure the attendance in court of the accuser by whatever means may be necessary, so that a trial of the matter could be held. The offer and acceptance of the return of the stolen money would be strong corroborative evidence of the guilt of the accused man. Pickpockets are dangerous* persons to be at large. When caught red-handed -they ought to be prosecuted to the limit, whether the victim gets his money back or not. —Minneapolis Journal. COAL TAB PRODUCTS AND HEART V ATT,TIRE.

S— > O MANY people suffer from sleeplessness and other real or imaginary affections of what we call nerves; and so many who think they suffer also think they find relief in a certain cycle of hypnotic drugs, that the permanent effect of these drugs on health is a matter of even more popular

than medical interest. The drugs In question are derived from the by-products of gas making and oil refining, coke burning and the like. Science has utilized these unpleasant mineral smells as it has utilized the animal smells of the packing houses. These compounds are grouped together for the chemist by the fact that they approach the highly complex formulas of organic chemistry and for the vulgar world of apothecaries and patients by the fact that the names of most of them end in al. They differ from the opiates or narcotics formerly used to produce sleep in their direct effect upon the brain and nerves through the circulation. This effect is produced through an influence upon heart action against excess of which medical men warn patients and which observing patients are able to detect. This effect varies In different preparations and in different patients, according td their condition and susceptibility, all the way from a slight depression of Vitality

CLIMATIC IRRITABILITY.

Why Certain Localities Are Brad ng and Others Are Enervating. Certain places are said to be “bracing," while others enjoy an unenviable reputation of being enervating, though the latter quality is sometimes described as “soothing,” according to the London Lancet. The very antithesis of soothing is the climate too often met with in many resorts on the Mediterranean littoral during winter, where a blend of hot and cold that is disagreeable to the healthy and very trying to the invalid may frequently be experienced. It is common in midwinter in these places for the landscape to be quivering in the hot sun while a piercing wind from the northeast seizes every opportunity—the shade of a palm tree or a wall —to grip the unwary traveler in its fierce embrace to the detriment of his comfort, possibly of his health. The Inexperienced laugh at the cautious resident who dons his overcoat in spite of what looks and feels like summer sunshine, but the wages of ignorance is often disease. There is one curious effect of these bitter-sweet climates —namely, a certain irritability of temper that attacks people after a few weeks spent in these surroundings. Ask any one who has passed three months at Helouan or Algiers, Nice or Menton, and although he may not admit it as regards himself he will readily concede the truth of this observation on behalf of his friends. Now, this irritability is no doubt an outward and visible manifestation of a disturbance of nervous equilibrium consequent on nervous exhaustion. The effect of these rapidly recurring alternations of heat and cold on the nervous system is strictly comparable with'that of quick alterations of light and dark on the eye. The" bewildered vaso-motor system does its best to respond to the kaleidoscopic indications, but fails and ultimately reacts on the nervous system as a whole. When this symptom deciares itself it ' Is time to ipove on, either further south, where the variations of temperature are less marked, or to a higher altitude, where the temperature, being low, is more uniform. . The latter is the better choice of the two, because no matter how/far south one goes, starting from the Mediterranean, much the same difference obtains between the temperature in the sun and that of the wind. The only advantage attending the desert air is that, being absolutely dry, the alternations are less trying than the near coast, where the relative humidity Is high- » ~AI

Spiders in the Cheese.

Andre Laturbe, a young Parisian who thought he had solved the problem of living at other people’s expense, has been arrested for a most ingenious

Editorials

Opinions of Great Papers on Important Subjects.

fraud, a St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Paris correspondent says. His method was to go to a fashionable restaurant and dine well. When he got to the cheese stage he produced from his pocket a little tin box full of spiders. To Introduce a couple of spiders on the plate from which he was eating his cheese was the work of a moment. Then he called the waiter and protested loudly against the filthiness of supplying food with spiders in it. On the arrival of the manager he protested still more loudly and the ruse Invariably ended by the distract ed manager hushing the thing up by inviting the outraged customer to take a glass of old brandy and tendering profuse apologies. Of course the waiter was instructed to present no bill. But finally Laturbe, in choosing a restaurant where he has not been before, happened to choose one that employed a waiter who had seen his trick at another establishment. This man quietly sent for the police and when Laturbe had been arrested and searched the box of spiders was found In his pocket.

NEWS OF RECENT BOOKS

lan Hay, who comes before the American public for the first tinie with his new novel, “The Right Stuff,” Is a young Scotch writer. “The Right Stuff” has been compared with Barrie’s “WheiTa Man’s Single.” It deals with London life of to-day. Maurice Hewlett has lately been appearing as the bellwether of Thomas Hardy’s admirers. Mr. Hewlett belongs to a family that has lived In Somerset and Dorset for generations. The members of the family were always Whigs and Puritans. Mr. Hewlett has some French Huguenot blood. His early reading wag Mallory, the Bible, “Don Quixote” In English, Sir Thomas Browne. William Allen White recently entertained Governor Stubbs of Kansas, Mrs. J. Pierpont Morgan and Miss Morgan at his home in Emporia. In an Interview the next day the Governor characterized Miss Morgan as an “insurgent.” This is perhaps significant In view of the fact that Victor Murdock, who, It Is believed, is the original of one of the characters In Mr. White’s novel, "A Certain Rich Man,” Is an Intimate friend of Mr. White's —and a leading insurgent H. G. Wells tells a story of a \ business man next to whom he once sat at a public dinner. The conversation had turned upon one of bls own books, and Mr. Wells had said something to the effect that “were there no self-seekers

• • • • e to complete heart failure and stoppage of life. Some drugs seem to affect one person in this way and some another, but few persons are immune to all of them. It appears that medical men in the East are proceeding from Individual warnings in relation to the use of drugs to an organized campaign against any resort to .them except on a physician’s order and under his direction. They resemble other remedies In the respeet that Injurious results follow their abuse. Whether these results are so uniform and certain as, to make (t necessary to pay a doctor’s bill every time one takes a dose appears still to be a matter of dispute.—St. Paul Dispatch. WHY MEATS ABE HIGH.

THE schemes of “civilization” to put food materials (mixed with some materials that are not food) through various complications that greatly Increase the price arid hencp the profit to the mixers, and jMgSgMK that capture trade by putting out a product jj ag a different appearance, color.

odor or taste from the same thing in a less expensive form, are entirely based upon qgir anthropoid curiosity. In the case of meats, for instance, the farmer takes grain worth a cent and a half a pound and feeds it to a steer who completely consumes fourteen out of fifteen pounds of it, and deposits in his carcass, together with the fifteen pounds of grain, two pounds of water. Now this steer the farmer sells to the packer at a rate high enough to pay for all his feed, labor and the loss from animals that did not thrive. Next the packer turns 40 per cent of this steer into fertilizer and fusses and fixes the rest of it up and passes it on to us through the hands of a dozen storage men, wholesalers and retailers; finally It reaches the consumer a pitifully meager of the original food grown on the farm, and hopelessly loaded with the product of the steer’s physiological economy and the packer’s chemical laboratory. When one considers the waste and folly of the whole proceeding, instead of being surprised that meats are high, he wonders that they are so low.—Physical Culture. BACK TO THE LAND

SNE HUNDRED years ago human society was essentially rural. Since then the great collective interests have developed, and the thought of the world has become largely urban. The present interest in country life is the rising of a tide. It is an unconscious expression of the sent!-

ment lying back in the human mind that society must be neither predominantly rural nor predominantly urban. We are now beginning to see that the most fertile civilization must be the result of the attrition of the two great means by which human beings express themselves —as individuals and as collective or aggregate units. Country life typifies the Individual selfacting unsyndicated means; city life typifies the associated consolidated and corporate means.—National Magazine.

the world would bo a Utopia.” This neighbor promptly observed: “I malntalp that all water used for drinking and culinary purposes should be boiled at-least an hour.” “You are a physician, I presume?” suggested the novelist "No, sir,” was the reply, "I am In the coal line.” It is well known that at one stage of his career Mark Twain was In serious financial difficulties. He was interested in the publishing firm of C. L. Webster & Co., and when that company failed he insisted upon undertaking their liabilities. The figures are now being recalled. "The assets of the company were realized upon as far as possible, whicn enabled the firm to pay about 40 cents on the dollar. As the entire debts amounted to 4100,000, this left >60,000 of unpaid and unsecured debts. When this became known Mark Twain announced that he would assume personally the responsibility of paying the >60,000. His phrase was: ‘l’ll pay this If I live.’ No one believed him, but he immediately went cn a lecture tour, wrote ‘Following the Equator,’ and kept at work until he had paid every dollar of the Webster indebtedness.”

Aged Man Sings Six Hours.

What Is believed to be the most prolonged singing performance on record has just been achieved by Alexander R. Porter, a magistrate living In the Liverpool suburb-of Waterloo, who before retiring from business was chief accountant In Liverpool of the North and South Wales bank, the London Express says. Mr. Porter has sung a hundred songs In one evening by way of demonstrating his vigor at the age of 72. The veteran magistrate is sprightly in his bearing "and has a ruddy and cheerful face. He believes that vigorous and frequent singing tends to longevity and good health and attributes his own mental and physical well-being to 1 vocal exercise. Since he was a lad he has x always begun the day by a vigorous bout of singing before breakfast and closed It with a liberal exercise of his vocal cords In the evening. The more he has sung the more he has found himself able to sing, and he contends that the singing has invigorated his heart and brain, expanded his lungs, and so largely contributed to his enjoyment of good health. Mr. Porter on his 72d birthday gave a party to relatives and friends, and during the evening sang 72 songs, one for each year of his life. The songs Included modern light opera, old ballads and sacred selections, and were rendered In a rich and powerful baritone, accompanied by a pianoforte. The feat took six hours, with necessary Intervals. , When a girl goes out of town on a visit, and her hostess cries when she departs for home, she thinks her visit was successful.

QUEERSTORIES

Neptune takes more than 160 years to make the complete revolution round Ithe sun. More than 400,000 persons emigrated from this country during the year 1907. This is a much smaller number than shown by the previous year. The Union Pacific Railroad Company Is conducting extensive experiments with the hope of making wireless telegraphy available for the operation of trains. From estimates and actual figures It Is computed that in the history of this country the total number of foreigners arriving on our shores amounts to 27,111,850. Wine production In Chile Is Increasing. The acreage in vineyards is 145,894, of which 47,103 acres are irrigated*. There is great demand for American oak staves. The Siamese language Is a great mixture of nearly all the dialects and languages of the far east, namely, Chinese, Malay, Mon, Cambodian, Sanskrit, Pali, and others. It is announced in the French press that the historic house occupied by Napoleon on the Isle of Elba, known as the Villa San Martino a Porto Ferrajo, is to be sold at auction. With the house are to go the furniture and other souvenirs of the Emperor. The newspapers urge that the friends and admirers of Napoleon take steps to prevent the dispersal of the historic objects. A subway amusement pier, consisting of an under-water chamber, with collapsible entrance and exit tubes, is proposed for one of the Atlantic coast resorts. The amusement seekers will enter the chamber through the tube leading from the shore, and leave It through th tube rising to the pier above the chamber. Portholes around the sides of the chamber will give a view of the bottom of the sea. Mrs. Margaret Stimson has just completed her forty-fifth year of service at the Institute of Technology, Boston. She was appointed in 1865 by President Rogers to take charge of the chemical apparatus used by students, Is still’ln active service and is said to remember the names and personality of more men who have attended classes In the Institute of Technology than any other person connected with the institution. In 1903 India rubber sold for 88 cents a pound. Recent special cable dispatches told' how London is going mad in gambling In stocks of rubber companies, the stuff itself having risen In price to >3.08 a pound. This Increase gives additional Interest to the processes of regeneration of waste rubber and of the manufacture of substitutes. The regeneration of vulcanized India rubber consists in removing the sulphur, which was added In the process of vulcanization.

CLOTHES OF ODD MATERIALS.

Fiber of Filamentous Stone, Iron Cloth and Limestone Wool. The Russians manufacture a fabric from the fibre of a filamentous stone from the Siberian mines, which is said to be of so durable a nature that it is practically indlstructlble, Harpers Weekly says. The material is soft to the touch and pliable in the extreme, and when soiled has only to be placed in a fire to be made absolutely clean. Iron cloth is largely used to-day by tailors everywhere for the purpose of making the collars of coats set properly. This cloth is manufactured from steel wool and has the appearance of having been.woven from horsehair. Wool not the product of sheep is being utilized abroad for the making of men s clothing. This is known as “limestone wool" and is made in an electric furnace. Powdered limestone, mixed with certain chemicals, 4 s thrown into the furnace and after passing through a furious air blast it is tossed out as fluffy white wool. When it comes from the furnace the wool is dyed and made into lengths like cloth. A pair of trousers or a coat made of this material cannot, it is claimed, be burned or damaged by grease, and is as flexible as cloth made of sheep’s wool. An English manufacturer has succeeded in making a fabric from old ropes. He obtained a quantity of old rope and eordage, unraveled it and wove it by a secret process into a kind of rough cloth. The resultant material he dyed a dark brown. A suit of clothes made from this queer stuff was worn by the manufacturer himself, and it is said that he has a large trade in this line in the British colonies. A novelty in dress material for women is spun-glass cloth, which, it is said, can be had in white, green, lilac, pink and yellow shades. The Inventor of this fabric was an Austrian, and his invention Is said to have resulted In the production of a material as bright and flexible as silk. The first lady to wear a gown of this material was of royal rank. It was of a very delicate shade of pale lavender shot with pink, and its peculiar sheen reminded her admirers of the sparkle of diamond dust. Paper clothes wore worn by the Japanese troops, who found them very serviceable and much warmer than those of cloth. Paper dressing gowns, bathrobes %pd similar articles of attire are now being turned out by toe carload in England, France, Germany and other European countries. The paper whereof they are made is of the •'blotting*’ variety, and after being .treated by a new process Is dyed in va-

rlous ■ colors or printed with a pretty floral design. Even gloves are made of paper these days, the principal claim of advantage being that they are susceptible of being cleaned many times.

THE COMETS.

Gossip About These Eccentric Wanderers In Space. Halley’s eomet is only one of many. So far astronomen have located 200 of these in our solar system and they come and go at irregular Intervals. As early as Caesar’s death, 44 B. C., a comet was seen that came nearer the sun than any other save one and which was the most brilliant of any ever discovered. It reappeared in the reign of Justinian, 553 A. D., and Again in 1105. It was again located by Newton in 1680- The comet of 1843 was the only one which got closer to the sun than the one Newton tracked. Comets differ from planets in traveling through space. The planets revolve in a zone of no great breadth on either side of the ecliptic; but the paths.of the comets cut the ecliptic In every direction. The orbits of the former are nearly circular; those of the comets are of varying degrees of eccentricity. Halley’s, in 1682, affirmed that the striking comet which appeared that year was Identical with those which had been seen in 1607, 1531 and 1456, and that it traveled around the sun in a period occupying some 76 years. Biela’s comet, discovered In 1826, revolved around the sun In six years and three-quarters. It returned promptly in 1832, 1839, 1845 and 1852, since when it has not been seen. Lexall’s comet in 1770 was traveling In an elliptical orb round the sun, taking about five and a half years for the encircling. Again in 1876 it circled the •sun and then went out into space and disappeared. This is known as the lost comet, though several have disappeared since scientific observations have been in vogue. Donati’s comet, visible in 1858, was noted for its brilliancy, its distance from the sun being 15 billion miles. The comet is something of a traveler. This -one which is due this month has been rushing through space at 500 miles a minute and by May 18 will be going at 2,000 miles a minute. Juns 3 it will be nearest the earth. Some astronomers believe it will touch the ground. The tall of the comet is worth considering. It is of vast size, more than the-mind can comprehend. Some of them are 400,000,000 miles long and are composed of gaseous matter. Comets are supposed to consist of vaporized carbon or hydro-carbon gases.

Shark’s Eye Was On Him.

“Ever get mesmerized by a fish?” said the skipper, according to the Detroit Free Press. "No? Well, I have been many a time. It was a shark that did it. “I don’t know the scientific name of this particular variety of shark, but it abounds on the Nantucket shoals. When full grown they are from eight to ten feet long and weigh from 500 to 700 pounds. They have saw teeth, five rows of them, about an inch and a half long, and they can flatten the lot and chew theh gums. But for a human being the peril Is in the eyes. “I don’t believe in man-eating sharks. I believe that If a shark is in bloody water he gets excited and will snap at anything he sees. But let one of those fellows get his eye on you and you don’t know where you are at. “They have a habit of coming up alongside of your live boxes and lying there while you fish. Then when you get anything on your line the shark has It off before you get a chance to pull. “I remember the first time I saw one of theifi. I was a boy at the time and one of these fellows had come up alongside of my live box and I put my hand out and touched his back. He didn’t seem to mind at all, but a minute later, when I stood up, I caught sight of his eyes, or one of them. Well, sir, I just tumbled back in the boat and was as helpless as a jellyfish out of water. “I don’t know how to explain It. The eyes of the fish are no bigger than the point of your little finger, but there Is something that comes out of them that makes you tumble in a heap. Many a time after that did I have a similar experience, and I know of a lot of men who have felt the same effect. The only explanation I could suggest Is that the shark’s eyes have some sort of mesmeric power.”

Not a Madern Custom.

In a certain church In Phldadelphia the custom has prevailed of presenting to each scholar of the Sunday school an egg during the exercises at the cele bration of Easter. On an occasion oi the kind the assistant clergyman arose and made this announcement, “Hymn 419, ‘Begin, My Soul, the Exalted lay.' after which the eggs' will be distributed.”—Lippincott's.

Politic.

Mrs. Nocasb—Mercy! You let youi girl off every afternoon! Neighbor—Yes, Indeed, it is such a saving. The more she is away the fewer dishes she breaks.—lllustrated Bits.

Saved His Life.

"Don’t chdde me for carrying a revolver. Thia little gun saved my life once." “How exciting! Tell me about It.” "I was starving, and I pawned it.”— Cleveland Leader. Talk with any little man long enough, and he will remind you that Napoleon was of small stature.

FACTS IN TABLOID FORM.

Sugar alone will sustain life for * considerable time. Ona hundreds pounds of almonds yield forty-eight pounds of oil. Of ten dyes used for Easter eggs, four were found to be poisonous. The pawnbrokers of Great Britain Issue over 190 million pledges a year. The popular belief that a drowning person rises to the surface three times Is unfounded. Life Insurance returns show that more suicides take place on Tuesday day and Thursday than on other days. In Nantes, France, a city of 160,000 population, there is not a single modern steam laundry. The washing is done, on boats. The most valuable pipe In the world is the state pipe of the shaft of Persia. It Is set with precious stones, and Is worth >400,000. At the close of the last fiscal year the life saving establishments of the United States embraced 281 stations, most of them on the Atlantic coast. In addition to the >172,000,000 worth of merchandise, there was received from Alaska >18,000,000 worth of gold of domestic production during the last year. Copenhagen Is plagued with rats and It has ..been made a criminal offense to breed rodents for the purpose of securing the bounty offered for rat tails. There is just one other great cod bank In the world besides those off Newfoundland. It lies off Cape Agulhas, which Is the southern tip of Africa, and-south of the Cape of Good Hope. The Agulhas plateau Is said to be almost a duplicate In size and richness of the north cod banks. But this is too far off, so there Is little promise of its appeasing the hungry, appetite of the world for cod. Londoners are considering with Interest the scheme of Lady Edward Cecil by which a number of families living In the country might club together to retain the services of two first-class teachers to conduct classes at one of their houses. The teachers are to be paid extra to provide their own board and lodgings. In the case she furnishes as an example, the cost amounted to about >l,lOO a year for a class of six children. One of the great English railways Is Installing a compact railway ticket printing machine. When a ticket for' a certain station is required, the clerktouches an Indicator which carries the name of the station, slips a blank Into a slot, turns a handle and the completed ticket drops out. At the same time a record of the sale Is printed on a continuous strip of paper, together with the fare, and all information required for bookkeeping. There Is a noticeable development In the jaws of the boys taken out of the streets of London and sent Into the British navy. A scientist says of the phenomenon: ‘The Important notable improvement In them, next to their superior stature and healthy appearance, was the • total change tn the shape and expression of their faces. On analyzing this one finds that It was to be mainly accounted for by the increased growth and improved angle of the lower jaw." Japan’s police force was originally the most aristocratic body of the kind in the world. Its establishment was almost coincident with the emperor's decree forbidding the wearing of swords. By a stroke‘of the imperial pen the samurai were deprived of cherished weapons by which the gentlemen of Japan had been accustomed from immemorial times to advertise their rank. So they went into the police, where It is still possible to carry a sword; and a very formidable weapon it was, being of the two-handed variety, Hyperbole Gassaway went from here to a little town In southern California for his health. In two weeks he wrote home that he felt ten years younger. Some days later he wrote again that he felt twenty years younger. Then his family heard no more from him. They telegraphed the mayor of the California town for Information about their Hyperbole Gassaway and got this answer: “I regret to inform you that your beloved husband and father, after a month's residence here, died from cholera Infantum.” Nearly forty years ago the British colonial office, through the agency of the Kew Gardens, Introduced specimens of the Hevea rubber tree from the Amazon Into the far east, with the result that It has become acclimatized, particularly In Ceylon and the federated Malay states. During the last year nearly ten million pounds of plantation rubber was exported from Ceylon to Malaya at prices higher than were realized for any other rubber in the world, for the reason that it was marketed in a cleaner condition than 'the "forest” rubber shipped from Pam. —Cassler's Magazine for MayWhen Illinois sent Dick Richardson to the Senate a vacancy wga created In the old Quincy congressional district that Included Hancock county. A Democratic farmer, named Jake Davis, from Hancock county, got the nomination. The Republicans raised the cry against him that he was a slave bolder; this was "befo’ the wah.” This was Jake’s defense: ‘‘Fellowcitizens, they say I am a slave holder. Well, fellowcitizens, the facts are these: I married a woman In Missouri who bad fifty slaves and, fellowcitizens, my love for that woman was so strong that I would have married her If she had owned a hundred slaves.”—-From Non man E. Mack’s National Monthly.