Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 195, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 August 1915 — Page 3

A MOONLIGHT IDYL

By MILDRED CAROLINE GOODRIDGE.

Hans Breitung, fat, slow to move, a first-class musician but a better gourmand, seated himself at the stem of the excursion steamer Dryad with a grunt of satisfaction. He was glad to rest and to be away from the noisy clatter of band music—martial, rag time and sentimental. Hans was the violinist of the excursion boat band. At the picnic grounds he and his fellow musician had discoursed varied melodious strains at intervals all day long. Now returning after dark, the celebrants were too tired out to dance, the instruments were packed away, and, his cherished violin in his lap, he settled himself to take a nap after the arduous exertion of the day. Alas for poor Hans! The camp stool he sat in bad not been made to sustain the weight of two hundred and forty pounds avoirdupois. The rail against which it rested was flexible. The stool collapsed, Hans was thrown under the rail, he rolled — Splash! The water choked him and prevented ap. immediate outcry. That part of the boat where he had sought seclusion was deserted and dark. He went under Ihe surface to come up with the boat lights fading fast and far. Ach! the Instrument —my Cremona! was his first thought and he shot out a hand to seize and stay his drifting violin case. Its floating qualities might have helped sustain him. His feet assisted. He was too clumsily built for an expert swimmer, yet he managed to keep afloat. Then hope shone in his eyes. The bright moonlight showed land not fifty feet distant. But not the mainland. As Hans, panting, dripping, well-nigh exhausted, struggled up a sandy incline, a sudden shock assailed him. “Ach!” he gasped, “I remember now —the haunted island!” He stood spellbound, an eerie chill overspreading him. On the way down the lake a fellow musician had told him a weird story of the little island.

He Was Glad to Rest and to Be Away From the Noisy Clatter.

It was called haunted. Years agone, the story ran, a young musician and a virtuoso in the refined arts, had lived in the select summer resort over the mainland. He was a genius, he had money, he was an idolized pet of society, but all soul and sentiment. He had loved the fairest of the fair among the aristocratic coterie. The end was disappointment and heartbreak. She had wedded another. The stricken lover had immediately abandoned the social world. He had purchased the lonely isle. He had become a recluße. Hans recalled warning signs, forbidding trespassers, scattered over the little body of land. He had been told that the exiled lover was rarely seen. Perhaps he was dead now. At all events, old settlers on the mainland spoke gruesomely of the desolate island. So Hans wondered, in his superstitious way, if he had not jumped from the frying pan into the fire. Finally he summoned up the courage to advance farther to where the beach melted into the green sward. He tripped over what seemed to be a taut string set low in the grass— Bang! With a resonant yell Hans dropped his violin and ran. He dashed wildly through a nest of underbrush. He was out of breath, frightened and weak. He got into the middle of a prickly copse. The wiry thorns held him a prisoner. He sank with a crash to the ground and declined to keep up the fight. Had Hans gone a hundred feet farther, he would have come to a clearing and in its center he would have discovered a neat rustic hut. Through its doorway, as the spring gun went off, a ’ human form passed. The explosion warned of intruders. The hermit of Lone Isle set forth to investigate. He was a thin, pale young man, but his eyes, burning like two animated coals of fire, told of vast pent up emotion. His restless probing glance roved everywhere as he strode on. At last he came to the beach. He halted as he to the violin case aban-

doned by Hans in his mad flight. Hs picked it up, observed that it dripped water and opened it In the clear moonlight a strangelysubdued expression crossed the clasalo face of the recluse. “Five years,” he murmured in a hushed but intense tone —“live years I" Ah! what did they not comprise of anguish and sorrow and heartbreak? Hike one in a trance he stood, dreamily, reverentially regarding the first violin he had seen since he had dashed his own favorite Stradivarius to atoms in * mad fit of fury. Music! How foreign had it become to that music-loving soul! He recalled the effort of Mb life, a love cadenza, composed only for the woman he loved. He recalled that last night of their meeting, just such a night as this, when he had rowed her out into the lake and had played for her ears only his great composition.

Memory seemed to leave him. And most involuntarily he carried the violin to a moss-covered rock, seated himself, wiped the wet and damp from the instrument, and, his bosom heaving, his eyes Jjlinded 'with tears, drew the bow across the strings. His heart cadenza 1 Ah, he could never forget it! Like a sob it began, its mellow tones growing into solace and then the wild passionate longing of triumph and love. He was absorbed, his soul seemed telling his sad story to the mystic spirits of the night. So lost was he in his weird occupation, that he did not notice a small boat rowed by a woman, another woman seated at its stern, approach the spot The latter was dressed in deep mourning. Was it coincidence or destiny that had brought this being upon that fateful night, widowed only a short time since, to the scene of her early girlhood, to revive sad memories, while they floated along? Was she thinking of Adrian Hope? Aye, and of the cruel persistency of her selfish father, who for the sake of wealth had forced her to wed .a man she despised! And now that music—the love cadenza! It seemed to wrench her heartstrings. The frail boat floated ashore. She sprang out, sobbing, in tears. “Adrian —it is I, Roselle!” A new form came stumbling along towards the spot as those two stood facing one another, and explanation and pleadings for forgiveness poured brokenly from the'lipß of the woman at whom the recluse stood gazing as though she were a wraith from the unknown.

The woman in the boat sat spellbound. The man coming down the beach, Hans Breitung, heard all, marveled at it all, and then comprehended all. As the two so long separated drew nearer and nearer until their arms entwined, Hans Breitung reached out and took up his precious violin. He was wet, he was cold, but his heart was warm, and sterling, and true. “Ach!” he whispered, “softly it is like a play on the stage. It is love and happiness in the moonlight—-it is romance-cadenza, so —” He drew the bow softly, and there stole forth upon the ambient air, soft and liquid as a vesper’s echo, the mellow notes of a wedding fantasie. (Copyright, 1915, by W. G. Chapman.)

Home of Edward Lear.

Knowsley, England, should be dear to all children as the birthplace of many of their favorite rhymes. Edward Lear lived there for four years during the time of the thirteenth Lord Derby, and invented his first book of nonsense verses for the amusement of his patron’s children. The idea of composing these was suggested to him by a friend at Knowsley, who in an unguarded moment uttered the pregnant words: "There was an old man of Tobago.” "That was enough for Lear,” writes Mr. lan Malcolm, “and he ransacked the index to the Atlas of the World to find the names of places from which ‘an old man’ or ‘an old lady’ might have come. Thus he commandered Smyrna, Ischia, Columbia and Moldavia: but for ingenuity of rhyme I should divide the first prize between the old man of Abruzzl, So blind that he couldn't his foot see, and the old man of Thermopylae, Who never did anything properly.

The English of the Irish.

Until something less than 100 years ago the inhabitants of Forth and of Bargy spoke a language different from that spoken in the rest of Wexford or in any other part of the country. It was a language that Chaucer and* Spenser would have understood. To this day some of the old words still survive, such as “let” for “hindered,” “kennen” for “known,” “mate" for “meadow,” “sash” for “shame,” “ractsome” for “fair,” “redesmen” for “adviser,” “choir” for “lewd” for “ashamed.” Any angry person will still say,“l’ll make gobbets of you!” Other Wexford expressions, rarely to be heard in other parts of Ireland, are “renegged,” meaning “change of mind,” “coknowsure” for a knowing person, “ramshogues” for "foolish stories," “shandrumdandy,” for “broken down," “sharoose” for "displeased.”—Maude Radford Warren in Harper’s Magazine.

Wealthy Germans.

Germany nowadays has a large class who belong fb that increasing number of extraordinary people who want money without even knowing how to get on without it The only satisfactory test of the right to wealth is the ability to get on without it. One of modern civilization's most dangerous pitfalls is the subversive doctrine that all men shall have wealth, even before they have proved their ability to do without it.

THE EVENING REPUBLICAN, RENSSELAER, IND.

A British convoy in Flanders struck by a German shell. The horses are dead, but the driver of them is pluckfly trying to rise to his feet. His officer has Just reached his side.

IS NIGHT IN HELL

German Writer Describes Visit to Battle Front. Every Instrument of Murder and Destruction in Action —Fearful Conner! Splits the Ears and Rakes the Nerves. Berlin. —The Berliner Morgenpost publishes the following vivid description of the awful battles north of Arras by Dr. Max Osborne, a special war correspondent who had been at the .western front since the beginning of the war: “With four or five other correspondents I had decided to visit our. advanced trenches near Arras. Two officers, a captain and a very young lieutenant, offered to lead us to the outer German positions. They jumped into our car and silently we sped on through the night. “After a while the lights of our auto were extinguished. Not a sign of life was discernible around us as we ran along the road cautiously but swiftly. Then we noticed gray shadows moving through the darkness singly and in groups.

“Suddenly our car stopped and we had to advance afoot over the dusty, rocky road. Great rockets swept up through the darkness, in beautiful curves, bursting high in the air and sending sheaves of fire in all directions. Great white lamps, resembling large moons, lighted up the country for miles around. It seemed as if lighthouses had suddenly been built into the air. These mysterious lamps were light-bombs attached to parachutes which keep them floating between heaven and earth for some time. “A moment later there was fire all around us. The artillery on both sides had commenced its awful work. Earsplitting, infernal noise now accompanied the fantastic fireworks. The dull roar dissolved itself into innumerable sounds and noises. With faint shrieks, like scared little birds, the' French infantry bullets whizzed over our heads, the machine guns rattled, shrapnels exploded with a deafening roar and the great howitzers spit out their charges with a gurgling sound. Every instrument of murder and destruction was in action.

“Covered by earthworks and sandhills we slowly moved along. We were told that about this time of the night the battle was generally becoming less violent, but after we had passed the last houses of a village a veritable hell broke loose. On a hill about fifty yards from us a French shell exploded, and then another one. We tried to reach the nearest shelter, but shells struck on all sides of us, mowing down the trees, tearing great craters into the field and meadow and sending a hail of sand and stones over us as they exploded. “All the devils of hell seemed to have escaped. A fearful concert split our ears and racked our nerves. In inorganic, distorted rhythms and hundreds of discordant sounds the satanic symphony roared over the country, shrieking, howling, grinding, rattling and at times almost laughing. The earth trembled beneath our feet, more terrors to the hellish concert above and around us.

At last we reached the shelter and here, safe as in a box of a theater, we watched the indescribable spectacle. We were as if in a trance, completely carried away by the wild dance Of death before our eyes. Near the bombproof shelter the soldiers moved around with serious, calm faces. The rain of shells and fire seemed to have no terrors for them, as they did not even hasten their steps when they passed a particularly dangerous spot. And a year ago most of them were peaceful citizens and civilians like myself, and my colleagues. What men war has made of them!

“The night of horrors seemed endless, but at last a weak ray of light, which fell into our shelter, and the warbling of a lark told us that morning was near. Still the guns were thundering and roaring, but as the sun slowly began to rise the firing ceased. For a few minutes not a shot was heard and in the pale twilight my overheated brain drew a fanciful picture of a God walking over the land and commanding peace. "The dream was short however. French shells came again tearing through the air, our cannon answered and the small guns chimed in. Within ten mlmttet the battleraged as vio-

HIS HORSES SHOT FROM UHDER HIM

lently again, all during the long night. Hell had only taken a breath.”

GOT $3 FOR FAMOUS HYMN

"Tell Mother I'll Be There” Made Thousands—lnspiration From McKinley's Message to Mother. Columbus, Ind. —While here to deliver an address before the Tabernacle Society of Men, Rev. Charles M. Fillmore, pastor of the Hillside Christian church of Indianapolis, told how he came to write his famous song, “Tell Mother I’ll Be There.” He said he was trying to organize a little church in Peru, Ind., and was writing hymns, which he sold at an average of three dollars each. One morning while he was waiting for his wife to get breakfast he read in a newspaper a dispatch telling that the mother of President McKinley was dying. He noticed that the president had telegraphed, “Tell mother I’ll be there.” “Couldn’t you write a song about that?” his wife asked. Before ten minutes had passed, the minister says, he had written the chorus and before breakfast was ready he had the entire song completed. He sold it for three dollars. Ten million copies of this song have been sold and at the customary royalty of one cent a copy the minister should have received SIOO,OOO. But three dollars is all he ever got for it

HOW ALPINES FIGHT

Italy Reveals Unique New Arm to the World. Mountaineers of the Alps Perform Feats Which Nobody Believed Possible—Scale Summits and Take Enemy by Surprise. Rome.—The Italian war has revealed to the world a new arm, the "Alpines.’' , The Alpine troops are strictly an Italian institution and, with the Bersaglieri, form a picked corps. The defense of the Alps is intrusted to them. First of all an Alpine soldier is a son of the Alps. They are recruited there and they are organized into battalions. The mountaineer of the Alps never wastes a shot. His markmanship must be infallible or the famished wolves infesting the deep, wooded gorges will destroy his herd. When military conscription claimed him he knew every peak, road and track. Constant exposure to the severe winter cold or the heat of the summer had hardened his mus-

GIVING THE PERSONAL TOUCH

Lord Kitchener personally inspecting a body of troops in front of. the Guildhall in Manchester.

SHORTAGE OF CRANBERRIES

Government Reports a Decrease in Trimmings for the Thanksgiving Turkey. Washington.—According to the reports received by the department of agriculture from the cranberry fields of the United States, there may not be enough sauce for the Thanksgiving turkey this year. Information from the cranberry sections of Cape Cod, New Jersey and Wisconsin is that in consequence of the cold weather of a few weeks ago the crops will be short. Cast season there were 625,000 barrels from these three sections, but, according to best estimates now, the coming crop will not exceed 400,000 barrels. On the contrary, the predictions from the South are that the turkey crop will be larger than ever before in this country.

TWO MEN FIGHT WITH LYNX

North Dakotans Kill Vicious Animal in Fierce Battle Near Devils Lake. Devils Lake, N. D.—ln a battle In a wheat field a half mile from Lakota, Fred Hensey and Charles Travnicek were returned victors over a vicious female lynx, the first ever seen in the lake region. A dray stake was used by Travnicek to kill the lynx, which was ready to spring at Hensey, who was unarmed.

cles and made him insensible to fatigue. The training of the Alpine includes everything belonging to the infantry arm and more. He is taught how to regard a cave as his fortress and a rock as a redoubt. He is taught methodically and scientifically how to climb to an almost inaccessible peak or scale a sheer wall with the help of a rope and pick. Further, he learns how to dynamite a rock in the space of a few seconds and how to set tons of stones rolling down upon the enemy climbing after him. The training and fighting qualities of the Alpine were put to a severe test during the advance in the Trentino and Carnic frontiers, where the occupation pf the passes and the summits dominating them had to be made swiftly and effectively. The task devolved wholly on the Alpines and infantry.

On May 25, at two in the morning the reveille was sounded and the Alpines received the order to scale the summits facing them, chase the enemy away and prepare the ground for the infantry and artillery. Not in a sin* gle instance did the Alpines fall to reach their objective. The Austrians were surprised and either fled or surrendered after a brief resistance. At noon every battery of mountain artillery was in its place and shelling the Austrian forts. On the Carnic frontier, or more prein the Monte Nero sector, the task entrusted to the Alpines was harder and more complicated. Probably the exact history of the capture of the five peaks composing the Monte Nero range will never be written, but eye-witnesses maintain that this history will be a hymn of praise to the Italian Alpine troops. General Cadoma in describing the capture of Monte Poce, the fifth peak, said the Alpines performed feats which nobody believed possible. The Austrians themselves regarded this particular peak as absolutely impregnable. Towards Italy it was nothing but a sheer wall. The only way of approach lay through a deep gorge on the northern side of the mountain looking toward Plezzo. On the Italian side even a sentry was regarded as superfluous. The only way to take the fort was to scale the wall and reach the trenches undetected. The Alpines did it The rest is known. Two Austrian companies were surprised and dispatched in their sleep. Two mors shared the same fate. Later in tbs day the Austrians launched against the Italians a battalion of Hungarian Honved, in a desperate effort to r*« take the position, but the battalion was annihilated and the bodies ol the Hungarians are still at the IneUom of the gorge.

HONE TOEN HELPS

PROPER CARE OF THE LAWN Grass Plat Must Never Be Neglected If Home Is to Have a Proper Appearance. One of the most Important duties on the home place during the summer is the care of the lawn. There Is nothing about a place that makes so much for general attractiveness as a well cared tor lawn. Many people make the mistake of keeping the lawn cut too close. In that case the grass roots are exposed to hot sun and drying winds during the summer. Cut the lawn frequently, but do not set the machine too close. To keep the lawn looking clean at all times have a grass-catcher attachment on the mower. A careful watch for weeds on the lawn should be kept. Cut them out well below the surface with an old knife as soon as they are large enough to be seen. A roller on the lawn is advisable, but it should be used with care. Lawns that have been rolled lor a long time are likely to become over-rolled; there is surface cohesion or closepacking of the top soil, which prevents the admission of air and healthy root development. The remedy is the use of the spiked tamper. A home-made one may be made by taking a piece of two-inch plank, some 12x12-inch timber and inserting four-inch spikes an inch and a half or two inches apart Bore holes a little smaller than the spikes before driving them in, to prevent splitting the wood. Perforate the whole - surface thoroughly with this, give a top dressing, lightly rake it in and water the whole thoroughly late in the afternoon.

HAVE TOP SASH SCREENED

May Be Considered Small Matter, But Is Always Advisable —Advice for Prospective Builder. Don’t forget that you maj at some time want to open the top sash of the window, and that flies and mosquitoes are not particular as to through which sash they enter; therefore have the screen run from top to bottom of the window; to do this, side springs will be necessary in the screen frames, but they will cost little more than a screen which can be used only from the bottom sash and which is little better than no screen at all. Don’t forget that there will never be a better time to build than the present; materials of all kinds are cheaper than they have been for several years* and as soon as the European war is over there is sure to be a sharp advance in prices. Don’t say you can’t build now because you have not enough money; if you have a little, the co-operative banks and building associations will loan you the balance needed upon terms under which you can pay for the house in monthly installments which would be no more than you would ordinarily be paying for rent —Exchange.

The City Beautiful.

A one-time mayor of New York, George B. McClellan, said: "In a self-governing community, the ultimate object of the government is the happiness of the governed. Something more is needed to make the happy city than health and wealth and wisdom. The city healthy, the city wealthy, and the city wise, may excite satisfaction, complaisance and pride, but it is the city beautiful that compels and retains the love of people." When last the tree men of the South met at Riverside, in the music room of the famous Glenwood Mission inn, an illuminated sign stretched across the stage, which read: "Make your city beautiful and you will learn to love it."

Standards for Electric Service.

A representative of the United States bureau of standards has been in conference with the public-servica commissions and managers of publicservice corporations in various parts of the country. The information so obtained has been used in preparing the bureau’s forthcoming circular on "Standards for Electric Service.” Another representative of the bureau spent the entire month in the South, making measurements of street illumination and electric current in the street-lighting systems of a number of cities and towna, The results of the investigation will form the basis of a circular on street lighting.

Use Only Fire-Resisting Material.

There has been established in Cleveland, 0., a society whose object is to disseminate information on the safe, sane and - sanitary building of mod-erate-priced houses. This society recommends only such building materials as will resist the action of the elements, thus reducing to a minimum the fire hazard.

Shade Trees Improve Property.

It has been estimated that within the cities of New York state there are 20,000 miles of streets capable of suaK t talning a growth of 6,000,000 shade trees, which can be made worth SIOO,000,000 in increased property value.