Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 88, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 April 1916 — Page 2

BALKED BY MIRAGE

British Artillery Has Queer Trouble in Arabia.

Evolutions of Troops Are Obscured*— See Infantry Like Trees Moving and Think Them a Transport Train. Sheikh Saad, Arabia.—The ground between the Tigris river and the hills was the scene of the battle of Sheikh Saad. The land Is maliciously and fanatically sterile. Even the agoon and the kharnoOg come to an end. It was over this rutty ground that the vrangport wagons bumped and jolted with their freight of wounded on the evening of January 7. It was evening when our steamer moored near the battlefield. We went out to meet them as they streamed in over the mud-colored flat, and gave what aid we could. Many were walking very erect, some of them with the stiffness of effort. These were the less serious cases. The stretchers and transport wagons came in later. One was struck with the hardiness and stoicism of the British and Indian alike. "Beg your pardon, sir,” says a British private; “can you tell me where the ambulance is?" and he deprecates the support of my shoulder, though his calf is bandaged and it is painful for him to put his left foot to the ground.> -‘I am all right, sir; it’s nothing serious.” He lifts up his shirt and points to a puncture in his stomach. His face is bloody and bandaged. "It is nothing,” he explains; "took off a.bit of my gums.” He will not rest, but moves on towards the distant Red Cross flag and the funnels of the steamer on the river. Here at least should be rest, warm tea and comforts for his wounds. But In Mesopotamia it is a far cry to the smooth motor ambulances of France, the rapid transit to.the hospital, where an hour or two after he has received first aid doctors and nurses are ready with every saving device that science can provide. We have heard the guns overnight and again in the morning as our paddle steamer with Its attendant lighters forged up stream. The first shell disturbed a flight of sand grouse which came wheeling across the river in such myriads that we who were watching from the -roof of the - bridge forget the ■hells and turned our glasses on the birds—a skein of plumage half a mile long tying itself up in loops in the most complicated evolutions, the van suddenly wheeling around, while the rear, an opposite point, then converged in a hoop. They were dark at one turn, silvery the next, as the sun caught their underwings through the black smoke of a monitor. The evolutions of our troops on land were obscured by the mirage. We saw infantry like trees moving, and thought them a transport train. Other masses, which could be nothing but artillery, crossed the pontoon bridge ahead of us from the right bank to the left. The mirage does not affect the atmosphere at the height of a bursting shell; we could see the shrapnel smoke innfolding two or three miles from the bank, and wondered if it were Turkish artillery or our own. "Shelling their advance posts” was the general verdict. It was not until later that we realized that the whole force was at grips with the enemy; and it was not until we moored and met the converging stream coming in from the trenches that we realized how costly the day had been. The guns we had heard had played but a small part in the action, for the mirage had made artillery preparation for our advance ineffectual, and the bulk of our casualties on both banks of the stream had occurred in frontal attacks on the enemy’s position. As I write we are moving on to attack a pew position, and it is not the moment yet for a detailed account of the action.

FUNERAL WAITS FOR COFFIN

She and Her. Husband Selected Walnut Lumber From Their Farm, but There Was Delay, St Louis. —The funeral of Mrs. Anton Weineke of Edwardsville, 111., was {delayed until a coffin could be made from a walnut tree of her “home place.” Mrs. Wienecke and her husband, throe years ago, picked out the walnut tree on their farm from which to have their coffins made. It was sawed Into boards, which were permitted to season until last June, when Wieneke took the lumber to a planing mill and ordered it made into coffins. Wieneke was then eighty years old, and his wife was seventy-seven. The work of making the caskets iwaa put off. When Mrs. Wieneke died, rather unexpectedly, orders were given to rush one of the cofins to completion. Mre. Wieneke was the daughter of {Anton Louis, a pioneer St. Louis druggist

Finds Coin Minted in 1790.

Fredericksburg. Tex.—Arthur KuekMpnann found a silver coin cm his lot here which was found to have been {minted in 1790 under Francis 11, emperor ot Germany, king of Bohemia and Hungary. The coin 4s the size of a silver dollar and in a fair state of preservation

TO HAVE HIS HEART’S WISH

John Driscoll of Hampton, Va., is the last survivor of the old U. S. S. Monitor, conqueror of the Merrimac in the Civil war. After the famous naval battle President Lincoln summoned the Monitor’s crew to Washington and told them if anyone ever wanted a favor It would only be necessary to ask It. Driscoll, now seventy-six, never asked anything of the United States until recently, when he told the navy department a trip through the Panama canal on a ■warship before he died would make him happy. The promise will be made good and he will sail on the next ship to make the passage.

ROMPS IN THE TRENCHES

Wee Waif Is Adopted by British Soldiers.

Little Girl Found In Firing Line Plays In Safety on Parapet—Sleeps Peacefully Amid Bursting Bombs. London. —The story of how a little girl, found in the firing line, was adopted by a British regiment has been told by a soldier back from the front to a traveler who relates his experiences in the Northampton Daily Echo. “About eight months ago,” he said, “the company was trudging along for the first line of trenches when one of the men —his name was Philip Impey —found the child in a ditch by the roadside. No one could go back, and the soldiers took the girl into the trench and made her as comfortable as possible. In a few days she had recovered from the ill effects of the wet and exposure and was running up and down the trench, the pet of all the officers and men. One day a -bomb nearly filled in part of the trench. When the men had recovered from the shock the sergeant major asked a man to go and see that the child was safe. They had left her asleep in a snug comer, and there they found her, Still sleeping. “The German trenches were about 150 yards off, and the level, open space between the two lines wasn’t healthy. No man who valued his life would go there unnecessarily, or recklessly put his head above the parapet. One morning, to their horror, the men, through the periscope, saw the child standing above the trench on the German side. Cries came from the enemy, but they were not hostile. The sight of the gij-1, little more than an infant, had touched their sentimental side, and she had offers of chocolates and Invitations to go and see them. “After that the girl went over the parapet quite often. She was as safe in that danger zone as if she had been behind the lines. would harm her, and once she went close up to their first line trench.” The eight days’ trench duty ended, the little daughter of the company was taken back and was not allowed to get between the lines again. She was taken charge of by the company storekeeper, who had children of his own and was mightily proud of his skill in dressing and undressing the child and his strictness about the morning bath. All the men made a fuss of her, and she of them/' The boys in khaki are her playmates and she goes up to any Tommy with a smile of complete trust. A month after she was found the men thought that she ought to have a name. Philip Impey, who found her, was now dead and they gave her his surname, with Phyllis as the nearest approach to Philip. After she had been six monthswlth the company the ser-

THE EVENING REPUBLICAN, RENSSELAER, IND.

GETS SCARE OF HIS LIFE

Thought It a Skeleton Rattling, But It Was Oply Two Screech ( Owls. • - Falmouth, Ky.—J. T. McNay of Short Creek had "the scare of his life recently about 12:30 o’clock at night. He thought his time had come when he was awakened by what he thought was the rattling of a skeleton at the head of hf& bed. When he -collected his wits he found that it was two screech owls sitting on the head of his bed cracking their jaws and making a lot of noise with their claws. When Mr. McNay raised up out of bed to answer “the call” of old St. Peter, as he thought It was, the two -owls flew against! the window. Then it was that Mr. McNay took a new lease on life, as he knew what it was. Mr. McNay says the owls were black with soot and he supposed that they were sitting on top of the chimney and got to fussing and fell down the chimney and into the room.

BLIND MAN OPERATES MILLS

Although He Is Sightless, Wilder Runs Four of Them Successfully. x Williamsport, Pa.—Forced to support a family when he became blind fourteen yeark ago, at the age of fortytwo, O. L. Wilder, after taking a turn at various occupations, turned to milling. He ordered a feed mill installed. With his hands he studied its mysteries and soon started grinding. With bls hands he built the blns and other equipment. Since then he has installed three additional mills. All of these he operates himself. He has not even put guards on the swift-running belts. He bags and weighs all the flour, feed, meal and oyster shells he grinds, and loads his products on the patrons wagons. He also conducts a small grocery as a side issue.

Freak Chicken Dies.

New York.—A chicken equipped with four legs, four wings and two backs, was hatched by a hen belong ing to Fred Mohrmann, Brooklyn. The freak chicken died shortly after leaving its shell.

Boy Falls Four Stories.

New York.—Falling from the fourthstory window of his home, Samuel Zacher, four, landed on a crate of eggs and only fractured his jaw.

geant major was wounded and came to a hospital in England. The girl came with him and stayed in the hospital too, the pet of patients and nurses. She has now been taken by her adopted “daddy”—the sergeant major —to Bedford, where she will have a woman’s care and still be attached to the regiment. The parentage of the child and how she came to be deserted in the ditch at La Bassee remain an unsolved mystery. She was too young to know her name or to give any account of herself. There is a suggestion of terrorstricken flight in the fact that she is afraid of a German helmet. For the khaki and becapped soldier she has an affection, but if a Tommy puts a helmet on she shrinks away as in fear.

IS SHAVED BY AUTO LIGHT

Son Puts Machine Where Barber Can Work on Father Who Is in a Hurry. Clayton, Mo.—Heroic measures were resorted to in order that Frank Tegethoff, a real estate dealer, could be shaved in time to catch a train one night recently. Tegethoff had but a short time in which to make the train and rushed into one of Clayton’s barber shops and demanded a hasty “once over.” While the barber was engaged in daubing Tegethoff's face with lather the electric lights failed and the proo ess had to be stopped. It was up to Tegethoff’s son, Leo, to supply the light. He drove his father’s automobile on to the sidewalk in front of the shop and stopped in a position which threw the rays of the headlight oh the elder Tegethoff’s face and the shaving operatim& 'was completed. Tegethoff caught the train.

FREE CONVICTS ARE FLUSH

Fifteen Men Out of Prison Had Little Roll of $704 Between Them. Olympia, Wash.—lnstead of the usual prison gift of $5 each, 15 inmates of the state penitentiary at Walla Walla took away with them a total of $704, earned in wages, when released recently. . . Thejeading capitalist of the crowd carried $92.70, the next $85.10, six had cash varying from S6O to SBO each, and the lowest, $15.80, all earned at the rate of 50 cents a day and board on public road work in Douglas •county.-"-: — Another detachment of 30 men has been ordered "from the prison to the honor camp, which will close on completion of work in that section of the state July 1. Twenty prisoners have been selected to be sent April 1 to the M eskill quarry in Lewis county.

STUDY EFFECT OF FIRE ON CAR

More than 200 pounds of oil-soaked rags, wood, and shavings were recently ignited in a steel passenger car by the testing department of one of the eastern railroads in order to determine what effect flames would have upon the metal framework. The material burned with great heat, but without causing distortion or serious injury to the car proper. Some of the stering, paint, and window panes were

WON OVER OBSTACLES

GREAT FEAT OF ENGINEERING ON ALASKAN RAILROAD. Difficulties That at First Sight Seemed Insurmountable Overcome hy the Courage and Skill With Which They Were Met. The building of the Miles Glacier bridge, on the route of the Copper River railway, may be taken as a typical example of the many and fearful obstacles that confront the railway builder in arctic Alaska, and is only one of many similar feats that could be cited. This 1,500-foot 'structure of steel, consisting of four spans carried on massive concrete piers, had to be erected across the rivet where .11 makes a double turn between the great living glaciers Miles and Childs. Both present 300-foot clifflike faces to the water for three miles and every spring precipitate into the swift current an endless flotilla of icebergs, many of them as big as a mansion. Here, indeed, was a problem —the building of bridge piers strong enough to withstand these masses of ice being hurled against them by a twelve-mile current. Everybody declared the feat impossible, but it was carried through after two years’ strenuous fighting against fearful odds. Great concrete piers, begun through the winter’s ice, were driven 40 to 50 feet through the river bottom to bedrock, and there anchored. They were built of solid concrete, heavily re-enforced with steel. A row of eighty-pound rails were set a foot apart all around and the whole structure bound together within the concrete in an amazingly massive manner. Then above the piers ice-break-ers of the same construction were raised.

The piers being finished, it was now necessary to connect them with a roadway of steel, and this had to be done in the winter, since no falsework would stand against the moving ice. It was a fearful and trying task. ’ Work was hurried forward and the last span was almost tn place when it was seen that the falsework that carried it had moved a distance .of -15 inches. The falsework that carried this span consisted of a thousand or two of piles driven deep into the bottom the river 40 feet below the surface. The ice was a solid sheet seven feet thick, and it was borne on a twelve-knot current. Into it the forest of piles was solidly frozen. But the spring break-up bad begun on the river, and the icecap, lifted 20 feet above its winter bed by the flood, was moving. The falsework, carrying a mass of unfinished steel, was 15 inches out of.line and had to be put back if communication wasto be established with the other side that winter. Any moment, for all the engineers knew, the falsework and span would be carried away. .They knew it would be a terrible tussle against seemingly overwhelming odds, but they determined to see it through. Steam from every available engine was driven into small feed pipes and every man in camp was put to work to steam melt or chop the seven feet of ice clear of the piles. And it was done. The holes were kept open throughout the day and night and in the bitter arctic cold hundreds of cross-pieces were unbolted and shifted while the river rose 21 feet.

Then began the movement up stream. At first it was but an inch a day; then three or four Inches. The melting and chopping went on almost unceasingly. Anchorages were hastily built into the ice above the bridge, and while a gang thawed and chopped at the ice around th,e piles the whole 450 feet of towering bridgework was pulled, dragged end coaxed inch by Inch back into its place. The engineers midnight, after an eighteen-hour day of one shift, that the last. bolt was driven home and the span settled down on its concrete At one o'clock the whole 450 Jeet of falsework was a chaotic The river had lost its fight by less than a single hour.

damaged, of course, but this was expected, naturally. The result of the experiment showed that the car was capable of withstanding fire and therefore up to the standard demanded by the company in that particular. The incident furnishes an interesting example .of the thorough manner in which some railway companies test equipment and supplies before. accepting them. —Popular Mechanic? Magazine.

HAVE CUT DOWN FATALITIES

Good Work of Railroads Has Been Ao- ( tively Aided by the Interstate Commerce Commission. The railroads have a good record in the matter of safety, and they must divide the credit with state legislators and the interstate commission. More than a million cars were personally inspected last year. More steel cars are being used, the roadbeds are kept up better than formerly and the electric block signals are getting a wider usq. In 1915 the number of passengertf killed was reduced 16 per cent over 1914 and the number of employees killed decreased 36 per cent in the same year. Out of over a billion passengers carried only 222 were killed — less than in any year since I§9B, when only half a billion people traveled, and an average of one in every 450,000. The public health service is another branch r f the treasury department. In preventive work it is one of the biggest safety movements in the country, even though not one of the most spectacular. The quarantine stations which ring us round with a sanitary wall against infection from abroad are part of the service, and the children’s bureau is another and newer offshoot from the same stem, though it comes under the department of labor instead of the treasury. The motto of the children’s bureau might well be “Safety at the very first.” Its work in baby conservation during the last five years has appreciably cut down the infant mortality in the country. It is a sort of scientific grandmother to all American women. The American Red Cross has reduced the number of fatal accidents by preventing a number of accidents from ending fatally. In co-operation with various industrial organizations, fire and police departments, and such bodies as the Y. M. and Y. W. C. A. s, it has given a .number of courses in first aid to the injured. The latest move along this line was a course for lumbermen. The department is under the direction of the army medical corps, and its instructors are competent physicians.

SAFETY FOR ENGINE FIREMEN

New Device Is Designed to Prevent Death Plunge, Which Is All Too Frequent. A common form of railroad accident is that which often takes place when, by some accident to the coupling between them, the tender and the locomotive become separated. In such cases the air brakes are automatically applied and the runaway train brought to a stop. But if the fireman is at his post on the tender, the sudden application of the brakes is sufficient to throw him off his feet and he is hurled headlong under the wheels of his own train, which has not yet been brought to a complete standstill. Matthew J. Slattery and Charles A. Diehm, two railroad men of Philadelphia, have been recently awarded a patent on a device which is designed to Save the fireman’s life in this emergency, says the Scientific American. The apparatus consists of a metal net, carried beneath the floor of the tender, which in case of a parting between the locomotive and tender will be released and drawn forward to provide a safety net to catch anyone Who may be standing on the tender at the time of accident.

Railroads to Spend Much Money.

A gross outlay of nearly $5;500,000 will be made by the Southern Pacific lines of Texas and Louisiana in improvements during the present year. Announcement of the plans was made by President W. B. Scott. Of this amount $2,038,000 will be used in the. purchase of new rolling stock, including 2Q locomotives; $2,066,000 will go for buying rails and fastenings for the $1,218,000 will be expended for various other advancement projects.

Spend Millions for Fruit Cars.

The Northern Pacific railroad has ordered 2,000 cars especially for han dling fruit. Cost $3,500,000.

HOME TOWN HELPS

BOOST ' Boost your city, boost your friend, Boost the lodge that you attend, Boost the street on which you’re dwelling. Boost the goods that you are selling. Boost the people round about you; They can get along without you, But success will quicker find them If they know that you’re behind them. Boost for every forward movement. Boost for every new improvement. Boost the man for whom you labor. Boost the stranger and |he neighbor. Cease to be a chronic knocker, Cease to be a progress blocker, If you’d make your city better Boost it to the final letter. —Detroit Free Press.

COLOR SCHEMES IN GARDENS

Matter in Which America Might Profit by the Example Set by English Landscape Artists. Little attention is paid to garden color schemes, less in California than elsewhere, for the reason that everything blooms so riotously here that we deem attempts at control quite unnecessary, says the Los Angeles Times. The English are the great color artists of the garden and they have garden books upon this subject alone. Sometimes colors are used for effects not necessarily allied to harmony, as when yellow is used on points thrust forward to shorten the apparent distance and blue is used to deepen the recesses and make them appear farther in the distance. Many of the good-sized local gardens have long borders where color schemes could be wrought with annuals or perennials, or with both. Remember two points which may be called fundamentals: White is the one great neutralizer or harmonizer in flowers and gray performs a similar office in foliage. Borders in which white flowers and gray foliage heavily predominate may have any and all colors in harmony so long as they do not mix, but have between them a mere touch of white. Such a peace-maker is often more necessary between shades closely allied than in marked contrasts. Thus with two shades of pink the lighter appears washed and faded in close comparison with a deeper and therefore stronger hue. Even great masses of white relieved by an occasional touch of any color never appear monotonous.

MAIL BOX THAT IS NEAT

Californian Has the Right Idea in the Erection of Receptacle at His Country Home; Permanency and sightliness are two of the attributes incorporated in an attractive mail box that has been erected by a Californian in front-*of his country home. The receptacle itself is

about eighteen inches square, Is made entirely of copper and fitted with a small door on one side. It is supported on a substantial brick pier, approximately four feet in height, which tapers slightly toward the top. Insomuch as the residence is a brick bungalow, this type of mail receiver is most appropriate. Popular Mechanics Magazine.

Arrangement of Street Lamps.

A recent investigation of the relative merits of parallel and staggered arrangement of street lamps is most interesting, since it discloses that from an ornamental viewpoint the former Is preferable, while, from a utilitarian viewpoint, the latter is preferable under certain conditions. By parallel arrangement is meant the placing of lamps so that they come opposite each other, while staggered arrangement means that the lamps on one side of a street are placed so as to come half way between those on the opposite side. In general, the staggered arrangement furnishes more uniform illumination. However, where the street width is not much greater than the distance between lamp standards, the parallel arrangement is preferable. In instances where’the street width is considerably greater than the spacing of the lamps, the staggered arrangement will give the best results. —Scientific American.

Just to Help Out.

“Well! Well!” exclaimed Mr. Dubson to a flustered acquaintance who rushed into a railroad station carrying two large suitcases. “Going away on thechoo-choo T* —— “Oh, no,” answered the acquaintance,in a sarcastic tone. "My sole idea in buying a railway ticket and hastening hither with all the baggage I could stagger under was merely to increase the stir and bustle of thiM great city.”