Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 225, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 September 1916 — Page 2

By WALTER PRICHARD EATON

SYNOPSIS. 1 crow tired of xny work as a collese instructor and buy a New England farm on sight I inspect my farm and go to board at Bert Temple’s. Bert helps me to hire a carpenter and a farmer. Hard Cider, the carpenter, estimates the repairs and changes necessary on the house. Mike commences plowing. I start to prune the orchard tree. Hard Cider builds bookcases around the twin fireplaces. Mrs. Temple hires Mrs. Pillig for me as a housekeeper, and announces the coming of a new boarder from New York, a halfsick young woman who needs the country air I discover that Stella Goodwin will make a delightful companion and believe shs ought not to return to the hot and dusty city for a long time. I squeeze her hand slyly. Together we dedicate “Twin Fires.”

Is there a better time to make love than the last day of Mayor a better place than a romantic old country home where there’s a murmuring brook, a lovely quiet pine grove, a rose garden and myriad song birds?

CHAPTER IX. Acteon and Diana. Memorial day dawned fair and warm. Bert and his wife and all their “help” went off to the village after breakfast. There were no painters in my house, and Mike had milked the cows and gone home before I arrived. Miss Goodwin and I seemed to have that little section of Bentford quite to ourselves, after the last of the carryalls had rattled past, taking the veterans from Slab City to the town. Having no flag yet of my own, I borrowed one from Bert, and we hung it from a second-story window, facing the road, as our tiny contribution to the sentiment of the day. Then we tackled the rose trellis, speedily completing it. for only two arches remained to be built, one of the carpenters having built three for me the day before, while waiting for some shingle9*To come for the barn. Indeed, we had it done by ten o’clock. “Now what?” said she. I looked about the garden. The roses had not yet come, so we couldn’t very well plant them. I judged that the morning of a warm, sunny day was no time to transplant seedlings. The painting was not yet completed inside, so I could fix up no more of my rooms. The vegetable garden didn’t appear to need cultivation. We couldn’t paint the trellis, as there was no green paint. “Good gracious!” I exclaimed, “this is the'first time I’ve been at a loss for something to do. It's a terrible sensation.” ■- “Couldn’t we build a bird bath?” she suggested. “Madam,” said I, “you are a genius!” “At the brook?” she added. “No, not the brook. I’ve a better idea,” said I. “My plan is to put the bird bath on the east edge of the lawn, halfway between the house and the rose aqueduct, corresponding to the sundial in the center, and to a white bench which will be placed at the west side when the grape arbor is built.” .. “Approved,” laughed Miss Goodwin, measured off the spot, an<j I mixed a lot of cement, laid it thick, set the bottomless box frame down upon it, and built up the four sides. As the girl had no gloves, I would not allow her to handle the cement (for nothing cracks the skin so badly, as I had discovered in my orchard work). But she kept busy mixing with the hoe, and handing me. bricks. Some I broke and put in endwise. and I was careful to all as irregular a setting as possible, till the top was reached. Then, of course, I laid an even line of the best bricks all the way around, and leveled them carefully. We had scarcely got the last brick on when we heard Bert’9"carryall rattle over the bridge and Bert’s voice yelling “Dinner!” -—-"Oh7 (lehf! That cement in the box will harden!" I cried. “Dump it all in.” Then, mixing more cement I laid a square bowl, as it were, two Inches deep, on the top of the little brick pile. We let it settle a few moments, and then carefully broke away the box. There stood the bird bath. “Can we put water in it yet?” the girl asked. “Surely,” said “Cement will hard- ■ en under water. And we’ll plant climbing nasturtiums around it, too." We passed through the house. The kitchen, dining foom. and hall were finished and the paint drying. TheW looked very fresh and bright. The south room, as we/Stepped into it was flooded with sunlifhi and cheerful with rugs and books. Flinging wide the glass door, we stepped out upon the terrace of the pergola-to-be, and lookedtoward the new bird bath. Upon its rim sat a song sparrow! Even as we watched, another came and fluttered his feet and breast daintily through the trembling little mirror of water.

Thr IDYL of TWIN FIRES

Then came a robin and drove them both away. “The pig!” laughed Miss Goodwin. “Do you know, I’ve got a poorer opinion of robins since I came here. We city dwellers think of robins as harbingers of spring, and all that, and they epitomize the bird world. But when you really are in that world, you find they are rather large and vulgar and — and sort of upper West slde-y. They aren’t half so nice as the song sparrows, or the Peabodies, and, of course, compared with the thrushes —well, it’s like comparing Owen Meredith with Keats, isn’t it?” “Don’t be too hard on the robins,” I smiled. We looked our fill at the new bird bath, which was already functioning, as she said her boss on the dictionary would put it, and <at the white sundial pillar, and at our prospective aqueduct of roses, and at the farm and the far hills beyond—and then she suddenly announced with great energy that she was going to saw wood. “You may saw just one piece,” said I, “and then you are going to take a book and rest. I’m going to work, myself. Twin Fires is getting in shape fast enough now so I can give up part of the daytime to the purely mundane task of paying the bills.” I wheeled up a big dead apple branch from the orchard to the wood shed, put

“That’s Why You Wanted Me to Work Until Five o’clock!”

it on the buck, gave her the buck saw, and watched her first efforts, grinning. “Go away,” she laughed. “You bother me.” So I went, opened the west window by my desk toShe wandering summer breeze, and went at my toil. Presently I heard her tiptoeing into the room. “Done?” said I. She nodded. ‘'Now I want—let’s see _what I want—well, I guess ‘Mariks the Epicurean’ and ‘Alice in Wonderland’ will do. I’m going to sit in the orchard. You work here till five or your salary will be docked. Good-by.” I heard her go out by the front door, and then silence settled over tlie sunfilled, cheerful room, while I plugged away at my tasks. I don’t know how long I worked, but finally my attention began to wander. I wondered if she were still in the orchard. I looked out upon the sweet stretches of my farm, with the golden light of afternoon upon it, and work became a burden. “Shall I ever be able to work, except at night, or on rainy days!” I wondered with a smile, as I tossed the manuscript I was reaxling into a drawer, and went out through the front entrance. The girl was nowhere to be seen. “She’s probably in her beloved pines,” I reflected. “It would be a good time to clean out a path in the pines.” I turned back to get a hatchet, and then went down toward the brook. I trod as noiselessly as I could through the maples, thinking to surprise her at her reading, and took care in the pines not to step on any dead twigs. She was nowhere to be seen near the upper end of the grove, but as I advanced I heard a splashing louder than the soft ripple of the brook, and suddenly around a thick tree at a in the stream, where the brook ran out toward the tamarack swamp in the corner of my farm, I came upon her She had her shoes and stockings off. and with her skirts held high she was wading with solemn, quiet delight in a little pool. Her back was toward me. I could have discreetly retreated, and she been none the wiser. But, alas! Acteon was neither the first nor the last of his sex. The water rippled so

THE EVENING REPUBLICAN, RENSSELAER, IND.

coolly around her white ankles! The sunlight dappled down so charmingly upon her chestnut hair! And I said, with a laugh, “So that is why you wanted me to work until five o’clock!” She turned with a little exclamation, the color flaming to her cheeks. Then she, too, laughed, as she stood in the brook, holding her skirts above the water. “Consider yourself turned to a stag,” she said. “All right,” I answered, “but don’t stay in that cold water too long.” “If I do it will be your fault,” she smiled, with a sidelong glance. Then she turned and began wading tentatively downstream. But the brook deepened suddenly, and she sank almost to her knees, catching her skirts up just in time. I withdrew hastily, and called back to her to come out. When I heard her on the bank, I brought her a big handkerchief for a towel, and withdrew once more, telling her to hurry and help me plan the path through the pines. In a moment or two she was by my side. We looked at each other. Her face was still but her eyes .were merry. We were standing on almost the exact spot where we had first met. But now there seemed in some subtle wise a new bond of intimacy between us, a bond that had not existed before this hour. I could not analyze it, but I felt it, and I knew she felt it. But what she said was: “I told you to work till five o’clock.” “It’s half-past four,” I answered. “Besides, you must have sent for me. Something suddenly prompted me to come out and hunt you up, at any rate.” “To say 1 sent for you is rather rather forward, under the circumstances, don’t you think?” “It might be —and it might not be,” I answered. “Did you have a good time?” “The best I ever had—till you spoiled It,” she exclaimed. “Oh, the nice, cold brook! Now, let’s build the path you. spoke about once.” We went back to the maples, where the ground was open, and selected a spot on the edge of the pines where the path would most naturally enter. Then we let it wind along by the brook. When we reached the hayfleld wall beside the house it was nearly six o’clock. “Now, let’s just walk back through it!” she cried. “Tomorrow we can bring the wheelbarrow, can’t we, and pick up the litter we’ve made?” “I can, at any rate, while you wade.” said I. She shot a little look up into my face. “I guess I’ll help,” she smiled. In the low afternoon light we turned about and retraced our steps. There was but a fringe of pines along the southern wall, and as they were forty-year-old trees here the view both back to the house and over the wall into the next pasture was airy and open. Then the path led through a corner of the tamarack swamp wherein wet weather I should have to put down some planks, and- where the cattails grew breast high on either side. Then it entered the thick pine grove where a great many of the trees were evidently not more than fifteen or twenty years old and grew very close. The sunlight was shut out, save for daggers of blue between the trunks toward the west. The air seemed hushed, as if twilight were already brooding here. The little brook rippled softly. , As we came to the first crossing, I pointed to the pool, already dark with shadow, and said, “It was wrong of me to play Acteon to your Diana, but I am not ashamed nor sorry. You were very charming in the dappled light, and you were doing a natural thing, and in among these little pines, perhaps, two friends may be two friends, though they are man and woman.” She did not reply at once, but stood beside me looking at the dark pool and apparently listening to the whisper of the running water against the steppingstones, Finally she said with a little laugh, “I have always thought that perhaps Diana was unduly severe. Come, we must be moving on.” I Once more we entered the plneA fol-’ lowing the new path over the brook again to the spot where we first had met. There I touched her hand. “Let us Wait for the thrush here,” I whispered. I could sets ber glimmering face -lifted to mine. “Why here?” she asked. “Because It was here we first heard him.”

If ho proposed marriage to Stella at this point, do you think she would accept him—or does a girl like to be pursued a little while longer when she feels she has her man ensnared?

(TO BE

PERIL OF FLY NOT FULLY REALIZED

By DR. SAMUEL G. DIXON

Commissioner of Health of Pennsylvania Reams have been printed about the danger from the house fly. Despite all that has been said it is a self-evident fact that people do not understand how real is the danger from these pests. If they did a single season would be sufficient to wipe out the dangerous nuisances. Let people once understand the part that the fly plays in the transmission of disease and they will look upon anyone who maintains a condition which breeds them as a public enemy to be summarily dealt with. There is much wasted advice about swatting the fly and trapping the fly. What we must learn to do is to exterminate it by doing away with all breeding places. While ’it has not been definitely proven what the fly has to do with infantile paralysis, we have good reason to believe that it takes a part in the spread of the disease. That they can and do carry the germs’" of typhoid fever and other diseases we know. It is a wise mother who screens the baby’s crib. ' - Thousands of children under one year of age die annually who would be saved if the fly were eliminated.

America Was Discovered by St. Brendan, Irish Legend

The first discoverer of America, according to a tradition firmly held by some superstitious Irishmen, was St. Brendan. Brendan lived in the sixth century, and, according • to' legend, fitted out a vessel and sailed west 1 - ward in the hope of discovering an Island supposed to contain the paradise once tenanted by Adam and Eve. He was accompanied by 14 monks, and the ship was “victualed for seven years.” After sailing forty days and forty nights they came to an island, where they found “a hall with tables spread with good meat and drink.” They then sailed on for a long time, and came to another Island, “wherein were the whitest and greatest sheep they ever saw.” After stopping for a time they proceeded with the voyage, and came to a third island, called “the paradise of birds.” After wandering about for seven years, from island to Island, St. Brendan and his monks returned to Ireland, where they astonished the natives by tales of the wonders they had seen. In spite of the wild and improbable features of this legend, it was for centuries accepted as truth, and the Spanish government sent out several expeditions in search of the islands of St. Brendan. The St. Brendan legend formed one of the causes which led to the discoveries made by Columbus.

Some Laugh at These

Explained. “How do you conquer your elephants when they get on a rampage?” queried the new reporter. “Oh,” replied the manager of the menageries, “we have an ex-baggage master to look after them.” “An ex-baggage master?” exclaimed the astonished pencil pusher. “Yes," explained the other with a look that indicated his sorrow for the other’s stupidity. “It requires a man who has had experience as a trunk smasher. See?” _

Hot and Cold.

Eifual Rights. Newed (a week after marriage)—By the way, dear, don't sit up for me tonight, as I may be detained downtown until after midnight. Mrs. Newed—Oh, very well. And in case you should get home before I do, kindly leave the gas burning in the hall, will you?” Business Point of View. “If I could write a play as great as *Hamlet,’ I would be content to rest on my laurels,” said the ambitious author. “And the chances are,” replied the successful theatrical manager, “if you wrote a play as great as ‘Hamlet’ in these days and times, you would be compelled to rest on your laurels for lack of any other support.” His Helpmate. “Never mind,” said the poet as he tossed the rejected poem on the floor, “I’ll set the world ablaze yet 1” “And just to help you get the conflagration started,” said his better half, as she picked up the aforesaid MS.; “I’ll light the fire in the cook stove with thls/^ — - Thought It Settled. They had been trotting in double harness for six long months. “Why is it,” queried the young wife, “that you never make me any presents like you used to before we were married ?" “Well, it’s like this,” explains the

Omar —I made a cool hundred at the race track last week. Helny —That’s good. What did you do with It? Omar Oh, it soon burned a hole In my pocket.

Mobility of the Individual

CommiMloner of Education, State of New York

Tha whole problem of society,. generally, is to. determine to what degree the mobility of the individual shall be restrained, predestinated and merged in the aim of all the collectivity. I translate this experience into the terms of our everyday life, and I make it graphic to myself by thinking that every man has an imaginary uniform, an imaginary uniform of his own measurements always in readiness in home or shop or office or in some public locker, that he may don at call of his community, state or nation, or perhaps of a world need: when under compulsion he goes to vote, to pay his taxes, to fight against dishonesty, inefficiency or waste, to inform himself upon public questions or upon public duties; when, in short, he performs any one of the hundred offices that are required of him as an efficient unit in an organized society. lam today a maker of meerschaum pipes, a peasant gathering my harvest, a college professor, a surgeon. Tomorrow I slip on this invisible garment, and lam a selfless, nameless, numbered patriot. And the next day I am working at my delicate pipes again; I am back m my field, or at my desk, or in my private laboratory; that is, if I am not killed or wounded in battle or suffocated in the trenches.

FAVORITE OF THE FILMS

Marguerite Clark.

Former comic opera star who stilled her voice to become a player in the silent drama.

No Mail for Eight Months.

For eight months In the year no mall reaches the coal miners In Spitzbergen, but*they are now able to get the world news twice a day by wireless telegraph.

victim of leap year, “after acquiring a title to a piece of property, a man naturally supposes there are no more installments to pay. Get me?” Somewhat Different. “Has the parson got through with what he had to say?” queried the man who had been enjoying a nap. “Yes, long ago,” replied the man In the adjoining pew, as he tried to strangle a yawn, “but there is no telling when he will conclude.” Sympathetic. “I have Iqst the manuscript for a book of poems that it took me nearly five years to write,” sighed the longhaired party. ■ “Too bad!” rejoined his friend. “But, of course, your loss is ,th<> public’s gain.”

Spiteful.

“I have fully made up my mind never to marry,” said the first dear girl. “W h a t’s the matter?” queried dear girl the second. “Has your father lost all his money?”

Fifty Feet of Snow in July.

Snow 50 feet deep within 18 miles of Santa Fe, N. M., on the Fourth of July is a feet which is likely to cause a good many people to revise their ideas of the "Great American Desert” of which so much is heard in the East. Visitors at Santa Fe lake and to the top of the lake and Penltente peaks found snow cornices around the crest of the crater overlooking the lake basin which sloped off gently from the top, the outer edge of the snow breaking off abruptly in walls which ranged from 20 to 50 feet in height. There Is no doubt from the measurements of these snow precipices that the snowfall tn midwinter must have been 15 to 20 feet In places and that the peaks were clothed In a solid mass of snow from bottom to summit. There were still masses of snow scattered all round the lake which were still four or five feet high. But for the warm rains that come later, snow probably would lie in the basin from year’s end to year’s end. Despite the hot July sun, the air Is so cool at the peqk level, more than 12,000 feet above the sea, that the snow cornices melted very alowly.

By DR. JOHN M. FINLEY

Poultry Scratchings

By C. S. Anderson of the Colorado Agricultural College. If you take pride in marketing good eggs at a good price, consider the following : Do not keep mongrel stock. They are not high producers, and their eggs are not uniform as to size and color. Keep laying hens separated from sitting hens. Gather eggs twice daily in warm weather. The sale of Infertile Incubator eggs never will help you to establish a higher market price for your product. Separate the male birds from the flock except during the breeding season. Fertile -eggs are poor keepers. Market eggs in a standard egg case. Never haul to town over rough roads or in an open basket or pan exposed to the hot sun. ■ You will have a larger number of “firsts” if you market at least twice a week. In keeping eggs, provide a dry, cool, well ventilated place. Fertile eggs must be kept below 68 degrees to check germination. Eggs are affected easily by bad odors. Do not keep In a musty grain bin, or in the vegetable cellar, or where they can absorb the odors of kerosene and gasoline.

In France Woman Usually Is “Man” of the Family

The French woman is the “man” of the family as a rule. This was illustrated in our hotel in Parts, where madame attended to the office and ran everything, while she kept her husband on the go from early till late doing the upstairs work. Practically all the '‘chambermaids” in Paris are men. The first thing we noticed on reaching Paris was a woman cab driver. Most of the street hucksters and venders are women —but they are busky specimens, who are well able to look out for themselves. Some of the cries of the hucksters are very musical. We pre specially taken with the call of the fish women, who in announcing for instance “bon maquereau”—“good mackerel” —would sing a regular little song. As you go along through Paris you are struck with the large number of women who run stores and all kinds of enterprises. They invariably keep strict accounts, and after closing hours they will be seen poring over their ledgers. It seems rather strange that the French women should never have made any special demand for the suffrage or other “rights of women” —perhaps because they realize that they already rule the roost.—Paris Letter in Pathfinder.

Clever Plants

The cleverness of some plants la indisputable. A sundew, or fly-eater, deceived by a-piece of chalk, seized it in its tendrils, but upon discovering the fraud Immediately withdrew them, A fly, held just out of Its reach, did not tempt it to move, but as soon as it was brought a little nearer the plant prepared to take possession of IL Darwin shewed that a begonia had a habit of searching for a hole to Insert its tendrils into, and even of withdrawing the tendril to insert it in another hole, if the first proved unsuitable. Nor Is this power of selecting confined to any particular class. Climbers like the lianas will to coll round a branch not (strong enough to bear their weight

A Shadowless Light

One of the latest improvements in hospital equipment is the? invention o 0 a shadowless light for tfae operating table. This has been se'cured by a fixture containing eight electric lights placed so that their rayß^'meet atan. agle of 45 degrees. This makes better vision possible in the examination of! wounds and also the possibility of a delicate 'deration betngi hindered hy the sha'dows of the surgeon’s hands, as infrequently the case with lights ordinarily placed. It 1* said that the s.Sadowless light might lessen the number of accidents in mauyj industrial est/blishiimita.