Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 235, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 September 1916 — Page 2

The IDYL of TWIN FIRES

by WALTER PRICHARD EATON

CHAPTER Xlll—Continued. The train started. It left New York behind it, it ran into the suburbs, then Into the country, and at last the hills began to mount beside the track, and a cooler, fresher air to come in through the windows. Still her eyes smiled Into mine, but she said little, save now and then to lean forward and whisper, “Is it true, John, is It true?” So we came to Bentford station, in tile early dusk of evening, and the air was good as we alighted, and the silence. Suddenly Buster appeared, undulating with joyous yelps along the platform, and sprang at Stella’s face. He almost ignored me. Peter was waiting with the buggy-. We sat hlaf^e tween us and drove home. T '” ¥ “Home —your home, our home.” I whispered, pressing her hand behind Peter’s back. "Sold a lot o’ peas and things," said Peter. “I got ’em all down in the book. Gee, I drove over ’most every d*y t *n’ I’m goin’ to be on the ball team in the village, an’ I wanter join the Boy Scouts, but ma won’t let me Mess you say it’s all right, an’ ain’t itr “We’ll think it over, Peter,” said I. Stella was bouncing up and down on the seat with excitement as the buggy rattled over the bridge. Lamplight was streaming from Twin Fires. On the kitchen porch stood Mrs. Pillig. dressed in her best, and Mrs. Bert and Bert. AS we climbed from the buggy. Bert raised his hand, and a shower of rice descended Stella ran up the path, and Mrs. Bert's ample arms closed about her. Both women were half laughing, half crying, when got there with the grips. “Ain’t that Jest like the sex?’’ said Jert, with a Jerk of his thumb—“so durn glad they gotter cry about it!" “You shet up.” said Mrs. Bert “For all you know, I’m pityln’ the poor child!” Mrs. Pillig had an ample dinner ready for us, with vegetables and salad fresh from the garden, and, as a crowning glory, a magnificent lemon pie. , “This is much better than anything at Sherry’s,” cried |tella, beaming upon her. We sat a long while looking at each other across the small table, and then we wandered out Into the dewy evening and our feet took us into the pines, where in the darkness we stopped by a now sacred spot and held each other close in silence. Then we went back into the south room. “Oh, if the curtain stuff would only burry up and come!” cried my wife. “You must learn patience—Mrs. Upton,” said I, while we both laughed •illily over the title, as others have done before us, no doubt. Presently Mrs. Pillig’s anxious face appeared at the door. She seemed desirous of speaking, and doubtful how to begin. —What la lt, Mrs. Pillig?” I asked. “Well, sir,” she said, hesitantly. “I suppose now you are married you won’t need me, after all." She paused. “I rented my house,” she added. “Need you!” I cried. “Why, now 1 ■hall need you more than ever!” She smiled faintly, still looking dubious. Stella went over to her. “What he means is, that I’m a poor goose who doesn’t know any more about keeping house than Buster does about astronomy,” she laughed. “Of course you’ll stay, Pillig, and teach me.” “Thank you, miss—l mean missus,” said Mrs. Pillig, backing out “Be careful,” I warned. “If you let Mrs. Pillig think you’re so very green, she’ll begin to boss yon/’ “That would be a new sensation ” laughed Stella. “I like new sensations as much as Peter Pan did. Oh, it’s a new sensation having a home like this, and living In the country, and smelling good, cool air and—and having you.” She was suddenly beside me on the settle. We heard Mrs. Pillig going up to bed. The house was still. Outside the choral song of night insects sounded drowsily. Buster came softly in and plopped down on the rug. We were alone in Twin Fires, together, and she wonid not rise to go up the road to Bert’s. She would never go! Bo we sat a long, long while —and the rest shall be silence.

CHAPTER XIV. We Build a Pool. It vu the strangest, sweetest sensation I had ever known to wake In the morning and hear soft singing in the room where a fresh breeze was wandering. I saw Stella standing at the window, her hair about her shoulders, looking out She turned when 1 stirred, came over to kiss me, while her hair fell about my' face, and then Cried, “Hurry! Hurry! I must get out Into the garden!” Presently, band in band, we went over the new lawn to the sundial which stood amid a ring of brilliant blooms —which, however, had become unbelievably choked with weeds in the ten days of my absence. The gnomon was throwing a long shadow westward across the VII. We filled the bird bath, which Peter had neglected. We

coeyaiowr a* oouoLeo**, wv&e O CO»

hurried through the orchard to the brook, to see tbe flowers blooming there, and there, alas! we found the volume of tbe stream shrunk to less than half its former size. We ran to the rows of berry vines to see how many had survived, and found the greater part of them sprouting nicely; we went up the slope into the rows of vegetables and inspected themf we rushed to see if ail the roses were alive; we went to the barn, where Mike had Just begun to milk, and sniffed the warm, sweet odor. “Yes, it’s better for any mon to be married.” I heard Mike saying to her, as I moved back toward the door. Then he gdded something I could not hear, and she came to me with rosy face. “The horrid old man!” She was half laughing to herself. The goodß we had ordered began to arrive after breakfast, Bert bringing them from the freight house in his large wagon. I took the day off, and devoted the morning to laying a stair carpet probably the hottest Job I ever tackled. Tbank goodness, the stairs went straight up, without curve or angle! As I worked, small feet pattered by me, -up and down, and garments from a big trunk In the lower hall brushed my face as they were being carried past—brushed their faint feminine perfume into my nostrils and made my hammer pause In midair. After the carpet was laid there were a thousand and one other things to do. There were pictures of Stella’s to be bung, and them we put In the hitherto vacant room at the front of the house, next to tile dining room, where Stella’s wall desk was also placed, and a case of her books, and some chairs. “Now I can work here when you want to create literature in your room, or I can receive my distinguished visitors here when you are busy,” she laughed, setting some ornaments on the mantel. “My, but I’ve got a lot of curtains to make! I never did so much sewing in my life.” Bureaus were carried upstairs with Mike’s assistance, and the ivory backs of a woman’s toilet articles appeared upon them; open closets showed me rows of women’s garments; glass candlesticks were unpacked and set upon the dining table, and the new dining chairs “dressed up” the room remarkably. Everywhere we went Mrs. Pillig followed with dustpan and broom, slicking up behind us. When night came it was still an incomplete house—“ Oh. a million things yet to get,’t cried Stella, “Just one by one, as we can afford it, which will be fun!” — but a house that spoke everywhere of a dainty mistress. Outside, by the woodshed, was a pile of packing boxes and opened crates and excelsior. “There’s your work, Peter,” I said, pointing. Peter looked rueful, but said nothing. That evening I tried to work, but found it difficult, for watching my wife sew. __ __ _ “You’ve no technique,” Ilaugbed. She made a little moue at me, and went on hemming the curtains, getting up now and then to measure them. “Why should I have?” she said presently. “You knew I was a Pb. D. when you married me. These curtains be on your own bead! I’m doing the best I can." There was suddenly the suspicion of moisture in her eyes, and I ran to comfort her. “I—l so want to make Twin Fires lovely,” she added, pricking her finger. “Oh, tell me I can. if I am only a highbrow!” Of course the finger had to be kissed, and she had to be kissed, and the hem had to be inspected and praised, and now, long, long afterward, I smile to think how alike wq all of ns are on a honeymoon. It was the next morning that we resolved to begin the pool. “I don’t expect to be married again for several years.” said I, “and so I’m going to take a holiday this week. We’ll carry the vegetables to market and bring back the cement, and begin on our water garden.” Mike loaded the wagon with peas, the last of the rhubarb, and ten quarts of currants picked by Peter, and off we started. " ~ “What is this horse’s name?” asked Stella, taking the reins to learn to drive. “He has none, I guess. Mike calls him ’Glddup.”* “No, it’s Dobbin. He looks Just like a Dobbin. He has a kind of conventional. discouraged tail, like a Dobbin. Glddup, Dobbin!” The horse started to trot “There, you see, it is his name!” she laughed. On Bentford Main street we passed several motors and a trap drawn by a prancing span, and all the occupants stared at us, or rather at Stella, who was beaming from her humble seat on the farm wagon more like an eighteenth century shepherdess than a New England farmer’s wife. We added over three dollars more in the account book with the market, and read with delight the grand total of $40.80 already in two weeks. “Next year,” said I, “I’ll double it!” Then I spent the SB, and some more, for Portland cement

THE EVENING REPUBLICAN, RENSSELAER, IND.

We got Into our Oldest clothes when we reached home, I put on lubber boots, and we tackled the pool. Even with tbe brook as low as it was, the engineering feat was not easy for our unskillful hands. Peter soon Joined ns. and lent at least unlimited enthusiasm. “Peter.” said I. “you never worked this hard splitting kindlings.” Peter grinned. “Ho, I like to make dams,” he said. The first thing we did was to divert the brook by digging a new channel aboVe the spot where we were to build the dam, and letting the water flow around to the left, close to one of tho flower beds. Then, when the old channel had dried out a little, I spaded a trench across it and two feet into the banks on each side, and with Peter helping, filled the trench nearly as full of the largest, flattest stones we could find, which we all then tramped upon to firm down. Then, a foot apart, we stood two hoards on edge across the space, to make a mold for the concrete above the stones. I sent Peter with a wheelbarrow to pick np a load of small pebbles In the road, of the most Irregular shape he could find, and I myself dug deeper in the hole where I had got the sand when we built the bird bath, and brought loads of it to the brookside. We dumped sand, .pebbles and cement into a bix box. one pall of cement to one pail of pebbles and three of sand, and Peter and Stella fought for the hoe to mix them, while I poured in the water from a watering pot, for I had read and seen the reason for the fact that the success of the cement depends upon every particle being thoroughly mixed. As fast as we bad a box full of mixture prepared, we dumped it into the mold between the boards. It took an astonishing quantity of cement—quite all we had, in sact —and to finish off the top smooth and level I had to get the quarter bag left from my orchard work and th< bird bath. It was evening when we had it done, and Peter, who had deserted us soon after dinner to play ball, returned to beg us to take the boards away, and grew quite unreasonable when we refused. That night there was a shower, and the brook rose a trifle. When we hastened down through the orchard after breakfast the new channel had curved itself still farther, as streams do when once they get started off the straight line, and had washed tbe southeast flower bed half away. Stella, with a cry of grief, ran down the brook

How Alike We All of Us Are on a Honeymoon.

Into the pines, and came back with sadly bedraggled Phlox Drummond! plants in her hands, their trailing root* washed white, their blooms broken. “Horrid brook,” she said. “Let’s put it right back into its proper place. I don’t like it any more.” “A sudden change of habit is always dangerous.” said I. “Put tbe plants in the mud somewhere till we can set ’em In again.” We now took away the boards from the new dam, which had begun to harden nicely. The next thing to do was to stake out the pool above It. As the dam was ten feet below the line between the proposed bench and the front door of the house, the other end of the pool was marked off 20 feet upstream, and between the two extremes we dug out the soil Into an oval basin. This was easily accomplished by chopping out the turf with a grub hoe and then hitching Dobbin to the drag scraper. The soil was a black, loamy sand, which came up easily and was hauled over and dumped for dressing on the site of our little lawn beyond the pool. When we had the basin excavated to a depth of about a foot, all three of us (for Peter was once more on the Job) scattered to find stones to hold the banks. ' New England farms are traditionally stony—till you want stones. We ended by taking some here and there from the stone walls after we had scoured the pasture behind the barn for half a barrowload. When once the circumference of the pool had been ringed Mth stones, stood upon edge, we raked the bottom smooth, sprinkled clean sand upon it, and were ready to let the water against the dam as soon as the concrete hardened. We gave It one more day, and then shoveled away the temporary dam, filled up the new channel where It turned out of tbe old, and stood beside the dam whils the current with a first muddy rush, whirled against It, eddied back, ttf began very slowly to rise.

(TO BE CONTIMVBOJ

MAGIC OF SURGICAL SCIENCE IS MAKING NEW MEN OF OLD

Some Remarkable Instances Where Operations Have Practically Rebuilt Vital and Important Portions of the Human Body That Had Been Shot Away in the Battles—“ Gas Gangrene” Is Surgeon’s Worst Enemy.

London.—The marvelous progress that has been made in recent times in surgical science is most impressively revealed by a journey to some of the larger military hospitals, made possible through the courtesy of Sir Alfred Keogh, director general of the army medical service. In all the hospitals what the medical staff set above all is conservative surgery—that is to say, the saving of limbs in order that the patients may remain useful members of the community. Thus, at the Herbert hospital, at Shooter’s Jgljl, there have been since the beginning of the war from three to four thousand operations, and Colonel Simpson, the officer in charge, declared that he did not believe there had been in all more than 25 primary amputations. The impression left by a tour of these hospitals upon the layman’s mind is that outsiders have an utterly inadequate idea of the debt they owe to modern surgery at a time like the present. Day by day the surgeons are giving to the nation new men for old. They have embarked upon a great mission of hope among the nation’s soldiers. They are doing more than would have been credible twenty years ago to rob war of its ultimate horror. Out of the hundreds of wonderful cases brought to one’s notice during these visits It Is only possible to describe a'few that may be regarded as typical of this trade of mending soldiers. Take first the new nerve surgery. Here is a man with a bullet hole near his collar bone which severed the nerve controlling the muscles of the wrist. The result was “wrist drop” and a hnnd which until quite recently would have been regarded as incurably useless. The two ends of the severed nerve have been freed from what had already become no more than a scar, they have been reunited and there is every prospect that in less than a year the hand will be almost as good as ever. “As simple as tying up the two ends of a cut telephone wire,” says the surgeon who operated, , Amazing Nerve Cases. There are more remarkable nerve cases still. A man had part of the fleshy portion of his arm shot .away, carrying with it four inches orMhenerve necessary to control the hand movements. The surgeon rang up several hospitals on the telephone till he heard of what he wanted, the amputation that afternoon of a healthy limb. The limb happened to be a leg, and it was amputated in the afternoon. No sooner was it cut off than four or five inches of practically living nerve were removed from the calf, placed In a saline bath and rushed by taxi to the other hospital. Here the patient wns already under an anesthetic. The wound in his arm was opened with a lancet, the ends of the Indispensable nerve quickly found and the circuit re-established, as it were, by means of the first patient’s four inches of filament. Today the man is in a fair way of regaining the full use of his hand. Bone surgery on rather similar lines Is more familiar, but hardly less surprising when you meet and . talk to a man who converses with the aid of a lower jaw part of which was only a few weeks ago part of his right leg. It was mended with two and one-half inches of one of his shin bones. The shin has quite healed, and the hole will be completely filled with new bone before long, so accommodating is nature when treated with knowledge. Another patient is perfectly happy and prosperous with three inches of the fibula of his left leg neatly mortised in the humerus of his right arm. He, too, will finally suffer no loss of bone whatever. The variants of such operations are endless and only limited

RED CROSS TREATS ALL ALIKE

The wounds of a captured German being dressed by a British Bed Cross Bum during the British offensive in the west K

by the Ingenuity and enterprise of each surgeon. Cprpentry and Legs. Of remarkable examples of carpentry applied to broken limbs most hospitals have two or three, if not more, on hand. A young fellow was brought into the hospital with one leg shortened by five Inches, owing to the ends of the broken bone overlapping. He seemed a hopeless cripple. The leg was rebroken under an anesthetic, an eighth ofc an Inch cut off from each side qf the fracture so as to secure a smooth joint, and a steel plate fastened on with gix screws, precisely us one would mend the broken leg of u table. The plate and screws will remain In position as a permanent addition to the soldier’s anatomy, for steel will not rust among the tissues. And the man has a leg practically as long and w straight Tather stronger than, U was Intended to be by qature. Some of the most cruel wounds are those In the jaw, but even here what the skill and patience of the surgeon have been able to do is wonderful. One poor fellow who had been provided with a new roof to his mouth was one of the most cheerful of the patients. His comic songs are the delight of the ward. You cease to be amazed at any height of human skill or human courage after a few hours in any of these military hospitals. You know for certain then that man Is unconquerable. Where the injury Is to the upper part of the face, resulting In, say, the removal of the nose and one eye, magical results are being achieved in a southwestern district hospital by the provision of masks perfectly counterfeiting tlje lost section of the physiognomy. Lieut. Derwent Wood is the jhiventor of the plan. With the help of photographs of what a patient was like before being wounded he will make a false nose of silvered copper, artistically painted to match the surrounding complexion, which will so far defy detection as to enable the owner to go out lntq the world again ■ without shrinking and play his old part In the anairs of men. • A Remarkable Operation. Here is another remarkable case. Not long ago a wounded Guardsman was brought Into the Queen Alexandra hospital at Millbank, suffering from a Examination under The X-rays showed that a piece of metal as large as a halfpenny and much thicker gad entered the breast and lodged in the region of the heart. It was, in fact, actually touching the heart and impeding its action. . An operation was decided on, and the surgeon thrust his hand right Into the opening and pulled out the piece of metal, which Is preserved as a souvenir. There was a danger that during anesthesia the lungs would collapse, and therefore ether was pumped into them to keep them distended. That gallant Guardsman Is now out and about, and it is declared that he will pot feel the slightest*ill effects from his strange* experience. In this hospital there is at present a Serbian officer who was wqunded in his own country and brought to England for treatment. It was a case of severe injury to the jaw. Lieut. Sir Francis Farmer removed a piece of hone about two and a half inches long from the tibia of the patient, and, having carefully prepared a bed in which to place it, fixed it in the jaw. The leg is now healed and the patient can eat wonderfully well. But this refitting and, as it were, rebuilding of citizens is not enough. They must first be snatched from that progressive process of destruction associate?! with thf dreaded word sepsis, that creeping death of the tissues which is the surgeon’s most remorseless enemy. And here again one encounters the marvellous. In this war the variety of sepsis that

has cl a 1 l.iea more, victims than any other Is that known in doctor’s slang as “gas gangrene.” Gas gangrene is caused by tbe presence In a wound of certain types of badllll classed as “anaerobic,” that Ir, bacilli which cannot live In air, the vital principle of which Is oxygen. They exist —like the tetanus bacilli—ln cultivated soil, and it is because the war Is being fought in France among the peasants’ fields that are introduced so constantly by ricocheting bullets or. scraps of earth stained clothing Into the soldiers’ wounds. y Once there they set übout producing tiny gas bubbles among the tissues, hence the name “gas gangrene.” But the gas they cannot endure is oxygen, nndj the obvious way to destroy them Is to Introduce oxygen the innermost recesses of the wound. This Is secured by various methods according to the nature of the Injury. A hole right through the shoulder will be sterilized by the use of a wick drawing peroxide of hydrogen from a small tank above the bed. Another kind of wound may be sprayed with ozone and the third more conveniently dealt with by means of a perforated tube fed with oxygen gas from a cylinder. The operations to which reference has been made would doubtless be described as severe even by the surgeons themselves; nevertheless, modern science has robbed them of most of their terrors. The Improvements in anesthetics have been such that it Is no uncommon thing for an operation to last two hours and for the patient to feel no ill effects from the drug a quarter of an hour after he recovers consciousness. Some, Indeed, will be smoking a cigarette within that space of time. The secret lies in the administration of oxygen with the anesthetic.

EDISON TAKES VACATION.

Thomas A. Edison, the Inventive genius, has abandoned the realms of the scientific world to spend a vacation of a few weeks in the Adirondacks, next to*nature. lie and a party of two, consisting of H. S. Firestone of Akron, 0., and John Burroughs, the famous naturalist, are roughing it in the wilds of the mountains. The photograph was taken as Mr. Edison was preparing to start for the mountains.

LOST HIS MEMORY AT FIRE

Indiana Man, Who Was in Iroquois Disaster in Chicago, Forgot His Past Life. Binghamton, N. Y.—After being given up as dead 18 years, Milton Summons. Kokomo, Ind., real estate dealer, has returned to his mother, Mrs. Cecelia Simmons, Syracuse. Simmons tells a remarkable story of his loss of memory resulting from the Iroquois fire in Chicago. He was operating a spot light in ths,balcony when the fire broke out and he’was plunged 60 feet into the bodies below, but was * rescued. The fall caused loss of mem/ ory, and after two, months *in a hospital he recovered, going to Tipton, Ind., where he engaged in business and married. Later he went Into the real estate business in Kokomo, where he now resides. Increasing pressure on the brain from the injury resulted in‘the necessity for an operatiop last winter, and following this he gradually regained memory of his mother and his former » Ufa. *

WILL NOT GET HER WAIST

British War Regulations Prevent Father of Indiana Woman From Following Usual Custom. "'Fort” Wayne:. Ind. Mrs. Brownie Simmons of Chicago; Who has been visiting relatives. In Fremont, will not recelve this year a waist from her father In Englund, as she has each year for many years, because oif the war regulations. She has received a letter from her mother saying the customs officers have refused to permit the waist to be sent out of the country, saying that wofild mean another waist would have to be imported to replace* it. i Mrs. Simmons’ mother also wrote that she Is required to spend one day each week wheeling wounded or kick soldiers about for an airing.