Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 236, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 October 1916 — Page 3

The IDYL of TWIN FIRES

by WALTER PRICHARD EATON

CHAPTER XlV—Continued. , —lfr"She holds, she bolds!'’ I cried. “But we’ve forgotten to put stones for the -water to fall over upon. It will undermine the structure If we don’t” •‘ ‘Structure’ la good,” laughed Stella, regarding our little six-foot-long and elghteen-inch-hlgh piece of engineering. We shouted for Peter, and ran to the nearest stone wall, tugging back some flat stones, which we placed directly below the dam for the overflow to fall on. Then, while Stella eat on the bank and watched the water rise, I shoveled some of the earth removed from the basin Into the now abandoned temporary channel and packed It down. “Say, we can have fish in here,” cried Petes, who was also watching the water rise. “You can have a four-legged fish.” laughed Stella, as Buster chme down the bank with a gleeful bark and went splash into the pool, emerging to shake himself and spray us all. I had scarce finished filling in the temporary trench, and was setting the poor uprooted plants back Into the bed, with my back turned, when I heard a simultaneous shout from Pteter and .goes!” cried Stella. “One, two, three —and over she Stella. I faced around Just in time to see the first line of the water crawling over the top of,the dam, and a second later it splashed on the'stones below; behind it came the waterfall. Stella was dancing up and down. 'Oh, it’s a real waterfall !” she cried. "I've got a real waterfall all my own! Come on downstream and look back at It!"

From the grove below It certainly did look pretty, flashing In the morning gun. “And when there are Iris bloslotns, great Japanese Iris, nodding ever It!” I exclaimed. “Ob, can’t we plant those right away?” she asked. “No.” said I. "Gardens are like Rome, I’m afraid.” We went back and surveyed our pool at close range. It was clearing now. But the second pile of earth remained to be removed from the west side. Peter and I carted that off In wheelbarrow* at once, dumping part of It Into the hole where we had dug the sand, and the rest Into a heap behind some bushes upstream for future compost. Then we climbed the orchard slope for dinner. Midway we looked back. There glistened our pool, a twenty-foot brown crystal mirror, with the four flower beds all askew about It, the ragged weeds and bushes pressing them close, and beyond It only the rough ground I had cleared with a brush scythe, and the scraggly trees by the wall. “Alas,” said I, “now we’ve built a pool, we’ve got to build a whole den to go with It!” “But It tinkles! Hear it tinkle!” cried Stella. We listened, hand in hand. The tiny waterfall was certainly tinkling, a cool, delicate, plashy sound, which ■tingled with the sound of the breeze In. the trees above our heads, and the sweet twitterings of birds. “Oh, John, it’s a very nice dam, and a very nice world!” she whispered, as we went through the door. “And, after all, it seems to me the greatest fun of gardening is all the nice other things It makes you want to do after you’ve done the first one.” “That,” said I sententlonsly, "is perImps the secret of all successful living.”

CHAPTER XV. The Nice Other Things. A port of water twenty feet long whining in the sun, or glimmering deeply in the twilight, that and Nothing else save a few straggling, annuals wrongly placed about It —yet it made Twin Fires over, it caused us weeks of toll, it got into our dreams, it got into our pockets, too. ' “Now I know why sunken gardens are so called,” said Stella, as she figured out the cost of the fall bulb planting we had already planned. “It's because you sink so much money In 'em!" Qt eorftse there was little that we would do to the margin of title pool that summer, but there was plenty to do beyond the margin-. The first thing of all was to place the flower beds differently. This took considerable experimenting, and Stella, being ingenious, hit upon a scheme for testing various possible arrangements. She filled all sorts of receptacle’s, from tumblers to pitchers, with cut flowers, low and high, and stood them in masses here and there, till the spot was found where they looked the best. As the p*of centered on the line between the front door of the bouse and the yet-to-be-built garden bench against the stone wall, and as the orchard came down to within forty feet of the brook on the stope from the house, it was something of a problem to lead naturally from a grassy orchard slope into a water feature and a bit of almost gardening, without making the transition stiff and abrupt We finally

ctwyiuewr or eouauBCMV. oco

solved it with the aid of a lawn mower, flower beds and imagination. Going over the grass between the last apple trees and the brook again and again with the mower, I finally reduced that section to something like a lawn, and also kept mowed a straight path from the pool up to the front door. Then, beginning just beyond the last shadows, we cut a bed, thirty Inches wide, on each side of the line of the path, running parallel with it to within ten feet of the pool; then they swung to left and right, following the curve of the bank until they flanked the pool. By planting low flowers at the beginning, and gradually Increasing their height till we had larkspur and hollyhocks and mallow In the flanking beds, we could both make the transition from orchard to water feature, and also screen off the pool. Increasing Its intimacy, without, however, hiding It from the front door, where It was glimpsed down a path of trees and flowers. Of course we had no flowers now in mld-July to put into those beds, save what few we could dig up from elsewhere, setting poor little annual phloxes two feet apart; but we could, and did, use them for seedbeds for next year’s perennials, and to the eye of faith they were beautiful.

Now we were confronted by the problem of the' other side of the pool, which Included the problem of how to get to the other side! Stblla suggested tentatively a tiny Japanese moon bridge above the pool, but I would have none of It. I “The only way to build a Japanese garden in New England Is to utilize New England features,” I Insisted. “We won’t copy anybody.” “All right,” she answered, “then we want stepping stones above the pool, and some more down below the dam, where we can see the waterfall.” “More suitable —and much easier," I agreed. Once more we robbed the stone wall, building our two flanking paths of stepping-stones to the other side of the brook. , \ On the other side we decided to eliminate all flower beds In the open, merely planting iris and forget-me-not on the rim of the pool. We would clear out a wide semicircle of lawn, with the bench at the center of the circumference, and plant our remaining flowers against the shrubbery on the sides, which was chiefly the wild reds osier dogwood (cornus stolonlfera). I got a brush scythe, a hatchet, a spade, a grub hoe and a rake, and we went to work. Work Is certainly the word. It was not difficult to clear the brush and the tall, rank weeds and grasses away from our semicircle, which was hardly more than thirty feet In diameter, but to spade up the black soil thereafter, to eliminate the long, tenacious roots of the witch grass and the weeds, to clear out the stubborn stumps of Innumerable little trees and wild shrubs which had overrun the place, to spread evenly the big pile of soil we had excavated from the pool, to reduce it all to a clean, level condition for sowing grass, was more than I had bargained for. Stella gave up helping, for it was beyond hei> strength; but I kept on, through the long, hot July afternoons, and at last had it ready. The time of year was anything but propitious for sowing grass seed, but we planted it, none the less, trusting that in such a low, moist spot it might make a catch. Then we turned to th.e bench. “Gracious, you have to be everything to be n gardener, don’t you?” Stella laughed, as we tried'to draw a sketch first,‘which should satisfy us. “The bench ought to balance the old Governor Winthrop highboy top of the front door 4 But I’m sure I don’t know how we’re going to make it” “Patience,” said I, turning the leaves of a catalogue of expensive marble garden furniture. • yust a simple design of the classic peripd will do. Colonial furnltufe was based on the Greek orders.”

We found at last the picture of a marble bench which could be duplicated in general outline with wooden planking, so I telephoned to the lumber dealer In the next town for two 24-inch-wlde chestnut planks, And was fairly staggered bv the bill When it came. It appears that a 24-lnch-wide plank nowadays has to come from North Carolina, or some other distant point, and is rarer < than charity, at least that is what they told me. “I think it would be cheaper In marble,” said Stella. “And it looks to me as if you could make the bench out of one plank.” “We want another bench on the sundial lawn,” said I, wisely. “You do now,” said she. “But if I hadn’t' got two plonks,” said I, “and had spoiled the first one, then we’d have had to wait two or three days again.” “Oh, that was the reason!” she smiled. I sawed one of the planks into one six-foot and two jwo-foot lengths, and rounded the edges of the long piece for the tpp. Then, on the two short lengths we carefully drew from the picture the outline of the supports ea

THE EVENING REPUBLICAN, RENSSELAER, IND.

the marble original, and went to wort with rip saw, hatchet and drawknife to carve them out The seasoned chestnut worked bard, and we were half a day about oor. tuk. The next day we put the three pieces together with braces and long screws; planed and sandpapered the wood till we had it smooth, and then painted it with white enamel paint While the first coat was drying, we made a deep foundation of coal ashes and flat stones for the bench to rest on? and the next afternoon, when the second coat, which Stella had applied before breakfast was nearly dry, I hove the heavy thing on a wheelbarrow, and carted ft around the road to the point where it was to go. We put a little fresh cement on the foundation stones to hold the two legs, and with Mike’s aid the bench was lifted over the stone wall, through the hedge of ash-leaf maples, put in place, and leveled. Stella hovered near, with the can of paint, to cover our fingermarks and give the top a final glistening coat “There,” I cried, as the job was done, “we have our pool and our garden bench! We have some of our flowers planted for next year! Wo have our bit of lawn! Let's go up the orchard to the front door and see how It looks.” t I left the wheelbarrow forgotten in the road, and we ran up the slope together, turned at the door, and gazed back. The pool shimmered in the afternoon sun. We could hear the water tinkling over the dam. Beyond the pool was the dark semicircle of fresh mold that was to be green grass backed by blossoms against the shrubbery, and finally, at the very rear, now stood the white bench, from this distance gleaming like marble. “Fine! It looks fine!” I cried. Stella’s eyes were squinted judicially. “Oh, dear,” she said, “I wish there was a cedar, a tall, slender, dark cedar, just behind the bench at either

“You Have to Be Everything to Be a Gardener, Don’t You?”

end. And, John, do you know, we ought to have some goldfish in the pool?” I sighed profoundly. “You are a real gardener,” said I. “Nothing is ever finished!” " “I’m afraid I am,” she answered. “But we will have the goldfish, won’t we?” “Yes, and the cedars, too,” I replied. “I’ll ask Mike when is the best time to put ’em In.” Mike was sure that spring was the best time, and there were some good ones up in our pasture. “Oh, dear, spring Is the best time for everything, it seems to me, and here it’s only July !” cried Stella. “Well, anyhow, I’m going to draw a plan of the pool garden, and hang it over my desk.” She got paper and pencil and drew the plan, while I lay under an orchard tree listening to the tinkle of the waterfall and watching her while Buster came and licked my face. “I think your arrangements of irla on the edge Is rather formal,” I was saying, “and It would be rather more decorous, If not decorative, for you to sit upon the bench, and —” when we heard a motor rumble over the bridge at the brook, and the engine stop by •our side door.

CHAPTER XVI. ■ Callers. “Heavens!’! cried Stella, leaping to her feet,, “do you suppose it’s callers?” She looked ruefully at her paintstained fingers, at her old, soiled khaki garden skirt, which stopped at least six inches from the ground, and then at my get-up, which consisted of a very dirty soft-collared , shlrt. no necktie, khaki trousers that beggared description, and soil-crusted boots. Some passengers from the motor were unquestionably coming up our side path—• they were coming around the corner by the lilac bush to the front door—they were around the lllae bush—they were upon us! We looked at them—at a large, ample female in a silk gown anything but sample, at a young woman elaborately dressed, at a smallish man with white hair, white mustache and ruddy complexion, clad in a juvenile Norfolk jacket and white flannels. "They are coming to call!" whjw pered Stella. "The Lord help Mt John, I’m scaredr ~ “ ' (TO BH ’CONTDOnUM

CALLAHAN IS HARD WORKER FOR PIRATES

SKIPPER OF THE PITTSBURGH BUCCANEERS.

Jimmy Callahan has the sympathy of Pittsburgh fans in his fruitless endeavors to get some real baseball out of the bunch of material that he has at his command, writes James J. Long in Pittsburgh Sun. Certain it is not due to any lack of effort on Cal’s part that the club is not playing better ball. No manager or player ever worked harder for the succejss of the club.. The skipper Is out on the field with the men in morning practice every day and misses no detail of the exercises; it is the same during preliminary practice In the afternoon, and from the time the game Starts until the*Tast man is out he Is the busiest and hardest working man on the lot. He talks to

DIAMOND NOTES

Jean Dubuc is pitching grand ball Tor the Tigers. • • * Appropriately enough, Otto Knabe has piano legs! • • * “Jess” Barnes continues to be the mainstay of the Braves’ pitching brigade. • * • Connie Mack’s ball team this year has been welcome everywhere but at home. • * • “Bert” Niehoff continues to be the star of the Phillies, both on offense and defense. * • • So far Cincinnati has not made the slightest hint as to C. Mathewson’s successor. • * * Leslie Mann, the Cubs’ outfielder, Is better than ever, according to “Joe” Tinker. ♦ V ♦ The manager who makes a pennant drive must hold a tight rein over his players. * Harry Davis steps in and manages the Athletics whenever Connie Mack goes a-scouting. • • * Mathewson is playing golf as often as he can, for he wants to forget his managerial troubles. * • • Fred Luderus, the Phillies’ first baseman, is said to hit the ball as hard as any man In the game. ♦ * * Did It ever occur to you that the player with the most speed at night is the slowest In the daytime? »* • $

“Conrife” Mack denies the report that he has agreed to sell “Joe” Bush, his star pitcher, to the Tigers. • * • The Cubs have signed a young Pittsburgh rookie named Bell. He ought to make good if he doesn’t crack. * * • If Matty fails to release the Reds from last place, the Cincinnati directors may offer the job to Houdini. * * Somebody had the wrong- dope when he said the Browns lacked a punch. Isn’t a Davenport a “sleep producer?” » ♦ ♦ If a baseball manager owned all the pastimers in the world he would still want "Just &ne more winning pitcher.” * « * Some people will continue to believe that Matty threw his greatest “fadeaway” when be signed with Cincinnati.' • • • After twelve years on the job Bill Klem sagely remarks that umpiring is no sinecure. Most of it is just pure sin. * • * Jim Scott is about through as a pitcher. He haS been able to pitch but one or two creditable games all season. —A wise gazabo-once said youth will have its fling, but Trlstam Speaker is one gent who doesn’t care a rap who’s fllngfcg. * * • According to Jake Danbert, the only ■way to bunt scientifically is to place the ball so it’ll take two outfield relays to get It back to the plate.

and tries to encourage the prayers going to and coming from their positions, and Pittsburgh’s turns at bat In every inning finds him out on the coaching lines trying everything to get the Pirates started on a rally or to direct the runners around the bases. Unlike McGraw and some other pilots, Cal does not pose on the lines when his club is winning and hide himself when it is behind._ The score doesn’t make any difference to him. If his team is ten runs behind he is out working all the harder. The Pirates have played some ball that would drive many a manager to a madhouse, but Callahan has been even tempered anduntiring through It all.

WAS ROOTING FOR BROTHER

Harry Coveleskie, Star Southpaw of Tigers, Forgot Himself in Recent Cleveland Game. If there is any one person who Is pulling with might and main for Stanley Coveleskie to make good as an Indian, it Is Brother Harry, the star southpaw of the Tigers. Harry was sitting on the Detroit bench when Brother Stan was mowing down the Tigers in a recent conflict. It was In the fourth inning and Cobb was on first with none out and Bobby Veach at bat. “Atta boy, Stan, atta boy. Guess that brother of mine hasn’t got something,” he yelled as Veach fouled to Turner. “That’s it, Stan. You’ve got his number,” he muttered as Sam Crawford hit a roller to Howard; forcing Cobb at second. , “Say, Harry, if you are going to root for Cleveland, go over on the’Cleveland bench,” shouted Oscar Vltt. Brother Harry was dazed for a minute. He had forgotten Brother Stan was agalrfst his own team. “Say, fellows, I clean forgot,” he said sheepishly and then he yelled as Hellmann went to bat: “Hit it outa th’ lot, Harry. That busher ain’t got a thing but a prayer.” . “It sure was funny,” said Trainer Harry Tuthill of Detroit in relating the incident.

PICKED UP ART OF THROWING

Player Can Keep Hla Arm Strong by Carefully Avoiding Pegging for Grandstand Fans. “Where did I learn to throw? That’s easy,” said Harry Hooper, outfielder

Harry Hooper.

range of a rabbit and bowl it over with a stone. “The training I got as a kid wasn’t wasted, either, for when I broke into baseball I could peg them as well as any of the fellows who had seen years of service. “A man doesn’t have to be a giant to throw a baseball a great distance. If he doesn’t try for grandstand pegs, he should always keep his arm strong.”

ED KLEPFER’S CLEVER WORK

His Pitching for Cleveland Has Been One of Most Striking Features in Two Major Leagues. One of the most striking features of the two major league pennant races has been the wonderful pitching of Ed Klepfer of Cleveland. Klepfer was with the White Sox last spring, having been purchased from Venice of the Pacific Coast league, but Manager Rowland considered him excess baggage and-passed him over to the Indians for nothing after the Jackson deal. '

for the Boston Red Sox. “I just naturally picked it up when I was a kid on my father’s ranch in California. I was just like any other kid wanted to throw stones, and by constant practice, during my spare mo.ments in the fields, became a sort of dead-shot. Oftentimes I would get the

JOHNNY EVERS PEEVED

Couldn’t Stand for Umpire Byron’s Song Solo. Arbiter Blngs Decision In Verse and Chorus—Some Picturesque Char, acters Mentioned Who Are Help to Pastime. It was very easy for aggressive and high-strung Johnny Evers to get

John Evers.

apologize to Mr. Tener. However, picturesque characters llkfe Byron, Germany Schaefer, Nick Altrock and Steve Evans are a help to the game, and Byron should be permitted to sing as often as he wishes. While mentioning the comedian Steve Evans It is timely to recite a humorous Incident in which Evans was the central figure In Toledo the other day. Steve has been playing for Roger Bresnahan and recently he was given a whirl at second base. One of the opposition who Is said to be the slowest man in the league, hit almost

to the fence and got a single. On the first pitch to the next batter, the catcher threw the ball hurriedly to Steve at second. “What are you throwing down here for?” shouted Steve., as he caught the ball. “Why, he’s trying to steal,” exclaimed the surprised catcher.

“He might be trying to steal * answered Evans, “but he’s not tn sight yet.” ,

"SLUGGER” JACK MURRAY

Jack Murray, former outfield star with the Giants and Cubs, has been hitting a hot clip with the Toronto International league tearti. Jack has been the team’s best bet through their climb upwards and looks good to return to fast company.

EXCUSE SIMILAR TO GIANTS

Pitchers Laugh When Batters Offer Alibis for Shortcomings—One From Braves Is a Bird. “It gives us pitchers a laugh,” said Tom Hughes of the Braves, who recently pitched a no-hit, shut-out game, “to hear the batters excusing their shortcomings. • Do not think for a mln? ute that the Giants are original in their grumblings over conditions at the Polo grounds. Braves are springing: one that is a SirtL -There are no signs on. the fences of the Braves’ field, remember, and no question of lights and shadows. But our players are not stumped for an excuse. They say that the outfield fence is too low, that when a southpaw is working the ball comes out of a bright sky to the plate and that when a right-hander is working the ball comes out 61 the scoreboard to the batter. Can you beat it?”

Mel Wolfgang la Star.

“Mel” Wolfgang, pitcher of the White Sox, has been twirling splendid ball all season and is now one of the most reliable members of Rowland’s crew. '

Senators Try Out Youngsters.

Manager Griffith Bas two youngsters he expects will make good. Horace Milan, a brother of the Senator center fielder, and Turney Barber have “’st been added to theft squad.

peeved when Bill Byron called him out on strikes and accompanied the ruling with a song solo. It Is tough to be cal led out on pitches, but when the umpire sings the decision In a verse and chorus, there is small wonder that Evers said someth 1n g which caused him to

Bill Byron.