Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 203, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 September 1918 — Page 3

THE VISION GIRL

By MILDRED WHITE.

The day had started gloomily for: Alan, but that was before the dream began. He had gone In his ranabovt, to make the usual pretense of medleal visits, for Alan’s well-equipped office, showed as yet no mark of usage. Upon this particular rtforning of the disastrous auto ride, he was wondering: “How-he was going to get his rent money together.” When, at the knottiest point of his problem, the car was held in a deep rut of the country road,, then without further warning, turned turtje, leaving Alan face upward on a mossy bank. - This was the last he remembered, the next development was his wonderful dream! With a' realizing consciousness of pain, he endeavored to turn his bandaged nead and discovered that he was lying in a great curtaindraped bed of a fashion of a century ago. Through the golden brocade of ' the draperies, Alan saw the room of princely appointment, chandeliers and wainscoting reminding him of stage scenery of an historic play. The young doctor wrinkled his brows in perplexity, then smiled. It was all an illusion of course. When he tried to stir the pain was intense, so he contented himself with reaching over the satin coverlet to touch something tangible. Inadvertently his finger pressed a button on the mahogany, and around the. canopy over bis head flashed a row of electric lights. It was not the blow of the accident, he decided which caused _ him to see these strange things, but some dope a doctor had probably administered. When the effect wore off he would find himself in the usual iron bed of a hospital. * But now as the dream continued, resting comfortably in his gold-draped bed, he saw before him'a panel of the wainscoting slide aside, while in its opening appeared a beautiful radiant creature —a girl who seemed to be from that same past period of the luxurious room. Alan caught his breath as the living picture moved toward him. Then as his eyes still gazed into the girl’s dark ones, she lifted a small heavily-ringed hand to smooth his hair. “Why,” softly murmured tne girl, “did you turn on the reading lights? Sunshine streams through the win'dow.” At her touch the electricity “was turned off. Alan did not answer. Of what use to talk to a vision? The girl sighed, as she turned from film, another moment and she had passed through the panel in the wall. Restlessly he endeavored to raise himself as an elderly woman entered the room. A man, evidently a physician with his bag, followed... “Well!” he ex claimed cheerfully, looking down at the injured one, “consciousness at last. You have kept us guessing. How do you feel?” “Tell me,” Alan asked painfully, “where I am.” “You are carefully housed in the old Judge Weller estate,” the doctor replied. , ■ ' “Then it was not all an illusion?’’ Alan eagerly questioned. He smiled. “I fancied that a lady in-trsHThg brocade came walking through , the wall.” The physician laughed. “You’ll have no more such fancies,” he said. “Your injury Js really slight. Judge Weller’s widow died recently,, and the only ones at present in charge are family servants. Theyhwyait the settling of the estate by the judge’s granddaughter who is abroad. The place and the Weller fortune are now hers.” When the doctor had gone, Alan gazed intently at the wall opposite. And as he watched, the panel swung again, and the girl was there. A smiling, rose-clad figure this time, as she advanced toward him. “How do you do?” she asked. “Doctor tells me you are yourself at last. He advises that We move you out to the balcony for a little fresh air.” From the doorway the elderly woman came forward. “Jake says,” she announced, "that he won’t carry nobody out to the balcony tonight.” The girlish rose-colored vision whirled about sharply. "Tell Jake,” she said positively, "that I am mistress here.” It was bewildering. Light came suddenly to Alan. This was the granddaughter, of course, re- ' turned unexpectedly from abroad. Alan’s mending was slower than the doctor had hoped, and Alan was glad. Days of enchantment like those spent upon the balcony came but once In a lifetime; his hostess wasklnd. The olden time frocks had 'given place to those of newer and simpler fashion. Back to Alan’s heart came the gloom of that first disastrous morning. Love had found him, and he must go away with It buried in his bosom. A penniless physician may not ask the hand and heart of an heiress. “Tell me,” he asked, "how you came to me dressed in brocades, through &> panel in the wall?” 1 merely a door,” she said.- “Old Mrs. Weller left her rings and gowns to. me. I happened to be trying them on at that time to see If they could, be made over. I was her companion, you know, and am keeping charge here until the heiress arrives.** Alan leaned toward the girl of his vision. His face was radiant, for the gloom of his morning had vanished again In a dream. (Copyright, 1918, Western Newspaper •• w Uatoß j . "Vwww

BOMBS

Maybe rubber collars are coming back to replace that kind of necks. There will be no vegetarians in the army-when the time comes to eat the kaiser up alive. It Is an enigma why common sense Is so called when it Is such an uncommon commodity. A fellow who is blind to reason and deaf to argument is never dumb in voicing his own opinions. There is little cause for patting yourself on the back because there is a little free alkali In your soap. There is a good deal of play on words nowadays but poor old “camouflage” is belnj* worked to death. It must be hard to convince the chap who has become the father of triplets that all good things come in threes. All work and no play may make Jack a dull boy, but turning the adage Inside out doesn’t make him a bright one. < When they“mug” a prisoner at the police station for their Bertillon records they probably tell him to watch for the little jail bird. Compared with the feminine side of his household, pa Is a regular war loafer. While ma and the girls are busy putting up fruit and things from morning till night, all pa has to put up Is his cash.—lndianapolis Star.

SCATTERED CHIPS

He is Indeed lost' who Is lost to shame. Nothing is quite so foolish as an angry fool. The- true secret of physical beauty is to be born pretty. At the age of twenty-one a man has more Ideals than Ideas. The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history. A lace hat trimmed with fur is like ice cream with hot plum pudding sauce. ' . Tills would be a dreary old world if there were no fools in it to make it lively Never do anything gratis today that someone is likely to pay you to do tomorrow. •MW When you see an advertisement for a plain cook It’s safe to bet that some man’s wife inserted it Beware of the girl with the marble heart, young man. Even cold cash can warm it up only temporarily.

SCIENCE NOTES

There are only five parts to- a gas motor invented in Holland! The Swedish navy will experiment ~with the use of both fuel and oils made* from native shales. For aviators a Frenchman has invented paper underwear, light in weight and hefit retaining. Sand of different colors can be fed through a new pencil for children to enable.them to draw outline pictures. An Indianapolis dentist is the inventor of an electric device with which teeth can be tested to ascertain ifjhelr nerves are alive. An English woman has invented a fireless cooker which is supplied With all the heat that it needs by an ordinary Incandescent electric lamp. Government investigators having found proper soil and climatic conditions, Chile hopes ta become an important sugar-producing country.

WAR AND THE SCHOOLS

The schools go “over the top.” Attendance in public schools has grown. Birmingham, Ala., has recently decided to build a new $1,000,000 high school to meet the needs. Out in Oregon schoolboys have attended school six days a week in order to get into the fields earlier. Pennsylvania teachers (in some cities) have been awarded increase of salary. Harrisburg about SIOO a year, Erie $12.50 a month. Reading sls a month on the average. In Maine the schoolchildren are raising 1,000 pigs; Portland has a lieutenant of the United States army in charge of school war gardening and grade children everywhere are making gun wipes, Belgian baby outfits and

WITH THE SAGES

A man deep-wounded may feel toe much pain to feel much anger.— George Eliot No nobler feeling than this, of admiration for one higher than himself, dwells in the breast of man. It is to this hour, and at all hours, the vivifying inftn<>no«> in man’s life.—Carlyle,

THE EVENING REPUBLICAN RENSSELAER, IND.

f TALL shaft today marks the spot in France where liberty was born. This shaft marks the site of the Bastille, that black medieval prison which was demolished 129 years ago by revolutionists who, like the Americans at Lexington, caring K? 2-4 more for liberty than life, unorganized and poorly armed, dared to challenge the tyranny of a king. The stirring events which culminated in the taking of France’s fortress of feudalism were in motion early in July, 1789, and two great characters in the history of France and the United States were in the French capital at that very time. The Marquis de Lafayette, after consulting with Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, presented to the national assembly a bill of rights. Had the French acted ten days sooner, as there u%re many indications that it might, a common birthday might now be observed by the rifetSr* nations. The traditions of the American colonies and those of France differed so widely that to sense the true meaning of the Bastille it is necessary to trace the origin of that gloomy pile in the Faubourg St. Antoine. For centuries the edifice was the sign of the divine right of kings. Before the storm of the French revolution broke there were 50 such prisons in France, for bastille signifies merely a fortified building. As the years went by so Infamous became that one which stood on the banks of the Seine and was usually known as the Castle of Paris that it took unto itself the title of “The BastQle.” Like the institution of monarchy> v of jWhlch it was the symbol, the structure was the development of centuries. The original edifice consisted of a pair of towers, and was a part of the stone barrier against the medieval Huns. Charles V about 1309 commissioned Hugues Aubriot, then provost of Paris, to enlarge the ,old fortification. Aubriot, having in mind the extension' of the feudal power, made it both fortress and jail. Various additions were made by the kings of France. As a fort it was considered as the main walls at their base were 40 feet thick, and beneath the battlements, 100-feet above the pavement, the light struggled into the cells through narrow windows piercing nine feet of solid masonry. Cannon were set in the deep embrasures, and there were portholes from which archers and crossbowmen once sped the shafts of death. To the peasantry and the common people the Bastille was all that was formidable and forbidding. A grim and mysterious stronghold, it earned year by year its evil name. Kings with power of life and death over their subjects used it as the Instrument with which to punish all who opposed them. They spared neither the high nor the low. In the days of absolutism the monarch could commit prisoners to the Bastille without any other process of law than a warrant which became known as a lettre de cachet. This document, bearing the royal seal, was often in blank Many lettres de cachet were obtained by unprincipled persons who either used them to punish their enemies or sold them to those who had sinister ends in view. The monstrous abuses which grew out of this practice were a blot on European history. Courtiers, charlatans and courtesans found a way to sate their grudges. The life or the liberty of no man in all the kingdom was secure. Eyen tn the eighteenth century notable personages might be thrown into prison because some relatives coveted their estates. In the reign of Louis XV 150,000 lettres de chachet were issued. His

Where Liberty Was Born in France

Great Column of. Spot In Paris Where the cAwe-> some BastUe Once Stood

successor, Louis XVI, credited with being an amiable ruler, sent forth 14,500 on their missions of oppression. It might well have been written over the entrance of the Bastille, “He who enters here, leaves hope behind.” The place realized the darkest visions of Dante’s Inferno. Separated from the streets of the city by a moat 125 feet wide and 25 feet deep, and accessible only by a drawbridge, it was like an Isle of the Dead. In its noisome dungeons abominable cruelties were visited upon unfortunate prisoners, whowere condemned to the rack and the boot and the wheel, or chained to pillars and flogged. There were circular cells with conical tops, in which the inmates could neither stand erect, nor sit, nor lie. The roll of the sufferers of the Bastille is a long one. Various degrees of punishment were meted out to the'prisoners, according to the whims of the Sovereign. Some of them, like the Man with the Iron Mask, for a time a prisoner in the Bastille, were treated with consideration. They had bounteous meals, and were assigned to rooms in which there was a fair amount of light, and were even permitted to walk in the garden. They had scant enjoyment—however, for they .never knew when they would be doomed to the fate of their less favored fellows. Men lived 50 and even 60 years in the Bastille, until they lost all connection with the world beyond the moat. In that world toward the close of the eighteenth century mighty changes came to pass. The line of the Louis hacf so impoverished the nation that the national credit was imperiled. When Louis XVI came to the throne a debt of $800,000,000 had been piled up, and it continued to pyramid. The common people had been footing the bill, and now came the proposal, strange in those days, that the nobility and the clergy, the privileged classes, should share the burden with the Third Estate. It was a day of questioningjmd hearkening and soul searching. The words of Voltaire, Rousseau and Diderot were sinking deep into the national consciousness. Hence assemblies to talk over _ these proposals. In vain were the prisons filled with agitators • and the Voltalres sent into exile. The storm was gathering. If the monarchy was to be sustained in its extravagance and feudalism to be upheld the mailed fist do its work. But there was more to deal with than murmuring serfs and a handful of encyclopedists. The soldiers of France, who were expected to uphold the old regime, showed that they were unwilling to kill their fathers and brothers like dogs. The people of Paris ransacked their city until they found arms or the material for making pikes. The time had come when the rights of men should prevail, and men who are starving under tyranny are easily recruited. As the forces of the new order grew they thought with one accord of the hated symbol of that galling oppression which was the cause of all their suffering. The cry “To the Bastille .’’’ rose from a hundred thousand throats. Men and women armed with weapons as effective as popguns would be against a dreadnaught moved against the ancient stronghold. Bullets pattered and flattened against the massive walls. The defense was only half hearted, and the French guards on the battlements were soon waving flags of truce. A force greater than all the munitions ever made was at work —a public sentiment which had become a resistless torrent. Delaunay, the governor of the Bastille, trembled before it and surrendered. Down came the creaking drawbridge and across it rushed the infuri- ■ ated citizenry. The tide flowed in and out of the dim corridors and searched out the narrow cells. AT'soon as there was the semblance of government arrangements were made for removing the Bastille. The work took the contractor nearly a year, although he employed a large force. -There was a thriving business in its relics, for hundreds of the blocks of stone were carved into models of the prison and sold as mementoes. Locks and • bolts were distributed all over the world as souvenirs.' Although the demolition of the Bastille itself proceeded, the thing for which it stood was not so easily swept aside. Feudal Germany and Austria blocked the road to liberty. We of this day, with the perspective of a century and more of ‘ETstory and belonging to a nation which is even now in arms against the powers which sought to foist theyoke of serfdom once more upon the

people of France, may see more clearly than even the able publicists of that period that the excesses of the French revolution grew out of desperation. The Huns, as now, were spinning the webs of intrigue. The Teuton, then as now, living still in the middle ages, domineering, mean and sordid, was determined that France should return to slavery. Louis XVI, under the influence of his beautiful wife, Marie Antoinette, was dominated by Austria. His court was filled with German spies and Prussian emissaries. When he found that he could not conquer his people with French artillery he pretended to accede to their demands and waited for the help of the German war lords. Escaping from Paris, he had got within a few miles of the border before he was intercepted at Varennes. It was his intent to get Germany to send her armies to compel his subjects to accept his feudal rule. • Nations become accustomed to changes of government slowly when they have been ground down under the iron, heels of despotism. Reckless and blind as was their king, the people of France felt that in some, way he was their father and portector and that it would be a calamity if he should turn his face from them. In the months which followed when these children of the new order, knowing far IjSs how to govern themselves than Louis and Marie Antoinette knew how to rule wisely over them, found their country invady ed by Austrians and Prussians they gave way to their rage. They had been willing to retain even so poor a king as a constitutional ruler, and he had already put upon his head the red cap. Had he been firm enough of purpose to resist the intrigues of the central powers he might still have saved his face —and his head. Those were the days when Teuton tyranny was everywhere spreading its nets and snares. George I of England was elector of Hanover, speaking German, jgn the British throne and knowing no English, addressing his ministers tn dubious Latin. George II could talk lamely in the tongue of the people whom he professed to govern. George HI was more German if possible than his predecessors. They had realized that Great Britain had a constitutional government and left affairs largely to the ministers. He, an exemplar of a middle age outlook, took the advice of his German mother, “George, be a king.” His obstinacy lost to Great Britain her American colonies. A German, he gave aid and comfort to France in seeking to make her yield to the demands of her Bourbon king. His kinsman, the duke of Brunswick, leading Austria and Prussian armies, invaded France and served notice upon her National Guard that they were liable to the death of traitors. In their exasperation, the citizens of an impoverished nation then guillotined the king who was taking no steps to meet the foreign foe and was waiting the oncome of the' Hun to subject them again to Bourbon tyranny. Hence the Commune and the Rdgn of Terror ,and those dark hours in which a nation in the throes was endeavoring to adjust Itself to the problems which followed the overthrow of the Bastille. Xi France came up out of much tribulation into a republican form of government. She was enjoying peace and plenty when the Hun again crossed her borders to Impose upon her a yoke which Is the same as that for which stood the dark stronghold on the Seine long since destroyed.

JAPANESE DIFFICULT TO LEARN.

To learn to read ordinary Japanese—to say nothing of the luxury of being able to appreciate the nuances of style in Japanese composition—is the laborious effort of long years for Japanese themselves, writes “A Student of Japanese” in the New East (Tokyo). A Japanese schoolboy haS to s take lessons in penmanship for a matter of nine or eleven years and even then he may find himself hopelessly stumped by an oddity in an ordinary post card. Small wonder, then, that the attempts of Westerners to learn Japanese in their own lands have been rather heartbreaking and profitless work on the whole. Yet even so, some small measure of success has been attained now and then. The old Jesuits had Japanese to teach them in their great seminary at Macao, as some of the Spanish orders had later on at Manila in the seventeenth century.