Jasper County Democrat, Volume 3, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 January 1901 — Page 2

OUR STORY TELLER

SAVED BY A BOY.

<T? T sunset on a tine spring eventhere was a great stir and bustle In a quiet little upland village of the Tyrol, the southwesternmost province of Austria. War bad broken out between Austria and France, and Hie French were advancing with a large army toward the Austrian border; so that the Tyrolese hills, which lay nearest to them would be likely to feel the first sweep of their fury. - - - - ■ Great was the excitement, and varied were the reports that flew about. Some •aid the invaders were coming from the south, on the side of Italy; other were equally sure that they were coming from the north, on the side of Germany. But, anyhow, it was certain that they were coming ami that when they came they would burn every house and kill every man that fell in their way. But the brave German mountaineers were not the men to be scared by any danger, however sudden and terrible. Tire bead man of the village, linns Godrel, was himself an old soldier, ami needed no one to teach him what to do when an enemy was coming. He at once set everybody to work, building barricades of felled trees, laying huge Btones along the hillside to roll down upon the assailants, and posting his best marksthen in the thicket on either side of the road by which the French must come; and he was especially careful to stock with frosh wood the beacon on the hilltop that overhung the village, and to station a trusty man beside it, with orders to light the slgualfire the moment he caught sight of the advane In g ene my.— This was a tine time for the village boys, and, above all, for little Gottfried Godrel, Han’s son, who now saw for the first time the stir and excite-

“one more sturdy blow and the BROKEN BRIDGE FELL THUNDERING AND CRASHING INT« THE ABYSS.”

merit of war, which he had hitherto known only from his father’s stories. All day long be and his comrades paraded the little village with toy Hags fastened to sticks, or went Into the pine woods to play at lighting the French, lying in wait behind the trees like riflemen, and then suddenly bursting forth upon their Imaginable enemies with a tremendous ‘'Helsa!” (hurrah). But as day passed after day, and nothing was seen or heard of the French, the mountain men began to relax their watchfulness, and to grumble at having to stand on guard all day, looking out for an enemy that never came, when they wanted to be going on with their work and earning money. One man wished to attend to his goats, another to cut his wood, a third to get ready his butter and cheese for the next market. Poor Hans Godrol hnd hard work to keep his recruits together, and, in fact, but for the fear of being laughed at and called cowards, they would probably have all gone off in a body. The worst grumbler of all was a big, bony, ill-looking wood-cutter called Franz Listlg, and when the men were mustered one morning for their usual duty, and Franz was missing, every one took It for granted that he had got tired of the service and had gone home In disgust But presently a hunter come In from the higher ridges, who had found Llstig’s cap and hatchet on the edge of a precipice, along which there were marks of sliding feet In the ■now, as if someone had slipped and fallen over the brink. “See now, my sons,” shouted Godrel's deep, strong voice, amid the general silence of horror, "what happens to skulkers and deserters. Fie who turns his back on the flag of the Fatherland can never come to a good end.” The old soldier's fiery words sank deep into every heart and there was do more grumbling for the next day or two. On the third evening after Llstig's disappearance a great cloud of sgioke was seen to go up suddenly from the hilltop above the village. The signal-fire was kindled!

"The French are coming!’’ ran from mouth to mouth. Every man cocked his gun and stood his post, while the boys, with little Gottfried at their head, rushed at a breakneck pace up the steep side of Beacon Hill to catch their first glimpse of the advancing enemy. All along the great plain below’ a rolling dust cloud was rising like a mtst, and through it appeared long lines of bl ue-roa ted gren a diers w 11h gll t taring bayonets, ami trains of horses dragging cannon, and masses of helmeted dragoons, and hussars all ablaze with gold lace, flourishing their shining sabres. But the dauntless mountain lads looked down upon thlFterflble magnificence of the spectacle as coolly as if it were only a circus. "If there are not guns enough for us, we can roll down stones on the Frenchmen!’’ cried Gottfried, manfully. “They won’t get up here quite so easily as they think.’’ Hut it soon appeared that they were not thinking of "getting up” at all, for, instead of turning off toward the hills, t hey k ept straiglll on acrosstheplahi, and vanished at length into the gathering darkness of night. Evidently they meant to attack some other point, and the long-expected assault was not coming, after all! Then Godrel’s band broke up at once, with a good deal of mingled growling and laughing. Some of the men were rather sulky at having taken so much trouble for nothing, but others made fun of the “chicken-hearted Frenchmen,” for whom one look at the Ty rolese hil Is ha d been enough, and one or two who had not looked very happy when the first alarm was given, now began to hold their heads high and to talk big of what they would havg

“ita LOOSENED THE LOO FROM ITS PLACE AND DOWN THE FEARFUL DESCENT LIKE AN ARROW.”

done if the French had come on in earnest. The next day everybody was at work again as usual. Haus Godrel himself Mid not think it worth while to keep watch, now that the French had gone past, and even the man who tended the beaconfire came and went to his hut. But there was one person in the village who was not quite so confident as the rest, and that was little Gottfried Godrel. He remembered all that his father had told him of the devices used in war to deceive the enemy and throw him off his guard. » True, it was not easy to see what trick there could be here, but Gottfried felt uneasy, nevertheless; and the result was that without saying a word to any one, he piled fresh wood on to the beacon, and watched beside it for three nights running. On the fourth morning, just about daybreak, the boy awoke with a start, and a strange feeling of there being something wrong. There was already light enough to see all around from the great height at which he stood, and hlg first glance showed him something tbst made his bold heart stand still. Along the snowy slope of the Rudclsberg a long, dark-blue line, crested with bright points, was creeping onward like some huge caterpillar, slowly but steadily, nearer and nearer every moment. The French were coming nt last—and coming, too, not by the road, but by an old, disused goat-path which some of the Tyorlese themselves could not “have followed without a guide. How had these strangers lon med the secret of it? There must be treachery somewhere! Quick as lightning the boy fired the pile, and the resinous pine wood crackled Into a broad, red blaze. But just then a terrible thought struck him. The villagers, on seeing the signal, would of course expect the enemy by the high road—they would never think of the goat-track, by which the French could come right up behind the village, and thus, so to speak, turn all the German defenses inside out. There was only one thing to be done—he must go down with the news himself. But before be could reach the

village by the long, difficult, winding foot-path, the French w’ould have got past the narrowest part of the goattrack, and It would be too late to stop them. At that moment his eye fell upon the “log-slide,” which went straight as a plumb-line down the steep mountain side to the village. Just at the top lay a huge tree-trunk, lopped, barked and all ready for shooting down. Could he bestride, that trunk, plunge down this terrible short-cut, and reach the foot alive? Perhaps and even If it cost him his life, he was determined to try. Between the stumps of the two great branctes that forked off from the main trunk there was a narrow hollow, into which the daring noy wedged himself firmly. • Then, with a violent push of his right foot he loosened the log from its place and shot down the fearful descent like an arrow. Everything seemed to spin round him as he flew—hills, woods, rocks, streams, all dancing in the air together, while the boom of the falling log sounded In Ills ears like one continuous peal of thunder. If It should turn over, or even swerve to one side, he would be crushed to death on the spot; but he cared not for that. Down,T!bWii, down he flew, dizzy and breathless, till suddenly there came a violent shock, and the flying log stood still, and he saw, dimly as if in a dream, the outermost huts of the village before him, while beside him stood two men, staring at him as if they had seen a ghost. _ _____ "The French—the Kudelsberg goattrack!” was all he could say; but it was quite enough. “Karl,” cried the younger of the two to his comrade, “off with you, and tell the lads to get their guns, and run for their lives to the Kudelsberg. I’ll go on before and hew down the bridge.” And aw ay flew Kaspar the wood-cut-ter, axe In hand, while Karl darted off In the opposite direction. The bridge of which Kaspar ITpoke was a rude plank framework which spanned a deep black chasm worn by a torrent in the side of the Kudelsberg, just at the narrowest and most dangerous point of the goat-path along which the enemy were advancing. This bridge once broken, the march of the French would be effectually stopped; but could he get there in time? Kaspar was famous for his swiftness of foot; but never—not even when he won a race against all the best runners of the district—had he made such speed j as now. The snow was more than an-1 kle-deep. but he dashed through it like a mountain goat, and at length, spent' and gasping for breath, came out upon the narrow ledge-path, and saw that he was the only living thing upon it. So far, so good; but at any moment, the foremost Frenchman might come, round the corner on the other jside of the bridge, and there was no time to be lost. To work went the trusty ax, and the white splinters and chips of wood flew up in the air like a shower of spray. One plank was cut through, a second, a third, and now the trembling bridge hung by a single support over the black abyss below, when suddenly, not fifty yards from the brink of chasm, there Issued from behind a projecting crag the tall figure and dark, sallow face of a French grenadier! And beside him j stood the missing woodmen, Franz Llstlg, who had betrayed the path to his country’s enemies. But just at that moment Kaspar’s quick ear caught the trample of hurrying feet behind him, and knew that his comrades were coming up to the rescue. “Let them kill me now, if they like!” he muttered through his clenched teeth. “There are enough of our lads behind to stop them, and my work Is done!” One more sturdy blow and the broken 1 bridge fell thundering and crashing into the abyss. But mingling with the crush came a sharp report and stifled cry. The baffled assailants had vented their rage on poor Kaspar with a volley of musketry, and the gallant fellow lay bleeding in, the snow. But he did not fall unavenged. The concussion of the air, caused by the tiring, loosened the great mass of snow that hung threatening overhead, and down it come with a rush and a roar like the bursting of a mighty wave, hurling headlong Into the fearful gulf below the three foremost Frenchmen and their traitor guide, Franz Llstig. The rest turned and fled, and the village was saved—saved by one daring child! As for poor Kaspar, he was hit In no less than three pjaces, and his comrades shook their head# and exchanged gloomy looks as they raised him and bore him slowly homeward. But he recovered In the end, and lived to tell for many a year afterward how hundreds of armed men had been baffled by the courage and cleverness of a single boy.

Laws for tho Soudan.

Benign paternal government Is to be the general-note of Soudan administration in the earlier stages of its reorganization, says a Cairo correspondent Here are a few of the chief heads of the new code just promulgated: The importation, manufacture or sale of alcoholic liquor is prohibited. No person will be allowed to sell his land or to make loans at usurious rates. Even mortgages will be subject to formal authorization. Trade, Industry and navigation are free, and every chieftain is a magistrate In his own district

Neutralizing Danger-from Damp.

Houses which are damft because of proximity to undrained land may be rendered more habitable by planting the laurel and the sunflower near them. Yon can’t get bread froip a stone, but you can get money from a gold brick.

POLITICS OF THE DAY

A Few Subsidy Facts. Why should we pay a few wealthy gentlemen $9,000,000 a year—slßo,ooo,1)00 in twenty years—for running ships? The scheme is urged on tlie ground, among others, that we are paying foreign ship owners $150,000,000 a year for carrying freights, all of which ought to be transferred to American jackets. The Engineering News acutely exposes this pretense. Assuming that the figures are correct, the greater part of the $150,000,000 paid for freight goes for the running expenses of the vessels. These would not lie affected by any subsidy. The coal, provisions and other supplies bought in this country’ now would continue to l>e bought here if we hired ship owners to put their vessels under our, flag, and whatever is now bought abroad would continue to be bought there, unless our merchants would sell the goods cheaper. The Subsidy bill purports 1o require wages to be paid to American seamen, but as its requirement that one-fourth of the crews of subsidized ships must be Americans can lie suspended at convenience, no change need be expected under that head. The fact that the sailors’ unions oppose the bill is sufficient to show what the wages pretense amounts to. Insurance premiums would not be altered by any provision of the bill.'

There remains only the item of profits to owners. Americans collect a large share of those now. They own 300,000 tons of foreign shipping, Their profits come here, and they could not do more than come here if the government added a present from the Treasury. The only subsidies Great Britain pays ire direct compensation to certain specified lines for carrying the malls to foreign countries and to British colonies all over the world, and for providing auxiliary cruisers built in accordance w’ith naval requirements. For these purposes she pays $5,851,525, which amounts to an average rate of 57 cents per ton on her entire ocean-going steam marine of 10,993.111 tons. Germany pays $1,891,620, which, for her oceangoing steam marine of 1,625,521 tons, amounts’to an average rate of $1.19 per ton. We are now paying under our existing mail subsidy law $998,211, which, for our ocean-going steam marine of 810,800 tons, averages $1.23 per ton. Under the proposed $9,000,000 arrangement our payment would average over gll per ton, or more than twenty times the British rate.

Of course, averages are misleading. The British pay certain vessels for dong certain work. Ninety-seven per cent of their shipping receives no government assistance at all. We propose to pay every ship that will hoist our flag, whether it renders any service to us or not The Hamburg-American line, the greatest steamship combination in the world, has been built up entirely without subsidies. This single corporation owns ninety-five steamers, aggregating 515,628 tons, or about 50 per cent more than the entire steam tonnage of the Fnlted States registered in the foreign trade.—Chicago American. Reviving a Bad Odor. Old man Alger has escaped from his political tomb just at a time when every one thought he was buried for good and all, dragging all the stench of bls embalmed beef and the smell of his unsavory record, military and civil, once more into the open air. The only the effect the incident can have is to renew the disgust felt by all decent and respectable people over the revelations of the rottenness and corruption disclosed in the early part of the McKinley administration, responsibility for which the President dodged by firing his guilty subordinate, after having caused the expenditure of hundreds of thousands of dollars of public money In ineffectual attempts to whitewash him.—Kansas City Times. Stupid Protection!#! Claim. Because the people of the United States have almost unlimited natural resources and because they can produce twice as much as they can consume and must therefore find a market lieyond their own shores protectionists point to our swelling exports as a proof that the free trade theory is demolished. The very reverse is true. The.home market theory Is demolished and free trade vindicated in despite of self-created barriers. Because of our natural advantages we are conquering our way In foreign markets and only denying to our own consumers their due share of the benefits of competitive trade.—Philadelphia Record. Harriaon a Rankling Thorn. Ex-President Harrison continues to discuss the unconstitutional and dangerous policy of the administration and majority in Congress toward tho Territories. Nothing can be more galling for the supporters of this policy than the attacks made upon it by the only living Republican ex-President of the United States. How feeble are the special pleadings of Attorney General Griggs and Senator Foraker in answer to the ex-Presldent’s weighty arguments in t>ehalf of constitutional government.—Philadelphia Record. Va»t Rurnt Being Expended. Since the lieginnlng of the Spanish war the Government has l>een levying taxes and spending tliem at a tremendous pace. It paid Spain $20,000,000 for territory which was already the country’s by law of conquest; it has

spent hundreds of millions of dollar* and thousands of lives in efforts to get from the Filipinos the title to this territory, which Spain did, and could not, give, and It has been paying tribute to the Sulu Sultan to enable him to perpetuate slavery and to maintain polygamy in noble state—Philadelphia Ledger. Forcing Hanna’# Hand. Many Americans will see considerable truth in Pettigrew’s assertion that Hanna’s ship subsidy bill is nothing more than an attempt to. pay the campaign debts of the Republican party at the rate of $9,000,000 per year, this gigantic annual tribute being taken from the pockets of the American people. There are also those who will agree with Senator Pettigrew that if Hanna and <the administration are determined to place this colossal tax upon tho people for the benefit of certain syndicate interests it will be well to have it done at an extra session of Congress in order that it may stand out conspicuously in its true light before the public.-St. Louis Republic. Trying to Conceal Infamy. The Ship Subsidy bill is carefully drawn and its advocates surround it with patriotic garnishing in the hope that tlie tawdry rags will blind its hideous proportions and obscure the infamous designs which its enactment will impose on tlie jieople. The unpardonable scandal which the last great steal mothered, the Pacific railroads construction, which about thirty years ago shocked the country and buried beyond resurrection the Ameses, the Colfaxes and similar ilk, is so far in the past that it is hoped that the shame of that infamous transaction is forgotten by the people. It is not forgotten. The offensive odor still lingers in the nostrils of those familiar with the stupendous robbery.—Cincinnati Enquirer.

Import# Shonld Be Remembered. It is a rare day that the Treasury Bureau of Statistics at Washington does not give put some figures on our growingyxports to the Philippines—caused j/most entirely by the transposition lof a part of the American home to that locality. The whole trntlrrequires that something be said about imports. Thus the army transport Grant came into San Francisco Monday witli a great number of sick soldiers and the bodies of 398 dead ones, mostly, of course, from the Philippines.-Springfield, Mass., Republican. America and Foreign Market#. Trade does not depend upon the possession of colonies. Englund supplies her colonies with but a small portion of her products. Her largest and most profitable export trade is with other civilized nations. We have entered foreign markets because we have supplied commodities of better quality at a lower price than could manufacturers on the ground. That is the sole and only reason.—Dubuque Herald. Explained in Simple Fashion. There Is no doubt whatever that the war is over in the Philippines. Mr. McKinley and his friends say so, and they are truthful people. But we can’t bring the volunteers home just yet, unless Congress will give us 70,(KM) regular troops to replace them. They are needed, and needed badly, to celebrate the peace jubilee* in the Philippines, without which peace will not be complete.— Petersburg, Ya., Index-Appeal. The Infant Still Neel# Protection. It is a long wty from Chicago to Melbourne, but the Illinois Steel Company has closed a contract for 20,000 tons of steel rails for Australia. Still, it is deemed necessary by Republican statesmen to maintain a high protective duty of $7.80 a ton on steel rails to protect tlie Infant industry. That is latter-day protection.—Pittsburg Post. The Wail of a Hackling. The steel trust insists that it must have tariff protection. Of course it must if it is to further continue its practice of charging the home consumer more than the foreign consumer. The steel trust is such a puny Infant that it must 1# coddled until the crack of doom, if its members are to believed.—Omaha World-Herald. An Injudiciou# Editor. Ex-Secretary Alger evidently doesn’t realize how dead tired the public is of everything connected with embalmed beef and Eagan and Alger and the controversies between prominent army officers. The magazine editor who drew him out of his retirement, to sny the least, did not do him a service.—Boston Globe. Haloon l<aw in London. In London, the largest city In the world, all the saloons -are comjielled to close promptly at 12 o'clock midnight, and they remain so till 6 o'clock in the morning. On Sunday tlie saloons, or public-houses, as they are calk'd, are allowed to open their places, if desired, between 12 o'clock noon and 1 o’clock p. m. to allow the poor and others to get their beer, to lie used at meals or otherwise, but promptly at 1 o’clock all doors are again cloned and no more purchases enn be made till 6 o'clock, when again the doors are opened, to remain open till 11 o'clock, nt which hour the saloons are again closed for the night. Lord Byron had a favorite dog, “Boatswain,” which is burled in the garden at Ncwstend Abbey.

MOB BURNS A NEGRO.

LEAVENWORTH, KAN., WITNESSES A HORRIBLE AFFAIR. Doomed Man Fastened to a f-take and Oil-Saturated Fuel Piled Abont Him —Wretch Had Attacked Miaa Eva. Both—Suspected of Another Crime. Five thousand infuriated men stormed the county jail in Leavenworth, Kan., Tuesday afternoon, took from it Fred Alexander, a negro, and burned him at the stake. Alexander was under arrest for an attempted assault on Miss Eva Roth and was suspected of having assaulted and murdered Miss Pearl Forbes last November. The negro was taken from his cell at the State penitentiary at 3 o’clock in the afternoon and loaded into a hack and taken to Leavenworth. Fifty deputy marshals surrounded him and Deputy Sheriffs Staucemyers and Tom Brown sat in the hack on either side of him. There were fifty buggies and wagons in the procession which followed the hack in, and it was a funeral march indeed for Fred Alexander. The trip to town was made quietly and there was no attempt to create a disturbance on the road. Entranee to the jail was effected by steel rails and iron bars, with which the mob battered in the doors and wrenched the cell doors and gratings from their fastenings. Sheriff Everhardy was called upon to surrender the negro, but refused. The mob was prepared for this action on his part, and in a minute the steel rails, nTfopetled as battering rams by the united strength of hundreds of determined and bloodthirsty men, began a resistless attack on the jail doors. One after another the barriers gave way to the onslaught and in less than fifteen minates the trembling negro was in the clutches of his captors. The punishment meted out to Alexander was identical with that administered by a Colorado mob last November to another negro, Preston Porter. The details Of Porter’s execution were fresh in the minds of Leavenworth’s people, and as Alexander was accused of precisely a similar crime his punishment was made a replica of the Colorado affair. He was taken to the scene of his alleged victim’s death, fastened by chains to an iron stake driven in the ground, fuel was then piled around him and saturated with oil and the father of his alleged victim given the privilege of putting the torch to his funeral pyre. Alexander* made no resistance after once dragged to the stake and only kept saying: “You are killing the wrong man.” While preparations were being made for the execution there stood on a box across the street a woman of 20. She had stood at the door of the penitentiary and had said, “That is the man,” as she saw Warden Tomlinson produce Alexander. “That is the man,” she said, "who assaulted me.” The crowd had heard her evidence. That evidence was the negro’s sentence and the mob was carrying it out. By 5 o’clock the stake was declared ready. It was the work of but a few moments for half a dozen men to haul Alexander from the wagon up the fourfoot bank of cordwood, and to fasten a chain about his chest and another about his feet to the rail. Then came the coal oil. It was poured on his head and splashed upon the cordwood. "More! Good!’ Light it!” were the cries. “Confess, for a hist time,” said rugged old Mr. Forties, determined to finish the tragedy he had set out to witness, but anxious to have conviction that he was about to help kill the man who had killed his daughter. “I ain’t got a thing to confess.” “Then you are off for hell,” was his answer. “Wait. Let me see my mother. Let me shake hands with my friends. I see lots of them here.” But the oil was all poured and the match was ignited. In a moment there was a flicker, a flame, the head es the negro waved from side to side as the flames jumped to meet it. A fiendish roar burst from the multitude. Alexander’s mother was the only one noticed crying. She was taken away by her negro friends before the match was applied. In less .than five minutes he was hanging limp and lifeless by the chains that bound him. As soon as the crowd saw that life was extinct, it began slowly to disperse. When, two hours later, the fire had died down sufficiently to allow the crowd to approach what remained of Alexander, there was a wild scramble to obtain relics, bits of charred flesh, pieces of chain, scraps of wood—everything that could possibly serve as a souvenir, was seized on with morbid eagerness.

OKLAHOMA AND STATEHOOD.

The Territory Make# Exceptionally Good Claim# for Admisaion. The Territory of Oklahoma seeks statehood and makes a good claim to it. It contains 400,000 people, 90 per cent of whom are native Americans and 100,000 of whom are school children; they have 2,000 school houses, no i>enltentiary, not a poorhouse, and only six per cent of illiteracy—less than any one of forty-five of the States. Thef- own $75,000,000 of property. And 12,000,000 acres are settled, and ’homesteader# are taking a million acres a year; LOOO miles of railroad brought last year 6,000 carload# of manufactures and carried away 40,000 carloads of produce. Ten years ago the population was about 00,000. Buch progress has ls-en made by no other area of equal size in the United States. If Indian Ter ritory should within a few years be added to Oklahoma, the two would have a population of at least a million, who would cast 100,000 votes and pay taxes on $150,000,000 of property.

Told in a Few Lines.

The Tivoli, noted New York resort, has been closed. Woolsworth’s store, Portland, Me., burned. Loss $50,000. West Lome, Ont., was nearly wiped out by fire. Los* $125,000. Maine has 175 factoriM in whish fish and vegetables are canned. General coal strike threatened in Nova Scotia. Miners want an increase. \ Chicago has let a contract for a slo,* 000 silver service for battleship Chicago,