Pike County Democrat, Volume 29, Number 34, Petersburg, Pike County, 30 December 1898 — Page 6

-JOYS 01’ CHRISTMAS. What the Holy Babe’s Escape Means to Humanity.

' ;r!fcrv v^--v’■ ** Sum Btoaweat BoltSay Sermon by Or. Tolmnse from the Uuobi of lie rod'a ECorti to Destroy the Christ Child. Washington, Deo. IS.—(Copyright. 1S9S ). In a most unusual way a scene connected with the nativity is emphasised fey Dr. TaJmage in this Christmas discourse; text. Matthew 2. 13; “Herod Krill seek the young child to destroy him.** The cradle of the infant Jesus had no rockers, for it was not to be oooihed by oscillating motion, as are tbe-cradies of other princes. It had no canopy, for it waa not to be Covered over by anything so exquisite. It had no embroidered pillow, for the young heed was not to have such luxurious comfort. Though a meteor—ordinarily the most erratic and seemingly ungovernable of ail skyey appearances—had feeen seat to designate the place where that cradle stood and a choir had been went from the heavenly temple to serenade its illustrious occupant with an epic, yet that cradle was the target for *11 earthly and diabolical hostilities. Indeed I give you as my opinion that It wa^the narrowest and- most wonderful escape of the ages that the child was not alain before be had taken his first step or spoken his first word. Hered could not afford to have him born. The Caesars could not afford to have ; him bom. The gigantic oppressions and abominations of the world could not afford to have him bora. The Herod who led the attack was treachery, vengeance and sensuality impersonated. As a sort of pastime he aiew By roan us, the grandfather of his m|fe. Then he slew Marianne, his wife. Then he butchered her two sons,‘Alexander *nd Aristobulus. Then he slew Antipater, his oldest son. Then he ordered burned alive 49 people who had pulled down the eagle of his authority. He ordered the nobles who had attended upon his dying bed to be slain, so that there might be universal mouring after hi* decease. From that same deathbed he ordered the slaughter of all the children in Bethlehem under two years of age, feeling sure that if he .massacred the entire infantile population that would include the destruction of the child whose birthplace astronomy had pointed out with its finger of light. What were the slaughtered babes to him. and as many frenzied and bereft mothers? If he had been well enough to leave his bed, he wquld have enjoyed seeing the mother*, wildly struggling to keep their babes, and holding them so tightly that they could sot be separated until the sword took both Uvea at one stroke, and others, mother and child, hurled from roofs of houses into the street until that village •of horseshoe shape on the hillside became one great butcher shop. To have such a man, with associates just as -cruel, and an army at his command, attempting the life of the infant Jesus, •does there seem anyjjliance for 3is escape? Then that flight southward for ao many miles, across deserts and amid bandits and wild beasts (my friend, the late missionary and scientist Dr. Lansing, who took the same journey, said It waa enough to kill both the Madonna and the Child), and poor residence in Cairo, Egypt. You know how difficult It is to take an ordinary child successfully through the disorders that are sure to assail it even in comfortable boroys and with all delicate ministries, and then think of the exposure of that famous babe in villages and lands ■where all sanitary laws were put at defiance. His first hours on earth spent In a room without any doors, and ofttimes swept by chilled night winds; then afterward riding many days under hot tropical sun. and part of many nights, lest the avenger overtake the ■fugitive before he could be hidden in another land! The sanhedrin also were affronted at the report of this mysterious arrive) of a child that might upset all conventionalities and threaten the throne of the nation. “Shut the door and bolt it and double bar it against him,#* cried all political and ecclesiastical power. Christ on a retreat when only a few "days of age. with all the privations and ■hardships and sufferings of retreat! "When the glad news came that Herod eras dead, and the Madonna was packing up and taking her Child home, bad

uiav Aivu^iui, iuc bad taken the throne—another ed infamy. What chance for the babe'a life? Will not some short grave hold the wondrous infant?** “Pat him to death!** was the order all up and down Palestine, and all up and down thedeeert between Bethlehem and tairo. The cry was: “Here cornea an of all established order! an aspirant for the crown -of Augustus! If found on the streets •of Bethlehem, dash him to death on the ^t! If found on a hill, hurl him the rocks! Away with him!** the Babe got home in safety and passed up from infancy to yonth and from youth to manhood and from carshop to Massiahshlp and from hship to enthronement, until 1 _' "_ in mention to mine and Suppose 'that attempt on the young child's life had been succeasfal! Suppose that delof wise men, who were to reHerod immediately after.they bed in the Bethic- , had obeyed orders > the beast carrythe Child in the td flung to death rcbelaus had got that his father :

the children dashed from the Bethlehem he me tope or separated by sword of the < nraged constabulary Jesus had perished % Then, to begin on the outmost rim of my subject, Christmas festivities would never hare been observed, Christmas carols never sung, Christmas gifts never bestowed. Christmas games never played, Christmas bells never rung. What an awful subtraction from the world’s brightness would have been the making of December 25 like other daya of the year! 'Glorious day! After brightening England and Holland and Germany* for cen turies it stepped across the sea and pronounced ita benediction on our shores. Why, we never get over oyr childhood Christmases! Father antkmother Joined in them. They forgot thdr rheumatisms and shortness of breath, and for awhile threw off the sorrows of a lifetime while they struggled with us as to who should first in the morning shout the “Merry Christmas!" Then there were all the innocent allurements as to who brought

the presents, and the wonderment as to how sleighs drawn by reindeer could come down tff* perpendicular, and afterward the disappointment as some older brother or sister, with all the piide of discovery, tried to persuade us that the chimney had not been the chan* nel of generous descent. Oh; what times they were, the Christmases of our boyhood, and girlhood days! We still feel in our pulses some of the exuberance which we then unwittingly stored up for future times, when the eye might- lose some of its lusterand the foot some of its spring and the heart some of its rebound. How holly and rosemary and ivy and mistletoe looked interwoven! The Puritans may not have liked the day, and John Calvin may have pronounced it superstitious and ffared it would bring into religious observance tha saturnalia of the hcatheif, the decorations of ivy inappropriate because ivy had been dedicated fco Bacchus and mistletoe had been .associated with Druidical rites, but we testify that Christmas never did us any harm, ind the only objection? we ever expressed was that it was so long a time from Christmas to Christmas. Ecclesiastical controversy as to whether jithought to be celebrated on the Oth of JaiUtary, or 20th of March, or 20th of September, or 2"th of December, did not bother us then any more than it bothers tis now. Can yotf imagine what a saerification of the world’s literature would be the removal of all Christ ever did and said? It would tear down the most important shelves of yonder congressional library, and of the Vatican library, and of British museum, and Berlin and Bonn and Vienna and Madrid and St. Petersburg libraries, and St. Paul’s life would have been an impoisibility, land his epistles would never have been written, and St. John, from the basaltic caverns of Pstmos. would never have heard the seven trumpets or seen the heavenly wall with 18 layers of illumined crysta.* lization. iOh, wise men of the east, 1 am so glad you did not rejbort to the imperial - scoundrel at Jerusalem where the babe was, for the hounds would have soon torn to pieces the Lamb, and 1 am so glad that not only did you bring the frankincense and the myrrh to the room an that caravansary, but that you broughV^he gold which paid his traveling expenses and those of Joseph and Mary in that long and dangerous flight to Cairo, in Egypt, and paid tbe r lodgirg and board there and paid their way back again! Well enough !o bring to the barn of the Saviour’s nativity the flowers, for th eye aromatized the dreadful atmosphere of the stables, but thv geld was* just then the most important offering. So now the Lord accepts your prayers, for they are the perfume of Heaven, but He asks also for the gold which will pay the expenses of taking Christ to all nations. Still further remarking upon thenar’ row escape which you and 1 and th4> world had in the diversion of the persecutors from the place of nativity, let me say that had that Herodic raid upon the swaddling clothes been successful the world would never have known the value of a righteous peace. Much has been made of the fact that the world was at peace when Christ came. Yes. But what kind of a peace was it? It wua a peace worse than war. It was the peace of a graveyard. The Roman eagles had plucked out the world’s eyes.ght and plunged their beaks through the heart of dead nations. It was a peace like that spoken of by a dying Indian chieftain when a Christian home missionary said to him: “You have been a warrior and I suppose have been in many feuds, but you must be at peace with all your enemies in order to die aright.** The dying chieftain replied: “That’s easy enough. 1 am at peace j with all my enemies, for I have killed

an orlotnu That v\u the style of peace on earth when Christ came, but the spirit of arbitration, which is to garland the tomb of this century and coronet the brow of the coming century, is consequent upon the midnight anthem above Bethlehem, two ban to that music, the first of Divine ascription, and the second of earthly pacification. “Glory to Qod and peace to men.** In His manhood Christ pronounced the same doctrine: “Blessed are the merciful.” Before tbe Bethlehem star flashed its significance the£heory was: “Blessed is wholesale cntthroatery. Blessed are those who can kill the most antagonists. Blessed are those who can most skillfully wield the battleax. Blessed are those who can etab the deepest with spear or roll a chariot wheel over the most wounded or put hia charger’s hoof on the most dead.” The entirely new theory of our Christ was blessing for cursing: prayer for those who despitefuily use you; foundries to turn spears into pruning looks, redhot* furnaces to melt swords into molds shaped like plowshares. If gigantic acerbities and world-wide tigerisma bad. without any Goa?jl opposition, gone on unfit tow and *en augmented by 1.588 dears of few tyv by tlitq time what wopld this worl have mm

need not remind me of the awful warm mince the opening of the year 1 of our Christian era, for if the earth has been again and again lacerated into an Aceldama, through improved weaponry of death and more rapidity of fire, Prussian breechloader, which in 1866 startled the nations with unprecedented havoc, eclipsed by contrivances that can sweep vaster numbers to death by one volley, and telegraphy adding to gunnery new facilities for slaughter by instantly ordering armies to where they can do the most wholesale murder —I say if all this woe has been wrought, how much worse would it have been if the Christly revelation had not been let down from Heaven on five-runged ladder of musical scale, and there had been no preaching of good will all up and down- Christendom for 19 centuries! The Bethlehem manger has given the roost potent suggestion of, peace the world has ever received. The cavalry horses cannot eavont of that manger.

I take another step forward In showing the narrow escape you and I had and the world had in the secretion of Christ’s birthplace from the Herodic detectives and the clubs with which they would have Joshed, the Babe’s life out when I aay that without the life that began thaVnight in Bethlehem" the world would have had no illumined deathbeds. BefSiihe the time of Christ good people dosed their earthly lives in peace while depending upon the Christ- to come, and there were antediluvian saint*, and Syrian saints, and Egyptian saints amd Grecian saint*, and Jerusalem saints long before the clouds above Bethlehem became a balcony filled with the singers of a world where they all sing, but I ^annot read that there was anything more than a quieting guess that came to those before Christ deathbeds. Job said something bordering on the confident, but it was miked up with a story of “skin worms” that would destroy his body. Abraham and Jacob had a little light on the dying pillow, but, compared with the after Christ deathbeds, it was like the dim tallow candle of old beside the modem cluster of lights electric. 1 know Elijah went up in memorable manner, but it was a terrible way to go—a whirlwind of fire that must have been splendid to look at by those who stood on the banks of the Jordan, but it was a style of ascent that required more nerve than you and I ever had, to be a placid occupant of a chariot drawn by such a wild team. The triumphant deathbeds, a9 far as 1 know, were the after Christ deathbeds. What a procession of hosannas have inarched through the dying room of the saints of the last 19 centuries! What cavalcade of mounted halleluiahs has galloped through the dying visions of the last 2,000 years save 100! Peaceful deathbeds in the years B. C.i Triumphant deathbeds, for the most pert, re- j served for the years A. D.l Behold the deathbeds of the Wesleys, of the Doddridge*, of the Leigh Richmonds, of the Edward Pay sons, of Vara, the convert- 1 ed heathen chieftain, crying in his last moments: “The canoe^ts in the sea. The sails are spread. Shq is ready lor. the gale. I have a good pilot to guide me. My outside man and my inside man differ. Let the one rot till the I trumpet shall sound, but let my soul wing her way to the throbe of Jesus.” \ Of dying John Fletcher, who entered his pulpit to preach, though his doc- j tors forbade him, and then descended ! to the pomnlunion table, saying: “1 j am going to throw myself under the | wings of the cherubim before the mercy j seat,” thousands of people a few days : after following him to the grave, sing- i ing: With heavenly weapons he has fought The battles of the Lord, Finished his course and kept the faith And gained the great reward. Of Pastor Emille Cock, the great French evangelist, who sat. in my church in Brooklyn brne Sunday morning, and in a few days1 shipwrecked and | dying after his wife had said to him: “God will help you, my dear; He will | give you peace.” replying: “But 1 have I it—peace, 1 have it!” Of Prince Albert, quoting with his last breath: “Bock of Ages deft for me, let me hide myself in thee! ” Of the dying soldier who had been shot through the mouth and could not talk, and when the chaplain ; approached hifu, motioned for pencil and paper and wrote: “1 am a Christian, prepared to die. Rally round the flag! Rally round the flagl” Of John

crown, of uaacungion, woo urn: i j desire to depart and be with Christ, aud, though I hare lived 60 years Tery comfortably in this world, 1 would j turn my back upon you all to be with Christ. There is no one like Christ —no one like Christ. I have been looking at Him these many years, and never yet could find any fault in Him but was of my own making, though he has seen 10,000 faults in me. Oh, what must He be in Himself when it is He that sweetens Heaven, sweetens Scripture. sweetens ordinances, sweetens earth, sweetens trial." Of John Janeway, saying in his last moments: have done with prayer and with SIl ordinances. Before a few hours are over 1 shall be in eternity singing the song of Moses and the Lamb, /shall presently stand on Mount Zirarwith an innumerable company of arfgels and with spirits of just men mmie perfect, and with Jesus the mediator of the new covenant. Halleluiah}^/ Some one ought to preach a course of sermons on triumphant Christian deathbeds end then let some one presch a sermon on triumphant infidel deathbeds—that is if he can hear or read of one of this latter kind. I never heard of one. Do tell ns of one. There never waspne. And had the Babe of Bethlehem died the same week fa which he was born there never would have been a trumphant Christian deathbed. It is the wonderful story of Christ now rapidly filling the earth, that makes triumphant Christian deathbeds The Bethlehem star had to ran which Of Rignmouaneaa.

TAXES AND DEFICIT. etfit RmiMlw Reveeee Meuim ” Do Hot Improve the Treaumry.

The nation plunges voluntarily and eagerly into new financial liablities of unknown extent while laboring under a long-continued and increasing revenue deficit. We must go back to the fiscal year 1893 to find the beginnings of a fiscal situation which is without parallel In the history of the country. The fol lowing tablt shows the extent of the deficit or excess of ordinary expenditures over ordinary receipts, since and Including that year: Average Total Monthly Deficit. Deficit. 1853...$ 1.766.994 1 147.250 1894.. 72.325.448 6.002.701 1896. 42.S05.22S 3.5*2.102 1896 .. ...... 25.203.246 flCO.270 1897 ... 18,052,254* 1.504.S54 1S9S,. 100.753.127 8.396.1*4 1899 (five months..... 83.259.408 16.b5i.900 Thus from July 1,1892, to December 1 of this year, the federal government has expended over $394,000,000 more than it has collected from taxation, and its present state in this respect is far worse than the first. War will largely explain the huge deficit of the fiscal year, 1S9S; but the still larger deficit rarfc being piled up, and amounting to above $83,000,000 for the five months since June 30 last, has been contracted after new sources of revenue have \jeen tapped to an estimated extent of from $125,000,000 to $175,000,000 a year, and under conditions as to drmy and navy expenses which now promise to become perma-pt cent and which this administration is striving to make permanent. Since hostilities with Spain were suspended and half the volunteer army was disbanded and the navy was practically put upon a peace footing, the monthly deficit has averaged over $10,000,000. It is now likely to remain indefinitely at nearly that- figure under present conditions of taxation and projected policies of imperial domain. Two great revenue measures have been enacted within IS months for the purpose of placing the government on a revenue-paying basis, and the*governruent is as far from that position now as it ever has been in the six years of deficit. It is living on borrowed money to as great or a greater extent than STer. The actual ordinary expenditures of the government in the fiscal year 1S97 amounted to five dollars per capita tax of estimated population. The ordinary expenditures now prevailing are at the* rate of nine dollars per capita of estimated population. The actual tax revenues collected, from the people in 1897 amounted to about $4.80 per capita. The actual revenues which must be collected from the people under the pro- ' jected policies of the McKinley administration will amount to nine doflars per capita yearly. We have been and arc now paying our way partly on borrowed money. But this cannot continue without national bankruptcy. The full measure of the new financial burdens of the imperial republic is yet to be currently assumed by the people. When these burdens are fully assumed through current taxation, it will appear that ihe actual federal tax burden upon the masses of the people has been increased by ST per cent.—that federal taxes have been nearly doubler within two years. That is the amaainjg record to be written of Mr. McKicleyre administration as it is now shaping {kU ccursc of things. /S These fedeVal taxesare collectedf chiefly from consumption—instead at from income or property. They consequently fall upon the people in neany^pfphd^ weight or amount per individual, and are collected in unseen ways. If they were collected by federal tax gatherers from door to door, the administration of Mr. McKinley, under the policies it has voluntarily and eagerly projected, would be obliged to send forth its minions to collect $45 from each average family throughout the nation, where cnly $24 was being collected when Mr. McKinley^ame into power. The administration which undertook that collection would not live a day beyond the time in which the people could get at it, and the imperial policies it was so complacently promoting would be buried under a furious popular uprising.— Springfield (Mass.) Republican.

BANK ROBBERY. 4a Example of Repablteam Metkoia of Lootlxg the Troaoory. It is alleged that Whitelaw Reid and Judge Day, of the peace commission, are to receive $100,000 each for their services. That io about $25,000 a month and expenses, and is the best job these two eminent incompetents ever captured. So far as the other members of the coxdmisaton are concerned, they will hive to be satisfied with getting the /honor, the junket and the single salary which they are drawing aa members of the United States senate. This proposed payment of $100,000 each to Reid and Day is a fair sample of the kind of robbery which the administration stands ready to approve. Reid is a millionaire many times over, having married a fortune with^the daughter of D. O. Mills, and thus won an easy financial victory in this world of work and worry. ^ Day, who was never heard of ontaide of Canton, O., before he became a member of the president’s cabinet, and who never earned as much as $5,000 4 year when practicing as a country lawyer, suddenly looms up as a man whose services are worth $25,000 a-month. The whole proposition it most outrageous and the people of the United States will regard it aa a plain case of looting the treasury and of robbing the taxpayers In behalf of a rleh man who man who couldn't earn that much in a . lifetime If be lived a hundred year*.— doesn't need the *y and of another

OPTIMIST DIHGLEY. - Tli* Great Tariff Dorter Sees !t»Ulsg Ahead Bat a Balfftaff Surplus. ...... Chairman Dingley’s views of the national finances forthe future are optimistic. While he declares that there will be no reduction of the war taxee before next winter at the earliest, he j confidently predicts that “our depend- j encies,” as be properly calls them, “will j be practically self-supporting by 1899” i and that “ ‘empire* will not materially permanently increase our expenses.” \ He disposes of Secretary Gage’s esti- i mate of, a deficit of $130,000,000 for the

current fiscal year ana of $30,000,000 for the year following by saying that the secretary, as a prudent man, puts the lowest possible estimate on revenue or income and the highest possible estimate upon the expenditures.” To illustrate, he says that the secretary assumes that we will have an army of 150,000 for two years and that we are going to spend $48,000,000 for river and harbor improvements in 1900, whereas we are not going to have an army of more than 100,000 and the river and harbor expenditures will not exceed $25,000,000. Mr. Dingley admits that the national expenditures will be increased for the time being in consequence of the war. but insists that with $100,000,000 produced under the provisions of the war ways and means bill there will be a surr plus in 1900 and that our dependencies after that will furnish their own “keep.** But Mr. Dingley fails to observe that, while My. Gage mokes good allowance for expenditures in some directions, he has to leave out of account a number of important items which are not merely probable, but almost.certain to appear in the next budget or as supplements to the one just submitted. For instance, he says nothing about the $20,000,000 which our Paris commissioners have agreed tp-pay Spain for a voracious elephant/ He says nothing about the millions that the president wants to spend on an isthmian canal and on ocean cables, and that he himself wants to spend to encourage Americans to build and sail ships. Mr. Dingley fails to observe that the reason given for spending these millions in hot haste is because we have been spreading ourselves territorially. It is fcr this reason, we are assured, that we need the canal and the cables and the ships without delay. Mr. Dingley admits that we are going to need an army of 100.000 men. He could not very well do otherwise when the prericlent unhesitatingly recommends that the regular army be increased to that number. It would not be an excess of prudence to estimate the increase in the standing Wmy at ^5.000 men. Since nobody pretends that there would be any need of increase if we had no dependencies to take care of. we must charge all this to the “empire.” The cost of this additional force would be $75,OQO.OOO a vear.“estimating in the usual way at $1,000 per man. But for service in the deadly tropics— deadly to men 6f the Caucasian race— the cost would be much more. A moderate estimate would be $100,000,000 a year. Mr. Dingley admits that he takes no account of increased expenditure on account of the navy. But it is no secret that it is proposed by the administration to add to the navy ships and armaments costing not less than $50,000,000. This, with the increased cost of maintenance, would be no small item, and it j will grow to still larger proportions if | Senator Davis* triple allianee is con- j summated. j Does Mr. Dingley suppose that we are ; going to make our dependencies pay all ! ^fchese costs? If he does he supposes ' that we are going to oppress them more than Spain ever did. though we may be more successful than Spain in applying the Hanna plan of getting the money out of them without letting them know what has become of it. He will learn, if he does not already know, that the taxpayers of the United States will have to pay the most of all this. If we make the possessions pay the cost of eivil administration, or such civil administration as our military governors may allow them, including the cost of schools and public improvements. we will go about to the limit. Most of the increased cqst of army and navy, of canals, cables hnd what not will fall upon the shoulders of the American taxpayers. And they may grow weary. Hence the necessity for making the most of the Hanna plan of filching from their pockets and learing them to wonder why it is that the dollar they earn seems so small and inadequate when they com^ to lay it out for the necessaries and comforts of life. Hence we hear even the optimistic Dingley talk of getting rid of the stamp taxes as soon as possible. It will never do to have people reminded that they are paying a tax every time they lick a stamp.—Chicago ! Chronicle.

POINTS AND OPINIONS. -There is bo longer an y doubt that President McKinley has his heart set a second term. He is throwing oratorical bouquets at the southern ladies.— St. Louis Bepublic. -Best rioting immigration and annexing the cheapest labor on earth are not consistent with each other. They are as antagonistic as protective tariff and the ‘‘open door.**—Pittsburgh Dispatch. -Brother Dingley is doing a great deal of thinking these days. He la trying to figure out a plan to open his tariff measures at the Philippine end and still keep it bottled up at the American end.—Waco (Tex.) Times-Herald. -As might hare been expected, the republican administration at Washington is neglecting and evading every pledge made by'the republican party at tbe polls in 1®C. Nothing has been done about the currency, none of the many promise* made have been kept, and the administration generally doesn’t seem to know what to do about

Rheumatism Is caused by acid in the blood. Hood's Sarsaparilla neutralu.es this acid and cure® the aches aud pains. Do not suaer anf longer when a remedy is at hand. Take tiie great medicine which has cured so many Others, and you may confidently expect it will give you the relief you so much desire. Hood’ssp2rina Is America's Greatest Medicine Price B. Prepared by C. t Hood & Co.. Lowell. Mass. Hood’s Pills cure sick headache. 25 cents

BAKER’S CHOCOLATE Celebrated for more than a century as a delicious, nutritious, and flesh-forming beverage. Has our well-known YELLOW LABEL on the front of every package, and our trade-mark 44 La Belle C&ocolatiere” on the back. NONE OTHER GENUINE, Made only by WALTER BAKER & CO. Ltd. DORCHESTER, HASS. cstas.ishcd tree. Go Sooth This Winter. For the present winter season the Louisville Si Nashville Railroad Company has improved its already nearly perfect through service of Pullman Vestibuled Sleeping Cara and elegant day coaches from Cincinnati, Louisville, St. Louis and Chicago, to. Mobile, New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Thomasville, Ga., Pensacola, Jacksonville, Tampa, Palm Beach and other points in Florida. Perfect connection will be made with steamer lines for Cuba, Poyto Rico, - Nassau and West Indian ports. Tourist and Home-Seekers excursion tickets on sale at low rates. Write C. P. Atmore, General Passenger Agent. Louisville, Ky., for particulars. An Easy Deduction. Wise—Gaybov’s wife must be a very beautiful. fascinating woman. Callow—She is. Have you seen her? “No, but their maid is very pretty.”—N. Y. journal. Years of rheumatism have ended with Cure by St. Jacobs Oil. Cures promptly. The boy with made-over trousers takes after his father.—Golden Days. For California Tourist*. The Burlington Route has Weekly Tourist Sleeper Excursions, personally conducted (oy a Burlington Route Agent) every Wednesday from St. Louis, and Thursday from Kansas City and St. Joseph to Lo# Angeles and San Francisco. The route is via Denver, Scenic Colorado, Salt Lake City, with 98 per cent, sunshine throughout the year. Ask Ticket Agent or write for descriptive folder to L. W. Wakeley, General Passenger Agent, St. Louis, Mo. The Affirmative Wins. N6 one can deny that in the matter of the Cyrano de Bergerac “fad” the play-going public is allowing itself to be led by tha nose.—St. Louis Republic. The nain of sciatica is cruel. The cure by St. Jacobs Oil is sure. It penetrates. The best efforts of the chairmaker an constantly being sat upon.—Golden Days. MCTJEF FROM PAIR. Women Everywhere Express their Gratitude to Mrs. Finkham. nrs. T. A. WALDEN. Oft—a, Qa^ wrttasi 44 Deab Mbs. Pihxham:—Before talc* , Ing your medicine, life was a burden to me. I never saw a well day. At my monthly period I suffered untold misery, and a great deal of the time I was troubled with a severe pain in my side. Before Swishing the first bottle of your Vegetable Compound I could tell it was doing me good. I continued its use, also used the Liver Pills and Sanative Wash, and have been greatly helped. I would like to have yon use my letter for the benefit of other*."'

fto. FLORENCE A. WOUFB. 8«3 nrtwy “Dkas Mbs. Pixmam:—For two jein I was troubled with what tho j phjridtaa told aw was infltiniMp ? tion of the womb. Erery month I suffered terribly. I had taken enough ■Mdieine from the doctors to cure anytime only. At last I concluded to writs to you in regard to icy case, and can aay that by following your advice I am now pefectly well.* fin. W. R. BATES. TUMfleU. La, wrltmt “ Before writing to you* I suffered dreadfully from painful menstrua* , tion, lenoorrheea and sore feeling in the lower part of the bowels. Now my friends want to know what makes me look so well. I do not hesitate one minute in telling thou what has brought about this great change. I cannot praise Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable