People's Pilot, Volume 2, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 January 1893 — THIRTY YEARS IN BED. [ARTICLE]

THIRTY YEARS IN BED.

A Woman Who Keeps the Vow Mala When She Was a Belle. In the village of Mattuck, L. 1-, lives a woman who has not been out of bed for thirty years. She remains in her bed, not from any infirmity, but from choice. Thirty years ago, when a very pretty, attractive girl of eighteen, *h* was the belle of the village, a leader at all dances,picnics and social gatherings. She had any number of beaux, buU strange to say, had never received a proposal of marriage. This she felt very keenly, particularly as her girl friends were one by one marrying. Two or three months before her nineteenth birthday she told her mothei that if she did not ‘receive an offer of marriage before her birthday sh* would go to bed and remain there a* long as she lived. Her mother treated it as a joke, and thought no more of it. The girl was doomed to disappointment, and on retiring the night of her nineteenth birthday said: “It’s no use and I’ll never get up again.” She has kept her word all of these years. Threats and persuasions had not the slightest effect upon her. Her mother took care of her at flrsi and then, at her mother’* death, a sister took the task upon herself. Now the sister is dead and she is left to the care of more distant relatives. She i* very cheerful and seemingly contented, and is always glad to liave the neighbors drop in to chat with her. She is quite talkative until the. subject of her keeping her bed is broached, and then she has nothing whatever to say. Her hair is gray and her skin very sallow, but one can easily see that in her youth she must have been an extremely pretty girl. Her room is on the ground floor and in summer her. bed is drawn up under the open win dow, on the outside of which has been built for her a wide ledge or shelf. Her head and shoulder* are well wrapped up and She rests them out on this ledge, r She will lie there by the honr looking up the street and holding in he» hand a small mirror, held so she can see what is coming behind her. She in very fond of children and they play under her window, and seem to quite like the decidedly queer-looking objec’ on the window ledge.—N. Y. Recorder

No Filial Ke era i d in Thibet. Filial piety fines no place in the Thibetan character. It is no uncom mon thing for a son to turn his father, when too old to work, out of doors and to leave him to perish in the cold. The superstition that the souls of the dead can, if they will, haunt the living, drives their hardened natures to gain by the exercise of cruelty the promise of the dying that they will not” return to earth. As death approaches the dying person is asked: “AV ill you come back, or will you not?” If he replies that he will, they pull a leather bag over his head ana smother him. If he says be will not, he is allowed to die is peace.—Edinburgh Beview. Sharpening Files by Add. A new mode of sharpening files k recommended by German papers, name* ly, the use of acids. A metal sheet covered with a thin layer of charcoal it fastened upon the file, protecting ths edges. This combination is laid into s solution of six parts of nitric acid and three parts of sulphuric acid in a hundred parts of water. The acid eat* away all the fnner part* of the di* leaving the protected edges unchanged which are then sharpened MV aaa