Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 May 1883 — Page 6

WHEN THE-MAKING'S ON US. T'wixt the vernal days of springtime, and the winter's gloomy reign; Ere the farmer tarns his furrows, ’ere the farmer sows his grain, Comes the jolly sugar-making, from the stately , maple trees, While music of the sugar birds, floats on the mellow breeze: Oh! it’s grand to tend the sugar-camp, and breath the sen ted air. With odors freighted gracious, lice to India’s spices rare, Oh, it lights the soul with gladness and with thankfulness and glee. When the sugars making's on us, and we tap the maple tree. There is something tranquilizing, round about the sugar-camp, When the evening shades come o’er us, and the drippings in the tank. In little silvery echoes fall upon the listening ear. In eadence with the murmurs of the ripling stream that’s near: While the flamipg, fervent furnace cast its shadows all around, And the hasty steam is flying 'mid the hissing, bubbling sound Of the syrup tossing wildly round and round in floating foam. Ah! it is a place of pleasantness, a grand, enchanted home. There’s a rapture that’s peculiar, and a flow of life and zeal, When we make the maple sugar, that we’re always sure to feel; There’s a halo, too, of gladness, that encircles all around. When we feast on maple sugar, on the camping sugar ground. You may boast of sorghum syrups, or of Cuba’s luscious sweets. Of the canes of Mississippi, or the sugars made of beets; And the crystal candies pure, or honey from the bee, But the best or all’s the sugar from the towering maple tree. While the poets fondly lavish undue praises of the spring, *. With its landscapes and its forests, and its birds on airy wing; Of its flowers and its grasses, and on worthy ones of rank, A strange neglect they manifest, to overlook the sugar-camp: They may sing of sweets of roses, of nectar in their sells, Of the oane of Lousana, or Cuba that eacels, , Or of much lov’d, boasted sorghum, or the honey of the b*e, These all are only second to the towering maple tree. Crawfordsville Jovnral.

AMONG THE REDWOODS.

BY BERT L. THOMPSON.

It was up in the country of the r< d woods, that stupendous growth which has won a world-wide renown. Who ba not heard of the man who built his house and barn and fenced in a two-acre lot from the product of one gigantic tree, o the schooner filled with shinglee made from another, of the mile of railway ties furnished by a third? The fame of that unexampled paradise of lumbermen had brought Bryce Renfrew all thte way from Maine to invest in the business, with a partner who had more capital but less practical knowledge of its requirements. They had procured a site for their mill at the mouth of one of those shallow,turbulent Jlittle rivers which pieroe the rocky coast at frequent intervals, and were doing well until one Jules Oiaycroft started a rival mill within a few miles of them. Craycroft had not chosen a water course for his site, and at first thought it would appear that he was placed at a disadvantage, but he kept his teams at work drawing in the logs during the dry season, when the lumber droghers could drop anchor in comparative safety under the bluff and while Renfrew <t Hayden’s will 'stood idle, while their legs accumulated, and they waited for the rise necessary to float them down the shallow ■stream, Craycroft was securing the orders which they had hoped to obtain. But ft last the long drought gave promise of breaking up. A leaden-gray sky spread over the forest. There had been rain up in the mountains already, and the river had swollen over the rooky points of its bed, and rushed in a frothing, ooffee-colored current to the sea. All was life and excitement at the log ing camp, but in the midst of the cheerful bustle came one of the frequent accidents which attend the adventurous life of the lumberman.

An axe glanced, flew from its haft, and buried itself in the shoulder of one of the choppers, who went down under the blow, with the red blood spurting from the ugly wound. “It’s all up with me, I reckon,” he said, as his companions gathered about him- “I—l wish, though, that death had druv the stake fair. It’s as hard on a tree to be held on a strain jest by a few fibers what’s bound to give way soon.” “Not when holding on will bring you back to your feet again,* said Renfrew, who had been applying a rude compress to the wpund. You’ll drive many a stake yet, Neff. Keep up your heart, man. It may take s better surgeon than I am tc pull you through, but you shan’t die for want of him. I'm off for the doctor boys; see that the work goes on, will .jour They promise, readily. It was a magnanimous act for “the boss” to leave his duties What critical time, and they were , determined that he should not be loser by tit

Half an hour later, Renfrew was riding at break neck speed, over the trail to the coast It brought him into sight of the river more than once, and his pulse thrilled to see the current charged with the floating logs which the men had been launching all that morning. Another turn, however, brought an unwelcome sight to bis gaze. The logs had gorged, and the twisting channel was piled high with the blockaded freignt With an exclamation of blank disappointment, Renfrew reined in his horoe. Just below him the river narrcwed to a mere pass between the rocky walls, and m this passage swung and twisted the key log of the jam. It looked ®s if an effort might turn it lose, and release tbe timbers which were held above.

He sprang from his horse, scrambled down the bank, and made his way out over the bumping logs, to the point he had in view. He had picked up a pole which he used as a pry, but it took only a few minutes’ work to assure him that the key-log was much more securely fastened than he had at first supposed. The mass, of timber behind was spread out in the shape of a triangle, while it was caught in the apex, and held there as if in the jaws of a vice. His utmost efforts failed to release it, and he was forced to reliqnuish the trial at last Dropping the pole, he stood up-, right, wiping the perspiration from his face, when a rush and a roar, which had been dimly apparent to him, broke with renewed force upon his ear. He looked up expecting to see the tree tops writhing in a strong wind, but they were almost preternaturally still. The clouds had gathered in a thick, black mass overhead, but the breathlessness which precedes the storm was unbroken. He knew then what was coming, and turned to face it, dropping down upon the key-log and clasping it with his arms —nona too soon.

A wall of water, which filled the channel from side to side, and towered high above him, swept down upon the gorge, and broke upon the mass of wedged timber, which was lifted and thrown forward by its resistless force. Renfrew came up from the sudden plunge, still clinging to his log, with the grating and grinding and bumping of the other logs sounding horribly in his ears—came up to find himself afloat o» that sudden flood. At the same moment a folk of lightning darted down and played luridly over the landscape, and when it was withdrawn, the rain burst forth, the thunder pealed, the now seething torrent was lashed to madder fury by he s hrieking gusts.

Bryce was chilled to the bone. He was in constant danger of being crushed against the rocky walls or between the floating logs; in constant danger of losing his hold when his particular log rolled, as it did more than once, to submerge him in the stream. How he managed to cling fast, how he was bom onward at race horse speed, how he found himself presently in a wider portion of the stream, and began to collect his disturbed senses, was ever afterward like a painful dream. He could do nothing but cling fast to his ark of refuge. The river was filled with tossing debris, and. an indifferent swimmer at the best, it would have been sheer madness for him to have left the log and attempted a landing, His only hope lay in being able to leave it when he approached the stiller water of the basin beside the mill

He was nearing it rapidly now. Hayden, who was at the mill, ought to be there with one or two men armed with hooks fixed at the end of long poles, ready to seize upon and draw cut the logs from the fierce current, which otherwise must bear him on over the dam. Ordinarily, the force of the stream was not sufficient to carry them beyond the break water, which protected the basin, but the present flood would over-ride that obstruction and sweep everything before it out to sea. Surely, Hayden would be warned by it in time to guard against their inevitable loss. There he was, when the basin came in eightflperched upon a flotilla of logs—doing what?

Bryce raised himself, and strained his eyes through the gloom, as something Rinißter in the actions of the crouched figure struck him. “Helloa!" he shouted. “Grapple on here, Hayden—hook on, I say!” The figure straightened, turned. It was not Hayden. Like a flash, Bryce recognized one of Oraycroffs myrmidons a Pike, who had annoyed them before this by lounging about the mill, and realized the enormity of the act in which the fellow had been engaged. “Spiking our logs,” he breathed, and threw himself forward, to be caught by the irresistable current and borne back, tcssedand buffeted, dashed hither and thither, until, with a desperate effort, he succeeded in regaming the log,as it hung for an instant above the brink of the chute by which the lumber was passed over the dam. In that instant he took in the scene

the mill seeming silent and deserted, the Pitre still standing in his startled attitude garing after him, the wild, downward rush of the water until it broke in a track of white foam, and was lost in the rough waves of the < eear. Then he was in'the midst of the rush and i oar and down-bearing weight of water. There was a taste of salt brine in his month when he came up at last. He had been borne over the chute, through the surge, and out upon the sea, lashed just now by one of the sudden storms which make that rugged coast a terror. Fortunately*, it was already beginning to abate. More deed than alive, bruised and beaten, and chilled to the very mir row, Bryce Renfrew clung to the log which had saved him, and was washed toward greater danger than he had met yet. Sudden, impenetrable darkness succeeded to the gloomy pall of the storm. He had been swept into one of the numerous caves which line that wave-eaten Western coast ’As he realized what had befallen him, he felt the log graze against the unseen rocks that surrounded him. He threw up his hand and it touched against the wall above. The tide was rising, too. It was only ' a question of time until his brains would be dashed out against the rocks or he should be drowned like a rat in its hole. Lying prone, too weak to struggle against inevitable fate, with the waves washing his very face, something like a star shone out in the darkness overhead. It was there one instant; the next it had twinkled out and theie was a splash in the water at his side.

He put out his hand, and a snaky coil slid over it He grasped it, and found — a rope. It was a work of minutes, in his benumbed condition, to fasten it about his waist; but a feeble jerk at last testified to those wailing above that their quest had not been in vain. He was drawn u”> through a hole in the rocks, and staggered when he found his feet. “Craycroft’s men have spiked our logs and we want a surgeon at the camp,” he managed to gasp, beforp sea and sky, and brown faces bending over him, were lost in the blank of utter unconsciousness. It was long before he knew how he had been saved. He had been seen bv the lookout of a lumber drogher which was anchored beneath the bluff, as the log, with its human freight, was whirled by and swallowed up by the current which bore in under the clifi. It was impossible to follow there with a boat, so the captain had landed a couple of the crew to give the alarm, and extend what aid they might from the shore.

And meanwhile, Hayden, growing impatient when the logs failed to appear with the rise, had set out up stream to discover the cause of the delay, and found the riderless horse of his partner, which was making straight for the mill. 3e hastened back, and set the two hands, who were playing euchre in their bachelor’s shanty, to watching the river —thus effectually putting a stop to the Pikes’ opportunity for mischief—and himself fell in with the sailors who were searching the cliffs. The logs came in with a rush when they began to.appear. Renfrew & Hayden dropped two prices with whicu Crayoroft, with his additional expenses, dared not compete, and it was not long before they had the field to themselves. Neff survived his accident under the efficient, though delayed, attendance of the surgeon, only to be killed by the falling branch of a tree a few months afterward. Such is life in the redwood forests.

Room to Turn Around In.

National Republican, About 45 per cent of the land of the U. 8. remains unsurveyed to this day—very nearly 1,000,000,000 acres in all. The moun tainous section of I he far West is included in the billion acres, but, on the other hand, hundreds of millions of acres of arable territory are as free from thetouph, of the surveyor’s chains as when Columbus landed. In Minnesota alone there remain 12,090,000 acres unsurveyed, in Dakota 66,000,000 acres, in Montanaßo,ooo,ooo acres, and in the Indian Territory 369,000,000 acres, a total area of considerably more than twice as large as that of the thirteen original States. Clearly, there is room for more people in the U. 8., without danger of anybody being elbowed into the sea.

A Hen of Advanced Notions.

Santa Rosa Republican. J. L. Beasly has a hen with a very progressive turn of mind. She has scratched around and laid for he# master a pair of . eggs of entirely new design. One egg co ?- tains the yelk, the other the white. Both are joined together by a ligamentous membrane, something after the style of the Siamese twins. Mrs. Langtry’s receipts have amounted to $229/53 in a season of twenty-foui weeks.

THE BAD BOY.

Peck’s Sun. “There, you drop that,” said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he came limping into the store and began to fumble around a box of strawberries. “I have never kicked at your eating my codfish, and crackers and cheese, and herring, and apples, but there has got to be a dividing line somewhere, and I make it at strawberries at six shillings a box, and only two layers in a box. I only bought one box, hoping some plumber, or gas man would come along and buy it, and by gum, everybody that has been in the store has sampled a strawberry out -of that box, shivered as though it was sour, and gone off without asking the price,” and the grocery man looked mad, took a hatchet and knocked in the head of a barrel of apples, and said, “There, help yourself to dried apples.” “O, I don’t want your strawberries or dried apples,” said the boy, as he leaned against a show case and looked at a bar of red transparent soap. “I was only trying to fool you. Say, that bar of soap is old enough to vote. I remember seeing it in the show-case when I was about a year old, and pa came in here with me and held me up to the show-case to look at that tin tobacco box, and that round zinc looking-glass, and the yellow wooden pocket comb, and the soap looks just the same; only a little faded’ If you would wash yourself once in a while your soap wouldn’t dry-up on your hands,” and the boy sat down in the chair without any back, feeling that *he was even with the grocery man. “You never mind the soap. It is paid for, and that is more than your father can say about the soap that has been used in his house the past month,” said the grocerv man, as he split up a box to kindle the fire. “But we won’t quarrel What was it I heard about a band serenading your father, and bis inviting them into lunch?” “Don’t let that get out, or pa will kill me dead. It was a joke. One of these Bohemian bands that goes about town playing tunes, for pennies, was over on the next street, and I told pa I guessed some of his friends who had heard we had a baby at the house, had hired a band and was coming in a few minutes to serenade him, and he better prepare to make a speech. Ph is proud cf being a father at his age, end he thought it was no more t”an right for the neighbors to serenade him, and he went to loading himself for a speech, in the library, and me and my chum went out and told the leader of the band there was a family up there that wanted to have some mnsic, and they didn’t .care for expense, so they quit blowing where they was and come right along. None o them could understand English except the leader, and he only . understood enough to go and take a drink when he is invited. My chum steered the band up to our bouse and got them to play ‘Babies on our Block,’and ‘Baby Mine, and I stopped all tbe men who were going home and told them to wait a minute and they would see some fun, so when the band got through the second tune, and the Prussians were emptying the beer out of their horns, and pa stepped out on the porch, there was more nor a hundred people in front of the house. You’d a dide to see pa when he put his hand in the breast of his coat and struck an attitude. He looked like a congressman, or a tramp. The band was scared, cause they thought he was mad, and some of them were going to run, thinking he was going to throw pieces of brick house at them, but my chum and the leader kept them Then pa sailed in. He commenced, ‘Fellow Citizens, and then went way back to Adam and Eve, and worked up to the present day, giving a history of the notable people who had acquired children,and kept the crowd interested. I felt sorry

for pa, cause I knew how he would feel when he came to find out he had been sold. The Bohemians in the band that couldn’t understand English, they looked at each other, and wondered what it was all about, and finally pa wound up by stating that it was every citizen’s duty to own children of his own, and then he invited the band and the crowd in to take some refreshments. Well, you ought to have seen that band come in the house. They fell over each other getting in, and the crowd went home, leaving pa and my chum and me and the band. Eat? Well I should smile. They just reached for things, and talked Bohemian. Drink? Oh, no. I guess they didn't pour it down. Pa opened a dozen bottles of champagne, and they fairly in it, as though they had a fire inside. Pa tried to talk with them about the baby, but they couldn't understand, and finally they got full and started out and the leader asked pa for three dollars, and that broke him up. Pa told the leader he supposed the gentleman who got up the serenade had paid for the music,aud the leader pointed to me and said I was the gentleman who got it up. Pa paid him,but he had a wicked look in hiseye,andmeandmy chum lit out and the Bohemians came down the street bilin’ full,with their horns on their arms

and they were talking Bohemian for all that was out They stopped in front of a vacant house and began to play, but you couldn’t tell what tune it was, they were so full, and a policeman came along and drove them home. I guess I will sleep at the livery stable to-night cause pa is afful unreasonable when anything costs him three dollars, besides the champagne.” “Well, you have made a pretty mess of it” said the grocery man. “It’s a wonder your pa does not kill you. But wnat is it I hear about the trouble at tbe church? They lay that foolishness to you.” “It’s all a lie. They lay everything to me. It is some of them dunks that sing in the choir. I was just as much surprised as anybody when it occurred. You see our minister is laid up from the effect of the ride to the funeral, when he tried to run over a street car, and an old deacon, who had symptoms of being a minister in his youth, was invited to take the minister’s place,' and talk a little. He is an absent minded old party, who don’t keep up with the events of the day, and whoever played it on him knew he was too pious to eVen read the daily papers There was a notice of a choir meeting to be read, and I think the tenor smuggled in the other notice, between that and the one about the weekly prayer meeting. Anyway it wasn’t me, but it like to broke up the meeting. After the deacon read the choir notice he took up the other one and read, ‘I am requested to announce that the Y. M. 0. Association will give a friendly entertainment with soft gloves, on Tuesday evening, to which all are invited. Brother John Sullivan, the eminent Boston revivalist, will lead the exercises, assisted by Brother Slade, the Maroi missionary from Australia. There will be no slugging, but a collection will be taken at the door to defray expenses.’ Well, I thought the people in church would sink through the floor. There was not a person in the church, except the poor old deacon, but what understood that some wicked wretch had deceived him, and I know by the way the tenor tickled the soprano, that he did it I may be mean, but everything I do is innocent, and I wouldn’t be as mean as a choir singer for two dollars. I left real sorry for the old deacon, but he never knew what he had done, and I think it would be real mean to tell him. He won’t be at the slugging match. That remark about taking up a collection settled the deacon. I must go down to the stable now and help grease a hack, ro you will have to excuse me. If pa comes here looking for me, tell him you heard I was going to drive to a picnic party 'out t" Waukesha, and may not be back in a week.. By .hat time pa will get over that Bohemian serenade,” and the boy filled his pistol pocket with dried apples and went out and hung a sien in front of the grocery, “Strawberries two shdlin a smell and one smell is enuff.”

Cunning Maine Foxes.

Lewiston Journal. One morning last week, as I was crossing lots with my hound, I saw an old red fox run into a thicket. I put my dog on his track, and concealed myself in the thicket knowing that a fox will often circle and pick up his old track. I could hear the hound baying off toward New Gloucester. Then it changed and grew more and more distinct, and I knew the fox was i eturning. I must have waited some half an hour, when I saw the fox dart into a hollow log a little distance to my left; but, as he went out at the other end, I remained in my hiding-place, supposing it a trick of the fox to put the dog off the track. The dog was puzzled only an instant', and followed the fox on a longer circuit this time, but in the course of an hour I saw it again enter one end of the log and come out at the other. Thinks I “My chap, I’ll play you a Yankee trick by stopping up the further end of that log.” This I did, and again hid myself, hoping for a third return. I was hidden about the same length of time, when, by the : "voice of my dog, I knew the fox was returning. A few minutes later I saw the fox enter the log. I ran up to the open end and soon had it secured. This being done, I waited the coming up of the dog, which I tied to a sapling, while I went out to get an ax. I soon got back and opened the log sufficiently to see four foxes instead of one. “How was that?” It's plain enough. One fox would run j until tired, then would enter the log, and another would take i*s place.

A Town of Giants.

Benton (Mont.) Record. There is a movement on foot to estab lish a town somewhere in the neighborhood of the month of the Judith to be called Giantsville. The program is to secure 320 acres of land, to divide the same into town-lots and streets, establish laws and regulations allowing only “six-foot-ers” to obtain possession of any of the lots, and allowing no female thereon below the standard of five feet eight By this means it is proposed to establish, in due course of time, a race of giants. All the saloons in Peoria must be closed at 12 o’clock after this, by order of the mayor. •