Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 April 1885 — Page 2

1 —— '* * - at thb ball. , . —— I O. Tom. how cod’d you treat mo sol Youknew me tashtuL coy and shy; You knew, or surely ought to know. ’Twas wrong to kiss me on the sly; And yet, at Mrs. El-more's Ball, When by the curtains we were hid. You k seed me thrice ere I could call— You did, you rogue, you know you did. And then, all through the waits quadrille. You squeezed my hand and pressed my The more I blushed, the harder still. Till, reaUr, I felt quite disgraced. And when I sternly looked St you. As though such license to forbid. You winked and all the bo der grew— You did, you scamp, you know you did. B”t. worse than all, when once alone, Yon whiapeted loro-words in my ear, In passionate and tender tone, Till, oh I I felt extremely queer, I tried to laugh, but had to cry. My tears fell fast the flowers amid; And in your arms you made me lie— You did. bad boy, you know you did. And then you held me, oh! so fast, ’Till Mrs. Elsmore came to see What kept us; for an hour had past Upon the moonlit balcony. You said: “My birdie I have caged,” The while my burning face I hid; “I'm pleased and proud, for we’re engaged”— You d d, dear Tom. you know you d.d. —Somerville Journal.

THINGS THAT NEVER DIE. The pure, the bright, the beautiful. That stirred our hearts in youth. The impulse of a worldless prayer. The dream of love and truth. The longing after something lost. The spirit’s yearning cry. The striving after better hopes— These things shall never die. The timid hand stretched forth to aid A brother in his need. Th© kindly word in griefs dark hour That proves a friend Indeed; The plea for mercy, softly breathed, When justice threatens nigh; The sorrowing of a contrite heart— These things shall never die. Let nothing pass, for every hand Must find some work to do: Lose not a chance to waken love; Be flrm and just and true; - So shall a light that cannpt fade Beam on thee from on high. And angel voice t say;to thee. “These things can never die." —The Guardian.

OLD TIME MILLS AND FLAILS.

BY R. G. BURDETTE.

All the world about the mill has gone to sleep. It is hibernating, like the bear. The hills have pulled the sheets of snow up to their chins and over their heads, and sleep so souldly that the restless winds have to do their snoring for them, and go sighing and. Binging and whistling, and sometimes* howling and shrieking through the leafless oaks and the swaying qedars, and through the rocky echoing glens, raging through all the varied gamut of the infinite snore of- slumbering nature. ‘

How patiently wait the cedars for the days of spring and sunshine of June. All the other trees have given up long ago, and ceased to look for anything save snow and sleet and biting frosts and winter rains. How fearfully they moan and wail when the winds come sweeping down from the northwest. They have thrown away every brown leaf, weeks and weeks ago. They will never wear leaves again, they know. The ground dbout their frozen feet is hard as flint. The sap is frost in their veins. Their limbs are stiff. The skies are grey, the hills are white and the meadows are drifted; There will never be any summer again, so the oaks and the maples and the hickories complain. But the patient cedars—bending under the burden of snow that trims their dark green cloaks with white as soft as swan’s down, they look upon the sleeping fields and down at the silent creek, patiently, trustfully waiting for May or June. Never wailing because the snows are deep and the winter is long; when the winds are soft and gentle the cedars whisper, and when the gales are blowing fiercely, they only sigh and shake the snow from their shoulders as they bend and sway. But always they are hopeful, parent, and they stretch their green arms out over the billows of snow, as if to greet the coming spring, which they alone of all the trees can see. And the busy, noisy, prattling, singing creek has gone into a new business. It has formed a co-partnership with the thermometer and gone into the manufacture of protoxide of hydrogen on a large scale. Ice-bound as far as you can see, and in the air holes here

and there, hqpr black and cold the water runs. The dam is bearded with long, venerable icicles, and the shivering spray has coated every branch and twig along the shore with sparkling frostwork. Fairy work it is; June can snake nothing lovelier than this silver lace work, with all her roses. Down below the silent wheel the creek does not murmur and laugh. It chatters and shiver, and just as fast as it can, ruffs under the ice to get out of the biting wind that comes howling down the great ravine and spitefully nips at ripples as it goes sweeping across to the white hills and the moaning oaks. Sow it will twist and bend the knotty old monarchs in its wild, roughrplay. It even catches the old mill by the shoulders and shakes it until its very windows rattle and the pigeons up in the loft coo and murmur soft, musical, frightened protests. The pigeons pass most of their time in the mill loft these days. I wonder if the Tumbler, in these long, stormy winter days of confinement, practices new feats of twisting and tumbling for his summer flights. I think he does, I know he does, indeed. And the Fantail there, is telling that pair of Nuns about a barn he once lived in that was haunted by the restless, cooing ghost of an unhappy Pouter, who loved a great strong Carrier, with such a long neck and beautiful shape. He enlisted in the mail service and went away to war, and carried dispatches from a beleaguered city out over the lines. For many a long, long sunny day, through all the dreadful summer, the poor Pouter waited and pined away and watched for him, and called him all day long. And so, in early November —the squirrels had just had their harvest home, and the blue birds and brown thrushes and meadow larks and so many other families were packing to go south with their children, and they nearly all took their .dinner at the mill that day. An east wind, that had come ail the way over the sea, swept up to the perch just outside the round winflowwhere the pretty Pouter was plaintively calling for Messenger, and laid a •oft feather, broken and stained with

blood, at her feet She died that very afternoon, and the leaves buried her, down by a big grey rock where the maiden-hair fern grew, but always after that, all day long and sometimes in the night, they'could hear her calling, calling, calling for Messenger. If they go to that barn, to-day,—it’s a big sidehill barn, painted red, with a ship for a weathervane, away, way up the creek, where they thresh wheat with the trampling horses and thundering flails yet; he was born in that barn. And the two pretty Nuns—l can hear them sobbing in soft tremulous coos as they listen with me. * How do I know what he said ? My boy, if you will haunt the old mill loft as much as I did whenT was your age, and many years older, too, you will understand every wprd a pigeon says. Why here, come to the window; look up the creek there, see on the side of that bald hill, with just a fringe of oak and maple about the base of the skull, do you see that old barn? That used to be red; a little faded out now; looks like an old fashioned carnation lying in the enow. Well, that is the barn that Fantail was born in. Come to look at him, I believe I knew that fellow when he was a squab. I know the barn all by heart. I knew the minute he said it was the barn where they threshed the wheat with flails. Ah, it’s the last farm in this part of the great Northwest to do that. ; Boom, boom, boom ! Do you hear that ? “For the fitches are not threshed with a threshing instrument,” said Isaiah, ever so long ago, "neither is a carrat wheel turned about upon the cummin; but the fitches are beaten out with a staff, and the cummin with a rod.” Listen again, you cannot help but hear it:

The gray barns, looking from their hazy hills O’er the dim wafers widening In the vales, Send down the atr a greeting to the mills ■ On the dull thunder of alternate flails.” Why, it is a sad thought, it is a solemn fact to contemplate, that there are children born in this republic,who are young men and women now, who came in since the last flail went out; who never saw a flail; never heard one, having no idea why flails should be “alternate.” Do you know, I talked, not two weeks ago, to a young man born and brought up on an Ohio farm, who didn’t know what a flail was ? He looked me in the eye and made the confession without a blush. The first time I met with a flail was down in Stark county, Illinois. You know that country as well as I do. Elder Gross was living in Toulon at the time, turning sinners into Baptists wherever he could find a stream of waist-deep water, and Grandfather Jones’ farm lay just ’outside of Lafayette. Unable to think of any specific mischief I could work out about the farm that morning, pitilessly locked out of the tool house because I had “sharpened” a keyhole saw with a rattail file, and sawed an ox boW in two with an eye to fancy sled runners the next winter, I had climbed up into the barn loft to comfort myself with the pigeons. Boom, boom; boom, boom; down stairs, and down ladder and post and the incline of mountains o[ hay I slid, and scrambled, and rolled, until I found the men threshing on the barn floor.

I had always assisted at threshing heretofore. We had threshed aforetime in the old, old way; we had trodden out the corn with the muzzled ox, and with the tightly checked horses, and I could stand in the middle of the ring and keep the procession moving. But somehow I had always missed this flail business. Often I had heard the noisy, booming din from other faraway barns, on the clear November air, and now I knew what it was. Never did a boy wait so impatiently for the dinner-horn. I thought the men would never go away, that I might dance ope set with the flail myself. How easy it was. How deftly the strong arms swung the great whips of oak, and with graceful sweeps lashed the golden grain from the quivering bearded stray. How I admired the play of the brawny arms, and how I longed to take the contract of threshing out all the rest of that wheat myself. The handmaiden came to the kitchen door at last, and wound her mellow horn, the hungry men went to dinner, and trembling with eagerness I approached the flail, as it leaned against the side of the fanning mill. ' Somehow it looked taller and grimmer than when it was gyrating about in the air, in graceful curves, ellipses and parabolas. I shook hands with the short leg, and the touch chilled me. I felt as I think a man must feel when he steps into the ring and shakes bands with Slugger Sullivan. A flail looks quiet enough. It seems gentle. It is not at all the sort of whip a Christian man would flog the little one with, but in its hours of ease it has a quiet, come - where - my-love-lies dreaming expression that is desperately wicked, and deceitful above all things. A flail is your true patrician. It is cordial and actively useful with the equals, but it resents any familiarity from its inferiors. In the grasp of its master, it is clay in the hands of the potter; gripped by the unwary and swung by the uninitiated, it is a' brick in the hands of a rioter, or a stone thrown by a lovely woman. Some feeling of this kind began to

oppress me as I examined the simple, primitive mechauism of the (Tail. There lias never been any improvement in the construction of this implement. The flail sprang into being, Minervalike, full grown, of mature age, and in complete armor, sound in wind, limb, and condition. The first flail, like the first bird’s nest, was a perfect model for all posterity. A whip of oak or hickory, with the lash a little shorter than the handle, and nearly as heavy; lash and handle loosely swung together with a thong that holds like a mortgage. The sheaves of wheat that look out from the elbows'of the barn where, the last of the load, they are crowded, shiver when they look down and see the flail leaning up against a bin, like a village bully, waiting for a chance to pound something. But nothing scares a boy very Ipng. I picked up the flail. It was heavier than I supposed it could be. I marched out on the barn floor to where the bearded sheaves were lying, ranked along in two eyen rows, head to head, and the line of battle just long enough for the sweep of the "alternate flails.”

I raised the simple implement above my head. I gave the same bold, eyeless swing—l know I did—that uncle Fred used, and right m the midst of the first circling rash, without hesitation, remorse, warning, or Compunction of conscience I was knocked down. First event for the flail. When I got dp the flail lay there on the floor. It had not changed. It was the.same calm, impassive old flail. I rubbed my head, felt carefully of the lump, and decided that I couldn’t wear tny Sunday hat for two weeks, and consequently would not have to go to church, and then I grappled the flail again. I x shrugged my shoulders to protect my head, and led the german. I never saw any quiet thing fly around as that flail did. Twice I saw it go sweeping past my face. Once it smote me in the back with a resounding thump that made me think, then and there, it had broken my heart And all this time I couldn’t get the bulge on it to whang it down on the wheat. I had got it started on its inhuman circuit and I couldn’t stop it. I had raised a demon I could not control. It 'pounded my ribs sore in rapid successive strokes; my arms were twisting out of their sockets; it was all I could do to keep my feet on the floor; the longer I held on the worse it got. At last I let go all “holts,” threw my arms over my head and started to run for my life. It just rained flails, broadside, end on, and cris-cross, down on me all the way across, the big barn, until, with one final mighty crash,, I fell down on the astonished dog Hector, trying to hide himself behind the straw cutter, a limp, inert, hopeless wreck of howling boy, pitiless final and terrifted dog. I began to think I would let out part of that threshing contract I sat up and cried for a minute or two, and made some remarks on the subject of flails, not necessarily for publication, but merely to place myself on record in case a bill for the prohibition of flails as a beverage should ever be called up, and once more I arose and picked my enemy up by the long end. I collared him with both hands, and resolved that if the sacrifice of my poor life was demanded in order that future generations of boys might know how tp dance round dances with a loose-jointed flail with misfit legs, I would die in the cause right there, even though the next time I fell on the dog it killed both of us.

The god-like Hector, comforting his own wounds and bruises with healing tongue, looked at me from a new lurking place behind the fanning mill, saw that I was preparing to enter the lists once more, and with an expression of amazement and disgust, and a rush that scattered the wheat sheaves like leaves in a November blast, shot out of the barn door, and then, with hair erect and every muscle quivering with excitement, turned to look at me. “That boy,” he said to the bay colt, who had come down td that end of the pasture to see what all the row was about, “has gone stark, raving mad and is trying to club himself to death with a pair of pitchfork handles, but I’m out of the game. I’ll pull him out of a mill pond all day long, but if a boy deliberately makes up his mind to hackle himself with a jointed club, I pass. I can get enough showers of broomsticks to satisfy me any day, by scooping a ham-bone off the kitchen table. I’m not sb fond of hickory that I will come to the barn and ask for more.” And the brute fled the scene of confusion, just as I swept the encircling space with the flail in a final effort. In the first and only circuit, the short leg flew straight up in the air, then dropped and tapped me on the head. Then it reached out at right angles and smote a three-gallon jug of ancient cidar from its high perch on the fanning mill, sweeping it into an everlasting temperance revival, then it swooped down with the sweep or a hawk, came around and caqght me behind the knees, dropped me on the floor with a thud that made me sick for a week, and in that humiliating position the men found me. I w’as sitting on the flail,, My enemy was at my feet, but I was not vain-glorious in my triumph. And when grandfather said, severely, “That boy has been at the cidar,” I sighed in bitterness of spirit, because I knew better than he did how energetically I had been at it. ." - And the day never came when I could use a flail. Before the dawn of that triumph, the threshing machine began to break the lees of men with its farreaching tumbling-rod, and the flail went out of business. “In Its crib the babe Is sleeping And the sunshine, from the door, All the afternoon is creeping Slowly ’round upon the floor: And the shadows soon will darken. And the daylight soon must rate. When her heart no more shall harken To the tramping of the flail To the dancing of the flail— Her tond heart no more, shall hearkeri To the foot-fall of the flail.”

Style a Good Thing.

The common herd needs a little of it, intermingled with the plain, to nlake the picture complete. All good clothing and bright colors would grow monotonous if it were not for the tender shades poverty and simplicity throw into the paths of business and society. To be sure, you get the best tokiches of human nature from the humble. The poor furnish the best lessons of life. Those who struggle for bread or a place in the world teach us the most and tell us the best stories that are written. Culture is too apt to make us liars. Perhaps not of the offensive sense, but jn reality. To sit on the wheel of fortune and stop at the stile marked style and fashion means to appear what we are not and act what we do not believe. To cultivate the graces alone is to be a cheap actor. It is better to be rude, natural, and honest than polite and insincere.—Philadelphia News,.

It Does Seem a Little Utopian.

The time may come—although it now seems too utopian a dream to be realized—when public schools will be provided with medical, dental, and optical inspectors, because public opinion will then recognize that education does not consist solely in setting a boy or girl on ai wooden'bench, with a primer or a geography before them, but in seeing to it that the body is not neglected for the mind.— Philadelphia Bulletin.

A Poor Boy’s Bomance.

I spent a day with great interest, says Mrs. Sarah K. Bolton in the Conor eg alionalist, in visiting the worsted | mill and warehouses at Saltaire, just out from Bradford, ~England, which covers about ten acres. The history of the proprietor, Sir Titus Salt, reads like a romance. A poor boy, a son of a plain Yorkshire man, at 49 in a loose blouse he was sorting and washing wool; a little later a good salesman, a faithful Christian worker, and the Superintendent of a Sundayschool. At 33, happening to be in Liverpool, he observed in the docks some huge pieces of dirty-looking alpaca wool. They had long lain in the warehouses, and, becoming a nuisance to the owners, were soon to be reshipped to Peru. Young Salt took away a handful of the wool in his handkerchief, scoured and combed it, and was amazed at its attractive appearance. His father and friends advised him strongly to have nothing to do with the dirty stuff, as he could sell it to no one, and if he attempted to make cloth from it himself, he ran a great risk of failure. Finally he said: “I am going into this alpaca affair right and left, and I’ll either make myself a man or a mouse.” Returning to Liverpool he bought the whole 300 bales for a small sum and toiled diligently till, proper machinery was made for the new material. The result was a great success. In three years over two million pounds of alpaca wool were imported, and now four million, pounds are brought to Bradford alone. Employment was soon furnished to thousands, laborers coming from all over Great Britain and Germany. Ten years later Mr. Salt was made Mayor of Bradford; ten years after this a member of Parliament, and ten years later still a baronet by Queen Victoria. A great change from the boy in his soiled, coarse blouse, but he deserved it all. He was a remarkable man in many ways. Even when worth his millions and giving lavishly on every hand, he would save blank leaves and scraps of paper for writing, and lay them aside for future use. He was an early riser, always at the works before the engine was started. It used to be said of him, “Titus Salt makes a thousand pounds before others are out of bed.” He was punctual to the minute, most exact, and unostentatious. After he was knighted it was no uncommon thing for him to take a poor woman and her baby in the carriage beside him, or a tired workman, or scatter hundreds of tracts in a village where he happened to be. Once a gypsy, not knowing who he was,’ asked him to buy a broom. To her astonishment, he bought all she was carrying. The best of his acts, one which he had thought out carefully, as he said, “to do good to his fellow men,” was the building of Saltaire tor his four thousand workmen. When asked once what he had been reading of late, he replied, “Alpaca. If you had four or five thousand people to provide for every day you would not have much £ime left for reading. ” Saltaire is a beautiful place on*-the banks of the River Aire, clean and restful. In the center of the town stands the great six-story mill, well ventilated, lighted, and warmed, 545 feet long, of lightcolered stone,'costing over a half million dollars. The four engines of 1,800 horse power consume fifteen thousand tons of coal per year. The weaving shed, covering two acres, holds 1,200 looms, which make eighteen miles of fabric per day. The houses of the work people are an honor to the capitalist. They are of light stone like the mill, two stories high, each containing parlor, kitchen, pantry, and three bed-rooms or more, well-ventilated and tasteful. Flower beds are in every front yard, with a vegetable garden in the rear. No broken carts or rubbish are to be seen.

Coin Standards of the United States.

The coinage law of 1792 provided for three gold coins, the eagle, half-eagle, and quarter eagle. It provided for the silver dollar as above mentioned,which was to weigh 416 grains, and be "the unit of Federal money.” In 1837 a code of mint laws, drawn by Mr. E. M. Patterson, the director of the mint, and adopted by Con press, reducing the weight of the silver dollar to 412-J grains, and the smaller silver coins in proportion, and for both metals the standard of fineness used in the mint of France was adopted. The gold dollar was first coined under the act of Congress passed March 3, 1840. By an act of February 21, 1853, an important change was made in our coinage. By the laws (previously existing both the gold and silver except the 3cent pieces) were a legal»tender to any amount. At the ratio of silver to gqld of 16 to 1, silver was of less value in the United States than in Europe, and our silver coins were exported in large quantities. To prevent this the act mentioned placed a seignorage, or mint tax upon silver, reduced the halfdollar and smaller coins in weight) and took from the subsidiary silver coins their legal tender quality excepting in small amounts. The silver dollar of 4121 grains was not included in this change. The mint was no longer to eoin silver for individuals, but to purchase the metal at its market price and manufacture coins, on • government account. The effect of this change was to give to the silver coin of this country a current value sufficiently above its'market price as bullion to prevent its exportation, and at the same time to make silver money subsidiary to gold. The silver dollar, however, .being still legal tender to any amount, and being heavier than a dollar’s worth of small coins, stood at a premium of from 103 to 105. By the coinage act of 1873, prepared under the direction ofJohu J. Knox, Comptroller of the Currency, the coinage of the silver dollar of 4124 grains was dropped, and in its place was substituted the dollar of 420 grains, called the "trade dollar,” since it was intended only for the convenience of our trade with Mexico and the Central American States, China, and Japan,and was never much used in this country excepting on the Pacific coast. The act o 1875 also provided that Silver money should only be a “legal tender at its’nominal value for any amount not exceeding $5 in any one payment” Thia restriction, together with the

omission of the old silver dollars from the list of authorized coins, resulted in the demonetization of of which so much was said when its effects began to be understood. By the “silver bill" of 1877 the dollar of 412| grains was restored to the coinage and again made legal tender. In using the word “standard" in the article to which our querist above refers we had reference simply to the fact that gold, having the highest bullion value of the two metals. would naturally regulate the value of silver as bullion. As coin, silver and gold are of equal value, $1 in gold being exchangeable for $1 in silver at any time—or either of them for $1 in paper—as legal tender of the United States.— lnter Ocean.

Where Monstrosities Come From.

Where do you get these freaks ?" asked a reporter of a dime museum lecturer during a pause in his eloquent and instructive address, describing the odities on exhibition. “Mostly from New York,” said the lecturer. “But you can trace their origin to all parts of the United States. The majority of these strange creatures come from the South and West During the summer season the circuses run across them, engage them, and after the season is over they generally make for New York.” “Why New York ?” inquired the reporter. “Because there are agencies established in that cjty tvhose business it is to get these freaks engagements throughout the country; Altera consultation with the agent, a plan of action is agreed npon. The agent thereupon advertises in the leading dramatic papers. Then he sends circulars to the different managers throughout the country. The manager notices the ‘ad,’ receives the circular, reads it carefully, and if the momstrocity possesses the necessary alluring qualities, engages it.” “Are there many foreign subjects on exhibition ?” ’ “No, they are mostly American products/’-: ■ “How many curiosities are there at present on exhibition ?” “Well, I hardly know. Probably thousands. There are fat women, fat boys, giants, skeletons, liliputians, armless and legless wonders, doubleheaded girls, etc. Besides there are hundreds of curiosities that "belong to the animal species.” “What salaries do these human curiosities command ?” “All the way from sls to $250 per week,” said the museum man, and then he turned away to resume the thread of his discourse to the crowd of gaping wonder-seekers. The origin of the dime museum is not known. Several well-known theadrical men claim to be the first to have projected such resorts. Since the beginning of the ptesent season there has been but one failure reported, and that was in a northern city. Every city of any pretention has its “Dime,” and all, it js stated, are making money. Outside of the curio hall there is the theatorium, where performances, are given twice a day. The class of entertainment includes opera, drama, comedy, vaudeville, etc. In the large cities, such as Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and Chicago, the museums are kept open from 10 a. m. to 10 y. pi., and in the smaller cities only two performances are given—after-noon and evening.-- Washington Star.

The Dainty Girl and the Orange.

It was evident that she had rehearsed on the orange and felt confident that she could slide it down her throat without spatter, slobber or muss. She first took it carefully between the tips of her small fingers, toying with it as though the task of eating it involved no special effort at grace. Next she laid it on her plate and with a knife cut it into quarters. Thirdly, she lifted a section with the thumbs and forefingers of both hands and neatly separated the peel from the pulp at the ends. This freed the latter until it lay almost disconnected on the peel. The fruit had been chilled in a refrigerator until it was as cold as a chunk of ice. At the instant when her refreshment from the cold, cold bit of orange was to have commenced, disaster intervened. A gentle repartee had just been emitted from her lips, and they still bore the smile of ineffable blandness. The eyes of Adolphus were fondly ravishing her fair face. Then, oh, then the quarter of orange did not slip into her dear mouth, but fell into the low corsage of her dress. If a piece of ice, had slid down her skin, lodging in a spot in the region of her belt and quite inaccessible at the table, she couldn’t have yelled “Ouch!” with more vim or scampered to the ladies’ dressing room with greater celerity.— Clara Belle.

A Laughing Plant.

There is not a flower that laughs, but one that creates laughter, if the printed stories of travelers are to be believed. It grows in Arabia and is called the laughing plant, because its seeds produce effects like those produced by laughing gas. The powers are of a bright yellow and the seedpods are soft and woolly, while the seeds resemble small black beans, and only two or three grow in a pod. The natives dry and pulverize them, and the powder, if taken in small doses, makes the soberest person behave like a circus clown or a madman, for he will dance, sing, and laugh most boisterously, and cut the most fantastic capers, and be in an uproariously ridiculous condition for about an hour. 'When the excitement ceases the exhausted exhibitor of these antics falls asleep, and when he awakes he has not the slightest remembrance of his frisky doings.— Vick’s Floral Magazine.

A Modest Witness.

Counsel—Did I understand you to say that Mr. Jones had but one leg? Witness (the same maiden lady who always retired to her own room when she wished to change her mind) —No, sir.; I said one limb. Counsel—Had he lost an arm or a leg, or two legs and an arm, or two arms and a leg? "Witness (determined not to shock the modesty of the court) —He had two arms, sir. but he walked with crutches. —New York Telegram.

MECHANICAL.

tTHE Fontaine locomotive, which won peculiar celebrity some time ago on the line of the Canada Southern,has finally disappeared. The central idea was the introduction of two friction wheels above two driving wheels. By the contact of the upper wheel with the lower, ■a greater number of revolutions per minute, and hence a greater speed, could be obtained. A company was formed with $1,000,000 nominal capital stock at $25 per share. Two engines were built at a expense of $25,000, but they proved a failure. Altogether the company paid out $645,000 and received $2,700 in return. The limit of temperature at which men can work depends !! upon the length of there exposure, the amount of exertion they put forth, their condition and the nature of the atmosphere, particularly as to its degree of moisture. Men have been employed on railways at 104 degrees, in mines—under very favorable conditions—at 125 degrees, and are said to work occasionally in the stockholes of tropical steamers at 150 degrees. Prof. Du Boise Raymond has estimated that a temperature of 122 degrees can be endured when the air is as dry as possible, but that even 104 degrees is likely to be fatal in an atmosphere saturated with moisture. It is considered certain that men cannot become accustomed to stand, for any considerable time, a higher temperature than 140 to 165 degrees, even when they keep perfectly still and are in quite pure air. There was an interesting debate in the Reichstag one day last week, on the Workmen’s Protection bill, lately introduced by Prince Bismarck, which seeks, among other measures for the benefit of working men, to establish a fixed number of hours to constitute a normal working day. This provision was vigorously attacked and declared to be impossible of enforcement. If it were interpreted so as to compel employers to pay laborers for time necessarily lost in waiting for work, it would only result in employers cutting do,wn the wages for the day’s work, and if they were only to be paid for the hours they were actually at work, they would be compelled to lose their own time and would have to be on hand for a greater number of hours than at present in order to earn the same amount of wages. The most official figures that can be found show that there are 29,227 locomotives of all kinds belonging to the railroads of North America. Reckoning the life of a locomotive at twentyfive years, it ought to require the construction of 1,169 locomotives annually to maintain the stock of engines. A great many locomotives kept on the motive power list are, doubtless, out of Service; but, making free allowance for this, the figures indicate that in the last year the renewal of locomotives has been far below the necessary requirements. Many of the engines built do not represent maintainance of stock, but were 1 called for by new roads and extensions. Renewals must be made sometimes to fill the blanks left by wear and tear; and those who delay longest in getting their motive power put in order will pay heaviest for the work when it can be delayed no longer.

Women’s Arms.

The most beautiful girl on the American stage to-day is Pauline Hall. That is my opinion; and when I also present it as the naked truth you will agree with me if ever you have seen her in the breviary condition of drapery common to burlesque. She has a lovely, good-humored face and a faultless form, excepting that her hands and feet are somewhat too generous. They make a mistake in their mode of using her, however, for she ought not to be allowed to stir while in sight of the audience, for she is as awkward as a cow with the blind staggers. Her movements are heavy and labored, and I have often felt like suggesting to the manager the expediency of strewing torpedoes along her track on the stage so that a series of explosions might enliven her foot steps. But she is an entrancing creature, and the dudes in the front rowshave to be strapped to their chairs to keep them from sliding down on their knees before her. What I mentioned her for was to describe her queer system of gesticulation. She has been taught since her debut to use a naturally good voice with some skill, but I fancy that the motions with which she accompanies her vocalism are of her own invention. You may have observed the painfully mechanical gestures with which the serr-comic girl of the variety shows is usually afflicted. Well, she is spontaneity itself compared with the automatic gyrations of Pauline’s arms. They are a perfect pair, ahd I don’t blame her for uncovering them to the tip-tops of her shoulders ; but their series of extensions, weavings, self-huggings, and prayerclaspings. repeated for every verse of a long song, without the faintest shadow of variation, is the most curious thing in current amusements. The other evening she inadvertely started in with a gesture which belonged in the middle of a stanza. She was so completely upset that she broke down entirely, and had to begin over again, like a vocalist who has got so badly out of time that disaster is inevitable, i When we consider how artfully and effectively most actresses employ their arms, I wonder that the belles of society do not acquire the same accomplishment. We are too apt to let our limbs remain as useless as the lower ones, so far as gesticulation is concerned, and I recall only one girl among my acquaintances who displays her arms for all they are worth. As seen at an opera or ball, the?’ are not the insensate things commonly seen, but are animate, helpful appendages, taking their active ahd graceful part in her movements and conversation. Let somebody open a school of arms for girls.— Cidra Belle’s Letter.

Grasses.

The variety of grasses is something wonderful. These plants outrank in importance all other plants combined, since they include all cereals en which mankind depends for bread. It is said there are over 6,000 kinds of grass, which is about one-sixth of all the flow-, ering plants that grow.