Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 February 1893 — A SMALL CAPITAL. [ARTICLE]

A SMALL CAPITAL.

But It Was Big Enough to Start a Widow in Life. Boston Advertiser. Mrs. K. was a widow with three children. One of them died; another, a daughter, married a man who left her, so that the mother had to pro vide for the grandchild, as well as her own family. This was difficult, and soon the stock of supplies got low and there was no money in the house, on which, also, a mortgage had to be met. One day the son, a schoolboy, came in to say that Miss J„ a neighbor, rather noted for being “close," had given him five cents for closing her cellar door. This five cents seems to have been the only capital of the widow and her little family, though I suppose she might have obtained more had she made her condition known to her prosperous neighbors. That would have injured the story, howover, and I am glad that she did not get the loan, but invested her son’s earnings in popcorn, as she by inspiration did. With some molasses she had left in the jng, the corn was soon made into fifteen of those sticky but enticing cornballs which have coaxed many a copper out of a schoolboy’s pocket. The town school was close by, and before noon they were all sold for a cent apiece, and the little capital trebled, “Quick returns and large profits” was the maxim of this merchant, which seems to have worked well in this instance; after four years of trade in the village of Plymouth, at the old stand, Mrs. K. is now the owner of her own house, without a mortgage; has money in the bank; has educated her children, (her grandson is now fourteeu years old), and has very much increased the variety of her merchandise.

The county of Fresno, Cal., boasts of a flume fifty-two miles long, built of timber throughout and designed for conveying lumber from the place of felling in the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the plains below. In section the flume is V shaped, the angle being 90 degress; the V is 21 inches deep and for the most part 3 feet 7 inches across the top, this width being increased, however, at various points, where a decrease in the grade necessitates a larger volume of water to carry the timber, the lower terminus being 5 feet 4 inches wide by 31 inches deep. The main supply of water is received from a lake near its head, but four additional feeders are led into it at different points along its length. The sides of the flume are constructed of H inch boards, and the structure is carried on trestle work for nearly the whole length, these trestles being as many as 130 feet high in some of the deep canons crossed by the flume. The steepest grade is one of 1,200 feet to the mile, maintained for about 3,000 feet.

If Governor Francis, of Missouri, does not get a cabinet portfolio he will try a first-class mission, and, failing in that, he will return to business at the old stand. The Governor is a young man yet and made a million or so in grain speculations.