Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 July 1895 — Page 6

THE OTHER ONE. Sweet little maid with winsome eys That laughs all day through tangled hair, Oaxing with baby looks so wise OTer the arm of the oaken chair, Dearer than you is none to me, Dearer than you there can be non*, * Since in your laughing face I see Eyes that tell of another one. fclere where the firelight softly glows, Sheltered and safe and snug and warm, VT-hat to you is the wind that blows, Driving the sleet of the winter storm? Round your head the ruddy light „ Glints on the gold from your tresses spun, But deep is the drifting snow to-night Over the head of the other one. Hold me close as you sagely stand, Watching the dying embers shine; Then shall I feel another hand t > That nestled once in this hand of mine; Poor little hand, so-cold and chill, 1 Shut from the light of stars and sun, Clasping the withered roses still That hide the face of the sleeping one. Laugh, little maid, while laugh you may; Sorrow comes to us all, yon know; Better, perhaps, for-.her to stay Under the drifting robe of snow. Sing while you may your baby songs, Sing till your baby days are done; But, oh. the ache of the. heart that longs . Night and day for the other one!

AN EDGED PLAYTHING

- HE Doctor paled; decidedly It was i\ something more fcs |T '|h than mere embar- - rassmeut that caused his unwilling-

ness. “I have given it jap, ladies,” said he; “I have nothing more to do with magnetism.” “But why, why, Doctor?” the pretty pleaders persisted. “Put us to sleepone of us—you must, or tell us the reason why.” ~ “Well, so be It,” sahl he, at lust, stttT visibly reluctant. “I will tell you why; It may teach you a lesson. “Eighteen months ago,” lie began,' “I went into the country to see a friend—we will call him Paul if you please. Though old comrades and devoted ‘chums,’ for a lopg time the chances of life had separated us, particularly his marriage, which, for certain reasons, had obliged him to locate for a while upon one of his properties, situated, as •I have said, in the depths of the country. Bat often and often my thoughts carried me—a trifle enviously, in the midst of my hard work—toward that forgotten corner, where his hours were passed in the quiet routine and bliss of a domestic lifd. “Nor was I mistaken in the picture my fancy had drawn; serenity, repose, breathed from the very trees, with their great moss-covered trunks, against which an old chateau leaned in the mingled shade and shine of the sunny Provence woods. “Paul met me at the station. His wife , J did not bafi?r® dinner, indeed—a beautiful woman, with dark, brilliant eyes, which flashed, when not shielded by the long, carting lashes, with the light of burnished steel. She had a superb figure and a complexion the tint and texture of old ivory, through which was flowing vigorously the rich red current of a healthy blood. Very, very beautiful she was, but, oddly enough, as I looked at hep I felt a sense of deception somewhere under that fair exterior.

“Was it fancy? Or was this full, robust beauty but similar to a too-fevvid summer that forces the sap to rise so fast that the fruit turns sour? I do not know, only that this woman entered with difficulty into the idyl I had evoked froiu the slmdowyalslciTdrihese oTcT woods, that seemed always whispering and murmuring to themselves. “Her intense vitality seemed to shatter this setting of peace and serenity. Moreover, we were not alone: another guest had arrived—a young man and a close neighbor. From the moment of his coming, too—or did' I -fancy that, also?—Paul, my friend, seemed less genial. The first joy in his eyes at my arrival had calmed; I saw him now in his habitual state, doubtless, a little aged, slightly constrained, with that vague, nervous reserve of the distrustful husband who in his inmost thougnts suspects treachery. “I had no time, however, to ponder long on these reflections; old memories, serious and gay, crowded thick and fast upon us in the ease and comfort of that well-ordered dining-room, looking out upon the lawn, the soft melancholy of the coming twilight slowly enwrapping ns and carrying hearts and minds both far back into the pa it. “Dinner was nearly over when a chance word or question turned the conversation upon a subject no less absorbing then than now, ladies”—and the doctor bowjed courteously to the circle of eager listeners closely clustered about him—“turned, I say, upon the subject of hypnotism and hypnotic suggestion. “My friend, from the first discoveries, had watched the advance of these studies with the liveliest interest, and many and frequent had been the discussions between himself and his wife concerning them, she denying the phenomena arising from these experiments and stubbornly denouncing them as humbug and charlatanism; and he affirming that strange things could aud did happen, as he knew from his own experience, a certain evening in Paris, when he had offered himself as a ‘subject’ as Incredulous as she, and had been put to sleep promptly and made to accomplish la his sleep things of which they told him afterwards. *“Bah! They duped you!’ Insisted bis wife. ‘Doctor,’ suddenly appealing to me, ‘help me to get> this rubblßb out of bis head, or Paul will certainly go ew-* :- r " \

“Forced to take sides, I was obliged to admit that I myself was deeply inter* ested in these matters, and had witnessed things that I did not dare to doubt She was still obstinate, still mocking; she would believe what she saw—no more, no less. “ ‘lf Paul is a subject, as he declares,’ said she, ‘the thing, too, Is easy enough; convince me—you have done such things, you say—by trying It here and now.’— - * —“Paul was W n Hng.‘ T locked intently at him; his eyes wavered curiously from my gaze; he wasa marvelouasub-' ject and fell Immediately under my will. “We passed into the drawing-room, placed him In a chair, and I had not made six passes over his brow when he was in a sound hypnotic sleep. “ ‘Well, he Is off,’ said I. “‘lmpossiblel No!’ -^sr~ “She bent over him, called him, pinched him—no movement; raised his arm—it fell inert like a log. “ ‘Quick, quick, suggest something!* said she, a strange eagerness showing suddenly in her face. ‘“■You would, perhaps, feel the proof stronger, madame, did you make the suggestion yourself.’ “She appeared to think, murmuring half aloud: ‘lt must be an unaccustomed act, something unusual, that he can not divine; that does not enter into his habit of life.’

“She looked about her. Near by on a table a magazine lay opened at a recent article on ‘Hypnotic Suggestion,’ a slenbetween the folds. She turned the leaves hurriedly. “ ‘Ah, we have it at last!’ said she, putting her finger upon a certain paragraph; ‘an experiment just made—successfully, they say—at the hospital of La Salpetriere. Repeat it with Paul, and I shall be convinced.’ “The experiment was to suggest to the patient at a fixed hour a predetermined act—the act In this case suicide with some harmless object that the ‘subject’ should be made io believe a poniard. “‘Willingly,’ I responded. - : “She handed me the paper-knife. ‘This is harmless enough, isn’t it?’ she said, yielding it to me with a charming smile; ‘it would not hurt a fly.’ “ ‘Perfectly harmless,’ and I held up the little pearl dagger before Paul’s eyes.

“ ‘Do you see it, Paul?’ said I, slowly and impressively, ‘this poniard here? Well, I am going to put it on that table yonder; to-morrow, whetrthedunebeon bell rings—the luncheon beli, remember—you will come here, take this poniard and—kill yourself!’ “Then I roused him. He remembered nothing and felt nothing, only a little comic uneasiness concerning the act that he was to accomplish and from which he was determined to defend himself. “The evening finished gayly with a rubber of whist, ending at 10 in order to give the handsome :«young neighbor a silent listener to what had been going on—time enough to reach home at a reasonable hour. “We were walking, Paul, his wife, and I on the terrace next morning when the luncheon-bell rang. Paul raised his head, listened a second, turned brusquely and re-entered the chateau. His wife had becqme very pale. “‘Come, quick,’ said I; ‘he has gone for that paper-knife!’ “She remained motionless. ‘“To what good?’ she said. *T see already that suggestion has reason in it, for Paul has gone. He Will come back madder than ever, I suppose.’ “I did not wait for her to finish; I hastened to the drawing-room, where my ‘subject’ had gone. “I ran; I threw open the door, and Paul was there—dead, face downward on the floor—a dagger in his heart!” “A real dagger, Doeter?” cried the mistress of the house, laying her hand softly upon the Doctor's arm. “A real dagger, madame. I turned to the table —the little mother-of-pearl pa-per-knife was gone. Who had taken it? Who had put the other—the real dagger —in its place? “God knows; but she, Paul’s wife, and he, the neighbor who dined with us that night, were married ten months ago.”—Translated for the San Francisco Argonaut from' the French of Relbrach.

LAFAYETTE’S GRAVE.

It Is in Old Paris, and an American Flag Always Floats Over It. “While in Paris a short time ago,” said-a traveler recently, according to the Washington Post, “it occurred to me that It was a fitting act to make a pilgrimage to the tomb of that illustrious Frenchman dear to the hearts of nil American patriots, Marquis de Lafayette. I asked a number of people before I could find anyone to enlighten me on to the spot, but after repeated inquiry ascertained its location. The grave is situated in old Paris, within the grounds of a convent that the ancestors of Lafayette " founded, and vMiere repose the remains of many of tlife French nobility. The first thing that attracted my attention in connection with the hero’s tomb was that above it floated a silken flag bearing the stars and stripes. “It seems that a good many years ago an American gentleman left in his will a sum of money to be used for the special purpose of keeping an American flag forever flying above the grave of Lafayette. It has done so without intermission from the day the will went into effect, and whenever, through the wear of the elements, one flag becomes unserviceable, a new one straightway takes Its place. Through untold centuries the emblem of the country which in Its early struggles for liberty had his beneficent aid will ware above his ashes.” If a man hopes to be well treated In business he should always buy, and never sell.

THE GATES OF HELL.

REV, DR. TALMAGE SPECIFIES SOME OF THEM, t. ■ f~ Re Tells What They Are Made Of andHammers the Brazen Panels with the Anvil of God’s Trnth—Swinging Ont and Swinging In. Preached in New York. 1. In his sermon for last Sunday Dr. Tnitnage chose a momentous and awful topic, “The Gates of Hell,” the text selected being the familiar passage in Matthew xvi., 18, “The gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” - —— Entranced, until we could more of the splendor, we have often gazed at the shining gates, the gates of pearl, the gates.'of heaven. But we are for a while to look in the opposite direction and see swinging open and .shut the gates of hell. V —1 rem ember, Tv hen the Fran co-German war was going on, that I stood one day in "Paris looking at the gates of the Tuileries, and I was so nbsorbed jn the sculpturing at the top of the gates—the masonry and the bronze —that I forgot myself, and after awhile, looking down, I saw that there ‘were officers of the law scrutinizing hie, supposing, no doubt, I was a German and looking at those gates for adverse purposes. But, my friends, we shall not stand looking at the outside of tlftrgates of hell. In this sermon I shall tell you of both sides, and I shall tell -you what those gates are made of. ’With the hammer of Gtid’s truth I shall pound on the brazen panels, aiid with the lantern of God’s truth I shall flash a light upon the shining hinges!

Impure Literature. Gate the First.—lmpure literature. Anthony Comstock seized twenty tons of bad books, plates and letter press, and when our Professor Cochran of the Polytechnic Institute poured-the destructive acids on those plates they smoked in the righteous annihilation. And yet a great deal of the bad literature of the day is not gripped of the law. It is strewn iu your parlors; it is in your libraries. Some of your children read it at night after they have retired, the gas burner swung as near as possible to their pillow. Much ofTMs literature is under the title of scientific information. A book agent with one of these infernal books, glossed over with scientific nomenclature, went into a hotel and sold in one day a hundred copies and sold them all to women! It is appalling that men and women who can get through their family physician all the useful information they may need, and without any contamination, should wade chin through such accursed literature under the plea of getting useful knowledge, and that printing presses hoping to be called decent lend themselves to this infamy. Fathers and mothers, be not deceived by the title “medical works.” Nine-tenths of those books come hot from the lost world, though they may have on them the names of the publishing houses of-New York, Chicago and Philadelphia. Then there is ail the novelette literature of the day flung over the land by the million. As there are good novels that are long, so I suppose there may be good novels that are short, and so there may be. a good novelette, but it is the exception. No one "■—mark this—no one systematically reads the average novelette of this day and keeps either integrity or virtue. The most of these novelettes are written fer broken, down literary men for small compensation, on the principle that, having failed in literature elevated and pure, they hope to succeed in the tainted and the hasty. Oh, this is a yvide gate of hell! Every panel is made out of a bad book or newspaper. Every hinge is the interjoined type of a corrupt printing press. Every bolt or lock of that gate is made out of the plate of an unclean pictorial. In other words, there are a million men and women in the United States to-day reading themselves nintd hell! When in one of our cities a prosperous family fell into ruins through the misdeeds of ene of its members, the amazed mother said to the officer of the law: “Why, I never supposed there was anything wrong. I never thought there could be anything wrong.” Then she sat weeping in silence for some time and said: “Oh, I have-got it now! I know, I know! I found in her bureau after she went away a bad book. That s what slew her.” These leprous booksellers have gathered up the catalogues of all the male and female seminaries in the United States, catalogues containing the names and residences of all the students,, and circulars of death are sent to every one, without any exception. Can you imagine anything more deathful? There is not a young person, male or female, or an old person, who has not had offered to him or her a bad book or a bad picture! Scour your house to find nut whether there are any of these adders coiled on your parlor center table or coiled amid the toilet set on the dressing case. I adjure you before the sun goes down to explore your family libraries with an inexorable scrutiny. Remember that one bad book or bad picture may do the work for eternity. I want to arouse all your suspicion about novelettes. I want to put you on the watch against everything that may seem like surreptitious correspondence through the posbotiiee. I want you to understand that impure literature j$ one of the broadest, highest, mightiest gates of the lost.

The Dissolute Dance. Gate the Second.—The dissolute dance. Tou shall not divert me to the general subject of dancing. Whatever you may think of the parlor daflee or the methodic motion of the body to sounds of music in the family or the social circle, 1 am not now discussing that question. I want yon to unite with me this hour in recognizing the fact that there is a dissolute dance. You know of what I speak. It is seen not only in the low haunts of death, but in elegant mansions. It is the first step to eternal rain for a great multitude of both sexes. You know, my friends, what postures and attitudes and figures are suggested of the devil. Tfiey who glide into the dissolute dance glide over an inclined plane, and the dnuce is swifter and swifter, wilder apd wilder, until with the speed of lightning they whirl off the edges of a decent life into n fiery future. This gate of hell swings across the axminster of many a fine parlor, find across the ballroom of the summer watering place. You have no right, my brother, my sister—you have no right to take an attitude to the sound of music which would be unbecoming in the absence of music. No Chickering grand of city parlor or fiddle of mountain picnic can consecrate that which God hath cursed.

Indiscreet Apparel. Gate the Third.—lndiscreet apparel. The attire of women for the last few yeats has been beautiful and graceful beyond anything I have known, but there are those who will always carry that which is right into the extraordinary and indiscreet. I charge Christian women, neither by style of dress nor adjustment of apparel, to become administrative of evil. Perhaps none else will dare to tell you, I will tell you that there are multitudes of men who owe their eternal damnation to what has been at different times the ness of womanly attire. Show me the fashion plates of .any age between this and the time of Louis XVI. .of France and Henry VIII. of England and I will tell you the type of morals or lmmorals of that age or that year. No exception to it.. Modest apparel means a righteous people. linmodest apparel always means a contaminated and depraved society. You wonder that the city of Tyre was destroyed with such a terrible destruction. Have you ever seen the fashion plate of the city of Tyre? I will show it to you: “Moreover, the Lord saith, because the daughters of Zion are haughty and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet, in that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments about their feet, and their cauls, and their round tires like the moon, the rings and nose jewels, the changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles, and the wimples, and the crisping pins.” That is the fashion plate of ancient Tyre. And do you wonder that the Lord God in his indignation blotted out the city, so that fishermen to-day spread their nets where that city once stood ? Alcoholic Beverage. Gate the Fourth.—Alcoholic beverage. Oh, the wine Cup is the patron of impurity. The officers of the law tell us that nearly all the men who go into the shambles of death go in intoxicated, the mental and the spiritual abolished, that the brute may triumph. Tell me that a young man drinks, and I know the whole story. If he becomes a captive of the win® cup, he will become a captive of all other vices. Only give him time. No one ever runs drunkenness alone. That is a carrion crow that, goes in a flock, and when you see that beak ahead, you may know the other beaks are coming. In other words, the wine cup unbalances and dethrones one's

better judgment and leaves one the prey of all evil appetites that may choose to alight upon his soul. There is not a place of any kind of sin in the United States to-day that does not find its chief abettor in the chalice of inebriety. There is either a drinking bar before, or one behind, or one above, or one underneath. These people escape legal penalty because they are all licensed to sell liquor. The courts that license the sale of strong drink license gambling houses, license libertinism, license disease, license death, license ill sufferings, all crimes, all despoliations, .ill disasters, all murders, all woe. It is the courts and the Legislature that are swinging wide open this grinding, creaky, stupendous gate of the lost. But you say: “You have described these gates of hell and shown us how they swing in to allow the entrance of the doomed. Will you not, please, before you get through the sermon tell us how these gates of hell may swing out to allow the escape of the penitent?” I reply, but very few escape, Of the thousand that go iu 999 perish. Suppose ode of these wanderers should knock at your door, would you admit her? Suppose you knew where she came from, would you ask her to sit at 'sour diningutable,? Would you become the governess of your children ? Would you introduce her among your acquaintanceships? Would you take the responsibility of pulling on the outside of the gate of hell while the pusher on the inside of the gate is trying to get out? You would hot, not one of a thousand of you would dare to do so. You would write beautiful poetry over her sorrows and weep over her misfortunes, but give her, practical help you never will. But you say, “Are there no ways by which the wanderer may escape?” Oh, yes; three or four. The one way is the sewing girl's garret, dingy, cold, hunger blasted. But you say, “Is there no other way for her to escape?” Oh, yes. Another way is the street that leads to the river, at midnight, the end of the city dock, the moon shining down on the water making it look so smooth she wonders if it is deep enough. It is. No boatman near enough to hear the plunge. No watchman near enough to pick ber out before she sinks the third time. No other way? Y’es. By the curve of the railroad at the point where the engineer of the lightning express train cannot see a hundred yards ahead to the form that lies across the track. He may whistle “down brakes,” but not soon enough to disappoint the one who seeks her death. But you say, “Isn't God good, and won-’t He forgive?” Yes, but man will not, woman will not, society will not. The .church of God says it will, but it will not. Our work, then must be prevention rather than cure.

Great Evils of Society. Those gates of hell are to be prostrated just as certainly as God and the Bible are true, but it will not be done until Christian men and women, quitting their prudery and squeamishness in this matter, rally the whole Christian sentiment of the church and assail these great evils of society. The Bible utters its denunciation in this direction agalu and again, and yet. the piety of the day is such a namby pamby sort of thing that you cannot even quote Scripture without making somebody restless. As long as this holy imbecility reigns in the church of God, sin will laugh you to scoru. Ido not know but that before the church wakes up matters will get worse and worse, and that there wiil have to bo one lamb sacrificed from,each of the most carefully guarded folds, and the wave of uncleanness dash to the spire of the village church and the lop of the cathedral tqwer. Prophets and patriarchs and apostles and evangelists and Christ himself hnve thundered against these sins as against no other, and yet there are those who think we ought to take, when we speak of those subjects, a tone apologetic. I put my foot on all the conventional rhetoric 7>iTfhis subject, and I toll you plainly that unless you give up that sin your doom is sealed, and world without end you will be chased by the anathemas of an incensed God. I rally you to a besiegement of the gates of hell. We want in this besieging host not soft sentimentalists, but meu who are willing to take aud give hard knocks. The gates of Gaza were carried off, the gates of Thebes were battered down, the gates of Babylon were destroyed, and the gates of hell are going to be prostrated. The Christianized printing press will be rolled op ns the chief battering ram. Then there will be a long fist of aroused pulpits,

which shall be assailing fortresses, and God’s redhot truth shall be the flying-am-munition of the contest, and the sappers and the miners will lay the train under these foundations of sin, and at just the right time God, who leads on the fray, will cry, “Down with, the gates!” and the explosion beneath will be answered by all the trumpets of God on high, celebrating universal victory. Mercy for the Wanderer. But there may be one wanderer that would like to have a kind word calling homeward. I have told you that society has no mercy. Did I hint at an earlier point in this subject that God will have mercy upon any wandereFwSo would like to come back to the heart of infinite love?

A cold Christmas night in a farmhouse. Father comes iu from the“*barn, knocks the snow from his shoes and sits down by the fire. Thfe mother sits at the stand knitting. She says to him, “Do you remember it is the anniversary to-night?” The father is angered. He ndver wants any allusion to the fact that one haehgone away, and the mere suggestion that it was the anniversary of that sad event made him quite rough, although the tears ran down his cheeks. The old house dog that had played with the wanderer when she was a child comes up and puts his head on the old man’s knee, but he roughly repulses the dog. He wants nothing to remind hiii) of the anniversary day. A cold winter night in a city church. It is Christmas night. They have been decorating the sanctuary. A lost wanderer of the street, with thin shawl about her, attracted by the warmth and light, comes in and sits near the door. The minister of religion is preaching of faimw’howaa wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities, and the poor soul by the door said: “Why. that must mean me. Mercy for the chief of sinners; bruised for our iniquities; wounded for our transgressions.’ ” The music, that night in the sanctuary -brought back hymn which she used to.sing when, with father and mother, she worshiped God in the village church. The /service over, the minister went down the aisle. She said to him: “Were those words for me? ‘Wounded for gur transgressions.’ Was that for me?” The man of God understood her not. He knew not how to comfort a shipwrecked soul, and he passed on, and he passed out. The poor wanderer followed into the street. -—Tlupg for the Fallen. . . '' “What are you doing here, Meg?” said the police. “What are you doing here tonight?” “Oh,” she replied, “I was in to warm myself,” and then the rattling cough came, and she held the railing until the paroxysm was over. She passed on down the street, falling from exhaustion, recovering herself again, until after a while she reached the outskirts of the city and passed on into the country road. It seemed- so familiar. She kept on the road, and she saw in the distance a light iu the window. Ah, that light had been gleaming there every night since she went away. On that country road she passed until she came to the garden gate. She opened it and passed up the path where she played in childhood. She came to the steps and looked in at the fire on the hearth. Then she put her fingers to the latch. Oh, if that door had been locked she would have perished on the threshold, for she was near to death! But that door had not been locked since the time she went away. She pushed open the door. She went in and lay down on the hearth by the fire. The old house dog growled as ho saw her enter, but there was something in the voice he recognized, and he frisked about her until he almost pushed her dowfl in his joy. " came dtfWh, and she saw a bundle of rags on the hearth, but when the face was uplifted she knew it, aud it was no more old Meg of the street. Throwing her arms around the returned prodigal, she cried, “Oh, Maggie!” The child threw her arms around her mother’s neck and said, “Oh, mother!” and while they were embraced a rugged form towered above them. It was the father. The severity all gone out of his face, he stooped and took her up tenderly and carried her to her mother’s room and laid her down on mother’s bed, for she was dying. Then the lost one, looking up into her mother’s face, said: “‘Wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities!’ Mother, do you think that means me?” “Oh, yes, my darling,” said the mother. “I| mother is so glad to get you back, don’t you think God is glad to get yon back?” And there she lay dying, and all their dreams and all their prayers were filled with the words, “Wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities,” until just before the moment of her departure her face lighted up, showing the pardon of God had dropped upon her soul. And there she slept away on the bosom of a pardoning Jesus. So the Lord took back one whom the world rejected.

The Voice of a Fish.

To most people the potjion that fishes have voices would seem rather absurd. Yet there are many species which seem to talk, and even sing. Some familiar ones, like the bluefish, croak when they are pulled out of the water. They do likewise in their native element, and often in concert, producing quite musical effects. A school of “gruntere” will furnish an example. From a vessel anchored in Southern waters one frequently bears at night the slow “boom—boom” of the jewflsh. Crews of ships have been startled on occasions by extraordinary noises like the beating of many drums in the distance. Likewise produced by fishes were sounds heard by Lieut. White, United States navy, in 1524, at the mouth of a river In Cambodia. They suggested a mixture of the bass of the organ, the ringing of bells and the tones of an enormous harp. In Chilian watery musical cadences are sometimes heard rising from the sea and covering four notes, resembling the tones of harpstrings. The “mnlgres” are famous for their vocal powers, emitting loud whistlings and hummings. The way in which fishes make these noises is as yet a mystery. Fishermen in Eastern Asia are said to hang little bells on the ends of their nets to attract fishes. In one county of Utah there Is snid to be an iron belt containing 50,000,000 tons of pure Iron ore surrounded by inexhaustible supplies of coal, but away from any railroad. A late report declares that a rich geld field was accidentally found a few weeks ago, on the San Juan River on Mexican border, by a school teacher and hia pupils.

T he Library Corner

Mme. Couvreur, better known as the clever novelist “Tasma,” has become the Brussels correspondent of the London Times. She has succeeded ber late husband in that office. Catulle Mendes, the French writer, recently fought a duel with a Parsian Journalist and got pinked in the forearm. The cause was an article stating that Mendes was a familiar friend of Oscar Wilde. i George Moore will lay the scene of bis next long novel In a nunnery. The scenario of this story is now complete; its writing will occupy Mr. Moore at least a couple of years. The cehtral Character is to be a prima donna, who, wearied of the garish day, seeks sanctuary in a convent, where, after a while, she takes the veil. The fact that the late Professor J. G. Romanes, who began his scientific career as a dogmatic atheist, ended his life in the communion of the Church of England, was made known at his untimely death. Fragments of a contemplated book explaining and defending this change of view were found among his papers, and have been printed under the title “Thoughts on Religion.” The letters from R. L. Stevenson to Sidney Colvin, written in Somoa, are described by the Athenaeum as “long journal letters, giving an almost daily account of the writer’s life and occupations in bis Island home during the last five years, and taking a place quite apart in his correspondence.” Mr. Colvin has been requested by the family and executors to undertake the ultimate biography of his friend, and asks for help “in the shape of reminiscences or correspondence from those friends of Mr. Stevenson with whom he may not be in private communication.” We find the following amusing paragraph in the Eureka (Gal.) Standard of recent date: “Apropos of man’s fallibility in most things, that excellent weekly journal, the Argonaut, carefully written by trained and Intelligent writers, whose business It is to know everything and write accurately on all subjects, makes the startling assertion In an editorial artlclff, eulogizing Robert Louis Stevenson and his works, that he Is the author of ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.’ Rider Haggard wrote that thrTT-“ ling work of unique fiction, and one would hardly expect a paper of the Arognaut’s literary imputation to appear with such an error in Its brilliant columns.”

ONLY A QUESTION OF TIME.

How an Impecunious Youth Undertook to Pay a Debt of S3O. ‘■That little bill?” said the debtor, pleasantly. “Oh, yes, of course. Well, you need not worry about that any more. I’ve got things down to a system now.” “You’ve,been a long time doing It,” suggested the creditor. “I realize It,” returned the debtor, “but it’s all right now. You see, S3O is ■ more than I can afford to let go of at any one time, but now I can get it together without missing it You see, a man never misses his small change, so I’ve bought a little bank that I can drop it Into every night You’ve no idea how fast it accumulates.” “I’ve heard of the plan before,” said the creditor. “If a man lives up to it and doesn’t hold out on the bank it mounts up rapidly.” “Oh, I live up to it,” protested the debtor. “I put every cent of small change into it every night, and It’s all for you.” 1 “I may hope then ” “My dear sir, you may more than hope. The system makes the payment in full an absolute certainty. It overcomes all obstacles and it’s only a question of time ” “How much time?” “Well, that’s rather difficult to say. You see, the amount of small change I find In my pockets varies, and ” “What do you call small change?’ “Pennies. I—what’s that? Oh, well, sue if you want to. That’s wliut a man gets for trying to do the right thing.”

Spring Changes in Milk.

It is interesting to notice the variations of butter fats made by herds and cows which may be accurately shown by the Babcock testing machine. When grass first comes In the spring and farmers begin to decrease their grain ration, exchanging it for the most perfect ration ever grown, the flush feed of May and June, the increasing yield Is perceptible. In the case of well-bred Jersey herds it is remarkable. Holsteins and only ordinary natives appear to respond less liberally to the change of food and conditions. The Babcock machine, and what it will prove to the wideawake dairyman may be made of inestimable value to him.

Common in Europe.

The use of a third cylinder on a locomotive, where the latter is a compound engine and the steam has two chances to expand, is no novelty. Such a plan is quite common in Europe. But a three-cylinder locomotive of the single expansion type is much more unusual, and, indeed, was unknown until quite recently. It Is an American inventloo, too.

Charitable.

The Board of Health of New York City has received a gift of $25,000 from Mrs. Mintum to establish a pest house wheSre patients will receive better attention than is commonly accorded them. She was moved to this deed by the Incarceration of a friend in the mls> erablo quarters now used. We are often made supremely happy py what we don’t get