Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 October 1874 — Page 3

RENSSELAER UNION, JAMES Sc HEALEY, Proprietors. RENSSELAER; - INDIANA.

THE EVERY-DAY. DARLING. She is neither a beauty nor genius. And no one would call her wise; In a crowd of other women She would draw no stranger's efes; Even we who love her are puzzled To say where her preciousness lies; She is just an every-day darling: In that her preciousness lies. She is sorrv when others are sorry. So awe'e„tly, one likes to be sad: And if people around her are merry, She is almost gladder than glad. Her sympathy is the swiftest, *The truest a heart ever had; She is just an every-day darling. The dearest that hearts ever had. Hey hands are so white and little ---tt—- : It seems as if it were wrong They should ever work for a moment, And yet they are quick and strong. If any dear one needs helping, She will work the whole day long. The precious every-day darling, Every day and all day long. She is loyal as knights were loyal, lu the days' when uo knight lied. And for sake of love or of honor, If it need be, a true knight died; But she dreams not she is braver * Than the woman bv her side. This precious every-day darling. Who makes sunshine at our side. Ah, envy her. Beauty and Genius, And women the world calls wise; The utmo.st-of all your triumphs Would be empty in her eyes. To love and be loved is her kingdom; In this her happiness lies. God bless her. the every-day darling! In this her preciousness lies. —Christian Union.

HOW BILL WAS MISTAKEN.

“ Two crazv men live up there. Go ■on, Sancli! Where’r goin’?” said my “ prospecting pard”—the first words to me, the remainder to the pack-mule—as we journeyed, skirting along the base of a range of rough rock-peaks, which peaks, like ourselves, were, and still are, in that Vast area of sage-brush called Nevada. “ Two crazy men!” repeated I, and added, “ Where ?” “ Why, up there! —to the right hand, at the end of that sprl of a road we jist crossed—where the mule wanted to turn off, you knowand, turning in his saddle, he pointed. “You see that high, dark-looking peak, with the round, white spot of snow on the north face, near the top; it’s the biggest peak of the lot, and kinder behind the rest. - Do you see it?” “ I think I do,” said I, shading my eyes with a heavy buckskin glove. “ There is something like a squad of white-pine trees just below the snow-spot.” “Yes; that’s it. The wliite-piners are a little below, and a little to the right of, the snow.” I nodded my head. “Sancli! Go on! Git! Just below them pines lives the two craziest men in this State.” “ Why crazy—what have they done?” “ Done! why, they ain’t done nothin but work away up there, winter and summer, on a little bit of a razor-blade silverlead, that isn’t wutli a hill o’ beans. Been a-workin’ there jist that a-way for three or four years —sinkin’ and sinkin’, and driftin’ on —nothin’.” How do they live?” “ Oh, the little streak is rich enough, what there is of it. They jist dig and dig and blast and gad—bustin’ fellows to work, you. bet!—and they save every ounce of it. Then you’d jist liev to laugh to see ’em. They’ve got a sort of Spanish raster, and an old blue mouse-colored big mule, with a club-foot, and rope harness; and with such fixins they grind out bullion enough to keep body and soul together. The raster is right alongside the shaft of the mine—jist side the dump —and one of the fellers works on the dump and hists out, while the other feller and an Injin works below. The chap on the dump hists out, sorts ore, and shies a piece of waste rock at old muley now and then to wake him up. That old mule—his club foot is mighty pigeontoed, and they Work him with that foot on the inside of the track, so he jist don’t walk, but sort o’ leans round and round, all day—that old mule has been kep’ goin’ one way on circular work so long that when he’s turned out to feed they never miss his tracks, ’cause he always grazes in circles.” : “Who are these crazy men?” “ Two brothers, they say, name of Rocksaw.” “Where ara they from —what race? Dutch, Irish, French or English?” “More’n I know. Never heard anybody say they pretended to know much about ’em. One’s older’n t’other; he never talks—jist works ahead, with ‘ Yes, sir,’ 1 No, sir,’ ‘ Can’t say, sir,’ ‘ Perhaps so, sir,’ and sich like, mighty short, but kind o’ perlite and quiet. The other one —the young one—is always smilin’; and his eyes are as blue as the sky in springtime—little eyes, away into his head, and nearly kivered up with long sandy eyebrows, like a hairy rat-terrier dog’s—and they, twinkle like specks of ice among dry grass in a sunshiny winter morning. And that young feller he never says nothin’ to speak of more’n the old one; but he’ll look at you like two brand-new' gimlets wliijp you’re talkin’; and he’ll stand all nervey-like, with smiles twitchin’ round his mouth, a-waitin’ for-some-thin’ to laugh at.” “I don’t see anything out of Hie way in what you tell me about these men.” “ You don’t? Well, you haven’t seen ’em yet. Why, I told the young one that old story about the broken winder, and I thought first he’d bust, and then wear Tilmself out a-laughin’.” “ I don’t remember any story about a broken window. What was it?” “ Don’t you know about the man who was ridin’along the road, passin’ a logcabin where was a six-pane winder-sash -with all the glass broke out, and the old woman and four children lookin’ out of •five frames in the sash, and the man said to the old womans ‘ How de do, mam? Have you had a funeral in your family -lately?’ ‘No, sir. Why do you ax?\ says the old woman; and then the man said: 1 1 see one sash-frame’s got no head in it, and I thought t’other head might be dead!’ But that man was on a good horse and saved his skelp.t’ , “ To laugh at tliat.sort of a story Is not good evidence of insanity.” said I to my “ pard,” as we spurred off into a short lope. •» I make note here of a sact —namely, after a joke on horseback, an acceleration of gait follows. Ido not, however, wish to infer that the animals enter into the enjoyment. In riding through the sage the horses are compelled by the bunches of brush to perform a continual zigzag jPurney, which interferes with any pace beyond a walk or jog-trot; so that we were soon forced to give up our g&yety of motion and resume the slower

progress, which seemed also to call for a resumption of conversation: ‘’ From what you tell me, Bill, about those queer fellows, I |gel inclined.To ride back and see the men and the mine. What do you say?” “‘Not a bit o’ use. They -won’t let you down into the mine—ashamed of it. I reckon—and you won’t think of stayin’ there all night.” “Why can’t we stay there all night? We’ve got our own grub and bed.” “ Oh, well, you could stay up tfieye; but you wouldn’t.” “ I don’t see why.” “ You don’t want to be eat up with m’skeeters, If you sleep #ut of doors, and you can’t sleep in them fellers’ cabin—there ain’t room. They live in a hole in the hill-side, and the hole is so small that one of ’em has to go to bed or go out while t’other one puts on his coat, or pulls on his boots. I’ve been up there. Them little popplewood groves is fuller of m’skeeters than a Mississippi swampbottom ; and, in July, a Nevada mountainm’skeeter cuts like, a lancet and sueks like a leech.” “Well, well, William, if you’ve been there, of course I’ll not insist; hut if we live to come back this way I’ll ride up and see the boys.” “All right! I’m on it, if you are in airnest about wantin’ to go now,” said Bill, riding forward to turn the pack~mxrts: ———— “No, no; never mind. Come back, Bill. Let the mule go ahead as he is,” said I. “ Well,” said Bill, dropping into line again, “jist as you like. I’m none of yer growlers that wants it all his own way, and can’t humor a pard’s curiosity. That’s not me. I can give and take, and alius do—on a trip like this.” Hereupon William proceeded to tell me, as we rode along, of the various prospecting trips he had been on in the sage-brush; interjecting his narrative ■with estimates of human character worked up from quiet observation of men in what he called “ close, hard games,” and “tight places,” from which a man had to fall back on his “ore in reverse,” and just “digout” or die —all of which he concluded with this piece of wisdom. Said he:

“ A man may live in a civilized country, and be as flowery, and mossy, and sweet to look at and be with as a buttercup dell on a seashore mountahywhile all his lifelong lie’s slippTn’on the bedrock; but you bring- that man into tliis dry country, where all the posies die and the leaves burn up, and he is soon stripped so that, if he ain’t got the clean grit in him, you can pan him down till he peters on the bed-rock in a week.” “Well, William, my boy, you’ve got the advantage of me, 1 think. You have had experience in panning—both mines and men—while I never yet handled a pan.” “ That’s it, is it?” said Bill, chuckling. “ I was talking hyperbowl—but you’ll see. Es you don’t have a higher or lower opinion of me, and me of you, when this trip’s over, then I don’t know the road to breakfast. Frills ’ll do at a social party, and made-up faces will pass in church; hut, out in these'mountains, you come right down to mammy’s boy, good or bad. What you are, you are; and you ain’t no more, nor can’t be.” William Wilson’s conversation is not very interesting without William’s manner, especially without his peculiar intonation; which latter, though making no disagreeably perceptible suggestion of halting, still has that, interrogative-re-sponsive-ejaculatory style, not exactly Emersonian, yet bearing such a likeness thereto as to require a similar habit of elocution in reducing it to reading. For instance, like many Pacific-slopers, lie has at least six ways of saying “yes” —three ways of assenting with the word, two of doubt and one which is neither assent nor doubt. In this last “yes” there is assent, dissent, doubt, admiration and wonder.

I said to Bill after we liad ridden some time in silence, broken/only by the ringing jingle of the great Spanish spurs on our heels as they jangled among the tops of the brush, or by the voice of Bill urging Sancho, the pack-mule: “ Bill, I think it’s our luck to find a staving mine on this trip.” Bill looked at me from under his hatrim as lie swung rapidly round in a circle the knotted end of his picket-rope, and said, “Y-y-e-e-us.” “ What do you mean by that kind of a yes?” “ Well, I mean —I mean” looking straight over his horse’s ears, past the coils of the flying rope, “ Git a-e-up, Sanch!—l mean, as near as I can make out, sort o’ yes, sort o’ no and mebbe so —l’m willin’.” “ I don’t like that kind of a yes, Bill. It hasn’t much faith in it.” Then Bill said: “N-o-6-uh,” with a peculiar cooing, rising inflection. “ Your no is as queer as your yes.” Then Bill said: “Y-y-e-e-us;” and laughed at the sound of his own words “ Bo yoji think you used your words that way before you came to California?” “ I dun know. Don’t reckon I did, though. I think that kind of use in the words comes from a teller talkin’ when Jhe is busy. If I’m in a drift, pickin’ and gaddin’, and lookin’ out for rocks overhead, and you are wheelin’ out, and you tell me somethin’ that I don’t know about, one way or t’other—can’t agree to in full, nor yet go back on it—and ain’t got much time to talk, anyway, I throw airGße answer into one word.”’ « “That’s a new style of elocution, Bill.” “ Don’t know, never elocuted any myself ; but it fills the bill as well as a sermon could.” There is not a great deal to startle the gaze of a rider through the sage-brush where the gray of one valley has its reflex in each other valley, and the ranges of mountains have, at first view, about the sameness of furrows in a new-plowed field. But, in the utter absence of brightgreen pastures and the myriad seamy -palms of leafy woods, with the glint and glitter of gliding waters pooling underneath, there is a wonderful play and a delicate blending of subdued c#lors along With a grand and varied lining-out of mountain tops against the blue-white ‘canvas of the sky; while every-change in the atmosphere alters this shading and blending in degrees so slight as to be scarcely perceptible to a stranger’s eye, and yet to be felt, even when not taken .into exact account. Over these'gray and sober-hued mountains travel the images of the floating clouds, painted by the sun—a mov T ing panorama, with nature shifting the weird lights; and the naked geology of the country modestly changes color under the inquiring glances of the sun. I said: “ William, my boy, do you see anything pretty or sublimfe in the surrounding scenery?” “Scenery!” exclaimed Bill, suddenly reining up his horse and looking round, “ which?—where?” “ Why,” said I, waving my unoccupied

hand in' a lofty manner, “ this grand, quiet chapter in the wide-open history of the universe; where the great central Intelligence has written in lines indelible—not subject to proof-imprint, or pi inter’s revise, error or errata —the prehistoric ‘ Sermon on the Mount!’ ” “ Eh?” ejaculated Bill. “Es you come that agin, you’ll make my eyes bung out like a butterfly’s. You skeer me!" “Well, William, I will desist; but there is, nevertheless, a lofty repose, a grand reserve of tone, in these silent sur*. roundings, which seem to hold the chirrup and clatter of more busy, bustling lands in the strong quiet of true aristocratic scorn.” “ I don’t know what you’re a drivin’ at any more’n a bump on a log! Mebbe you’re playin’ oft’on the scenery people? —those high-toned uns what go into tits over a bunch of green rock-moss with a dew-drop in the middle of it; which I heard one woman with long, bony white hands and gold spectacles, once, on the Sierra, call it the ‘ king of dimefits with the emerald in his dream.’ Is that what you’re goin’ for?” No, William. I truly admire what we now behold around us.” “ You do! Well, I don’t. I’d as soon look at a Quaker meetin’ When their spirit was otl on particular business. Scenery’s somethin’ ’at I don’t savey. I always thought it meant somethin’ green a-stamlin out of doors in the worst place it could get to. But here we are at the spring, and we may as well put up for the night.” And Bill dismounted. Putting up for the night on a prospecting trip may be rendered lying.jyut for the night; but there is a pure-aired satisfaction in hustling about the impromptu location with the ever-present thought of “what next?” that drives away all weariness, to be replaced by a zeSty keenness of appetite, as the prelude to a simple supper, a solacing pipe, and a sound slumber. After we had done all that a sagebrush camp requires in the way of unpacking, unsaddling, hobbling, picketing, making fire, cooking, eating, unroll ing blankets into bed-shape and were laid down for the night, with our faces upturned to the bright, sparkling, starlit sky, I observed to William: “ Tliis is grand.”

“Wot!” said Bill. “This night of calm repose in the -gorgeous bridal-chamber of our first parents.” “ There you go agin! Lnonov as a new convert at a camp-meetin’.” “ No, William, not looney. It’s a beautiful thought, that Adam and Eve, in the incomparable purity of the first new love that blessed the world, should have rested thus upon the young earth under the royal drapery of all the night.” “Yes. A shiverin’in the wind, without mission blankets, and no shirts on, like two Shoshones in a wickiup! You can’t come any of that on me. I had a pard once, in California, that used to read a lot of that every night, out of a book he called MiUonJ' “Who was Milton? Do you know', Bill?” ‘ Yes!”—without variety of accent. “ He was a looney old psalm-singer, and said that the devil invented silver and gold mining in the back territory of hell and erebust, whatever that is.” “ Do you remember the lines, William?” “No, I don’t. Somethin’ about the devil and his crew' working three shift a day into a hill.” ; v I recited: “ By him first Men-also, and by his suggestion taught, Ransack'd the center, and with impious hands Killed the bowels of their mother earth For treasures better hid. Sooii had his crew Open’d into the hill a spacious wound, And diggd out ribs of gold. Lot none admire That riches grow in hell; that soil may best Deserve the precious bane.” “ That’s like it,” said Bill. “ But old Milton didn’t know much more about mining than Moses did about making time across deserts. Gold may come out in ribs in hell—l don’t know'; I never mined in them diggin’s—but it comes in lumps and dust on this coast. That’s how the fact is; but the poetry is—well, curse the poetry! I’m a-goin to sleep!” He turned over on his side, drew the end of a blanket over his head, and said no more. I had left one of the older settled mining towns to inspect a ledge belonging to my present companion and company, and also to find whatever other prospects there might be open to location and possession. This statement will account for my present journey. Wilson & Co. were to put their mines into my hands, to be sold by me to other and wealthierparties, if I liked yie property. On the morrow' there was before me part of a day’s ride, previous to reaching ilson A Co.’s camp; and,after arriving at that point there was the climbing, on foot, of mountains "of rock, naked to the hot noonday sun, except in those favored spots where struggling* straggling trees sucked a scanty and scrubby life through their bruised roots* ”in the stony soil. I tried to forecast the future, even, for a day-; but gave it up, and passed into sleep with as full a confidence in the unknown as I could have felt in the positively ascertained. Do we not, no matter what may be the tone of our faith, rely more implicitly upon the wide unknown than upon the known or knowable ? i need not trouble the reader with the result of my speculations and climbings with Bill Wilson. We did hot fihd tint “ staving mine;” but we got through our business and returned to town, stopping, however, on the way back to visit what Bill called the “craziest camp in Nevada.” After going through a narrow, steep canon, w T e climbed a crooked, rocky trail, and stood upon the dump, near which the club-footed mule limping arouqd the shallow* circular pit of an arastrtt, dragging after him a short beam, fastened at the farther end to a revolving center-post in the middle of the pit; and this beam, in turn, dragged a heavy stone round and round, ttirougTT a mass of rock mush. 1 need not say that tliis “ mush” was well-pulverized ore, mingledwith a portion of . quicksilver; the mercury gathering into itself the silver, as the dragging rock freed it from the stony portion of the ore. “ How do you do?” I said to the man on the dump, as he landed a bucket of ore from the windjjass. “ So-so,” said he, smiling and twinkling at me, as he stood erect, with the crank of the windlass in his hand. v* “Not far from heaven, up here!” , This remark seemed to strike him as such a particularly good jotfe that.he laughed all over, and shied a piece of rock out of the bucket at the pigeon-toed mule; then he looked at Bill, which made Bill laugh, and tjien we all laughed—at nothing.' • “Is your brother dpwn below?” said Bill. , “Yes."

“ This gem leman wants to see him.” “All right,'” said the younger Rocksaw; and disapp eared down the shaft by way of a ladder p ailed against the timbering, reaving his laughing face the last part of him visible. “Didn’t 1 till yoil f ” said Bill, “he would laugh more’n any two*.men? But t’other chap won’t laugh. The Rocksaw family ain’t laid out in fair shares—one’s got all the laugh, and t’other -all the solemn.” * Presently there came slowly up the ladder a bared head of light-brown hair, sprinkled with gray and dusted with minute rock; and soon there stood before us a middle-statured, stout man, clad in garments of a hundred pieces, carefully and coarsely sewed together. “How are you, gentlemen?" he said, as he straightened up from the mouth of the shaft, in a voice at once deep, musical and doubting. _ “ Well, thank you. How are you, sir?—Mr. Rocksaty, I believe,” I said, extending my hand. - “Yes, sir—George Rocksaw,” said he, taking my hand in a manner both shy and hesitating. “Mr. Rocksaw,” I said, “I have heard that yourself and one other man—your brother, I presume ” “ Yes, sir—Andrew.”

“ have worked a mine for years all alone. I should like very much, if I may be permitted to ask it, to see what work two men can doTnThis hard mountain.” He looked at me, with one hand on his hip, and the other stroking his long sandy whiskers, and answered: ‘“No, sir. Against our ruler There Is nothing to see.” , “Imerely wished to see your work—the amount of labor ” “ Sorry to say ‘ No,’ but that’s the rule. Never depart from it.” All his talk was in the same even key; neither assertive nor commanding, but shyly, rather than modestly, positive. Andrew came up the ladder with a face still on the verge of breaking over into a laugh; but gave his entire attention to the circularly-moving mule, who seemed inclined to stop and take an interest in the conversation. George Rocksaw ventured no further remark, but'he stood as before, stroking his whiskers with his hard hand.

“ Well, good-by, Mr. Rocksaw,” I said, proffering once more my hand. “Good-by, sir,” said he, taking his baud off lire - hip to put—ft —in —rrrtnej-attd- - was gone down the ladder in an instant thereafter. By this time Bill was in the saddle in no very good humor; and as I went down the side of the dump I said: “Good-by, Andrew. If you come to our place, bring your knitting and sit awhile.” “ 1 will,” said he, through his torrent of cachinnations. “By gol, I will, and a hank o’yarn! Good-by!” “There!” said Bill, as we rode dow*n the trail, “lie’s got enough to keep him laughin’ a w*eek. But that George!—l don’t go much pn him. He looks like a cracked preacher—one of them kind what thinks as God Almighty made the world for saints, and he’s one of ’em, and mad because he can’t get more’n his share. That’s the way I’d put him up-; provided he’s not got regular crazy. Go on, Sauch! Git!” “Bill; my boy, did it ever occur to you that it is a terrible charge on a sensitive person to cry out ‘ eraz fV after him, as he passes through life? Call him a rogue, a thief, a swindler, a villain, or a fool if you must; for these charges he can settle in his own way when he hears them; but this charge that one’s mind is affected is something which rests in the estimation of the public, and is practically true or not true, as the public sees fit to receive it. The soundness of one’s mind is like the price of greenbacks—a matter of opinion; no odds how well secured, that rises or falls with the public pulse. There is no surveyed boundary between sanity and insanity, How do you know that, you are of sound mind?” “ How do I know?” “Yes.” “ Well, I know —because I’ve got good horse-sense, anyway. I eat when I’m hungry, drink when I’m dry, rest when tired, work hard when I can’t do any better, sleep when I’m sleepy, and take myself in out of the wet—that’s what I call sound-minded.” “ Yes, so far as it goes. But how* about your ambition, wherein you imagine yourself wealthy from finding a great mine;. rolling in your carriage; enjoying tire fine things of life, and the flatteries of the fair, the foolish and the false? Do you never dream with your eyes wide open of being a great fellow—a ‘ big-up ca-piUu-al-ist,’ as you call it?” “ Certainly. I believe every man is to have his streaks of luck.” “ Then, William, you are a dreamer — we are all dreamers; and dreams are made of ‘perilous stuff’ When a man dreams in a full wakingstate his ‘horsesense’ slips away from him into a cloud, and beds partly out of his mind. .He may, from this state, go all the way out, or he may return to his ‘horse-sense.’ The floating cloud-land between sanity and insanity admits of no permanent boundary.” “Then how’s a fellow to know he’s got sound sense?” asked Bill, withatired-of-tlie-discussion expression, as we rode across the gray valley. “He can’t know. It is the public—the vote populi —which puts the value on the soundness of sense. That is why all new doctrines are first-resisted, then ridiculed, then examined, then stolen. The public itself is not often sure of its Own wits. In Utah it is sensible to see angels and hear voices* froth heaven. In Boston, Mass., it is sensible to worship your own intellect. In Nevada and in California it is the height of good sense to worship the power of money. It is wisdom in China to bow before one’s father’s ghost; in Japan, before Buddha: in India, before Brahma: in Rome, before the' Pope; in Mecca, before a black stone. —So you see that any sense above ‘ horse-sense’ is a risky and uncertain property in the world’s market. Like a ball of quicksilver, it has weight, color, power and grfat brilliancy; but it is liable to roll away from you, at any moment, in a thousand glittering pieces.” Bill made no answer in the pause I left open for him, so I added* “ That man, back yonder at the mine, is a dreamer, Bill; and whatever his dream, sad or happy, it weighs upon him, and makes him a stranger in all the real world —in (he ‘ horse-sense’ congregation, I mean.” “Well,” said Bill, throwing away his studying-cap, “curse him! let him dream it out. I’ll not trouble him again soon.” The conversations between William Wilson and myself, as we rode, day after day, across broken mountains and gray, sfreamless valleys, were to us twain im teresting enough, but need not, therefore, be of interest to other people. And yet, thoqgh I do say it myself, we made

some pretty sharp remarks on a great variety of subject*; into which William at times threw his unbookish mind with startling effect. Upon one occasion he “ got off ” as he called it, his opinion of “talk.” - Some fellows,” he said, “ are always putting up that ‘talk is cheap;’ but I say talk is precious at twenty to the pan. Blab is cheap; but the first thing in nay mother’s old Bible is talk: ‘God mid let there be;’ and them weeds started off into the darkness and slumgullion of nowhere, putting up stuff for heavy crops, and leaves, and flowers, and business generally.” • “ Why, William, you’re a poet!” “Not much! I despise poetry. But good sound talk set the world a going, and keeps her a humming on the pin. I’d like to know what would be the use if people couldn’t talk—or didn’t talk! I’d as soon be a bump on a log as not to be able to talk. When a fellow says to me: ‘Oh, it’s all talk!’ I say: ‘ You bet your life it is!’ Newspapers and books is talk. Law and gospel is talk. Money is talk, done up in * tens’ and ‘twenties;’ take the talk out of it, and it’s nothing.”

Thus, one way or another, we whiled away the journey back to town; where I left William, and proceeded about my business, far away from tire high, altitudes and dry valleys of Nevada. Some months later I returned to> find tile town in one of those mining fevers which invariably follow the discovery of rich silver ores. Picking up the lively little daily newspaper from the clerk’s counter at the hotel where I stopped, and glancing over it, my eyes fell upon the following: Rich Strike ix the Silver Chamber! — Wires, ropes, spangles,, flecks, and cakes of silver! Chloride ores, by tons and tons, all through the mine, with rich sulphurets at the water-level. Nothing, except an ownership in the property, could give us more satisfaction than we now enjoy in chronicling the grand success which has crowned with a gorgeous silver crown the Ion" and tedious labors of the genial Brothers Rocksaw. By invitation of Mr. George Rocksaw we stepped into his buggy on Saturday last., and after a pleasant drive of two days, and a stiff climb up the side of Pranghorn Mountain, we w r ere permitted to descend into the mine. In the descent of the main shaft, and for a hundred feet long the main drift, there is nothing wortli mentioning; but at the end of this hundred feet there opens -a scene more, gorgeous than the dream of the Count de Monte Christo. All along the drift, overhead, under foot and upon the hanging wall for a distance of 400 feet, the precious wealth of nature glitters in the “ lamp-light gloating o’er.” Below this drift on the lower level, a distance in perpendicular deptli of fifty feet and in the mountain over 100 feet, there is even a richer picture. The mine is not describable except by exclamations. It is magnificent! The mine is patented under the broad seal of Uncle Sam to George Rocksaw and Andrew Rocksaw, their heirs and assigns, to have and hold forever. So Bill was mistaken after all about that mine and the. Rocksaws.— ■Overland Monthly.

HAPS AND MISHAPS.

—Mrs. Mary Harrihell, an old woman living near Bloomington, 111., was recently gored to death by a cow. The old lady went to the cow-slied to care for the animal, when she was caught under the lower jaw and thrown against the roof of the shed, and died in a few minutes. —A little daughter of Job Walter, of Lucerne, Pa., was left alone the. other day while her mother attended some outdoor duty, and, to help pass away the time pleasantly and profitably, pulled down the match-box. Her clothing caught fire, and the little creature was burned to death. —While Henry Zerne was walking about Gregg’s planing mill at Mendota, 111., the other day, he missed his footing and fell into a caldron of boiling water. His body from the waist to his feet was badly scalded, the flesh dropping off from the bones in several places. He lived but a short time after the accident. —On a recent morning the boilers in the pork-house of Mitchell & Go., New Albany, Ind., exploded with terrific force, tearing the' boiler shed to atoms, and severely scalding four persons, one of whom lias since died. The boilers wrere blown into the air to the height of fifty feet, and carried 200 feet from their original position. —Dr. Henry Lieb, station agent at Neeleyville, 111., on the Toledo, Wabash A Western Railroad, met with a horrible death the other evening by being run over by a locomotive. At the time of the accident Lieb was standing on a sidetrack conversing with a brakeman, when an engine which was switching came down the track unnoticed by these men, knocking the former down, crushing both legs u»der the wheels and causing death in one liour. Deceased was thirty years of age’ and left a wife and one child. The last words of the dying man *were, “ I die happy. Kate, take good care of our darling baby.” —Recently a gentleman named King, moving with his faqiily from near Plato, Mo., to Maries County, encamped for the night on the island near Waynesville. After unhitching his team, etc., he went to the timber to procure some wood fora fire, two or three of his little children following, among them a little girl only two or three years of age. The little girl it |eems lost sight of her parent and 1 becanie separated from the rest of the children. She was soon missed by the f amily and search was mstifufed at once: The alarm was given and the citizens of Waynesville and vicinity immediately joined in the search. All night long the search was kept up but without avail At about ten o’clock the next moring the little girl was found in the cold waters of the Roubideaux, still in deaths She had, apparently, crossed over the creek and wandered up the bottom till near the Big Spring, when she attempted to recross and was drowned.

—A Highlander who sold brooms went into a barber’s shop in Glasgow to get shaved. The barber bought one of his brooms, and, after having shaved him, asked the price Of it. “Tippence,” said the Highlander. “No, no,” says the shaver, “Til give you a penny, and if that does not satisfy you, take your broom again.” The Highlander took it, and asked what he had to pay. “ A pepny,” says Strap. “ I’ll gie ye a baubee,” says Duncan, “ and if that dinha satisfy yt\ pit pn my beard aghin.” —There was a total of eighty-nine railroad accidents in September, by which twenty-sjeven persons were killed and 105 injured.- Eighteen accidents caused the death of one or more persons, seventeen others injury but not death, and the remaining 'fifty-four, or 61 per cent, of the whole, caused no serious injury to any ever, are several unusually fatal casualties. —„ ’ - *' . ■

Only a Granger.

Since out Grange was established, Mr. Ring" we * ’ iave opened our eyes. All of us are trying ' co-operation. We work just as hard U 1 keep back the angry words, to be ajwa. careful, considerate and polite, to ki ‘ e P out from our home all the annoyances of life, as we would to keep pigs oat 0 * the parlor and kitchen. We hav, e lectures in the Grange Lodge room, a nd are coming to have quite a liking *» i ear of something besides the rattle of dia h-kettles, scraping the bottom of the meal-bucket or flour-barrel; the creaking of old chairs and everlasting growl, gru nt and grumble to be heard in families where it is nothing but drudge, stint, labor and starve from birth till death, w itli never a full stomach except when visit We are learning to live. Tha. * is what all of us Grangers are doing. W* ' believe in sewing machines, churning nn '-chines, patent flat-irons, musical instnunents, carpets, hooks, papers, pictures, good clothes, reasonable ornamental w ork, nice carriages, good beds, well-ventilated rooms, easy chairs, hours for rest, flowers, pretty chair-covers, napkins, eatin g with a fork, good food, delicacies and the best we can get, the better to enjoy life, be satisfied with our position and give strength to the intellect.

We are learning to think. We are Grangers—only Grangers—but, Mr. Ring, this is beginning to mean business. We have children to educate. Now there is my boy John. When he went in the Grange he was so bashful he hardly dare whisper the Lord’s Prayer, for fear God would hear him. He had a good head and a fine memory. In our debating society he has grown out of his bashfulness and into a manhood that is not nervous or impudent. He is a good reasoner, and at odd times is studying law. That is, the principle of law. In ten years he will be fit to hold any honorable position within his circle of attainments, and will be fit to live and assert his manhood to some purpose—some satisfaction to himself. Look at this farm. It is worth 50 per cent, more than it was before our Grange was started. You can’t sell it for taxes now—my neighbors won’t let you! I won’t let you sell theirs. We will keep the taxes down. We will keep all such men as you—all thieves, defaulters, bounty-brokers, note-shavers, land-steal-ary-grabbers, place-hunters and sly sneaks—no matter what their politics—out of office. We are bound to put a stop to your living in idleness at onr expense ; to have honest men in office and to shorten the list of offices. There is no reason under God’s heaven why a man should work,hard all his life, live poor, wear rags, raise a family of paupers, then die, be laid out under a patched sheet on a narrow hoard, put in a pine coffin and dumped into a hole in the ground, just as you ride by with your mistress, rejoicing in having a mortgage on all he has been an entire lifetime accumulating. It is not simply to .make a candle go further or to buy a pound of soap cheaper that we are Grangers. We wish to make farming respectable; to build ourselves up into a higher manhood, to know that we have* some little interest in the goodness of God; to make our homes beautiful, and to know an muchof men, minds, maxims, laws, principles, life and things in general as you know’! You call us mudsills, swine-feed-ers, plowholders, country jakes and wearers of old clothes. You say we are not well posted. Now, Mr. Ring, there is some truth in what you say. The fault and the remedy are with us. We intend to know more, to dress better, to have better homes to give our children better education to fit them for life. To think more of our babies than of our pigs and horses; to improve our standing as human beings ; to give our wives and children a chance to see the country. You own cars and we intend to ride in them, to pay for the privilege. We wish to go to St. Paul, Boston, Mobile, New Orleans, Texas, San Francisco, New York, all over God’s country. We wish to sail in the ships to Europe and around the world. We intend to see what there is to be seen—to have some of the good things ourselves—to earn money, and save every dollar we can from the collector, that we may buy more watches, books, papers, pianos, carriages, carpets, mirrors, sofas, easy-chairs, and have them in our houses as in yours. Now that your houses are full of nice things, why not give us a chance? Help make life an object and we will help you to live. The more money you make the more you hoard—the more interest you make us pay, the more you rob us. The more we keep still the more you steal, and now, Mr. Ring, by the Eternal, we intend to take care of ourselves; to pay out our own money and to know where it goes to; to give employment to all the artisans and mechanics you* throw out of employment—to save several millions of dollars each year from your bondholders, land-sharks and official pirates, so we can buy fine things for our homes, and have baked potatoes, brook trout for supper, and happy hearts in every day we live. According to a correspondent of the Marietta (Ohio) Register, the body of an infant dying suddenly in that vicipity was followed to the grave by a Maltese cat that had been the child’s pet in life. The animal persisted in remaining beside the burial-place until the last sod was replaced, and then followed the bereaved family back to the house. At night she returned to the burying-ground, and, being followed and watched, was seen to work frantically with all four feet until she had completely leveled the little mound over the grave. Then she went home again; but on the following morning was seized with a fit exactly at the hour of the child’s sudden sickness, and died at the moment corresponding with the instant of the child’s d£ath. A lady who was urging some friends to dinner felt disgusted when her eight-year-old son came in and said: “Mrs. Jones says she can't spare no bread, and Mrs. Fox ain’t to home, so I didn’t get any butter." The friends thought they had better dine elsewhere, and the lady thought so too, but she taught that boy that the way of the transgressor wa3 hard. —Ophelia Rogers, of Montieth, Mich., was killed a few daysago under the following circumstances: While riding in a buggy with her brother, holding a package of powder, he lighted his cigar, and a spark fell on the powder, which exploded, burning her so badly that she died almost immediately. - —*—- To cuke dull times—Apply an advertisement to the afflicted part.