Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 July 1875 — Page 3

RENSSELAER UNION. JAMES A HEALEY, Proprietors. • RENSSELAER, - INDIANA.

THE SCHOLAR AND THE WORLD. In mediaeval Rome, I know not where, There stood an image with its arm in air, And on its lifted finger, shining clear, A golden ring with the device, “Strike here!” Greatly the people wondered, though none guessed The meahing that these words but half expressed," " Until a learned clerk, who at noonday With downcast eyes was passing on his way, Paused, and observed the spot, and marked it well, Whereon the shadow of the finger fell; And, coming back at midnight, delved, and found A secret stairway leading under ground. Down this he passed into a spacious hall, Lit by a flaming jewel on the wall; And opposite a brazen statue stood With bow and shaft in threatening attitude. Upon its forehead, like a coronet, Were these mysterious words of menace set: “ That which I am, I am; my fatal aim None can escape, not even yon luminous flame!” Midway the hall was a fair table placed, With cloth of gold, and golden cups enchased ■ W th rubies, and the plates and knives were gold, t t dgold the bread and viands manifold. ’ Around it, silent, motionless and sad Were seated gallant knights in armor clad, And ladies beautiful with plume and zone, But they were stone, their hearts within were stone; And the vast hall was filled in every part With silent crowds, stony in face and heart. Long at the scene, bewildered and amazed, The trembling clerk in speechless wonder gazed; Then from the table, by his greed made bold, He seized a goblet and a knife of gold, And suddenly from their seats the guests upsprang, The vaulted ceiling with loud clamors rang, The archer sped his arrow, at their call, Shattering the lambent jewel on the wall, And all was dark around and overhead; Stark on the floor the luckless clerk lay dead! The writer of this legend then records Its ghostly application in these words: The image is the Adversary old, Whose beckoning finger points to realms of gold; Our lusts and passions are the downward stair That leads the soul from a diviner air ; The archer, Death; the flaming jewel, Life; Terrestrial goods, the goblet and the knife; The knights and ladies, all whose flesh and bone By avarice have been hardened into stone; The clerk, the scholar whom the love of pelf Tempts from his books and from his nobler self. The scholar and the world! The endless —strife, The discord in the harmonies of life! The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, And all the sweet serenity of books; The market-place, the eager love of gain, Whose aim is vanity, and whose end is pain! —Extract from “ Morituri Salutamus,” by Henry W. Longfellow, in Harper's Magazine for August.

A WELSH MINING FEUD.

BY JAMES WIGHT.

Dr. Peter Williams, the recently-de-ceased Coroner of Flintshire, Wales, was, at the time of his death, the oldest Coroner in Great Britain. He was verv deaf, very old and brimful of “yarns” connected with his official experience. What he termed the “Buckley Mountain Feud” was one of the most interesting and sanguinary of the many cases in which his professional services had been called in requisition. What is called Buckley Mountain is an elevated table-land about three miles east of the market-town of Mold. Its inhabitants were formerly a savage, quarrelsome race, divided like the Scottish Highlanders into “clans.” There were the Willjfeimses, the Joneses, the Hugheses, the Griffiths, the Morgans and the Shepherds, and bitter family feuds often raged between them. Coal-mining and coarsestone pottery manufacture employed most of the adult males; and it was no infre3 uent occurrence . to see the military orered from Chester to suppress their internecine conflicts. The soil is mostly freehold, and the coal-mines are worked on the principle of shares —each mine being divided into thirty-two shares, and each share being designated “ a half an ounce.” At one time eight relatives of the name of Hughes were associated with an equal number of the name of Griffiths in working what was termed the Great Ash Mine, so named from the fact that the shaft had been put dow n close to an immense ashtree. The coal lay deeper here than in most other sections of the mountain, but

it was a thicker seam, and of superior quality, and the Hugheses and the Griffiths were hence esteemed particularly fortunate all over the mountain. There were a good deal of rivalry and frequent quarrels among them; but it W’as mostly goodnatured rivalry carried on by boasting, feats of strength, and physical prowess. But when it became widely known that Evan Hughes, a handsome, stalwart young man of twenty, and Samuel Griffiths, an equally lithe and promising young Hercules, were bitter rivals for the heart of Miss Anne Shepherd, everybody in Buckley knew there w’as strife ingAnne was the daughter of a stone-pot-tery manufacturer, who, without education, had risen from the ranks, and accumulated a handsome fortune. Wealth did not make him arrogant. He was still “hail fellow, well met!” with every hardtoiling miner on the mountain; and he did not hesitate to state, when in his cups in the Red Lion parlor of a night, that Sam Griffiths and Evan Hughes were the two brightestyoung men on the mountain, and that he would be satisfied with either of them for a son-in-law’. A >,

Sam and Evan had wrestled, and run, and jumped, and pitched the stone, with Varying success, and with eager animosi ty. Nothing but Anne’s threat that she would discard the first one who made a blackguard of himself kept them from open and deadly hostilities. Both knew she was a girl of pluck, and would keep her word, and hence their fierce spirits were kept in the outward bond of peace. Meantime the Great Ash colliery was turning out well; the seam was promising and the “dip” was very gradual and uniform. It was, therefore, resolved to sink another shaft directly north of, and about 2,000 feet from, the Great Ash shaft; and it was estimated that, by the time this new shaft was put down, the workings would be driven from the Great Ash to meet it, and thus perfect ventilation by means of an “upcast” and a “downcast” shaft. Evan Hughes and Sam Griffiths were employed to sink the new shaft, which was christened the Great Oak. They took alternate shifts of four hours, - one “ boring” while the other, assisted

by an old bank's-man named Bill Conway, drew up the clay and stone with a rope and windlass. *.When they descended to the limestone each man drilled his blast-hole with a hand-hammer, like that used by stone-dressers, drilling it alxrnt twelve inches deep, "and then charge, it ..with coarse blasting-powder. No fuse was used for igniting the charging; but a copper-pointed “ needle" was placed on the powder and allowed to stand until the ►hole was tightly stemmed with clay-slate. Then the needle was carefully withdrawn and the hole filled with a finer grain of powder. The “ shot” being thus far prepared the man below sung out for the cord, when one end of a tightly-twisted line was let down the shaft and then securely stemmed into the top of the shot-hole. The bottom end of the line being now' secured and surrounded by fine powder, and the other end in the hands of the bank’s-man, the man below gave the usual signal and was forthwith drawm to bank. A red-hot ring, three or four inches in diameter, was then taken from the “ hut” fire; the end of the cord was quickly passed through it; the ring shot down the Shaft and the blast was fired. One fine spring day Sam and old Bill Conway w'ere at bank, and Evan below' had just prepared his blast in the manner described and had given the signal to be hauled to bank. It was nearly noon and a "half-witted son of the old bank’s man w’as walking quietly along behind an adjoining hedge with’ his father’s dinner. He heard the “ shot” fired and hurried to the pit-heap. There he saw Sam Griffiths jumping and sw’earing around; he saw the smoke pouring up the shaft; he saw' his father’s little dog; but he saw’ neither his father nor Evan Hughes. • “Where’s fayther and Yeaven?” asked the poor, half-witted lad. Sam’s blood w r as up, and he struck poor Dick on the cheek and blacked his eye. The lad ran home, and Sam went halfway to the Great Oak shaft, howling wildly for assistance. The fearfully-muti-lated bodies of young Hughes and the old man Conway were brought to bank, and a few hours after Coroner Peter Williams held an inquest. Sam Griffiths was the only important witness. He testified that Bill Conw’ay, being old and stupid, had, at Evan Hughes’ signal to “ wind up,” gone for the red-hot ring by mistake. That, seeing the old man’s terrible blunder, he (Sam) had rushed from behind the “hut,” where he had been asleep, to prevent the mischief, but that he had only arrived in time to see the glowing ring shoot down the shaft. Almost instantly the old man had discovered his fearful error, and, stricken with horror and remorse, he had plunged head-first down the shaft just as the smoke and debris from the blast were rising. “It was all the work of half a minute,” he said to the Coroner and jury; “ and it was all over before I could reach the spot. As for ‘ shouting,’ I w’as struck speechless with fear.” The jury accepted the explanation—there was none other to offer—and, though the silly lad Conway, by his curious antics and expressive pantomime, seemed to have something on his mind, he did not understand the nature of an oath and w r as consequently not sworn. There were imposing funeral services in Buckley on the following Sunday. The village maidens, with white handkerchiefs on their heads, and sprigs of rosemary, rue and balm in their hands, w'alked before Evan Hughes’ coffin, singing pathetic dirges, until the graveyard w’as reached; but Anne Shepherd had been- seized with a fit when she heard the fatal tidings, and was unable to attend the young man’s funeral. Time passed. The Hughes family began to repine less for the untimely end of the pride of their family. The Great Ash and the Great Oak Shafts were now each in operation, and the workings underground had been materially extended. Another cousin filled Evan Hughes’ place, and there was still a sharp rivalry between the eight Griffiths and the eight Hugheses. In order to make plain what is to follow, a short explanation of the mine is necessary. The two shafts, then, occupied each an end of the long side of a parallelogram —the Great Ash, or “ downcast shaft,” at the south, and the Great Oak, or “ upcast shaft,” at the north. From each shaft a drift 200 feet long ran due east, and the parallelogram was completed by running another drift north and south, joining the ends of these two easterly drifts. They had thus cut clear round a rectangular mass of coal, 2,000 feet long by 200 feet broad, which they would work aw ay by sections and pillars until it was exhausted. The air that descended the Great Ash shaft, had it been permitted, would have rushed along the straight gallery and right up the Great Oak shaft, without ventilating the three other sides of the parallelogram where the men were working; but there were massive doors placed close to the foot of each shaft in the straight gallery between them, to divert the air through the workings. There was a large escape of gas from the coal-face, and the pure air that descended the Great Ash shaft consequently ascended the Great Oak very much charged with carbureted hydrogen. The mine was worked on two shifts. On alternate weeks the Hughes party went down the Great Oak shaft at four a. m., and worked till twelve m., while the Griffiths party descended the Great Ash at four p. m. and worked till midnight. Each party had their own door-keeper, whose sole duty it was to see that the door was kept shut at all times, or closed instantly after any person connected with the mine had passed through it. Although there was a considerable escape of gas, the air-current was so direct and strong that the men worked with open oil-lamps; and, albeit there had been pretty severe “ blowers,” as sudden spurts of local gas are termed, no danger was apprehended by either of the gangs who owned and worked the mine. It was now three years since Evan Hughes met his sad fate, and on a fine May morning there were great rejoicings in the village. Bunting waved from every available flag-staff and the gutters in front of the four ale-houses literally ran beer. The Griffiths were in high feather, for Sam and Anne .Shepherd had been married in the morning. Long before noon the bride’s proud sire was purple in the face with pledging the young couple and with urging others to do likewise. Gaylydressed groups of youths and maidens danced round the Maypole on the village green, and everybody was in a supreme state of enjoyment—all except Mrs. Hughes, poor Evan’s mother, and Hannah, his twin sister. The merry-making palled on their hearts. It recalled the lost one—the flower of the flock, who had so miserably perished, and who to-day might have been Anne Shepherd’s husband. Therefore they retired early in the evening and, by closing doors and windows, tried to exclude the sounds of merriment. While the day’s festivities werd’being prolonged far into the night, the mother and daughter retired to rest. Sleep fell upon their sad eyes and each woman dreamed a dream—a dream so marvelously uniform in detail that it was as if the two had sat and watched the same tableau.

They saw the three men sinking the Great Oak shaft ; they saw Evan charge and prime his shot, and then attach the end of the “ firing-cordthey • heard him give the signal to be-hauled to bank; they saw old Bill Conway begin to turn the windlass; they saw Sam Griffiths steal out of the “ hut” with the red-hot ring and slip it down the rope; they saw the old man quit hold of the windlass in horror; and they saw the powerful young murderer dash the old man down the shaft in the face of the shower of stones thrown up by the explosion. Mother and daughter awoke in the solemn midnight and discussed their dream with trembling and with awe. And they clung to each other, and comforted each other, and tried not to believe it. Just then John Hughes, the husband and, father of the two women, entered; and after some banter—he was in liquor—the women again slept. “It was a most extraordinary circumstance,” Coroner Williams used to say, “• but both these women dreamed the selfsame dream over again.” In the morning Mrs. Hughes met Dick Conway, the idiot lad, took him aside, and questioned him about what he saw that day when he lost his father. He indicated by dumb show how some one was thrown down the shaft, and how some one else was struck on the face, meaning himself. Mrs. Hughes shortly after died. The doctors who attended her were not agreed respecting her malady; but Dr. Jones, of Mold, was certain that her mind was gone, and that she was the victim of hallucinations. Hannah, the twin daughter, now devoted herself exclusively to her father. She would frequently descend the Great Oak shaft while he was at work, and carry ale, hot coflee, tea, etc., to him; and consequently she achieved a kind_of envied notoriety on the mountain for her bravery in descending the coal-mine. She had several admirers ; but her kind w'ords and light looks seemed reserved for her father. On his part he repaid her with an affectionate admiration that approached idolatry; and it was his boast that when his head w’as laid low Hannah would be a lady.

On a dark December midnight, a few months after her mother’s death, Hannah Hughes and the idiot lad Conway stole quietly away from Buckley village and proceeded toward the Great | Oak shaft. Her father and his companions would have stopped work at twelve o’clock, and the two nocturnal pedestrians avoided the road by which the miners would return to their homes. When Hannah and Dick reached the nit-heap all was still as the grave. The horse had been loosed from the “ gin” windlass, and lay sleeping in the straw, and not a star cheered the gloomy vault of heaven. Hannah soon obtained a light; the stable door was opened; the gin-horse was harnessed and hitched into the, accustomed shafts for raising the coal; the young woman took her seat on the “ corve, ,T or basket, and told Dick to “ loweraway.” Into the black, yawning pit she descended without fear or trepidation, and when the bottom was reached she stepped briskly out of the “ corve,” proceeded to the airdoor near the bottom of the shaft and securely propped it open. Then she walked along the 2,000 feet that separated her from the Great Ash shaft, and, reaching the air-door there, securely propped it open. The air-current now shot direct along the shortest route between the two shafts and, by its violence, extinguished her light; but she returned, undismayed by the darkness or the inequalities of the rugged tramway, until she reached the shaft whm-e she had descended. Then she shouted ro Dick, who started the horse |nd she was wound up until she reached the bank in safety. The horse was now unhitched and returned to the stable, and the girl and the crazy lad made quick progress homeward. Before daybreak every man and woman on Buckley Mountain was plunged into a paroxysm of grief and wailing. The Great Oak and Ash Colliery had exploded, and, with the exception of the doorkeeper, every man of the Griffiths gang, who had gone to ivork at four a. m., was torn and scorched into shreds and patches and scoria of humanity. As far as the Coroner could gather from the doorman’s ante-mortem statement he had gone down the pit as usual, but had almost immediately been horror-struck to discover that the door was open and that the air was blowing straight along the Great Asli gallery, instead of coming along the eastern workings. Thereupon he had slammed the door and had run as fast as he was able to shut the door at the other end of the gallery. The miners, meantime, had returned into their workings and were shouting and swearing about the air. When both doors were closed the air returned into its proper course, carrying with it all the gas that had accumulated during these four hours. Of course it ignited like a spark of gunpowder, and with irresistible force swept through the mine and burst up the two shafts with a gigantic tongue of flame and a report like Titanic artillery. The id At boy had remained out of bed in expectation of some catastrophe, and when he saw the two vivid flashes and heard the heavy reports he danced around the village street, crying: “Hoorah! hoorah! for Hannah Griffiths and me! Who’s got a black eye now? Hoorah!” By this demonstration of crazy Dick Hannah was suspected, and she, made an open confession of the terrible’.crime to Coroner Peter Williams, stating, at the same time, that she had been incited to the deed by the double dream and the certainty that Samuel Griffiths had murdered her twin brother. She was lodged in Flint Castle to await her trial, but evaded her probable fate by suicide. — Appletons' Journal.

There is a curious anecdote of Henry VII. The King had been out hunting in the neighborhood of Windsor. His eagerness in“ the pursuit of the chase had carried nim out of sight and hearing of his retinue. Night was falling; return to the castle that day was close at hand lay the Abbey of Reading. Thither accordingly the King turned his steps. His habit was simple, and the good monks took him for one of the royal foresters, while Henry, for reasons of his own, did not care to undeceive them. He was hospitably entertained, and the lord abbot looked on with an appropriate smile at the hearty performance of his guest. At last, he said: “ Truly, I would give His Grace your master the half of my revenuesrfor so good an appetite.” Three days passed; the abbot was, suddenly arrested in x the King’s name, and hurried to the Tower, where a diet of bread and water was assigned him. The end of the story maybe imagined. Before a month was over the abbot had recovered an excellent appetite for beer. —Some one has discovered that the po-tato-bugs steal rides frdm the West in ’•freight cars. They should be made literal dead-heads as soon as they alight.

Our Young Folks.

WILD ROSE OF CAPE COD.

BY SARAH J. PRICHARD.

Nearly all the roses in Massachusetts are born in June, but Wild, the little daughter of Capt. John Rose, was born in December, and on Cajie Cod, too. Ah, what a struggle it is to live at all on Cape Cod in December. You have only a narrow strip of sand to cling to, and the Atlantic Ocean (even when it is not in a great rage) clutches away wjth one single wave of its watery hand an acre or two of sand, while the cold waters of Cape Cod Bay sweep right in on the other side, within sight, too, the arm of sand is so thin and worn and wasted away. Look on your map at the State of Massachusetts and see if I am not right about it. Well, on Cape Cod, as I sajd, Wild Rose was born; but that was twelve years ago, and so this last December was celebrated her twelfth birthday. It wasn’t much o a celebration, to be sure, for there weren’t many persons to celebrate it—only Mrs. Rose and Johnny and Wild herself, for Capt. Rose was gone on a fishing trip. At tea that night there was upon the table a big loaf of ginger-cake—“frosted,” too—and around about it—not on „it, mind you—twelve small tallow candles. “ Twelve dips,” Johnny said, “thatmade most as much light as the Highland itself.” And Johnny ought to know-, for the keeper of Cape Cod light is a great friend of Johnny’s and often in summer lets the lad go up with him to see him " light up.” This Highland Light stand® out on the bleak cape, and is oftentimes the first light that greets the sight of seamen when approaching the coast of New England from over the Atlantic Ocean. Even in summer the wind blows so hard at the Highland that it blows the wings of young turkeys over their heads, and in winter it blows nobody knows how hard. I’m quite certain that you have never seen a home like Wild Rose’s home. It is hidden away in the very bottom of a big hollow in the sand, and is protected on all sides by a high fence to keep the sand from covering it up. In the first place the house had been built upon piles driven into the sand, but the fence was afterward added, and outside of the fence was a barricade of seaweed. Over the stilts, fence, seaweed and all was the fisherman’s cabin, as snug and ivarm and comfortable as anything on Cape Cod could be. Not far away, on the Atlantic coast, w r as a Charity House, not a “ poorhouse,” where poor folks could go and live w hen they hadn’t anyw here else to live, but a rude room inclosed by a rude outside, into which a poor shipwrecked mariner might crawl and possibly save himself from freezing to death until help should arrive. Wood and matches and straw’ are supposed to be kept in every Charity House along the coast. Johnny Rose was two years younger than his only sister Wild, but a ten-year-old lad on Cape Cod knows more of the sea and ships and fishing than the wisest grown-up in the world who lives inland.

The Little Katie was Capt. Rose’s fishing schooner, and the Little Katie was frozen fast in the ice more than six weeks ago, right in sight from the land up the bank above the cabin. Tw’o weeks passed by and still the ice held the fishing-boats and would not let them go. Stout little steam-tugs went rasping away with firm bows and good intent at the ice day after day in order to break it up and tow the boats out of danger, but the cold came down stronger than ever and knit the icecakes firmer and firmer. Every day Johnny bundled up until he looked like I don’t know what, made the toilsome journey over to the Highland to look through the “ glass” at his father’s schooner, and every night for two weeks, with a face on fire from the friction of the w ind, he came back with the good news, “No signal up yet.” No signal up yet meant that there was still something left to eat and wood to burn on the Little Katie, and hope also of getting free from the ice without sinking. Now and then a neighbor came down into the hollow and walked right jn without knocking at the cabin door, to inquire how Mrs. Rose was getting on, and to say, yet again, “ Cape Cod has seen harder times than this, Mrs. Rose. Keep up a stout heart and we’ll have the fleet safe into Providence harbor before many days.” And then Mrs. Rose would put out a bright look and say, in a cheery voice, “ Oh, I hope so,” but in her heart she feared all things, for did she not know that every dwelling on Cape Cod had its widow, sooner or later ?

At last there came a clay when Mrs. Rose said that Wild might go to the light with Johnny to learn the news. The two children set oft - in high glee. The sky was clear, and the wind was blowing from the west. The Highland Lighthouse was not more than a mile away, and what cmdd happen to the children? Nevertheless, Mrs. Rose gave them many commands. They were to return as soon as they found out what news from the Little Katie, and if it should snow they were to go back or forward, whichever way should be the nearer, and if near the coast they were to go to the Charity House in the bank and wait there for rescue. The wind helped them on their way, and, to write the exact truth, blew so hard and so fast that it came very near blowing them past the light-house over the high bank into the ocean. “ It’s a tough day, a tough day, even for the Cape,” said the light-keeper when they reached the light-house, “ and the boats have drifted, johnny. For the life of me, I can’t make out the Little Katie but Johnny made het out without the slightest difficulty. Of course he did! Does not every Cape Cod boy know his father’s boat ? More than all, "there hung the signal of distress. The light-keeper saw it, and Wild looked at it, and Johnny looked again, and declared that, “ Come what would, he'd get out there and find out what the matter was.” Then the i* glass” was put away and they all went down, and the children, thoroughly warmed, started for home. A little cloud over Cape Cod Bay grew and came neare/luid spread out more and more, and. at last began to drop down white, like snow, on the “ Come! pitch into it as fast as you can while we can see,” said Johnny, seizing Wild's hand and bowing to the -wind. “ We’re three-quarters home, and we’ll make it in no time.” It was not dark and Johnny knew the sandmarks well. Here a bunch of pov-erty-grass and there a forlorn little clump of "bayberry, whose outlines he knew just as he knew the outlines of the boats and sails, served to guide him when the air was thick with snow. “ We’re lost!” said Wild, pulling back and trying to stop Johnny; the sturdy little fellow declared that they weren't lost at all; didn’t he know all about it? hadn’t he “ fogged” it many a time to the light 'andback? Why, there, right ahead, was

a pole that fa knew. Of course it was, right on top of home? and there was mother calling this minute, not fifty feet away. All of which statements w«e and in five fninutes they were safe in> the cabin and had told their news froiw the fice-boimd boats. “ Nothing to eat, maybe, and cold, perhaps. Not sick, I nope,” said Mrs. Wild; and then, in rather a dismal way, she set forth thq little table for their evening meal. , “ I should think you’d feel gladder about our getting home safe,mother,” said Wild; “ for just see how it snows.” “lam,” said Mrs. Wild; “but I w’as thinking about some way to help your father.” “ Do you think there is a way?” asked Wild. “ You know the boats can’t get there, and the ice isn’t safe.” “If I was God,” said Johnny, “I’d fetch a big wind along that ’nd cracker that ice up small as fish-scales in no time.” . « ".Yes, and sink every boat in no time!” suggested Wild, with scorn. “ Oh, dear!” said Johnny. “ I guess I was in too much of a burry; but something’s got to be done!” The wind had been blowing two hours after dark, and the snow and sand were whirling about in a • long, long round dance, after the fashion of Cape Cod sand and snow, when Wild called, out of the darkness to Johnny: “ Are you asleep ?” Johnny guessed he wasn’t asleep, although he had been fast asleep when Wild’s voice reached him, and wanted to know what was the matter. “ I’ve thought of a w r ay, I guess, we can reach, the Little Katie, Johnny.” “ How?” Johnny was up in the bed leaning on his hands, interested in a moment. " You know that big hank of net twine of father’s ?” “ What of it?”—with disappointment. “ Don’t you believe ’twould reach?” “Whose goin’ to reach it, I should like to know ?”

“ When the wind blows right ” .“ What then, Wild Rose? Are you talking in your sleep?” “ Send a kite over,” suggested Wild, not heeding the interruption. “Whew!” exclaimed Johnny, sinking down into his warm lied again. He didn’t speak, and poor Wild thought he held her scheme in extreme derision; nevertheless, Johnny was thinking about it, even after his sister was sleeping. The next day it snowed all day. There was no chance to hear one word from the fishing-fleet. Johnny declared that he must go to the nearest neighbor’s house. He knew the way well enough; but it was after nine of the clock before he set forth. Presently he returned with his friend, Peter Petit, and the two lads spent the morning with barred door in Capt. Rose’s nehroom. Wild peeped into the place when the boys w’ere out of it eating their dinner and beheld, to her amazement, the skeleton of a huge kite. . “ Oh, Johnny, are you going to try it?” she cried, running out to him. At first Johnny was vexed that she had found out, but in a minute or two he was all over the pet and was in high glee when Wild and her mother also joined in the work. An hour before the sun went down across the bay the kite was done and the snow ceased to fall. It was too late to go to the Highland Light to see the signal on the Little Katie; it was too late to do anything with the kite, even had the wind been right. The next morning the wind blew just right, and almost at break of. day the boys set forth, accomnanied by five or six men, for idlers are always to be found on Cape Cod in winter. The kite was made of good stout paper, and it w’as covered with messages to the captain of the Little Katie, or any other captain over whose boat it might chance to fall or get entangled. The wind was off shore, and away went the kite, the men paying out the seine twine, but, alas! the kite went high above the boatsand did not reach them. It was cold work flying kite on that awful, ice-bound shore, but the novelty of it brought a crowd of men to the spot. To their own surprise they entered into the work with spirit, but every attempt they made that morning failed. The kite fell short, or flew too high, or went off in the wrong direction. “ Run home, laddies, and get your dinner, and get warm clear through to your bones,” said one of the men to Johnny and Peter about eleven of the clock, “ and we’ll see what can be done with the kite this afternoon.”

When Johnny reached home he declared that he 'wasn’t cold the least mite, nor hungry an atom, but he sat in front of a blazing drift-wood fire and ate like a giant, and got up to go the coast again. Wild didn’t see why she couldn’t go too. It was her father just as much as Johnny’s, and she gueesed she cared as much about the Little Katie as any of them did. And so Wild, bundled up until all resemblance to a twelve-year-old girl was lost, set forth toiling through the snow and sand to the coast. At a short distance in the rear Mrs. Rose followed on. It seemed to her, as she drew near the shore, that half the inhabitants of the next village were gathered to see the flying of a kite. It was just ready to start on its over-ice journey when Wild came upon the scene. “ Don’t you see there won’t be anything to catch hold of?” she said to Johnny. “Catch hold of?” repeated Johnny, who felt that he could not, in justice, despise Wild’s suggestion# any more. “ I’ll show you,” she said, “if you’ll hold on a minute. Tie some long strings, now and then, near the kite, that will hang down.” The strings were tied on, half a dozen of them at intervals, and away went the kite with more “string to it” than any other kite, ever flew. “’Twon’t reach! It flies too high! No go! Let out! Give it string! Hurrah!” as the kite seeming to meet wind in another current, began to flutter, turn and actually did fall on the ice within reaching distance of the Little Katie’s crew. Then such a shout as went up from Cape Cod shore, for .was there not a line fast from one of the ice-bound boats to the firm old mainland, and did it not mean that bread at least could be drawn across the frozen sea to the famishing? !■. The men on the Little Katie were pulling in the kite, which looked a good deal worn, but still Why gathered around it, and read in Johnnv's boy-hand the w ords: “Ifyou get the Kite, "don’t pull in the string, for we’U put something to eat on it if you are hungry, and you can pull it over. Everybody’s well over here. Wild and Johnny.” , Capt. Rose read the words and then he and his crew tried to shout back, but the wind carried their voices across the bay. Within the next twenty-four hours the cord'had been doubled and food, in small packages, went along the novel roadway from hour to hour, until miles ot seinetwine lay on the deck of the Little Katie

and many loaves of.bread,wijkh small packagesof ” salt meat,” Aiigaf,”tea add coffee, had been secured from the sea. The next morning the wind blew again on Cape Cod. The inhabitants were on tlie watch for the kite, and lo! it was seen rising in the air. On, on, it came. It sailed over the .heads of the group on the shore; it went right across the “ Wrist’! of Cape Cod. It would have gone out upon the ocean but for the Highland Lighthouse, that caught and held the great fluttering bird of man. Wild and Johnny were the first toreach the light, and cry out, “ What news »” to the keeper, who had just succeeded in recovering the poor, battered kite. “ Come and see with your young eyes.” Wild and Johnny found the words: “We had nothing to eat for two days. Now we’ll weather the ice, God willing, and get in all right. We’ve supplied The Mary from our stores.” * , And there, right at the door, the first comers-, who had followed the kite, were Mrs. Rose and the friends of the men of The Many. “ Whose idee was the kite?” asked an old fisherman. “Wild’s,” shouted Johnny. “ Johnny made it, though. I couldn’t make a kite,” said Wild; but not a soul, save Johnny, heard her, for the wild air about the light was ringing with the shout of “ Long live Wild Rose of Cape Cod!”— Christian Union.

MECHANICAL AND SCIENTIFIC.

—To extract rust from steel, immerse the article to be cleaned in a solution of one-half ounce cyanide of potassium to a wine-glassful of water until the dirt and rust disappear. Then clean by means of a tooth brush with a paste composed of cyanide of potassium, Castile soap, whiting and water. —An ingenious method of filtration has recently been devised, by means of which it is claimed a liquid may be filtered in one-fourth of the time which the operation as usually performed requires. At the bottom of an open glass tube about an inch in diameter is placed a piece of filtering paper, and over this a piece of India muslin, secured around the tube by a rubber ring. The tube is filled with the liquid to be filtered and is closed at the top with a rubber stopper through which runs a piece of rubber piping. The tube is connected with two bottles so arranged that the water in the upper one flows down into the lower, forcing out the air, which in turn runs through the rubber pipe, forcihfc the liquid the filtering material. —lmmense quantities of buttons, manufactured frofii'pebbles, are produced jn Paris and sent to almost every part of the globe. These pebbles, which ah’ of crystallized felspar, containing as little clay and lime or lime salts as possible, are reduced to powder by heating them to cherry red and then plunging them into cold water. The powder is separated from its impurities by being passed through a wire gauze sieve, and is next WbH stirred in water. The residuum is treated with a quantity of hydrochloric acid, varying from 3 to 10 per cent., to free it from the oxide of iron, which would give the buttons a reddish tinge in the baking process. One hundred pounds of powder are mixed with two of chloride of sodium and four of ffour paste, dissolved in five quarts of water ; the whole is then passed through a sieve and dried to a proper consistency for molding. ■ -. j —A writer in Engineering contends that for train signaling there has yet been brought forward that js superior to the Binney electrical system. Briefly, it consists of a communication fixed-in each compartment of the car, and a flattery and bell in tlie front and rear guards’ vans. On pressing a stud in the car, the guards’ bells are rung electrically, and two disks are mechanically projected outside the car —on either side—from which the signal was made. A portion of the communicating mechanism is brought into view by the act of signaling, and acts as an indicator of the compartment whence the signal was sent The special feature of this system, beyond the simplicity of the arrangement, is that the two conductors are connected, one with both positive poles and the other with both negative poles of the batteries, and until contact is made no current can pass, and consequently no waste is going on in the batteries.

—For the preservation of timber from decay so many and different methods have been introduced that the best engineers and constructors appear to be in doubt as to which is on the whole to be preferred. It is however found that one or the most effective of these curious processes consists in subjecting the wood to a temperature above the boiling point of water, and below 300 degrees Fahrenheit, while immersed in a bath of creosote a sufficient length of time to expel the moisture. When the water is thus expelled the pores contain only steam; the hot oil is then quickly replaced by a bath of coal oil, by means of which change the steam in the pores of the wood is condensed and a vacuum formed, into which the oil is forced by atmospheric pressure and capillary attraction. It is thought that a wooden platform, thoroughly treated in this manner, would last twenty to thirty years, and prove superior to a stone platform during the entire period.— N. Y. Sun. A Rome correspondent describes a remarkable suicide of recent occurrence there, which has caused much sadness and horror amon» the professional and artistic Romans. The victim was the distinguished Juvara, an engraver of the highest reputation and a pupil of the celebrated Parma engraver, Toschi. He was sixty-seven years old, easy in means, married to a good wife and lived in a quiet, orderly, old-fashioned way. On the morn., ing of the fateful day he shut himself up in his private studio and proceeded, in a leisurely and systematic manner, to kill himself. He was over six hours in performing the horrible act, and has left a written record of his sensations during that time. At 8 o’clock he cut a vein in his foot and collected the blood in a dish, then with a brush painted with it on the wall, on a great cartoon, various sentences at different hours. For instance, one of these sentences said: “8% o’clock. With a serene and cheerful conscience ’’l am awaiting my death.” Another iS\ “10 o’clock. Death has not yet arrived. I now cut the vein in my arm. ’* At' 10:30 he wrote: “ How strange? The bl<xxl mounts to my head. God pardon me, for I pardon myjenemies.” Tbe saddest sentence is this: “ 2 o’clock. I have recovered my reason. My God, what have I done! What a rash act! It is too late, however, to repair the evil.* I will now." put an end to myself at once.” Where-- • updn it seems that he took a revolver and shot himself in the mouth, which killed him instantly. Upon entering the studio an hour afterward they found the poor old man dead, sitting in an arm-chair, holding the revolver in one hand! The bloody writing on the wall told the sad story.