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mwmwrfmm lArS Ci-J Wfr. rS3T,2MS fr- ; . m w wt- THOMAS COUNTY OAT. - PORTER & HOVEY, Publishers. COLBY. KANSAS. THE ROADSIDE SPRING. Tall houses crowd the rislngr yround, where stood the woods before. But still unchanged the crystal spring and as jt was of yore ... The yellow log through which It wells, its bot tom strewn with sand. The gourd hung on the alder bough, so ready to the hand. The lush-grass growing on the edge, the bushes drooping low It Is the same old roadside spring of fifty j ears ago. Here one time was the grazing farm where I wus born and bred: There stood the farm-house they have built a mansion there instead; This street was once the turnpike road, o'er which in drought or rain There used to pass, on creaking wheels, the Conestogawain: And here, however gtven was he a stronger draught to take. The driver always stopped awhile his cease less thirst to slake. How frequent, on my way to'school, I tarried at the brink, And looked within its crystal depth before I benttodnnk. There is no change the water still the purest and the best; That gourd It seems the very same my lips so often pressed. The grass around is quite as green; tho log as mossy seems; . Bow vividly the past comes back, like figures seen in dreams! Out yonder stands a church, whoso spire is piercing through the air, . Where stood the school-house in a field of grass and bushes bare; Ji. little wooden house it was, one storied, nar row, low Old Gnflin was the teacher then; he died here long ago: Hard-featured, stern the neighbors said he was a learned man: One thing he knew beyond all doubt the uso of his rattan. Down that side street, so thickly built, the path lay to the glen The short road to the village mill; they've arched the stream since then. That dut-ty, dun, three-stoned mill, with ever open door: That champing brutes that bore the grist ranged in a row before: The black wheel turning slowly round, the water falling free: Tne clatter and the whirr within how plain they are to me. Mill, woodland, school-house, field and farm they all ha e passed away: This is a strango and alien land wherein J stand to-dav; Tho scenes of youth I longed to see, at my approach have tlca; Here i- the burial place of dreams, and here the past lies dead; And j ct one verdant spot remains within the desert drear, One oasis within tho waste the roadside spring is hero. Taomqs Dunn English, in iV. Y. IndepindcnL WONDERS OF MEMOKY. Both Idiots and Geniuses Cer tainly Exhibit Them. If " all great people have great memories," as Sir Arthur Help declares m his delightful book entitled Social Pressure, it by no mean3 follows that all those who are possessed of great meniorses are great people. Many an instance might be cited to show that men of very moderate intellectual ca pacity may be endowed with a power of memory which is truly prodigous. In addition to this, there are plenty of well-authenticated examples of the extraordinary power of memory dis played even by idiots. In the Memoirs of Mrs. Somerville there is a curious account of a most extraordinar' verbal memory. "There was an idiot in Edinburgh," she tells us, "of a respect able family who had a remarkable memory. He never Jailed to go to the kirk on Sunday; and on returning home, could repeat the sermon, saying: 'Here the minister coughed; here he stopped to blow his nose.' During he tonr we made in the Highlands," she adds, "we met with another idiot who knew the Bible so perfectly, that if you asked him where such a verse was to "be found, he could tell without hesita tion and repeat the chapter. Ihcse examples are sufficiently remarkable; but what shall be said ot the case cited ly Archdeacon Fearon in his valuable pamphlet on Mental Vigour? "There was m my father's parish," saj's the archdeacon, "a man who could remem ber the day when every person had been buried in the parish for thirty-live years, and could repeat with unvarying accuracy the name and age of the de ceased, with the mourners at the funeral. But he was a complete fool. Out of the line of burials, lie had but one idea, and could not give an intel ligible reply to a single question, nor be trusted to feed himself." These phenomenal instances may be matched by the Sussex farm-laborer Georjrc Watson, as we find recorded in Hone s Table Book. Watson could jneither read nor write, yet he was wont to perform wondrous feats of mental calculation, and his memory for events seemed to be almost faultless. But the most extraordinary circum stance," says Hone, "is the "power he possessed ot recollecting the events of every da- from an early period of his life. Upon being asked what day of the week a given day of the month oc curred, he immediately names it, and .also mentions where he was and what was the btato of the weather. A gen tleman who had kept a diary put many questions to him, and his an swers were invariably correct." Of a similar kind is the memory for which Daniel M'Cartney has become famous in the United States. The strange story of this man's achieve ments is told by Mr. Henkle in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy. M'Cartnej-, in 18G9, declared that lie could remember the day of the week for .any date from January, 1827, that is, from the time when he was nine years and four, months old forty-two and & half years. He has often been tested, and, so far as Mr. Henkle's account goes, hadnotfailcd to tell his questioner what day it was," and to give some information about the weather, and about his own whereabouts and doings on any one of the fifteen thousand or more dates that might be named. When Mr. Kcnkle first met this man of marv elous memory, he was employed in the office of HonT T. K. Rukenbrod, editor of the Salem Republican, where noth ing better coold be found for M'Cart ney to do than "turn the wheel of the printing-press on two days of 'each week." On the firet formal examina tion this man underwent, bis answers were tested by.reference to the file of a newspaper which gave the day of the week along with the date. In one case his statement was disputed, for the day he named was not the same as that given by the paper; but on further in quiry, it was found that the newspaper was wrong, for the printer had made a mi&take. Short-hand notes of the con versation were taken at subsequent in terviews. The report of these is very curious reading. Take the following as a sample: "Question October 8, 182S? Answer (in two seconds) Wed nesday. It was cloudy and drizzled rain. I carried dinner to my father where he was getting out coal. Ques tionFebruary 21, 1S29? Answer (in two seconds) Saturday. It was cloudy in the morning, and'clear in the after noon; there was a little snow on the round. An uncle who lived near sold a horse-beast for thirty-five dollars." And so the conversation ran on for hours, ranging over forty years of M' Cartney's personal history. Mr. Henkle tells us that if he went over some of the dates again, after a few days' in terval, the answers, although given in different terms, were essentially the same, "showing distinctly that he re membered the facts, and not the words previously used." M'Cartney's memory is not confined to dates and events: he is a rare calculater, can give the cube root to such numbers as 59, 319; or 571, 787, &c; can repeat some two hundred and fifty hymns, and start about two hundred tunes; has a singu larly extensive and accurate knowl edge of geography, and never forgets the name of a person he has once seen or read of. With all this singular power of memory, however, he is not a man whose general grasp of mind is at all noteworthy. The same may be said of scores of men whose one rich gift of memory has brought them into prominence. No one has claimed any high intellec tual rank for the renowned "Memory Corner Thompson," who drew from actual memory, in twenty-two hours, at two sittings, in the presence of two well-known gentlemen, a correct plan of the pariah of St. James, Westminster, with parts of the parishes of St. Mary lebonc, St. Ann and St Martin; which plan contained every square, street, lane, court, ally, market, church, chapel and all public buildings, with all stables and other jiirds, and also every public-house in the parish, and the "corners of all streets, with all minutiae, as pumps, posts, trees, houses that project and inject, bow-windows, Carlton House, St. James1 Palace and the interior of the markets, without sc.tle or reference to any plan, book, or paper whatever; who undertook to do the same for the parishes of St. An drew, Holburn, St (.liles-in-thc-Fields, St Paul's, Convent Garden, St Mar3r-le-Strand, St Clement's and St George's; who could tell the corner of any great leading throughfare from Hyde Park corner or Oxford street to St Paul's; who could "take an inven tory of a gentleman's house from attic to ground-floor and write it out after wards. He did this at Lord Nelson's atMcrton, and at the Duke of Kent's, in the presence of two noblemen." Turning, now, from examples like the foregoing, which have been given to show that a great memory docs not argue in all cases any umiaiial mental power in other directions, let us look at some of the "great people" whose "great memories' illustrate the cor rectness of Sir Arthur Helps' dictum. Running over a long list of examples, which the wi iter has prepared for his own use la the studv of this sutject, he has been struck with the fact, that the last three or four centuries appear to much greater advantage in this review than any similar period which precsded them. This, after all, is not surpris ing, when the circumstances of mod ern life are carelully considered; but it is not in accordance a ith common opinion. There is a notion abroad that the power of memory has declined since the invention of writing, and especially since the invention of print ing and the universal spread of cheap books and newspapers. Is' othing could be more mistaken than such a suppo sition. If wo do not nowadays use the memory as the only registry of facts within our reach, we do use the mem ory even more than the ancients for the simple reason that our knowledge travels over an immeasurably wider area, we hate more to remember, and. as civilization and culture advance, a good memory becomes more and more needful for the work of life; the gener al level of intelligence is being raised, and mental power is developed from age to age. In this general advance ment and growth, memory has its share. The verbal memory displayed by the old Greek rhapsodists and bards, or the Icelandic scalds, was undoubtedly remarkable, and is often held up to the envy of these degenerate days. Yet the modern Shah-nama-Khans, Koran Khans and other singers and reciters oi rersia, who will re cite, for hours together without stammering," and the Calmuck na tional bards, whose songs and recita tions "sometimes last a whole day," can not surely be a whit behind, if in deed they do not surpass the prodigies of early ages. We are often reminded of Greek gentlemen who knew their Homer by heart, in the days when Ho mer occupied the field almost alone and there was very little else to learn. But what are their exploits by the side of men like Joseph Justus Scaligcr, who committed Homer to memory in twenty-one days, and the whole Grnek poets in three months?" Casau bon says of Scatiger: " Thee was no subject on which any one could desire instruction which he was not capable of giving. He had read nothing which he did not forthwith remember. So extensive and accurate was his ac quaintance with languages that if dur ing Ws lifetime he had made bnt this single acquisition it would have ap peared miraculous." Since the revival of learning in Eu rope there have been scores, yea, hun dreds of scholars who have known their Homer" by heart and a thou sand other things besides. Bishop Saunderson, old Isaac Walton tells us, could repeat all the odes of Hor ace, all Tully's Offices, and the best part of Juvenal and Persius. Ealer the mathematician and Leibnitz the ntiUMonher could recita?JM .naidl fcx.vrM,SfevC3?'?A5.' ..X-'ftv!? -c - ., from beginning to'end, IntheVay Porson, Elmsley, Parr and Wakefield held the foremost place as scholars.ind all, of course, had rare memories;ut the palm must be given to Porson, of whom endless stories are told. Be fore he went to Eton, he was abe to repeat almost the whole of Horace, Virgil, Homer, Cicero and Livy. When, as a practical joke, a school-fellow slipped the wrong book into Porson's hand, just as e was about to read and translate, the boy was not discon certed, but went on to read from his memory, as if nothing had occurred. In later life, his performances ap proached the miraculous. It would re quire all our space to give any fair idea of them; for he not onlv knew all the great Greek poets and prose -writers pretty well by Heart, but could recite whole plays of Shakespeare, or com plete books from Earadise Lost, Pope's Rape of the Lock, Barrow's sermons, scenes from Foote, Edgeworth's" Essay on Irish Bulls, scores of pages from Gibbon or Ilapin. He is also said to have been able to repeat the whole of the Moral Tale of the Dean of Badajoz, and Smollett's Roderick Random from the lirst page to the last Gilbert Wakefield's memory was also of the gigantic order, but it will not bear comparison with Porson's. There were few passages in Homer or Pindar which he could not recite at a moment's notice; Tirgil and Horace he knew perfectly; and he could recite en tire books from the Old and New Testaments without halting or failing in a single verse. There was also John Wyndham Bruce, whose leisure time was devoted to classical studies. His chief favorite was iEschylus, tho whole of 'whose plays he had learnt by heart, including the twelve hundred lines of the Agamemnon collated by Robertellus. He knew his Horace in the same way, and was quite content, until one day he met with an old fellow-student at Bonn, who, when' he made a quotation, uould mention book, ode and verse, remarking that he did not regard any one as knowing Horace properly unless he 'could do that Mr. Bruce accordingly set to work at Horace again, and it was not long before he could name the exact place occupied by a line in any of the famous odes. It would be hard to be lieve that Athenian lads could beat the English lads of fourteen years and un der, of whom Archdeacon Fcaron tells us in the pamphlet referred to above. It was the custom in the school to which he went for the boys to repeat at the end of one of the terms all the Latin and Greek poetry they had learnt during the year. The usual quantity for a boy to go in with was from eight to ten thousand lines, and it took about a week to hear them. "One boy in my year," he says, "repeated the enormous quantity of tourteen thousand lines of Homer, Horace and Virgil. I heard him say it" Ease in learning foreign languages is sometimes regarded as a mere mat ter of memory; while, however, this is not exactly true, it must be allowed, of course, that skilled linguists are en dowed with powers of memory beyond the average. Here also we find that there are no examples in ancient times that will stand comparison with our great modern linguists. Our modern facilities for travel and study place us at an immense advantage. Crassus, when praetor in Asia, was so familiar with the dialects of Greek, l that he was able to try cases and pro nounce judgment in any dialect that might chance to be spoken in his pres ence. "Mithridates, king of twenty two nations, administered their laws in as many languages," and could harangue each division of his motley array of soldiers in its own language or dialect. But what are such linguists as these by the side of the, best examples of re cent times? Keeping within the limits of the last hundred years, we have ex amples that have never been surpassed or even approached in former times. Sir William Jones knew thirteen lan guages well, and could read with com parative ease in thirty others. John Leyden, a very inferior man to his great contemporary, had a good ac quaintance with fifteen of the leading European and Asiatic languages. Within the last few years we have lost two men who could have traveled from the hills ot Counomarn or the mount ains of Wales to the Ural mountains, or from Lisbon or Algiers to Ispahan or Delhi, and hardly met with a language in which they could not converse or write with ease. The reader will most likely have anticipated the names of two of the most remarkable linguists this country has produced George Borrow and Edward Henry Palmer. When Borrow was at St. Petersburg. he published a little book called Tar gura, in which he gave translations in prose and poetry from thirty different languages. Besides speaking the native tongue of every European nation, Palmer was so perfect a master of Ara bic, Persian, Hindustani, Turkish and the language of the gypsies, that even natives were sometimes deceived as to his nationality. Mr. Leland says that one day in Paris Palmer "entered into conversation with a Zouave or Turco, a native Arab. After a while the man said: 'Why do you wear these clothes?' Why, how should I dress?' exclaimed Palmer. 'Dress like what you are!' was the indignant reply 'like a Mus lim!' " Viscount Strangford may be placed in the same category with these; and the "learned blacksmith," Elihu Bur ritt, whose friends claim for him that he knew all the languages of Europe and most of those of Asia, must not be left out of sight But even these do not touch the highest limit of linguistic skill and power of memory. The most scientific linguist we have to name, and one of the most remarkable for the extent of his acquisition, is Von der Gabelentz, who seems to have been equally at home with the Suahilis, the Samoyeds, the Hazaras, the Aimaks. the Dyaks, the Dakotas and the Kiriris; who could translate from Chinese into Manchu, compile a grammar or correct the speech of the inhabitants of the Fiji Islands, New Hebrides. Loyalty Islands or New Caledonia. When we come to Cardinal Mezzofanti and Sir John Bow ring we find the "highest record" as regards the mere number and variety of tongues that men have been known to acquire. No one can speak with ab- oliua certainty a &o the number of J languages Mezzofanti could converse in 'with ease. Mrs. Somerville says that ho professed only fifty-two. This brief review of the subject nec essarily leaves eut of account a vast number of the most extraordinary and interesting examples. Artists like Horace Vernet; mathematician'; and calculators like Dr. Wallis and Leon ard Eulcr, or G. P. Bidder and young Colburn; musicians like Mozart; news paper reporters like the unequalled "Memory Woodfall;" literary men like Lord Macaulay and T. H. Buckle; chess-players like Paul Morphy and J. H. Biackbourne, have accomplished feats of memory as marvelous as any of those which have been mentioned. ClMmbers1 JournaL m SCIENTIFIC GRAIN DEALS. The Marvelous Effect of Sua Spots on the Prices of Grain. . For some years past there have been few subjects of astronomical study so interesting, and none that has been pursued with such diligence, as that of "sun spots." 'While little has been really learned as to the cause or nature of this periodic, measley condition of the solar orb, very much light has been gained as to its effect on matters ter restrial. Indeed, it has been found that few natural phenomena transpire that are not more or less affected by the so-called sun spots. One of the most novel discoveries yet made in the realm of sun-spot science has just been laid before the world by Mr. Frederick Ch imbers, of Bombay, India, whose researches have devel oped the fact that the fluctuations in the prices of food grains in tnat coun try correspond to the regular variation which takes place in the number of the sun's spots during the same period. Mr. Chambers has been able to formu late the following law upon the sub ject: The lowest prices occur from three to five years after the year of maximum sun spots, while the highest prices occur from one to three years preceding the year of minimum sun spots. If this rule holds good for India it will probably be found to apply to grain-growing countries generally, and the discovery is an important one. It will work a revolution in grain specu lations. The Board of Trade man will no longer need to consult market re ports, study the condition of growing crops, and guess as to the proper dis count to be made upon the lugubrious complaints of the grangers. His course will hereafter be to master the in tricacies of sun-spot science; to ascer tain whether "the sun-spot curve" in the particular period he is operating in is regular; whether the interval be tween maximum and minimum spots is of the average length; in short, to search out many of the mysteries of "sun-spot waves" and "cycles" which have as yet eluded the keenest efforts of science to solve them. In order to pursue his business intelligently, the grain man will find a telescope abso lutely essential to his outfit, and we may expect to see every chamber of commerce provided with an observa tory containing one of these instru ments for the free use of its members. In view of this contingency our new Board of Trade building will have the usual Chicago advantage over all other competitors in that its lofty tower will be eminently.suited to the uses of an observatory. But the operator who shall be able to have an observatory on his own house and to provide himself with his own telescope, will possess an obvious advantage over his poorer neighbor, as he will be able to pursue his study of sun spots at every favor able opportunity. The man of scien tific tastes will be likely to lead in the new method of graiu-deaiing. Chicago Journal. PROTECTING IRON. A Trocest Which Will Prevent tho Rust Ing oT Ga-i anil Water Pipes. The liability of iron to rust is a great drawback to its use for many purposes, and the practical value of a process which will protect it at a slight expense is self-evident That the process is successful in accomplishing this object seems no longer a matter of doubt, anc" at less cost than galvanizing or tinning. The color on cast and wrought iron is a bluish graj', which to some may be objectionable, but, as the coating takes paint far better than untreated iron, this objection is easily overcome, and with the assurance that the paint will remain, and not soon be thrown off, as it is generally. For polished work tho color is a lustrous blue-black, adding greatly to the beauty of the article treated. This process seems peculiar ly well adapted for gas and. water pipes. Any one who has had occasion frtiipn Tot-r... liiT, Itno ,inD2nn l,.,, rvK . a new iron pipe, or one that has not been used for some time, knows how full of rust it is, and that only after months of constant use does it become clear again. With pipe coated with the magnetic oxide by the Bower-Bar process, no trouble of the kind can oc cur. The water runs pure from tho first day, and if for any reason the pipes arc emptied, and left so, there is no danger of their becoming coated with rust Another important fact is, that the water coming through one of these rustless pipes is just as pure as when it entered, for the water can dissolve none of the coating of oxide, as it al ways does with lead or galvanised pipes.. It is a well-known fact that water running through lead pipes is very apt to contain lead in solution, and the continued use of such water causes lead-poisoning, for although the amount (of lead) dissolved may be very small, still it accumulates in the system, and finally causes sickness and disease J. S. V. Wells, in Popular Science Monthly. Talking about busy men, who leave their homes early and get back 'after dark, and never see their children, a man of that sort was hurrying away one morning when he found that bis little boy had got up before him and was playing on tie sidewalk. He told the child to go in. Child wouldn't Man spanked him and went to business. Child went in howling. The mother said: "What's the matter?" "Man hit me," blabbered the youngster. "What man?" "That man that stars ban Sundays." Boston Potk 'ESTEEMED CONTRIBUTORS: ' What the Publls Owes to Veritas' aaC HI 3f tuneroas .ABoayatoas Co-Workers A Dlssertatloa.br Bill Nye. My name is Veritas. I write for the papers. I am qnito an old man and have written my kindly words of advice to the press for many years. I am the friend of the public and the guiding star of the American newspaper. I point out the proper course for a newly elected member of Congress and show the thoughtless editor the wants of the people. I write on the subject of po litical economy. Also on both sides of the paper. Sometimes I write on both sides of the question. When I do so I write over the name of Tax-Payer, but my real name is Veritas. I am the man who first suggested the culvert at the Jim street crossing, so that the water would run oft toward the pound after a rain. With my ready pen ready, and trenchant also, as I may say I have", in my poor, weak way, suggested a great many things which might otherwise have remained for many years unsuggestcd. I am the man who annually calls for a celebration of the fourth of July in our little town, and asks for some young elocutionist to be selected by the committee, whose duty it shall bo to read the declaration of independence in a shrill voice to those who yearn to be thrilled through and through with patriotism. Did I not speak through the columns of the press in clarion tones for a prop er observance of our Nation's great natal day in large Gothic extended caps the Nation's starry banner would remain furled and the greased pig would continue to crouch in his lair. With the aid of mv genial co-workers, Tax-Payer, Old Settler, Old Subscrib er, Constant Reader, U. L. See, Fair Play and Mr. Pro Bono Publico, I have made the world a far more desirable place in which to live than it would otherwise have been. My co-laborer Mr. Tax-Payer is an old contributor to the paper, but he is not really a tax-payer. He uses this signature in order to conceal his identi ty, just as I use the name Veritas. We have a great deal of fun over this at our regular annual reunions where we talk about all of our affairs. Old Settler is a young tenderfoot who came here last-spring and tried to obtain a livelihood by selling an inde structible lamp chimney. He did well for several weeks by going to the dif ferent residences and throwing one of his glass chimneys on the floor with considerable force to show that it would not break. He did a good busi ness till one day ho made a mistake. Instead of getting hold of his exhibi tion chimney, he picked out one of the stock and busted it beyond recognition. Since that he has been writing articles in violet ink relative to old times and publishing them over the signature of j Old Settler. Old Subscriber is a friend of mine who reads his paper at the hotels while waiting for a gratuitous drink. Fair Play is a retired montc man and Pro Bono Publico is our genial and urbane undertaker. I am a very prolific writer, but all my work is not printed. A venal and corrupt press at times hesitates about giving currency to such fearless, earn est truths as I iikc use of. I am also the man who says brave things in the columns of the papers when the editor himself does not dare to say them because he is afraid he will be killed. But what racks Veritas the bold and free? Hoes he flinch or quail? Not a flinch; not a quail. Boldly he flings aside his base fears, and with bitter vituperation he assails those lie dislikes, and attacks with re sounding blows his own personal en emies, fearlessly signing his name, Veritas, to the article, so that those who yearn to kill him may know just who he is. What would the world do without Veritas? In the hands of a horde of journalists who have nothing to do but attend to their business, left with no anonymous friend to whom they can fly when momentous occasions arise, when the sound advice and better judgment of an outside friend is need ed, their condition would indeed be a pitiable one. But he will never desert us. He is ever at hand, prompt to say, over his nom de plume, what he might hesitate to say under his own name, for fear that he might go home with a battle of Gettysburg under each eye md a nose like a volcanic eruption. He cheerfully attacks every thing and svery body, and then goes away till the fight, the funeral and the libel suit are over. Then he returns and assails the grim monster Wrong. He pro poses improvements, and the following week a bitter reply comes from lax Payer. Pro Bono Publico, the retired three-card-monteist, says: "Let us have the proposed improvement re gardless of cost" Then the cynical CT. L. Sec (who is really the janitor at the blind asylum) grumbles about use less expense, and finally draws out from the teeming brain' of Constant Reader a long, flabby essay, written on red-ruled leaves, cut out of an old meat-market ledger, written econom ically on both sides with light blue ink made of bluing and cold tea. This es say introduces, under the most trying circumstances, such crude yet original literary gems as: Wad some power the jfiftle gie us, etc. He also says: The wee sma hours ayant the twal, and farther on Breathes there a man with soul so dead Who never to himself hath said, etc. His essay is not so much the vehicle of thought as it is the accommodation train for fragments of his old school declamations to ride on. But to Veritas we owe much. I say this because I know what I am talking about for am I not old Veritas him self? Haven't I been writing things for the papers ever since papers were published? Am I not the man who for years has been a stranger to fear? Have I not again and again called the Congressman, tho capitalist, tho clergyman, the voter and the philan thropist every thing I could lay my tongue to, and then fought mosquitoes in the deep recesses of the swamp while the editor remained at the office and took the credit for writing what I had given him for nothing? Has not 1 many-a ppbnni m name and -libel suit upon, what I have written, and yet I am almost unknown? When people ask Who is Veritas and whert does he live? no one seems to know. He is up seven flights of stairs, in a hot room that smells of old clothes and) neglected thoughts. Far from the madding throng," as Congressman Header has so truly said, I sit alone, with no personal property but an over worked costume, a strong lovo for truth and a shawl-strap full of sug gestions to the over-estimated maat who edits the paper. So I battle on, with only the meager and flea-bitten reward of seeing my name in print "anon," as Constant Reader would say. All I have to fork over to posterity is my good name which I beg leave to sign here "Veritas" ii Clucago News. WISCONSIN RAFTSMEN. How Salts Are Bailt and BetrelU la tk Great Northern Fiaeries. If you look at a forestry map of 'Wis consin you will see that a sfcip of the peculiar shade of yellow which indi cates territory strippdd of its market able trees lies along either side of all the rivers. The raftsman's greatest day is gone, then the day, at leat, when he was the most important per son, as he yet thinks he is, whom the iog encounters from the woodman to- the carpenter. Kalting, like every thing else, has been changed some what by the railroad, and many of the river "driver's" adventures with his logs in shooting rapids and going down, swift and narrow streams are denied to his successor. Great mills have been built in the Wisconsin forests, and. fewer logs every year are transported, a great distance. Yot in the last cen sus year $12,000,000 worth of round timber was sent by rafts down the rivers of S iseonsin to mills in Iowa, Illinois and Missouri. Ten billion feefc of pine lumber alone were standing ia 1880 in the valley of the Wisconsin river, to say nothing of the valleys of the other rivers, or of other species of marketable woods; anl the State is, next to Michigan and Pennsylvania, yet the greatest lumber-producing; State in the Union. Rafting is by no means the mere binding together of logs and the easy floating down stream on them that the picture of a raft in a mild current in dicates. The logs arc thrown into the jstrcam above rapids and narrows, and the raft often has to be made over many times. The simple splicing and fastening of them together, which makes the voyage down a steady cur rent easy enough, are at best a trifling protection against the forming of a "jam," where the stream runs rapidly through a narrow or crooked channels Then one log wrenched out of position may obstruct all the rest, and the raft become a wreck. To loosen a jam has- sometimes proveu to De the woric ot a whole week, and men have had to be swung over it to find the "key log," and to cut it from a tree or cliff above. And when the jam is loosed, the raft must be rebuilt wherever and when ever its material can be got together again. If there be a freshet when the logs get loose, or if a jam has so dammed the water that when it is loos ened the stream is swollen at any angle the river makes, half the raft or all is likely to be driven and left high and dry on land. In the upper waters the raftsman has to make his way sometimes on his raft sometimes by boat and "sometimes by land, to keep his cargo together. The men whom, this traffic has trained to be amphib ious have acquired a degree of skill in the management of logs that gives warrant for their feeling oi contempt for mere river pilots or boat captains on the lower waters. When the raft has been built for tho last time, and only the broad river lie before it, it is equipped with a rudder, the raftsmen make their home, on it for days and even weeks; they stretch their tent and go comfortably on, using; long poles when necessary as an auxil iary either to the rudder or to the cur rent Saw-mills as far down the Mis sissippi river as St Louis arc yet sup plied with logs from the high waters of the Wisconsin river. When the river broadens sufficiently, a number of smaller rafts are joined together into onelarge one, and when it reaches tho point where a tug-boat can be employed with advantage, the consolidated raft is a forest afloat several hundred yards in length. Harper's Weekly. GOING TO WHIP HIM. Why Young African Will Rccoit am. Emphatic Admonition. " "Gwine ter whup dat boy ef I kotch es him, gwine ter whup him, sho's he's bo'ned," exclaimed a negro worn rushing out of a cabin and hurriedly looking about her. "Oh, l'sc gwine ter whup him fur he shain't treat me dater way an' 'scape." What's the matter?" asked a man, stopping at the fence and addressing the woman. "W'y dat triflin boy o' mine hab put me in trouble,,dat's de matter." "What did he do?" "W'y he slipped in dar whar I wuzv washin' an' eat up all dat saft soap." "You don't tell me that he aUr soap!" "Co'se I does, fur dat's whut he done. Neber seed sich er chile ez dat in my life. Hit sometimes peers ter me dat de blame boy acks like he wu mos' starbed to def, an' dat too when he knows I gin him nearly er whole catfish head day befo' yistidy. Oh, I'so gwine ter whuff him fureatin' dat soap like he was haungry." ArLonsaw Traveler. m i. Many seem to think that they have made toast when they brown the out side of & slice of bread. Have they? The obiect in making toast is to evap orate all moisture from the bread, and holding a slice over the lire to sine docs not accomplish this; it only warms the moisture, making the insido of the bread doughy and indigestible. Ihe true way ef preparing it is to cut. the bread into slices a quarter of an inch thick, trim off all crust, put th slices in a pan or pUte, place them in the ovea which must not be too hot take them out when a d.i;.. and butter at qms. ErthMnat. t& i-Kt V" .. 'm Sti -l3! 4m ilf v iJv $; ' 'fe ?Vtf l:M r r ,jTr ' A iglfeiefcitrtfeU, . --- sjfe Jtetjjgaagj