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iWirror Entered at the postoffice at Stillwater. Minnesota, as second-class mail matter. Thk Mirror is issued every Thursday at the following rates: One Year - < IOO Six Months - 50 Three Months To inmates of all penal institutions per year -50 Address all communications to Thr Mirror. Stillwater. Minn. Thk Mirror is a weekly paper published in the Minnesota State Prison. It was founded in 1887 by the prisoners and is edited and managed by them. It aims to be a home newspaper: to encourage moral and intellectual improvement among the prisoners: to acquaint the public with the truk status of the prisoner: to disseminate peno logical information and to aid in dispelling that prejudice which has ever been the bar sinister to a fallen man's self-redemption. NOTICE TO INMATES: Each inmate is accorded the privilege of sending one paper home, or to friends free of charge. To do this you should write your own name and register number and the name and address of the person you wish to send the paper to, and hand same to your officer. If you desire to send more than one paper, each additional copy will be charged for at the rate of 50 cents a year.—The paper delivered to your cell each week must be kept clean, and should be folded in the same manner as you receive it. placing it at the foot of your bed on the morning follow ing the day on which it is delivered to your cell. CHURCH NOTICE. Services in the Prison Chapel at nine o'clock every Sun day morning, Protestant and Catholic service every alternate Sunday. Rev. C. E. Benson and Rev. Fr. Corcoran, Chap lains. 0 Notice Contributions submitted to tbe Mir ror for publication must be absolutely original: if not original, proper credit must be given, if known; if writer s name is not known, it should be so speci fied by said contributor. Should contributor fail to comply with this request be will henceforth be dropped from the Mirror s contributing staff. Signed by Editor. Approved by Warden. | .-.COMMENTS.', j "That man John Smith is a dandy good fellow!” Is he? That is a matter of personal opinion and the feeling of one individual toward another in gratitude for an act of kindness or some personal service rend ered to himself. Hut, because one man thinks a certain individual is a good fellow, it does not make him so, and it is very bad form form for one to shout it at every person whom he may meet; for he is cer tain to meet a number who, no doubt, hold to a view just the opposite, They will probably reply in the affirmative, although believing otherwise, because they do not want to cause hard feelings, and also that they do not want it to be thought that they are of an envious disposition and dislike to hear the praises of another. The “good fellow” opinion means nothing more nor less than the liking of one individual for an other. One believes the other is a good fellow be cause they both have the same taste in common; or lie believes it because the other has helped him over some rough spot in life’s journey and has executed various other favors for him at different times —all of which he has done because of a fancy he has tak en to the other fellow. Now, on the other hand, this same “good fel low” may have been the very personification of meanness and ingratitude toward some other indi vidual, who has probably been trjing very hard to cultivate a friendship with him, believing that he really was a “good fellow,” and who, upon discover ing that his advances are snubbed at every turn, re verses his opinion of the man’s claim to the title of “good fellow” and lets him severely alone in the fu ture, closing his ears every time he hears him praised as being a “good fellow.” And if he ventures to dis pute it, he is looked upon as a sort of a green-eyed monster. So, never judge a man by his acts and manner towards you, but watch him and take notice of how he treats others, and by the treatment that he ac cords to those around you, you will be in a position to form an unbiased opinion as to whether he is a “good fellow” or not. —“B.” Instead of the ‘movies” for our entertainment in our Auditorium, we enjoyed the pleasant surprise of having Mr. John YVinuiuger and his company of all-star-repertoire players, present one of America’s laughiug successes: “Officer 606.” The players, who are proving a sensation in Stillwater theatrical circles, were engaged by our official family, to produce one of their plays in our Auditorium. And to say that our permanent audi ence was delighted and surprised, is stating it mild ly, and gives a scant idea of the appreciation which was shown by repeated applause and breathless in terest. The play was one of three acts, and its setting a Fifth Avenue, New York mansion; in which an im personation, attempted theft of valuable paintings, a little vein of romantic love and comedy were inter woven in au action that continued to hold interest from start to tinish. Mr. John Wiuniuger, as “Police Officer, Mich ael Phelau No. 666,” carried the title role with art ful characterization, supporting aud being supported in turn, by. the leading actors, Mr. Glen Coulter as “Travers Gladwin,” Rosalind Machan as “Helen Barton,” Jean Clarendon as “Alfred Wilson” aud Harry Bodie as “Whitney Barnes.” The remainder _ _ “He’s a Good Fellow” i “Officer 666” of the players, assisting in the minor parts, that heightened the action, were as artistic and conscien tious in their parts as the leading players. The in genue part was enacted by Franc Dale, and Kate Givney played “Mrs. Burton,” which added a touch of delightful feminine characterization to the vein of romance that glinted throughout the action of the play. The entertainment was one that will not soon be forgotten by the inmates and it is hoped that at some future time we will again have the pleasure to be entertained by these estimable players. The managemement, in behalf of the inmates extend their siucerest thanks to Mr. Winninger and his able company for their splendid rendering of “Officer 666.” Following is a-copy of the program provided by the players: JOHN D. WINNINGER presents The Winninger Players in “Officer 666” By Augustine McHugh Direction of Jean Clarendon CAST OF CHARACTERS In order of their appearance on the stage. Bateato, Gladwin's Japanese servant Minet Madutz Police Officer Michael Phelan No. 6(i(> John D. Winninger Whitney Barnes Harry Bodie Travers Gladwin Glen Coulter Helen Barton Rosalind Machan Sadie Small, her niece Franc Dale Mrs. Burton, her aunt Kate Givney Alfred Wilson Jean Clarendon Watkins William Carlson Captain Stone Hugh Adams Ryan, a police officer Harry Sheldon Kearney, a plain clothes man Adolph Winninger THE PLAY IN THREE ACTS The entire action of the play takes place in the drawing room of the Gladwin mansion on Fifth Avenue, from 5.00 o’clock in the evening until 2.00 the next morning. STAFF 1 John Winninger Manager A. R. A. Barrett Business Manage^ Harry Bodie Stage Manager William Carlson Stage Carpenter Laurie Shoup Master of Properties The Annual meeting of the “Washington Coun ty Better Farming Association’’ will be held in our Auditorium, January, 27th. A miscellaneous pro gram is arranged consisting of addresses by promi nent men ou problems that confront this growing organization. Among the listed speakers are, Mr. F. W. Murphy of Wheaton, Minn,, president of the West Central Developement Association; Mr. Mar cus D. Munn of Forest Lake, president of the Amer ican Cattle Breeders’ Association, and others, togeth er with speakers selected from our Business, Sales, Twine and Farm Machinery departments. The meet ing promises to be the largest ever held in our insti tution. The visitors will be heartily welcomed by our official family as guests of the stale. Rev. John McCoy, former Chaplain at this in stitution, but now residing at Washington, D. C. sends The Mmiton a post card with his new address. Among other things, Rev McCoy compliments us with the following: "Would you kindly send me your much prized weekly reminder of the very pleasant times I had when Chaplain of the New Prison, etc.” Tiie Mikrok takes this occasion to wish Rev. McCoy a fruitful future in his new activities in the White City ou the Potomac. The Way Out. We sometimes say of a man that he doesn’t seem as if he were “all there.” Well, where is the rest of him? Perhaps wool-gathering. Or if he is a great inventor or musician the rest of him may be in his inventions or his music. Or it may be burrowing dismally in the field of memories. In rare cases it may be preoccupied with profound thoughts. A man’s consciousness may be shining intensely upon any part of his mind as well as feebly upon the part he is now talking to you with or using for his routine work. Walt Whitman, for instance, always felt that part of his consciousness was with the winds and the great trees and the sea and earth and surging to and fro with the great world of men, sharing with them a great common life. That is why he cared so little what happened to his personality. He did not feel it to be the whole of himself. Himself was that other that was out abroad with earth and men and windß and stars. He felt the spirit of evolution, of expansion, of progress, everywhere, and felt himself to be part of that spirit. Hence he knew that though his body and personality would die some time, he himself was deathless. It depends, you see, upon where you have your self, where you live. Consciousness, the light of knowing by which a man is conscious, is the man himself. It is usually so entirely and intensely upon the body and the lit tle personal personality and the limited brain-mind that it seems to him as if that were the whole of himself. It is thfs mistake that gives rise to all his pain. Whitman never made it, and we need not. As we stop throwing the spotlight of attention, of consciousness, on the personality, pain begins to cease and life to get bigger and to fill with exulta • • t tion. The new and larger self that we are beginning to make is soon very much more splendidly interest ing to us than the little old one of personality. The thing is pure again at once, though it may take a lit tle time to see it. Hand over the personality to the rules and du ties of the place you happen to be in, thinking: “I am more than that.” And with that thought accept what comes: slights, frictions and all the rest, re maining yourself as it were apart in peace, looking on. Try it a day and then a week and so on, trust ing that things will somehow work out all right for you in the long run. And they will. h rom the first comes a new sense of freedom, of growth, like that of a plant taken out of a cellar in to tbe open air. .you begin to understand the great life opening ahead of you, not to be limited or cut short by anything—ahead of you and all other men and creatures. Try a few steps on this path. At first it may seem as if everything, events and people, were con spiring to hinder you. But you will break through that, and events, finding you their master, will soon be visibly arranging themselves to help you. —Student, in The New Way. Pensioning' Old Rodney Rodney, a faithful army horse, has served the United. States government steadily for 20 years. He was first acquired by old Battery E of the First Artillery, at Fort Riley in 1890, when he was eight years old, and through his long service gained a high reputation for intelligence, willingness, strength and all-around ability. During his service in the army he was never sick and was never known to refuse a task no matter how difficult. In Cuba, in 1898, he pulled heavy cannon through almost impassable roads and his work helped to save a difficult situ ation, Although he outlasted his equine fellows, Rodney became unable to stand the strain of active service and was condemned, under the rules of the service, to sale. He was so popular with the mem bers of the Third Field Artillery that they bought him at auction, and since then he has done only the lightest sort of work at Fort Meyer. Upon the recommendation of Captain Charles D. Mor timer, the commanding officer of Battery D., Third Field Artillery, authority has been given to stable, feed and care for Rodney for the rest of his life. He is to be retired from active duty and placed on a pension.—Ex. Too Many Still Believe in Perpetual Motion Some day, go into the Patent Office in Wash ington and look at the applications that have been made for patents on perpetual-motion machines. You will see some very ingenious devices. For instance a machine to be run by the power of gravity —iron ball dropping down a chute and turning a wheel. The inventor of that machine provided for everything, lie even added a brake to stop the machine, in case it should run so fast as to become unmanageable. He forgot only one thing—that it requires just as much energy to lift the balls up against gravity as they develop by falling down In England, between 1617 and 1903, more than six-hundred separate applications for patents were made on perpetual-motion machines. Every single year new applications are made. They stand —this unending procession of appli cations — as a magnificent monument of the un changeaoleness of human nature. A testimony of man’s unquenchable belief that somehow, somewhere, it is possible in this world to get something for nothing. It is a mistake to gather all these perpetual motion machines together in Washington, D. C. One should be set up at the busiest corner of every American city. And twelve should be dis tributed along Wall Street, New York. Every man who goes down to business in the morning should pass a perpetual-motion machine and be reminded of its lesson. There is one great law that runs through all life. Many have discovered it; Emerson named it the Law of Compensation. Everywhere that law is operative. In physics, action and reaction are equal. In electricity, if the north end of a magnet attracts, the south end repels. If, as Emerson points out, a government is bad, the governor’s life becomes unsafe. If taxes are too high, they yield no revenue; if laws are too severe, juries will not convict; if they are too lenient, pri vate vengeance steps in and metes out justice. Compensation —everywhere. When I started in businesss I used to be some what worried by the good fortune of the wicked. I saw fellows who worked one-half as hard as I get twice as much money. I saw other fellows lift themselves into the good graces of the boss on the golden wings of gol| and funny stories. But I have seen the Law of Compensation get in too much deadly work even to concern myself any more about anybody else’s success. I have seen good fellows who thought they were perfectly secure because they called the boss by his first name, be fired by the same boss, who called them by their first name when he did it I have seen men giyow very rich —and I know there are many ways in which the Law of Compen sation can work when a man has the ambition to be come very rich. It can make him pay with his health. It can turn his home into a counting-room. It can make his children snobs and hypocrites. It can destroy his joy in simple things. Another gentleman discovered the Law of Com pensation even before Emerson. He stated ii in this form: Be not deceived; God is not mocked, for what so-ever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. There are many seeming exceptions to this law; but the longer I live the more sure I am that if most of the exceptions were analyzed they would be found not to be exceptions at all. There is no such thing as perpetual motion. No man for very long gets more than he deserves, without paying for it something equally as valuable as he gets. Nothing can work me damage except myself,” said St. Bernard. The harm that I sustain I carry about in me and am never a real sufferer except by my own fault.” And” he might have added —'never a real gainer for very long, except by my own hard work.” —Sunday Post Magazine. ~ -i QUERIES - i NOTICE TO INMATES , Forthe benefit of any inmates who apprecciate amd see the op portunity that their spare hours give towards a means of self-education through correspondence school courses, study of good literature, tequir .ing an education in our Night Schools, or. who need helpful informa t,®“. •“ connection with their work in our various departments, will here with be privileged to use the ‘Query” column. You are welcomed to send in any queries of serious interest to yourself. The Mirror with the kind colaboration of Miss Miriam E. Carey, Supervisor of Institution Libraries, will gladly endeavor to supply the requested information. NOTICE—In order to regulate the conduct of this column in mates must sign their name, register number and lock number to all queries submitted for publication. Inmate’s names, of 0 course, will not be published, only the initials of each querist being used. (Ed.) Q: Can you please tell me what the popular vote was that was given to Theodore Roosevelt?—yf. B. A: Roosevelt, (Republican), received a majority vote of 2,545,575; his popular vote was 7,623,486. That of his near est rival, Alton B. Parker (Democrat), was 5,077,911. Q: —Will you please tell me what is meant by the length of sound waves? — E. Z. M. A: —The length of a sound wave embraces the distance from the point of greatest compression in one wave to the same point in the next. This depends upon the pitch for if a sound ing body is making one hundred vibrationsa a second, by the time? the one hundredth vibration is made, the wave from the first vibration will have traveled about eleven hundred feet from the startiug point, and the remaining ninety-eight waves will lie between the first and one hundredth. In consequence of this, the wave length for that particular sound will be about eleven feet. If the sounding body had made eleven hundred vi brations a second by the time the first wave had traveled eleven hundred feet, there would have been eleven hundred waves pro duced, and the wave length for that sound would be one foot. 'I he wave lengths of sounds produced by the human voice usu ally lay between one and eight feet, though some singers have produced notes having wave lengths as great as eighteen feet, and others have reached notes so high that the wave length was only about nine inches When a tuning fork is struck, it produces a sound so faint that it can scarcely be heard unless the fork is held near the ear; but if the end of the fork is held on a box or table, the sound rings out loudly and seems to come from the table. The ex planation of this is very simple. When only the fork vibrates, it produces very small sound waves, because its prongs are small and cut through the air. But when it is set on a box or table, its vibrations are communicated to the support, and the broader surface of the box or table sets a larger mass of air in vibration, and so amplifies the sound of the fork. When a sur face is used in this way to reinforce the vibrations of a small body, and thus produce sound waves of greater volume, it is called a sounding board. Many musical instruments, like the violin and the piano, owe the intensity of their sounds to sounding boards, which reinforce the vibrations of their strings. Columns of air, like sounding boards, serve to reinforce sound waves. Unlike sounding boards, however, they do not respond equally well to a large number of different sounds. They respond to one sound only, or to several widely different ones. This may be shown as follows: Take a glass tube about sixteen inches long, and two inches in diameter, and after thrusting one end into a vessel of water, hold a vibrating tuning fork over the other end. By gradually lowering the tube into the water a point will be reached at which the sound becomes very loud, and as this point is passed the sound gradu ally dies away again. By raising the tube again the sound is again made loud when the tube reaches a certain point. This shows that to reinforce sound waves of a certain vibration fre quency, the column of air in the tube must be of certain length. Let us now see why the waves produced by the tuning fork are reinforced only by a column of air of a certain length. When the prongs of the fork make a vibration, a wave of air is produced which enters the tube, goes down to the water, is re flected and comes back toward the fork. Now, if the reflected wave reaches the fork at the precise moment when it has com pleted one-half of its vibration and is about to begin upon the second half, it will strengthen the wave produced by the second half of the vibration; but if the reflected wave reaches the fork before or after the beginning of the second half of the vibra tion, it will not reinforce it. At the downward movement of the lower prong of the tuning fork, a wave of compression is sent down into the tube, and is reflected at the surface of the water. In order to reinforce the wave produced by the prong when it moves upward, the reflected wave must reach the fork just at the time that the prong reaches its normal position and before it starts upon the second half of its vibration. Not only do columns of air tend to reinforce notes having a certain rate of vibration, but all elastic bodies have a certain rate at which they tend to vibrate, and when sounds having the same rate of vibration are produced near them, these bodies will vibrate in sympathy with them. If the sounds be kept up long enough, the sympathetic vibrations in objects near them some times become so great that they can easily be seen. Goblets and tumblers made of thin glass show this property very strik ingly. When the proper notes are sounded the glasses take up the vibrations, and give a sound of the same pitch. If the note is loud, and is continued for some time, the vibrations of a glass sometimes becomes so great that the glass breaks. Large buildings, and bridges also, have rates at which they tend to vibrate, and this fact is the foundation for the old say ing, that a man may fiddle a bridge down, if he fiddles long enough.