A romance of Civil War times will reach its climax
in Richmond, Va., when Miss Gillie Cary, once one of
the belles of Richmond, becomes the bride of Colonel W.
Gordon McCabe, former headmaster of McCabe’s University
School, who for some time past has been devoting
his time to literary pursuits, writing for English
and American magazines.
Sweethearts during the stirring days of 1861-’65, when
McCabe was a dashing young officer in Lee’s army, the
two are said to have been parted by a trivial lovers’
quarrel. The colonel, after the war, married Miss Virginia
Osborne, of Petersburg, where he established his
school and made it one of the best in the South, educating
many young men who have since risen high. In
1895 he moved the school to Richmond, and seven years
later retired from active work. In 1912 he lost his
wife.
Not many months ago Miss Cary, who had remained
true to her first love, was rummaging among old papers,
when she came upon a batch of poems that the young
officer of war days had written to her. Soon afterward
she met him and the old flame was fanned to new life.
The colonel once more became a suitor.
Now they are planning to spend their honeymoon in
Charleston, S. C., where one of the colonel’s sons is head
of a large cotton firm.
Countess Jeanne Demadre, once belle of European
courts, convent mate, and friend of Princess Eugenie, who
later became wife of Napoleon III., died recently in a
humble cottage in a secluded spot in South Bend, Ind.
Few knew her, and none of her acquaintances realized
that half a century ago she was considered a world
beauty and the associate of the crowned heads of Europe.
A brief twelve-line obituary chronicled the death of
the woman, giving her name as Mrs. Peter Veuve and
her age as eighty-three. Her only surviving relative is
her heartbroken husband.
The countess was born the daughter of Count Hippolyte
Henri Demadre Desoursins, June 24, 1831, in the
mansion opposite the Royal Palace in Brussels, according
to the register of the Royal Church, in Brussels.
She was sent to a French convent, and there she became
a friend of Princess Eugenie, who was destined
later to become the wife of Napoleon III.
She left the convent when she was eighteen years
old, and when she was nineteen she became the wife
of a Frenchman named Baudin.
Her presentation at the court of Belgium took place
shortly after she left the convent, and after her school
friend Eugenie became the queen of Napoleon III., she
was presented at the French court and later at the
court of Queen Victoria.
She invested a fortune in De Lesseps’ Panama Canal
scheme after her husband died, and later she opened a
toilet shop in Paris, and, by catering to royalty, amassed
another fortune. During the Franco-Prussian War, she
became a nurse and was decorated with a gold medal.
Her son met with an accident in New York, and his
mother came to the United States to be with him when
he died. She later married Peter Veuve, a Swiss. The
latter made unwise investments, and twelve years ago,
practically penniless, the couple came to South Bend.
How does a great preacher’s mind work? Insight into
this mystery is gained from the letters of the Reverend
Frederick Robertson, a popular preacher at Brighton,
England.
He died before he was forty, of brain disease brought
on by overwork, broken down by the nervous strain of
preaching.
Robertson wasted his strength very often in small controversies,
such as Sunday observance, and the unfortunate
fact that he had no sense of humor often led him
to take seriously and regret childishly, and answer bitterly,
criticisms which were not worth thinking about and
critics wholly unworthy of his steel.
Robertson himself knew that certain serious defects of
character are almost inseparable from the preacher’s
office.
“I wish I did not hate preaching so much,” he wrote
one day; “the degradation of being a Brighton preacher
is at times almost intolerable,” and, again he regrets that
he has weakened his nervous system by “stump oratory.”
Preaching always excited him, and a sermon would
leave him for days too much agitated to work. He
doubted often if he ought not to give it up—for the
sake of his spirit—though he would not attend to his
doctor’s advice and give it up for the sake of his body.
Blameless as was his life, and fruitful as were his
exhortations, he could not escape the minor dangers which
the pulpit shares with the stage. He grew sensitive and
self-centered, he came to need the stimulus of a crowd
moved to emotion.
Close as were his intimacies and wide as were his
benevolences, the circle of his affections was latterly narrow,
indeed. Yet he hated excitement as much as he
craved it. He wrote:
“I am persuaded there are few things morally so bad
as excitement of the nerves in any way; nothing—to borrow
a military word and use it in a military sense—nothing
demoralizes so much as excitement. It destroys the
tone of the heart; leaves an exhaustion which craves
stimulus, and utterly unfits for duty. High-wrought feeling
must end in wickedness; a life of excitement is inseparable
from a life of vice. The opera, the stage, the
ballroom, French literature, and irregular life—what must
they terminate in?”
Not many people realize that there is a special sort
of whetstone for nearly every purpose. The proper
sharpening stones or abrasives for use in various professions
and trades and in household work are exhibited in
the division of mineral technology in the older building
of the United States National Museum, at Washington,
D. C.
The exhibit shows specimens of the crude and partially
prepared stones and the finished products ready for use,
as well as a series of photographs which illustrate
the operations of mining and preparing them.
Probably the first stone used for abrasive purposes was
sandstone, a very widely distributed rock, and it is still
used to-day. Its coarse grit and even grain first attracted
attention, while the rough edge that it gave was all that
was then required.
With the progress of the arts there began a search for
various stones which could be used for sharpening objects
of different sorts, so that to-day, not only sandstones,
but mica schists, slates, and emery stones are
used, besides several artificial compounds.
The hard, white, compact sandstones found near Hot
Springs, Arkansas, are among the best whetstones known,
equaling, if not surpassing, the Turkey stone, which for
years has been considered one of the best. This Arkansas
stone is known as novaculite, and occurs in two or three
grades, intended for use with certain tools.
The hard, flintlike stone should be used only to sharpen
instruments made of the very best steel, requiring very
keen edges and points, such as those used by surgeons,
dentists, and jewelers.
The other grades, although composed of the same ingredients,
are more porous, the sand grains are not as
close together, and a rougher edge is given to the
sharpened tool. Because of their more porous nature,
these stones cut faster, proving suitable for the finer-edged
tools of carpenters, machinists, and engravers, and
for honing razors.
Indiana and Ohio supply a whetstone made from a
sandstone of a coarser grain than the novaculite of
Arkansas, but nevertheless quite uniform. It may be used
with either oil or water, and is useful for sharpening
household cutlery, penknives, or ordinary carpenters’ tools.
But since it is easily cut and grooved by hard and sharp
steel, the fine instruments of dentists and surgeons should
not be edged or pointed on this stone.
Scythe stones and mowing machine stones are practically
all made from mica-schist rock found in New
Hampshire and Vermont. These rocks are generally of
a dark-gray color, and composed of very thin sheets of
mica and quartz crystals interlaminated.
A simple experiment made about fifteen years ago led
to the discovery of carborundum and crystolon. By heating
a mixture of salt, sand, and sawdust, and powdered
coke in an electric furnace, the variegated colored crystals
of carborundum and crystolon were produced.
These crystals are extremely hard, cutting glass easily,
and, in fact, almost any substance except the diamond.
Emery cloth and paper are very well-known commodities,
but are little used to-day because the artificial
abrasives are just as effective and cheaper. Experiments
to obtain an artificial product having the main characteristics
of emery resulted in the making of alundom and
aloxite, both of which are shown in the museum series.
California, with an area of 158,000 square miles, is the
second largest State in the Union. It exhibits wide
geographic diversity, for it includes the lowest area in the
United States—Death Valley, 276 feet below sea level—and
the highest—Mount Whitney, 14,501 feet above the
sea.
Similarly there is a great diversity in scenic effects,
climate, and vegetation. Records obtained at meteorologic
stations in the Salton Sink indicate a maximum temperature
of 130 degrees in the shade, the highest recorded
within the continental United States, while it is probable
that minimum temperature on the higher peaks, like Mount
Whitney and Mount Shasta, approach the minimum within
our boundaries, a total difference of nearly 200 degrees.
Records of rainfall in the most arid sections of the
southern deserts of the State represent the extreme of
aridity in the United States, showing an annual average
of less than three inches and periods of twelve months
or more, with only traces of rain, whereas the precipitation
in northwestern California is very heavy, an annual
average of close to one hundred inches being recorded
at a few stations in Mendocino and Del Norte Counties.
“Learn how to box! Latest tricks of the ring taught!
Exhibitions of shadow boxing with all the swings, jabs,
and hooks daily! Reasonable fees—honey, apples, and
all kinds of sweets accepted in unlimited quantities, honey
preferred. Professor Zip. Studio, Central Park.”
“Bill” Snyder, head keeper of the Central Park Zoölogical
Gardens, New York, N. Y., is the manager of Professor
Zip, while James Coyle, who looks after the bear
pen, is the active assistant of the professor. He has to
think quickly and act quickly, for professor knows all
the fine points of the boxing game, and when the keeper
faces him for his training bout every day, he has to be
on the alert. The professor knows the swings and jabs
and can sidestep and dodge with the best of the ring
artists.
Boxing is not the professor’s only accomplishment. He
is “some” dancer, too, and plays his own music, furnishing
original bear tunes for each lesson, playing it
himself and composing as the dance proceeds. You don’t
often find a boxing teacher who invents new dance steps
and hops, composes music, and plays it, too.
Zip does all these things, and, besides, has tricks galore.
For a nice red apple he’ll give an exhibition of shadow
boxing that would shame any star of the ring. For a bit
of candy he’ll turn somersaults and do all sorts of gymnastics,
but when honey is handed to him, he is in his
element, and that is the time he plays his bear tunes
and steps off in a way that the best tango “bug” would
envy.
Zip can be seen any day doing his “stunts” in the bear
pen at the Central Park menagerie. He is a small, black-brown
sloth bear, a new arrival at the park, for he has
been there little more than a month, but in that time he
has won more friends than any other animal in Bill
Snyder’s collection. He is particularly popular with the
children, who flock to his pen every afternoon to watch
him dance and box with “Jimmie” Coyle. One particular
friend of Zip is a young woman who visits the bear
pen every afternoon with a supply of honey. Once he
gets a taste of that, Zip goes through all his tricks.
He plays the harmonica, dances, does gymnastic stunts,
and then jerks “Buster,” his companion, to his feet and
proceeds to knock him all around the ring. For Buster
is a novice at the boxing game. Buster never could box
until Zip came. Then, when he found that Zip got all
the “sweets,” Buster became jealous, and one day tried to
beat Zip at his own game. But Buster is too old to learn.
He can’t get any music out of the harmonica on which
Zip composes his dance music, and as for boxing, Zip
just uses him for a punching bag.
When Jimmie Coyle found that Zip was a boxer, he,
having ambitions in that line himself, went after the
bear in true ring fashion, but Zip knew too many tricks,
and, after giving Coyle a good pummelling the first two
or three days, to show him how little he knew about
the game, he permitted him to act as his trainer, so that
every day the keeper and the bear have a few rounds in
the pen, while Buster looks on and watches for pointers.
Zip was presented to the menagerie by Charles B. Knox,
of Jamestown, N. Y. Mr. Knox got the bear when he
was a cub, and in the next few months he became a great
pet of the family. He used to ride with Mr. Knox on
the front seat of his automobile and learned lots of
tricks. Mr. Knox also had a big Newfoundland dog,
“Jack,” and he and Zip became great chums; in fact, it
is said that Zip learned all his dance steps from Jack, for
they were often seen dancing together at Mr. Knox’s
home. Finally, however, Zip became too big for a household
pet, and it was feared that he might get too mischievous,
so Mr. Knox offered him to Bill Snyder, who
just then was looking for a bear to take the place of
Buster’s mate, who died about six weeks ago. So Zip
was shipped down to Central Park, and there he was in
his element at once, for all the kiddies who know every
animal in the park made friends with him and brought him
good things to eat as soon as they saw he could do so
many tricks.
Mining experts in the Philippines agree that a steady
increase in the gold production of the islands may be
expected for an indefinite period.
It is possible for the human ear to distinguish sounds
over a range of about eleven octaves, but only seven and
one-third octaves are used in music.
After twelve years of experimenting, a Dresden engineer
has succeeded in perfecting a rocket carrying a
camera to photograph objects and places over which it
passes, being returned to the ground by a parachute.
Several of the most common diseases, including typhoid
and arthritis, have been practically banished from the
United States navy by the use of distilled water for cooking,
as well as drinking.
Italian canners are now utilizing the skins and seeds
of tomatoes, the former for stock feed and the latter for
oil, in its crude form, for soap and illumination, and,
when refined, for table use.
A project for draining and reclaiming 1,000,000 acres
of land in Egypt, work upon which has been begun, is
one of the greatest and most expensive tasks of the kind
ever attempted.
A new automobile convenience is a wind or light shield
for one person that can be mounted at any angle by rods
connected to the steering post.
For public places there has been invented a drinking
fountain that dispenses ordinary water free and ice
water when a coin is dropped in a slot.
An observatory at Berlin holds the world’s most accurate
clock, which is kept in an airtight glass cylinder in
the basement of the building.
An old idea in the history of telephony has been revived
by a British inventor, who has patented a transmitter
shaped like the human ear.
A simple wire loop to be fastened to a doorjamb and
locked around the necks of two milk bottles to prevent
their theft has been patented.
A telescope with two parallel barrels, to permit two persons
to see the same object at the same time, has been
invented by a Swiss optician.
An ingenious tool has been invented to enable jewelers
to remove stones from settings quickly and without injury
to either stone or setting.
So that wheelbarrows can be used over snow and ice, a
Wisconsin inventor has patented a runner attachment.
A new sled that can be steered has three runners, the
odd one being in front, where it is controlled by a
handle.
Peruvian petroleum is said to rank next to that of Russia
in its suitability for producing high-grade lubricants.
With but three horses to each 100 residents, Switzerland
has the smallest equine population of any nation.
The head of a new thumb tack is a clip to hold paper
without puncturing it.
There were 1,220 accidents, causing 1,753 deaths, in
British coal mines last year.
Powdered borax sprinkled on a garbage can or refuse
pile will drive away flies.
Nearly seven million white, foreign-born males over the
age of twenty-one years are now in the United States.
About 400,000 of these are English and 600,000 Irish, the
total from the United Kingdom being about 1,300,000.
There are less than 60,000 French, about 800,000 Russians,
and 1,300,000 Germans.
Of the English, sixty per cent are naturalized American
citizens; of the Irish, about sixty-nine per cent; of
the French, fifty per cent, and of the Russians, twenty-six
per cent.
Of the Germans, about seventy per cent are naturalized
Americans, showing a more marked and more permanent
absorption into the life of their adopted country than is
the case with the other nationalities.
Miss Elaine Thompson, of Maplewood, N. J., is an
amateur ventriloquist. Yesterday, on a street car, she
frightened two Newark women into a faint by making
a noise like a dog yelping under the car. The lines
were blockaded and the car jacked up before it was discovered
that Miss Thompson was just having a little
joke.
Fox trotting and other modern dances are proper amusement
for young people, according to Reverend Allen A.
Stockdale, pastor of the First Congregational Church, a
meeting place for many of Toledo’s wealthiest families.
The assertion of the pastor came in response to the
question if dancing had been indulged in at the church.
Doctor Stockdale admitted that members of the church
had danced.
The city of Prince Rupert, B. C., Pacific coast terminal
of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, has once more witnessed
the yearly recurring phenomenon of having its
large harbor so densely packed with huge schools of
herring as to make the progress of rowboats a difficult
matter. This year’s schools were exceptionally large, and
so dense that the immense body of fish seemed like one
solid moving mass. Men and boys on the G. T. P. docks
hauled in literally millions of these fish in buckets, wire
waste-paper baskets, and almost any utensil that was
handy.
Some of these herrings were taken by the fish companies
and frozen in boxes for use as bait in fishing for
halibut. They are an excellent table fish, but so far
comparatively few of them are being shipped, although
several inland cities have made inquiries. Fishermen say
that the herring took sheltered bays to escape the whales
which prey on them in certain localities in the Pacific during
their migrations.
Two cougars, trapped more than a year ago in a river
cañon by A. J. Holman, of Mondovi, Wash., have been
reduced to such docile temper that for many months
their captor has daily entered the crib in which they are
kept.
J. A. Hart, who lives about six miles south of Eureka,
Kan., has a freak of nature in the shape of a two-legged
kitten that walks, jumps, and frisks about like any normal
kitten. The kitten is now about three months old, is
plump and well grown, and appears to be a normal, healthy
kitten in every respect except that it hasn’t the vestige
of a hip bone or hind legs, and, what is more strange, it
does not seem to feel the need of another pair of legs and
feet any more than a duck or any other biped.
It walks about on the two front feet with easy, graceful
equipoise, waving its tail over its back. When it
pauses, it sits down naturally, and the casual observer
might not notice the absence of the hind legs and feet.
One mate to this kitten is normal in every respect, but
another one of the same litter lacked the hip bones and
hind legs. This kitten was growing nicely, but was
accidentally caught in a trap and died from the injuries.
Had it lived, the two would have made a strange pair of
kittens.
People of melancholic temperament rarely have clear
blue eyes.
The chameleon is almost the only reptile provided with
an eyelid.
Eyes with long, sharp corners indicate great discernment
and penetration.
Unsteady eyes, rapidly jerking from side to side, are
frequently indicative of an unsettled mind.
It is said that the prevailing colors of eyes among
patients of lunatic asylums are brown and black.
Eyes placed close together in the head are said to indicate
pettiness of disposition, jealousy, and a turn for
fault finding.
All men of genius are said to have eyes clear, slow
moving, and bright. This is the eye which indicates mental
ability of some kind—it does not matter what.
To lift 550 pounds one foot in one second requires
what is known as one horse power. Similarly, a horse
power is able to raise twice that weight one foot in twice
the time or one-half foot in just that time. Moreover,
it can raise half 550 pounds one foot in half a second,
or two feet in a second, and so on. Therefore, when
we lift one-fourth of that weight, 137½ pounds, four
feet in one second, we are exerting a horse power.
Accordingly, when a person who weighs 137½ pounds
runs upstairs at the rate of four feet a second, he is exerting
the equivalent of a horse power. For a man weighing
twice that much, 275 pounds, it would be necessary
to climb at the rate of only two feet a second to exert
a horse power. It is possible to do much more.
As a matter of fact, a horse often exerts many times a
horse power. The average horse can draw a wagon
up a hill where a ten-horse power engine with the same
load would fail. A horse power does not represent the
greatest momentary strength of the average horse, but is
a measure of the power which he can exert continuously.
To be a poor little girl with the poor little girl’s dream
of some day becoming a princess with untold wealth and
then to suddenly find that the wealthy part of the dream
has come true, is the experience of fifteen-year-old Josephine
Romano, of Boston, Mass.
Josephine’s dream of wealth came true when she was
awarded $16,000 by a jury for injuries sustained several
years ago when she was hit and tripped by a live wire
which was dangling from one of the Boston elevated
poles. She was so severely burned about the head, face,
and hands that the marks will remain on her body
for life.
“It is so much money that I don’t know what to do
with it,” she said. “I think I’ll put it in the bank and then
be a real lady.”
The economic situation in Spain is becoming steadily
more serious, notwithstanding the efforts of the government
to find a solution for the difficulties which confront
the country. It is feared that conditions will soon become
so bad that they may lead to a conflict fraught with
grave consequences.
Dispatches from the provinces tell of numerous riots
resulting from the high cost of food. In some interior
districts and in the Canary Islands the people get food
only every other day. Many families are said to be living
on herbs and roots. A woman said to have been
driven mad by privation, drowned herself with her children
at Lazaretos.
Fierce rioting resulted at Lacele from the increased
price of bread. The civil guards are reported to have fired
into the crowd, killing one and wounding many.
Miss Alma Brewer, of Como, Miss., is proudly exhibiting
a common hen’s egg which she recently found in
a nest which measures six and three-fourth inches around
and seven and five-eighths inches the long way.
A more favorable view of the discipline in the Russian
army in Galicia than prevailed during the autumn
invasion of East Prussia is given by Leonhard Adelt, the
war correspondent of the Tageblatt, who recently visited
Neu-Sandec, on the Dunajec River, a short time after it
had been evacuated by the Russian army.
At the corner of one street he saw a hook fastened to
the wall, from which, as he was informed by the citizens,
the Russians had hanged one of their soldiers for
plundering. There was still visible on the adjacent wall
the following inscription:
“The czar sent out soldiers, not pillagers, to fight for
him.”
Adelt goes on to say that the Russians maintained
strict discipline in the city. As further examples of their
stringency, he mentions that one soldier who stole a ham
was given fifty strokes with the knout, while another,
who strayed into the quarters of other soldiers and made
undue noise there, got thirty strokes.
In Bukowina the Russians demonstrated the sincerity
of their newly acquired temperance principles by emptying
all strong liquors into the gutters.
The German prisoner who was shot through the lungs
some time ago by a sentry while trying to escape from
the internment camp near Kingston, Jamaica, is dead from
his wounds. He persisted in stoning the guard who shot
him. Since this affair, no other attempts to escape have
been made.
In round numbers there are now 1,600,000 automobiles
in the country, and not one of them can possibly get
along with less than four tires a year. The most conservative
estimate must place the number per car at six
tires a year. This would be 9,600,000 tires. In addition,
there are scheduled for manufacture during 1915 not less
than 600,000 new cars, which must be fitted with at least
2,400,000 new tires, making a total of at least 12,000,000
tires. In reality, the number is much greater, even though
a million or more tires are “retreaded,” fitted with
“covers,” et cetera. Taxicabs and some of the high-powered
converted racing cars could not possibly get
along with less than twenty tires a year. The money
spent for tires in 1914 in the United States alone probably
exceeded $200,000,000.
The London County Council is not encouraging the
changing of German street names. Despite the fact that
the borough council of Stoke Newington requested that
Wiesbaden Road should be renamed Beatty Road, after
the naval hero, the local government committee, in a
report that will be submitted to-day, says it is not satisfied
that a sufficient cause for alteration has been made
out.
Recently the county council decided to take no action
with regard to renaming Berlin Road Gatford Road.
Suggestions have been made by many citizens to change
the names of Hanover Square and St. Petersburg Place.
Libya, in Africa, again has given an ancient piece of
sculpture to the world. At Cyrene, once the principal
city of ancient Cyrenaica, a colossal statue of Alexander
the Great, lacking only a part of the right forearm, has
been excavated. It is a magnificent marble copy of the
celebrated bronze of Alexander by Lysippus, which is
known only by the copies of it on coins, the original having
been destroyed.
The statue probably was made fifty or sixty years after
the original, in the third or fourth century before Christ.
It is larger than life and represents Alexander, entirely
nude, standing, looking upward, with his right arm outstretched
and his left holding a spear, on which he is
leaning.
Boy scouts are now engaged in the navy of Great
Britain for signaling and are receiving more pay than
midshipmen. More than 12,000 scouts have entered military
service of one kind or another, and 2,000 more who
are nearing the age of enlistment are in training.
At the outbreak of the war the scouts by thousands
guarded telegraphs, telephones, and bridges, served as
messengers, and performed countless duties of value to
the war office and the admiralty. More than 5,000 medals
have been given to scouts who performed not less than
twenty-eight days of service. About 50,000 boys have
served a fewer number of days.
The sea branch of the movement volunteered to carry
out the duties of the coast guardsmen recalled to the
fleet, and they were detailed to duties on the east coast.
This required more boys than this branch could supply,
and the land scouts joined, and now 1,600 boys are so
employed in patrols of eight, under their own leaders
and with their own equipment.
The colored porter at H. T. Whitfield’s billiard room,
in Murfreesboro, Tenn., captured a freak rat. The
rodent’s head and front part of its body is pure black,
while the other half is snow white, excepting a black line
running along the center of its back to the tail. The
rat is still in captivity, and the owner has been offered
ten dollars for it. When caught, it was very vicious and
made several attempts to bite its captor.
Will Pline, a farmer living five miles from Lebanon,
Mo., was surprised on finding that one of his newborn
calves has three mouths, and was as spry as any calf in
his herd.
The mouths are all on the front of the animal’s head,
one being up between the horns and another just below
that, and the third a little lower down.
Mr. Pline feeds the calf milk, which it seems to relish
as any ordinary calf. It seems as though the animal will
live, for when any one enters the lot where it is kept, it
will run and play as though it felt healthy and strong.
A cat and a dog can be friendly—aye, even more. The
old argument was settled here with a statement from
Reverend Father Bernard of the Fort Yates Catholic
Church, of Fort Yates, N. D., that he had just married
Miss Rose High Cat to Harry Poor Dog. They are
Sioux Indians.
To accommodate visitors at the Panama-Pacific Exposition,
the Southern Pacific Railway Company has constructed
a building, 200 feet square and in classic style,
standing between the west portal of the Zone and the
Machinery Palace.
The structure has a cozy rest room for women, with
a nurse in charge, and is furnished with writing desks,
easy-chairs, and newspapers from all parts of the United
States. There is a similar room for men.
The entrance leads through the heart of a California
big tree. The whole inclosure is a miniature woodland,
with trails winding among the trees. Through this woodland
a path leads to the offices of the company, where a
squad of information clerks are ready to answer all
questions.
Opening out of the ticket office is Sunset Theater, a
replica of The Little Theater, in New York City, where
stereopticon scenes and motion pictures are presented.
The company has engaged lecturers, and their talks are
interspersed with musical selections rendered on the
great Kimball pipe organ.
A strange creature, presenting anatomical characteristics
which might be attributed to fish, snake, or lizard,
has been placed on exhibition in a business house in Bicknell,
Ind. No one has found a name that seems to fit
the animal, or reptile, which was caught by Grant Hooper
and Carl York, fishermen.
The body of the creature is twelve inches long, and in
shape resembles the old-fashioned four-cornered dart kite.
The head, in form, is like a snake’s, but the resemblance
ends there, for four sharp tusks protrude from the mouth.
Apparently the creature breathes through gills similar
to those of a fish. The horns and ears, which follow
closely the forms of the human ear, give a peculiar appearance
to the head. The skin or hide is black and white
in color.
So heavy is a great fourteen-inch gun just completed,
to guard New York City from hostile attack, that it broke
down one of the two flat cars conveying it along the
West Shore Railroad, near Cornwall, on its way to Sandy
Hook, to be mounted.
It is said to be the most powerful fourteen-inch gun
ever made. It was on its way from Watervliet Arsenal
when the journal of one of the cars, overtaxed by its
excessive weight, wore out and had to be replaced. The
gun extends almost the length of the two cars, the breech
resting on the rear one.
Becoming peeved over the fact that the Big Four Railroad
did not have a train scheduled to leave at a
time when he desired to return to his home, Benjamin
Yentzer hung up a walking record for one of his
age. Although eighty-seven, he walked from Tiffin to
Adrian, Ohio, twelve miles, and made the journey in two
hours. He was feeling fine at the end of the walk,
too.
Much of the flavor and other virtues of meat and
vegetables are lost while undergoing the cooking operation,
being carried away in the escaping vapor and heat.
In a recently invented kettle, a lid is sealed on under
pressure. This prevents the escape of steam and facilitates
the cooking process. It is claimed that not only is
the cooking done in much shorter time, but that foods
prepared in this manner have a more delicate flavor. The
lid is held in place by means of a lever which is easily
manipulated. In order to prevent the possibility of an explosion
when the kettle is on the stove, the lid is fitted
with automatic safety valve which permits the steam to
blow off when the pressure approaches the danger
point.
Still enjoying good health at the great age of 106 years,
Mrs. Abigail Morrill passed another milestone, and has
the distinction of being the oldest person in Newburyport,
Mass.
Mrs. Morrill was born on a farm in West Newbury in
1809, and has lived in this vicinity all her life. She has
for several years resided with her daughter, Mrs. Abby
Morrill Oliver.
She is the mother of ten children, three of whom are
now living; Mrs. Oliver, of this city, Louis Morrill, of
West Newbury, and George Morrill, of Lynn, the two
sons being survivors of the Civil War.
Her husband was the late Jacob Morrill, of this city,
to whom she was married May 4, 1835. There are eleven
grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren. Except for
being slightly hard of hearing, Mrs. Morrill has her faculties
well preserved.
The newest shaving mug is equipped with a little alcohol
lamp. So little water is required that it takes but a
short time to heat it to the boiling temperature. The invention
is one that will be appreciated by traveling men
especially, as the mug is not much larger than the ordinary
kind, and is, of course, much easier to carry about than
shaving outfits. In fact, it seems odd that the invention
was not thought of before. The interior of the cup is
of a substance not injured by heat, and the lamp is lighted
from the bottom. Hot water may thus be obtained at
any time in a few seconds.
After carrying a bullet in his head for nearly fifty
years, or ever since the battle of Gettysburg, Calvin Cook,
a Confederate soldier living in Catawba County, N. C.,
has sneezed from his nose a leaden pellet commonly
called “buckshot.” He was wounded in the head at Gettysburg
and eventually recovered from the wound, only
to be troubled many years by what was designated as
some sort of growth in his nasal passages. During a recent
sneezing fit he “blew” his nose with uncommon
vigor, and out rolled his souvenir of the greatest battle
of the Civil War. His nasal trouble vanished when the
“growth” rolled out.
A New Yorker of wide experience, has written a
book telling how the tobacco or snuff habit may be
easily and completely banished in three days with
delightful benefit. The author, Edward J. Woods,
230 G, Station E, New York City, will mail his book
free on request.
The health improves wonderfully after the nicotine
poison is out of the system. Calmness, tranquil sleep,
clear eyes, normal appetite, good digestion, manly
vigor, strong memory and a general gain in efficiency
are among the many benefits reported. Get rid of that
nervous feeling; no more need of pipe, cigar, cigarette,
snuff or chewing tobacco to pacify morbid desire.
