Evening Star Newspaper, August 13, 1892, Page 10

—<S RUSSIAN VILLAGERS. PEASANT RUSSIA. A Look at Bussia’s Half Million Villages and Their Institutions. ‘The Land of the Crar—How the People Really Govern Themselves and Their Wonderful Communal System—How the Lands Are Divided—The Freedom of the Serfe—The Garden of Russia. POSE ee Bpecial Correspondence of The Evening Star. Tamsorr, Russta, July 12, 1892. WRITE THIS LET- 7 ter in the heart of the | great black plain of e Russia, I am two days’ ‘ZEW ride by rail south of Moscow, in the ragged * little city of Temboff, and I have been travel- ing for days through some of the richest lands on the face of God’s greenearth. This binck plain extends from Poland far into Siberia. It is as fist as a floor, as rich as guano and as black as your hat. Its soil is made up of decomposed vegetable matter, and it makes me think of the richest fields of Kansas, which Senator Ingalls once told me were so good that you could thrnst your arm down into them up to the shoulder and pull out from the bottom handfuls of black earth as rich as that of the valley of the Nile. ‘This soil of the black plain is an almost natural | manure. I: pulverizes easily and it ranges all the way from three to five feet deep. It is the garden of Russia, and it bas been called the Glsay,cf Enrope. For hundreds of rears it produced the ric! crops with no scien- iss ieee peoaieed by aoming, to oood hes been yy sowing merely ite surface with aft hl 3 Bas H | iH Bs pour into i ‘and financial condition of the world would be changed. FACTS ABOUT RUST A. In order to get any idea of the Russian empire and ite people one must get ont of the cities and day is an agricultural country, and it is among the ts that vou find the elements that are te the world im the future. There are more than 100,000,000 of these peacants, and it | is an interesting study to look at them and the vast (05. Fe more than 800,000,000 acres of ills lie north of the center of the country and a Water shed, so that from them by Most gradual fall the water runs from these both nurth and south. Russia is well watered. and great rivers cut their way through the land, giving her irrigation and transporta- tion’ facilities. irrigation is aa et on fs the Mississippi and itis 2,300 rans through eastern ‘part of European Rusma and it has such branches that it forms a tuade artery for central and south Russia and Siberia. It ig connected by canal with the Neva and goods can be taken by water frour Astrakabn to St. Petersburg, and by bundreds $f it brenches and connections can be shipped the Baltic to the most out of the way of the country., The Don, which flows the Black sea, runs for a part of its course net far from the Volga, an > ® and an overcoat, while I spepting in my shirt sleeves, Northen Hass covered with forests, and the czar has probably more wood than all the rest-of raya ako From the Bgltic to Moscow there is little else than forests, There are vast hich ht wander for hundreds and | which you might wander for | hundreds en A 7 SOME BABIES OF THE VI 400,000,000 acres, and takes in the most of the northern part of Russia in Europe. Bglow this zone of forests comes this black lands zone | where Inow am, and below this and running | parallel with it ncross Russia is the arable | steppes zone, which is bringing forth good crops, but which needs manure to help it, and which in its character is much like our westera prairies. It is used largely for i and it grows wild grasses which are often seven and eight feet high. , This zone has as much land as Texas. and it is said that Texas conld feed the whole United States. Iam told that the soil in that part of Russia is much like that of Texas, and when Russia is well opened up by railroads this zone will be an important factor in the agricultural markets of the world. it is now only about one-tenth of even the ‘k lands’ region is cultivated and Russia al- ready supplies the greater part of the food of Europe. Germany and the’ other countries of the continent have been much affected by the ‘ohibition of the grain exports from Russia during the famine, and it is this more than an’ thing else that has set the Germans to studying and experimenting on our corn to sce if they cannot get some combiration of corn and rve which will feed their army and leave them in- dependent of Russia. As it is they have been getting large proportion of their rye from Russia and rye is the staple bread food of the Germans. HOW RUSSIAN LANDS ARE DIVIDED, The land laws of Russia are far di‘ferent from those of the United States and the land is vided up in a way that is not known elsewhere. The czar owns more than half of all the lands of the empire and a great part of the vast forests | of Ruesia belong to the crown. These forests are managed by the officers of the crown and the wood from them is eut by the peasants either for wages or on speculation. The crown has something like 30,000,000 acres of forests, and it has avast area of land which is leased out and which brings a regular yearly revenue. The most of its lands lie in the northern part of the country and a large per cent of them are unproductive. Next to the czar come the peasants, who own about 27 per cent or only a little more than a! fourth of European Russia, and the great bulk | of this land is mortgaged to the state and is | being paid for pn the insteilment plan. This peasant land is owned not ty individuals but by Villages in common, and there villages have as- | med the debt for the land which was assessed | them at the time that the serfs were freed by | sand nd they work the lands in com- | mon, dividing them up among themselvesevery there are a baif | which is about the THE BLACK LAND ZONE. FARMING IN f 3 i i ! i g 2 i if Be Hl Hh if bili See HoH | Asiatic tribes, and some of the new territories, as Finland and Poland, are to a certain extent different from the pure Rus- sians, but the greet: Russia isa village, Russia Russians as @ nation are the peasants, ‘4 RUSSIAN VILLAGE. Iwas surprised during a call which I made on ex-Minister to Russia Lothrop at his home in Detroit to hear him say that Russia was the most republican country in the world and that its people, toa large extent, governed them- selves, I ‘find this to be true, Each of the | 500,000 villages is a little en Ita imhati- tants elect tl own courts, for all @rdinary offenses, by judges elected by it. Every village has a little assembly of its own made up of one mem: ber to every five houses, and these men manage by vote and its the affairs of the village. The village, you know, owns the land and this assembly i from time to time among the people, giving each family @ certain number of acres accord- ing to the nymber in it to its working power, After such a division the lan are left with the families to which they are allotted until the next division, when they re- vert to the village to be given out to the eam reons or to others as the assembly may see it. This assembly fixes the dates of harvesting, the time of sowing crops and it 8 all arrangements as to the collection of taxes. The government of the czar taxes the village a lump sum, and this assembly apportions this tax among those who should pay it. No one can leave the village without the permission of the assembly or without leaving behind him guarantee in some shape or other. that his share of the imperial taxes will be paid, anda drunken, good for nothing is often voted out of the villa y of the village lands goés back to the village. Each village elects two petty judges, who settle al! emall suits relating to sums of less than @8 and pett; quarrels, and larger suite are settled up to certain amount by a higher court elected by fixed number of villages and formed into an ~~ COMMON. si bi ‘There re : ea of land held in | this way in different parts of Russia, or enough | land to make eight states the tize of Ohio or | three acres per person. POOR NOBLES. The Russian nobility, who used to own nearly all of this peasant land and who tilla genera- rembly called “the volost.” Every thousand peojle among the ate have one of thee assemblie« and the: mn days, w et er, and ze 1O8e these courts b: “anal ave judges appoin by the there are trials courts made up theezar and partly by o| tea appt give tion ago bad the peasants as their serfs or half | prise slaves, are growing poorer and poorer. 8 received pay for their lands which were given to the peasants on a basis of a 6 per cent revenue value of them. But ther have not made lee out of their sales, and they are gradually ing what they have left, and in the future Russia may some time become a land of small | Rroprietors. Yet as it is they still have 4 vast of real estate, and I have traveled through the farms of nobles where you could ride all day on horseback af a good Russian fastest in the world, not vigable rivers " f : fi il Pel? & f E g i I i [ } | was a series faraine of been | | | which go into the Black | get to the end of their estates. Almost ia filed with lakes and | the nobles are extravagant. it is ouly in the south that the lack fome as poor as church mi to be i nd oe of « long Hi 3 4 pif | f He ire managed | in, divides this | big thing in ‘our 8,000,000, but Ruséla at but as villages, not ‘the individuals re- time of payment tor an 5tb0, 000.008 or more than 85,000,000 acres. | ve bought more land and some of the peasants have bought land. and nold it in addition to the village land. Buch cases are, however, comparatively very few, ian peasant is naturally improvident and unambitious. He has but few wants, and be lives as far as he ean from hand {0 mouth, fe has not yet reac! stage of aspiring independence and to the ordinary comforts of life, and his dependence asa serf with all the shiftlessness that comes with such a condition clings to him more than it does to our negroes in the worst parts of the south. Naturally, however, he is physically and intellectually the eqeal of any man on the face of the earth, and when he is once roused up to his possibilities and shown how he can realize them he will develop into one of the strongest men of the fnture. No one can go among the Kussian peasants without being struck by the wonderful strength of feature: of both men and women. Teee every day scores of peasants whose faces would attract attention in any American crowd, and the women I meet are motherly, womanly looking women. There are very few villainous faces, and the patriarchal men who look as thongh they were men of authority and force are to be seen on every side. I visited a Russian bath in Moscow where I saw an hundred odd men stark naked, steam- d scrubbing their milk whit sand I was struck by the splendid phrsique which every one of them possessed. re was of the whole hundred not one who had not broad shoulders and big bones. All were tall and stout, and when I thought that these men were not picked athletes, but merely an average crowd at a public bath house, I felt the ataying wer of these hundred odd millions as I never d before. During the past few days I have been visiting these peasants in their fields and in their villages. I have gone into their houses and have talked with ail c! of them. They seem to me like a vast nation of palo | men who, with the strength of a giant, have all the simplicity and ignorance of a semi-savage child. Inanother letter I will take you into one of their villages and show you as well as I can just how they look, act and live. 3 Frank G. Carpenter. a ENGLISH YOUNGER SONS. A Great Number of Them “Roughing It” in the West. Correspondence of Harper's Weekly. The proportion of young English gentlemen | who are roughing it in the west far exceeds | that of the young Americans. This is due to | the fact that the former have never been taught a trad@or profession and have nothing | in consequence when they have been cheated of | the money they brought with them to invest but their hands to help them and so take to driving horses or branding cattle or digging in | the streets, as one graduate of Oxford, sooner | than write home for money, did in Denver. Ho, | snow teaching Greek and Latin in one of our colleges, The manner in which visiting English- men are robbed in the west, and the quickness | with which some of them take the lesson |to heart and practice it upon the next Englishman who comes out, or borrow |from the prosperous Englishman already there, would furnish material for a bookful of pitiful stories, and yet one cannot | help smiling at the wickedness of some of these schemes. ‘Three Englishmen, for example, bought, as they supposed, 90.000 Texas steer:, but the Texans who pretended to sell them the cattle drove the same 3,000 head ten times around the mountain, as a dozen supers circle around the back drop of a stage to make an | army, and the Englishmen counted and paid for each steer ten times over. There was ano.her Texan who made a great deal of money by ad- vertising to teach voung men how to become cowboys, and who charged them $10 a mo’ taition fee, and who set his punils to work dig ging holes for fence posts all over the rancl un fl they grew wi-e in ‘heir genera ion and left him for some oiher ranch, where the: were aid $90 per mon h for doing ‘he -ame bing | Bu. in many m-ances it is be tables of san An onio which ake ‘he grea.er art of b+ Ging Englihman- money. One gen le- man who some ime re resenied ne Lie of ‘ight in the lower howe s)en thee modes fortunes in he don Antouo gumbling hoa-es and (hon mar-ied his cook. Which vroved a most admirable specula ion, as she had a fragai mind and ‘vok en ive con: trol of bis live income. And shen the star quia ot Ale ford died in Colorads the only friend in hi, conniry wh» could be found o take the body back to inglund wa: his firt cou-fu, who, at che time, was driving a back around xan ‘An‘o.io. Que bears stories 0) his sort on cooks and cowboys who have served ‘hrough campaign: in India or Egypt or who hold an Oxford degree. A privaie in G troop, ihird 0 was my escort On several scouting in the Garza outfit, was kind end quite able to tell ma which club in jon had the oldest wine cellar, whore one could get best visiting cards engraved and wh: ¥ ct the professor of ancient languages at Oxford In was’ the i} Ge of the instructor in like bridge. He did this quite un- affectedly and in no way attompted to excuse his present position, nor was he questioned con- cerning his position in the past. Of couree the jue part of these stories de- ‘and personality of the hero, names I « +22 -—____—_ OUTSIDE WINDOW BLINDS. | Suggestions for Overeoming Their Most Ob- Jectionable Tendencies, From the New York World. Among the household inconveniences left over to this generation outside window blinds are among the chief and worst, Their prin- | cipal objects seom to be to get out of order, hang on oe hinge, collect dirt, alam violently noisily and contribute in every possible way to the dilapidated appearance of a dwelling. To shut or open them one must risk dislocation of the neck, and if they are on '» dressing room window they are apt te blow I i i Ett aly iy it F H ry iff ff fa | i # aE E | € i ? ie ut H i i 3 | ili i ch | ery side. und one meets faro dealers, 8%" have to omit the | A RAW RECRUIT. He Gets to the Front and Sees Ao- tual Service, FIRST TIME UNDER FIRE. ‘Mo Finds That Fine Accoutrements and New Uniforms De Not Constitute = Soldier's Fighting Qualities—Werk of « Battery in Action—A Panic and Mow It Was Overcome. term was about to ez- pire without waiting for the end of their enlist- ment. Baitery G was at Columbus, Ky., very short handed, most of the veterans having gone home on their furlough, and others were await- ing our arrival. We took » gtenmer at St. Louis and landed at Columbus late at night, and shouldering our baggage we marched up & long hill to camp. Some cavalry who had wintered there had built log houses for them- selves and long shed for their horses, and gontrary to the usual custom of soldiers break- ing camp had left them standing and our boys had taken possession. Four of us were given one of these houses and were soon asleep, and it seemed to be but a few minutes before a bugle awakened us and we heard a cali for everybody to turn ont. In response to another bugle cali we fell into line and answered to our names and were dismissed for breakfast. Rations had been provided in anticipation of our ar- rival,and we spent the forenoon getting ac- | quainted with our new comrades and looking | ‘round us, At the foot of the high bluff upon which we were, the Mississippi river was a mile | wide, and directly opposite was the battlefiel of Belmont, where Grant and Logan saw their first service during the war. + TWO STRONG EARTHWORKS. Columbus wasa straggling village of per- hapea hundred small frame housés. On the bluffs near our camp were two strong earth- | works whose heavy guns commanded the river for several miles in either direction, as well as the land approaches in the rear. Fort Halleck, the larger, inclosed some fifteen acres, and | Fort Quimby was about one-third as large. The | garrisons of these forts were colored troops and numbered in all about 1,200. Near us, out- side the forts, was a regiment of New Jersey infantry, whose colonel as the ranking officer | ‘was in command of the post. To the rear was alevel space beyond which at a distance of a couple of miles was some timber at the edge of whith was a line of pickets. Two roads led from the town to the top of the bluff, one of | which was anew one cut through the hill and paved with logs laid side by side, forming what was called a corduroy road. This road was| nearly as steep as the roof of a honse and led to | the gate of Fort Halleck, while the other ran along the side of the bluff to the entrance of the other fort, At noon we recruits were called into line to be inspected by our captain. He wasa Swede who had spent many years in the Swedish army | a8 an officer, and while a brave man and a good tactician he was out of place in our volunteer | service, as he felt that there should. bea brond Pine between an officer and his men, and our free and easy waya worried him. Speaking badly broken English and giving great atten- tion to details which we considered unim- portant, he was not popular with his subord nates, either officers or men, and resigned a few weeks later to accept a command of colored troops. He always appeared on duty in full uniform, and as he walked slowly down the line as straight asa gun barrel, with coat but- toned to the chin and wearing sword and spurs, I thought I had never seen so soldierly a figure. He looked at each of us yery closely and on the whole seemed plensed with our appearance. BEGINNING TO DRILL, The next morning we wore divided into ‘messes and our drill was begun. A’ battery of six guns has a captain and four lieutenants, one of whom acts as quartormaster and has charge | of drawing rations for the men and forage for | the horses. Each gun has a number by which | it isalways known; two guns form a section | under direct charge of a lieut nant, and euch gun and its accompanying caisson is drawn by six or eight horses—ours had derly sergeant keeps the company roll, termaster serseant an commissary sergea issue forage and supplies. There is a sergeant for each gun and two cor, to each ver- geant, two buglers, one of whom rides with the captain, a veierinary surgeon, » biacksmi.b, a wagon maker anda harness maker. There isa driver for euch team, eigh: men with each gun and @ few extra men to take he place: of any | who are vick or disabled, and four ceam ters, who drive the -ix-mule veams which baal the wagons, and altoge her a sf<-gun bat «ry has five oticer. and 13) or more men und nearly 150 hor es. and twenvy-four mules. | Each “au ergeant has charge of in, segs “ha “he hore. are rove lv card ter undtha ai d= wchmen! ges ix yrope amount oc ra ien. on amarbbr atdil b Sa che bead of hi dea binen. beside one he gua, and ts €37 © kno aii be commands aud Heras wn 9 g.ide aad ins:rac ho men, aud verinead the worlang of bi Each man in aganaqaad bisa plea: be gau and a number, aad all she men belonigins ‘0 a;icce fom a gan de wehmeut and ace a title commuamt. by th. selves, The ra ious for a detachmon, are issued in bulk, in cunp each mes. ba i fires, ihe hor-es ure tied to ind except as we met at roll call or relieved each o rd we were :h:own very litile wi.b members of o.her detachments, Each mess bad a co! man enlisted a: a cook, and those of us who did not want to do our own washing paid our cooks to doit for us, None of our clo.hes needed starching or ironing, and when in sers- ice we were satisfied if they w ipped | some stream and ried on the bushes once in a week wr two, Everything in the battery is lowe by rule. At the sounding of feed cail each driver gets from the stable sergeant the o~ for his team. At water call the drivers |fall inline with their teams, and led by the | sergeant on duty go in line to the watering place and retarn the same way. At Columbus we waterod in the Mississippi at the foot of the wl taught to keep ate we soon decided that it ees much fan. 4 Lasso’ 1x CamPatoxtxa. Early in April a brigade of infantry was sent to Columbus end our battery was ordered to accompany them to some pointin Kentucky, and the captain sent most of us recruits to give five 5 E. fj Ey H z i uli iif int if | For a few minutes a | forwar< | galloped up to our captain and gave him an gackE i fii s65Hi ; t if F223 i it Eee i 1 € li i Z i a 23 ih i 28 En f. tf i i i i g ( H gts a sf E firing had wamber of dehd or wounded rebels whose retreating — had been com- to leave them. We left the road and gal- through some high grass, and my team suddenly jumped to avoid trampling on a wounded man. When it was certain that the rebels bad gone we went back and gave him some water and puta blanket under him. He waid his name was Atkins and that be was from Tennessee. but our surgeon said he would only live a few hours, ashe was shot entirely through the head. We did not unhitch that night, but the drivers sl Jul: & southeasterly course into Mississippi. IN THE ENEMY'S COUNTRY. Our force was composed of about 9,000 in- fantry, with seven batteries and a small bri- gade of cavalry, the whole under command of | Gen. A. J. Smith. Our object was to destroy a railroad and to keep a body of the enemy em- | ployed. and prevent them from joining the te and ihe cannoneers at their forces in front of Sherman, who was operating | posts and the infantry in line, each man lying in Georgia. The first day'we left La Grange | on his musket. Each day as we marched t= we were reminded that we were in the enemy's | ward Memphis the enemy's cavalry followed us country by hearing musketry in front and | closely, and although nearly ever y fora learning that our cavalry had encountered a| week we formed line of battle no attack in strong line of skirmishers, who fell back as our | force was made. When we reached the place main body advanced, For the next few days | from which we started we were a sorry-looking we broke camp by early daylight and halted | lot of fellows, very unlike the ones who before noon to escape the intense heat, and | turned up their noses at the men just in from during the entire day the rattle of carbines was | Louisiana a few weeks before. We lost one heard and our cavalry was kept on the alert. | of our comrades in battle, two were wounded About the middle of ‘the forenoon on July 10|andanumber worn out and sick. Our sleek the column was halted and we saw some un-| horses, of which we had been so proud, were in usual movement in front, and suddenly the boom | a very bad plight. For days at a time they had ofacannon joined the crack of the rifles and | not been unharnessed: several times they had we heard the vicious screech of a shell and then | been twenty-four hours without water and at the explosion. The command, ‘Attention! Can- | all times forage for them had been scarce, and noneers, to your poste!” was given, and we | ail this in the scorching heat of July. Every thonght that the enemy had decided to stand. | day some of them had given out and hed to be was brisk, but | taken from the team, and the deep, hot sand us developed, and we moved slowly | through which much of our route lay had caused ‘@ soon reached the place where the | a disease of the anikles, battery had been and found a dead horse beside | walk without difticull the road, and near by two men in butternut | object had been mplished. Gen. A. J. Were lying, one dead and the other dying. At | Smith and his second in command, Mower, noon we want into camp, the usual order, “Un-| were promoted to be major generals and one hitch and unbarness; cannoncers, put up picket | or two colonels were made brigadiers. We new rope,” had been given, the bugle blew water call | recruits had gained considerable in experience and the horses had started for the nearest | and were not quite so sure that we could han- stream, when a sudden burst of murketry from | die the rebellion alone: in fact, we were quite the woods, half a mile or more in front of us, Fauxious to let some other fellows try it while we startled us, and a minute later a staff officer | took a good long rest. F. J. Youxa. —— PORTRAITS OF CELEBRITIES. Fancy Prices Paid in New York for Photo- graphs of Famous People. | 66Q\OCIETY WOMEN IN THIS COUNTRY have not yet adopted the English fashion | of permitting their photographs to be sold in the shops,” said a dealer in portraits of celebri- ties yesterday to a writer for Tux Stax. “Fur- thermore they do not seem atall likely todo so. There are only four Indies of quality in wounded cavalrymen. New York who allow that sort of thing. They FIGHT AT TUPELO. are Sallie Hargous, Mrs. Burke-Roche, Mra. Just before sundown we started back over the | Jack Leslie and Mrs. Moreton Frewen. The road we had followed in the morning, bgt after | last two are sisters of Lady Randolph Churchill. going acouple of miles we turned northand| ‘Some day it may come to be the style for about dark weapproached a town called Tupelo. | handsome or otherwise nguished society Instead of going into camp in the usual way we | men to be photographed for the market. I placed our guns in a line one hill overlooking | wouta not be surprised to see that come about, 4 meadow, our infantry laid down close behind 4 us and our veterans told us we were forming a | but ithas not done so yet. At present only line of battle. Soon after we halted we heard a | actors, great politicians and royal personages sudden burst of musketry and a few discharges | are represented in my stock of male portraits, of artillery in the direction from which we had | Mfr. Gladstone is selling well just now becanse —s. = paleecginoe! pe | he is in the public eye at the moment. With midnight » column of infantfy pased and an | ig eeaphipl pep rbinboge ep officer told me that they had been destroyi : some railroad tracks and that the enemy was | pot arenas lang ba Ray eee atieating pepe neat in considerable force and would probably atiack us in the morning. Soon after daylight WHEN PUBLIC INTEREST DROPS. “For example, I have in stock many beauti- we heard firing as usual, bat we remained in Position. It was a scorching day, wehad nosbade | ful photographs of Mary Andersoa, but they and our poor horses,whicb had not been watered = = since she left the stage. So for morethan twenty-foyr hours, plainly showed | ong as actresses are playing in New York their pictures find a ready market, but as quickly as thelr auffering, and we huddled tinder the guns and eaissons to get some relief from the terrible : heat, Our rane had been drawn back over tm | bot’ ton' ¢ oticine’ tan an eee ae brow of the hill and although we heard dring | Poort on © svstring tour or otherwise their of my customers are women. They like pic- on our right all was quiet in front of us until jast before noon when Col. Moore, who com- | of MY cus mem, pontliahaley cates, but their fancies in this regard are never to be manded the brigade, came along the line with connted upon. For instance, you would nat- several officers and stopped on our bill and sur- veyed the timber oppos He us through his lasses. | Sratty imagine that the lik Praga William of Germany wouid please them, inas- by their teams with the reins for emon seri order which caused him to call, “Bugler! Boots and saddles!” ‘The hotses came back on a gallop without being watered, and very soon we were allat our posts ready for anything | that might turn up. All around us the I came for the artillery to remain ready to move at once with horses harnessed and for the fantry to break ranks, but for no man to leave his company's camp. ‘All the afternoon a lively skirmish was carried on, and frequently ambu- lances went to the rear, carrying dead or Although we had seen no enemy there was one | there, und two shells were immediately thrown | at the mounted group and went screaming over | our heads. Two more quickly followed, one of | ich killed one of the black horses which had | given meso muéb trouble in Memphis, and fragment of the 0 ber struck one of our men in the hip, giving bim a wound of which he died | that night. Oar captain was ordered to revly and our guns were at once moment later o} range pretty well and did some very good <hoot- ing, bat their amm ini ion wa: very and | Tew of ths -hells exploded, al hough ther fell uncomfor.ably near us and a number of our in- faniry suy ports were killed or wounded. HE MADE HIMSELF USEFUL. Boing an “octra,” { had no regala- station, mself generally usefal. I carried wmminition, beld the vaptain's horse and ually took @ uumber of canteen: and filled from s stream in che rear. As I was re- carninga shell buried itself in the ground rectly in front of mo, and, exploding. cove me with dirt aud nearly frigh ened me out of m= wits. After recsurning the canieéns to thair thi-sty owaers [ stretched myself on the ground aad looked over the brow of the hill at the fleld of batile in fron: of me. All I could see was a cloud of smoke in the pe of the timber from | wound ‘of a shel, and govadonsven pad of | notice of any individoal of either sex. ‘For smoke from near the ground between tne lines | Smple, no one supposed that Caprivi was going showed tholozation of soms skirmi-her, The | t© be made chancellor of Germany until he was intense heat soon exhausted the men at the | sPPointed. bat I had already-socured his photo- gans, and the firing was: not very brisk after , 8Pb and was able to supply copies of it to tl the first hal hour, and occasionally ceased al- | "¢wspapers, which are large customers of together. During one of these intervals a line | 1 charge high prices, sometimes as mnch as $10 of'men suddenly cams out of the woods oppo: | fot One photograph: but I am obliged to make site us at double quick and came toward us, | Dig outlas for, pictures, many thonsands of Our men jumped to their and opened | Which I may find little or no sale for. with cantatas, and, being in «place to gets ~ ‘ood view, I saw several gaps made in A HOSPITAL ROMANCE. fine. ‘They only came n short distance before ; — breaking und falling baek, bat rallied immedi- ately and nearly reached our line in our canister, but our infantry rose ai monarch, but, ase matter of fact, he does not sell any better than does the Prince of Wales or the Czar of Russia. ENGLISH PROFESSIONAL BEAUTIES. “An actor may be ever so handsome, but if he has a name which does not happen to please the women they will not buy his photographs. Likewise, if Oug as a pervon of immoral lif tures drops at once. ‘ont popular po its of English professional beautiés just at present are those of Lady Brooke, the friend of the Prince of Wales; the haughty-looking Lady Londonderry and Belle Bilton, the music-hail | singer, who married into the nobility. There is | alwaysa demand for likenesses of the Princess of Wales. PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE THOUSAND. | “Ihave a stock of 120,000 photographs. It is my business to keep posted on the doings of the | world. and whenever a new beauty appears or @ i ‘ian iy into jinence I ‘ure Sapegray rary powne end ope ment. In fact, I must be in a position to anti- cipate the popular demand for portraite which immediately follow the rising into public them a volley of musketry which caused to break. "I jumped upto chest, when a | whlch was aleoeat ae struak below the t knee, giving me « rather end losving’s war.” Sunt teblnd the | as they charged was an officer horse. The rider was the horse trotted into our line, blind in one eve and poor in flesh he be a serviceable animal and worked fu e day, old—he was afflicted with as many trials and eltough | ‘cibolations as usually fall to the lot of even to of i i i i ith bit é ; HE tlt i itt £ i i f fl $ Hi if He ule E i i t FRE fl of fi 4b I Hi ltt ty much as he is young, very good-looking and a | old Pom - } Thor 'for | a2 quite a youth—be is now thirty-one years ‘The man who has @ vein of sentiment and te not e-hamed of it had s litte romance, or what he chose to regard asa romance, to tell sbout the other evening. One of his office rooms, as every one knows who bas been in his office for the last ten rears, looks out on a court. Directiy across the court are the windows of ‘a millinery shop, and on the upper side of the court those of an electrical establishment. The: are all on the same level. “I used to notiee when I looked out into the court,” be said, “a young woman in the milli nery shop who worked away industriously at the window. Over in the piace where they made electrical appliances was @ good-looking fellow, who was siways whistling or ‘hum i . He seemed pas ¥. One ; that moment the girl, who was turning « ha: Sf | around to look at if with a critieal epee reiend her glance. He gave ber « litte and smiled at her in a frank. I thought I could see ber her eves down after that, while be went on working and whistling merrily. “Later [noticed thet his mod used to be re- turned witha emile. When they were about to ther would give each iy nod, went on for more than a year, and I fot interested in the two voung and be- fen to weave romances about them. In the coming spring when I wanted to bavesome work done in my office I went over to the electric shop to see about getting the young man to do it. When he was in my room after- ward I'ma him go to my window and glance across the court, He had to make several trips there. for the young womau's eyes seldom strayed over to my window. Finally. how- ever, he caught her eve, and shegave a little start of surprise and then blushed very per ceptibly, as young people do who are caught | Unawares by those in whom they are interested | “When my voung electrician turned around he must have seen the interested jon on my face, for the color came up and «prend all over his face until it was as rosy red as the side of i cls @ very moten ont pretty girl’ T said to him encouragingly. for my curiosity wae | getting the better of my discretion. “Indeed she is,” he said, blushing agwin. “*How long have you known her? [ asked, ina tone calculated to invite bis confidence ~ ‘Oh. T don't know her,” he answered hastily, and his face got scarlet this time. “You see,” he added, ehy1, bave seen each other so long at those windows that it seemed natural for us to nod at eech other.” | “Iwas a little disappointed at this, for I | couldn't make much out of the romance. “Aft | ward, however, I saw that they kept up the ex- | change 0” smiles across the court, and occa- | stonally the young electrician would glance my Kay and give me « greeting with his curly ead. | “This went on for | I noticed that the | missing from the win not seem to mind | seemed more light-hearted and cheerful jever. I could hear him singing away pleasing voice by the hour, and I reail dislike the man for not seeming to care whether hhis little milliner ever came back or not. You see, Iam romantic, | “Well, the next summer was so bot that T | used to take ride down to Coney Island and | back every Sunday afternoon to try to keep | cool in the breezes of the ocean. On one of these Sundays I saw the little milliner, looking as bright as a ripe peach, sitting alone in the stern of the boat. She was neatly dvessed, with | a pretty bonnet on her head, and she was at- tractive-looking enough to be one’s wife. Pretty soon a man came along the deck earry- ing on one arm a child and holding in his hand | a glass of water. Then, when be turned his | face, which had been hidden behind the child's big hat, I saw that it was my electrician. | tching sight of me.he nodded and «miled, | just as he had often done across the court, and | {walked straight up to him, and_ shaking’ hima | heartily by the hand congratulated bim with genuine feeling. When he introduced me to | is wife he was as proud asan emperor, and I | never spent a better afternoon than on that day, chatting with that couple. You may talk | about your love and matchmaking, but I never saw two ‘who seemed to care more for j each other than they did. | “If Thad known that they were going to be | married I should have sent them « weddi | present—and a bandsome one, too—but, as n't been allowed to do that, the next day and bonght that | chain and sent it over with « | the happy young electrician by | boys, and a few minutes later, | man’s beaming face nodding ‘at me jcourt as he held my little gift in | felt—well, I felt like @ fool for being « crusty bachelor.” — ae Written for the Evening Star. T'm standing by the gate, dear, ‘Where oft we stood before And listened to the lullaby (Of wavelets on the shore, And watehed the wondrous clouds, deem ‘That o'er the mountain stole, And read above on wings of love ‘The fortunes of our soul. For then onr hearts were one, dear, Sealed with a single thougnt— ‘To live and love and love and live As only love had taught. And so within the sky, dear, In cloudiand far away, "Mid rosy beams we dreamed the dreams Of love's long summer day. ‘We saw the snowy peaks, dear, Of airy mountains high, With fairy streams and cataracts ‘That sparkled in the sky; And by the emerald seas, dear, We saw the castles bright, ‘Whose towers bold seemed made of galt Amid the fading light. ‘Then say, we gardens fair, dear, | Where wondrous flowers grew, | While silv'ry brooks seemed murmuring ] “Through felds of golden hue; | Amd music seemed to fall, dear, In gentle, meliow spray, As tinkling belis in fairy fells From cloudiand far away. T see the clouds again, dear, Kissed by the parting day, But like the hopes and Joys of ife ‘They pass and melt away. ‘The mountains fade tn mist, dear, ‘The crombling casties fall, ‘While oceans grand and fairyland Fast fade beyond recall, And #o they pass away, dear, ‘The dreams of life and love, ‘That for a moment hid from view ‘The endless night above; And thus they are absorbed, dear,