Evening Star Newspaper, February 16, 1895, Page 13

“A” UnNauatirieD es aa. ~Pitot” @ uovar AC PLINGS ee —~ (Copyright by Bacheller, Johnson & Bacheller.) Almost any pilot will tell you that his work is much more difficult than you fmagine; but the pilots of the Hugli know that they have one hundred miles of the most dangerous river on earth running through their hands—the Hugli between * Caleutta and the Bay of Bengal—and say nothing. Their service is picked and sifted as carefully as the bench of the Supreme Court, for a judge can only hang the wrong man, but a careless pilot can lose ®@ four thousand ton ship with crew and cargo in less time than it takes to reverse the engines. There is very little chance of getting off again when once you touch in the furious current of this river leaded with all the fat silt of the fields of Bengal, where soundings change two feet between tides and new channels make or efface them- selves in a season. Men have fought the Hugli for 200 years till, now, the river owns a huge building with drawing, sur- vey and telegraph departments devoted to its exclusive service, as well as a body of wardens who are called the port commis- sioners. They and their officers govern absolutely from the Hugli bridge to the last buoy at Pilot's Ridge, 140 miles away, and out im the Bay of Bengal, where steamers first Pick up the pilots from the brig. A Hugli pilot does not bring papers aboard or scramble up rope ladders. He arrives in his best clothes with a native ‘ervant or assistant to wait on him, and he = Jim Would Lie in the Bow. behaves as a man should who can earn $10,000 a year after twenty years’ appren- ticeship. He has beautiful rooms in the rt office at Calcutta, and generally keeps imself to the society of his own profes- sion, for though the telegraph reports the ™more important soundings of the river daily there ts much to be learned between trip and trip. Some millions of tons of shipping must find their way to and from Calcutta each twelve-month, and unless the Hugli were watched as closely as men watch the At- lantic cables there ts a fear that it might silt up as {t has silted up round the old Dutch and Portuguese ports twenty and thirty miles behind Calcutta. So the port office sounds and scours and dredges and builds spurs and devices for coaxing cur- rents, labels all the buoys with their proper letters and attends to the semaphores and + the lights and the drum, ball and cone storm signals, and the pilots of the Hugli do the rest, but in spite of all the care the Hugli swallows a skip or two every ear. hen Martin Trevor had followed this Ife from his boyhood; when he had risen to be senior pilot entitled to bring up to Calcutta the big ships drawing over twen- ty-four feet that can (or could till a few years ago) only pass by special arrange- ment; when he had talked nothing but Hugll and pilotage all his life, he was ex- ceedingly indignant that his only son should decide upon following his father’s rofession. Mrs. Trevor had died when the ‘ yy was a child, and as he grew older Trevor, in the intervals of his business, noticed that the lad was very often by the fiver side—no nice place for a boy. Once, when he asked him if he could make any- thing out of the shipping, little Trevor re- ied by reeling off the list of all the house- Razs in sight at the moorings. “You'll come to a bad end, Jim,” sald Trevor. “Little pmeey haven't any business 0 know house flags.”” : “Oh, Pedro at the Sailors’ Home taught me. He says you can’t begin too early. “At what, please?” “Piloting. I’m nearly fourteen now, and —and I know where all the shipping in the river is, and I know what there was yes- terday over the Mayapur bar, and I've been down to Diamond harbor—oh, a hun- dred times—and I've—” “You'll go to school, son, and learn what they'll teach you, and you'll turn out bet- ter than a pilot,” sald his father, but he might just as well have told a shovel-nosed poise of the river to some ashore and Beain life as a hen. Jim held his tonguc— he noticed that all the best pilots in the port office did that—and devoted his young attention and all his spare time and money to the river he loved. Trevor's son became as well known as the Bankshall Itself, and the port police let him Inspect their launches, and the tug boat captains had always a place for him at table, and the mates of the big steam dredgers used to show him how the ma- chinery worked, and there were certain native rowboats that Jim practically own- ed; and he extended his patronage to the rail that runs to Diamond harbor, forty miles down the river. In the old days nearly all the East India Company's ships / waed to discharge at Diamond harbor on e@ccount of the shoals above, but now ships go straight up to Calcutta, and they have tnly some moorings for vessels in dis- tress there, and a telegraph service and a harbor master, who was Jim's Intimate friend. He would sit in the office and lis- ten to the soundings of the shoals as they were reported every day, and attend to the movements of the steamers up and down (Jim ays felt he had lost some- thing if a beat got tn or out of the river g it), and when the big rows of burning port Beat Him Down to One ‘Twenty. holes tied up tn Diamond harbor for the night Jim would row from one ship to the other through the sticky, hot air and the buzzing mosquitoes and listen respectfully as the pilots conferred together. Once, for a treat, his father took him down clear out to the sand heads and the pilot brig, and Jim was joyfully sea sick as he tossed and itched in the bay. So he had to go down three or four times more with friendly pilots till he had cured his weakness. The eream of life, though, was coming up in a tug or a police boat from Diamond harbor to Calcutta over the James and Mary—the terrible sands christened after a royal stip they sunk two hundred years ago. They are made by two rivers that enter the Hugif six miles apart and throw their pwn silt across the silt of the main stream go that with each turn of weather and tide the Is shift and change like a cloud. It was here (the tales sound much _ worse, when they are told in the rush and growl y waters), that the Countess tons, touched and cap- ; and a 2,000 ton r in two; and a pilgrim ship in five; other steamer literally in an tnstant ner men with the masts ani Erh Tze wu napes. Young Jim would Me up in the bows of the t 4 watch the straining buoys kick and s er in the coffee-colored red cur- rent, and the semaphores and flags signal from the bank how much water there was in ti | till he learned that men who deal with men can afford to be careless on the chance of their fellows being like them; THE EVENING STAR, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 1895-TWENTY PAGES. but men who deal with things dare not relax for an instant. “And that’s the very Fe on,” old McEwen said to him onc “that the James and Mary is the safe: Part of the river,” and he put the big bla Bandoorah that draws twenty-five feet through the eastern gate, with a turban of white foam wrapped round her foot end her screw beating as steadily as his own heart. If Jim could not get away to the river there was always the big, cool port office, where the soundings were calculated and the maps were drawn; or the pilot’s room, where he could lie in a long chair and listen to the talk about the Hugli; and there was the library, where, if you had money, you could buy charts and books of directions against the time that you actually steamed over the places themselves. It was ex- ceedingly hard for Jim to hold the list of Jewish kings in his head, and he was more than uncertain as to the end of the verb “audio” if you followed it far enough down the page, but he could keep the soundings of three channels distinct in his head and, what is more confusing, the changes in the buoys from Garden Reach down to Saugor, as well as the greater part of the Calcutta Telegraph, the only paper he ever read. Unluckily, you cannot peruse about the Hugli without money, even though you are the son of the best-known pilot on the river, and as soon as Trevor understood how his son was spending his time he cut down his pocket money; and Jim had @ very generous allowance. In his ex- tremity he took counsel with Pedro, the plum-colored mulatto, at the Sailors’ Home. And Pedro was a bad man. He introduced Jim to a Chinaman in Machuatellah, a nasty place in itself, and the Chinaman, who answered to the name of Erh-Tze, when he was not smoking opium talked pigeon English to Jim for an hour. P “S'pose you take. Can do?” he said at last. Jim considered the chances. A junk he knew would draw about eleven feet, and the regular fee for a qualified pilot out- ward would be 200 rupees. On the other hand, he was not qualified, so he could not ask more than half. But, or the other hand, he was fully certain of a thrashing from his father for piloting without license. So he asked 175 rupees, and Erh-Tze beat him down to 120, and that was like a China- man all over. The cargo of his junk was worth anything from 50,000 to 100,000 rupees and Erh-Tze was getting enormous freight on the coffins of thirty or forty dead China- men whom he was taking to be buried in their native country. Rich Chinamen will pay fancy prices for their services, and they have a superstition that the fron of steamships is bad for the health of their dead. Erh-Tze’s junk had crept up from Singapore, via Penang and Rangoon, to Calcutta, where Erh-Tze had been stag- gered by the pilot dues. This time he was gcing out at a reduction with Jim, who, Pedro said, was just as good as a pilot. CHAPTER I. Jim knew something of the outside of junks, but he was not prepared, when he went down tat night with his charts, for the confusion of cargo and coolies and cof- fins and day-cooking places and other things that littered the decks. Jim had sense enough to haul the rudder up a few feet; he knew that a junk’s rudder goes far below the bottom and he allowed a foot extra to Erh-Tze’s estimate of the ship's depth, Then they staggered out into midstream very early, and never had the city of his birth looked so beautiful to Jim as when he feared he would not come back to see it. Going down Garden Reach he discovered that the junk would answer to her helm if you put it over enough and that she had a fair, though Chinese, notion of sailing. He took charge of the tiller by stationing three Chinese on each side of it, and standing a little forward, gathered their pigtails into his hands, three right and three left, as though they had been the yoke lines of a rowboat. Erh-Tze al- most smiled at this. He felt he was get- ting good care for his money, and took @ neat polished bamboo to keep the men attentive, for he said this was no time to teach the crew pigeon English. The more way they could get on the junk the better would she steer, and as soon as he felt a Jim Raked Him With His Spy Glass. little confidence in her Jim ordered the big rustling mat sails to be hauled up tighter and tighter. He did not know their names —at least any name that would be likely to interest a Chinaman—but Erh-Tze had not banged about the waters of the Malay archipelago for nothing, and as he went, he rolled forward with the bamboo the sails rose like eastern incantations. Early as they were on the river a big American kerosene ship was ahead of them in tow,and when Jim saw her through the driving morning mist he was thankful. She would draw all of seventeen feet, and if he could steer by her they would be safe. It is one thing to scurry up and down the James and Mary in a police tug without responsibility, and quite another to cram a hard-mouthed old junk across the same sands alone, with the certainty of a thrash- ing if you came out alive. Jim glued his eyes to the American and saw that at Fultah she dropped her tug and stood down the river under sall. He all but whooped aloud, for he knew that the number of pilots who preferred to work a ship through the James and Mary without a tug was strictly lim- ited. “If it isn’t father it’s Dearsley,” said Jim, “and Dearsley went down yesterday with the Bancoora. If I'd gone home last night Instead of going to Pedro I'd have met father. He must have got his ship quick, but—father fs a very quick man.” Then Jim reflected that they kept a piece of knotted rope on the pilot brig that stung lke a wasp—but this thought he dismissed as beneath the dignity of an officiating pi- lot who need only nod his head to set Erh- Tze’s bamboo at work. As the American came round, just before the Fultah sands, Jim raked her with his spyglass and saw his father on the poop with an unlighted cigar between his teeth. That cigar, Jim knew, would never be smoked on the other side of the James and Mary, and Jim felt so entirely safe and happy that he lit a cigar on his own account. This kind of piloting was child's play! His father could not make a mistake if he tried; and Jim with his six faithful pigtails in his two hands had leisure to admire the perfect style in which the American was handled— how she would point her bowsprit jeeringly at a hidden bank as much as to say, ‘Not today, thank you, dear,” and bow down lovingly over a buoy, a3 much as to gay, “You're a gentleman, at any rate,” and come round sharp on her heel with a flut- ter and a rustle and a slow steady swing something like a woman staring round a theater through opera glasses. a It was not hard werk to keep the fink near her, though Erh-Tze set everything that was by any means settable and used the bamboo very generously. When they were almcst under her counter and a little to the left, Jim would feel warm and happy all cver, thinking of the nautical and pilotic things he knew. When they fell more than half a mile behind he was cold and miserable, thinking of all the things that he did not know or was not ite sure of. And s0 tHey went down, Sina steering by his father, turn for turn, over the Maepur bar with the semaphores on each bank signaling the depth of water, through the Western Gat and round the Makoaputt! Lumps and in and out of twen- ty places each more exciting than the last, and Jim nearly pulled the six pig tails out for pure joy when the last of the James and Mary had been left astern and they were walking through Diamond harbor. From there to the mouth of the Hugli things are not so bad, at least that was what Jim thought, and held on till the swell from the Bay of Bengal made the old junk heave and snort and the river broad- ened into an inland sea, with islands only a foot or two high scattered about it. The American walked away from the junk as scon as they were beyond Kedgeree, and the night came on and the water looked very big and desolate, so Jim promptly anchored somewhere in the gray water, with the Saugor light away off toward the east. He had a great respect for the Hugli and no desire whatever to find himself on the Gaspar sand or any other little shoal. Erh-Tze and the crew highly approved of this plece of seamanship. They set no watch, Ht no lights and at once went to sleep. Jim lay down between a red and black lacquer coffin and a Uttle live plg in a basket. As soon as It was light he be- gan studying his chart of the Hugli mouth and trying to find out where in the river he might be. He decided to be on the safe side and walt for another sailing ship and pos her out. So he made an enormous reakfast of rice and boiled fish while Erh-Tze lit firecrackers and poe gilt paper with ostentation. Then they heav ip thelr rough and tumble anchor and made after a big, fat, iron four-masted sailing ship heavy as a hay wain. The junk, which was really a very weatherly at and mien have begun life as a pri- vate pirate In Annam thirty years ago, followed under easy sail, and the four- master would run no risks. She wae in old McEwen’s hands and she waddled about like a broody hen, giving each shoal wide allowances. All this happened near the outer Floating Light, some hundred and twenty miles from Calcutta and ap- parently in the open sea. Jim knew old McEwen’s appetite and had often heard him pride himself on getting his ship to the pilot brig between meal hours, so be if He’s a Resourceful Lad. argued that if the pilot brig was getable (and Jim himself had not the ghost of a notion where she would be) McEwen would find her before 1 o’clock. It was a blazing hot day and McEwen fidgeted the four- master down to Pilots’ Ridge with what little wind remained, and, sure enough, there lay the pilot brig, and Jim felt cold up his back, as Erh-Tze paid him his hun- dred and twenty rupees, and he went over- side in the junk’s crazy dinghee. McEwen was leaving the four-master in a long slashing whaleboat that looked very spruce and pretty, and Jim could see that there was a certain amount of ex- citement among the pilots on the brig. There was his father, too. The ragged Chirese gave way in a ragged fashion, end Jim felt very unwashed end dis- reputable when he heard the click of Mc- Ewen’'s oars alongside, and McEwen say- irg: “James Trevor, I'll trouble you to come along with me. Jim obeyed, and from the corner of one eye watched McEwen’s angry whiskers stand up all round his face like the frill of a royal Bengal tiger, while his face turned purple and his voice shook. “An’ is this how you break the regula- tions o’ the port o’ Calcutta? Are ye aware o’ the penalties ye’ve laid yourself open to?” Jim said nothing. There was not very much to say, and McEwen roared aloud: “Man, ye've personated a Hugli pilot, an’ that’s as much to say ye'’ve personated me! What did yon fellow heathen give you for an honorarium?” “Hundred and twenty,” said Jim. “An’ by what manner o’ means did ye get through the James an’ Mary?” “Father,” was the answer. “He went a the same tide—and I—we steered by {m."? McEwen whistled and choked; perhaps it was withsanger. ‘Made a stalkin’ horse 0 your father. Jim, boy, he'll make an example 0’ you.” The boat hooked the brig’s chains and McEwen said, as he rolled on deck: “Yon’s an enterprising cub o’ yours,Tre- vor. Ye'd better put him to the regular business or one o’ these fine days he'll be acting as pilot before he’s qualified and sinkin’ junks in the Fairway. If ye’ve no other designs I'd take him as my cub, for there’s no denyin’ he’s a resourceful lad, for all that he’s an unlicked whelp.” “That,” said Trevor, reaching for Jim's left ear, “is something we can remedy,” and he led him down below. The little knotted colt that they kept for general purposes on the pilot brig stung like hornets, but when it was ail over Jim_was an unlicked cub no longer. He was McEwen’s property, and a week later when the Ellora came along he bun- dled over the side with McEwen’s enam- eled leather handbag and a roll of charts and a little bag of his own. — AN INSIDIOUS VICE. Gembling is More Dangerous Than Drunkenness to Business Integrity. From the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. “Gambling is the skulking, poisonous foe to business integrity,” said an experienced business man. “You can see the signs of drunkenness,” he said, “and guard against being damaged by a drinking partner or employe,but more often than not you know nothing of the gambler’s downward pro- gress until your losses tell the tale. I have seldom seen a case in which the habit of gambling did not have the companion habit of lying. The lying gets worse as the gambling becomes confirmed. Your gam- bling associate comes along with such a cheerful mask of falsehood that you are indignant when somebody intimates that he is treading the dangerous path of dal- liance with cards or horses. “Some years ago I had a little expert- ence which I’ve no doubt many merchants can duplicate. I was a managing partner in a branch of one of the most extensive houses in St. Louis. We had a salesman whom we valued highly. It came to our knowledge that he was falling in love with poker. I said that he must be warned. ‘The other partner thought he was all right, but consented to the warning. In a few menths the man collected a bill and lost the money at poker. I then insisted on re- porting a discharge to the main firm, but my partner stuck to his faith in the man’s promises. Finally we compromised by re- taining the delinquent on condition that my partner notify the firm that he would be personally responsible for losses caused by a repetition of the occurrence. We also sent to every customer a notice that all bills should be paid directly to our head- quarters. “Before six months had passed the sales- man managed to collect a bill of $1,500, and lost every dollar. “My partner took the money out of his pocket and reimbursed the firm. It is not necessary to tell anybody who knows zgam- blers that he never received a cent from the man he had befriended. “The preacher and the lawmaker may grade other vices as more heinous, but the merchant and the banker who know what {s good for them are more afraid of gambling than of anything else.”” ——_+e+__ REPAIRING AN OCEAN CABLE. Delicate Work, for Which Wonderfal Instruments Have Been Invented. From the New York Morning Advertiser. It is said that one submarine cable fs laid at a depth of 18,000 feet. But there are at least three cables working at a depth of nearly 17,000 feet, and four in about 16,000. ‘The vast majority He in water about 12,000 feet deep or less. Repairing a cable is hard work. The apparatus has also to be at once sensitive and strong. As is gen- erally known, the repairing steamer pro- ceeds to the point where calculation shows the break or damage to have happened, and then lowers a grapnel, which it slowly drags across the route of the eable at right angles. As soon as a tension on the grap- nel rope is noted, due to catching the cable it has hooked, great pains have to be taken lest the precious treasure-trove slip off at any stage of its Sourney: up to day- light. Special grapnels have been devised for this important work. In one of the latest the prongs project from a hood like the claws of a crab or turtle. Should any of them come in contact with rock on the bottom of the sea they recede with- in the shield suffictently to let the grapnel glide over the obstruction. The writer has seen chunks of prehistoric granite as bi; as one’s fist brought up by a clogged. grapnel from more than 1,000 fathoms of water. In this new grapnel the prong, if {t has hooked a bight of cable, Will still hold on when it retracts into the shell, oo —_____ Looking Forward. From Town Topics. “Fly,” he implored. ‘The maiden pressed his hand to her lips. “Fly, I bes2ech”— And he strove to push her from the room. “—you. I hear mamma coming in her heavy walking boots.” Even as he spoke a dark form appeared in the door and swore violently, after which there was the sound of conflict, and the beautiful boy was weeping alone. | ELECTRIC STEALING How the Telegraph and News Com- panies Are Victimized, THE OLD WAY AND THE NEW Stories Illustrating thedngenuity and Fertility of the ‘Tapper. AN UNSUCCESSFUL BUSINESS Written Exclusively for The Evening Star. W yitH THE RECENT introduction of a bill in the United States Senate by Senator Chandler of New Hampshire to penal- ize wire tapping, the first step was taken to place electric stealing under the ban of the law. At present, and until Senator Chandler's bill becomes a law, the telegraph com- panies’ only resource is to have the “tap- pers” arrested for trespassing. The penal- ty under that law is so small that it has had little effect upon the evil doers, and, as @ consequence, attempts to steal electricity are of almost weekly occurrence. The recent extraordinary exposures made in Chicago regarding the stealings from the Associated Press by means of wire tapping have resulted in a@ movement to prevent thefts of news in the future by wire tapping, and Senator Chandler’s bill is the result. It was quite a different matter to steal stock quotations and racing returns from the Western Union Telegraph Company, than to arouse the wire of the big news as- sociation, and when the latter was made to feel the full effects of this evil they im- mediately set to work to stop it. When the telegraph companies tried to prosecute wire tappers under the trespass law, the latter would generally take refuge behind the plea that the racing news was aiding a gambling scheme, and in the hands of a shrewd lawyer their case gen- erally triumphed. In the case of the pres- ent bill, the full penalty will keep a trans- gressor in jail for about five years, unless he has the $2,000 to pay the fine, a state of things not at all likely, as the guilty one generally goes into the scheme owing to the lack of funds. Takes an Expert. A large proportion of those who attempt to tap wires make miserable failures. And it is because of their gross ignorance. Six- ty per cent of the operators in all large offices cannot set up and work a common set of telegraphic instruments, taking the wires from the time they come into the office until they take ‘battery or go out again. bah La Yet with a great part of this class the idea of wire tapping emanates. They think they know all about it, an@ when some of them unfold their schemes an electrician has to smile at their simplicity. They do not recognize the difference between an in- strument of four ohms and one of 100 ohms, and upon the subject of galvanometers and Wheatstone bridges they are completely lost. This class of telegraphers may have been successful fifteen or twenty years back, but with the improved apparatus they are never successful. The old-fashioned, original wire tapper selected as his scene of operations a pole set back as far as possible from the high- way or railroad, over which the line-re- pairers passed when! looking for wire trouble. If the pole was partially hidden by trees the tapper was correspondingly grat- ified, as it lessened the chances of discov- ery. Waiting until night he strapped on his climbers, threw his tool sack over his shoulder and walked up the pole as easily as a fly goes up a window pane. Reaching the crossarm he produced his strap and vise, which, as its name denotes, is a small but powerful vise, with serrated teeth, at- tached to a looped strap eight or ten feet long. Getting a good hold with his vise on the wire which he wished to tap, he buckled his strap around the crossarm and pulled in the slack of the wire until he had six inches or a foot to spare. Then with his plyers or nippers he cut the wire short off between the vise and the tnsulator. The wire did not fal' because the strap and vise had a firm grip on it. An Improvised Office. The tapper next let in a section of non- conductor, such as a piece of gum-covered wire, making the splice outside of the cov- ering, so that no connection was made be- tween the line wire and the newly set in piece. If the covered wire was not at hand he used a scrap of rope or clothesline, any- thing, in fact, that gave the wire a look of continuity without being a conductor of electric fluid. That was the scientific way. If he was in a hurry or short of material he simply took a hitch around the glass Insulator by tho tie wire. There was, how- ever, no connection between the two ends. The wire was, in telegraphio phraseology, open in either case. Of course the tapper did not allow the wire to remain open long. That would have excited suspicion. He made what is known as a half connection to keep the wire closed while he continued his operations. He had in his tool sack a coil of fine cop- per wire covered with dark silk, so that it was invisible more than a few feet away. One end of this coil he attached to the line wire on one side of the plece of non- conductor he had set in; the other end he connected to the tapped wire at a point beyond the non-conductor. Then he knock- ed off his half-connection, for the circuit was completed through the coil of copper wire. Having taken off the strap and vise after irserting the non-conductor, he is all ready to descend. The coil of copper wire, which may be a mile in length, but very light and small in compass, he threw to the ground and rapidly followed it himself. All he had to do then was to walk off, car- rying his coil of fine wire and paying it cout as he moved until he reached the spot where he had established his telegraph office. Sometimes it was a deserted shanty in the woods, occasionally it was under a culvert beneath the railroad tracks, or it might be only a relay box instrument in a fence corner behind a clump of bushes. Wherever it was he could hear everything that went over the wire; could ground it in either direction, and could, by using proper precaution, ‘transmit telegrams as if coming from any point along the line, to suit his purpose. é What Worrtles the Tappers. The new-fashioned wire tapper, to be successful, must be a thorough electrician, beside a Morse operator of the very first class. A poor sender would be picked out immediately upon his, trying to transmit @ message, and a receiver of the same sort could not interpret the’ dots and dashes as they fly from the key of an expert. There are several ways,@ wire can be tarped, all depending upon how it is work- ed, whether single, duplex or quad. There is one system that would rather worry mest any electric pilferer, however, and that is the Wheatstone automatic. But as this system is almost entirely used in the far west mere mention will suffice. Under that system fully 200 words a minute are sent, and, of course, human ability cannot ccpe with that record. The single wire is, of course, the simplest way of teloeraphing, in use, consequently the easiest to interfere with, being only common, old-style instruments. Then there are the duplex systems of aigarent pat- terns, all requiring sets of a like nature to make them work, such as the Stevens, “polar,” D’intrevilie, and others. Next comes the quadruplex, which means four men at each end of a wire, all working at the same time. But the latter system, although @ complicated one, can be tapped under certain circumstances. The knowledge necessary would be to know the mileage resistance of that par- ticular wire, the exact mileage where the tapper wishes to operate, an accurate amount of resistance to be used on each side of the intruding set, a corresponding amount of battery necessary to have the same strength, and most essentially a complete set of quadruplex instruments for the work, together with eight compe- tent men to work it successfully. This is a@ very intricate and expensive piece of work, but, to the backers of a scheme of this kind, expense does not cut any figure if they can get the right sort of men to stand by them. Even When Underground. When the wires were placed under- ground the telegraph officials congratu- lated themselves that thelr quotations and news were at least safe within city limits. But the tapper soon discovered that it was a good deal easier and safer to tap underground cables than to tamper with overhead wires. This revelation came to the telegraph officials like a shock. They had fondly imagined that the underground system was absolutely safe, but the wily tapper was keeping right up with the procession. He not only found a way to get at the strands of the cable, but he also advanced in science, so that he no longer had to open a wire or loop it in for tapping pur- poses. He worked by induction, and need- ed only one wire instead of a loop to steal the desired intelligence. Up to this time the electric pilferer had to have one wire leading from the tapped line to his instrument and another one back to complete his circuit. Under the improved system he hitched one wire on to the main line and ran it to what is known as a condenser. There he ended it within a fraction of an inch of another wire, which ran through a delicately con- structed telegraph instrument to the ground. The leakage or induction obtain- ed by this method was sufficient to op- erate the instrument. It is not often that one telegraph com- pany will deliberately tap the wires of a rival concern in order to steal news, but it is said that right here in Washington it has been done. It happened during the Baltimore and Ohio and Western Union telegraph war some years back. The for- mer was trying to gain a foothold, but was barred out of the stock exchanges, race tracks and base ball parks. Of course, at such times, matters shape themselves so that the word “hugtle” is the bright particular one in the tele- graph manager's lexicon. The stock ex- ckanges tabooed bucket shops and for- le the Western Union furnishing them with quotations. Consequently this class of customers had to turn to the Baltimore and Ohio for relief. Whenever a bucket shop was known to be in receipt of the markets strenuous ef- forts were made to discover the source of its supply, and sleuths were hired to un- earth the wires and destroy them. It took several weeks for the Western Union officials to find out the method by which one bucket shop was getting the markets. They could see an operator sitting at his table, with a pair of telephone sounders glued to his ears, but where he obtained his news was for a long time a mystery. They searched high and low for the origin, but were compelled to acknowledge defeat, and the bucket shop continued to receive quotations until the Baltimore and Ohio was “gobbled” up by the Western Union, when the plan was unfolded to the puzzled officials of the latter company. How It Was Done. A private wire, running into the quota- tion room of a legitimate stock broker on F street, had been tapped, and connections made with a set of dead wires that for a long time had been abandoned. These were picked up and connected with other wires running north, until they terminated in an office on G street, where a sounder was in- serted. From the telephone company a private wire was rented, running from the office on G street to the bucket shop near the legitimate stock broker’s on F street, where the operator, by affixing the tele- phone sounders to his ears, was able to hear every click of the sounder, which was placed directly in front of the transmitter in the office on G street. As fast as the quotations: were received he jotted them lown and passed the slip over to a boy, who chalked them up on a blackboard. It was a cute device, and one well worthy of its originator. Of course, the office on G street was xept strictly private, no one being allowed to enter but those in the fcheme. —— SENTIMENT AND SEPULTURE. Decided Views {n Regard to the Dis- posal of Bodies, From the London Spectator. It is certain that a great majority among us do care about the disposal of our bodies. In every part of Europe the “resurrection- ist," who was once regarded by scientific men of high character as a useful member of society, is looked upon with as much ab- horrence as a cannibal, and if caught at his grewsome trade would infallibly need erergetic protection from the police to save his life, and in many countries would not get it. The horror of being dissected after death rises with many men to a mania, and has repeatedly inspired legislative acts, drawn with a punctilious desire at once to forward the knowledge of surgeons and to respect a feeling too strong to be dealt with by any kind of argument. Millions of Christian men and women would be hor- rified at the idea of lying in unconsecrated ground, though not one of them could say clearly what was the difference between one side of the cemetery, provided it were equally protected from desecration, and the other. Every day good and pious men pick out the spot in which they should prefer to be buried, or leave the most earnest in- structions not only that a certain spot shall be chosen, but that, if it be possible, the ¢ame spot shall be selected when the hour shall strike for the dearest of those who survive—a singular, yet, as we all feel, a natural, interference with their equal right of selection. We have known at least a dozen men penetrated with a wish to be buried in a country graveyard, a grove, a garden, anywhere except in a suburban cemetery—a feeling which this particular writer, even while his reason repudiates it with scorn, acknowledges to be in his very blood and bones. The feeling of the very poor fs different, being concentrated on the avoldance of a pauper funeral; but among the cultivated probably more thar half form and express a distinct wish as to the place and method of their own interment, and would feel acutely if, for any reason, that request was refused—which it never is, though we have known personally at least one case in which such a request involved immense expense and something very like elaborate. lying, in order to con- ceal from a superstitious crew the burden they were involuntarily escorting to the grave. Men wish to be interred as their forefathers were, and say so oftentimes in wills with some peremptoriness and inten- tion to compel. —_——+0+___ THE GIRL OF THIRTEEN. Unless She Has Care She Will Make a Forlorn Woman. From the New York Sunday Advertiser. The girl of thirteen is the future woman and a very important parcel of humanity. She is a child and just growing into wo- manhood, and this transition which to grown-ups means only a sudden shooting up beyond all bounds, and a tendency to stooped shoulders, is much more to the girl who leaves childhood behind and 1s not yet a young lady. Fast growing is a very great drain on any child’s strength, and as at thirteen she usually has considerable mental work at school, both mind and body are called upon to do double work. That is why she needs care. Good food, rest and congenial company are some of the things which are necessary for the girl of thirteen. She should not have too much excitement, or books to read which tax her thoughts too much, as her mind develops only too quickly at this age, and everyday life and lessons are enough to occupy her. She should go-to bed early and sleep ten hours. For break- fast she should eat strengthening, bone- making food, oatmeal, oranges, brown bread, eggs and milk. For her midday meal she should have something more sus- taining than a bread and butter lunch, if she is to grow up into a strong woman. Hot soup and a chop and a baked potato every day for three months will make her stand up straighter than braces will. She should have a walk in the open air every day; if she does not get this she will grow neryoug and sleepless, have fantastic notions about an early grave and running away from home, or worse still, grow sen- timental and write morbid little verses and weep over the poor. These are all true symptoms of the girl of thirteen, She be- gins to think she is very old as soon as she gets into her teens, and the responsi- bilities affect her sensitive new mind to an appalling degree—if she is given time to think of them. Dandruff forms when the panes of the skin are sveakened, and, if neglected, baldness 1s sure to follow. Hall's Hair Renewer is the best pre- ventive. Hon. Thomas G. Alvord, ex-speaker of the New York assembly, ex-leutenant governor, first vice president of constitutional convention and a mem- ber of the former constitutional convention, is a man universally known and respected. Although ex-Governor Alvord is nearly ninety years of age he is still hale and hearty, and, as wes tested in the constitutional convention last summer, in as perfect mental condition as is that grand old man, Mr. Gladstone, “Do you never feel tired and Iterally worn out, governor?” was recently asked him. “Several years ago for the first time in my life I did feel in that condition. I was then a member of the assembly at Albany. It took the form of most disagreeable nausea, and, of course, rostration, which such attacks occasion. By sheer force of will power I seemed to overcome the attack, but the year following it again came on with even more violence than before.” ‘WVhat were sour ‘symptoms, governor?” “T felt a sense of weight fullness in the Jower part of the body,followed by & dull throbbing pain and accompanied with a sensation of fever eat or @ chilly shudder.” “You*must have suffered considerable. But was that all?” 13 HON. THOMAS G. ALVORD. “At times the fever seemed to establish itself then all the symptoms of a general would come on. I suffered from general and an effort to move my Timbs or body was at- tended with @ fecling of weariness and exhanstion. fact seemed to be giving relief except good health’ “Listen, and I will tell ron, I determined to take my case into my own hands, and therefore ber WY ata tna, aah ian eal. It benefited me at once, and I continu: psc, until Iam completely restored to heal it kept in physi ‘ion, and all the use of Warner’s Safe Cure."” “Your experience, governor, Important and valuable one."* “Yes, for ailments, and especially those incident to declining ears, there is nothing equal to Warner's and certainly I am @ good living example what it can do.”” need not be told jail ywho Know Governor Alvord is stats relial experience Yaluaite. As suck they are ‘given ‘herewith for may be je. As such they are given who health and long life. suffering WOMEN DRUMMERS. A Comparatively New Field, but the Sex is Winning Success. From the New York Sunday Advertiser. Women drummers are becoming more plentiful every day, and they are success- ful, too. One has but to go to the firms employing these “ladies of the grip” to learn that their sales are equally as large as, if not larger than, those of the sterner sex. This field for women is comparatively new, but already so many bright and clever young women have entered into it who have met with phenomenal success it will not be long until they will stand equal chances with the “knights” who have for so long monopolized this particularly well paying business. And we have not far to go in looking for a reason for all this. In the first place, a woman is bound to gain recognition, simply because she is a wo- man, for it is the hardest thing in the world for a man to refuse a request made by a woman, especially if the woman be young and pretty. And before he knows it, he is placing an order! In many branches, such as in selling corsets, waists, perfumery, millinery, toilet articles, etc., a woman is in her element, and it is second nature for her to dilate and expand on the salient features of such of these articles as she may be selling. As a rule, these ladies are quick at repartee, brimming over with original good humor and have a knowledge of men’s weakness- es. “Oh, yes; they have come to stay,” said a drummer the other day, “and it will not be long before the many men holding these lucrative positions will be forced to look for other employment. We'll not be ‘in it? in a short time. Why, I know person- ally twenty women who are making more sales and getting better salaries than I am, and I have been in the business fif- teen years, and am traveling for one of the largest silk houses in the country. They are emart, far-sighted and quick to read human nature, and every one of them is a perfect lady. And, by Jove! some of them are actually pretty, too.” SS TEETH OF SCHOOL CHILDREN. Some Statistics Which Show That They Are Much Neglected. From the American Medical Association Journal. In one school of 700 pupils, 500 from ten to eighteen years of age, I distributed printed slips with the following questions: Do you cleanse your teeth with a brush every day? Do you cleanse your teeth with a brush twice a day? The teachers requested the pupils to answer the ques- tions by writing the word yes or no to each question. The slips were immediately gathered up. On summing up it was as- certained that out of 500 pupils 50 cleaned their teeth twice a day; 275 used a brush sometimes, while 175 did‘not own a brush. Notice, the ages were from ten to eight- een. In the primary department of 200 upils, from six to ten years of age, the feachers said they did not think there were 10 children in the department who used a tooth brush. This school is not an exceptional one in this matter, as further inquiry and in- vestigation demonstrated. In fact, its grad- uates take high rank at our universities, and if there is any difference it is in ad- vance of most schools in percentage of those who have clean mouths, as well as neat clothes and bright faces. When there is so much neglect and s0 little real care of the mouth it is not at all strange that the sixth-year molars have to be sacrificed daily, because the parents cannot go to the expense of treatment to have them preserved, thinking all the time that this valuable tooth is deciduous, and soon to be replaced by one that is bacteria roof and will last forever in a mouth that Bis never been properly cleaned. The school of 700 pupils mentioned, where only 50 made any pretense to reg- ular care for the teeth, shows what a field for instruction and training every teacher has. What an opportunity for philanthropy and missionary work! Our children’s teeth must be saved. Ex- rience has taught us that it is impossible fo repair the ravages of decay, except in a limited degree. Prevention through cleanliness and proper care of the teeth is the only way possible and practicable to Umit the wholesale destruction. —___+e+____ A Rough Retort. From the Boston Transcript. Fenderson—“I got my education at Har- vard.”” Fogs—"‘And forgot it where?” —__+-- ______ The School Boy of 1994. From Fliegende Blatter. the benefit of those men or women who desire = SECRET OF OLD AGE. Difference of Opinion Among Those Who Have Lived Many Years. From the Popular Health Magazine. The famous French scholar and politi- clan, M. Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, who re- cently entered on his ninetieth year full of physical and intellectual vigor, has been writing in the British Medical Journal how it is that his days have been so long in the land. It is, we are told, the effect of strict acherence to the ra precept, “early to bed and early to rise,” with steady work dur- ing waking hours. Every grand old man seems to have a secret of his own. Mr. Gladstone, we believe, attributes his lon- gevity to his habit of taking a daily walk in all weathers and to his giving thirty- two bites to every morsel of food. Oliver Wendell Holmes pinned his faith on equa- bility of temperature. The late Maj. Knox Holmes swore by the tricycle, which, in the end, was the cause of his death. Dr. P. H. Van der Weyde, an American octo- genarian, not long ago offered himself “as an example of the benign influence of the study and practice of music.” Some aged persons give the credit of their long lives to abstinence from tobacco, alcohol, meat or what not; others to their indulgence in all these things. One old lady, of whom we read not long ago as having reached the age of one hundred and twenty or thereabouts, maintained that single bless- edness ig the real elixir vitae, and she ascribed the death of a brother at the ten- der age of ninety to the fact that he had cemmitted matrimony in early life. M. Ferdinand de Lesseps believed in horse riding. Carlyle was also a great rider al- most to the end of his long life, and he rot only rode, but, we believe, groomed his horse himself. On the whole, it must be eased ome the real secret of longevity ind constituti y bentan ution prudently hus- BOARDED BY A CASK. A Strange Incident While Lying Te Of Cape Horn. From the Morning Oregonian. City Physiclan Wheeler has two bottles of claret of uncertain age and still more uncertain flavor, which he delights in of- fering to his friends, not because of the fine quality of the wine, but because it gives him a chance to tell again a story of tho sea that is a little out of the ordinary. The claret is put in lime bottles, such as may be found aboard any long-voyage ves- sel, and, while its most pronounced flavor 1s @ cross between Mme juice and salt wa: ter, there is still a “smack” in it that re- minds one that it must have been at one time prime “stuff.” Dr. Wheeler was pre- sented with the bottles by Capt. Dexter of the British ship Samaritan, which re- cently left this port in cargo for Liver- pool, and the captain told the following story of how he came by them: “In the fall of ‘03 we were bound from Liverpool to Shanghai in ballast, and were nearing the Horn, when a big storm over- took us. We hove to and drifted about 1,000 miles off shore. The storm was one of the worst I have ever experienced in twenty years of seafaring life, and one dark night, when big seas were breaking over us, & big burley fellow from the forecastle came aft, knife in hand, and walked directly up tome. I thought for a minute that mutiny, was aboard, and, drawing my revolver, ordered him to stand back. But I soon saw he was terribly frightened, and, with chattering teeth, he told me that a fright’ ful-looking object was floundering about amidships. “I went with him to see it, and, sure enough, whenever a wave struck us @& huge black body glowing in the phosphor escent blaze of the tropics, could be seen floundering about on deck. I soon ascerm tained that it was lifeless, and then pro- ceeded to investigate. It proved to nothing but a huge wine cask, every stave of which -was encrusted with barnacles, and it had probably been left on deck by @ receding wave. Visions of dead bodies buried at sea in casks loomed up before me as I lashed the trophy to the rigging, to await daylight before investigating. “When the storm cleared away 1 tap- ped the cask, and by means of a long iron rod ascertained that there was nothing but liquor in it. I drew off some of the stuff and tried it on two Portuguese sail- ors aboard. They pronounced it primo, so we all took a taste. After that I drew off all the wine and stored it in these lime bot- ties, the only thing I had handy. . The cask I placed in the British ae Shanghai, for it wag a real curiosity. 1 chances are that cask of claret was thrown overboard from some wreck, and it must Have floated about in mid-ocean for three or four years at least before it came aboard us. Barnacles do not form on float- ing wood in less time than that, and the cask was so covered with them that not a bit of the wood was visible.” oo —____—_ Disappointed Travelers. 3 From the Boston Transcript. “About half the people on this ship are going back to America with sad hearts,”* said a German on board a westward bound German steamer one day last sum- mer. “We have, most of us, been back to Germany to see our old friends, and we are disappointed because they all seemed mcre eager to know how much money w@ made in America than glad to see us.