Evening Star Newspaper, July 20, 1895, Page 13

WHERE BULLETS FELL Appearance of the Bull Run Battle Fie d Today. TRAGEDY OF THE HENRY HOUSE Talk With the Survivor of the Family Occupying the Place. BCENES OF PEACE —__+—__—_ HIRTY-FOUR years ago today and tomorrow, July 20-21, 1861, the first serious battle of the civil war was fought at Bull Run. Every man who fought in the battle of Bull Run remem- bers the Henry house.e It was the center of the fight, and the taking of the plateau upon which {t stood was the whole aim of the federal érmy, and to keep it the whole alm of the confederates. They kept it. The old house was pretty badly demoralized by the cross -firing of friend and foe, and a new house was built or the stones that held the old one. Bleak and bare, and brown with the storms of many winters, the warpings of many a summer sun, it stands, as a Star writer found on a recent visit, in the midst of as fair a scene as artist ever pictured, with walls of corn and waving grain ftelds. Its sole tenants are Prof. Henry, son of the former owner, and a faithful colored servant, whols cook and plow hand, valet @nd chambermaid to the old man, the sum of Whose life was totaled when the smoke of that battle rolled, beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains, leaving him lonely ard bereft of loved ones, when the sun of existence was already far down the western slopes. For twenty years or more he had been the pro- fessor of a young ladies’ seminary in Alex- andria. When he heard that the battle was raging about the home of his mother, who was bedridden with old age, with no one to care for her but her daughter, then a wo- man near sixty,and a black servant or two, he left his school and started home. He had to walk and hide himself for hours at @ time to keep out of the way of the en- emy, and he did not reach home till the second day after the battle. Even yet, he cannot speak calmly of the fearful sight that met his eyes. Along the lane leading up to his home the roadside was red with the scarlet uniformed zou- aves, who sold their lives so dearly in the last fearful charge. The demoralized ar- mies had gone off and left their dead un- buried, and the air was black with the birds of prey, greedy for the fast preparing gorge. His home was a blackened and bat- tered ruin, and his mother was dead! When order came to open fire, it was so hastily given that the confederates, who held the Henry house, gave no thought to {ts inmates, and the frightened women were left alone in the center of the field with the enfilading fire of heavy batteries from both sides of the conflict raking their residence from front and rear, from right flank and left! It was a cruel thing to leave them thus, for there was absolutely no mode of escape. The poor bedridden old lady and her daughter crawled into the big wide fireplace, but the bricks and mortar knocked off by flying bullets fell upon them and drove them back. Then Mrs. Henry asked to be carried to @ small ravine close to the house, where it seemed to her the bursting shell might fly over and leave her in peace. Vain hope! Rains of the Henry House. Bhe was injured while being carried down, and struck while there. Terrified, she begged to he taken back again, and was scarcely laid upon her bed when a bursting shell wounded her cruelly in the side. Thir- teen times she was wounded and torn by balls and splintered shells before death cut her torment short. The daughter was not wounded seriously. Prof. Henry's first sad duty was to bury his mother. You can see the grave today, close by the hcuse, with its tall, white slab, “Sacred to the memory of Judith Henry,” the first woman killed in the war of the re- bellion. Close beside her lies her daughter. You have to push the briar roses aside to find the graves, roses as red as the blood of the martyr, and roses as white as the pure purpose of her life. Prof. Henry has never left the old place. He is a feeble old man now, and very deaf, but always courteous to callers. He reads and thinks and broods over the incidents of that awful time, and since that July day lfe has not held much of interest else. With infinite patience he has marked every spot en the whole plantation inside the Henry bounds with placards, showing where eac! command stood and how the batteries were located, where each brave officer fell, and where the high tide of blood rolled deepest. ‘That spot was marked by other hands than his before the close of the war. Those The New Henry House. who took part on the loyal side in that battle erected a monument on the spot where the fighting was a hand-to-hand confilct. It is of soft sandstcne, found near the Manassas Junction, is twenty-seven fect high, including the base, and stands on an elevated mound. On each corner is tall block of sandstone, and on each rests a conical 100-pounder shell, the top being surmounted by one of the same. On one side of the monument !s the in- scription “In Memory of the Patriots Who Fell at Bull Run, July 21, 186 On the other side, “Erected June 10, 1 It was constructed by the sixteenth Massachusetts light battery, and nearly every survi officer who fought in that battle was pres- ent at the dedication. Envious tine has laid her vandal fingers heavily upon the, at best, rough memorial stone, and it is far on the way to tumbling over, while the soft sandstone will soon leave of the inscription only a memory Relic hunters have wan- tonly defaced it, tco. It ought to be reno- vated before it is too late. jardly a day passes that some one who THE EVENING STAR, SATURDAY, JULY 20, 1895—TWENTY PAGES. fought in the battle of Bull Run, or who had friends in it, does not call upon Prof. Henry and ask to be shown over the battle ground. He has told the story so often that he reels it off like a machine, and if you break in on him with a question It confuses him, and he has to go back and begin all over again. He tells the story well, though, and there isn’t much room for questions, The Stone House. for he covers all the ground, if you will just give him a chance. He will point you to the exact spot on which Gen. Jackson stood with Stannard’s battery, when Gen. Bee is said to have called to his routed men, “Form! Form! See! There stands Jackson like a stone wall ‘Yo be sure Jackson's nephew has scouted the story, and says it isn’t true, but Prof. Henry believes in tt firmly, and has the spot so marked. He will show you where Gen. Bee fell and was buried, and where Barnard fell. Where Col. Campbell fell when leading his canny Scots up the pla- teau, and will point you off in the distance where he was buried, close by the house of Mr. Dogan, who lives right there yet. He will show you the spot where Hamp- ton got his wound, and Jackson and Beau- regard and Imboden and Col. Fisher, And where Col. Johrston of Hampton's Legion was killed. He will point ont to you the “Robinson” house, and the “Stone” house, down in the hollow by the Warrenton pike, and the stone bridge and the site of Sudley Church, and the old ford. It is all historic, this land. There is the old Chinn house, too, off among the trees; he will tell you that loyal people tive in it row. These houses don’t look much the worse for wear, either. A little more moss has gathered on them. Some patched-up places, where impertinent shells bit big holes in them, add to rather than detract from the picturesqueness, The gently rounded hills are covered with timber of good growth, and you scarcely believe that at the meeting of the armiesq thirty-three and thirty-four years ago the face of the country was swept almost clean of trees. Tall and slim and stately stands the new forest, its infancy nurtured by the blood of thousands of brave hearts, both those who were the blue and those who wore the gray. Where some of these trees stand Prof. Henry has marked them as monuments to the memory of Col. John Siocum and Maj. Ballou and brave Col. Haggerty of the Irish regiment. He will point the exact spots where Cols. Hunter, Hetntzleman, Wilcox, Gilman, Martin, Wood, Farnham, Corcoran and Henry W. Slocum got thelr wounds. So many brave men of this battle have become famous since! He will point you out the Leachman house in the distance, Beaure- gard’s headquarters for a time, one of the typical old southern homesteads, where a hospital was made for the sick and wound- ed.* And he will say that a solid shot still shows up in one corner of it. He will tell you about how disease carried off several of the boys in blue, and they were buried down in the young orchard, and time effaced every sign of graves. And how, twenty-five years afterward, some northern people, a lady, for one, stop- ped at this hospitable home for some days, and got to telling them of a wayward.son who ran away from home, and the last They tell her of the unfortunate buried down in the orchard, and suggest that in some such manner her son may beve died. And then they all talk, and talk, till hope springs up In the mother's hungry heart, and hope grows Into con- viction. The’ old colored servitor who buried the dead is sent for, and told to find the obliterated graves, if possible. He digs, and digs, and digs, for weeks, till almost the whole surface of the orchard, now full of grown trees, is turned up with his spade. But one day he struck an ob- struction, and then another, and at last from the bodies taken up one was iden- tified, and the precious dust sent to rest in the ancestral cemetery, among northern pines. And that is but one of the thous- ands of romances of the war. Fair and peaceful as the “Happy Valley” might be looks this battlefield today, but if that fair country had tongues for each soul set free there in the two battles fought within thirteen months of each other it could a tale unfold that would rival that of Hamlet's ghost. “On to Richmond” was the popular war cry of the north, and “on to Richmond” McDowell undertook to go. He got as far 2s Manassas, twenty-seven miles south- west, and met with a serious obstruction, Bis forces, numbering about 27,000, being “met up with” by the opposing forces of the confederates, under Beauregard, num- bering nearly 35,000. In the conflict that followed the federal loss was 16 officers and 444 enlisted men killed; 78 officers and 1,046"enlisted_ men wounded; 50 officers and 1,262 enlisted men missing; 25 pieces of artillery and a large quantity of small arms. Confederate loss—Twenty-five officers and 362 enlisted men killed; 63 officers and 1,519 enlisted men wounded; 1 officer and 12 en- Usted men missing. It was called a con- federate victory. It certainly was a fed- eral rout. There are people living in Wash- ington today who rode out to the scene of the battle, confidently expecting a Union victory. Society women, arrayed as if for a coaching party, went merrily off to see their favorite biue-coated officers pluck laurels as one gathers daisies from the field. They remained long enough to see them vainly try to rally their demoralized forces, and then themselves formed a part cf the panic-stricken mob which fled back to Washington. ae SETTING THE DAY. The Wooing of Her as It Will Be in the Years to Come. From Brooklya Life. “You look tired, dear.”” The man who had given up his life to the young girl who so solicitously ques- tioned him, gazed down tenderly into the eyes uplifted so searchingly into his. “I am a trifle tired, my darling,” he said. “Our cooking class was a little longer than usual this afternoon, and it has told upon me.” . “Yes, dear,’ she replied sympathetically. “J have heard mother tell how wearing they were to her, and I can understand in a measure how irksome they must be. Is this all you have been doing today?” “Oh, no!” he cried. “This morning I attended a most atsorbing lecture on the care of the househoid, the first of a series that are to be given this season. It was so helpful.” “I can imagine £0," she replied softly. “Although a subject that has never claim- ed my serious thought, I can appreciate just how inspiring talks of this sort must be to one so ambitious as yourself.” “Indeed, yes, and that 1s not all,” he ex- claimed, enthusiastically. “I am looking up the subject of home decoration, and it is wonderful what a vast field it Is. They asked me if I would prepare a paper on the use and abuse of tidies,” he added modestly, “but I havent enough conil- dence in myself." “Oh, why don’t you?” she cried. “I am sure you could do it, dear, and all these things will be such a help in your future life. You are a dear, good boy, and you try so hard to please me.” With an exclamation of delight, her fu- ture life companion, the Icok of weariness on his face giving place to one of the great- est hopefulness, drew her swiftly to his arms. “Do you think so?” he sald. “Ah, my dearest, how I have toiled to hear you say those words—the first words of praise for me that have ever fallen from your lips, and now that you have spoken, tell me when can I claim my reward and call you my own?" nd there was a look of intermingled satisfaction and complacency in her face as she replied: “I think, James, dear, if you keep on in the way that you have begun, that in three or four years you will be fitted to take up- on yourself the duties of a husband.” ——___+0+-____ The First View. From Life. She—"'So. there are the Alps at last!”” He—“Must be. You don’t suppose a first- class tourist company like this would work off any substitutions or imitations on its patrons?” —__+e+____ Her Father Taught Her. From the Wheeling Corner Stone. t Well Flower—“How gracefully Miss stern holds up her train.” Second Wall Flower—‘It ought to come natural, for they say her father started life as a road agent.” 13 THE OLD MONITORS. . == The Antiquated Craft Which Are to Come to League Island. Richmond Correspondence Philadelphia Times. The fleet of single-turreted monitors that for a decade have been in keeping near Richmond will be taken to Philadelphia as soon as they can be made seaworthy enough to get them there, and the James river tourists will hereafter miss one of the most unique scenes of the river trip. For the last twenty years they have been "| in soak, as it were, In the muddy waters of this historic stream. They are all single- turret monitors, built on the model of the waspish craft which fought the memorable duel with the confederate ironclad Merri- mac, in Hampton Roads, and set the fash- ion for the armor-protected navies of the world. The monitor fleet, originally numbering thirteen vessels, were placed in James river to protect them from the deteriorating ef- fects of salt water. They were all single-screw steamers of 840 horse power, and each carried two guns. The Ajax, Canonicus, Mahopac, Manhattan and Wyandotte are 2,100 tons each, while the Catskill, Jason, Lehigh, Montauk, Na- hant, Nantucket, Passaic and Comanche are of 1,875 tons each. Their number has gradually been decreas- ed by detail for practice boats for the naval reserve, and on account 6f worthlessness, until, when the order of Secretary Herbert came to remove them to Philadelphia, only six remained in the fleet here. Two of these—the Catskill and Lehigh—were last ee Est in shape under the supervision of Thief Engineer John Love, as far as could be done at this point, to be towed to the Norfolk navy yard to be prepared for their trip to Philadelphia. Powerful government tugs were assigned to the removal of these relics of the late war, and though the monitors have had steam up in the last few days to test their machinery, they were not trusted to their own power, but were towed to Norfolk Sun- day by the tugs. It is the purpose of the government to have these two boats, which are the best of the fleet, put In such condition as will NO REALLY Win HORSES. All Are Said to Be Descendants of ‘Those That Once Were Domesticated. From a Paper Read Before the Bombay Historical Society. Is there such a thing as the wild horse, an aboriginal or truly wild horse, in the world how? The angwer is more than doubtful. The mustang of Mexico, the wild horse of the South Arterican pampas, the brumbi of Australia, jqll are descendants of the domesticated animals introduced from Europe. The first horse was landed. in America at Buenos Ayres in 1537. In 15S0— that is, in lesa than fifty years—horses had spread to regions as remote as Patagonia. In Australia the difftsion of horses that have escaped from civilization has been quite as rapid, and jn, 4875 it was found necessary to shoot as many as 7,000 wild horses in the colony of New South Wales alone. In some parts of Australia the horse pest has received legislative notice. The wild horses tempt domestic horses to join them, and wild stallions also invade the Aus- tralian horse runs and vitfate choice herds in a most annoying manner. They recur to the ancestral manners in a way that is always the same. Ech stallion has his following of mares, ranging from a few up to forty and even fifty, and these parties may be separate or banded together in herds of considerable size, even, it is said, 400 strong. The young and the weak mares remain with a scanty or even no following. ‘The stallion has to maintain his supremacy by frequent combats, which especially oc- cur at certain seasons of the year. The animals are suspicious in the extreme, swift in flight, but bold in defense with tooth and heel in emefgency. They range extensively in search of pasture and water, and when hard pressed by danger and famine the herds break up. It is said that each troop has a leader and implicitly obeys him. He is the first to face danger and give the hint to fly. When pressed the horses form a ring, with the mares and foals in the center, and defend themselves vigorously with their heels, or they close in on thelr opponent in dense masses and trample him to death. It ig distinctly proven, then, that there can be no aboriginal or wild horse in either TEXAS SNAKE BARS. Necessary Precautions in Homes Along the Rio Grande. From the Philadelphia Times. J. D. Mason, a well-known traveling man, who has just returned from a business trip through southwest Texas, gives the follow- ing interesting account of a peculiar phase of life in that part of the world: - “There is a little strip of country,” said Mason, “in Texas down by the Rio Grande where snakes are literally too numerous to mention. They are really as thick as the proverbial dead leaves of Vallombrosa, and the most abstemious man in existence sees enough snakes in a minute to knock him reilly. I have a friend,Jim Hughes by name, living down in that region, who owns a cattle ranch, consisting of 1,500 acres of land, and really and truly the trail of the serpent was over them all. Jim has a wife who is the prettiest little woman west of the Mississippi, and two of the dearest little girls in the whole world, I reckon, and for a long time Jim was put to it to know how to protect his family from the snakes. He said that it used to be so that during the first warm days of early spring, when the snakes were just awaken- ing from their torpor, he and his ranchmen, cowboys, &c., would just have to leave the cattle to their fate and form a cordon about the house to keep the reptiles out. Nowa- days, though, such constant precaution is not necessary, as he has hit upon a device to circumvent the snakes to a certain ex- tent. He manages to do this by fencing in the house yard with close-woven wire net- ting "Fo begin with, however, he had to dig a ditch all around the place to a depth of about four feet, and plant cedar posts, let- ting them stand about six feet above the level of the ground. Then on these posts he stretched ten-foot wire netting and threw the dirt back in the ditch. By this means you see, he had four feet of netting under- ground, which prevented the snakes bur- rowing beneath and coming into the yard, and a six-foot fence above, which only the more adventurous reptiles try to sur- mount. Now and then a little snake will manage to wriggle through the meshes of THE MOST EXPENSIVE SHORT STORY EVER PUBLISHED. ; IT WON THE CAPITAL PRIZE OF $2000. 0FFERED BY THIS <0 AND OTHE ENTITLED I EL ie AND WILL ARP} _WALKINS, THE, FOREMO AMERICAN NOVELIST, IN COLLABORATION WITH MR,JOSEP NEWS Dada Aya = / i = F.CHAMBERLIN OF BOSTON. DUELS AMONG STUDENTS Still Scratching One Another as in Earlier i Years. Heidelberg’s University Prison—A Re- minder of Bismarck’s Youthful Days—Some of the Fights. From the Philadelphia Evening Telegraph. The two most distinctive institutions in Heidelberg, perhaps, are the university prison and the dueling which the students constantly carry on. The prison is a use- less inheritance from an antiquated past, and the dueling, mot to say anything more severe about it, is agains the law, and, in- deed, against a great many laws—those of the university itself, those of Baden, and those of the empire. Yet, there are ap- parently no other two things which the people of the town try harder to maintain, or which, however sorry we may be to recognize it, seem to be quite so attractive a drawing card for strangers. In what this peculiar attraction may consist we are unable to say, and it surely is not to be reckoned any more seriously than a pass- ing love for the curious. In times back every university in Ger- many had its prison, and many still have. Each‘todzy has its own judge and con- stablcs and various laws which the stu- dents are supposed to be obliged to observe. Earlier each university was a kind of little state within a state, with very extensive independent judicial powers; but since the enactment of an imperial law regarding this subject in 1878, important changes have taken place. However, there-are va- rious classes of disciplinary offenses, such as drunkenness, gueling, insult of a fellow student, unseemly uproar on the public streets or on the university premises, etc., which the university authorities themselves still punish. The sentence may be expul- sion or imprisonment in the university car- cer for a term of days, or both. This prison system flourished at Heidelberg in a more pronounced form than anywhere else. At Gottingen the visitor may be shown an old door, which earlier stood in the prison of that university, upon which is deeply carv- ed the name of Otto von Bismarck, a bit of workmanship ascribed to the old chancel- lor when he was sowing his wild boyhood oats. The boys when they are sentenced to prison come in great state. They bring their servants with them, if they have any. They drive up in carriages, with mattresses and all the necessary bedclothing, so that their stay may be pleasant as well as Profitable. They are also well equipped with paint and all the suitable utensils for mural decoration. The duels at Heidelberg are very famous. There is perhaps no university in Germany at which dueling is not practiced, but here it is regarded almost as a religious duty. The sons of the rich congregate at Heidel- berg, and they are the people who are es- pecially addicted to this form of student pastime in Germany. It is not an exag- eration to say that between twenty and thirty duels take place here every week during the semester, and these nearly all at the Hirschgasse, a little tavern across the river from Heidelberg, which is known and advertised everywhere as the place of resort for such encounters. It has served in this capacity for a great many years. The signboards point to it. It is mentioned in the guide books, and every one knows of it except the university officials and the police. It is not a ten-minute walk from the center of the town, though it is outside of the city jurisdiction. This, however, seems to be a matter of no mo- ment, for some of the clubs for a period last year fought in the town itself, at a tavern directly in the shadow of the old castle. There are duels here some three or four mornings every week by the members of the various fighting clubs, of which Heidel- berg has an enormous number. The most aristocratic of them all is the Saxo-Borus- sia, This club bears cartel relations with the Borussia of Bonn, to which the Hohen- zollerns belong. Five or six duels between various combatants are usualiy fought on the same morning. This is all a curious commentary on law and order as they are supposed to exist in Germany. Such machinery for the enforce- ment of law as is to be found here flour- ishes in no other land in the world; and yet, for one reason or another, the duel gces on unhindered. By the laws of the empire, without taking into account the penalties prescribed by the lower jurisdic- tions, there is the most severe punishment for dueling and the challenging to duel. In spite of various attempts to make other interpretations, the student duels have by the supreme court of the empire been de- cided to be duels in the sense of the law. Yet publicly in the reichstag, no longer ago than last winter, an esteemed member of the kaiser’s ministry declared himself and his government at issue not only with the laws and the supreme court, but with what- ever moral feeling there may be in the land against this malevolent form of evil. That there {s a strong feeling against the systematic mutilation of the human face in the universities there can be no doubt, al- though it is sometimes difficult to discern, Those who are opposed to it, however, are so far removed from the throne of author- ity that they cannot make their influence felt. It is one of those abominations, of which there are several in Germany, that there will be no way to uproot until there is established a government which can rest in some way upon a free and responsible public opinion. Whatever the government of Germany is today, it is not this, Dueling is so common at Heidelberg that it is said sometimes by those who do not know their subject that all the students fight. This is, of course, not true, though there is relatively a ‘larger proportion en- gaged at it here than at some other univer- sities. There are surely not more than 300 — our a whole attendance of 1,200. is figure, however, ma; the ee y be slightly below -o<+—____ Debit and Credit. From Trath I never was good at fen But now that the bail te done T'll square my accounts, and balance Expenses with girls and fun. Let's see;the tickets two dollars, And four for the carriage and pair, And three for the Jaequeminot roses— She looked out of sight, I declare, ‘That's nine. Well, I guess th; ? From the Mabllity side. 1 ompletes it And now for the assets—one item Is all that I find for a guide. And yet that lone figure’s sufficient ‘To more than offset it—and this Is the fractional part of a mini ‘That I spent in a last good-night kiss, permit them to be loaned to those states which have naval reserves, as practice boats. Of the four monitors which will re- main here some time longer it is sald some will be sold for scrap iron. So long as the navy had more officers than ships the monitors served as a berth for a commander and a goodly number of officers and men, but now that the navy has grown and there are many ships with- out crews the Secretary of the Navy has determined to utilize these men for more active service and to save the expense of $50,000 a year required for their mainten- ance. For years the monitors and their crews have been the pets and show things of this city, and the merchants have reaped the profit of the supplies furnished them. Periodically threats have been made of re- moving them, but the protest of the chamber of commerce, backed by the in- fluence of their Congressman, was sufficient to keep them here. This method, however, was no longer potent. The monitors have also played their part in the fashionable life of the city. Super- structure after superstructure was placed on board the Ajax until the commander’s quarters became quite ample for purposes of entertaining, and the steam launch car- ried down many gay parties in summer to enjoy the hospitalities of the commander's family. The elehty or a hundred men who now make up their crews have had a lazy time of it for years and a berth on the monitors has long been a synonym for an easy place. Most of them have married in Richmond and some of them built up lttle homes and families and the change for them will be very distressing. ee The inevitable Conclusion. From Life. Freddy—‘Mamma, our principal says that his school days were the happiest days of his fe. Do you believe that?” Mamma—“Certainly. He wouldn’t say so if it were not true.” Freddy—‘‘Well, I suppose he played hook- ey and didn’t get caught.” America or Australia, although there are tens of thousands of unknown horses. Tra- dition points,to Central Asia es the orig- inal abode of the horse, and there the orginal stock of wild horses may still pos- sibly exist. Darwin’g-statement that no ab- original or truly wild horse is known to exist must still be held as explaining the exact position of this question. But we must supplement it by stating that it ts not certain that truly wild horses do not exist; and, on the whole, conclude that the evidence is in tavor of the existence of the wild horse in Central Asia, but that we have no eviderce ag, to his pedigree in re- lation to domestication. |The wild horse of the British Islands is now practically the Shetland pony, but He’ i not the powerful animal described by, Caesar. The domes- ticated animal everywhere, however, re- verts very easily to the savage state. The paces of a wild hore are a walk and gal- Icp. The double an@ the canter are arti- ficiai, and it is still:a rhooted question as to whether the wild, horse ever trots. ee = Defuelizing Wood. From the New York Tribune. “Defuelization” is a new word added to the language; told in a story by Senator Palmer about an Illinois farmer who for several years had been selling him wood for $6 a cord. “This year,” says Senator Palmer, “he came to me with a load and I told him that I dtd not want it. He offered it at 2a cord. I still refused, and he wanted to know why I would not take it at $2. I told him I was using soft coal, for which I paid $1.37 a ton. ““Gosh!’ he exclaimed, ‘I heard you was trying to demonetize silver, but now you're trying to defuelize wood.’ eee Changed. From Life. He used to be the meekest man In all the human race; But since he bought a bicycle He travels on his face. the wire and get into the yard, but the big fellows are practically circumvented. Every morning, though, a man goes all over the yard on a tour of inspection, killing all the small snakes that may have crept in, be- fore Mrs. Hughes or the little girls venture out of the house. It Is not a very pleasant prospect, either, although you are seated in the house in comparative security, to look over the fence and see the reptiles writhing and squirming in the sun, now and then butting against the fence or clinging to the wire in hideous coiling festoons, “About two miles away from the place is a little bog or marsh, whence a little stream makes into the river, and here the reptiles breed. Hughes inveigled me into going over one night to the neighborhood of the bog, and I shall never forget the horrible noises that emanated therefrom. The snakes were evidently fighting among themselves, and the bog seemed to be alive with them, Deliver me from another ex- perience like the one that night, and from a home in Texas down by she Rio Grande. Hughes thinks it is the garden spot of the universe, however, and says when he suc- ceeds in getting that marsh properly drain- ed the snakes will disappear.” —_—_\_-oo—__. She Studied to Please. From the Chicago Record. ~ “You know de w’ite house over yere on de hill D. “W'at you s’pose the ole woman said w'en I axed for a hand-out?” ‘Give it up.” She sez, ‘Do you like ven’son?” I sez, ‘Yes.’ An’ then she sez, “There's a saw- buck out yere—mebbe you can rassle off a piece if you work right hard.’ ” —_—_+o+____ Enough to Begin On. From Life. She—“Father says if he comes to live with us he expects to pay board. How much do you think I ought to charge him?” He—That depends. If he is satisfied with only a hall bed room, I think about $4,000 @ year would be enough. The Season’s Change. From the Boston Transcript. Helen—“How could you give up Harry Haussmann for Tom Waterman? You used to think everything of Harry. Martha—“I know; but the theaters are nearly all closed now, and Tom has such @ lovely yacht." —eoe—__ Theory and Practice. From the Halifax Herald. He—“My views of bringing up a family are—” She—“Never mind your views, I'll bring up ene family. You go and bring up the coal.” ee This Color Warranted Not to Run. From Clothier and Furnisber, THE EVENING STAR has a Larger Circulation: - in the Homes of Washington than all the | Other - Papers é - of the City Added Together, because it Stands Up Always for the Interests . of the People of Washington; Contains - the Latest and Fullest Local and General News; and Surpasses all the Other Papers in the City in the Variety and Excellence of its Literary Features. It. Literally Goes Everywhere, and is Read ; by Everybody. It is, therefore, asa Local Advertising Medium, without a Peer, Whether Cost or’ Measure of Publicity be Considered.