Evening Star Newspaper, December 14, 1895, Page 14

14 THE EVENING STAR, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 14, 1895—TWENTY-FOUR PAGES. HOW THE BRIGADIER PLAYED FOR A KINGDOM, —— + BY A. CONAN DOYLE. —. (Continued from Friday’s Star.) (Cozyrl, by Bacheller, Johnson & Bacheller.) SYNOPSIS. After the disastrous retreat of the army on from Moscow Brig. ; as seat through German territory, nom!- nally fr.endly, but really ripe for revolt, to aise troups in Prance. On his way he has 4 with some di: the black looks tile f a mysteric toast to the | n little later he is warned of his p fee stricken man hidden by the road- sid it means to me if I am seen heiping you,” the man had sald. atht From whom?” asked the briga- “From the Tugendbund. From Lutzow’s night-riders. You Frenchmen are living on a powder magazine, and the match has been struck which will fire it.” “But this is all strange to me,” I sald, still fumbling at the leathers of my horse. “What is this Tugendbund?” “It is the secret society which has planned the great rising which is to drive you out of Germany just as you have been driven out of Russia.”’ “And these T’s stand for it?” “They are the signal. I should have told you ali this in the village, but I dared not be seen speaking with you. I galloped through the woods to cut you off, and con- cealed both my horse and myself."" “I am very much indebted to you, “and the more so as you are the only man that I have met today from whom I have had common civilit “All that I possess 1 have gained throush contract.ng for the French armies,” he said. “Your emperor has been a good friend to me. But I beg that you wiil ride on now, yor we have talked long enough. Beware enly of Lutzow’s 1. sht-rders!” “Banditti?” I asked. “All that Is best in Germany,” said he. “But for God’s sake ride forward, for I have risked my life and exposed my good name in order to carry you th.s warning.” Well, if I had been heavy with thought before, you can think how I felt after my strange talk with the man among the fag- Ots. what caine Lue lo le even more than his words was his shivering, broken voice, his twitching face, and his eyes glancing swiftly to right and left and open- ing in horror whenever a braach creaked upon a tree. It was clear that he was in the jast extreme of terror, and it is possi- ble that he had cause, for not long itter 1 had left him [ heard a distant gunshot and a shouting from somewhere behind me. It may haye been some sportsman hallooing to his dogs, but I never again either heard or saw the man who had given me my warn- ing. Rikeot a good lookout after this, riding viftiy where the country w: open and slowly where there might be an ambuscade. It was ser.ous for me, since 500 good miles of German soil lay in front of me; but scmehow I did not take it very much to heart, for the Germans had always seemed to me to be a kindiy, gentle people, whose hand closed more readily arouni a pipe- stem than a swordhilt—not out of want of valor, you understand, but because they are genial, open souls, who would rather be on good terms with all men. I did not know then that beneath that homely surface there lurks a deviltry as flerce and far more persistent than that of the Cuastillan or the italian. And it was not long before I had it shown to me that there was something more serious abroad than rough words and hard looks. I had come to a spot where the road runs upward through a wild tract of heatherland and vanished ‘nio an osk wood. I may have been half way up the bill, when looking forward I saw somethiag gleam under the shadow of the tree trunks, nd a man came out with a coat that was slashed and spangled with gold that he blazed like a fire in the sunlight. He ap- peared to be very drunk, for he reeled and staggered as he came toward me. One of his hands was held up to his ear and clutchea a get | Landkerohief, which was fixed to his neck. I had reined up the mare and was look- ing at him with some disgust, for it seemed strange to me that one who wore so gor- geous a uniform should show himself in such a state In broad daylight. For his part, he looked hard in my direction ard came slowly onward, stopping from time to time and swaying about as he gaz2d at me. Suddenly, as I again advanced, he screamed out his thanks to Christ, and, lurching for- ward, he fell with a crash upon the dusty read. His hands flew upward with the fall. and I saw that what | had taken for a@ red cloth was a monstrous wound, which had left a great gap in his neck, from which a dark bieode st hung, Lke an epaulette, upon his shoulder. “My God!" I cried, as I sprang to his and I thought you were drunk!" but dying,” said he, oh! thank heaven that I have seen a French officer while I had still strength to speak.” I laid him among the heather and poured some brandy down his*throat. All round us was the vast country side, green and peaceful, with nothing living in sight save cnly the mutilated man beside me. “Who has done this?” I asked, ‘and what are you? + ere. revch, aud yet the uni- form is strange to me.” “Tt is that of the emperor's new guard of honor. I am the Marquis of Chateau St. Arnaud, and I am the ninth of my blood who have died in the service of France. I have been pursued and wounded by the night-riders of Lutzow, but I hid among the Poxgey aod yonder and waited in the hepe w a Frenchman might pass. I could not be sure at first if you were friend or foe, but I felt that death was very near, and that I must take the chance.” “Keep your heart up, comrade,” said I. “TI have sean a man with a worse wound who kas lived to boast of it.” “No, no,” he whispered, “I am going fast.”” He laid his hand upon mine as he spoke, and I saw that his finger ni were al- teady blue. “But I have papers here in my tunte which you must carry at once to the Prince of Saxe-Felstein at his castle of Hof. He is still true to us, but the princess is cur deadly enemy. She is striving to “But He Bazed Like a Fire light. make him declare against us. If he does so it will determine all those who are wavering, for the King of Prussia is his uncle, and the King of Bavaria his cousin. in the Sun- ‘These rs will hold him to us if tney can only reich him before he takes the last step. Place them in his hands tonight and perkaps you will have saved all Ger- many for the emperor. Had my horse not been shot I might, wornded as I am—" he choked, and the cold hand tightened into a grip which left mine as bloodless as itself. Then, witn a groan, his head fell back, and he had gone as a brave ®oldier would wish to go. Here was a fine start for my journey home. I was left h a commission of which I knew little, which would lead me to delay the pressing needs of my hussars, and which at the same time was of such importance that it was impossible for me to avoid it. I opened the marquis’ tunic, the brilliance of which had been devised by the emperor {n order to attract those young aristocrats from .hom he hoped to raise these new regiments of his guard. It was a smal] packet of papers which I drew out, tied up with silk and addressed to the prince of Saxe-Felstei. In the corner, in &@ sprawling, untidy hand, which I knew to be the emperor's own, was written “press- Ing and most Important.” I! was an order to me, those four words—an order as clear as if it had come straight from the firm Ups, with the cold gray eyes looking into mine. aly troopers might wait for their horses, the dead marquis might lie where I had lad him amongst the heather, but if the mare and her rider had a breath left in them the papers should reach the prince that night. I should not have feared to ride by the road through the wood, for I had learned in Spain that the safest time to pass through a guerrilla country ts after an out- rage, and the moment of danger is when all {Is peaceful. When I came to look upon my map, however, I saw that Hof lay fur- ther to the south of me, and that I might reacn It more directly by keeping to the moors. Off I set, therefore, and had not gone fifty yards before two carbine shots rang out of the brushwood and a bullet hummed past like a bee. It was clear that the night riders were bolder in their ways than the brigands of Spain, and that y s would have ended where it un if I had kept to the road. a mad ride that, a ride with a nm, girth deep in heather and in gorse, plunging throug bushes, ying down hillsides, with my neck at the mercy of my dear little Violette. But she—she never slipped, she never faltered, as swift and as sure-footed as if she knew that her vider carried the faie of all Germany be- neath the buttons of his pelisse. And I— I had long borne the name of being the best horseman in the six brigades of light cavalry, but I never rede as I rode then. My friend the Bart had told me of how they hunt the fox in England, but the swiftest fox would have been captured by me that day. The wiid pigeons which flew overhead did not take a straighter course than Violette and I below. As an officer IT have always been ready to sacrifice my- self for my men, thoug the emperor would not bave thanked me for it, for he had many men, but only one—well, cavalry leaders of the first-class are rare. But here I had an object which was indeed worth a sacrifice, and I thought no more of my life than of the clouds of earth that flew from my darling's heels. We struck the road once more as the Light-was faillng, and galloped into the little village of Lobenstein; but we had hardly got upon the cobblestones when off came ore of tke mare's shoes, and I had t> lead her to the village smithy. His fire was low ond his day’s work done, so that it would be an hour at least before I could kepe to push on to Hof. Cursing at the delay, I strelled into the village inn and ordered a cold chicken and some wine to be served fer my dinner. It was but a few more miles to Hof. and I had every hope Girth Deep in Heather. that I might deliver my papers to the prince on that very night, and be on my way for France next morning with dis- patches for the emperor in my bosom. I will tell you now what befell me in the inn of Lobenstein. The c Ken had been served and the wine drawn, and I had turned upon both as a man may who has ridden such a ride, wren I was aware of a murmur and a scuf- fling in the ball outside my door. At first I thought ft was some brawl between some peesants in their cups, and I left them to settle their own affairs. But of a sudden tkere broke from the low sullen growl of the voices stich a sound as would send Etienne Gerard leaping from his deathbed. It was the whimpering cry of a woman in pain. Down clattered my knife and my fcrk, and in an instant I was in the thick of the crowd which had gathered outside of my door. (To be continued on Monday.) ——— SHE LIVES ON THE OCEAN. Rich Mrs. Carson. Has Boarded There Several Years. From the New York Press. For the third time since she began her trips, in 1898, the Cunard steamship Lu- cania came in here on Friday without hav- ing Mrs. Carson on board, and it was an event in the history of the steamer. It did not seem like the same vessel with this strange bearder absent. Any ore in search of a good boarding house might get some points from Mrs. Carson—address the North Atlantic Ocean. The olu song tells of a “Home on the Roll- ing Deep,” but Mrs. Carson is probably the only person whose home is really there. Officers and sailors “‘go down to the sea in ships” to “do business on the great deep,” and have their homes on shore, but Mrs. Carson has her home on the sea, and only gces ashore for business or pleasure. Her present floating home is the Cunard steam- ship Lucania, and she’s greatly attached to it. For’ just how many years Mrs. Carson has been making her home on the North Atlantic nobody seems to know exactly, but she was going back and forward between New York and Liverpool for some time before the Lucania set forth for the first time. When the big Cunarder was launched Mrs. Carson inspected her, and concluded to take board on her. She selected a roomy cabin, and setting up her Lares and Penates therein, settled down comfortably to enjoy her new home. The Lucania is now in her twenty-sixth round trip; that is, she has crossed the ocean fifty-one times. Only twice before the present trip has Mrs. Carson been ab- sent from the steamer when she “plunged the ocean blue.” Therefore she has cross2i the ocean forty-six times on the Lucania. For two yeags the ship has been her float- ing home. She has been on deck in the gentle breezes of summer and the fierce gales of winter; kas seen the beauty of the sights of starlight and moonlight, and the sights of darkness and storm. Sometimes, wher the vessel 1s in port, she goes to a hotel for a day or two; more often she does not leave the ship, for she is a stcady boarder. Of the reasons of Mrs. Carson choice of a boarding house only the bare outlines are known. She is supposed to be a widow. She is known to be a woman of means, and to cordially dislike and distrust the rela- tives to whom her property will go upon her death. She does not want to be where they can get at her, and she does like sea. So, instead of going to some o1i the-way place on the continent to live, where she would be lonesome, she chooses the Atlantic ocean as her home and the Lucania as her boarding house. Then she has the benefit of the salt sea air, which may prolong her Jife beyond that of her waiting relatives. She has the lux- ury of salt water baths all the year round, good attendance and a bountiful tabie. She also has plenty of company, and forms pleasant acquaintances among the passen- gers who come and go across the o ferry. a A Regular Churchgoer. From the Philadelphia Inquirer. A story of the fcrce of habit In a dog was related by M. Wolverton Small, a Market street merchart, who has just returned from a gunning and fishing trip in the south. According to Mr. Small, tnere is a dog named Gipsey at Pittsborough, N. C., chat attends the Episcopal Church service every Sunday. The dog, now owned and cared for by Matthew Hill, who lives near the church, was formerly the property of Dr. Ihrie of Pennsylvania, who died six years ago. Dr. Ihrie, who occupied the Hill mansicn, was one of the pillars of the church, and every Sunday morning when the church bells rang he called his dog Gip- sey, and the man and dog attended the services tugether, occupying a pew to- gether. After Dr. Thrie died his dog kept up the churchgoing every Sunday, with the greatest regularity, and, although now fif- teen years’ old and blind, he has not missed @ service since his master died. CHRISTMAS IN PARIS Especially as It is Spent in the American Colony. SHOPPING FUR THE- HCME FOLKS After All, the Fact Remains That They Are Exiles. ——_+—___ ONLY AN IMITATION er Special Correspondence of The Evening Star. PARIS, December 5, 1895. HRIsTMAS WEEK in the American col- ony of Paris begins @ month beforehand, It is occasioned by the necessity of se- lecting suitable Christmas presents to be sent home to America. Shopping for oneself is a fever; but to make the tour of the junk shops of the Rue de Rivoli ts a gay rec- reation. Only, when we go in parties, there Is at the first beginning constraint, inse- curity, uncertainty, timidity. How dare I admit to the Misses McGrew, so elegantly fashionable, that it is my fixed, well-rea- soned-out intention to send my Aunt Mary only a gilt, hand-painted calendar for 186, my Brother George an Imitation brier- wood pipe, marked Paris, but made in Germany, and my three little girl cousins each a packet of the Paris edition of the New York Herald's world-celebrated col- ored-paper-doll supplements, saved up Sunday after Sunday for them with loving care? b The party skurries down the Rue de Riv- oli, by way of an ice-cream-soda and cocoa- nut-cake emporium. It is a delightful win- ter afternoon in Paris, crisp and bracing, the air laden with the perfume of absinthe and two-sou bunches of violets, musical with the cracking of coachmen’s whips, the hum of conversation and the swish- ing of silk petticoats. The arcades of the Rue de Rivoll are kal- eidoscopic with the play of electric lights on a thousand shop windows where repose n mereiricious splendor imitation pearls and diamonds, rubies, sapphires and all precious stones, oil paintings suitable to be packed in a trunk, lace handkerchiefs made by machinery, bronzes, marbles and glit' statuettes marked down below cost price, Persian tapestries and gimcracks from Jerusalem, sham antiquities and an- tique novelties, German-made cheap china dogs to put on mantelpieces, birthday ecards and Christmas greetings, models of the Eiffel tower and photographs of every- thing on earth at one franc each. Streets in Holiday Dress. The Christmas presents are already on their way across the broad Atlantic, and as each hour passes Christmas day is com- ing nearer. Mistletoe is being hawked about the streets. The restaurants and shops are decorated with the festive holly. The giant Christmas tree of the Louvre shop is drawing {ts multitudes of wor- shipers. And on the Boulevard ifself the baraques of the Christmas fair already crowd the promenade. However occupied one is, with educa- tional matinees at the Theater Francais and the Colonne concerts, 5-oclock tea: dressmakers’ appointments, hygienic bi cyeling in the Rois de Heulogne, skating lessons at the Palais de Glace, with char- itable visits to poor young painters’ studios, not to speak of evening dances, the opera and going to the Scala to hear Yvette, despite the strain of making up the winter trip to Nice or Cairo or through Spain, they.must find time to see the fascinating baraques of the Boulevard. Everythirg {s sold in these sheds along the sidewalk, from gingerbread horses only fit to hang out the window as baromete: to kerosene lamps labeled “useful pre: ents” at thirty-five cents each. For a dol- lar you may have a nest of Pharaoh's ser- pents eggs, a razor-edged corn cutter, a box of baby-powder with a puff, an In- dia rubber statuette of the Queen of Mad- agascar, a photograph album, a box of paints and three bunches of violets. In the baraques of the Boulevard you may also procure cheap pulse warmers to present to the choir boys. It helps the poor also, for all these leprous little sheds are con- structed by a rich company and rented out to bankrupt shopkeepers, speculative widows and orphans and sewing girls out of work, who are obliged to sell below cost price in order to do a sufficiently large volume of business to pay their rent. The Midnight Mass. The reveillon and the midnight mass come next. Naturaily all the Americans desire to attend the inspiring religious office at the fashionable Church of the Madeleine. It is true that hundreds of tourists annual- ly, Germans, English and Americans, may be seen grouped disconsolately around the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris, waiting for it to light up—as it never does—on Christmas eve. They even go to the Sainte Chapelle, which is no longer a church. These are serious-minded people, who, avoiding the glitter of merely exterior Parisian life, desire to penetrate to the truth of things and comprehend something of the life of the people. I myself have ccnducted, during the past three Christmas evcs, three parties to the midnight masses, { either to Saint Gervais to hear the wonder- ful Palestrina music, or to the Madeleine, to be in contact with the rich and worldly audience, We have never yet been able to get inside, either, on account of the crowd, and have always consoled ourselves with promising to attend the midnight mass next year. : The reveillon is easier for us, for all you need do is to enter a restaurant. The theory is that after the midnight mass everybody will be cold, wet, hungry and rejoicing. In families they have always had a substantial supper walting at heme. Chocolate soup, blood sausage, mulled wine and cake is the habitual feast for serious people. The custom of reveillon supper is so firmly fixed that no one dreams of neglecting it. Those who do not go to the midnight mass only eat the more. When they are very werldly, indeed, they come in full ball cos- tume, drink too much champagne and dance till daybreak after eating. - For all such crab soup, lobster salad and truffied turkeys take the place of the blood sau- sage. o Not the Renl Thing. There are three ways for Americans to eat Christmas dinner in Paris. It may be in @ boarding house, in a restaurant, or in a private family. In any case festivity is given to the occasion by making the hour 1 o'clock noon, instead of 7 in the evening, as on ordinary days. The Parisian restau- 1ents advertise roast turkey and cranberry sauce. They know no other Christmas. The boarding houses frequented by Ameri- cans add canned corn and sweet potatoes, not to speak of tinned plum pudding from England In private families the height of luxury is reached in stufling the turkey with bread- crumbs, sausage and chestnuts. The French, bad luck to them, have no Idea of stuffing a fowl, alleging that to do so draws away {ts juice and flavor. They look upon cranberry sauce as the innocent mania of a primitive people, on green corn as food for cattle. They no more dream of cooking an oyster than a baby. Give a French woman a dish of snails as hors d'oeuvre, some fried brains as entree, to be followed by monkey veal on a slimy bed of ckcpped spinach or a stew of domestic rab- bit and onions, and she will not ask for turkey and cranberry sauce. If you want a true American Christmas dinner, you must go to one of the American restaurants of Paris. There is nothing you cannot have, from corn bread and hoe cake to pumpkin pie, from fried oysters to mo- s candy. There is corned beef hash, e are codfish balls. A pair of the lat: ter, accompanied by a bottle of American beer, has become the fashionable American and English after theater supper this pres- ent winter. The people have tried every- thing else, and they long for the simplici- ties of home. Exiles From Home. But to eat Christmas dinner in a restau- rant of the Rue Saint Honore is a sad thing and brings to mind that one is an exile after all. There are a dozen parties in the large room, non Kwing anything of the other. We speak In whispers. The turkey chokes 'n one’s throat. Even the stuffing does not taste right. What shall we do this neereneg | a too late to go to a matines. It is 1d) outalde. What shall you do? Oh, I'll go home. And you? I'll go home, too. her ne goes home. Home! Home to the boardifg house, home to the hotel. Every one is going home to go to bed. There, warm but miserable, one may forget. 1 In the Americdn cdfony of Paris Christmas presents are not only of two kinds—those given and those-received—but they also ap- pertain thus to two distinct classes of Americans Abrgy.. hese are tourists and residents. The 'X aves lady Uving with her daughter all the winterein a Paris boarding house;ds t a resident, though she may think ff She is a tourist also. The Christmas presents of tourists are those which they make to themselves. I know three such young ladies, each spend- ing the Winter in Paris. All three are sporting chinchilla fur coats, without which their happiness would have been incom- plete. They discovered it immediately. And they are Christmas presents, bought them by their mothers, though bought in November. One of these girls, following these tactics, has anticipated the Christ- mas presents of the next three years. Girls in the American Colony. Residents of the American colony consist of (1) American girls whose parents have allowed them to marry foreign titles, and (2) American girls who, with the permission of their parents, hope to marry foreign titles. In the latter case the utility of hav- ing an immense amount of jewelry, con- stantly renewed, is obvious. In the former case they would prefer a check. The American father, come abroad before Christmas, is a petted individual. His daughter loves him devotedly. She shows him hew Celightful her position ts, how much to his credit and the credit of his country. His grandchildren are little counts. He himself sits all day smoking big cigars, because he hates French life and cannot understand the things which interest his foreign family. But he per- ceives the idea of a Christmas present or a New Year present is the foremost one, and that his role is giving. His daughter strikes him after dinner daily; and his son- in-law comes striking tn the morning. There is mistletoe and holly in the Amer- ican colony at Christmas time; but you are not allowed to kiss under the former, and the latter only looks like a bright mockery. Letters from home sadden the heart. Writ- ing home is a task. At this time Americans in Paris perceive clearly that they are but exiles after all. STERLING HEILIG. ABOUT “CALAMITY JANE.” A Once Noted Woman Revisits the Scenes of Her Explol From the Chicago Daily Tribune. . When “Hank” Jewett drove to the Elk- horn depot in Deadwood, S. D., one after- noon recently, he got two passengers. One was a stout, heavy-set dark woman, a trifle the other side of forty, clad in plain black, and the other a little girl, apparent- ly her daughter, somewhere near nine years old. When Hank drove back from the depot and directed his team toward Wright's boarding house, on Upper Sher- man street, there was almost as much ex- cltement in town as when the first rail- road entered Deadwood. © “Calamity Jane’s in town!” shouted an old-time miner, who caught a glimpse of Hank's load leaving the depot. Not a man, woman or child in Dead- wood but had known Calamity Jane be- fore she left hete' eighteen years ago, or heard story afteristory of her wonderful career. The advent of a President of the United States into the Black Hills would hardly have created greater interest. Ca- lamity Jane was one of the three most noted characters of the westérn frontier of post-bellum days.’ The others are her two former associates as scouts in the gov- ernment service, “Ruffalo Bill” (W. F. Cody) and “Wild " (Villiam Hickock). The latter died with hts boots on, and sleeps In the cemetery oh the mountain side east of Deadwood, beneath a hand- some monument. : Calamity Jane’s name was Martha Can- nary. In the summer of 1872 there was a milf- tary post on Goose creck, Wyoming, near where the town of Sheridan now stands. At Sheridan Buffalo Bill's only daughter now conducts a hotel. In those days and for years, after this was In the heart of the Indien country, One day a small de- tachment of troops from Goose Creek camp was surrounded nearly by Indlans. Six soldiers were killed and Capt. Egan was wounded. fe was reeling in his sad- dle and about to fall, when Martha Can- mary dashed up beside him, grasped him about the body, and pulled him over upon her horse in front of her. Thus the gallant woman scout saved the Hfe of the United States army officer—as she saved others— and Capt, Egan, while recovering from his serious wounds, one day jokingly called her “Calamity Jane.” She has been known by that title ever since. Tts aptitude will be better understood when it is said that this remarkable char- acter was always to be found at the front wherever there was trouble, whether a fight with Indians or a lynching bee. And yet Calamity was never a quarrelsome person. She would not be called a good woman by the Pharisees, yet her nature had, nevertheless, a certain stamp of no- billty. Fearless and masculine in nearly all her attributes, including the costume she usually chose to wear, there was yet a feminine tenderness {n her character which always prompted her to share her last doliar or her last strip of bacon with a hungry miner, and which is wonderfully manifest in the metamorphosis of advanc- ing years, Her natural love for adventure, excitement and the primitive wildness of the furthest frontier drove her from Dead- wood eighteen years ago. Yet she reap- pears now, a kindly matron in the prime of life, and concerned only for the welfare of her two little daughters, whom she wishes to have the advantages of school- ing. She married a ranchman named M. Burke after she left Deadwood, and has been living over a hundred miles north of here, beyond Camp Crook, in Montana. Calamity, when young, had more than her share of good looks. But that never troubled her. Neither did she allow the restless characters of early days to trou- ble her about it any more than she felt so inclined. Her prowess with the six-shooter entitled her to as much respect as was given to any man in the camp she hap- pened to frequent. She associated with desperadoes, frequented dance halls, drank a Lttle—but never much—joined in sports, racing and hunting, as a man would, was to be found on the streets amid groups of men, talking with them as one of their kind, wore a man’s suit of handsomely made tight-fitting buckskins, and a broad- brimmed hat, and always rode one of the best horses on the plains. At an Indian scare or a lynching Jane would always take the lead, and was easily the most conspicuous character on those occasions. It was she who would arrange the details of an execution, and after the ceremony would superintend the funeral. That the late lamented had been a valued acquaint- ance at one time never feazed Jane. If it was for the good of the camp that he ex- plate a few pf his sins on a convenient mountain pine Jané was there to see that everything was carried out according to Hoyle. is most disagreeable to me, John; I like a glass of Bordeaux, but I have “qt woulk misleid, or perhaps lost my cellar key “Don’t matter, doctor, don't matter; the red wine bottle can be taken quite easily through the lattice.” CONGRESS MET HERE Dramatic History of the Old Capitol Building, AND A PRISCN > A HOTEL ONCE Now Turned Into Fashionable Residences. WAR TIME MEMORIES Written for The Evening Star. To reproduce the old Capitol, antiquate Lanier place and subtract thirty years from the present. Throw the three houses com- prising the place into one and replace the mansard slate roof with a sloping,hump- backed shingle one. Brick up all the win- dows and outside doors. Cut four lines of old-fashioned window casements on the Ist street side in successive lay- ers, making three stories in helght. In the center on the ground floor batter an opening large enough to admit a caravan and make of it an arched doorway. Over this, extending to the slanting roof, open an arched window the same width as the door below. Let the A street side be the gable end. In the middle of it place two great arched windows, one above the other, flanked by three stories of height. They whitewash the building half way up and paint the other half a faded red. Fil) up each bordering street to a level with the present terrace. Lay an uneven brick sidewalk, extending to an imitation gutter, which never drained. Outside make a road- way of loose stones and clay and you have a nightmare of architecture, but the old Capitol just the same, a house with a his- tory more famous than that of any other in the country. It became a refuge for Congress when Congress had nowhere else to shelter its head. A platform hung from one of its arched windows once, and upon It one of the Presidents delivered his inaugural. It became a meeting place for international commissions adjusting claims. It was a school where youth declaimed the speeches made by Congress in it years be- fcre. It was a first-class boarding house, and with the years met the fate common to first-class boarding houses in Washing- ton by becoming a tenement. It was a prison in which brave men languished} and in its yard four or five languishing went to death at the end of the rope. Finally its vagabond course was checked and reno- vated, renewed and modernized. It has become the home of wealth and luxury. Daniel Carroll’s Farm. The site of Lanier place before the loca- tion of the capital city was a portion of farm land belonging to Daniel Carroll of Duddington. In the division of lands be- tween the United States and the original proprietors according to agreement it be- came the property of the public. At the first sale of Washington real estate the- square having been previously subdivided into lots, it was sold. The corner of Ist and A streets was bought by Lund Wash- ington for $409.65, and a year later he sold it to the unfortunate George Walker for $050.16. John Kearney bought an adjoining lot on A street in 1800 for $2,186. After a series of transfers the whole was finally bought by William Tunnecliffe, and upon it, in 1804, he erected a building and in it open- ed the hotel known by his name. It subse- quently passed into the possession of Pon- tius D. Stelle, a noted Washington hotel keeper of that day, but Stelle appears to have had little success with it. An old print of the times pictures the building as a three- story brick structure, with a veranda and a courtyard. The hotel was offered for sale in 1808, but no purchaser desiring it at the price asked it fell to Peter Miller for Stelle’s debts. It remained vacent until September, 1810, when Samuel J. Coolidge opened it, but he likewise failed. The property was sold in 1812 to Daniel Carroll. Carroll did not thrive with his purchase. Tenants were shy and slow. The building remained with closed shutters, unlighted, going to decay, with its stabling and outhouses and large, airy rooms, but still awaiting an occupancy which was to make It famous. “ When the British Came. Toward the middle of the year 1814 the atmosphere of Washington was full of war's rumors of the intended occupation of the city by the British, and so imminent was the danger thought to be that Madi- son, by proclamation, on August 8, called an extra session of Congress, to meet on the 19th of September following. Alas! When Congress came the charred, blacken- ed walls of the Capitol and the ashes of it of the British on that sultry August day preceding, and among the few private houses burned was Carroll's Hotel on Capitol Hill. There was no place for the deliterations of Congress in the capi- tal. On the northeast corner of 8th and E streets stood the wreck of the great hotel, commemorating poor Sam Blodget’s folly, misfortune and misguided hopes in ths capital’s promise. For several years prior to 1814 it was used as the offices of the general post office and patent office. It was the only public building which escaped British wrath, and its safety was due to the exertions of Dr. Thornton, the first commissicner of patents, who persuaded Ross and Cockburn that science would sus- tain an irretrievable loss in the destruc- tion of his handful of models. in this building the third session of the Thirteenth Congress was held. But little was done during the session, which began on September 19, 1814, and ended on March 4, 1815, except the consideration of the sub- ject of removing the capital. The removal of the capital, even temporarily, meant ruin to the property holders of Wash- ington. To avert such a calamity, the most strenuous efforts were begun. For once, sectional jealousies were suspend- ed, and the citizens were a unit. Rea- sonable assurances from the southern delegations were received that if sufficient accommodations were prepared for the re- ception of Congress at the ensuing session Washington would continue the meeting place of Congress. There was no time for theory. The crisis meant quick action or ruin. Accordingly a joint stock company was organized to build a temporary Capitol, cersisting of Daniel Carroll of Duddington, Elias B. Caldwell, Griffith Coombe, Wm. Brent and W. Emack. The company was known as the “Capitol Hotel Company.” Carroll offered his lots on the corner of A and Ist streets, in square No. 728, to be rated as so much stock, and the site and his offer being considered the most avail- able ones, they were accepted. ‘The Temporary Capitol. The corner stone of the temporary Capi- tol was laid on the Fourth of July, 1815. Werk was at once commenced, and al- though, as the Philadelphia Commercial Advertiser of that date says, “On that day the ground was a garden; the brick for the building clay, and the timber lay uncut in woods, so speedily was the work pushed forward by the harmonious action of the company that when Congress assembled in the following December a large and commodious structure, having cost $30,000, awaited their reception.” The first session of the Fourteenth Congress met on the 4th of December at Blodget’s Hotel. Henry Clay was elected Speaker of the House, and one of his first acts was to lay before that body a letter from Daniel Carroll and others offering the new building on Capitol Hill for the temporary use of Congress. The matter Was at once referred to the proper committee, and the same action was taken in the Senate. On the 8th of De- cember a bili was passed authorizing the President to lease the new building on Capitol Hill, on square 728, with the ad- joining buildings and appurtenances, for the term of one year, and from thence until the Capitol is in a state of readiness for the reception of Congress, at a rent not exceeding $1,650 per annum. Three days after, on December 11, the House sat in the new building. Its cham- ber was on the second floor, seventy-seven feet long, forty-five feet wide and twenty high, with a gallery attached. The Senate did not meet in the new building until the day following, in order to give the work- men a chance to complete its chamber, which was on the first floor, farty-five feet long, twenty-five feet wide and fifteen feet high. The Supreme Court also moved in at the same time, and the old Circuit Court of the District, without a building of its own, limped in some days later like a poor relative. Congressional committee rooms occupied the rest of the building. The ses- sions of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Con- gresses were held in the temporary Capitol. On March 4, 1817, the oath of office as Pres- ident was administered to James Monroe in the building, and he delivered his inaugural address from the platform erected over the door on the Ist street side. Congress, the Supreme Court and the Circuit Court of the District of Columbia (the latter having been ousted once or twice) continued to meet in the building on A and Ist streets until December 6, 2819, when a general removel to the re- built Capitol occurred. Congress, for the use end occupation of the old Capitol from the year 1815 to the year 1819, paid in all the sum of $13,155, as follows: For rent, $6,600; for fixtures and other expenses i cured for better accommodations, $5,000 for necessary repairs, $1,555. When Congress Left. After its abandonment by Congress the old Capitol began an uncertain existence awaiting tenants. Toward the close of the twenties the Rev. Mr. Keiley, assistant pas- tor of St. Patrick’s Church, opened a school in it for boys, assisted by Nicholas and John F. Callan, Charles Strahan and a Mr. Mallory as teachers. Mr. Hughes svececded and established his private academy in the building, continuing it there until abcut the year 1835. In these two schcols many old citizens of the Dis- trict, the Mays. the Watterstons, the Galts, the McDermotts and mauy others, were edveated. During its occupancy as a school a commission or two, under international treaties, held their sessions in a portion of the building, and as messenger to one of these ts still remembered Mr. Brightwell, who kept a stable of fine horses in the yard and trotted them over a private course on what is new Lincoln Park. Having survived its use as a school, as if true to its hostelry origin, the bullding reverted into a fashionable boarding house, kept by the wife of H. V. Hill, a cabinet maker of the city, and it was In it that John C, Calhoun died, on Sunday morning, March 31, 1850, between 7 and 8 o'clock. At Last a Prison. As is well known, at the beginning of the war a handful of men were secretly drilling in Washington every right, with the inten- tion of seizing the capital at the first op- portune moment, and placing it in the hands of the rebels. At the same time, meetings, as secret, were conducted in Tem- perance Hall by men whose object was the espionage of the suspected persons and their arrest for disloyalty, and as a conse- quence raany a citizen was sent over the lines for secession sentiments expressed un- Ger cover, as the result of their work. As the war continued these arrests, became more frequent. The prisoners were con- find in pleces provided by the provost mar- shal or sent to military prisons throughout the country. A common place of imprison- ment for the stspects as well as for pris- ouers confined pending trial by court-mar- tial became necessary, and William P. Wood, a Washington citizen, a particular favorite of Stanton, who had especially pursued with a keen scent for suspected Parties, was ordered to provide a suitable building 8s a common place of imprison- ment. He received his order early in the year 1862, and at once took possession of the old Capitol. It was then in a state of Gecay, its title was in dispute, it had been sold again and again for taxes and its r: muffin tenantry knew no landlord. He di possessed the motley crowd of tenants who clung to their habitation like wharf rats to the cocks. Windows were barred, heavy bolts adjusted to doors and all was in read- iress for the purposes intended at a week's notice. Then the big battles of the war commenced, and the prisoners captured were sent to tke old Capitol, until the over- crowded condition of the building necessi- fates. an annex, and Carroll row, one block farther down on Ist street, was seized. PURE Baking Powder Ai few OF term bucy poh a. Highest o1 all in leavening strength. Latest United States Gov't Food Report, ROYAL BAKING POWDER C0., 106 Wall 8t., N.Y. = DRUGS AND DRINK. Stimulants That Cause Far More Harm Than Alcohol. From the Hospital. With our civilization has come a great and continued decrease in drunkenness. The “national drink bill,” concerning which so much is said, is less, man for man, than it was a century or half a cen- tury ago, or at least represents a less con- sumption, We hear more abont drunken- ness, but that ts because we have ceased to regard it as a matter of course, a regular part of daily life. Therefore, it may be surmised that our blue ribbon and other armies in fighting the “drink fiend” are striking at what is after all a dying mon- ster, though dangerous even in the death- grips. * Meanwhile another and subtler demon arises. The vices of civilization are with us, and those who would scorn to “drink,” as they call it—differentiating the con- sumpton of alcohol from that of all other liquids—indulge in drugs of various kinds. Opium, either in the form of laudanum drinking or in the subtler form of the hy- podermic injection of morphia, ts, though not common, less rare than it is guessed to be. Insomnia or pain wh'ch to our sensi- tive nerves seems intolecabls is the excuse for beginning the habit. and the end is worse than drunkenness. The “cocaine habit” is a recognized fact in America, where our Teutonic race, subjected to an irtenser climate and an intenser life than in Europe, has developed a quicker sens!- telty and more irritable nerves. The in- halation of chloroform has proved an irre- sistible temptation to many, and women “he would scorn any indu:sence .n wine sip eau de coloine and other yerfumes. infinitely more dangerous than alcohol are these forms of inebriety in that no re- volting associations surround them. Their victims do not regard themseives as drunk- ards—at least, not until the habit is fully formed. They cannot Iidenufy their nerv- ousness, their faintness, their sleepless- ress with cravings of the staggering loafer of the street, nor the rest they obtain after the dose with the stupor of vulgar drunk- enness. Therefore, to an extent which is not generally realized, women are subject to this temptation. Their imagination is not offended, and they can usually obtain the drug they want without suspicion ard carry it about in convenient forms It takes a long time for even intimates to realize that the depression, the irritability, the varying moods of a rigid shstainer arise from drunkenness; we generally conceive that condition as being due to only one source. And drug habits of vari- ous sorts become incurable just because no ene realizes that they are simply a form of inebriety. The general habit of drugging is to be condemned. No healthy person needs con- tinual medicating with either digestives, purgatives, tonics or sedatives. Ifa doc- tor prescribes these things, good and well; he knows, presumably, when to give and These two buildings became the famous military prisons of the north. What Lib- bey was to Richmond they were to Wash- ington. William P. Wood was appointed superintendent, and held his position con- tnuously during the war. The old Capitol prison! Who but remem- bers it! It stvod, gloomy and dismal and for- lern, a veritable architectural hulk, strand- ed; a derelict in an ocean of brick and mor- tar. In it were the colonel and private in gray, the camp follower and the spy. The detailed history of the building during its period as a prison would fill a volume. Military Executions. In the old Capitol prison yard occurred four military executions, as follows: December 5, 1862, John Conrad Kessler, company K, one hundred and third New York volunteers, hanged for the murder of Lieut. F. Linzy of the same company at the 6th street wharf. November 25, 1864, Charles Williams, colored, thirty-first U. S. colored troops, hanged for the murder of an unknown colored woman at Camp Casey. August 26, 1864, Charles Fenton Beavers of Loudoun county, Va., private in Mos- by’s guerrillas, hanged as a spy. November 10, 1865, Henry Wirz, the An- dersonville jailor, hanged for violations of the rules of war in wantonly destroying the lives of United States soldiers while prisoners undey his custody. The most noted prisoner at the old Capi- tol was probably Belle Boyd, the dashing confederate female spy, who began her ca- reer by killing a Union soldier whg had of- fered an insult to her home in *Martins- burg, Va. in an autobiography called “Belle Boyd in Camp and Prison” she has detailed the adventures of her life. The old Capitol she describes as “a vast brick building, like all prisons, somber, chilling and repulsive,” and William P. Wood as “a man having a humane heart beneath a gruff exterior, and announcing the hours and forms of religious worship in the pris- on in the following parlance: ‘All you who want to hear the word of God preached ac- cording to Jeff Davis, go down into the yard; and all you who want to hear it preached according to Abe Lincoln go into No. 16.'"" Remodeled. ~ On the conclusion of the war the old Capitol was abandoned as a prison, Wirz being the last prisoner confined there. Some enterprising freebooters took possession of the building and for a few days did a thriving business by exhibiting its interior to the public at ten cents admission. ‘The federal authorities checked the enterprise by closing and barring the structure, leay- ing it more dismal than ever. Disintegra- tion threatened its old roof and architec- tural suicide seemed imminent in its bulg- ing walls. The title to the building seemed always shadowed by some legal clouds, and under judicial order the auctioneer offered it for sale on April 26, 1866. The price lim- ited was $24,000, the highest offer $6,000, and the sale was withdrawn. Shortly af- terward George Brown, the sergeant-at- arms of the Senate, bought the decaying structure, and at once began its renova- tion, The cunning of the architect ex- hausting the learning of his profession, the highest skill of the trained artisan and a couple of fortunes were needed and em- ployed in the task. Without destroying the bistorical brick and mortar of the old Cap- itol, its forlorn identity was lost in its re- constructicn. George Brown made his in a way by connecting it purchase ard reconstruction of the old Capitol, but he emptied his pockets in his ambiticus enterprise. Mortgages and building licns covered the property, and gradually his name disappeared from the records as its owner. J. F. D. Lanier of New York city purchased the house on North A and Ist streets for $25,000 and the southern one on Ist street for $21,000, sell- ing it afterward to Judge Field, associate justice of the Supreme Court. Cyrus Field bought ihe second house for $15,000. It will happen that during the coming years strangers in the city will look with interest upon the three buildings, and they will prove to be the children and grand- children of the men who fought on the other side In gray, filled with the family traditions of sufferings endured by sires and grandsires while prisoners of war in the old building; but they will look in vain for the structure that is gone, and mayhap the bright and cheery appearance of Lan- fer place will mellow into kindly remem- brance the bitter war recollections of the old Capitol. GENE RILEY. —— The Equality of the Bike. From the Boston Globe. While walking in the new park near Huntington avenue I witnessed an incident showing that humanity in general has much the same capacity for enjoyment. A young woman in a native bicycling cos- tume—not bloomers—was speeding around @ curve in the park when she collided” with a colcred girl, who was also having her outing on the wheel. Both fell to the ground. The white girl was severely bruised, while her colored sister was un- hurt. ‘Just then a Chinaman, who was also on a bike, came and with the grace of a Chesterfield alighted from his wheel and kindly proffered any assistance that might be required It was a curious pot- pcurri of color and circumstance. when to stop, but the irresponsible way in which people pour substances far stronger than alcohol into their systems would awak- €n one’s admiration of their courage, if it cid not arouse one’s indignation at their folly. Cases have been known of ginger drunkenness, Extracts of ginger, popular among women as relieving functional dis- turbances, contain strong alcohol disguised by the pungent spice. Arsenic eating is not confined to Styria, but is popular as an improvement to the complexion among the society dames of Australia, while innocent People take strychnine in their tonics with- out knowing it until they begin to feel “jumpy.” The danger is two-fold—first, the directly injurious effects of the chosen drug, and seconaly, the risk of ignorantly clasping to one’s breast a viper more malignant than the “drink fiend.” Alcohol we know and dread, but these things—as dangerous as alcohol—we take without any fear. And while for men and women of a different race,dwelling in a hot and malarious climate, quinine, opium and other drugs may be not only harmless but even wholesome, they are for us Anglo-Saxons, except in rare ine stances, subtle and pernicious foes. Some Rare Minerals. From the Spokane Review. “Once in awhile,” remarked a mining man last evening, “you hear of a man who claims to have found a mine of bismuth, and basing his calculations upon a price of say $2 a pound, he heralds his find and thinks he has a fortune within his grasp. The fact is, there is no bismuth produced in this country and there are only about thirty tons imported. So if any one could put 100 tons on the market it would bring the price down to 5 cents, at least. “Of cobalt not more than 200 tons are used annualiy in the world. “In regard to mica—I am speaking now of the uses it is put to in electrical ap- pliances—the East Indian product is driv- ing the Canadian product out of the mar- ket. Mica that is in the least associated with fron is useless for this purpose. It is much the same with some of the rarer minerals. Were tellurium found in large quantities its value would lessen, but, as only a few ounces are found each year, not enéugh to supply the demand, wity the value is enhanced.” Three-fifths of the nickel produced in the world comes from Canada. The pro- duction in other portions of the world ts so small as to cut no figure in the sta- tistics of mineral production. asses The Bullet-Proof Vest. From Life. “Ladies and gentlemen, dis young man has kindly consented to shoot at me ag twenty paces.”’ “De young man was nervous, I fear, but you will notice de vest remains unpuno= tured.”