Evening Star Newspaper, November 20, 1921, Page 71

.5q HE RAMBLER WRITES OF VANSVILLE AND OTHER PLACES ALONG AN OLD HIGHWAY HE Upper Valley of the Eastern Branch. l to visit the old home place. The l ‘ T The Countryside in Late Autumn—The Hughes boys reminded him of the Questicn of a Name—The Theory of Vans- | THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, NOVEMBER 20, 1921—PART 4. ° ‘Guessing on Uncle Nels—By Sewell Ford|T OU might think it was pretty soft for us, living here In i this swell apartment house, ‘Wwith real palms in the foyer @nd & doorman dressed like a real admiral, and Ines’s rich uncle to sign checks for everything. Course, I in- sist on paying the same board I did at Miss Wellby's, but that's a good FEW hundred yards beyond Beitsville, the track of the clectric railway to Laurel pass¢s oné Gf those little open-front piano boxes which we call stations and crosses a road which buggy in the barn and asked him if he did not want it. He preferred to let the ancient vehicle rest in the old barn. Rear Admiral Ammen man and was intere many things. He was particuiarly was an active d in a great deal of a fancy gesture. As a matter does very little business fn compari- i " of fact what I turn in doesn't help son with that done by its powertul| | ville—Following an Almsst Abandoned Road. | | actvec cam, o5 ot oenea " e much to scale down the grand and influential neighbors, the Powder ® . Nicaraguan route. He wrote num- monthly total/whatever it 1s. Mill road and the washington-sati-| | A Tree of Persimmons — Shaking Hands I}’;’; L N oLl But Uncle Nels seems satisfled.” He #ays it's worth it to have us_with : e Y h 8hillington, e him, and once he hinted that I had tle road leads up a hill on which of FPenmsylvaniu uvemue and 4 more'n saved all we both cost him by stands the home of Judge Fillmore| | D o - 1 gtreet, "and “wrilten “at Ammendals Beall, the front entrance to which resident. | the Rambler. Thage i kn&ln‘ him out of the hands of slick Il,'rl e I'll admit he's right, too. Fu more boulevard. Westward, this lit- is from the Powder Mill road which leads west from Beltsville to the old With the Locomotive Engineer, Just Like a brothers, who lived a few hund printed by Joseph Shillington, corne to tell about thest fs T've told you of two or three cases where he'd have been nicked owder Mill, which, in the days of |look as though a warm soft snow night, and there Lafayette and his per- | apart in the neck of the £00d and plenty if Trilby May Dodge the American revoiution, Stood on|Were coming, and what jolly games]sonal friends rested, at the Rossbury | which we are walking today hadn't crashed in just at the right Paint branch at the point where Ben-|we will have Hotel.” e o ity s aAve moment to show up a crooked game. ny Gallant lives now. The Powder| Under the shelter of a tangle of e ’M,_ Raties T a So I should worry. Besides, he must Ml road today conmects with many | Ereenbrier vines by the roadside half SH A UHEouEh: the. tibie to the: aola have an income that runs into husky roads which lead throughout that|# dozen guinea keets, or guinea fowl |-THE origin of Vansville has not( . electric light bill is heing run un flnl\;nrzn. It - 4 wide region called the Paint Branch ;{y.dy"{' rlp!émn;h\a[: better, 'udrvmh“)xél,d‘l:lt‘ii been learned by the Rambler. Helout of all relation to the wor of ut, as ry to make Inez under- country. & 0 5 aporis Ve v it e ¢ its | this story. And so. I am go stand, part of our bargain, besides From the open-face, piana box sta- | In his bearing, _ guard over|does not even know how it came by its| i 8 TSV, TOL M rambie at an- eing that Uncle Nels is more or less tion the road passes eastward over |lhem. No hens are in sight. but the|name. He has gone through several giper time. flat country which is the floor of the |T0Oster seems content and 100k as|jyaryiand records with the aim of find- TR ntertained, s to keep track of him and see that he doesn’t get into mis- chief. And I'll say that's no cinch. You wouldn't mistrust, though, to though he might “Behold, this is family—my : upper valley of the Eastern branch, acroes Indian creek, which is a feeder of the Eastern branch, through ing somebody by the name of Van mi Prince Georges county. He found ro | [HE Rambler bade farewdll Ammen-Hughes hous sponsibility is great.” He watched such names. look at this dried-up little old shrimp with the skim-milk blue eyes and the slumped shoulders, that he would ever start anything on his own hook. Al- though we've succeeded in getting him to wear fairly decent clothes, there's no disguising the fact that he's a hick dressed up. Ydu can tell that just by his shuffling, aimless walk,” and he- will continue to go gawping about as if he'd just drifted in from the rutabaga flelds. So of course he's an easy mark. He might Just as well wear a sign. It isn’t 8o easy, either, to find things that will interest him. When we discovered him here, you remember. he had a fad for sailing mechanical toy boats in three bathtubs he'd had hooked up In the living room. But he soon got tired of that as an indoor sport and we induced him to have the tubs_taken out. For awhile, there, 100, Ines thought she’d made a movie fan out of him, but somehow—I think it was having to see a wild west star three times in one week—he kind of soured on the movies, and Inez had to fall back on Annette, our near- French maid, as a matinee escort. Uncle Nels seemed to prefer wande: ing around through the streéts and the park by himself. If he liked to read, or to play solitaire, or join in a two-handed game of dominoes or parcheesi, It ‘would be different. But about all the reading Uncle Nels does is in a Swedish paper that comes once a ‘week by mail, and he's never learned to play any kind of games at all. He's led too busy a life for that. He much of a sitter, either. Rest- less old boy. And when he does camp down qulet he seems to put himself into staring at noth- o far as I can dis- not even thinking. * k% X SO he’s more or less ‘of a puzzle. As for Inez, she's no help at all. She will sit directly opposite him for an hour at a time without opening her head and perfectly contented to yank away on her gum. She's one of the non-thinkers, too. She can be just as lively and animated as a cold boiled potato. Anything in the world might be going on—big strikes, more ‘wars threatened, kings and presi- dents blown to bits by bombs—but if nothing joggled her elbow she'd take no_notlice. That's why I'm so desperate at times to find things for 'em to do. One of my experiments was taking them to a professional matinee. 1 knew it was going to be kind of a weird play and probably something they wouldn't be crazy over, but Ames Hunt had given me these four free tickets and I hated to waste ‘em. Besides, Barry Platt had offered to_take us.down in his car. The plece was weird, all right. No wonder the producer wanted to open in the afternoon with a lot of his friends present and the house well papered. My guess is that it will run about a week before it joins the other dramatic discards of the season. Inez yawned throuxh the whole four acts and Uncle Nels hypnotized him- “SAY, YOU WANNA KNOW TOO MUCH,” SAYS HE, AND SHUFFLES OFF ACTIVE TO HOLD UP A COUPE THAT'S DRIVEN UP WITH AN ©OWNER DRIVER. —_— self into a_two-hour nap so he didn’t suffer much. I couldn’t blame either of them. It was only after we had walked fa block and a half, to where Barry had parked his car, that Uncle Nels oftered any remark. Your automobeel don’t get stole, eh?’ he suggests. ‘Not thi; says Barry. “You see, there's a fellow on_ this block who's supposed to watch your car for you. Yes, he's right on the job. Anyway, he's coming to collect his tip, Uncle Nels watches as_this rough- looking person in the faded ulster slouches up with his hand out. “How much you have to give him?’ he 8. ) “Oh, he'll take anything from a quarter to 2 half,” says Barry. That seems to impress Uncle Nels gmore than anything he’'d seen on the stage. “Huh!" he remarks. *“Latta cars on this block, hey?” Fifty or more” says Barry. be a hundred. He doesn’t get em all, though. Some don't give up, yme do. It's a little private graft, £ course.” *“Huh!"” says Uncle Nels, and lapses Bnto his al silent mood. “He does get 80 excited over the rams, doesn't he?” I whispers ‘to Ty. A It must have been only a few days mfter this that I began to get puzzled mabout Uncle Nels. He took to sliding out promptly after lunch every day, and instead of dolling up in any of Shis new clothes he would dig out his oldest suit. On cold days, too, he would wrap himself in an old plaid gnackinaw coat, such as he uged to wear in_the woods, and‘pull a faded o©ld_woolen cap down over his ears. “What's the big notion?” I asked him _once. “Geing out to drive a @ruck, or something like that?* “Pruck!” says he. ‘“How foolish!” ‘“What's the matter with the new vercoat?” I demands. “Well, it ain't Sunday, is it?" says \ l | he, as he shuffles through the door. 1 noticed, too, that he stayed out all the afternoon, no matter what the weather, and that when he'd show up around 6 o'clock his Baldwin apple cheeks would be redder than ever, his old eyes bright and twinkly, and his appetite more like a hired man's than like a retired plute's. But all the re- sponse 1 could get out of him as to where he'd been or what he'd been doing was vague and sketchy. In fact, whenever I opened the subject it seemed as if Uncle Nels was just lling me off. 'Now what do you guess than old boy is up to?" I asks s “Him?" says she. walk around, don't he “Must be exciting sport, tramping the streets. especially in the rain,” I suggests. “Yesterday when he came in he was dripping wet. {__“He's tough, Uncie Nels, “Funny old man, too. I couldn’t deny either proposition. So far as his health went, he's about as delicate as a pine knot. I never knew him to have anything the mat- ter with him, not even a cold. And he certainly ‘could indulge in some odd habits. Still, I was more or less curious about these afternoon disap- pearaiices and his reluctance to talk over his daily doings. * X * X A D the next thing I knew Inez reports that he's begun to stay out evenings. In fact, it was only a few nights later that I came home from the theater to find Uncle Nels just letting himself into the apart- ment. He has on the same back- woods outfit that he'd been wearing afternoons. “Aren't you keeping rather late hours, Uncle Nels?” says I "I get tired goin' to bed so soon, s he. “Wake up too early.” “That's fairly plausible, says Inez. ‘But T hope you haven't been promen- ading Fifth avenue in that costume. Huh!” says he. “Can't 1 wear what I like? I ain't all time asking where you girls go or what you put on. He's generally such a mild old bird, but believe me he can get up on his ear once in a while, and I saw that !this was once when he needed to be handled gentle. Which I proceeded to_do. “Far be it from me” says I “to tell you how to amuse yourself. If you want to see how New York be- haves itself up to midnight and whether or not prohibition prohibits, that's up to you. I was only wonder- ing what you found 8o interesting? He squints his eyes cagey and nods. “Well.” says he, “it don’t do no harm, Trilby May—wondering. Me, I gohna go to bed. And I was just as well informed as it I'd been interviewing a mummy in a museum. What could an old boy like that find to do every night? Must be some outdoor sport or else he wouldn't have to be dressed so warm. Why, he looked like a night watchman guarding some new build- ing. Could he have found some old crony with a job like that and was he spending his evenings chatting around a bucket bonfire? Or did he have some reason for trailing around in disguise? After a few more futile stabs like that I gave it up. But I didn’t quit wondering. The feminine mind doesn't, they say. Of course, Italked it over with Barry Platt. Usually he has some bright ideas on almost any subject, but he had nothing sensible to offer on this one. *Oh, maybe he's turned bolshevik, and is attending meetings on the East Side somewhers,” he sug- gests. “Or perhaps he's been taken into a Kelley pool crowd, or ha run across some old side-kick who's pilot of a ferryboar. Why worry it doesn’t seem to do him any harm “I wouldn't, Barry,” says I, “If there was any way of taking out insurance on a rich uncle's bank account. There should be, you know. How are we to tell when he's going to get reckless with his check book, wander- ing around that way? Besides, I'd just like to know how he passes the time.” Of court I I talked it over with brought in t first clue only a day or so later. “Say, you remember the chap who has worked up a street parking graft down in the theater district?” he asks. “The one I tipped the day we all went to that pro- fessional matinee? Well, who do you think I saw him chatting chummy with this afternoon?” “The mayor,” says I says he. “He was s0 he didn’t notice me as I passed says I “Thanks, Barry. I think that gives me a hunch. 1 didn’t lose any time in following it, either. I persuades Barry to drive me down to that block the next after- noon about 2:15. And sure enough, who should show up with an offer to watch the car but dear old Uncle Nels. He was more or less fussed, too, when he found who was in the machine. How enterprising of you. Uncle Nels ys I “So this IS your new job. eh” “Well, why not?” he mumbles. “Oh, I suppose you need the money, says I. “But how are you werking {1t? Running an opposition, or have you gone into partnership with the other pirate?” “Say, you wanna know too much, you,” says he, and shuffles off active to hold up a coupe that's just driven up with an owner driver. * x k% UT it looked like I'd solved the mystery. At least, we knew what Uncle Nels was doing afternoons and evenings. No great harm in it, of course, but it did seem rather absurd for an old boy with as much money as he has to be exposing himself that | way just for the sake of a few dollars that he surely didn’'t need. “Must be gettin' foolish in ‘the head,” is all the comment Inez makes ‘when she hears. I agreed with her. And for awhile we tried to josh him into quitting. “Next thing we know,” says I, “you’ll be out with a wheezy accor- deon squatting in some doorway with in cup in your-lap. ‘Maybe,” says he. “You would drop in some pennies, hey?” We tried shaming him ou too. “Suppose,” says Inez, body asks me what my uncle do? ‘What should I say?™ ou tell ’em,” sayssUncle Nels, ‘that he does what he likes. “But it's s0 absurd,” says I, “for you to be knocking around the streets with your hand out for a few half dollars.” “Yes,” says he. “But I'm only & foolish old man, ain’'t I? Well?" “Youve said it,” says I ‘And thought you had better sense.” | Even at that I couldn’t figure out why he stuck to it, unless it was be- cause we'd stirred up that stubborn streak in his disposition. Anyway, we had to let the thing ride, although Inez was beginning to take the situa- tion hard. “We think we're livin' swell and all,” says she, “and here Uncle Neis has to act like that. Suppose some- body found out?’ “Don’t make me shudder, Ines’" says I. “Why, our social position ‘would be utterly ruined. That is, the g:or man might stop nodding cordial e Next we noticed that Uncle Nels ‘was doing a lot of figuring in a cheap paper-bound account book that he'd haul out of his ?ocht at ocd times, He seemed to get a lot of satisfaction going over items on various pages and adding up columns. You could ANNETTE COMES BACK FROM TIDYING UP HIS ROOM AND EGHIBITS SOME DISCOVERIES SHE'S MADE. good collection last I asked him once. was all the an- swer I got out of him. “If you save it all up,” says L “perhaps you'll be able to buy & new overcoat by spring. “If I can’t I might borrow the dir- ference from you; hey, Trilby May?" he comes back at me. Then the last Sunday afternoonm, while Uncle Nels was out for his aft- ernoon walk, Annette com back from tidying up his room d hibits some discoveries she's ma One is a blue cloth cap, something like a conductor's, with more or less gold braid on it and a nickeled badge pinned on the front. “Uncle Nels “Look says she. joined the band, eh?" “What are A. O. “Let's see” says I. those letters on the badge P. A. Now what kind of a secret order is that? Where was this cap, Annette?’ ‘On the top shelf his closet,’ says she. ‘“These, too.” The other exhibit was a bunch of numbered tags, with detachable cou- pons, and on each tag was printed, “Automobile Owners Protective Asso- ciation.” We were still trying to guess what it all meant when Uncle Nels drifted in unexpected and found the articles displayed on the llving room table. “Huh!" says h ‘Somebody’s been snoopin’ around, eh?" Looks that way, doesn't it?" says I. “And we're more curious than ever. You wear the cap, do you? He nods. “And _you've gotten to the stage where you give 'em real checks for their cars, have you?” I guess on. “It's a foo ides, hey?" he asks. * x % ‘(NO. T should say that it was rather Fright,” says L. “I take it you have organized the business a bit?” "Maybe,” says he. “Are you working more than one block?" I asks. He shrugs his shoulders careless and digs up his old note book. “By tomorrow it will be twenty-two blocks,” says he. “Oh, come!" says I. “You and your partner couldn’t possibly cover that number of blocks. “Partner!” says he. “That old bum ain’t no partner any more." him out long time ago. He works for me now. Lot of others, too.’ “What!” says I. “You mean you've developed a little side street graft into a regular enterprise?” He had. In about every block where the police regulations allowed parking he had an assistant wearing a uniform cap, and when you drove up you were hailed. That is, almost anywhere in the theatrical district. And if you ‘wanted to be sure of find- ing your car again when you came out you gave up half a dollar. “But how many of them do?™ I asked. “Most allL” says Uncle Nels. “Some think they have to, on account of the badge on the cap. Like an officer, you know. I thought that out first thing. But some wouldn't give money unless they had something to show for it. So I gets up the coupon tags, just like they have in big garages. Only I prints the price on it, s0 they know they ain’t gettin’ stuck. I start with one man, Old Pete. Then I get another, and more and more. First off I give ‘em half, but so many want to work for me that I give ‘em $3 a night, and iIf they don't like that they get the chuck., But they do. Tips is why. Folks who drive to shows in cars don't care how they spend money. And they can leave robes and coats. My men watch everything. And me, I watch them. “You mean you go around and check up each block?™ says I. “You bet!” says Uncle Nel They don’t hold out nothing on me. And I have 'em make the drivers park their cars in tight, so I get more to a block. It ain't bad, twenty-two “I should say not, at 50 cents a throw,” says I. “Why, if you had only 100 cars to a block that would be—great guns!—over a thousand dollars a night, less a hundred or so for expenses.” “Uh-huh ys he. “It counts up.’ “Wowey!” says I, staring at him. “Do you mean to say, Uncle Nels, that you can drift around New York and pick up a cinch like that right from under the noses of all these grafters who were born and brought up here? Say, you're some wizard.” “Me?” says Uncle Nel: ‘“No. I'm just a foolish old man who came from Sweden long time ago and don’t know many Yankee tricks. Yes, I did make a Iittle in lumber business. But that was luck, they say.” Jwfiy! thought so,” “T'll admit I says I. “But I'm beginning to sus- pect some of it was due to shrewd moves, Didn’t you sell standing tim- ber on Indian reservations?’ * ® X ¥ OTTA lumber jacks do that,” says Uncle Nels. “You could sell snything them days to suckers from the east. And some way I used to see the suckers first.” “Yes, I can imagine you did,” says L ‘“Those honest blue eyes and the simple look in 'em must have been quite a help, too. But to put afly- thing like this over in New York— that's what I call a regular stunt. Using the public streets a storage arage, and getting away with it! 5-.1 the tune of a thousand or more a day, too! Say, I wonder the cops don't get onto your scheme, or that the pelitical bunch don’t find - out what & good bet they're missing.” Uncle Nels gives another hunch to his shoulders. “They have.” says he. “Both the cops and the poll I kept. the cops l‘?l.!“ at first with little present: 'hen they wanted more—twenty-five dollars a week. I & a swampy tract along the horders of the creek and up a steep hill to lhnl_ five-house village of Vanceville. It is the strange little hamlet to which the Rambler guided you two Sundays ago and the main house of which is one that was built and dwelt in many years ago by a Dr. Belt, and which at a later time came to be known throughout the neighborhood as the home of Gen. Jacob Ammen. On the trip two Sundays ago we followed the old Baltimore and Washington post road, which was the original Wash- ington-Baltimore pike;, north from Beltsville. On this trip we will fol- low the road east from the piano-box station and will enter the Washing- ton-Baltimore road at the top of the hill of which Vansville is the ancient and more or less picturesque crown. * ok ok ok THE land is flat and some of it was given over last summer to pota- toes, cabbage and tomatoes, and some of it has not been under cultivation within the memory of man. Out in that country they are growing subur- ban subdivisions rather than market gardens and raising building lots in- stead of vegetables. It {s one of those parts of the country in whick it is not easy to find country people. You meet a young woman on the road and perhaps she has the latest edition of a fashion journal in her arms, and she is not a bit interested in setting hens or knitting quilts. You sit on a& rail fence with a man and he is apt to ask you how the market opened or clos whether Skinnem Oil passed the divi- dend it earned by selling stock, Wwhether Stuckum and Stretcham Rub- ber went up on the report that its stock was no good, or whether Instan- taneous got around the track at Havre de Grace on the same day she started. The valley of the Eastern branch, with Baltimore boulevard, other good roads, the Baltimore and Ohio railroad and an electric rallroad running through it, is building up fast, and the real country out that way, where farmers live, where plows turn the land in furrows and the threshing machine sings. has been forced back beyond the tall and beau- tiful ridges which bound the valley on the east and west. But there is quite a rural aspect to the strip of country through which leads the old road over which you are now passing. You cross the gray | and _grease-black _ boulevard over which thousands of our Washington | people and our Baltimore neighbors | pass and repass daily without seeing | anything of the country on either | side. Then you cross the tracks of | the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, one of the historic ways of the world, and which was the first line of railroad track to reach into Washington city. Then you cross a fleld that is gray and black with winter-blighted weeds. Fuszzy, ashen plumes stand high. Once they were the bright blooms of gol- den rod. There are black, dead stalks which were once merry with the yel- low flowers of mullein. There are curious dried tufts that are the rellcs of the white “birds' nest” flowers of wild carrot and the black umbels of yarrow.- A cold wind swept over the bleak fleld and sparrows, all fluffed up to keep warm, flocked in sheltered places. When a sparrow fluffs up his feathers, or her feathers, to keep warm he does pretty much the same thing & man does when he turns his overcoat collar up around his ears and stuffs his hands deep in his pockets. There is a threat of snow in the air, or juncos, which we have called snowbirds ever since we were children, are twittering and frisking They are saying: “How delightful the winter is down here in the sunny south compared with Navember on the shores of Hudson bay! It does e it, but sald T was a poor man. They could figure up, though. Then somebody told the district leader. He was around to see me yesterday. He say 1 must take out a license and he can fix it for me but it might cost a lot. I guess. so. ‘So the parking cinch s golng to be short lived, eh?” says L. “Looks s0,” says Uncle Nels. “That's why I seil out today.” “n L Mr. {(:rfl- l-Bll“mi: uyfll he. cket ulator. e's been figur- ;;l"f Yoo, “"Gets up syndicate to take over business from me. Lotta men in it—Mr. Hirshfield, Mr. Goldstein, Mr. Cohen. Bright fellers. I meet ‘em this afternoon. They had the cash. No checks, I tell "em. Just bills. So it don't take long. I get the money in one hand and sign paper with the other. See?" He displays a Iong envelope full of big denomination bank notes—the biggest I'd ever seen. Had me gasp- I Ing ow—how many thousand?’ asked. “Say, ‘wan: now a lot, don't vy iy Ent enough, I 7" says he. “But I ;::u. .g-vbc they think so when the political leader comes around. Eh? he's_such doar, simple old soul, too, Uncle-Nels. Too bad hes lost, his job, isn’t 1t? (Covsright, 1921, by Sewell Ford.) the Rambler go by without making audible comment, and although I passed within six feet of the strange family the guineas sent out no alarm call and did not stir. If you knew much about this African gallinaceous bird you would understand that the fact that they did not stir, and did not send out that peculiar call as of a gate swinging on rusty hinges, is worthy of note. * X ¥ ¥ XVOCR way leads down into the na row swamp which borders In dian creek, and you cross the fast- running water on a foot bridge of | a locust sapling for a hand rail. Around you are stunted black oaks, their leaves crisp and brown, and some sweet gums and sumac whose -Jeaves. red a few days ago, are now black and shriveled. From the edge of the creck the road turns and passes up a hill whose slopes are dressed with wisps of dry and yellow sedge and decorated with poles with ADMIRAL AMMEN'S OLD HOME. Christmas trees—young, scraggy jack pines. The road is covered with bita of red and brown “ironstone,” which will remind you that this is ome of the early—the very early—iron-min- ing and iron-smelting ~regions of America, the site of the Snowden furnaces being about four miles to the northeast and the old and famous Muirkirk furnaces about a mile and a half north. At the top of the hill you come to Vansville, which stands at a point where a road strikes off to Annapolis and other places from the old Washington and, Baltimore post road and turnpike. Vansville was a point of some celebrity in the days of stage-coach travel and wagon trains. Vansville election district is one of the old sub- divisions of Prince Georges county, and its number is 1. Whether that tells that it is senior election district } of the county the Rambler does not know, but there is some relation be- tween the numbers and the age of the districts. The other districts in the order of their numbers are Bladensburg, No. 2; Marlboro, No. 3; Nottingham, No. 4; Piscataway, No. 5; Spauldings, No. '6; Queen Anne, No. 7; Aquasco, No. 8; Surratts, No. 9 Laurel, No. 19 Brandywine, No. 11; Oxon Hill, No.'12; Kent, No. 13; Bowie, No. 14; Mellwood, No. 15, and Hyatts- vilie, No. 16.. 2 Several years ago, in telling the story of Lafayette's visit to Washington, Oc- tober 12 to 16, 1824, the Rambler wrote: “Lafayette arrived in Washington at 1 o'clock, Tuesday, October 12, 1824. He left .Baltimcre on Monday afternoon, ac- companijed by his son, George Washing- ton Lafayette: his secretary, Col. Vas- siéur; a delegation of the Baltimore re- ception committee, Col. Dickerson and Col. Liloyd, aides on the staff of the Governor of Maryland, and with Capt. Hillingsworth’s cavalry troop of Greys from Elk Ridge as an escort. Fifteen miles out from Baltimore, Lafayette and his entourage were met by the 1st Cavalry Troop of Biadensburg, under command of Capt. Sprigg, who had been Governor of Maryland not long before. At Vansville the trinmphant party was ounted. ifcmen: m reached Rossburg at 10 o'clock Monday i Capt. Snowden's company of Thle cavalcade In the census of 1790 ap- 1 pear Rartholomew, John and William | Vain in Caroline county, and John, | Henry and William Varne in Dorchester. | grist, Vanderford, Vancrief, Vandyke, Vanhorn, Vantenson, Vanner, Vanpool, Vansand: Vansickle, Van Swearingen, and Van Wyck. The Rambler's theory of Vansville| is that at a remote time, before | or during the American revoiution, & Dutch-American named Vanschmitte schnitzen, or something of that sort took over an old tavern or opened | new one at the fork of the Baltimore- to-the-south and the Annapolis roads. | His customers and neighbors got the | habit of calling him “Van" for short nd gradually the site of the tavern came to be “Vans-ville.” It was never a closely built-up settlement. There are five houses there mow. Four of them are comparatively new houses.| None of them seems to be older than | about fifty years. The largest and most conspicuous of the houses is the Belt-Ammen-Morton home, and it does not seem to antedate the civil war. At the cross-road are the sites of two houses destroyed by fire. One of these was the tavern. Follow the ‘old Baltimore road, now little traveled, north from Vansville and you pass down the Vansville hill, across the valley of a little stream and up a hill. On the left is a big frame house set deep in grounds that will attract your attention. There are holly trees, spruces, firs, arbor vitae, cedars, a big catalpa and a pin oak. You know that once there was a holly hedge around the whole place, but many people, when the old Bal- timore-Washington road was a real highway, passed that way, and be- | ing fake nature-lovers, like 8o mlns other persons today, they destroye the jedge to make Christmas and Newfll Year decorations. Near the hous® is & rectangular fish-pond and ice-pond, something like fifty feet wide and a hundred and fifty feet long, and an icehouse with a ramp from the shore to the top story and a ramp on the land side. It is a fine old house and there are many- beau- ties in the grounds. It is now the home, and has been for eighteen years, of George B. Hughes, electriclan of the government printing office. The Rambler met two of his sons in the park and they asked him in the houke to get warm They are upstanding young fellows, athletic and alert, and their English and their accent are in strong contrast with the slovenly speech and drooling accent which one hears so much of. Before George Hughes and his family came to live here this was the home of Rear Ad. miral Daniel Ammen, who was a brother of Gen. Jacob Ammen, who lived in the big house on top of the Vansville hill a few hundred vards to the sout Daniel Ammen and Ulysses S. Grant were childhood friends and playmaty and in the barn of “Amendale” is an ancient buggy which President Grant gave to Rear Admiral Ammen. It has not been d_since the admiral’ death in 1898, and some time ago the admiral's son, Grant Ammen, came a road leading down by the and out to the railroad mendale, meaning, of ¢ urse c and W But urel rerhaps. or seven D ing to th sands of the s If one hos cultivated t simmons b tion of th must never persinmons it reveren gentleman | without pat meal as t gods of fruil tree | set up. Eating persimmons, the time pa swiftly. The whistle of a train Baltimore und Ohio xounds. 1t south. xpress from New Yor Philadelphiz.” thought the R It comes in sighi up the Jong train of cars, and moving f Al day coaches” comments the Ramller, smearing _in another persimmon Plumes of steam pour out fts whistle and then the sound comes! Great Caesur! or Am mendale, and it's “ op! IUs a local for Wa n’ Can 1 get it Vale! Persimn 1 run? | zet there, but on 1 tracks, while on from t doors of the are shut and a 1 long to run around Smith. the fi and wa to me to board t n from the other side! My friend Dan Zimmer- man, the engineer, opens the throttle and pulls the train down the tracl till the rear of the last coach is or posite the Rambler and stops. [ run across the track. Tom Jovce. flagman, takes my camera. p tripod on board and zives m Conductor Chitterton and Bra Willie Watkins look out to ses wh) the train has stopped. Tom Jufferson, the baggagemaster, also looks see what's happened. man gives her the s 161, leaving Baltimore at 1 Washington at 3 o'cloc! the Rambler sinks into a soft plus seat, and Conductor Chitterton comes through with a punch in his haud The cash fare is 50 cenis and then Conductor Chitterton, Brakeman Wil- lie Watkins, Flagman Tommy Joyc and the Rambler sit around and talk about how courtesy and accommoda- tion bring dollars to a railroad com- pany. When No. 151 drew into Union station the Rambler walked down to the locomotive and shook hands with Engineer Dan Zimmerman and Fire- man John Smith, just like a President of the United States They Do Not Twinkle D nd dy GTARS do not really twinkle. They are immensely ant suns, und the light ‘goes out from them as evenly and as steadily as light goes out from the sun that shines on the world and the other planets of our small system. The light of these dis- tant suns, which we call stars. does reach us in a flashing or twinkling way, but the fault, if it is a fault, is due to the atmosphere which sur- rounds the little orb on which we live. Far down on or near the horizon the twinkling of a star is most per- ceptible and at or near the zemith, which is that part of the sky dir, overhead, the twinkling is much less pronounced and often imperceptibie It is the atmosphere, with its power or its habit of refraciing light waves which makes the stars appear to twinkle. The degree of perceptibility of the twinkle of a Star varies with the copdition of the air through which th% light waves pass. An astronomer explains it in this wa; “The twinkling of a star is pro- duced the variable refraction of its by air or uneven density and the interference of rays of light from the star following slightly different paths. As the result of this irregula® rafraction we see the light of the star concentratgd continuall at slightly different points—hat the star ‘twinkles' and through in- terference of light rays one color is temporarily obliterated and another intensifed. For instapce. the gree rays may be blotted out. for the mo- ment and the red ray strengthen-d, 80 that the quality of the light re- ceived from the star continu- ally to a slight degree.. A star near the horizon, where refraction effects are greatest, owing to the highly variable density and ansteadiness of the air close to the-surface of the earth, twinkles continually. and often flashes light of different colors.” A telescope intensifies the apparent twinkling of & star, and this fl ing is very much more -troublesome to observers om some nights than em athers. { o