Evening Star Newspaper, December 25, 1921, Page 37

" 'THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. O, DECEMBER 25, . 192I—PART 4.~ — 5 “ONE CHRISTMAS I REMEMBER”. HRISTMAS joys for the chil- dren are mosgly prospective— ~edXing forward. -Christmas jeys for those in the after- noon of life are mostly retrospective— i looking backward: This is trug with regard to the little immigrant boy, aged eleven, working as puddler in the iron and steel mills, grown to be the Secre- tary of Labor. It is true of the little nine-year-old boy in a suit of butter- nut homespun made by his “good mother by candle light, who devel- oped into one of the most noted men in the world and who has broken all records for length of service in Congress. It is true of the young ploneer and prospector who made the way for railroads and cities and who 18 today leader of the majority party in the House of Representatives. The backward gaze of these men, who hold conspicuous positions in the life of the nation, shows in bold relief that the greatest and most last- ing joys of Christmas time are those ] that arise out of suffering, soaring! above hardships—and that the most | “heart-warming and satisfying enjoy- | ment of the great feast comes through sacrifice—for of such is the real spirit of Christmas. Today an orange seems a trivial and almost ridiculous Christmas glft, but one woman—the second of her sex ever to sit in Congress—re- calls the gift of an orange to a dying child as a joy through forty years that have passed. 1 * ok E K THE true significance of Christmas cah be brought up to date in no better way than in the “best Christ- mas I ever had” astory of the former little immigrant puddler, James J. Davis, now Secretary of Labor, di- rector general of the Loyal Order of Moose, who, as chairman of the Moose war relief commission, visited American, Belgian, French, British and Itallan battlefields in 1918, and after the armistice returned to the Dattlefields of Belgium and Germany for relief purposes: “I have in mind the Christmas which I spent on the Rhine in 1918. Even if Christmas had not been at hand, we should never have forgotten those early winter months at the close of the war. It needed but the touch of Christmas to make this one of the 'most brilliant spots in my memory. “A party of us had left Paris two days before and had traveled to Metz and from there to Coblenz. On the way we talked with our allies and those with whom we had so recently been at war. They all felt that Christmas had ceased to bring them the joy that it had in years gone by, and no wonder, for they were all war-weary. The country was deso- late and the ravages of war were everywhere. But this one brought with it more of Christmas cheer, for there was.peace and there was safety. We arrived at Coblenz on the eve of Christmas. A new snow had fallen and the harshness of the scene. had been softened. “That Christmas eve we were en- tertained by a German club—promi- nent men in the city’s business and political life. They had a green fir tree dressed in Christmas costume for the benefit of working girls about the club. “There is one thing which I think ‘we Americans do mot get the most out of. It is song. All over Europe we find so much of it, and on this Christ- mas eve the young men in this prom- inent club stood around the tree and sang. They sang that old German hymn which.has come to be & part of so many of our Christmas pro- grams, “Silent Night, Holy Night, All Ts Calm, All Is Bright” “This was the first Christmas in five years that they could sing that carol with full expression and mean- ing. Not one of the eyes of that group of stalwart German men was dry and no one tried to conceal his emotion. It is mo confession of ‘weakness to say that as I viewed the scene and the full significance of the song crept {nto my mind and heart I turned aside and shed a tear. “The following morning we were shown the church in which the kaiser had worshiped. The Christmas serv- jce was being held and I at- tended. I heard a wonderful sermon. In the midst of it I glanced up into the box which the kaiser was wont to occupy in the days when his word was law in that country. It rather amused me as being distinctly ap- propriate that this box was now oc- cupled by two buck privates from our own Army. “The most brilliant part of this winger day was the evening. A-huge fir tree had been brought from the hills and placed in the city as a Christmas tree for the children of the community. Hundreds of colored lights were suspended from fts branches, and a huge star was sup- ported in the topimost branches, whieh on that night seemed to touch the heavens. ~What a reminder that brilliant spectacle made of the Christmas more than 1,900 years ago, when, in the midst of heavenly light over Beth- lehem’'s plains, the angels sang ~Peace on earth, good will toward men.” “Thousands of little .gifts were brought in by the relief organizations at work with our forces—the Red Cross, the Y. M. C. A, the Salvation Army and several others. I recall with keenest pleasure the siyht of this great Christmas tree, with the happy children beneath its branches, singing their carols and eagerly watching and waiting their turn for @ share in the many gifts in store for them.” * k k% VIGOROUS Christmas reminis- cence, chock-a-block full of dar- fng hardships and stubborn fight to the very last against discouragement,| in the days when the West was young and he was searching for one of the biggest coal mines in the country, is told by Representative Frank. W. Mondell of Wyoming, the House lead- er, as folows: “I am reminded of our celebration in the Black Hills of Wyoming that. winter in the late 80s, which will be long remembered by stockmen as the coldest and most disastrous in their experience.” 3 “The winter began in the early fall and my little prospecting party of six, which started in, late October from Buffalo Gap for a hundred-mile trip across the Black Hills to our degtination in Hyoming, pucountared & snowstorm on the slopes of Elk mountain. We floundered through heavy drifts and beyond the L. A. K. ranch, over dim and obscure trails, finally pitching camp—cold, worn and ‘weary. “Our original party increased to about a dozen after we went into camp, including ‘Big Mike' Norsk, master of woodcraft, and Levi Dodd, an old-time prospector, both natives ‘of the 'hills, and as famillar with the country as though they had made it. Our only neighbors, nearer than the distant cattle ranches, were Van- tine and Miller and their families, ad- Venturous small ranch people. “Ordinarily we might have expect- ed a month or more of good weather in which to establish permanent win- ter camp, bringing in supplies, and do the preliminary prospecting nec- essary to determine the point of per- manent winter drifting on the min- eral vein, but the bottomless tralls resulting from the rapid melting of the heavy early snow, followed by days of storm and intense cold, ren- dered travel to distant supply points exceedingly difficult, and Wweather conditions seriously interfered with the work on the winter cabins and hampered prospecting. “The middle of December found us with cabins half-finished and work on the permanent drift only fairly under way, with food supplies of all kinds practically exhausted. The tobacco users, who constituted most of the personnel of the party, were restive and almost mutinous. “Curley, the invincible, with our splendid four-horse team, was start- ed over the fifty-five-mile road to Custer for supplies. But four days later, in the midst of a howling bliz- zard Curley and his ‘four’ staggered into camp. plumb beat out. . Hell's canyon, twenty-five miles on the road to Custer, almost impassable at any time, choked with ice and snow, pre- sented a barrier that even Curley and his sturdy outfit could not surmount. “The next morning a cowboy from the Y. T. ranch rode into camp fo de- liver mail which he had beep good enough ¢o bring in from Sundance a few days before. The only letter that interested me added to the gloom of the general situation. It indicated that through an unfortunate combi- nation of -eircumstances it was quite probable that the funds on which we had been depending for our winter campaign would not be forthcoming, at once raising the question whether we would work on and hope for the best or get out before the roads were entirely blocked. 2 EE ¢(Q the heels of the mail courrier \ came Big Mike, from the job on the cabins, bellowing that some ‘damn tief' had stolen all our nails and spikes.” Such, on investigation, proved to be the case. The kegs and boxes containing these supplies so essential to finishing the cabins had been placed under a bough shelter near the main cabin. Not more than a dozen of our entire nail supply remained. And so the work ot the doors, the floors and the windows and the remaining por- tion of the roof of the ‘main cabin stopped. Vantine tried to get through to Sundance on horseback for a few nails and some tobacco, but the snow around the base of Inyankare was too deep. “Curley thofight he could get through to Deadwood with Vantine's sleigh 1f he could get his loaded sleigh up Salt Creek hill, five miles from the camp, on his return. So I started Curley out with Dodd ,for Swamper, and we eased them down the hill with ropes and bade them godspeed on their sixty-mile trip to Deadwood, promising to have a look- out on the top of Pisgah to signal their return, and to be at the bottom of the hill when they reached there, with block and tackle to pull them up. Looking out across the snowy reaches of the Canyon Springs'prairie and beyond toward the old, abandoned Deadwood stage road they were to follow, it did not look as though there was any possibility of their getting through, or, If they did, that they could get back. 3 “We had to have tobacco, whether we had anything to eat or not, so the boys said, and Big Mike volunteered to try and get through-to Sundance on my saddle horse Prince. Rrince was big and powerful and had never failed, but Mike was a heavyweight on a snowy road. “The weather settled into that sullen gloom that is the most dis- spiriting of all northern winter weather. 'I began to plan the aban- donment of thg enterprise. And then a trifiing incident occurred that proved the turning of the tide. “Vantine’s small boy, Bill, flushed with excitement and all out of’breath, came rushing to the drift where I was working, followed by his big New- foundland dog, shouting ‘Come, see what I found” Following the boy along the slippery hillside to the foot of a giant pine, which grew straight against an overhanging, mossy:bank, they led me to the recently uncoyered cache of an industrious family of pack rats. How Rover barked and Billy's eyes bulged, for they had found the thief. There they were, not only our nails and spikes, but a fine assort- ment of new, bright tin cups, tin spoons and other kitchen parapher- nalia, which had been carried away by these industrious rodents from one of the unfinished cabins. * k¥ % uHOW hammers rang-after the re- covery of the spoil and how much brighter things looked! We even had a dash of sunshine. Al hands put in the next two days finish- ing the cabins and we tried out the big fiteplace. But how the smokers and @hewers did growl about the lack of tobacco, and with the last of the flour and bacon gone, it was venison stralght, except for a handful of potatoes from our neighbor Vantine. “The day before Christmas dawned clear, crisp and bright, and along the middle of the forenoon we heard from the far side of the canyon the théer- ful ‘Hello’ of Big Mike from Sundance with tobacco and mail “The change in the atmosphere around the camp was magic. Such a chewing &nd spitting and smoking you never saw! We packed on our backs, oven a quarter of a mile of the roughest trail imaginable, our belong- ings from the tent camp to the cabins. But welcome as Big Mike's contribu- tion was, it left us with the prospect of a mighty cheerless Christmas. Nevertheless, the boys gathered Christmas &reens and berries and > kitchen and dinfhg room combined— of the main ‘cabin with them, as though all was to be well. ““Along in the middle of the elear, crisp afternoon high above the forest cover rose the column of signal smoke tine team we broke the trail up the divide to the top of Salt Creek hill, and with block and tackle we warped Curley’'s load of provisions up the hill, and as the sun glowed red near the western horizon Curley and Dodd started with their load for camp. Mounted on Old Mike's pinto pony T swung down through the head of a nearby canyon and got an easy shot at a fine two-prong buck. “Through the long twilight and undér a wonderful winter moon, I trailed back into camp with my game, arriving just as Curley and Dodd got in. Then for the first time I got up courage enough to read a letter which Mike had brought from Sun- down and which I knew would settle the guestion as to whether wa were to continue our winter's work. It was all to the good, for it contained assurance of funds sufficient:to keep the work going. “‘Twas a jolly party that gathered early Christmas evening around the long deal table, with its fresh oil- cloth cover and its bright new tin tableware, in the big evergreen- festooned cabin. Our neighbors were there—the Millers and the Vantines, with little Billy Vantine and little Susie Miller. Mrs. Vantine brought a jug of choke-cherry wine and a big jar of buffalo-berry jelly, and Mrs. Miller brought an abundance of plum pies. “Gus cooked the haunch of the veni- Son to a turn, baked biscuits that would have done honor to a Virginia housewife, and loaded the table with the good things appropriate to-the oc- casion, from piping hot baked potatoes to fruit pudding, and the party was as merry as the food was palatable and plentiful. After supper we cleared away the big table, and while the boys smoleed, Curley got out his mouth organ, Gus his accordion and Dodd his fiddle and the dance was on. Little Billy, decorated with the cook’s apron, served as, the fourth lady for the square dance and the Virginia reel. hp “As the hours grew small in the morning we all escorted our nelgh- bors to their nearby homes, and, re- turning, we spread deerskins deep in front of the fireplace, and while the cedar and the pitch pine crackled and roared,s Curley sang, Big Mike told stories of the northland and Dodd and Gus furnished more music. The party did not break up until the paling of. the. candles announced the coming of the morn. & “Out of this grew a great mine, the extension of railroads and the estab- lishment of thriving communities, but in all the period since, I imagine there never has been a merrier Christmas party in all that region than that Christmas in the Black Hills in those early days.” * X K X NCLE JOE" Cannon, eighty-five years of age, and now in his forty-fifth year of service in Con- fress, has a longer Christmas-studded vista than any other man in public lite. He looks back over nearly four- acore years to Christmas when he was nine years of age, in the pioneer days of the great northwest territory. “I have never outgrown the old- fashioned notion that Christmas is a sacred home day, and so, though I have been In. Congress forty-five years, I have never yet spent a Christ- mas in Washington. I always go back home. A “Oh, thé good, simple pioneer Christ- mas was 80 much better and had so “« ] covered the walls of the big room— sent up by our watcher on Pisgah.(on. Curley was coming! With the Van-|and a pair of shoes or boots made by 'NEVER MERRIER A PaRTY THAN THAT CHRIST IMAS BLACK HLLS “we K HAPPIEST [ CHRISTHAS N\ A CRISTHAS }‘.'!')AY vm MANILA 1S VivipLy, RE(ALLEpt, day. I remember when I was nine vearp old—although every Christmas for every boy in my youth was just one blur of butternut-coloréd suits of homespun, all alike—the real sur- prise I got on that day When I found my new suit waiting’ for me to put We boys invariably got a suit the crossroads shoemaker. The sur- prise came because I knew the vast amount of labor required to make that suit, and T had not seen the good mother at work upon it, g0 I supposed I was not to have one. “The good mother had worked for weeks by dim candle light far into the night, to prepare suits forme and my . brother. She spun the wool and wove it on a primitiver wooden loom, colored it with butternut juice, which made a good substitute for indigo, but was pretty yellow.. With these suits were : thick woolen etockings home spun and knitted by the same good mother, with love in every click of her needles. So each boy had a complete Pploneer suit, and it was recelved with more real joy than any tailor-made suit costing $100 would be received today. In other words, it was not only appreciated becauss it was useful .and warm, but it was doubly appre- olated because we knew that the good mother had spent many hours when we were asleep in weaving her love into each garment, preparing them as a Christmas surprise. Those oddly colored, suits, sometimes ill- fittigg, were worn as royal raiment, because mother had made them. “In the-early morning our clumsy new boots, creaking in the crisp snow, we set oft for church, spelling each other-at pulling the sled. We went to the Quaker meeting house, about a ‘mile and a half from the crossroads town, In the Wabash country of west- ern Indiana. I had a birthright in the Friends meeting, both of my par- ents being Quakers, but the Metho- dist preacher abounded, and when the roads were passable the country folks flocked to the -crossroads church with sleigh bdlls jingling and lan- terns gleaming dimly across the snow. The most of the people went to the church' meeting in the schoolhouse, but wa plodded along to the Friends meeting. “The story of that Christmas would be only part told without the layout of three fine big wild turkeys roasted by mother before the big log fire- place. The day before I had gone off in the woods with my older brother to get them. Later I killed many a wild turkey for-the Christmas feast, but that year I was not old enough to kill, but T was sturdy enough to lug the biggest one home in triumph. In those days wild turkeys and quall abounded—now all that is passed. “A butternut-colored suit still looks mighty good to me in memory—and they have lost tie fine art of making homespun.” | EE UNDEB_uw. caption, “My Christmas Orange,” Miss Alicg Robertson of Oklahoma, the only woman in Con- gress, sketches, in a drab background of suffering and hardships, her Christ- mas picture of the past, but brightens it with touches of the true spirit of the day. Her story is of a missionary family among the Indians and points a moral: “Christmas, 1882, found my mother and me living beside the ruins of the lar'ge brick mission building where a hundred Indian children had had a happy school—all scattered now, as was our family, following my father's death after the fire,” Miss Robertson recalld. - S “Mother and I had planned a Christ- mas tree for the Indian neighbors, but three nights before hundreds of armed horsemers had suddenly appeared through the darkness of the quiet night and we knew that a rumored tribal war_was on. We were mot afraid, for fio Indian would ever harm much more heart in it, although itla mission y, but for us Christ- the-childzen of i man Was @ bo deferred—all roads were guarded, all ferries stopped, and we could get none of our expected supplies. “Breakfast for 400 from our winter store of food was cheerfully provided, but we almost wondered how ‘daily bread’ would come when the ‘light horse’ troop had been fed. They did not sfay but the day, filing away in the picturesque straggling line of the original American Rough Riders, leav- ing, however, a dozen men to guard our little family—mother, an Indian orphan boy and girl and myself. Our guard camped at the barn; we were living in the laundry. An Indian fridnd sent us a wild turkey, which, pieced out with prairie chickens, made us and our guards a good Christmas dinner. “Late at night a knock on the door brought us a surprise—one of the Indian neighbors, who handed, in a bulky package, some candy, oranges and a letter from our good doctor in the beleaguered town. Through by- paths, crossing the Arkansas in a canoe, he had reached the doctor to get medicine for a sick child, and there were enough oranges for all of us next day. I wanted mine so much I would not eat it right away. “Next morning the. weather changed to a terrible ice storm. An Indian boy came begging with quiet insistence that I go to his sick sister. So I pack- ed a little basket with a few simple remedies and some milk, eta. Felix, the orphan boy, hitched the sharp- shod ponies into the light spring wagon and, well wrapped, we started out through a terrible storm that ‘would have made ‘good roads’ impass- able. We.found the cabin. The child ‘was past all human aid, perfectly con- scious, though. I knelt down beside her and told her of the gospel story in simple words. I had brought my orange to her. She tried to hold it, for she liked oratges, too. So I fixed some of the pulp for her. “I shall never forget the look in her big black eyes that followed me pa- thetigally when I left her. “That night she died, but the poor mother said she was not afraid and her last words had been a prayer. “The giving of that orange has been a joy through all the years, and the Christms lesson of it is some sacri- fice of small personal comfort or ease if one may not be able to give ‘things’ of intrinsic value, but without the real spirit of Christmas.” o * % % ¥ EPRESENTATIVE MARTIN B. MADDEN of Tlinois, chairman of the House appropriations committee, worked his way from water-boy in a granite quarry to head of one of the largest construction corporations in the United States, and is rated as a millionaire. “The happfest Christmas of my Mfe Wwas more than ten years ago, when I played Santa Claus and got away with it without any one finding it out for a oouple of years,” said Representa- tive Madden. “I was in the Chicago city post office one day when the postmaster told me about thousands of letters that were coming in ad- dressed to Santa Claus, and ghat they did not know where to deliver them. “T asked him to turn all thesel let- ters over to me. I went through many of sthem myself, and they touched my heart. I had every one of those letters in childish scrawls carefully read. We sorted out those which were evidently from the chil- dren of well-to-do people, and saved those which, through the modesty of their requests, were from the children of the poor, who did not expeot elab- orate gifts. “Then I sent all of these letters to a couple of department stores to have the orders filled, and we hauled sev- eral loads of Christmas gifts to those humble homes on Christmas eve, leav- ing no message to show who had sent them.” Representative Madden says that he never enjoyed anything more in all his life, and that half of hls Joy. SECRETARY OF LABOR DAVIS Tells of a Christmas Day in Metz After “ the Armistice, When the Germans Sang *Holy Night"—"Uncle Joe™ Cannon and His Homespun Suit of Clothes, Made by His Mother—Representative Mondell Relates How His Prospecting Party Was Snowed In, and the Relief That Came on 'Day Before Christmas—R epresentative Alice Robertson and Her Precious Orange. Christmas Day After Close of Civil War-and One Yuletide in the Phflippines. UNUSVAL CHrisTHAS DAy IN SHANGHA! would have been missing if folks had known he'd been playing Santa Claus. When the story leaked out several years later, he was very unhappy. He admits that one particular fling at substituting for Santa Claus cost con- siderably more than $5,000. Every year since Representative Madden has, unostentatiously, been doing some- thing the same, to make children hap- Py, who otherwise would get little on the great day—and he looks forward to this Christmas merriment with as much delightful anticipation as any child who gets his gifts. i * k% % RISTMAS day with the American soldier boys in Manila during the Spanish-American war is vividly and entertainingly recalled by Represen- tative Edward C. Little, who was lieutenant colonel to Funston in the Philippines. He spins hié tale thus: “On Christmas Day, 1898, there were some 15,000 American soldiers camped in and around Manila, maintaining a line of sentries about fourteen miles long around the city. So that Christ- mas was part American and part Filipino, but both amigoes. “A couple of days before, a big sergeant brought me a ten or twelve year old little Filipino boy, neatly dressed, very sedate and intelligent, speaking Englfsh haltingly, who in- vited me to eat Christmas dinner with his widowed mether and their family at her home near the La Rosa barracks, in the Tondo district on Manila bay. His little oration de- scribed pathetifally the glories of the festivities arranged in my hon- or at some length. I was regretfully compelled to decline this glimpse in- to the native life, because I had ac- cepted an invitation to take my Christmas dinner with some Oregon officers in the Walled City, coming from my oM friend Capt. Will Moon of that regiment. “The day was fair and beautiful to look upon, but a singularly mo- mentous one to us in a foreign land across the Pacific and half a conti- nent from our homes. Early in the day I made a trip to a venerable Spanish church in San Augustin, ob- served the stately ceremonies, and heard the solemn and beautiful music of the people who had just lost those fairy islands which they had held for three centuries. “Presently I attended the funeral in the ancient Spanish cemetery of a Kansas City boy from company B, the first Kansas soldler that ever dled overseas. “The Oregonians were pleasantly situated in the cartel de Espagne, an officers’ quarters in the Walled City, and a very pleasing Christmas dinner, served in the afternoon, was a some- what elaborte and very pleasing one. “That afternoon Capt. Moon and I adjeurned to the Luneta to see the Oregon and Colorado teams plan an exciting game for the base ball championship of the islands. Moon and I took’ reserved seats on top of a carromata, a little Filipino hack bullt for a small people. A boy came ‘up eagerly at the end of the seventh inning and sald, ‘Cap, we have got the champlonship cinched—the score is 8 to 2* The captain replied, ‘Don’t be too sure. I played in a game once ‘where we struck out the first four- teen men as fast as they got up, didn't let & man get to first base in the first seven innings; didn’t let & man get to second in the first eight, and had them beat, 10 to 0, at the first half of the ninth—but they tied the score in the ninth inning and though we struck them out in the tenth and the pitcher himself made & run for us in the eleventh they won the game in the last half of the eleventh in- ning—so don’t be too certain’ I sald, ‘Captain, who pitched that game? He hesitated a moment, threw his arm around me, uncere- moniously tumbled me off the car- romata and said, ‘Why you, you son- '==but Oregon 1 AS TOLD BY THE AFFAIRS “I rode back to quarters on my Filipino pony to find half the bat- talion standing in the street, twenty or thirty feet wide. They pointed to the small Filipino houses just across the street from my room and said: ‘Colonel, this afternoon & man died there from the smallpox. The in- spector visited us and has taken Coleman away to the smallpox hos- pital’ Christmas ended for the 1st Battalion of the 20th Kansas in sad- ness and In gloom. Coleman recov- ered, but in two weeks we saw four- teen of our comrades taken away with that dread disease. “The Filipinos who possessed suf- ficlent means and had a desire to please their frlends each hired a brass band or orchestra and prome- naded the streets, visiting and enter- taining their friends in considerable splendor. A wealthy Philippine gen- tleman in our neighborhood, pro- prietor, I believe, of our barracks, which he had built for a cigarette factory just before we arrived, came over with his band and entertained the battalion. He was followed by some of his friends and reminded the boys that it really was Christmas, and that the spirit of Christmas was abroad in the Philippines. “That evening Lieut. Ed Hardy and I rode into the woods along the guard line, under the wonderful foliage of the tropics, and watched the sentinels on both sides pacing back and forth. We saw what seem- ed to be a Christmas tree yonder in the forest, its branches and leaves crowded with Christmas tapers. We paused with astonishment. But as we approached it developed that the tree was an attraction for the fire- flies and all these Christmas tapers which reminded us so much of home wera the firy lights of thousands of those little insects, heralds to us in that distant land on Christmas day, or nature's announcement of ‘peace on earth and good will to men’ given to American soldiers underneath that Southern Cross, which lingered above us in the skies.” * ¥ ¥ ¥ THE only man in the House of Rep- resentatives today who served in the Unlon Army during the civil war is Representative Henry Zenas Os- borne of California. He enlisted at the age of sixteen as a private, Com- pany E, 192d New York Volunteer In- fantry. He is a printer by trade, and a publisher of newspapers by pro- fession, and at the age of twenty- seven was first vice president of the International Typographical Union, in 1876. He was senior vice commander- in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, 1912-18, and for thirty-seven years has been an active member of the G. A. R. Representative Osborne has a very, very distinct recollection of his Christ- mas fifty-six years ago, which he records as one of the most important dates in his life. Let him tell his own story : “As I look back, the Christmas that is most distinct in my memory imme- diately followed the close of the civil war—Christmas, 1865. “I left the little seminary town of Cazenovia, N. Y., to do my soldier- ing, but went to work on the Utica Herald on my return. I was then seventeen years old. I concluded to spend my holidays at Cazenovia, and I went to the home of dear old Mrs. Ives, with whom I used to board. It was evening, and I knocked at the door. “I was surprised and delighted to MEN HIGH IN OF THE NATION have it opened by a young lady, whom I thought the most beautiful I had ever seen. She had rosy cheeks and blue eyes. In those days there was neither gas nor electricity, and she had & kerosene lamp in her hand. I had never seen her before, and I commenced to explain who I waa I Was very nervous, and she must have been nervous, too, as between us we managed to shake off the chimney from the lamp and break it on the floor. “I made a resolution that I would marry this beautiful girl, who w: attending the seminary, but that [ must make $10,000 before I could think of starting life. As Jacob served seven years for Rachel, 80 L worked seven years to get my $10,000 together, without results. “Finally I gave up the financial Umit I had placed upon my hopes, and this lady did me the honor to be- come my wife. We have together enjoyed forty-nine years of happi- ness. We now have grown up (and heads of families themselves) four sons and one daughter and ten grand- children. “I think that was one of the most important events of any Christmas in my life—when the glass lamp chim- ney broke.” * ok ok ok 'HE most traveled man in Congress, Representative Ernest R. Acker- man, who has visited more than 100 countries and made more than forty trips across the Atlantic, hadl as unusual an experience a quarter of & century ago on Christmas day, mixed in with celebration of the great feast, as has come to most men. Here is his story: “I was spending two weeks in Shanghal in 1895. Christmas day came while we were waiting for a boat to take us to India. Of course, there are many English and American residents who celebrated Christmas according to old home customs, going to church in the morning, having a good dinner at the Astor House at noon and participating in some form of entertainment during the balance of the day. In the afternoon we witnessed a paper chase by hounds in a park in the suburbs of the city, to which the Bubbling Well road, lined by handsome residences, was the most direct route. “A quarter of a century ago the Chinese were still clinging to their old customs and traditions. Among the latter was the one of consulting the soothsayers and astrologers as to where a person should be buried so as to enjoy uninterrupted repose dur- ing the last sleep. If the Feng-Sui, or spirit of repose, were not satls fied as to the last resting place the sleep was broken and unhappy. Hence, if the fates decreed that the coffin containing the remains should be deposited in your front yard or in your garden, whether you were re- lated to the deceased or mot, this custom and the law decreed the cof- fin might be deposited and you could not legally disturb it. “It was a strange and a gruesome sight to see hundreds of coffins in all stages of disrepair so located, and the large field in which the paper chase was held was dotted all over with coffins, and the newest among them were used as points of vantage by the spectators to view the chase, which was vociferously and hilarious- lv conducted by a great throng of spectators, totally disregarding the evidences of the fate that must over- take us all.” Sending Conference News To Papers of the Far East T is doubtful if any event in world history ever received more pub- licity than the present confer- ence for the limitation of arma- ment. Not only American newspapers, but periodicals in the uttermost parts of the earth have sought to give their readers full and accurate reports of the parley, day by day. Foreign cor- respondents came to Washington by the hundreds. g Japan's quota is fifty newspaper men, while China has only twelve. This does not mean that fifty Japa- nese and twelve Chinese papers are actually represented at the parley. Few of the correspondents really send cablegrams to the newspapers in the far east. Most of them are assigned to the task of gathering news. Many large Japanese papers maintain news bureaus, where trained correspond- ents cover special phases of the con- ference. Some attend the conferences, while others meet the delegates of the different nations. All their news comes through the same channels as that published in American dailies. Only news of prime importance is cabled, because of the cable tolls. The press rate to Tokio and Pekin is 35 cents a word and the regular rate is a dollar a word. Many messages are sent at the latter rate. The Japanese correspondents aver- age seven or eight hundred words a day. As a rule the Chinese journal- ists send shorter messages. The volume of news varies in direct pro- portion to its importance. Some days there is scarcely any news worth cabling, but on other occasions, as, for example, when Secretary Hughes proposed a ten-year naval holiday and Senator Lodge revealed the four- power treaty, the messages exceeded a thousand words in length. It is out of the question to cable the greater muss of the material, 80 the long reports and texts of speeches are mailed by special delivery. An American newspaper man labors under a handidap. His uff” must be on the wire at a certain hour every day in order to have it reach the office before his paper goes to press. In doing this the corre- spondent is forced to work at top speed up until the last minute. A correspondent for a newspaper in the far east doesn’t have to worry about sending his article at a precise min- ute, for he never knows how long it will take for it to reach its destina- tion. Twelve hours is the actual time required for the transmission of a message, but it rarely, if ever, reaches the far east in that time. The route is so roundabout that numerous delays are apt to occur, conseqquently it re- quires from fourteen to seventy hours instead of twelve. The message must Arat-go-go-New York. There it is put on the wire te San Francisco, from *Frisco by naval radio to Guam and then by cable to Manilla and Shanghai. Other routes, of course, are available, and when the traffic is heavy all of them are press- ed into service. Some messages are cabled from San Francisco to Tokio direct. Some readers may wonder how the Japanese correspondent manages to send his messages over the wire. It is impossible for him to use his queer hieroglyphics. Most of the newspaper- men from the far east know English perfectly, so they merely write out their dispatches in English and depend upon a translator in the newspaper office to change the words into the characters or ideograms used in their newspapers. Jabin Hsu of the Shanghai Pres employs what he calls “skeletonized™ English. He dispatches the barest outline of the day’s news, sending on the average 150 or 200 words By merely giving the salient facts in the fewest possible words he is able to compress & vast amount of material into a compact cablegram. If the edi- tor of his paper so desires he can have the story elaborated and ex- panded. The Shanghai Press s one of the most influential papers in China. It is printed in English for the benefit of the Americans and Europeans in the far east. It boasts of a circula- tion of 25,000 or 30,000, but it reaches @ far greater number of readers. The innumerable native papers translate and reprint most of the news appear- ing in the Press. A few of the correspondents have resorted to an arbitrary phonetic lan- guage, which is simply Japanese written in English letters so that they produce the same sounds. The English words so fabricated are ab- solutely meaningless. For that rea- son telegraph operators are a trifle more carefull for fear they will make a mistake. When the message reaches Japan the process is reversed. The phonetic words are changed back to the ideograms and rushed to the com. posing room to be set in type. Frogs in Rocks and Trees. ATTENTION may bs invited to the astonishing longevity of the pop- ular delusion, to which even educated persons at the present day give cred- ence, that lving frogs, toads and other animals are sometimes discov- ered in hermetically sealed cavities in tree trunks and rocks. % A little reflection shows, from the very nature of things, that such tales are incredible, and that those who vouch for them must be mistaken in their observations, as the most sharp- sighted persons are deceived by the feats of a prestidigitatos,