Grand Rapids Herald-Review Newspaper, October 13, 1909, Page 4

Youngsters Explanation of His Fa- ther’s Standing Left the Others Away Behind. The story, long since familiar, of the little boy whose boast that his fa- ther -had put a cupola on his house ‘Was capped by his playmate, who re- tharked, proudly, that his father had just put a mortgage on theirs, is brought to mind by an occurrence which was told the other day by @ prominent politician. The small son of a man who was in politics for revenue only, on moving into a new district this summer, went out and struck up an acquaintance with two other kids of the same age who lived in the neighborhood. They were interested in the newcomer and began to try him out as to what his parents amounted to anyhow. “My father is a window trimmer and an awfully big man,” said the first kid. “Ah, that’s nothin’,” said the second. “My father’s a dump trimmer, and he’s twice as big as your’s.” It was plainly up to the stranger to make good. And he did it with much gusto. “My father is a politician,” he said, “put I heard a man tell him last night that he was the biggest trimmer in this ward.” And it was apparent to any one that the new kid had made a strong impression upon the neighborhood. EYE OF THE CAMERA IS KEEN Has Been Used to Decipher Docu- ments Substantially Obliterated by Age. Often the eye of the camera will de- cipher documents of which the writ- ing had been substantially obliterated by age, says a writer in Van Norden’s Magazine. I have successfully copied with the camera the utterly faded pho- tograph of a classmate of 40 years previous. Changes in the pigment of the skin, undiscovered by the eye, appear with distinctness on the sensitive plate, and it is said that ample warning of approaching disease has been there- by given. The camera takes pictures of sub- jects which cannot be made to appear on the ground glass and of those which the eye of man has never seen. The human eye can penetrate space no further in an hour than in a single instant. Yet the eye of the camera will gaze into the sky for hours, look- ing deeper and seeing more with each second that passes. Through this attribute of the cam- era a great chart of the heavens is now being made. In this work dis- tinguished astronomers and photogra- phers throughout the world are co- operating. Yet not one in a hundred of the stars already plainly pictured by them was ever seen by the unaided eye of scientists. Too Tough a Morsel. “Tenderfoots” are not necessarily fools, as the guide of whom a writer in the New York Herald tells discov- ered. He was recounting some of his early experiences with the brethren of the wild, for the benefit of his open-mouthed audience of easterners. “Yes, sir,” he said, “ it was my first grizzly, and I don’t deny I was proud of having killed him in a hand-to-hand struggle. We began fighting about sunrise, and when he finally rolled over, done for, the sun was going down.” He paused. No one said anything, and so he added slowly, “for the sec- ond time.” “Do you mean that it took you two days to kill a grizzly?” asked the Eng- lish. tourist. “Two whole days and one night,” replied the guide. “He died mighty hard.” : “Choked to death?” asked the tour- ist. “Yes, sir,” the guide said, calmly. “Well, well! What did you try to get him to swallow?” Fallacy as to Drowning. There is a popular fallacy about a drowning man sinking for the third time. The number of times a man sinks has nothing to do with his Growning. He may sink but once, and he may go beneath the water any number of times. It all depends upon the person who is drowning, his phys- ical condition and how quickly the lungs fill with water. That cycle of three is carried along by those who insist that a person dies in his third congestive chill. But that is not true. The same rule holds good in .conges- tive chills as in the case of a drown- ing man. A person may die in the first, or he may have half a dozen, and still live. The rule of thrée doew not obtain there, either. Canal Long Ago Projected. It is now nearly 400 years since the first proposal was made for the Pana- ma canal. A canal was suggested as early as 1520 by Angel Saavedra, but for a long time all such suggestions met with determined opposition from Spain, who made it a capital offense to seek or make known any improve ment on the existing route from Porto Bello to Panama. More recently Louis Napoleon, when a prisoner at Ham, spent much time considering the practicability of such a scheme. It was not, however, until the California gold rush of 1849 that any accurate knowledge of the topographical condi- tions was obtained, and even then 30 more years elapsed before the actual site was chosen by an internatioal eommission and the work begun, There Every Part of the Tree Is Util- ized, Leaving Nothing to Start Conflagration, The question has been asked why there should be so many fires in our American forests when there are so very few or none at all in the forests of Europe. The answer is this, says Outing. When the trees are cut in the forests of Germany, France or Switzerland, the entire material in the tree is marketed and removed, leaving no inflammable litter on the ground. In our American forests, ow- ing to lack of market for such mate- rial, fully one-half of the tree—the limbs, smaller branches, twigs and foliage—are left upon the ground, where they soon become dry and fur- | nish material for a forest fire. In the European forests every part of the tree, including the smaller twigs, is sold. The sale of this minor product constitutes over one-half of the revenue. Hence, when the for- ester is through with his tree cutting no inflammable material is left upon the ground. Now, if our Adirondack lumbermen could sell the limbs and tops of the trees instead of allowing them to go to waste for lack of a market, they would not be obliged to leave the ground encumbered with the inflammable debris and litter which is such a prolific source of fire, and which when ignited is so difficult to extinguish. HE WANTED TO BE ON TIME But It Is Probable Mrs. Blank Had Something to Say to Him That Night. He was a very busy man, and, like all of his kind, he hated to waste time by unnecesary waiting. That was why in the midst of his correspond- ence, along about 11 o’clock the other morning, he paused, and, turning to his secretary, requested him to ring up his residence on the ’phone. “Jemmison,” he said, “get my house on the wire and ask Mrs. Blank to come to the ’phone. Just tell them that I wish to speak to her.” The secretary made off, and in a few minutes the required connection was made. “Is that you, Mary?” he said. “Yes,” was the answer. “Well, this is John,” he said. “I have just rung you up to tell you that Barker was in here this morning with two tickets for the theater to-night. He and Mrs. Barker have been called suddenly out of town, and he thought we might like to use the tickets. How about it?” “Fine,” replied Mrs. Blank. “I have nothing else to do.” “All right, my dear,” continued Blank. “The curtain rises at 8:30.” “Yes, I know,” said Mrs. Blank. “I thought I’d let you know in time, so that directly you have had your lunch you can begin to put your hat on,” he went on. “Then we can get there before the middle of the first act. By-by, dear.” The only answer was an angry click at the other end of the wire, which seemed to indicate that another receiver was in trouble, but Mr. Blank only laughed as he returned to his work.—Lippincott’s. A Determined Violet. An ancient homestead in Wood- stock, Conn., shelters under its thresh- old an in‘eresting freak of nature. Be- tween the house and its huge old door- step is a narrow crevice filled with cement. In this hard and seemingly forbidding environment a fine flourish- ing English violet plant awakens much wonder and admiration. With appar- ently no encouragement this brave lit- tle plant yearly puts forth fresh leaves and sometimes as many as ten fra- grant flowers bloom at once.—Coun- try Life in America. Had No Complaint to Make. Two young women boarded a crowd- ed street car and were obliged to stand, says the Washington Post. One’ of them, to steady herself, took hold of what she supposed was her friends hand. They had stood thus for some time, when, on looking down she dis- covered that she was holding a man’s hand. Greatly embarrassed, she ex- claimed: “Oh, I’ve got the wrong hand!” Whereupon the man, with a smile, stretched forth his other hand, saying: “Here is the other one, madam.” Scoffs at “Maternal Instinct. We talk about “maternal instinct.” There is no such thing. To be sure, there are things that have to do with young, which females possess and males lack. The wasp lays its egg on the body of the caterpillar for the larvae it will never see. The hen sits 21 days on any roundish, whitish. ob- ject of the proper size. I have seen, at a children’s party, every little girl leave the supper table on the advent of a baby, and every little boy go stolidly on with his supper. But each kind of mother has its own bundle of instinctive reactions. There is no “maternal instinct” in the abstract.— E. T. Brewster, in McClure’s. A Question of Taste. “You are sure this was moonshine whisky?” said the investigator. “Jes,” smawered the man from Ten- aessee. “Did you taste it?” “Taste it? No. I swallowed a lit- tle. You don’t taste it any more than you’d taste a hornet if you acciden- tally bit one. You just know it’s there.”—Washington Star. < Woman of To-Day Bay evatne” “Youthtu ness Longer Than Her Grand- mother Did. Women in. Switzerland. grow ape more gracefully than any of the women in Europe, according to a a ter to the Emporia (Kan.) te. That does not mean that women ‘who work hard in youth and sap their fives out, before they are 30 are pretty. Not even American women of that type are beautiful. Perhaps it means that, owing to social and economic conditions, women do not have tc wear themselves out as their mothers did, and hence they are beautiful ir their forties and fifties. It may b« pertinent to digress here and present this query: Are not women the Worle over, as a rule, adding a decade te their years of youth? It does seen that there are more handsome womer between 35 and 55 than there wer 25 years ago. Or perhaps a boy ir his "teens isn’t so charitable to thr minor failings of a woman in her for ties as a man is in his forties..,.Bu discounting the pride of youth, i does seem that to-day, all over thi world, the woman whose family jr come is between $10 and $1,000 : week—a wide range, surely—ti woman retains her youthful fr ness and charm longer than (bh grandmother retained hers. .Lab; saving machinery seems to have den that much for the woman in generz everywhere in civilization. USES WINGS TO CATCH FISH Sly Old Bird Is the Cassowary, Ac- cording to Observations Made by Naturalist. Habits of the cormorant and of our native fish hawk are generally known. Their methods of taking fish are very much like those of birds of prey. But the cassowary fishes according to a method of its own. A well-known nat- uralist witnessed its operations on a river in the island of New Britain. He saw a cassowary come down to the water’s edge and stand for some minutes apparently watching the wa- ter carefully. It then stepped into the river where it was about three feet deep, and partially squatting down, spread its wings out, submerging them, the feathers being spread and ruffied. The bird remained motionless, and kept its eyes closed as if in sleep. It remained in this position for a quar- ter of an hour, when suddenly closing its wings and straightening its feath- ers it stepped out on the bank. Here is shook itself several times, where- upon a quantity of small fishes fell out of its wings and from amid its feathers. These the bird immediately Picked up and swallowed. The fishes had evidently misjaken the feathers for a kind of weed that grows in the water along the banks of the rivers in this island and which resembles the feathers of the casso- wary. The smaller fishes hide in these weeds to avoid the larger ones that prey on them. The Man with Mechanical Ability. ‘The man with a natural aptitude for hanies received so many invita- to take automobile trips with viends who acted as their own chauf- ir that he came to be envied by his ss fortunate acquaintances. One day opular guest condescended to en- Lien them as to his true status. fellows needn’t get green- he said. “I haven't such a ter all. What they want me z for is to blow up the tires repeirs in case of an acci i wouldn’t be such a hot fevor e if I wasn’t so proficient in that i knowledge is somewhat ng, but as I enjoy the trips Is y pride and accept the = invita tie Hazel Twig. have been used as ich to discover The twig has at credited with many Not only could it “ be- el, which, according S guided by the pixies the treasures of the France the divining rod of used in the pursuit of while in many of the meus or investigating the future the rning of hazel nuts played a part. Wonder of Nature. A noted divine was very fond of ‘ding on horseback, and, being vastly onceited about his fine figure, wore ‘ays to show it off. One day he was “rown from his horse and lay prone n the road. A farm laborer from a eighboring field ran to his assistance. he first-aid man began to feel the arson all over, and suddenly yelled nt to ancther laborer: “Rin, Jock, for heaven’s sake, for a cetor. Here’s a man’s ribs running ae sooth instead of east and yest.” If » Woman Sawed. “What is the meaning of the old Cage about sawing wood and saying cothing?” asked the fair maid, “It means that there is a man on the job,” replied the home-grown philosopher. “And why not a woman?” queried the f. m, “Impossible,” answered the local philosophy r. “If a woman had to saw the wood the world see certainly about it” cae — <<. iv << so 2. -— <— |... ~~. | ‘THAT SETTLED THE. QUESTION | NO FOREST FIRES N EUROPE ONLY AS OLD AS. AS SHE LOOKS ‘NICETIES OF LEGAL TENDER Somewhat Perplexing Question Which Very Few Seem to Properly Understand. One of the prominent officials of the treasury department recently ven- in a hundred and probably not half a@ dozen members of the senate or house could tell accurately what parts of the United States currency are le- gal tender. He went on to say: “A great many people know that the definition of legal tender is money of a character which by law a debtor may require his creditor to receive in Payment in the absence of a special agreement. But when it comes ‘to stating just what money is legal ten- der you will find the banker all at sea. “Gold certificates are not a legal tender, but are receivable for customs, taxes and all public debts. Silver cer- tificates are not legal tender. Neither are national bank notes. They are re- ceivable, however, in payment of taxes, excises, public lands and all other dues to the United States, ex- cept duties on imports. Trade dollars and fractional currency are not legal tender. Fractional currency is re- receivable for postage and revenue stamps and also in payment of any dues to the United States less than five dollars, except duties on imports. Foreign gold and silver coins are not legal tender. “The following are legal tender in all that the term means: “Gold coins of the United States, standard silver dollars, subsidiary sil- ver coins, minor coin of copper, bronze or copper-nickel, up to 25 cents; United States notes or green- backs, demand treasury notes, treas- ury notes of 1890. Columbian half dollar and Columbian quarters. Sub- sidiary silver coin, including Colum- bian half dollars and quarters, are legal tender up to $10.” CASE CALLED FOR SYMPATHY Life of Single-Blessedness Made No Appeal to Battered-Up Mar- ried Woman, Apropos the discussion of the ad- vantages of married life recalls the experience of a certain bachelor maid of some forty summers and some win- ters. She has had proposals enough, so she says, but she prefers single- blessedness to pouring coffee, mend- ing socks and spanking babies, She recently began devoting much of her time to working in the slums, partic- ularly among the women and chil- dren. A pitiful case was recently brought to her attention to care for. A wom- an had been cruelly treated by her husband, who, as a final act, locked her out in the street. The poor, suf- fering creature, ragged and dishev- eled, reported at the charity head- quarters and begged for shelter. Miss J—— dressed her wounds, gave her something to eat and then started a sympathetic conversation with the sufferer. The latter, after recounting at much length the in- juries she had borne at the hands of her liege, lord and master, asked a few questions to satisfy her womanly curiosity about her new-found friend. “Live here?” she inquired of Miss JI—. 'No,” was the reply; “I spend only a part of my time here during the day. My home is way up in Harlem.” “You're married, ain’t you?” was the next question. “No, I’m not married; and I may never be.” The poor, wretched woman opened her bruised and swollen eyes as best she could to get a look at her friend, gazing at her in amazement. “My, my!” she said, sympathetical- ly. “I’m awfully sorry. Say, but ain’t it flerce to be an old maid?”—New York Times. A Millionaire Before He Was 21. The arch prospector of all times was Cecil Rhodes. For him it was not merely going out and putting down holes in likely places. At 17 he had Been touched with tuberculosis and ordered south. Arriving at his brother Herbert’s cotton plantation in Africa in the midst of the second. diamond excitement, he, with Herbert, was drawn into the “new rush.” They took a claim at Colesburg—at 30 shil- lings a month rental. In a few weeks each leased a full claim, all the law allowed. Cecil Rhodes set himself to get the law to allow one man to own two claims, then ten, and then as many as he could lay hold of. So well did Rhodes keep pace with changing regulations that he returned to England at 19.a millionaire!— Franklin Clarkin, in Everybody’s. Easily Imagined. Imagine, if you please, time when every family ean have its own flying machine—a means of getting out for a day with as much safety as now at- tends the automobile or the old fami- ly horse. Wouldn’t such a thing add a value to the world? Would it not en- hance the pleasure of living to be able to take the wife and babies out for a spin in the sky, where the air is pure, where all of the earth is spread out before one, even as it is spread before the eye of the eagle? Would it not add to the sum total of human happiness to take to the clouds as do the birds, and to have to consider neither the beaten highways nor the rocky bar- riers of the mountain ranges? Cer- tainly it would. And just as certainly such a time is rapidly dawning or the human race—Springfeld (0) News. tured the opinion that not one banker’ that at 65 cents on each side, than yo tions. COLUMBI DOUBLE-DISC RECORDS A different selection on each side They fit any machine That tells the whole story except Double-Disc you get a better record, fore at $1.20 for the same two selec- Get a catalog! 4 GRANDRAPIDS, - - for the Columbia ou ever bought be- BELL, MINNESOTA. | Land of Gold Witnesses Many Strange Vicissitudes in the Matter of Wealth. To-day a humble gold-seeker may be living in a hutch of the simple ar- chitecture of a box car, says Good Housekeeping. To-morrow he is build- ing a “villa” with real clapboards and shingles, hiring a Chinaman of all }work and sending to ‘Frisco for a brass bed and a Persian rug. Some very pretty little houses begin to dot |the barren landscape. A railroad stretches its metal arm down into the gold-bearing wilderness and links it with the outer world. Come tailors, |modistes and milliners, soda water ‘and ice cream, clergymen and drum- | mers, pickpockets and actors and all that splendid procession from the cozy corners of civilization. Social conditions were decidedly perplexing. Your washerwoman ac- cepted a mining claim for an uncollect- able debt. Suddenly the claim yields jher a fortune, whereat, to show you that her wealth has not made her snobbish, she purchases an elaborate portable house and settles down as your next-door neighbor. However, if you take it into your head to move, away from the vicinity of the fortunate lavandiere you would find the moving problem quite simple. A small force of husky men can pull your house up by: #he roots and carry it up a hill or down a slope without any great exertion—that is, unless your dwelling is ‘dobe, or you happen to be one of the bonanza crowd and have gone in for heavy architecture. The Better Half. “Tye often wondered,” said Jones, “why woman is called the better half.” “Yll tell you,” said Smith; “but it’s a hard matter to clearly define. You naturally, being a workingman, think money better than anything else?” Jones assented. “You likewise know that money telks?” So I’ve heard,” Jones replied; “al- though, to tell the truth, £ usually hear only the echo of it.” “Well, we grant that money is bet- ter than all else; we grant, also, that money talks. Well, woman is half of a man’s life. And—” “Yes, indeed,” finished Jones, inter- rapting him, “and she certainly does talk.” Soldier’s Odd Weapon. A soldier named Paviet was con- demned to death by court-martial at Oran, France, the other day. He was charged with assaulting a corporal whilst on duty. During the hearing he threw at the president of the coun- cil a curious weapon made by him- self, the blade of a pair of scissors fastened into a wooden handle. He was at at once tried for this crime, and ine death | sentene pronounced, SOCIAL CLIMBERS IN NEVADA ! | HAD THE AUDIENCE WITH HIM ,Christian Missionary Had Littie Show in Argument with Native Mollah. As a medical misionary, stationed for 16 years in northwestern India, near the Afghanistan frontier, Dr. T. L. Pennell had his share of peril and adventure, which he has recounted in a volume entitled, “Among the Wild | Tribes of the Afghan Border.” | As a medical man, Dr. Pennell had ;his ups and downs with the native 'doctors, who sweat their patients and burn sores with lighted oil, but have jgo faith in western treatment. They {also bleed and purge; but gradually the new-fangled treatment was ac- ;cepted, and grateful converts were made at the Bannu dispensary. As a missionary, Dr. Pennell had to contend with the mollahs, who are argumentative and great browbeaters; and very often, he confesses, he got jthe worst of it by verdict of the tagged crowd that hemmed in the theologians. With a certain mollah, who regard- ed the Christian medicineman as a tival, Dr. Pennell had an amusing en- counter. “Do you know,” asked the mollah, “what becomes of the sun when it sets every day?” The doctor gave the native circle the scientific explanation. “Rubbish!” exclaimed the mollah. “We all know that the fires of hell |are under the earth, and that the sun passes down every night, and there- fore comes up blazing hot in the morning.” All Dr. Pennell’s accounts of natural phenomena were ridiculed by the mok lah. Then, turning to his people, he said, with contempt in his face and voice: “It is evident that I shall have to teach him everything from the be ginning.”—Youth’s Companion. His Legislative Job. “Dey got me ter do some work *round de capitol de yuther day,” said Brother Dickey, “an’ I wuz in an’ out *mungst de legislators from sunup ter sundown, an’ w’en I got throo’ I walked right up an’ drawed my pay.” “Felt good, eh?” “You right I did, suh—des ez good ez de yuther legislators!”—Atlanta Constitution. Theory and Fact. “T tell you that it is a mistaken idea that animals have instinct,” re- marked the new-fangled naturalist. “Will you inform me, then, what makes a hen set on a doorknob?” asked an auditor. “My investigations have only gone far enough to show that it is not in- stinet,” replied the naturalist, some What stiffy. Raa iss