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lewis m. (iinsT. Proprietor,| An Jndfpcndont .family |ltiL'spaptr: ..for the promotion of the political; Social, Agricultural and (ftominercial Jntrrcsts of the $outh. jTERMS?$2.00 A YEAR IN ADVANCE. VOL.38. YOBKVILLE, S. C? WEDNESDAY, JTJJ^E 22,1892. ^~Q. m SCflRL #? BY NATHANIEL CHAPTER IV. HESTKB AT I1ER NEEDLE. Heater Prynne's term of confinement tu dow ?t an end. Her prison door vu thrown open and she came forth into the sunshine, which, falling ?>u all alike, seemed to her sick and morbid heart as if meant for no other purpose than to reveal the scarlet letter on her breast Perhaps there was a more real torture in her first unattended footsteps from the threshold of the prison than even in the procession and spectacle that have been described, where she was made the common infamy, at which all mankind was summoned to point its finger. Then she was supported by an unnatural tension at the nerves and by all the combstive energy of her character, which . enabled her to convert the scene into a kind of lurid triumph. It was. moreover, a seDerate and in tal*tod event, to occur bat once in her lifetime, end to meet which, therefore, reckleet of economy, she might call ui the vital strength that would have sufficed for many quiet years. The very Uw that condemned her?a giant of stern features, but with vigor to support, as well at to annihiUte, in his iron arm?had held her up, through the terrible ordeal of her ignominy. Bat now, with this unattended walk from her prison door, began the daily custom; and she must either sustain and carry it forward by the ordinary resources of ber nature or sink beneath it. She could no longer borrow from the future to help her through the present grief. Tomorrow would bring its own trial with it; so would the next day, and so would the next; each its own trial, and yet the very same that was now so unutterably grievous to be borne. The days of the far off future would toil onward, still with the same burden for her to take up and bear along with ber, but never to fling down, for the accumulating days and added years would | pile up their misery upon the heap of shame. Throughout them all, giving up her individuality, she would become the general symbol at which the preacher and moralist might point and in which they might vivify and embody their im ages or woman rrainy ana tnnrui j>aasion. Thua the young and pure would be taught to look at her, with the scarlet letter flaming on her breast?at her, the child of honorable parents; at her, the mother of a babe that would hereafter be a woman; at her, who had once been innocent?as the figure, the body, the reality of sin. And over her grave the > tnfamy that she must carry thither would be her only monument It may seem marvelous that with tho world before her?kept by no restrictive clause of- her condemnation within the limits of the Puritan settlement, so remote and so obscure?free to return to her birthplace or to any other European land, and there hide her character and identity under a new exterior, as completely as if emerging into another state of being, and having also the passes of the dark, inscrutable forest open to her, where the wildness of her nature might assimilate itself with a people whose customs and life were alien from the law that had condemned her?it may | seem marvelous that this woman should still call that place her home, where, and where only, she must needs be the . type of shame. But there is a fatality, a feeling so irresistible and inevitable dV... t U Una *UA IAWAO A# /InAm al. VU?V IV IUW i>ug *Vi w v* .uw?Mt niwvu ?M~ most invariably compels human beings to linger around and haunt, ghostlike, the spot where some great and marked event has given the color to their lifetime, and still the more irresistibly, the ! darker the tinge that saddens it. Her sia, her ignominy, were the roots which she had struck into the soil. It was as if a new birth, with stronger , assimilations than the first, had converted the forest land, still so uncon- j genial to every other pilgrim and wanderer, into Hester Prynne's wild - and dreary but lifelong home. All other scenes of earth?even that village of rural England, where happy infancy and stainless maidenhood seemed yet to be in her mother's keeping, like garments pat iff long ago?were foreign to j her in comparison. The chain that bound her here was of iron links and gulling to her inmost soul, but could never be broken. It might be. too?doubtless it was so, although she hid the secret from herself and grew pale whenever it struggled out of her heart, like a serpent from its hole?it might be ['.mt another j feeling kept her within the scene and pathway that had been so fatal There dwelt, there trod the feet of one with i whom she deemed herself connected in a union that, unrecognized on earth, would bring them together before the bar of final judgment and make that their marriage altar for a joint futnrity of endless retribution. Over and over again the tempter of souls had thrust this idea upon Hester's contemplation, awi iKn notioinnuln on/1 /liVu. ETISTTER , HAWTHORNE. dames of a court might gladly have availed themselves to add the richer and more spiritual adornment of human ingenuity to their fubrics of silk and gold. By degrees, nor very slowly, her handiwork became what would now be termed the fashion. Whether from commiseration for a woman of so miserablo a destiny, or from the morbid curiosity that gives a fictitious value even to common or worthless things, or by whatever other intangible circumstance was then as now sufficient to bestow on some persons what others might seek in vain, or because Hester really filled a gap which must otherwise have remained vacant, it is certain that she had ready and fairly requited employment for as many hours as she saw fit to occupy with her needle. Vanity, it may be, chose to mortify itself by putting on for ceremonials of pomp and state the garments that had been wrought by her sinful hands. Her needlework was seen on the ruff of the governor; military men wore it on their scarfs, and the minister on his band; it decked the baby's little cap; it was shut up to be mildewed and molder away in the coffins of the dead. But it is not recorded that in a single instance was her skill called in to embroider the white veil which was to cover the pure blushes of a bride. The exception indicated the ever relentless rigor with which society frowned upon her sin. > Hester sought not to acquire anything beyond a subsistence of the plainest and most ascetic description for herself and a simple abundance for her child. Her own dress was of the coarsest materials and the most somber hue, with only that one ornament?the scarlet letter? which it was her doom to wear. The child's attire, on the other hand, was distinguished by a fanciful, or, we might rather say, a fantastic ingenuity, which served indeed to heighten the airy charm that early began to develop itself in the little girl, but which appeared to have also a deeper meaning. We may speak further of it hereafter. Except for that small expenditure in the decoration of her infant, Hester bestowed all her superfluous means in charity on wretches less miserable than herself, and who not unfrequently insulted the hand that fed them. Much of the time, which she might readily have applied to the better efforts of her art, she employed in making coarse garments for the poor. It is probable that there was an idea of penance in this mode of occupation, and that she offered up a real sacrifice of enjoyment in devoting so many hours to such rude handiwork. She had in her nature a rich, voluptuous, oriental characteristic?a taste for the gorgeously beautiful, which save in the exquisite productions of her needlo found nothing else in all the possibilities of her life to exercise itself upon. Women derive a pleasure, incomprehensible to the other sex, from the delicate toil of the needle. To Hester Prynne it might have been a mode of expressing, and therefore soothing, the passion of her life. Like all other joys, she rejected it as sin. This morbid meddling of conscience with an immaterial matter betokened, it is to be feared, no genuine and steadfast penitence, but something doubtful, something that might be deeply wrong, beneath. Her imagination was somewhat affected, and had she been of a softer moral and intellectual fiber would have been still more so by the strange and solitary anguish of her life. Walking to and fro, with those lonely footsteps, in the little world with which she wus outwardly connected, it now and then appeared to Hester?if altogether fancy, it was nevertheless too potent to be resisted?she felt or fancied, then, that the scarlet letter had endowed her with a new sense. She shuddered to believe, yet could not help believing, that it gave her a sympathetic knowledge of the hidden sin in other hearts. She was terror stricken by the revelations that were thus made. What were they? Could they be other than the insidious whispers of the bad angel, who would fain have persuaded the struggling woman, perate joy with which she seized and then strove to cast it from her. She barely looked the idea in the face and hastened to bar it in its dungeon. What she compelled herself to believe?what finally she reasoned upon as her motive for continuing a resident of New England?was half a truth and half a self delusion. Here, she said to herself, had been the scene of her guilt, and here should be the scene of her earthly punishment; and so, perchance, the torture of her daily shame would at length purge her soul and work out another purity than that which she had lostmore saintlike, because the result of martyrdom. Hester Prynne therefore did not fiee. On the outskirts of the town, within the verge of the peninsula, but not in close vicinity to any other habitation, there was a small thatched cottage. It had been built by an earlier settler and abandoned because the soil about it was too sterile for cultivation, while its comparative remoteness put it out of the sphere of that social activity which already marked the habits of the emigrants. It stood on the shore looking across a basin of the sea at the forest V>?11a /.ufof/1 flm wnuf A nlnnm CUV CI CU UlllO, IVTTOIU UIV TT VOV, ViUUI|/ of scrubby trees, such as alone grew on the peninsula, did not so much conceal the cottage from view, as seem to denote that here was some object which would fain have been, or at least ought to be, concealed. In this little, lonesome dwelling, with some slender means that she possessed, and by the license of the magistrates, who still kept an inquisitorial watch over her, Hester established herself with her infant child. A mystic shadow of suspicion immediately attached itself to the spot. Children, too young to comprehend wherefore this woman should be set out from the sphere of human charities, would creep nigh enough to behold her plying her needle at the cottage window, or standing in the doorway, or laboring in her little garden, or coming forth along the pathway that led town ward; and, discerning the scarlet letter on her breast, would scamper off with a strange, contagious fear. Lonely as was Hester's situation, and without a friend on earth who dared to show himself, she, however, incurred no risk of want. She possessed an art that sufficed, even in a land that afforded comparatively little bcojkj for its exercise, to supply food for her thriving infant and herself. It was the art?then as now almost the only one within u woman's grasp?of needlework. She Ijoro on her breast, in the curiously embroidered letter, a specimen of her delicate and imaginative skill, of which the as yei oniy nair uiu vicum, uiui me innward guise of purity was but a lie, and that, if truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet letter would blaze forth on many u bosom besides Hester Prynne's? Or must she receive those intimations, so obscure, yet so distinct, as truth? In all her miserable experience there was nothing elso so awful and so loathsome as this sense. It perplexed as well as shocked her by the irreverent inopportuneness of the occasions that brought it into vivid action. Sometimes the red infamy upon her breast would give a sympathetic throb, as she passed near a venerable minister or magistrate, the model of piety and justice, to whom that age of antique reverence looked up, as to a moral man in fellowship with angels. "What evil thing is at hand?" I would Hester say to herself. Lifting her reluctant eyes, there would be nothing human within the scope of view save the form of this earthly saint! Again, a mystic sisterhood would contumaciously assert itself, us she met tho sanctified frown of some matron, who, according to the rumor of all tongues, had kept cold snow within her bosoui throughout life. That unsunned snow in the matron's bosom and thu burning shame on Hester Prynne's?what had tho two in common? Or, once more, tho electric thrill would give her warning?"lie-hold, Hester, here is a companion!"?and looking up she would detect the eyes of u young maiden glancing at the scarlet letter shyly and aside and quickly averted with a faint, chill crimson inherchoeks, as if her purity were somewhat sullied by that momentary glance. O fiend, whose talisman was that futul symbol, wouldst thou leave nothing, whether in youth or age, for this poor sinner to revere? Such loss of faith is ever one of the saddest results of sin. Be it accepted as a proof that all was not corrupt in this poor victim of her own frailty and man's hard law that Hester Prynne yet struggled to believe that no fellow mortal was guilty like herself. The vulgar who in those dreary old times were alwuys contributing a grotesque horror to what interested their imaginations had a story about the scarlet letter which we might readily work up into a terrific legend. They averred that the symbol was not mere scurlet cloth tinged in un eurthly dye pot, but was red hot with infernal tire, and could be seen glowing all ulight whenever Heater Prynne walked abroad in tho night time. And wo must needs say it seared Heater's bosom bo deeply that perhai* there was more truth in tho rumor than our modern incredulity may be incliued to admit. CHAPTER V. pearl. We havo as yet hardly spoken of the infant, that little crcaturo whoso innocent life had sprung, by tho inscrutable decree of Providence, a lovely and immortal (lower out of tho rank luxuriance of a guilty passion. How strange it seemed to tho sad woman aa she watched the growth and tho beauty that became every day more brilliant, and tho intelligence that throw its quivering sunshine over tho tiny features of this child! Her Pearl?for so had Hester called her; not asunamoexprosaivoof her uapect, which had nothing of the calm, white, uuimpaaaioned luster that would 1m indicated by tho comparison. "" I But utie named the iufaut "Pearl," uh being of great price, purchased with all she hftd, her mother's only treasure! How strange, indeed! Man had marked this woman's sin by a scarlet letter, which had such potent and disastrous efficacy that no human sympathy could reach her, save it were sinful like herself. Ood, as a direct consequence of the sin which man thus punished, had given her a lovely child, whose place was on that same dishonored bosom, to i connect her parent forever with the race and descent of mortals, and to be finally a blessed soul in heaven! Yet these thoughts affected Hester Prynrie less with hope than apprehension. She know tiiat her deed had been evil; she l could have no faith therefore that its result would be good. Day after day she looked fearfully into the child's expanding nature, ever dreading to detect some dark and wild peculiarity that should correspond with the guiltiness to which she owed her being. Certainly there was no physical defect. By its perfect shape, its vigor and its natural dexterity in the use of all its untried limbs, the infurit was worthy to have lieon brought forth in Eden; worthy to have been left there, to be the j plaything of the angels after the world's 1 -* ?i. mi l;i3 urni parents were unven out. luecuuu had a native grace which does not in- | , variably coexist with faultless beauty; its attire, however simple, always impressed the beholder as if it were the very garb that precisely became it best But little Pearl was not clad in rustic ; weeds. Her mother, with a morbid purpose tb at may be better understood hereafter, had bought the richest tissues that could l;>e procured, and allowed her iinI aginative faculty its full play in the arrangement and decoration of the dresses which the child wore before the public eye. So magnificent was the smull figure when thus arrayed, and such was the splendor of Pearl's own proper beauty, shining through the gorgeous robes which might have extinguished a paler loveliness, that there was an absolute circle of radiance around her on the darksome cottage floor. And yet a russet gown, torn and soiled with the child's rude play, made a picture of her just as * perfect. Pearl's aspect was imbued with a spell of infinite variety; in this one child there were many children, com prehending the full scope between the wild flower prettiness of a peasant baby and the pomp, in little, of an infant nrinpuus Tlirnnr/linnt nil hnwBVfir. i --O , . there was a trait of passion, a certain j depth of hue, which she never lost, and if, in any of her changes, she had grown fainter or paler, she would have ceased to be herself?it would have been no longer Pearl! i This outward mutability indicated, and did not more than fairly express, the various properties of her inner life. Her j nature appeared to possess depth, too, as well its variety, but?or else Hester's J fears deceived her?it lacked reference and adaptation to the world into which she was born. The child could not be made amenable to rules. In giving her existence a great law had been broken, and the result was u being whose elej nienbi were pcrhups beautiful and brilliunt, but all in disorder, or with an order peculiar to themselves, amid which j the point of vuriety and arrangement was difficult or impossible to be discov- j ered. How soon?with what strange rapid- : ! ity, indeed!?did Pearl arrive at an age i that was capable of social intercourse, I beyoud the mother's ever ready smile I and tonsense words! And then what a > happiness would it have been could Hes; ter Prynne have heard her clear, bird- , like voice mingling with the uproar of j other childish voices, and have distin- > guislied and unraveled her own darling's | tones, amid all the entangled outcry of a group of sportive childrenl But this could never be. Pearl was a born outcast of the infantile world. An imp of evil, emblem and product of sin, she had no right among christened infants. Nothing was more remarkable than the instinct, as it seemed, with which the child comprehended her loneliness; the destiny that had drawn an inviolable ' circle round about her; the whole peculiarity, in short, of her position in respect to other children. Never, since her release from prison, had Hester met the public gaze without her. In all her walks about the town Peai 1, too, was there; first as the babe in arniB and afterward as the little girl, small companion of her mother, holding a forefinger with her whole grasp, and tripping ulong at the rate of three or ' ???..* Ul,? iuur iWUJICJW l?/ UUO VI 4. J. VOW A o. ?JUV saw ibe children of the settlement on the grassy margin of the street, or at the domestic thresholds, disporting themselves in such grim fashion as the Puritanic nature would permit?playing at going to church, perchance; or at scourging Quakers, or taking scalps in a sham tight: with the Indians; or scaring one another with freaks of imitativo witchcraft. Pearl saw and gazed intently, but never sought to make acquaintance. 1 1 1 in the afternoon of u certain summer's day, after Pearl grew big enough to run about, she amused herself with gathering handfuls of wild flowers and flinging them, one by one, ut her mother's bosom; dancing up and down, like a little elf, whenever sho hit the seal .et letter. Hester's first motion had been to cover her bosom with her clasped hands, but whether from pride or resignation, or a feeling that her ]>cnanco might best bo wrought out by this unutterable pain, sho resisted the impulso and sat erect, pule us death, looking sadiy into little Pearl's wild eyes. Still came the battery of flowers, utmost invuriubly hitting the murk und covering the mother's breast with hurts for which she could find no balm in this world, nor knew how to seek it in unothcr. At last, her shot being ull expended, the child stood still und guzed at liester, with that little, laughing image of a fiend peeping out?or, whether it peeped or no, her mother so imagined it from the unsearchable abyss of her black eyes. "Child, what art thou?" cried the mother. "Oh. I am vour little Peurl!" answered | tho child. But while she uuid it Pearl laughed and began to dance up und down with I the humorsomo gesticulation of a littlo imp, whoso next freak might bo to liy up the chimney. "Art thou my child, in very truth?" asked Ilebter. Nor did hIio put the question altogether idly, but for tho moment with a portion of genuine curnestueHH, for such was Pearl's wonderful intelligence thut her | mother half doubted whether she wus not acquainted with tho secret spell of her existence and might not now reveal herself. "Yes, 1 am little Pearl!" repeated tho child, continuing her antics. "Thou urt not my child! Thou art no Pearl of mine!" suid the mother half playfully, for it was often tho caso that u sportive influence came over her in tho midst of her deepest suffering. "Tell mo, then, what art thou and who sent thee hither." "Tell me, mother!" said the child seriously, coming up to Hester and pressing herself close to her knees. "Do thou tell me!" "Thy Heavenly Father seut thee!" unewered Hester Prynno. But she said it with a hesitation that did not escui>e the acutencss of the child. Whether moved only by her ordinary ' freakishness or because an evil Bpirit prompted her, she put up her small lorelinger ami touched tho scarlet letter. "Ho did not send me!" cried she positively. "I have no Heavenly Father!" "Hush, Pearl, hush! Thou must not talk so!" answered tho mother, suppressing a groan. "Ho sent us all into this world. He sent even mo, thy mother. Then, much more, thee! Or, if not, thou btrange and cllish child, I whence didst thou come?" i "Tell luel Tell inol" refuted Pearl. no longer seriously, but laughing and ! capering about the floor. "It is thou that must tell me!" But Hester could not resolve the query, being herself in a dismal labyrinth of doubt. She remembered?betwixt a smile and a shudder?the talk of the neighboring townspeople who, seeking ! vainly elsewhere for the child's paternity, and observing some of her odd attributes, had given out that poor little Pearl was a demon offspring. I Hester Prynne went one day to the mansion of Governor Bellinghan with a pair of gloves, which she had fringed and embroidered to his order, | and which were to be worn on some [ great occasion of state, for, though the chances of a popular election had caused j this former ruler to descend a step or I * J.L- 1.J.-1 L 1, l.~ ?M11 k.M IWU HULU uio ui^ucsw i auaf uo ovm ugiu an honorable and influential place among the colonial magistracy. Another ami far more important | reason than the delivery of a pair of embroidered gloves impelled Hester at ibis time to seek an interview with a per- ! sonage of so much i?ower and activity in the affairs of the settlement. It hud reached her cars that there was a design - on the part of some of the leading inhabitants cherishing the more .rigid I order of principles in religion and gov- i .eminent to deprive her of her child. On the supposition that Pearl, as already hinted, was of demon origin, these good people not unreasonably argued that a Christian interest in the mother's soul required them to remove such a stumbling block-from her path. . If the child, on the other hand, were really capable of morul and religious growth, and possessed the elements of ultimate salvation, then surely it would enjoy I all the fairer prospect of these advantages by being transferred to wiser and better guardianship than Hester I Prynne's. Among those who promoted the design Governor Bellingham was said to lie one of the most busy. * * * Full of concern, therefore, but so conscious of her own right that it seemed ; scarcely an unequal match between the public on the one side and a louely woman, backed by the sympathies of nature, on the other, Hester Prynne set , forth from her solitary cottage. Little Pearl, of course, wjis her companion. She was now of an age to run lightly ! along by her mother's side, and constantly in motion from morn till sunset could have accomplished a much longer journey than that lx;fore her. Often, nevertheless, more from caprice than necessity, she demanded to l>e taken up in aims; but was soon as imperious to be set down again, and frisked onward before Hester on the grassy pathway with many a harmless trip and tumble. We have spoken of Pearl's rich and luxuriant beauty; a beauty that shone with deep un.l vivid tints; a bright com- j plexion, eyes \ ossessing intensity both ol depth and glow, and hair already of a deep, glossy Irowu* and which in after years would lie nearly akin to black. There was fire in her and throughout her; she seemed the unpremeditated offshoot of u passionate moment. Her mother, in contriving the child's garb, j had allowed the gorgeous tendencies of her imagination their full pluy, arraying her in a crimson velvet tunic of a peculiar cut, ubundautly embroidered with fantusies and flourishes of gold thread. So much strength of coloring, which must have given a wan and pallid aspect to cheeks of u fainter bloom, was admirably adapted to Pearl's beauty, and made her the very brightest little jet of flame tliat ever danced upon the earth. But it was a wuiarkable attribute of this garb, and, indeed, of the child's whole appearance, that it irresistibly j and inevitably reminded the beholder of , the token which Hester Prynne was ' doomed to vear upon her bosom. It : was the scarlet letter in unother form; j the scarlet letter endowed with life! ! The mother herself?as if the red ig- j nominy wer? so deeply scorched into ' her brain that all her conceptions assumed its form?had carefully wrought out the similitude; lavisning many nours : of morbid ingenuity to create an analogy between the object of her affection and the emblem of her guilt and torture, j But in truth Pearl wus tho one as well at) the other, and only in consequence of i that identity had Hester contrived so ' perfectly to represent the scarlet letter in her uppearunce. As the two wuyfarers came within the j precincts of tho town the children of the Puritans looked up from their play, or what pAssed for play with those somber little urchins, and spake gravely one i to another; "Behold, verily, there is the woman of the scarlet letter; and of u truth, moreover, there is tho likeness of the scarlet letter running along by her side. ' Came, therefore, and let us fling mud at them." But Peurl, who was u dauntless child, after frowning, stamping her foot and shaking her little hand with a variety of threatening gestures, suddenly made a rush at tho knot of her enemies and j put them all to flight. She resembled, in her iierce pursuit of them, an infunt | pestilence?the scarlet fever or some such half fledged angel of judgment? ' whose mission was to punish the sins of tho rising generation. She screamed and shouted, too, with a terrific volume of sound, which doubtless cuused the hearts of the fugitives to quake within them. Tiie victory accomplished, Pearl returned quktly to her mother and 1 looked up smiling into her face. Without 1 urthcr adventure they reached the dwelling of Governor Bellingham. This was a large wooden house, built in u fashion of which there are specimens still extant in the streets'' our older towns; now moss grown, crumbling to decay, ami melancholy at heart with the many sorrowful or joyful occurrences, reineinliered or forgotten, that have hapjs-ucd and passed away within their dusky chambers. Then, however, there was the freshness of the passing year on its exterior, and the cheerfulness, gleaming forth from the sunny windows, of a human habitation into which deuth had never entered. * * * They approached the door, whicli was of un arched form und flanked on each side by u narrow tower or projection of tho edifice, in l?>th of which were lattice windows, with wooden shutters to close over them at need. Lifting the iron hummer that hung at tho portal, Hester Prynno gave a summons, which was answered by one of the governor's bond servunts, a free born Englishman, but now a seven years' slave. During that term he was to lie tho projs.*rty of his master, and us much a commodity of burgain and sale as uu ox, or joint stool. Tho serf wore tho blue coat, which was , tho customary garb of serving men of that jK'riod and long lieforo in the old hereditary halls of Engluml. "Is tho worshipful Governor Belling Ma ; : 1 irA.d,.M haul "Wlllimr 11141111 mi Utnu-I. "Yeu, forsooth," replied the l>ond servant, staring with wide open eyes at the scarlet letter, which, being a newcomer in the country, lie had never before seen. "Yea, hiH honorable worship is within. Hut he hath a godly minister or two witli liiin, and likewise a leech. Ye may not see hiH worship now." "Nevertheless,! will enter,"-answered Jlcster Prynne, and the boml servant, jterhaps judging from thoidecisioii of her air and the glittering symlsd in her bosom that she was a great lady in the land, offered 110 op]mention." So Hie mother and little J'earl were admitted into the hull of en trailer. With many vuriut ions suggested by the nature of his building materials, diversity of elimate and a different mode of social life, (inventor Hellingluim had planned his new habitation after the residences of gentlemen of fair estate in his native land. Here, then, was a wide and reasonably lofty liall, extending through the whole depth of the house and forming a medium of general eomnruiiicatioii, more or less directly, with all the other apart j meats. * * * i At uhout the center of the oak puuels that lined the hall was suspended a suit of mail, not like the pictures?an ancestral relic?but of the most modern date, for it had been manufactured by a skillful armorer in London the same year in which Governor Bellingham came over to New England. There was a steel headpiece, a cuirass, a gorget and greaves, with a pair of gauntlets and' a sword hanging beneath, all, arfd especially the helmet and breastplate,,so highly burnished as to glow with jvhite radiance aAd scatter an illuminatftm everywhere about upon the floor. THs bright pane ply was not meant for npre idle show, but had been worn by tfie governor on many a solemn muster and training held, and had glittered, moreover, at the head of a regiment in the Pequod war. For, though bred a lawyer and accustomed to speak of Bacon, Coke, Noye and Finch as his professional assodates, the exigencies of this new country liad transformed Governor Bellingham into a soldier as well as u statesman and ruler. Little Pearl, who was as greatly pleased with the gleaming armor as she had been with the glittering frontispiece of the house, spent some time looking into the polished mirror of the breastplate. "Mother," cried she, "I see you here. Look! Look!" l/A/-.bi.,l In. u-uv /,f hnmnritnr ilCOlCt ll/unvv* f KfJ ?? V? ??'"O tho child, and she saw that, owing to the peculiar effect of this convex mirror, the scarlet letter was represented in exaggerated and gigantic proportions, so as to be greatly the most prominent feature of her appearance. In truth, she seemed absolutely hidden behind it. Pearl pointed upward also, at a similar picture in tho headpiece, smiling at her mother with the elfish intelligence that1 was so familiar an expression on her small physiognomy. That look of naughty merriment was likewise reflected in the mirror with so much breadth and intensity of effect that it made Hester Prynne feel as if it could not be the image of her own child, but of an imp who was seeking to mold itself into Pearl's shape. "Come ulong, Pearl," said she, drawing her away. "Come and look into this fair garden. It may be we shull see flowers there, more beautiful ones than we find in the woods." Pearl accordingly ran to the bow window at the farther end of the hall and looked aloug the vista of a garden walk el..Ui.lv ullUVCTl imtKS 1111(1 VOl WU TTIHi VIVUVIJ w?M? . v.. 0 bordered with Home rude uud imn/uture attempt at shrubbery. But the proprietor appeared ulready to have relinquished as hopeless the effort to perpetuate on this side of the Atlantic, in a hard soil uud amid the close struggle for subsistence, the native English taste for ornamental gardening. Cabbages grew in plain sight,, and a pumpkin vine, rooted at some distance, had run across the intervening space and deposited one of its gigantic products directly beneath the hall window, as if to warn the governor that this great lump of vegetable gold was us rich an ornament as .New England earth would offer him. There were a few rosebushes, however, and a number of apple trees, probably the descendants of those planted by the Reverend Mr. Blackstone, the first settler of the peninsula; that half mythological personage who rides through our early annals seated on the back of a bull. Pearl, seeing the rosebushes, began to cry for a red rose and would not" be pacified. "Hush, child, bush!" said her mother earnestly. "Do notcry, dear little Pean! I hear voices in the garden. The governor is coming, and gentlemen along with him!" In fact, adown the vista of the garden avenue a number of persons were seen approaching toward the house. * * [TO IIK CONTINITKI) NKXT WKKK.] A NTH, WoRMH ANDHNAKKH AH FOOD. The French eat frogs, Hiiails and the lame of severul species of caterpillars. The Turk will out putrid flesh that smells as loud us a slaughter house, hut turn pule and faint when he sees some one devour a fine oyster. The natives of the Antilles eat alligutoreggs and esteem them as a great luxury. They are suid to never trouble themselves ubout the freshness of the egg; if half incubated it is all the better in their estimation. Ant eggs is one of the most costly dishes that the epicures of Siaui can enjoy. Only the Nabobs can afford such a luxury. The negroes of the West Indies eat hukcd, fried and boiled snakes of all kinds, to say nothing of their feasts of palm worms and smaller insects and "wigglers." The celebrated naturalist, Buckhind, declares that a boa constrictor's flesh is fine eating, and that its taste and color could hardly be distinguished from veal. Ants are eaten by several of the minor nations. In Kgypt they are eaten raw with sugar; in Brazil they are served with a resinous sauce, and in Kast India stewed in buffalo grease or fried in butter. TheCingu' 1 ? I i.l.l.imr H's(! uiwuyh t'Ut I III" uiiri i them oftheir honey. Caterpillars ami spiders aro dainties unions (lie sumo people. The Chinese silk weavers always eat the ehrysalis of the silkworm after he lias unwound the silk from around it. Among the Digger and I'te Indians there is no edihle so highly esteemed as the eonimou grasshopper. Cl KlOSITJKS OF Sri'KltSTITlON. ? When Mgypt was in the height of her power, when she was most highly eivili/.ed, and delighted in being called the "mistress of the land and sea," her people were so narrow-minded as to madly worship a hlaek hull. There was some discrimination, however, even in this form of worship. In order to lie an object of mad adoration it was necessary that the hull calf he horn with a circular white spot in the exact center of his forehead, and the advent of such a creature in any herd was the signal for wild demonstrations from the Mediterranean to the borders of the Dyhiun Desert. Kvcn as late as the time of ('leopatra, "star-eyed goddess, glorious sorceress of the Nile," such animals were shod with gold and had their horns tipped with the same metal. Herodotus tells of a man who died with grief because he sold a cow that soon after became the mother of a black hull callTnarked with the sacred white circle in his forehead. ^ Anciknt Hkds. -Iii ancient times the beds we read about were simply rugs, skins or thin mattresses, which _ " * * * 1 5 I colll<l be rolled u|> aim rumen awaj ill the morning. At night they were spread on the floor, whieli, in the better class of houses. was of tile or plaster, and as shoes were not worn in the house and the feet were washed before entrringa room, the Moors were cleaner than ours. Altera short time a sort of bench, three feet wide, was huill around two or three sides of the room about a foot above the floor, and covered with a soft cushion, was used during the day to sit or lounge on. ami as a sleeping place at night. The bench was sometimes made like a settee, movable and of carved wood or ivorv. Table Talk. Till*: Ci hit. The length of the ancient cubit, so often referred to in sacred and other writings of early date, varied aeeeording to the race. Strictly. it was the distance from the elbow to t lie tip of the middle linger. Keren! investigations proves that the Roman ( libit was IS.-17 inches in length. The I reek, IS.2(1. The Hebrew varied from 21..Tl to 22.SU. the variations being due to the age and locality. Some biblical scholars believe that Noah's ark measurements were cubits of about three feet. pistcUanrous Reading. I XLI CKV THIRTEEN. Hun the Number uny HlgiilHcuiu-e in Htale Polities ? Written for the Yorkvllie Enquirer. Thut fuinouH number, thirteen, Ih playing somewhat of u part in our State politics at present, an the follow1 ing facts will show : The call for the March convention of . 1892 was signed by thirteen gentlemen. > That convention put forward a utan to oppose the gubernatorial renomination of B. It. Tillman, who is the thirteenth ( governor South ('urolinu has hud since the Confederate war. The gentleman who was suggested by the March convention is Ex-Governor John C. Sheppard. Take the initiul letter of his middle name and the letters of his first and lust names, and we find thut they number thirteen. The gentleman who is on flie ticket for lieutenant-governor witii Governor Hheppard, is Colonel Orr, whose first and second names j , (James Lawrence) are composed of thirteen letters. McDonald Fukman. Ramsey, Sumter county, June 14. j hEK AND GRANT. In his recent uddress on Grant, Chauneey M. Depew said : "It neith- ' er detracts from the fume, nor impairs the estimate of that consummate soldier, Roliert K. Lee, that he was beat<>ii hv Grant. Great us he was he had "?J met u greater." Mr. Depcw is right in , hia first uaacrtion, hut the eold facta areagainat hia second. It did not detract from the military fame of Napoleon Bonaparte that he ^ras eventually overwhelmed by Europe and defeated by a second rate general. Neither doe# it detract from Lee's fume that he was liealen by so able a commander as Grant. But when Mr. Depew declares that Grant was a greater cornman,der than Lee, ia he not yielding to the.naturul partiality which a Northern man entertains for a Northern hero? When Grant and Lee were pitted against each other in 1804, l>oth of them demonstrated the fact that they were great generals. If Grant had won grout renown at Donelson, Shiloh and Vicksburg, Lee could point to the fact thut he hud lieaten buck every general which the Federals had sent against him. l'ope had started out to crush him, but hud been crushed and removed from the command. McClellun, by luck, had found Lee'a plan of campaign and had assailed him ut Khurpsburg with double his forces. It was a drawn battle, but Mc('leilen, who ought to have won, was deprived of his command. Humside flew ut Lee's neck and lost 10,000 men in the attempt; and then, Fighting Joe Hooker was torn all to pieces at Chancellorsville. We now know that had I'ickett's charge, which was successful, been sustained as orderby Loo, the verdict of battle there would have been different, and Lee would have been in Washington dictating the terms of peace. Hut when Lee und (irant met in 1804, the comparative merits of the I soldiers were displayed. We give (Jruut full credit for his splendid pluck and perseverance, but it is to be rememcrcd that his army was vastly superior in numbers to Lee's; that he had every facility for making war, that his men were well fed and well clothed, und so thorough wushisequipj inent that whenever his army was in I camp, there was telegraphic connections from headquarters to every di- j vision. This one item alone was of incalculable vulue; but Lee was entirely deprived of such facilities as (irant enjoyed. During the campaign of 1804 (irant und Lee were lighting incessantly. When (irant entered the Wilderness with un army double that of Lee, the latter divided his army in two, ussuult- t cd (Irunt from both sides und turned his right wing; and the Union general, after losing 20,000 of his men, got out of that hot box us rapidly as possible. At every objective point to which he inarched his army, he found Lee across his path, and when the fighting season of 18(54 closed, (Jrunt had suffered an unbroken series of defeats, and ' had lost more men than the total of Lee's army. In 18(55 (irunt was enabled to concentrate his great forces on Lee and drown him out, as it were. It wus not then u question of military skill, but simply one of endurance. The Confederacy was virtually bankrupt. No heljt of any kind could be sent to the Confederate chieftain. A part of his army he had been compelled to send off to operate in the Shenandoah, and it had been dissipated before vast ly superior forces. So that in the spring of IXtio Lee's available force was not over 000 men. It is not in the nature of things that such a force could withstand the blows of Limit's magnificent army. Lee had done ; everything that was possible to mili- I tary skill, hut lie could not contend against starvation, We do not believe that any impartial military critic will ever pronounce Limit the abler general from a careful survey of that desperate struggle between the army of the Potomac and army of Northern Virginia.?Memphis Appeal. HYIIIMPHOHIA A HAKK. "Can a man scare himself to death after having been been bitten by a dog which isn't mad?" 1 asked Superiudant llawkinson of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, one day as lie sat in his little ollice on Twenty-second street. Mr. llawkinson is a good natured looking mail with reddish hair, who is afraid of nothing and nobody ; certainly not of hydrophobia quacks. "Why certainly, " he said with decision. "That man down in Asbury Park who was bitten by a cat was i scared to death. He died of nervous prostration brought on by worry over an imaginary danger. His friends were all pitying him and hoped lie wouldn't die, and prophesying that lie would, and he was a mail of a nervous temperament, as educated people .sometimes are, and it simply killed him. I suppose lie read up in the hooks about hydrophobia ami it turned his head. That's all there was i about it. l)o you remember what a great howl there was about those Newark boys who were bitten by a 'mud| dog,'and who were sent over to Pasteur to be 'cured ?' " "Why, of course, who dosen't ?" "Well, it is quite easy to cure a disease that never existed. Those hoys never had hydrophobia and never would Have II. I'lirm^ uiui excmiiiciiI wo wont to Nowurk ami found a lot of dojjs shut lip. Wo ask011 to In* allowoil to take tlioiu away to our slalilcs, hut tlio pooplo wouldn't have it. Itoyou know what was iloiio with those does? Alitor tin* excitement was all ovor tlioy woro given haok to thoir owners, every one of them. Not one <d' tlioiu was killed. Not one of them had anything worse than a lit. Why. our men are eonstautly handling dogs, get hitt?*n again and again. hut they 1 never dream of hydrophobia. It is a myth : there isn't any sneh thing." A tWSK Ol-- IMAdl.N ATloN. "Then you don't helieve in the existanee of such a disease?" I asked, thinking that, as .Mr. Ilawkinson prohahly knows more ahoiil animals than any other man in America, lie must he good authority. "No. I don't. There may he sneh a , disease hut I don't helieve it. I never i huw *a case or knew of one positive- ! ly." "How al>out those doctors who cure it Y" I asked. "They don't cure anything. I asked u man who makes a specialty of treating hydrophobia, as he called it, if ever he suw one single case of hydrophobia to which he could swear. He refused to answer, but told me this story : 'A man came to him one day in terrible distress. He had been bitten by a dog; he feared madness; he could not sleep at night and was afraid he was going ; to die. He begged the doctor to treat j hiiri. The doctor said it was to late; the period of inoculation had passed, i and it would do no good now. If he had hydrophobia there was no way to stop it.' "The man went away, but came back next the day nearly frantic. He hadn't slept a wink and begged the doctor to do something for him. So the doctor took the man into his operuting room and gave him a hyppdermic injection of water?just pure Croton water. He went away, slept for the first time iu two weeks, and : came back the next day for more water, , and again the next, and woe soon perfectly cured. The doctor told me that himself, and he professes to cure hydrophobia." HHK WAS MAI)., "Why," continued Mr Hankinson, j "I've had a woman in hysterics right in that chair you're sitting in because a dog had bitten her. She wanted me to kill the dog. I wouldn't do it. | Then she screumed iu a terrible way. When she stopped, I said to her : 'Mad- : am, you ought to be ashamed of your- } self. A woman of your intelligence! You've interrupted the business of the j office and drawn a big crowd under the window to listen to your yelling, and i all for u whim. Somebody told you you were going to go mad, and now you think you ought to go mad, and you'll be mad if you don't go mud. You just go home and say nothing about it and you'll be all right.' j And she did it. "Another woman brought her boy in. He had been bitten by a mad dog, and she wanted it shot, she said. The boy looked perfectly well. "'Now. look here.' said I,'you've been talking u good deul to the boy about this, haven't you?and the neighbors too? And you have been telling him that he is likely to have hydrophobia, haven't you V" "Yea.'* '"Kxactly,' said I. 'You've been talking the precise course likely to drive him mad or make him think himself so. You have been trying to scare him to death. If he were to go crazy it would be your fault. How is it bub,' said I turning todhe little fellow. 'You don't expect to go mad do you?' " 'No, he didn't think he should,' he said. He didn't feel uuy different. He was a brave little fellow. Ko I sent him home, too,and that was the last I heard of it. The dog had had a lit, that was all. Its u shame the way people will shoot valuable dogsjust for a fit that might eusily be cured or avoided."?New York World. PET SUPERSTITIONS. How many of us are there who do not once in a while feel just a little uncomfortable when we find that we have sal tliireen at the table, or have done any of the thousand und one things that are supposed to portend tliol iliinLr fni* it tnn I* VII I *^U|? (llilt TT V- biiutn *v* ?. ?*.v incut any misfortunes really will happen in consequence of those acts, hut the suggestions are not pleasant, and we wish our utteulion hud not been called to them. Of course we all laugh at superstitions, and we think them silly, us they are, but, nevertheless, we do not get away from unpleasant feelings. I knew an old ludy who considered it positively wicked and unchristian to give up to "foolish superstitions," hut she never would allow any one to rock an empty chair in her presence. You will see people in the streets who have been hurrying us if anxious to lose no time, stop on a corner, and wait five minutes for a long funeral procession to puss. They have not the courage to cross through it when an opjiortunity is offered, although they may wa.su* momeiiiH umi an: golden to them. The most .sensible and practical people in the world will often take particular pains to skim oil' a patch of hubbies that has risen to the top of their tea, because some one in jest has said it is a "sure sign of money." It always requires a distinct effort lor me to pass a pin that 1 sec lying on the sidewalk, because of that absurdly bad rhyme, which, of course, I consider nonsense? "See a pin and pick it up, All the day you'll have good luck." Sometimes the omens do not go well together, and even contradict each other. For instance, one will tell you that the only lucky way to find a pin is with the head turned toward you; and just as you have the habit of going around looking for pins with their heads toward you, another man wilT say, "It is very unlucky to pick up a pin with tint head toward you. The only right way is to have the point toward you, for then your luck will he 'sharp." If at the table a little salt is spill between two people, the way to avoid a quarrel is for each to take a pinch and throw it over the left shoulder. Salt always has seemed a wonderfully powerful mineral from the time when we were small. Which of us, when a child, did not firmly believe in the old joke about putting salt on a bird's tail ? I remember a littler curly-headed boy in kilts who went out into the garden with a handful of salt, resolved upon catching a bird. He was very patient, and cautiously tiptoed around for a long while. Finally, a little discouraged, he went in to his mother, and said, mournfully, ''Mamma, they all Hew away." His mother didn't laugh at him. When we slop to think, we wonder how real these silly superstitions, in which nobody believes, are in their influence upon our actions. We hesitate to start on a journey on Friday : we walkout in the mud rather than go under a ladder: we don't give knives or sliarji instruments to our friends: and we don't do a hundred things that we might all do because, although we are not superstitious, we would rather uot do what suggests anything disagreeable. -Kxchangc. fay* This story about Uencral Custer is picked up by the llull'alo Courier : "The gallant cavalryman believed in having martial music on all possible occasions, lie would have the band out at live o'clock in tin; morning and the last thing in the evening. One day. when the narrator's regiment had just come into camp. Ccucral Custer ordered the hand out. The men were tired, ami reported that they had lost the mouthpieces to their instruments. 'Very well,'said the general, 'you may lake pickaxes and shovels and help repair the roads. You may find the missing mouthpieces while you arc working.' It is unnecessary to state that the baud played soon after." first Politician If you could get at the truth of the matter, I advise you . Second Ditto The truth of the mailer! Ureal Ca-sar's ghost! what do you suppose I care about the truth of the matter? All I want is to have my prejudices hacked up. If you can tell me who will do that for me. I'll thank you. HAD YOU THOUGHT OF THIS? When the government buys the railroads, as demanded by the Third party people, to whom will the purchase money be paid? Why of course to the owners of the railroads?to Jay Gould, the Vanderbilts and "plutocrats and monopolists" who have been so bitterly denounced. Had you thought of that? If not, just stop a moment and.think of it. Does it not seem a little travesty on common sense and a bitter mockery on reform and relief, for a political party to propose taxing the farmers of the country in order to pay countless millions to the "plutocrats" who now own the railroads ? And yet that is exactly what is meant by the demands for the government to own the railroads. If not, why not? Of course the oiHy way by which the government can own the railroads is by buying them. Kven if any anarchist should wish them confiscated, that will not be seriously considered. In order to own the roads the government must, therefore, buy them. The present owners must then be paid zor them. These owners, it is said, are few in number. Yes, it is continually alleged that the railroads in the United States are owned by a few millionaires. And now it is gravely proposed for the government to issue to those few millionaires countless millions of greenbacks in payment for their railroads. Would not that be centralizing and consolidating the money power to a most dangerous degree ? Would it not be giving to these millionaires far greater power than they now have ? Had you thought of this? If not, think of it. Think of what an immense sum of money the government would have to pay Jay Gould, the Vanderbilts and other "plutocrats," und what a dangerous influence so much money would give to them. With all. these countless millions of dollars they could and would buy not only congress but every Htate legislature?even if composed of only Third party patriots! What then would become of the liberties of the people? * Men and brethren think of these things. When the goverment owns the railroads, as demanded by the Third party people, no taxes will be collected from them. Had you thought of that? If not, just stop and think for a moi \V it/tiiMin ntrnmrKn/1 Lr nAtt/Q menu \j\ uuuinc | CiJ I/VUJ mMVfTw that government property is not taxed at all, and therefore when the railroads become the property of the government, they will not* be taxed. The railroads now pay many millions of dollars every year as taxes to the States, counties and towns through I which they run. But when the government owns them, no State, county, or town will get one cent of tax from them. Now isn't this "financial reform and j relief' with a vengeance? In order to give relief to the farmers, in order to* lighten their taxes, the Third party people propose to exempt the railroads from all taxation. And in order to do this Democrats are urged to desert and disrupt their old party. Of course the more property that is exempt from tuxatiou the higher must be the rute of taxation on the property that is tuxed. And therefore when railroads are owned by the government and are exempt from taxation, of course a higher rate must be levied on land and personal property. What sort of relief will this give our people ? DETECTING BAD MONEY. New York Advertiser : Miss C'ulhoun, one of the most expert money j handlers in the Treasury Department at Washington, has the remarkable j record of counting 85,000 coins in a single day, each coin passing through her hands, and so delicate has her sense of touch become that should ! there be a counterfeit coiu in the lot, she would detect it even when counting at this tremendous rate. She spreads the coins upon a large glass top desk and draws them off with the tips of her fingers, one, two, three or four at a time, us she pleases ; for her j four fingers are ull equally educated to j the work. Her eyes have nothing to do with the detection of false coins, j Her lingers do it all. They have become so very familiar with the exact weight of a true coin, the feeling of it and the amount of its resistance upon the glass desk, that a piece of spurious gold, silver, nickel or copper money i attracts her attention instantly. The expert counters of paper money detect counterfeits more by the eye than by feeling, though if the quality of paper bo poor they can tell it by the sense of touch. Mr. Burnett, the chief of the redemption division, tells of a young lady who was ono day counting money sent in for redemption, when she threw out a bill and went on with her count. When she had completed the count she took up the rejected bill und examined it elosely, but could find nothing wrong about it. Her first impression, however, had been that it was a bail bill, and she stood by that impression and guve the bill to the foreman of her room. He usked her what was the matter with it, and she did not know, only she was sure it was bad, The foreman put it under a gluss and pronounced it good, but the young lady was so positive in her rejection of it that he took it to the chief. That gentleman examined it carefully and pronounced it good. The chief then took it to the young lady and asked her why she had thrown it out. She said she could not tell, but she knew it was counterfeit. Then it was sent to the two most expert men in the treasury department, and one of them pronounced it good, while the other, when he came to it in a pili' of good bill#, with which it had been given to him, threw it out, saying it was had. To settle the matter the hill was ta| ken over to the bureau of engraving and printing and the man who made ! the plate applied his infallible test to ' it and found that, while the bill was almost perfectly executed in every other respect, one little line of shading was about a sixteenth of an inch further to the left than it should be. The young lady's eye had become so accustomed to seeing that shading in exactly the right place that, without > being able to explain how, she had discovered its spurious character; and without being able to give any reason for it, she bad stuck to her first impression. This might be a good case for those persons to speculate on who enjoy the analysis of mental phenomena and the separating of intuition from education of the senses. (INK SKI'KKT OF SI ITKSS. Mead the following carefully. There is a great truth in it : A famous writer once said to a newspaper man: "To succeed in one or many things a man must concentrate his whole mind and body on the thing that is before him. and that is what I do, and the only way in which 1 am enabled to accomplish so much. A man can do anything he wants to if he has a good digestion, a clean conscience and a reasonable amount of intelligence; hut don't donnythiugyou don't want to. I never did anything in my life that I did not want to. That's another great principle in my life. Always have your own way in that : do things you want to do and they will he well done.'' Now there is more hard common sense and philosophy in this than will appear to the casual reader. , Mut it will be said that the environ ' ment determines the occupations of most men. They are so hampered that they cannot do what they would like to do. And right bene the successful man shows his power in so shaping circumstances that he will be in a position to have his way?to take advantage of opportunities. Even then, however, a man of ability very often j fails because he will not or cannot concentrate. Some men are able to concentrate their attention upon many lines of effort; others can do only one j thing well. Any man of average intelligence and industry can, by conI centrated effort, succeed in at least one direction. The trouble is that many | persons scatter their energies, and grasping after numerous prizes miss them all.?Atlanta Constitution. SNAKE FARMING AS AN INDUSTRY. Snake farming as an industry is just ndw engaging the attention of the people and press of the Southwestern seci tion of Missouri. The Ozark News of a recent date says : "Big. Don Allen and Senorita Lanna Lee, representing the J. E. Childs snake farm at Cbadj wick, this county, were in Ozark last Friday and Saturday establishing agencies for their rattlesnake oil. Miss | Lee had with her a pair of water moci casins that she handled as though they i were kittens. There is no doubt but that snakes can be petted as easily as anything else, and for a choice between snakes and alligators we would certainlv take snakes." | Further particulars concerning the unique enterprise is thus given in another edition of the same paper : "Among the many enterprises in Southwest Missouri there are probably none that attract more attention than does the snake farm located three-fourths of a mile due west of Chad wick. The farm proper consists of about five acres, half inclosed by a i natural stone wall, or a ledge. On j one side of this inclosure is a natural rock cave, and out of this cave runs an everlasting stream of the purest wa, ter. This spring being on the highest I spot of land on the farm, it is easily conveyed to 411 places where needed. Mr. Childs has been dealing in snakes and manufacturing rattlesnake oil for i over ten years, and finds it quite profitable, as he supplies all species of ; snakes for exhibition purposes, all kinds of snake curiosities, rattlesnake oil to the drug trade, and charges an i admission fee of 10 cents to all visitors who come to the farm. He is now fix it- - ~i r? III g up me pittee iui iuc duiuuki trade, and will have large pens built for the snakes, with a living pond of water in each one, and a platform on the outside where visitors may stand out of danger looking at the hundred different species, all in their natural state, eating, drinking, playing, swimrning, fighting, sleeping, etc. Mr. G'hilds also proposes to pay cash for all live snakes of any species measuring over 3 feet in length. He proposes to ship all the snakes out of this part of the country and bring back cash in their stead." Sam Jonks.?Sam Jones is just beginning a meeting in Kuoxville. A tabernacle seating about four thousaud has been erected for him. It is a coarse, frail structure, made of rough, unplaned boards, and the seats are backless. And yet the crowds throng to hear him. In his first sermon he ?-? struck the liquor traffic and the town some hard blows. He makes the people laugh at the church, at the preachers and their own sins. He rarely re' fers to salvation by grace, or the need of salvation through Jesus Christ. He ! is a moral reformer with small emphasis on the moral. He has preached in Knoxville before, and there is u dif ference of opinion as to wnetner nis preaching did more harm thun good. While I was pastor in Baltimore he i preached there in u rink seating 5,000 for one month, and 2,000 converts were | reported. My church was near the ; rink and we received fifteen, most of , ' them reclaimed backsliders, and I think we got a larger number than any church in the city. It is safe to say that all the churches did not receive ! one hundred additions. I stood by him, not because I thought he preached a full gospel, but because he represented the right side. I do not care to have to stund by him again. He always declares that he does not ask any one to endorse him ; but if a pastor , in a small town refuses to endorse him, he is certain to abuse him for it. As a lecturer, making war upon liquor Helling, gambling and drinking, Sam Jones is a success, for he is a mighty speak er; but as a preacher, proclaiming the greut tidings of salvation through u * crucified and risen Christ, he is a total i failure.?Rev. I)r. If. M. Wharton in Haltimorc Baptist. A Frknch Patriarch.?Adolph Zemeri, who died April 2, in the district of Guizot, France, was in possession of documentary evidence which proved that he was born in 1742! i When old Zemeri first saw the light of day Washington was a lad of but ten tender yeurs. Wellington was not > born until twenty seven years later and Waterloo was seventy-three years in the future. Zemeri's allotment of I years exceeded those of all men of re; cent times except Henry Jenkins and "Old Parr," two English worthies, the > former of whom lived to be 1<?9 yeurs old and the latter 152. If each of "Old" Zemeri's ancestors had equaled him in point of longevity and each bad come into the world at the precise moment his immediate predecessor left, the thirteenth one might have been present at the crucifixion of our Saviour and have been old enough to have understood its uwful import, too. Fai.sk Tkkth Mauk to Grow.? The French professor who makes human skulls to order (already mentioned in these "Notes") has a rival in the person of Dr. Znamensky, the Russian ' dentist lit .MOSCOW, WHO lias uiscuvctcu 1 a moans of causing false teeth to grow to the gums as (irmly as the ones nutare provides. I>r. Zuumcnsky has performed several saeeeesfal operations of this diameter, hoth on haman and 1 i animal subjects, the animals used heing chiefly dogs and eats. He is said to make holes in teeth and also in the patient's jawbone. After this has been performed to his satisfaction the tooth is placed in the cavity. Within twenty-foar hours a soft, granular semifluid exudes from the jaw lame and finds its way into the hole which the learned M. I), has drilled into the false tooth. This granuluted growth soon hardens and holds the tooth firmly in position. Kaniik of Wak Sine (Si nk.?A 12 inch Schneider gun, under an angle of projection of 2!>? (average maximum angle used on hoard ship), will throw a 900 pound shell lot miles. Thenarc many guns now mounted on battle ships that have the power to throw projectiles under maximum ship angles of projection. So says Lieutenant K. M. Weaver, in The Journal of the 1'. S. Artillery. At Portland. Me., the ten mile circle passes out to sea some :U miles from the nearest land, at Boston 2.1 miles from land, at Brooklyn L't miles from land off Coney Island. Ships of war. at the above distances, could bombard the cities named with great shells and make frightful havoc. WrUT' As everybody believes that everybody else is something of a fool, it is fair to presume that all are more j than half* right.