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BOWSER THE SAVANT, S8fe?'- / :-V* Flies a Kite to Learn What Insects Inhabit Upper Air. W-\ !THE TEST ENDS IN DISASTER. k:? Experiment Attracts a Crowd of Small Boys, and Policeman Interferes?His i- Wife, as Usual, Shows Little Sym">s pathy For Him. - tCopyright, 1907, by T. C. McClure.] i Whea Mr. Bowser came home to din < ner the other evening he was fifteen *X minutes late and had that thdughtful_ I I Jook on his face that comes to a man .who is given a lead nickel in change a street car conductor. When Mrs. Bowser called attention to his lateness he made an-ambiguous reply, and it was not until the meal was over that 1 he woke up and said: "Mrs. Bowser, this is a fine starlight . . night, with a Breeze of about six miles -an hour blowing." A more fitting night ; for the experiment could not hare ^ Jbeen made to order." ? ' " 1?-a < Mrs. uowser lWiitiU U.L mill uuu || groaned. | y There was to be an experiment, r ! She had thought all the time that he J; might have a headache. y .2 " What sort of an experiment? Was . he' going to try a patent fuel and melt the top off the range or some gas saving patenf and blow up the house? She was wondering over it when he said: "For the last year there has been a ; hot dispute between the savants as to *5 the insects 'occupying the upper strata of the atmosphere. We know that the Jower strata are teeming with house J'- flies, horse flies, mosquitoes, moths, bugs and other tilings, and for the last 200 years savants have let it go at that They have now turned their attention to the upper strata, .however, and are v anxious to ascertain the forms of life. 2 What insects exist a mile high?* Do* they have legs? Do they have lungs? Do they have fangs or teeth? Do they exist for a day or a week or a month? ' -Do they have* sight or are they blind? All these are queries to he answered, : ' and the man who answers them first is going to find himself famous." j/, "But what have you got to do with It?" asKeci Mrs. t>owser. 1, . "Nothing except that I may he the . | man to solve the mysteries. I rather . ' expect to be." ^ "Are yon going up in a balloon?" "No, ma'am. Peopie have been go. Ing up in balloons for the last hundred HE WENT INTO HIS OWN BACK YABD. years, and they have not brought'down the information sought for.. Indeed, they have rather muddled things up." "If you don't go up in a balloon, I don't see ho*w"? ' "Of course you don't. A woman seldom sees anything except another woman's hat It is not expected of her. The solution is dead easy, however, to a man?to me. It is so easy that I am amazed that there should be any reason for disrmfp. T hone to settle the thing in an hour." "I hope you Trill," she demurely replied. "Now that I come to think of it, I have often wondered what sort of creatures were roaming around up there. I have wondered whether they were longtailed or bobtailed, whether they were cross eyed or not, whether they were lopeared and cockeyed or as handsome as angels. You will catch me three or four, won't you?" His Face Gets Purple. "By the seventeen bulls of Bull's Bun, but are you talking such nonsense to me?" shouted Mr. Bowser as his face grew as purple as an old . - plum. "I?I didn't mean it for nonsense." "Then you are a born idiot! I might have known better than to sit down and talk on any serious subject with you. How could I expect you to understand and appreciate? This ends it Not another word. I make my discoveries alone. When my name is herald ed all over the country, as will be the case inside a week, I will even deDy that there is a Mrs. Bowser. I will say that you died ten years ago of softening of the brain." "'But I thought from what you said that there might bo insects in the upper strata with two humps on them, like a dromedary, and that it would be so,nice to keep one under a glass case and feed him on bones from the table. If you were very good, you might feed him once in awhile yourself. We could call him Willie." For the next sixty seconds Mr. Bowser was threatened with a stroke of apoplexy. His eyes hung out. His ears worked. His bald head turned the color of raspberry ice cream. . There is hardly a doubt that he would have been a goner if he hadn't made the greatest effort in the world to hang on to himself and if he hadn't determined on killing Mrs. Bowser in her bed after he had made his experiments a howling success. He glared at her and glared and glared, but he didn't say another word. Her doom was sealed. Out in tko vestibule as he came in he had left a large box kite and a small lantern and a ball of stout twine. He now went out and got the lantern and lighted it Mrs. Bowser wanted to ask more questions. She wanted to ask if he didn't think that the smell of fried bacon would bring most of the Inhabitants or that upper strain aowu to earth long enough to be lassoed, but a look into his face kept her lips closed. He had become dangerous. One more word from her would have sent him off like a Du Pont powder magazine. In five minutes she saw what he was at He was going to send up a kite with a lighted lantern attached to ' attract the insects up these. He was going to do more. On one side of thp kite he pinned a sheet of sticky fly paper so as to catch and detain any wandering inhabitant The inhabitant must either come down or eat the kite up. Mr. Bowsef didn't propose to have his experiments periled by. the presence of a crowd. He went into his own back yard to send that kite soar ing aloft There was a good breeze for kiteflying, and, after galloping up and down the yard a few times and making a few failures, away she went toward the clouds, and then with the aid of the stepladder he climbed to the. roof of the shed and sat down to let the fly paper do its scientific work. The secrets of the upper strata were about to be solved for the first time in the history of man, and the solver couldn't be blamed for feeling a warm glow stealing over him. \Mr. Bowser had taken the boys into consideration when he sought his back yard, but not sufficiently. He hadn't figured on the fact that when a boy sees a light bobbing around in the heavens he is bound to find out whether Mars has broken loose from its wharf or some one has sent up a lantern. His kite was net yet 200 feet high when twenty pairs of sharp eyes were watching that lantern and wondering where the string led to. In ten minutes they had located it and were running down the- alley and taking seats on top of the fence and calling to each other: "Say, now, it's Mr. Bowser, and he's got hold of a great idea!" Offered Money to Vanish. The first -comers were offered !10 cents apiece to vanish, but they indignantly refused. If there was anything in the shape of a menagerie coming down from the upper strata they wantj ed to be there .to see. It was inevJ itable that a policeman should get on to the boys soon after they had got on to Mr. Bowser. He followed the crowd down the alley, and men and women followed, him. It was reported, that another "crime wave" had set in, and they wanted to help hang somebody. Mr. Bowser was seen sitting on the shed and holding the string of the kite. . Just as he felt a nibble from some creature of the clouds the cop climbed the fence ana caueci out: "See here, old man, what's all this about?" "In the interest of science," was the reply. : N "In the interest of bosh! You get that kite down at once. Can't you see that you are drawing a crowd and disturbing the peace? There'll be a thousand people here in no time." "I am on my own land, sir," protested Mr. Bowser. "That makes no difference. You either bring that kite down or I'll bring you!" > Mr. Bowser rose up to protest anew and in more vigorous language, and in his excitement he slipped and went falling from the roof upon the grass. There was an awful yell from a hundred throats. The kite began to fall, and everybody rushed for the string. They ran over the prostrate man; they broke down fences: they snapped clotheslines. A minute later the yard was cleared as the crowd ran up the alley to catch the falling kite. Then the dazed and trampled Mr. Bowser sat up to hear some one saying: "Poo? man! lie will never try it npm'n And I shall never have a two humped insect and -call him Willie!" M. QUAD. s? 1 Probably. "I've just been thinking," said Willieboy. "Thinking what?" demanded Silliman, to whom the idea of Willieboy's thinking was somewhat disconcerting. "That in Adam's case it must have been a real re-leaf to change his clothes," said Willieboy. ?- Harper's Weekly. ' Enterprise. ^ "Sell ye a nice air cushion cheap."? Browning's Magazine. A Safe Pursuit. It's got to be I dursn't go Out in the wood& to shoot Fur fear I'll be mistook fur game Ey some gash-dern galoot. But I kin set upon the "cri#k" Ez often ez I wish. I guess they ain't nobuddy round .Will take me fur a fish! ?Joe Cone in Puck. I IMIMM I??? I ? ??pr Plain Talks on Fertilizers m ' I How to Gel the Greatest Possible Yield per Acre i It is well-known sold to Southern farm- j scientific fact that in f?f0S0$l0: ers last year; and every order to produce the SPj^j|g year the demand bevery greatest possible comes greater, yield from any soil it fejlHpfl The best results in must contain an actual producing corn, the excess over and above good old stand-by crop all demands that can of the South, follow the possibly be made on it ?||ggi|Q application of 200 to by the plants." " ^ 300 pounds of the right Many farmers will feed their fertilizer. Virginia - Carolina Stock as much nourishing food Fertilizers will greatly "inas thev can possibly assimi- crease your yields per acre" ? ... C . ... r . ? late, yet will starve their crops 01 corn or any ouier crop, even on the mistaken notion that on poor land?and the most they are "economizing" on fer- wonderful results are produced tilizer. 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