Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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ISSXTED SEmi-WEEKI^^ l. m. grist's sons, Publishers. [ % Katnilg jfleicspaper: Jfor the promotion of (lie political, Social. Agricultural and Commercial Interests of the people. jTERs?noi*e c!1 pt.Vivk cent?!a N U K established 1855. YORKV^ILLE S. C., TtJESI) A.'Y,~SEPTEMBER 8, 1908. NO. 72. 4~4,'4'4*4*4<4S4* 4s 4* 4" 4s *i * if8 J|< C8^ + vJxxoJ: 4* J By ETT^ ^ 4* ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ * CHAPTER XXXIV. Her Fate. Eleven solemn strokes pealed from an ancient clock In the hall at Windy mere. On the brass flredogs some crimson brands were alternately flashing and smoking. In the light and shadow thus made Ed'th Fassel stood, with her hand on her brother's shoulder, and her anxious eyes searching his face. "Paget, what will you do now?" she asked. fc "rir> mv wnv " hp answered, huskily. "and forget her?If I can!" "How strange and dreadful It all seems!" she shuddered. "Love came to you tardily, Paget. You cared nothing ? for womankind until you met her. 1 * can forgive her everything but the breaking of your true heart." A faint spasm appeared on his face. "Do not reproach her. even in your thoughts, Queenie. It is impossible for us to measure her temptation." "Oh, Paget, I know how it will be? 1 you will redouble your roving now? from this time henceforth you will find no peace anywhere." I He bent, and with affected carelessness pushed a fallen brand into place on the flredogs. "I shall go tomorrow," he said; "you need not be told that it is better for me to avoid meeting her again. The story will make a wretched scandal. I would save her, if I could, from carp ing tongues, but that is impossiDie. Lepel Ellicott Is furiously angry"? "Quite pitiless!" sighed Edith; "he will never forgive her." He drew a deep breath. "Mrs. Ellicott will be kind, and you, Queenie, must remain her friend." "For your sake. Paget." He pressed her hand. "You will be a power of strength to ^ the poor child. Stand by her, Queenie. J and she cannot feel wholly forsaken. Thank God!" the words wrung from J him by some great anguish, "she will never suffer as I am suffering?it is not In her nature." "You do not believe that Mignon loves you as you love her?" He shook his head. | "Consider, Queenie. I am a man past thirty, wrestling with the first j supreme passion of my life?she is hardly twenty, and exceedingly childish for her years. Already she forgets her first love?why not the second also? To think otherwise would be in ? ?* > VI a T?Af tnr fa *? hat suppui muie iu me*. ucuci?to.. ter that she should be found incapable of strong emotion, than to break her heart in regrets for our lost happiness." Edith started suddenly. "Hark!" she said; "what noise is that. Paget?" He listened. The storm still sobbed outside, but it was not that which he heard. Something was beating on the hall door of "VVindmere, not loudly, but with steady persistence. He went forward and opened it. On the threshold stood Mignon. A long black cloak wrapped her slender figure, beneath its hood her drenched yellow hair clustered in disordered masses. Without a word, Fassel drew her into the hall. "Oh, Mignon! Mignon!" exclaimed Edith, in horrified amazement. "You here?at this hour?" "To whom should I come but to you?" the girl answered. "You promised to befriend me in time of trouble." They led her to the fire, and took off her cloak. It was dripping wet?her dress, her tiny feet were soaked in water. "Where have you been, Mignon?" cried Edith, aghast. "It was very dark in the avenue," she answered. "I turned in the wrong direction, and stepped into the lake? your little lake, Queenie. where the swans are kept. The water was so cold!" shivering. "I felt like one of those desperate wretches who rush on death, because they can no longer endure life. Then I saw the lights shining in your windows, and I hurried to you as fast as I could." "And on foot?" "Yes. As soon as they left me to myself I stole out of the house?I could not stay there another moment. So long as I remained under that roof was I not keeping the mother and son from each other? Lepel Elllcott will return when he knows I am no longer there?not before!" said Mignon. Brother and sister exchanged glances. As the former vanished through a neighboring door, Edith called a servant to bring some dry garments and make her unbidden guest comfortable. This done, she went forward to the hearth rug. and knelt by Mignon. and looked up compassionately into her small white face. ^ "My poor child, Lepel will forgive you?he cannot help it; he. too. has sinned. His better nature will tell him that he cannot consistently condemn you. You will yet be reconciled to your husband." She made a gesture of horror. "No, no!" she cried, wildly. "Impossible! I should then be a thousand times more wretched than I now am. I abhor him. He is not my husband! True, there were words said over us by a clergyman, but it seems ages ago ?so long, indeed, that I have forgotten its meaning. Don't talk of I^epel Ellicott." She started suddenly from her chair, and flew to meet Paget Fassel, who had Just entered the hall again. "Oh. love!" she cried, throwing her wild, -white arms around him. laying her colorless cheek against his shoulder. "You have not spoken a word to me since this dreadful thing happened. You think me too wicked for forgiveness, or even tolerance." "I think nothing of the kind." he answered. hoarsely: "but what can I say. Mignon? You have broken my heart!" She gave an agonized cry. "Not that?anything but that! I cannot bear that you should suffer for mv sin. From the first I knew that you h ^ 4* 4* 4s 4* 4* 4s 4* 4s 4- 4* 4* BIBLE I ^ Jil1" 4> ?$? l W. PIERCE. ^ were too good?too noble for one like me, and that I could never hope to make myself worthy of you. Yet you offered me your love, and how could I refuse such a gift Andy Gaff was a nightmare horror to me?nothing more. I could not make myself seem like a wife?his wife. Oh, Paget, you did love me yesterday?judge me kindly tonight. From the rest of the world I ask no mercy; but you?oh, say that you will not quite hate and despise , me!" * ' "Hate? I could not do that, if I flnswprpd: "neither is It possible for me to think of you other- ^ wise than kindly, Mignon. God forbid that I should pass judgment upon you. J Since we must part forever, why waste these our last moments together in , useless reproaches?" Her eyes dilated. "Our last moments? What do you mean?" "You cannot be so dull as to misun- , derstand me," he answered, almost harshly. "I leave the country tomorrow." "But you will take me with you? ( you will not leave me behind? Noth- J ing remains to me but you?if you, ( too, cast me off, I must die." "Mignon!" "Let me go with you, as you planned, before Lepel Ellicott appeared," ( she entreated, wildly. "I was to have been your wife in the morning. Let , me go with you, Paget?I belong to ' you. Have you not sworn to love me always? See your ring." lifting her j trembling hand in the firelight. "No one shall take it from my finger while , I live. You only can be my husband, for I love you, and you alone. I will follow you to the ends of the earth? J yes, to death itself, if need be." "Mignon. my poor child!" He was pale as ashes, but he unclasped her clinging arms, and put her firmly from ( him. "You do not know what you say?all this misery is driving you mad. You are Lepel Ellicott's wife? you cannot follow another man. You must go back to Mrs. Ellicott, or to ' that cousin, Bess Hillyer, of whom you talked tonight." "Never! Never!" She clung to him anew, trembling j and weeping. In vain he tried to rea- , son with her?in vain Edith Fassel j sought to soothe and comfort her. J She was delirious with terror and misery. For the first time Fassel knew j how desperately this girl loved him. Light and shallow as she had always seemed, there were tragic depths in ^ her nature, after all. "If you cast me from you I will not | try to live!" she cried, again and again. ( Then she turned upon Edith with ] the impatience born of utter misery. ! "How can you guess what I suffer?" ^ she said. "You never did anything amiss. Queenie?you do not even know what love is?love like mine, which means more than name or fame, or life , Itself to me. No, you cannot compre- ' hend it?you live in a different world? t above the things that torture and distract weaker women." A flash of crimson appeared for an ^ instant in Edith Fassel's cheek. "You are wrong?wrong!" she an- j swered, with unwonted vehemence; . "but let it pass. Listen to reason? ( Vriii will nr?t*> Thon Pnp-pt hpiner still sane, must think and act for you." Fassel looked down Into the white face uplifted imploringly to his own. "Will you send me away?" she sob- , bed. j "I must." "Then you have ceased to love me?" , "I love you more than ever before? ^ that is why we must part, Mignon." The word was like an arrow in her j heart. t "Parting is death!" she shivered. . "Oh, love, love! How cruel you are! I j come to you. homeless, hopeless, for- ( saken by all. stripped of everything? with no -efuge but your breast"? I He interrupted sternly. ( "You may not know it. Mignon. but , you are driving me wild! I will or- j der the carriage, and you must go back , immediately to Mrs. Ellicott's house." j Edith interposed. ( "Remember how far she has walked ( tonight. It is storming hard, and the , hour is late. She is greatly exhausted. Let her stay with me till morning?I ] will send a messenger to Mrs. Ellicott, with word that she is safe here at ] Windmere." I He gave his sister a pale, grateful look. , "I myself will be your messenger." Gently he put Mignon into the nearest chair. She neither resisted nor pleaded further. She was like one stupefied. "Good-bye." he said, with eyes averted from her. "Mignon, good-bye." "Good-bye, dear love!" she answer- , ?i. ; And so Paget Fassel passed from her presence, out into a night as dark as that which had settled on his own heart. Edith gathered Mignon into her arms. "You are quite worn out." she said, soothingly: "come and rest. Perhaps , the morning will bring you new hope." ; A smile sadder than tears appeared on Mignon's wan face. "There is no longer any hope for me." she said. "I have had my day." i Then she s'.ipped her chilly hand into that of the elder girl. "But I will do as you like. It is kind of you to pity ; me?to cry for me?you have always been kind since the hour I first saw you. I bless you for it now. Others may think you proud and cold, but I know better." "Oh, my poor child!" groaned Edith Fassel, "what good can my tears or my 1 O ' ...III. r |Miy uo ,v<>u now ; Vyiiiiir, w mi composure. "we must not talk any more. You will be ill if you do not sleep. Your loriK. solitary walk to Windmere at dead of nifflit was dreadful?not to speak of that stumble in the lake. Come now. dear, and rest." She carried Mignon to her own chamber, determined not to lose sitfht of her for a moment. She dismissed her maid, and with her own hands pre pared her guest for bed. With her arm around the unhappy girl. Miss Fassei knelt at her devotions. All the while Mignon remained as cold and impassive as stone. "Shall I seen him again?shall I ever see him again?" she said, as Edith arose from her prayers. Alas! Mignon's thoughts were fixed, not on a heavenly, but an earthly and most unfortunate love. "No," answered Edith, sadly; 'he is going far away." "Yes, to the ends of the earth," murmured Mignon; "he will never come back! Oh, I understand everything. Who sows the wind must reap the whirlwind. I am very tired, Queenie; let me sleep." She crept into bed, and, like a weary' child, nestled down by Edith Fassei. Not another word was spoken by eith er. Behind a painted screen a night lamp burned. Outside, the storm had ceased, but a dolorous wind still rushed, like frightened feet, through the long avenues of Windmere. Edith waited till the calm, regular breathing of her companion told her that Mignon had forgotten sorrow for awhile in blessed sleep. Then deeply relieved, she closed her own wearied eyes, and fell into dreamless slumber. For an hour or more she remained unconscious. The hall clock was striking one, when suddenly, as though an unseen hand had been laid upon her, Edith Fassel awoke. With a confused sense of something ivrong, she started up in bed. Mignon was gone! The door of the chamber was ajar. With her heart in her throat, Edith snatched at the first garment within reach, thrust her feet into slippers, and seizing the night lamp, ran into the corridor. Here a current of cold air met and chilled her to the marrow, glancing down the staircase, she dis covered that the entrance door or Windmere was standing wide open. Pull of nameless fears, she descended to the hall, and flew out upon the terrace, and Into the path leading to the little lake. "Mignon!" she called. "Where are you, Mignon?" A wan moon, in its last quarter, shone through broken clouds, and lighted the way before Edith Fassel. "Mignon! Mignon!" she continued to call: but no voice answered. She reached the lake. A recent thaw had frfed its gray waters, and anly a thin rim of ice remained bordering the brink, like a band of steel. On the garden side, the copper beech stood stripped and bare, the swans ivere now gone?wintry silence and desolation reigned over the spot. An awful cry broke from Edith Fassel?a cry loud enough to reach to the servants at Windmere?for. several yards distant, on that tossing surface she suddenly espied a white face rise, ike a star?a slender girlish hand dung convulsively upward, and then :>oth vanished from her' sierht. The iake, though small, was very leep. Edith Fassel plunged straightway into its ice-cold depth. She was i superb swimmer, and a few rapid strokes brought her to the spot where =he had seen the face. She dived, and 'rasping Mignon's limp and lifeless sody, drew it upward into the light of he waning moon. She bore her burden to the shore. IVith a superhuman strength she carded it down the path under the trees. S'ear the entrance to Windmere, she , net the frightened servants hurrying :o find her. "Take the best horse in the stables," 'ommanded Edith Fassel, "and ride for lr. Hume. Miss Hillyer has been valking in her sleep. She found the ake tonight by accident, and turned hat way a second time. Make haste >r she will die of this mishap." Some one caught Mignon from the irms of her rescuer. "Merciful Heavens! Miss Fassel," /ried one of the maids, as she threw i wrap around her mistress, "what a flight you are in yourself! To plunge nto the water in one's night clothes. it the dead of winter, is nothing1 bet:er than suicide. They carried Mignon to the house. Every known means was employed to estore her before Dr. Hume should ar"ive. In vain. She lay like a Parian mage, a smile on her lips, but without wreath or motion. By and by the welcome thud of horse loofs sounded in the drive. Nigel Hume jntered?went up to Edith Fassel, as lie latter, with no thought of her own leeds, knelt by Mignon. Her wet hair vas streaming in dark disorder upon ":er shoulders, her face seemed cut rrom stone. Mechanically she went on . hafing the small, cold hands of the roiceless, motionless girl. "Help her!" she said, looking- up at Hume in miserable entreaty. He bent for a moment over Lepel Ellicott's wife; then, very gravely drew the hands from Edith's tremulous hold. "Nothing can be done," he answered, "for she is dead." To be Continued. FIERCE CANINES. The Wolfish Dogs of Newfoundland and Labrador. On the extreme northern coast of Newfoundland, as well as in Labrador, he fishing villages and settlements ire all situated in the harbors and ereeks along the seashore. In the summer all intercommunication with the various villages is by water, so that the roads are very primitive. In winter, when the ground is covered with snow and the marshes and lakes ire frozen, the people utilize dogs and "comaticks" to travel to and fro, and ulso for hauling firewood, building material, etc. Those dogs are savage mongrels, closely allied to their progenitor. the wolf; in fact, they are half wolf. The residents do not trouble much about these mongrels in the summer, and they are generally kept in a state of seniisavage starvation. They feed on fish offal during the fishing season and occasionally band together and go a-hunting on their own account. On these occasions they will attack anything they come across, man or beast, and so tierce are their depredations that caribou which are plentiful in Labrador, can only on rare occasions be found within twenty-five miles of the seacoast, as these mongrels have destroyed or driven them all inland. Last winter it was reported that a team of those dogs turned on the driver and devoured him and his wife and ifhn u-?r? affnmnanvillir him to a distant settlement. It had been long recognized that these packs of savage dogs were great obstacles in the way of the progress of the people in these parts. It was impossible for them to keep cows, sheep, goats or even poultry.?Forest and Stream. iHiscrllancous Sradinq. THE LEPROSY DELUSION. Disease Is One of the Least Contagious of Those Due to Germs. 'Tis not only truth that crushed to earth will rise again. Popular error, especially if ancient enough, has the same buoyant faculty. When the discovery of a case of leprosy in a poor young Russian servant girl in Boston was announced recently, the papers of the land flared with headlines and a wave of horror and dread swept overi the community. Frenzied snace writers gloated over the appearance of "the dread scourge in our midst," and wondered copiously what the health officers would do when the crop of infected victims hegan to show itself. Sim- ' ilarly, last year, when a Syrian exile . was found to have a mild case of leprosy, great commonwealths vied with each other in the savagery with which they drove him from their borders, and, when he was at length found dead of cold and starvation in the half-ruined hut into which he had been driven at the muzzle of rifles with an occasional bullet sent through the roof to ' keep him in order, everybody breathed 1 a sigh of relief and said: "Poor fel- 1 low! best thing that could happen to him." These are but exhibitions of 1 the cruelty which is born of cowardice ' and founded upon the terror of abys- 1 ma] ignorance. Few things are more utterly un- 1 founded than the popular dread of lep- * rosy. The prevalent conceptions of the 1 disease are as grotesquely mistaken as the famous definition of a crab given 1 by one of Agassiz s students: "A little red fish that walks backward." The ' great professor, you remember, smiled ' quietly and remarked: "Very good, 1 except that a crab is not a fish, is not 1 red until he had been boiled, and does s not walk backward, but sidewise." 1 The three features in the prevailing 1 idea of leprosy?that it is Intensely" ' contagious, absolutely incurable, and 1 inevitably fatal?are almost as thor- 5 ough inversions of the actual fact. Leprosy is one of the least conta- ' gious of all diseases known to be due ' to a bacillus. Ten cases of leprosy at large would be a lesser source of dan- 1 ger to the commonwealth of Massa- ' chusetts than one case of ordinary ' consumption. In the great European 1 hospitals cases of leprosy are kept for 1 months and even years in the open ' wards, with thirty or forty other pa- ' tients to be exhibited to students and - .... 1 visiting1 physicians, without the slight- 1 est fear of contagion. White men liv- ' <ng upon civilized diet seldom contract ' the disease even in the tropics, but ' when they do, and return home with ' it, they almost invariably recover, 1 and never have been known in a single I instance to communicate the disease ' to others, not even to members of their I own family. Osier relates the case of < an eminent clergyman who was a leper i for thirty years without it even inter- 1 fering with his work, or any one save 1 his physician suspecting the fact. A civilized community, properly fed and housed, is in no more danger from a t case of imported leprosy than it would j be from one of beriberi, or scurvy, or | ^ancer, or clubfoot. The leper house or . colony is a survivor of barbarism and . medical ignorance pure and simple, t nnd as unnecessary as it is cruel. Instead of leprosy being' hopelessly ? incurable, cases in Europeans, which ( are recognized early and given prompt . change of climate and food, usually get , well or come to a standstill. Although ] it is due to a well-recognized germ, J the bacillus leprae of Hansen, the chief factors in its development are food and ( sanitary conditions. Whenever tiese ^ are brought up to. or even toward modern standards, leprosy rapidly disapnears.?Collier's Weekly. ^ CLEVELAND'S GENUINENESS. ( \ Simple In His Tastes, Genial and : Loyal to Friends. I The quality which impressed one most on becoming acquainted with Mr. < Cleveland was not his greatness: one i " -*-1 iU.l. 1 * !.?_ r^m r\ * if i 1 , naa anticipated mm; uui m? geumi [ kindness and his quiet, pervasive hu- ( mnr. He even had charm. These char- . acteristics I. for one, had not anticipat- , ed at all, I had pictured him, as prob- j ably most people still fancy him, a ] gruff, rugged old warrior, resting after | his buttles, brooding over the past; silent. except when stirred occasionally to pronouncing a polysyllabic profundity: august, austere, a personage difficult to know and impossible to love. 1 I expected to admire him, but it never ( occurred to me that one might like ' him: still less that he might care to 1 he liked by those among whom he had cast his lot. I think every man who had a chance to know him must have felt affection for him. Sam. his coachman, used to say: "The finest Dimmycrat I ever knew. I'm a Republican." After the funeral he said: "I could hardly drive for the tears runnin* down me face. The finest man I ever knew, Dimmy- ' erat or Republican!" The atmosphere of greatness?that subtle emanation of real power?was always present, always felt, more so than in the case of any man I ever met. So often it evaporates when once you have seen enough to disassociate the inati from the name. Rut there was nothing gruff or severe about this pleasant, simple-mannered, large framed man, comfortably seated by his library fireplace, saying little, but listening carefully, sympathetically in fact, to all that was being said, with a ready smile for whatever might be amusing, a kindly solicitude tor the . comfort of your seat and a grave carefulness in the selection of your cigar. "Well. I guess there's no law against our smoking," was his frequent phrase. He seemed, as a friend remarked t ie other day, "just as much interested in giving me a good time as I was in trying to entertain him." But no one, not even the most intimate, thought of being familiar with him. He always insisted upon carrying his gun case himself when making the annual pilgrimage; but he also Insisted upon due respect to the high office he had held. Some of the numerous invitations to : address quasi-important gatherings annoyed mm: " rney ve jp?r nerve u? expect a former president to attend their show." He did not say "me," but 'a former president." i His voice in conversation was a little higher than one would expect for nut 11 >uu iuiu nun yuu actv* mo u?v Richard make a good catch playir.g ball out on the lawn as you came In his whole face lighted up with his wonderful smile. His attitude toward children was not the smiling condescension which many of the "Olympians" adopt, :ind which children hate; he treated them with that flattering earnestness which children like. "Some of the other gentlemen here this afternoon left this bat behind them," he would say to his boy. One day these two were seen walking home together n the rain. Richard .was holding the umbrella. Father than let the boy see that he cou'd not hold it high enough [he Ex-President walked all the way iown Bayard lane with his head and shoulders bent low. One day on the train from New York fie became very much concerned over i little girl who seemed to be travelling alone. Finally he had to go and lsk her about It. She said it was all right, she was to be met by her father it New Brunswick. But when that station wa.< finally reach the former president, without saying anything to the rest of the party, quietly stole out io the rear door and watched until he ;aw the child safe in her father's arms; then he returned to the group he had eft and went on with the conversation as if nothing had happened. The democratic mode of his private life is sometimes spoken of as f an ideal to which he consciously adiered. With him it was a good deal nore than a well-followed creed; it .vas spontaneous expression of his lerionality due to his inherent honest:y: He liked simple things because he was simple. He was of the soil. He nad but few forms, though these he observed strictly and expected others to observe them. The inevitable vanties and artificialities of a highly organized stage of society were not ivrong, bit distasteful to him. He felt their incongruity with him. In ihort, he had humor?not the chirping 'acetlousness of the generation which -rates to an unhumorous extent about ts sense of humor, but the real thing, he inner , vision of truth which is the Deginning of wisdom and its end. H-? like.] and enjoyed all tne reai hings of life and despised the unreal, "or instance, he had real friends. Onv a few people, even in private life, lave real friends in their old age. But imong tho great history shows a still smaller proportion so blessed. That w.os one keynote of his charicter, but along with his simple love >f truth there existed a cognate qualty which, however, does not always iccompany it; and that was an active sense of 'esponsibility to some power ligher than ourselves. In one of those are moments in his unusually light ;onversation when he broke through lis habititual reserve and showed vhat he thought about deeply, he once said to one of his friends: "I don't see low a democratic people, struggling ind fighting for its needs and desires, ?an continue to exist as a free people vithout the idea of something invisible ibove them to which they believe :hemselvos accountable." Like all great truths, this has been said before. The point here Is that le believed it, and that in these two 'undamental qualities, the vision of ruth, and the sense of one's unshirkible accountability, and in courage, vhich was their offspring, are to be 'ound the determining motives of his ife.?Jesse Lvneh Williams, in Colier's Weekly. Slept Through Fight. About the laziest man on record :omes tr light in a reminiscence of the :ivil war. One night, during the sumner of 1862, a detachment of General virby Smith's troops clashed with a lortion of the Federal forces near Richmond, Ky. In the very centre of this dark batlefield, so the story goes, stood the louse of Peter Van der Hausen, an old Dutchman, who was noted among' his leighboi-s for being the laziest man Ln hat section. So, around this house, struggling >ack and forth through the Hollander's tarden of weeds and wild flowers, the wo hostile forces fiercely struggled, vhile the darkness was riven by the lash of muskets and the roar of artilery. The next morning, as soon as the leighboring farmers dared poke their loses out of doors, they hurried ever o old Peter's to see if, by happy fate, le were yet alive. Entering the bulct riddled house and flying up the flairs, they burst into Peter's bedroom, lorror depicted on the faces. What >vas their amazement, however, to beiold the Hollander snoring peacefully lway as if sleep were the one and only |ov of his life. Tiy persistent shaking they woke him mrtially. "Get up. Peter!" cried one leighbor. "Are you wounded, Peter.'" "No." yawned the Hollander. Then le sat lip and gazed bewilderedly at the familiar faces about him. "Vas ss?what is the matter?" "Matter!" cried they: didn't you hear the awful n >ise outside last night?" "Noise? Yes, I did hear the thun-1 lering noise." "And didn't you see the flashes of fire?" "Yes. but I turned over and went to sleep again." "Went to sleep again! Man, don't rou know what that meant? Don't ?ni? house is shattered?" For a moment the sleep-dazed Peter seemed to be undecided whether to get out of bed. Then, slowly rolling over into his trousers, he said, "So the lightning1 struck the house, eh?" NOISELESS GUN AWES. Official Tests Show Fearful Posaioilities?Inaudible at 150 Feet. In the presence of a committee of United States army officials, Hiram Percy Maxim, the veteran Inventor, last week at Springfield, Mass., demonstrated beyond all doubt that the noiseless gun which he has contrived is a success. He proved during the tests held today In the armory and in the fields near North "Wilbraham that his new gun can be fired within 150 feet of a person without detection by- him. To make clear to the minds of thel 'tfflcers the tremendous revolution which this gun would cause In warfare, Maxim utilized a little cricket which was found in a bush. The officers could hear the cricket chirp at a distance of fifty yards. And they heard It chirp even when the Maxim gun was fired. Those present at the test, which was the official government one, were Mr. Maxim, Major Morton, Capt. Allen, Lieutenant Meals, Henry Southey, city engineer of Hartford, Conn., and six enlisted men. The party went to the armory, where tests for penetration, noiselessness and accuracy were conducted. One of the soldiers, a crack-shot with the rifle, fired the regular army gun several times, the explosions ringing out above the noises of the factory where Uncle Sam makes small arms. Then Maxim adjusted his "noise-killer" to the weapon. The sharpshooter took aim at a tar get far down the yard and pulled the trigger. From the white plate, more than a hundred yards away, there came a sharp metallic ring. The bullet had ploughed into the steel?but not a sound excepting a soft one, as of fingers snapping, came from the gun. Then, showing, a slight hissing, so slight as to be hardly audible was heard, and the officers looked at one another in bewilderment. The soldier who did the firing looked at the weapon in his hands and held it from him an instant, then laughed in a childish way. The party adjourned to the fields. Forty regulation cartridges were given to the marksmen. The officers posted themselves 2,000 yards from where the sharpshooter stood, and he was given the word to fire. Methodically he sped bullet after bullet into a distant target, each time the service gun emitting a roar that was audible 6,000 feet away, in the village. After Maxim adjusted the "noise killer," the soldier fired again and eight times he hit the target. All the time the officers were coming closer to him. They could hear the steel proj jectile smash against the target, but [ nothing' else. * many, wnen wunin iou feet of the soldier, they heard a faint sound. It was the hammer of the gun striking the cartridge. But they heard nothing more, nor did they see either smoke or fire coming from the weapon. Not contented, Maxim invited the experts to the lake near North Wilbraham.' One of the soldiers was posted across the water five hundred yards distant. A target was erected near a little booth "he "OCCTTTTted. Eight-times to heard the steel Jacketed bullet olunge into and flatten on the disc, hut he heard no other sound although rhe place is a wilderness and even the low murmurs or ine ruwri au nui yewctrate it. The officers made calculations and agree that the gun is 74 per cent noiseless. It was a moody, cogitating group that returned to the armory late in the evening. The men bore no air of triumph. Each probably was thinkng of the dreadful possibilities shut up In that little secret device which had heen adjusted to the ordinary service guns. An idea of th'e severity of the tests may be gained from the fact that 50 grains of smokeless powder were used in each cartridge, a charge capable of hurling a bullet more than 1,500 yards with fatal results. PERUVIAN GUANO. j Careless methods Are Responsible For Rapid Exhaustion. To the people of Peru the guano in| dustry is of the highest importance. ! Not only has guano a great money value for purposes or export, out it is absolutely essential to the agriculture of the country. The destruction of the industry would be a public calamity. By not a few people it is supposed that the accumulations of guano in Peru are something like coal deposits in that they represent the very gradual accumulations of a vast amount of time and that their deposition is now at an end. This is not the case, since guano is being deposited today just as formerly, but in much less quantity than formerly, since the birds which produce it are far less numerous than they used to be. On the other hand the guano produced today Is valuable?perhaps even more valuable than that deposited years ago. The deposits of old guano are being rapidly exhausted, and when thewe are exhausted, there will remain only the annual product, which under present conditions is certain to grow less and if>?? This is true because the birds that produce it are wholly disregarded, for the contractors who collect ".he guano do so without the slightest reference to the hirds on which the supply depends, driving them from their nesting places and destroying the eggs and young. The whole subject has been carefully studied by Senor Larraburey Correa. who recently submitted 1 a full report to the Peruvian government. The two principal birds which deposit this valuable product are a cormorant and a pelican, and these birds spend the greater part of their time during the whole year on the nesting ground, unless frightened away by man. To secure the best results from their presence they should be encouraged to remain on these grounds, and instead of being treated as wild animals whose useful product men seize nn oll-'iv tllPV "shdlllfl hf? trMtf'd as domestic animals, engaged in useful labor and producing a crop to the harvesting of which the highest intelligence should be devoted. The birds should not be driven away from their nesting grounds. The present tendency to a decrease in numbers could be checked. Protection will result in a great increase, and such increase will mean the addition to Peru's supply of hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of guano each year. | Everything: should be done to increase ahe number of birds, for the greater the number of the birds the greater the amount of the guano produced. Action should be taken at once, for the pelican, the more useful of these two birds, is gradually disappearing. It is necessary to watch the contractors who remove the guano from the islands and see that they do it with due regard to the safety of the birds and the future supply of the product. It would be well also to close each of the various guano islands in rotation for a term of years, thus leaving the birds on the different islands unmolested for periods of years as long as possible. A great step in advance has been made in recent years by establishing a closed season for the islands, during which they are not to be worked; but this measure is, after all, only a palliative. It does not strike at the root of the evil. The agriculture of Peru is dependent on the supply of guano. The demands of the export trade are insatiable. The time is coming when both these demands cannot be satisfied. It is high time that a strong effort shall be made to increase the supply, and this can only be done by protecting the breeding grounds of the birds.?Forest and Stream. THE ADVENTUROUS .ENGINEER. The Third Man In the Great Army of World Conquerors. In the order of conquest the contracting engineer is but the third man on the spot?first the missionary; then the soldier; then the contracting engineer. After that come the ordinary mortals known as population. And only by the previous efforts of these three and over their white bones can the world's population and commerce proceed. He learns to take 80 miles a day on foot as a mere constitutional, to sleep on the ground, to steer by the sun, to guess his altitude by the trees, to sense the characteristics of the country he journeys in as a sportsman judges a horse. He must ride and swim (in water or quicksand, as the case may be,) and not be afraid of high places or deep tunnels. He must explore treacherous rivers in an egg-shell of a boat and not miss a single feature which he passes nor turn up missing himself. He is supposed to be able to get ashore somehow in safety when rolled out of a boat in the heavy breakers of an unknown coast. I have met more than one of him ?'t? ? Urt/1 r?V> t no n n 1 Ko 1 o ' on t h of vviiu uau luug itc cuiiuiuuio, ou mui. should, no doubt, be put down as one of his accomplishments too. And sometimes he has to recover from a broken leg or a fever with nobody but a superstitious Cholo woman for a nurse and a fragrant mud hut for a hospital and goodness knows who for a doctor. All the while he is roaming over and learning the planet In its natural magnificence, he is studying how to make It, possibly not so magnificent, but vastly more convenient to live in. Where you sweep gracefully round the curve on the cliff and hang for a moment in the mid-air on the great steel cantilever and catch a flashing look at what the guide book calls its scientific marvel, you will be making far better time than the fellow who blasted out the curve and climbed by inches down one side of the gorge and up the other leaving a string of stone piers behind him; and for comfort and convenience you will be tremendously more fortunate, but you will never see the region as he saw it, when he was hewing his way and your way through it, nor ever knew it as he did when he lived in a little hut on the ledges and watched his army working and heard the faint noise of his machinery drifting down the weird, lonesome valley, with the thin smoke of his donkey boilers. A MRITION'S WAY Country Reporter's Newspaper Instinct Wins Recognition In New York. A cub reporter in a small city in the western part of New York state coveted a position on a certain New York paper. Somehow the chances of getting on that paper's exclusive staff seemed mighty few. But one day his city editor told him to go down to the railroad station, see Lord Charles Beresford, who was to wait there a little time between trains, and get an interview from him. The boy was country bred, and Beresford was littlo mnr-c than a nnme tn him Rut he had an hour to spare before he would have to be at the depot, and that hour was spent in a library reading of the right before Alexandria and of revolving guns in the Sudan. When he reached Beresford at the railroad depot he found the rear admiral very gracious and obliging and ready to fill him with much praise of the country in whole and that part of rhp rnnntrv in narticular. The boy took copious notes, then closed his book with a bang and a smile. "That's all good stuff, Lord Beresford," said he, "but it's what every single one of you Englishmen, tell us when you get over here. I want some real news." "Real news?" was the response. "If you would answer a single real question for me it might put me on my feet and make a big journalist of me." The big man smiled at the boy. A ol* tVio nno nilPQtinn Let me see what it is," he said. It was at the time of the earliest troubles in the far east. "Why did you change your plans and not go to Port Arthur?" he was asked. "But that's a diplomatic question and not to be answered," he replied. "The very reason why it is real news," pressed the boy. "The foreign office at London requested me not to go there," said Beresford as he hurried back into his train. The boy kept his secret to himself, wrote his conventional interview with Beresford for the paper that employed him, then wired Beresford's answer to his real question as an exclusive feature for the New York paper. That paper put It in its cable service and sent Beresford's answer to the country reporter's question swinging around the civilized world. Then it sent for the boy himself and put him on his feet. Today he sits close to its managing editor's desk and draws a salary of more than $5,000 a year.?Saturday Evening Post. MAnU LU I Uf KtAHL uivcrio. Misfortunes of Natives of French Islands In the Pacific. About 4,000 people on the Tuamotu Islands, thousands of miles out in the Pacific, are now living in a state of destitution and wretchedness that is scarcely paralled in any other part of the world. They are the victims of the great storms of 1903 and 1905, and of the indifference, neglect and mismanagement of French officials. Their story is printed in the Bulletin of the Comite de l'Aste Frarjcaise, from the pen of Father Bracconl one of the Roman Catholic missionaries in the lsianas. The Tuamotu Islands form the most extensive of the archipelagoes controlled by France In Oceania. They comprise eighty little atolls, narrow rings of corral rock rising a few feet above sea level and enclosing lagoons. Though they are scattered over an area 700 miles long andt 200 miles wide, the total land surface comprises only about 215,000 acres. VAnJir C AAA ty islands before the storms of 1903 and 1905 reduced their number. Many of the uninhabited islands are visited in pursuit of the only important industry of the group, diving in the lagoons and in some waters outside the atolls for mother of pearl. Every islander in his prime is a diver, and Father Bracconi says that professional divers in no other part of the world can compare with them. They can swim as though water were their native element. They do not even come ashore to eat, but catch fish with their hands and devour them raw. Four or five commercial companies of Tahiti have practically made slaves of these Islanders. For years before 1903 the average production of mother of pearl was 400 tons a year. The trading companies bought this for about 600,000 francs, all payable In merchandise, and sold it for 1,500,000. They had besides the extortionate nrnflta HarlvaH from tho h?rt??r trade. The pearl diver was always In debt to the traders and they manoeuvred to keep him in debt, and he was always straining >. ry nerve to bring more shells, for his creditors never ceased to bully and threaten him. It was a bare existence, hand-to-mouth, for every one of the 6,000 natives in the archipelago. This had for years been the situation when the storms of January, 1903, destroyed every cocoanut tree on the islands, overwhelmed the low reefs on which the natives lived, washed all their huts and fishing implements into the sea and drowned hundreds of the mnnv r\t hpat ldicxuucia, iiitiuuiiiQ j V4 ?mv ww divers, whose families have since been dependent on the charity of their poverty-stricken neighbors. They had bdgun to get a new start when the storms of March, 1905, occurred." , These storms were even more destructive than those of 1903. The giant waves not only killed nearly 1,000 people, but dug to the bottom of the lagoons and carried out to sec. the bivalves that yielded the real wealth of the islands, mother of pearl. Jn addition not a drop of potable water was left in the islands. There are no brooks among these little rings of rock. The people depended upon cisterns of mason work, in which they caught the rain. Every cistern was destroyed in the gales, and the first thing to do was to rebuild them, spreading cloths meanwhile to catch the rain and thus alleviate suffering from thirst. Under these circumstances the islanders lost courage and wished to flee from tne scene 01 meir mam. They sent a delegation to Tahiti to lay their case before Governor Julllen. "We've lost everything but our lives," said the old chief, who was their spokesman, "and nearly every family is mourning its dead. We men are not afraid to stay on the islands, but we fear for our women and children. We ask you to give us some places on this great high island, where our families may be safe. Help us a uttio at first and we shall not ask for anything, not even for work." The governor was much affected and promised assistance. Nothing was done, and in the following December another great storm occurred. There was not much left to destroy except human life, and it took its share of that. France heard of this last blow and 80,000 francs of the public funds were voted to relieve the immediate needs of the sufferers. A commission was also appointed in Tahiti to visit " 1 - 3? ~ ^ nrVkof r?rui 1 r? hp HnnP me lsianus anu acc nimi V.V, to ameliorate the situation. Father Bracconl severely criticises the commission. In the first place it used a large part of the money to buy European fishing gear, which was useless to the natives. A few thousand francs were used to build (cisterns. It was voted to build very strong platforms on which the people might take refuge above the cyclone | waves that had drowned nearly 2,000 of them, but to this day not a step has been taken to carry out this proposal. A good deal of the fund is carried on the books of Tahiti as "receipts extraordinary." The one good outcome of these recpfiips is the destruction of the trade monopoly. The natives have been helped by the government to organize their own syndicate, which markets their mother of pearl in Tahiti, and its full value is received by the divers. The present situation is that the people are thrown into terror at the slightest indication of a storm. The government will not let them have the the Islands because to admit their inhabitability would ruin a valuable possession. The white teachers in Tuamotu say that the abandonment of the islands would be unnecessary if the government would fulfill its plain duty to safeguard life thcie by every means in human power; if the government will not do this it should not insist that 4,000 people continue to live in a region where they believe their lives are always in danger. t'T Red-haired persons are usually lmulsive and outspoken. 'ifi' In this country' the death rate among the miners is 3.4 per 1,000 employed. In Belgium in 1906 the number was .94. in Great Britain it was 1.29, in France it was .84 in 1905, and in Prussia it was 1.8 in 1904. such a large man; it was undoubtedly what foreigners would call an American voice, somewhat nasal, though not unpleasant, and with something in it that reminded me of the way I supposed Lincoln's voice sounded. When he referred to his old friends and associates there was tenderness in it as he pronounced their names?'Joe" Jefferson or "Tom" Bayard, and others, less known to fame, but equally dear to him. The world only heard of the famous ones, but it never occurred to him to arrange his friendships on any basis but the real one?or that his more obscure chums were not just as interesting to quote and tell about. Callers who undertook to inform him to his face that he had been a great nresident made him exceedingly miserable. (though he did not mind reading about it when they were not around), u..4. i e i?i j v,; ../v., Kaif