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LOUIS APPELT, EDITOR. MANNING, S. C.: WEDNESDAY, OCT. 14, 1896. PUBLISHED EVERY WEDNESDAY. "WHEN ELiPS HAD HIS DINNER." On long, h$Sunday afternoons, When we 'e got home from meetin, An Eli's changed his pantaloons, He's awful set on eatin. He's that outrageous cross'twouldshame An unooverted sinner. I have to stand a heap of blame Tin Eli's got his dinner. An so I'm never very slow To get the kettle bilin; I call it duty, for 1 know His temper is a spilin. I warm the taters an the mest An don't let nothin hinder, An then I let the feller eat, An Eli gets his dinner. Now, Eli's not a greedy ran, . But somehow, come a Sunday, He'll cat a bigger dinner than He'd think of on a Monday. An when he's done he tips his chair Back 'gainst the kitchen winder, An soon you'll hear a snorin there When Eli's got his dinner. But when he's dozed a little while, Half wakin an half sleepin. He'll wake up in a better style For Sunday an a deakin. He'll talk so pious an so kind. 'Twould touch a hardened sinner; A better man you'd never and Than Eli after dinner. -Chicago Inter Ocean. BIG TOM, CONVICT. There were those who said that con vict 1280 was innocent of the crime which sent him to prison for such a long term of years, but that there was scarce a hope of his ever being a free man again. They meant that he was tech nically guilty. He had sought to save a woman from a beating at the hands of her husband, and in the struggle and excitement he had struck a blow which caused the death of the man. It was sociden;, in a sense, but it was also manslaughter. No man who Is a man will stand by and see a woman beaten, and yet if he interferes he must take his chanoes with the law. Big Tom, as the convict was sometimes referredto, was, like most big men, a child in his gentleness and good nature. He did not complain, but he grieved. He thought of the years and years which must drag away before the prison doors would open to him, and he moved about like a weak, old man. The prison officials felt pity for the man, but a convict is a oon vict, and all must be treated alike-all who show obedience to the rules. They sized him up as childlike and good na tured, and yet they said to each other as they talked of him: "Look out for Big Tom! He will break loose some day and do some des perate thing!" They thought it would come during the first six months of his term-then during the second-then they almost beame afraid of him. Men who are slow to anger-who go on grieving, brooding and bearing a mental burden for weeks and months are devils when the climax comes. Big Tom had the management of the trip hammer in the machine shop. Ead they put him in the shoe shop or tailor shop he would have rebelled at once. His place was beside the biggest piece of machinery in the shops, two pieces of machinery, as it were-Tom and Trngagy day and week by week nd month by the ponderous hammer rose and fell and'its blows shook the very earth for yards around, making the convict smile and look proud, the guards had an eye on hizn 'and kept.saying to each other: "It will come. It Is only delayed. When he breaks loose, he will kill some one and have to be killed in turn." Nearly half of the secnd year had passed, and the giant oonviet had naves even sulked, when one day there came into the shop as sightseers a husband, wife and little girl 4 or 5 years old. Children are seldom seen in prisons, and it is a rare thing that they are taken into the shops in the yrds. Ii any one in that prison knew that convict 1280 had a daghter--a fair haired, handsome child, who could only walk alone when the jury pronounced his verdict of "guilty"--he had for gotten the fact. His wife had visited him as often as visitors were allowed, but the child had never been seen with in the grim walls. Enowing that hei husband had killed a man by accident, the wife could bear to see him wearing the horrible stripes of a convict, but tc let the child look upon him, to gaze in wonder at the iron bars, to ask why all those men were there, a thousand times no! And so this was the Srst child Big Tom had seen since the heavy doors shut him in. Father, mother and child came close to him and gazed at the ponderous hammer with wondering eyes. You would'have argued that the sight of the child would have softened the convict's heart and brought tears to his eyes, but it did not. It brought a feeling of mad ness, of desperation, of frenzy. To save a woman from a brutal beating at the hands of a drunken, worthless thing not fit to be classed with men he had struoli a blow. A jury had called it murder in the second degree, and he was here in pris. on on a sentence almost never ending. He had been wronged, and the knowl edge of it fired his heart and brought the long expected outbreak. With a sud den cry which startled every one in the noisy shop Big Tom made a spring for. ward, seized the child in his arms, and there was a shout of deflanoe ca his lips as he held her at arm's length and glared about him. The mother of the child gasped for breath and staggered back to the wall and sank down. The father stood staring, as if struck dumb, but presently held out his hands in si lent supplication. Big Tom glowered and muttered in reply. He was a con vict, a childless father. He was dead to his child-she was dead to him. Be could not make another father's heart ache and throb and grieve as his did, but he would secure revenge. After muttering he was silent. !Nc one cried out. Guards and convicts were seemingly stupefied. There was the hum of machinery, but not of voices. Con victs turned from forge and anvil and bench and lathe and held their breath. The two shop guards leaned forward in their chairs and looked and looked, but they did not move or cry out. "Whait will he do with the child?" The two men woriking at the trip hammer with Big Tom had fallen back. He had control of the machinery which worked it. The answer to the question could be read in his eyes. Men had wronged him under cover of the law. He had been deprived of liberty, de graded and disgraced. Death were more .erciu than such a sentence nai. ana in dying he would secure reveng A piece of iron had been left under the hammer. There was heard the sound of crash! crash! crash! as the mass of iron ree and fell at regular intervals-that sounded above- the monotonous hum of the machinery. "He will thrust her undor the ham mer!" So thought each guard and each con vict-so thought the father, whose feet seemed chained to the floor and whose face was whiter than the dead. One of the guards could have touched a button and signaled the engineer to shut off steam, but he did not move a hand. Either guard had a fair mark to shoot at, but their pistols were not lifted. Up and down-up and down went the ham mer, but suddenly the belt was thrown over on the loose pulley and the mass rested on the anviL It seemed to those who looked as if they had been looking through a mist -such a mist as rises from earth of a summer morning. It seemed to them that this mist thinned out-cleared away before the influence of a rising sun, and by and by they saw the child nestling on Big Tom's hairy breast, one hand smoothing his cheek, and seeming to come from a long dis tance off they heard her childish voice saying: "No, you wouldn't hurt Nellie-you wouldn't hurt Nellie! What makes you cry? Have you got a little girl too? Won't they let you go home to see your little girl?" And the convicts advanced step by step, and the guards crept forward, and loI Big Tom's tears were falling as he hugged the child more tightly and kiss ed her fair hair and roSY cheek. There was silence yet-silence as he walked to and fro and wept and sobbed and lifted the child till she could clasp her tiny arms about his neck and rest her cheek against his. Not a whisper among the convicts-not a move from father or mother or the guards. By and by Big Tom placed the child in its father's arms, wiped the tears from his eyes on the sleeve of his striped jacket, -and with a "God bless the little darlin, !" and a "Thank ye. sir!" he returned to his work, and the hammer was lifted and held in waiting for the hot iron to be placed on the anvil beneath. The guards motioned for the other convicts to go back to their benches and forges, and a minute later the visitors had gone and work was in full blast. The long expected outbreak had come and gone. For s0 seconds Big Tom had felt such a raging hate in his soul that he was transformed Into a human devil The child had smiled into his burning eyes-her soft touch had lulled him her words had brought back his reason. Was he punished? No! A year later he was pardoned, and today another fair haired, blue eyed, smiling child puts her arms about his neck and says: "You are such a great, big papa, but you wouldn't never hurt nobody, would you?"-Detroit Free Press. A Gent--manly 'orfsion. A city man was lately asked to recom mend a nice, gentlemanly profession in which a quick fortune could be made without risk. He replied that he knew of only two such professions, and they were both rather hard to get into. They were the professions of KamR million aire and American railroad reorganiZer. The Kaffir millionaire is not entirely unknown to our readers, but perhaps th ar not sowell acquainted with the ri reorganiser. His native habitat is New York, and he is only to be seen in Lndon as abird of passage. He may honor us with his company for de days when on his way to a tjvera on the upper Nile b Iud b n himself too bj'I e were to rc nize such aj~lng as business when7 "had onlyd'n over for a short holiday.' His wor& here is 8one vicariously througb sympathetic agents or public spirifed committees. He has also comn mittees in New'Zork, and nowadays he finds It necessary to have syndicates and underwriters as well. A playful professional fiction assumes that these committees hay> been electe4 by the reorganised bond and stock hold ers to protect their interests. Another plasant illusion gives the syndicates and the underwriters credit for stepping into the deadly breach to save the reor ganization scheme from imminent periL. And they have to be paid accordingly, or, in professional phraseology, "come penated. "---Saturday Review, Greely and Greeley. "Do you know, " said Representative Aldrich of Chicago, "meeting Genera] Greely recently reminds me of a day at the World's fair, when we all stood with open mouth wonderment and in terest, looking upon that scene, so graph ically illustrated, of Greely and his lit te band of surviving explorers strug gling with death and worse. At the same time we were listening with sad ness to the eloquent recital which wasn given to groups of visitors every few moments by the attendant, when sud denly, during a pause in the proceed ings, an old granger-that was his ap pearance-broke out feelingly, 'I allus thought it was a shama that Greely wa'n't elected president and said so to the Grant crowd to hum at the time.' -Washington Post. STEVENSON'S MODESTY. The Novelist's Opinion of Himself as Eu pressed In Ris Letter. There is one passage in Louis Steven son's correspondence which' it would have been a thousand pities to miss. So much nonsense has been written about Stevenson's work, he was made the vic tim while he lived of such an extrava gant system of puf~ng, that those who did rot know him were almost inevita bly forced to associate him with his flatterers and to believe that he must see himself with their eyes. It is clear that he did not. His most exacting critic can hardly have judged him more sternly than he judged himself. "For the nonce my skill deserts me, such asts, or was. It was avery lit te dose of inspiration, and a pretty lit tle trick of style, long lost, improved by the most heroic industry. So far I have managed to please the journalists. But I ani a fictitious article, and have long known it. I am read by journal Ists, by 'my fellow novelists, and by boys. With theseincipit et explicit my vogue. Good thing anyway, for it seems to have sold the edition. * ** I do not think it is possible to have fewer illu sions than I. I sometimes wish I had more. They are amusing. But I cannot take myself seriously as an artist. The limitations are so obvious." It is not often one finds a popular au thor writing in such a strain-an au thor, too, whom there seemed a general conspiracy among the reviewers to spoil. What a contrast it is to the following extract from the touching epilogue add ed to these letters by his editor and friend: "The fragment on which he wrought during the last month of his li'a gives to my mind, as it did to his own, for the first time the full measure of his powers, and if in the literature of ro mance there is to be found work more Imasterly, of more piercing human in sight or more concentrated imaginative vision and beauty, I do not know it." -Mamillan's Masrazina. HARDWARE! H. W. DURANT & Sill, S 7U MD, S. c(j. To Our Clarendon Friends: We are now prepared to offer lower prices tb an ever. Call or write for what you want. Our Stock is complete. We have added to our im.. mense stock of hardware a large line of PAINTS, OILS, ETC., at low figures. Harness, Saddles, Rubber and Belting, Leather. etc. Great bargains in Guns, Pistols, etc. Headquarter for Powder, Shot and Shells (loaded and empty.) Engine Supplies, Belting, etc. HEADQUARTERS FOR COOKING AND HEAYING STOVES (WARRANTED), AUCTION! 3RD CAR LOAD OF HORSES WILL BE SOLD AT THOMAS & BRAHAM'S STABLES Monday, October 19th. Farmers, here is a good cpportunity to get a good, well broke horse for a little money. Thomas & Bradham. 16 Sixteen to One. This is what is agitating the minds of the people of the country, but whether this wins or the gold banner floats on the breeze You are Compelled to Shoe Yourself, Wife and Children, and there is no place in the State where you can be better suited in shoes than in Sumter, and ~No place in Sumter can compete -With WALSH fr ,SHAW. Fow if you have 16 children or I it will pay you a.J all and see us. We make itasuySHE WALSH & SHAW The Sumter Shoe Store, Sumter, S. C. DAN VILLE, VA, One of the Leading Ware houses on the Largest Loose Leaf Market in the World. Has ample means and every facility for handling and selling tobacco to the best advantage. agrWe desire a share of your patrouage. Correspoudence solicited. Letters of inquiry promptly anisweredl. J. H. WILSON, M~anager. REFERENCE-"Border Grange Bank," Danville, Vi. AND STILL THEY COMIE! A Car Load Horses and Mules arrived oni Oct. 3rd, and a car load all Horses Oct. 6th, at the Feed and Sale Stables of HI. HARBY, Sumter. S. C., Oct. 7, 1896. POSITIONS G'IURANTEED. dotmnyin a tloal'io tion. Enter at any time. Cheap board. Send for free Illustrated catalogue. (Mentio this pape) DP uho' c Z -. Nashville, Tenn., ~3ocn temhe p Shorhaed.ewr ing n Telegon acts. eto Y he os tl ru *rcia n "f'pr gsesh*as wf t heaidi t h oland th Pcs patr ie iteogra h toteR . .,..olpla.Terrsint J. F.A K DIERaLuo, i uhro'ru,.nse~a St mAo kepn wihcno etuh inC.Any oer school. gint o n colMfwANN otNGo moTEe wr Itten aplctos. foC.okeern SH3E3PERD SUPP-.'3 CO.. 232 MEETING STREET, CHARLESTON S. C. State Agents for the Sale of Wholesa!A dealers in Stoves, Tinwares, House Furnishing Goods, Tin Plate, Sheet Iron, Tinners' Supplies. Galvanized Gutter and Rainwater Pipe in ten feet lengths. We Manufacture TOBACCO BARN FLUES and Deliver Them Freight Prepaid to Any Sta tion. L Dnn ri and giving weights Send for our Circular nd s izes 'of all the showing plans of T n F u s best .tyles.............. Percival Manufacturing Co. Doors, Sash and Blinds. 478 to 486 MEETING ST., CHARLESTON, S. C. * 1-J. VT. FOLSOIVI, B~lMTER : B . C. - A BIG LINE OF - Birthday, Wedding and Christmas Presents - WATCHES, DIAMONDS - Fine Sterling Silver Clocks, Optical Goods, Fine Knives, Scissors and Razors, Machine Needles and All repairing guaranteed. THlO!AS WILSON, H. E. JAQUES, JOHN WILSON, President. . Manager. Secretary and Treasurer. The Caroliia Grocery Compaly SUCCESSORS OF BOYD BROTHERS, Wholesale Grocers ald Conmission Merchants, No. 195 EAST BAY, cTOm-SER o . . . E. o. TO CONSUMERS OF LAGER BEER : The Patlmetto Brewing Company of Charleston, . C., have made arraLngements with the South Carolina State authorities, by which they arc enabled to fill orders from consn~mer for shipmeants of beer in any quantity at the following prices : Pints (patent stopper).. .................. 70c per dozen Four dozen pints in crate................ ............$2.80 per crate Eighth-keg.. .................................. ..... .. 12 Quarter-keg.................................................$2.25 Half-barrel.........................................,.,......$4.50 Exports, pints, ten dozen in barrel............................$9.00 It will be necessary for consumers or parties ordering to state that the~beer is for private cous~nmptioni. We offer special rates for these shipments. This beer is guar an tied pure, maade of the choicest hops and malt, and is recomimendied by the medica fraternity. Send to us for a trial order. The P'almetto Brewing Company, Charleston, S. C. THO. . OGAN, -DEALER IN Chia, Glassware, Lamps, Lamp Goods, Woodenware, Brooms, and Tinware. Oil and Gasoline Stoves, Fly Fans, Fly Traps, Ice Cream Churns, Fruit Jars and. Jelly Glasses. AGENT FOR THE HOME PRIDE COOKING STOVES AND RANGES. Big Bargains Always on the 5c. and 10c. Counters. Opera House, Opposite Court House, Surnter, S. C. HOTEL CALHOUN. Or: the American and European Plan. A DELIGHTFUL AND COMFORTABLE PLACE FOR COUNTRY VISITORS. BOW M AN & L EVIN, PROPRIETORS, King Street (Business Centre of City), Cxlaarleston, S- c-, Rates $2 and $3 Per Day. Subscribe to The Manning Times, $1.50 per Year. JoSEPH F. RHAMtE. *V 0. Divis. JOHN S. 'WILSON, A72TOR NEYS A 2 LA W, MANNING S. C. MANNI "G, S. C. LEVI BROTHERS HERE~WE ARE To tell the people of Clarendon that glib-tongued orators n keep the country in a state of agitation about the finan< problem, but what is more of interest to them now is to f the best place to buy goods cheap. Levi Brothers have a good reason to feel proud of th success in business and to. no people are they more indeb than to their old home folks in Clarendon. Goods are ch< and this season affords our farmers an opportunity of obta ing a fair price for cotton and a chance to buy goods at a I cotton basis price. We have for years been acknowledged as leaders in the spective lines that we handle any it is our purpose to cont ue leading. Dress Goods. This department has been selected with unusual care i our stock is not only varied and large, but a lady can. f the very latest fabrics with the necessary trimmings to mat Wash Goods. ThIere is no store in the city of Sumter that can excell in this line, and we defy any house in eastern Carolina show up a prettier line of prints. Cassineres and Jeans This line we carry in large quantities and can say w safety that no where south of Baltimore can you get a bet value for your money. Notions, Hosiery, &c. Every buvr is invited to exanine our line of Ladi, Misses' and Children's lose, Handkerchiefs. Bunlons, T( els. Doilies and other articles too numerous to mention. - Plaids and Brown. Goods, Long Oloths, and Sheeting This stock was bought when cotton was at its lowest pr and we took advantage of the depression, Olothins I-ats, and Oent Fuxirnishings. We can say without fear of successful contradiction that have the most complete line that can be found anywhere Trunks by the car load. Shoes, Shoes, Shoes. Every kind and style that is manufactured by first-cl factories is handled by us and we take a special interest this line. Groceries, Groceries. Our stock is up to date and our farmers can save money buying from us. Remember, we pay highest prices for cotton. Yours, &c., LEVI BROTHERS, Suimtez-, S. C New Store! New Store CHARLE'S F. NCFDDD Formerly of Ciarendon, Has opened up one of the largest Gene Mercantile stores in Sumter. GREAT CROWDS OF GOODS ARE ARRIING ON EVERY TRI A cordial welcome is extended to mg Cla endon friends. Will say more later. Yours, &c., Charles F. McFaddin.