Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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I EZRA BRIGGS' REVENGE By D. H. TALMADGE ...Copyright, lUUt, by T. C. McCluro... My frieud tho postmaster aud gen ral storekeeper of llaiieyvllle was sit ting on the front porch of his establish ment lazily putting small clouds o blue smoke into the air and blinkluj comfortably at his slippered feet which were resting against a post 01 a level with his face. I spoke to him and the feet slipped down with a thud "Howdy," he said. "Some warmish ain't It?" I nodded, wiping from my face tlx perspiration engendered by an ill ad vised walk of two utiles over a road unshaded from a merciless July sun The family at the farmhouse where from motives of economy, I was spending my vacation had gone to a funeral, and I had wearied of my own company. Wherefore, the afternoon being too hot for fishing, I had come to liarleyville to seek companionship. "I'd have went to Ike's funeral myself," said the storekeeper when I had explained thus to his understanding, "only the rest of the folks wanted to go, and I didn't like to close up the place on account of the postottice. I was down to Ike's when (he great damp breath blow his lamp out. I set up with him two or three nights along at the last." "He was a close friend of yours?" I asked. "Well," sighing explosively, "there ain't much doubt he was considerable close, and we was always friends, hint and me. I had a feeling of sympathy for him during the last years of his life, too?sort of an admiration for him, because ho took his medicine like a man. 'Tain t every male human that does." "Then lie had lomr been an invalid?" "No; that ain't the idea. Ho wasn't sick n groat while. The story datos back nigh on to twenty years, when him and Ezra Ilriggs was rivals fur the hand of Martha IVIford. 'I'was nip and tuck betw een 'cm. l>ut Ezra finally won the match. Ike was foul enough to get mad about it, and when his pa died, leaving among his other effects a mortgage on the old Ilriggs place where Ezra was living, his parents both being defunct, he foreclosed the thing and made a regular dickens of a bad mess. Ezra conhl have paid if he'd had another six months, but Ike wouldn't wait. That was the beginning of a mighty hard time for Ezra. Nothing he touched after that seemed to prosper. IHm and Martha?there T7t?sTft no jchlldren?cpme af lasi to live in a house not much better than a shanty down by the mill yonder, and the woman's love, so my wife and daughter say, sort of took sick and died. I've heard tell there ain't much female love that's proof against poverty long drawn out, and heaps of what passes for real honest affection leaks away through the wornout places in woman's clothes. "It's my opinion that Martha wasn't a real comfortable person to live with during the last two or three years of Ezra's life. I've got a suspicion, more or less founded on fact, that she was sourer than the dregs of vinegar and that her patience sort of shot oil" like a Gatling gun once it had bn'stcd. Ezra took sick finnllv with snninli?-ulv ,n? nili. er's disease of something or other that the doctors said was incurable, and lie didn't keep up after that, just poked around and groaned till the trouble knocked him down into bed. "lie kept his own counsel pretty much, but I've got a notion he was nursing n feeling of bitterness against Ike most of the time then. I said to myself 'twould be a blessing if the old death angel would only flop down and carry liim off before he done anything that would shock the community. "But I was worrying unduly. However much he may have been figuring on revenge, there wasn't no bloody violence mixed into Ins figuring. lie did give the community sort of a shock, though, such as 'twas. Most of us couldn't understand then why he done as he did, but it is as clear as molasses jp i LISV/h Cl^ Sold by Uni | f SOXJTH?RH :j TH!3 CHEAT KAIL < AY R<;\' S GR^AT CO?;? a CONVENIENTLY UNiKHG ALI. '?!t2 H V/. A. T'JRK. *""s*1 Fatten; r "t roflic Mir.*;? "i C-v.rr, S Y/AuMlHtfrjii, D. C | W. li. TAYLOE. Aas i Con l Pass. Aj V t to me now. "Tlio river yonder five years ago last March sot on a ripping tear owing to a sudden thaw, and among other things it done It swooped down across ; Ike's barnyard and carried ofT a Jot of J live stock and things, including Ike himself, who was trying to rescue n valuable tain he'd paid a big price for at the state fair. 1,lIo went along with the flood and never stopped till he stuck in the branches of a small tree about seventy " or eighty feet from shore near where ! ' Ezra's house stood. And as chance would have it Ezra heard him yelping for help and dragged himself out of " i the house, whore he was staying alone 1 I with his disease while Martha washed I dishes up to the hotel over at Bottom village. "Now, 'twould have been no more than natural for a man in Ezra's position to have done nothing but gloat over the situation. But Ezra didn't do nothing of the kind. He hustled ' around as fast as his disease would ' let him to save Ike before the tree 1 come unrooted. 1 ' "He got a long rope and tried to throw one end of it to Ike, but it fell about five feet "short every time, so he waded out into the water, though the | doctor had told him 'twould kill him , to get his feet wet. When Ike had tied one end of the ropo to himself 1 i;zr:i lien tne omer i'iih 10 u lencu post. I and the current done the rest. , "That wetting of his feet and legs j was the beginning of Ezra's finish. That night lie had a chill, and his dis | ease simply got rampageous. The doetor said 'twas hopeless the minute h* seen him and give liim a week to live, if he didn't drop off in the meantime. And Ike well, Ike come around penitent and humble as anything the Old Testament ever produced, saying Ezra saved his life, for he couldn't swim a stroke, and asking if there wasn't anything lie could do to make amends to him. There wasn't, of course. The time had gone by for that. Hut Ike hung around the place clothed in figurative sackcloth and ashes most of the time till Ezra passed along to the next world eight days later." It seemed to me rather a pretty story of the greatcr-love-hath-no-inau-thanthis sort and lioap-eoals-of-flre-upon-hishead sort, and I said as much to the* storekeeper. "Shucks! That wasn't Ezra's revenge at all, though I thought it was till I learned different. Ezra was simply I saving Ike for the torture; that was J all. Two days before ho died ho sent for me, and he says, with a shivery chuckle, when he'd sent the others out of the room: "Old friend, I've got to tell somebody this, and I've chose you. It'll l>e easier dying if I know that PC~ienouy"~aIi-.'" knows how I got even with that cuss. I've forgive him and all that; but, say,' and he drew me down closer to him, 'I've made him and Martha promise solemnly, with their hands touching mine, that they'll get married as soon as decent, and, oh, glory, won't she just knock tlie plaster oil of him!' lie was chuckling hard when I left him, and I reckon he died chuckling. My wife said he looked real peaceful and contented and satisfied and sort of natural in his coffin." "And Ike?" I asked after a short interval, during which the storekeeper's n-Mi'u 111min a uisianr nimop wnore white stones gleamed in the sunshine. Once more he sighed, more softly this time. "Poor Ike!" he murmured. "I never see a man who seemed so glad to die as hint." More TIiiiii They Claimed. "Say," said the irate victim, "you advertised that the house was live minutes' walk from the station." "WellV" replied the agent. "Why, it's nearly thirty minutes!" "Ah, then, as we said farther on in the advertisement, it is more than we claimed." Chancrcd Ilia Mind. "I thought it was a case of love at first sight." "It was, hut he concluded that second sight was best."?Brooklyn Life. Tlio Penalty. "Iii your bachelors' club what is the penalty for marrying?" "Marriage."?Town Topics. IOUS C& CONSTIPATED I to men look blue, g ickly change to rosy hue, P Damons Pills their work do do n on Drug Co. ^ Jim- W*' ^ ^ ^ gg/iriilfc i^^s^j^-sksgaa^ 'ulway u mjn the i g tr-; houch a j best VESTi- | **?>* buif trains i ""' ' ' and have the j 1&kss&* best dining j . ? car service rl or.!, Atlanta, Ca. B J 1 I t ' ) IIBLACK- I DRAUGHTI {stock ?"d | "poultry! MEDICINEl Stock and poultry have few IM troubles which are not bowel and fj liver irregularities. it lack- fl Draught Stock and Poultry Medi- K cine is a bowel and liver remedy Kg for stock. It puts the organs of M digestion in a perfect condition. Kg Prominent American breeders ami M farmers keep their herds and flocks 13 healthy by giving them an occa- B sional doseot Black-Draught Stock H and Poultry Medicine in their N food. Any stock raiser may buy a U 25-cent half-pound air-tight can H of tliis medicine from his dealer 11 and keep his stock in vigorous Ig health for weeks. Dealers gener- R ally keep Black-Draught Stock and i Poultry Medicine. If yours does P3| not. send '35 cents for a sample H can to the manufacturers. The Km Chattanooga Medicine Co., Chat- Bf tanooga, Tenn. . B Rochkllb. Oa? Jan. 30,1902. Bj Black-Draught Stock and Poultry IS Medicine is the best I ever t ried. Our stock was looking bad when you sent BJ me the medicine and now they are D getting so fine. They aro looking 30 Kg Poetry nntl Science. Poetry has perhaps no place in the exact sciences, partly because exactness is incompatible with poetic license, partly because of the unalterable tendency of the poet to get things wrong. A. curious example of this was noticed In a lecture at the Camera club by Mr. Duncan on cuttlefishes. The modern cuttlefish is a descendant of the fossil bclcmnlte, bnt the only descendant of tl^e coeval ammonite is the paper nautilus. Better "known is the Portuguese man-of-war, with which the paper nautilus is sometimes confused and which is really allied with the bclcmnitc group, because, while its shell appears external, it is not really so. The poets Pope, Byron and James Montgomery all easily fell into the error, and Pope's well known lines in the "Essay on Man"? Learn of the little nautilus to sail. Spread the thin oar and catch the driving Sale?' ' v embody a wrong description of this very interesting survival. Pope believed, with many other people, that the little nautilus comes to* the surface keel downward and spreads some Ucshy oval and ciliary expansions lii the form of two sails and six little,.oars. Bat it does nothing of the kind. Tito two little oval expansions?the sails^-are ucv it raiseu at ail, but always tightly clasp the shell. They form; in fact, part of the shell. Moreover,., the nautilus comes to the surface upside down, if we may so express Its position.? London Post. Nohe an a Curative A sent. The Chinese doctor sets up a terrible racket when called to treat the sick. This is supposed to drive evil spirits away, and it unquestionably acts well in a great many cases. Civilization demands rest and quiet. All noise is barred from the sickroom. The Chinese have demonstrated unknowingly a great psychological or psychapatliologlcal fact. A patient of mine had received the last rites of the church, the pulse had ceased at the wrist and he had sunk into that coma which precedes death. Some one in the next house struck up the "Anvil Chorus" from "11 Trovatore." 1 was very much annoyed and distressed and tried to stop it. Suddenly the pulsation at the wrist began again, the patient gradually opened his eyes, motioned to his sister. She bent low. and he whispered in her ear, "To dum to dea; that is my favorite tune." We roused him, fed him, and today, ten years after the event, he weighs Jto pounds. The therapeutics of vibration or noise is yet to l^e written. So I have discovered that anything that can arouse the subconscious, subliminal self will cure my patient when all drugs fail, and noise is a very cheap agent.?Medical Brief. | Deer him J Sleep. Deer reverse the apparent order of nature, for they sleep in the daytime and feed at night. How much sleep they do take is a matter of contention even among experienced stalkers. Some say little, others much. On the whole, we are inclined to agree with the for- | mer, for it has to be remembered that they chew the cud when lying down. Two most experienced and observant foresters, the one in Argyllshire and the other in Aberdeenshire, thus gave their opinions: "Deej^sleep or rest from hi ? ? uuuuv ivj ui j i si. 111. 10 -i p. m," "j)eer sleep from noon to 5 p. m." It is 110 uneoiumon occurrence to come on deer asleep. A stalker in tlie Hlackmount lind tlie rare experience I of coming upon a parcel of seven stags, all sound asleep. A herd was seen to move in (Jlenfeshie, hut one stag remained behind, lying motionless. On a careful approach he was found to be asleep. Perhaps, however, the oddest occurrence of tills nature happened In Rraemore, when a stalking party on going up to the stag which hail Just been shot found a three-year-old close to It fast asleep. In fact, it is by no means rare to get within a yard or i two ol a sleeping deer.?Scottish Field. 1 DRU3ILLA S | I GARDEN | St By TEMPLE BAILEY $( Copyright, 1903, by T. C. McClurt J|j / (, j> ??MJHJ>'3?< j> ,g? i^?t 3?4><9>;i,*5?,?>'2,<?"5,<S,'$wi't The garden was really only a box on the lire escape, but there were pansies In It In the spring, and Inter a tiny rosebush bloomed. Then geraniums held full sway until winter, when Drusllla took the box Into the house and raised a few pale violets. Every morning Drusilla picked off the withered blossoms, and in the evening she watered her plants, for Drusilla was busy all day, polishing and tiling the nails of the patrons of the manicure establishment In which she worked. When a typewriter was llrst placed at t?ie window of the big office opposite the fifth lloor of the tenement in which Drusilla lived and a dark young man seated himself in front of it the young girl watched the installation over the heads of her purple pansies. But when the young man looked across and smiled Drusilla stepped over her threshold and shut the door with n slam. "Impertinence!" she ejaculated in the dimness of l\cr room, but her lips smiled in answer to the look that the yoong man had given her. But the'blossoms cried out for water, and presently Brasilia's fair head, adorned with a porky black velvet bow, bent over the pansies. The hands of the young man remained suspended over the keys. Then he rose and walked to the window, but Drusilla picked o(T some dried leaves and brought out an infinitesimal watering pot. She made a cool picture in her white shirt waist. 'A little wliMT of damp earth blew across, cooling tlio heated atmosphere. The evening hour grew to be an itn portant one to Drusilla, for slie arrived home at 0, and the dark young man did not leave until 7. She sat up late nights to finish a certain blue lawn that had. a train that trailed over the iron steps of the fire escape, to the further undoing of the Infatuated young man over the way. She hummed little tunes that caused the complete cessation of the "clickety-click-cliek" of the machine opposite. But still she kept her eyes to herself, for Drusilla had a full sense of her dignity as a working woman. There were certain conventions that could not be dispensed with in her circle, nnd one of these was the formal Introduction. "He's a dear," she confided to Mazle Dunn as" the two girls arranged their little trays and got out their shining instruments and the pink powder and creams. "But I'm not going to let 1dm think I'm easy." Willi which rather inelegant summing up of the ease Drusilla showed that she was a true conqueror of men. So for many weeks Juliet on her balcony remained cold, while Romeo at the typewriter sighed in vain. lie threw sniall balls of paper in among the pansies, and Drusilla brushed them calmly into a neat little dustpan, but when the dark young man had gone she picked them out carefully and read the fervid messages: "You are uiy pansy blossom." "There's only one girl in the world for me." Only once, however, did she condescend to an exchange of civilities.* On a certain damp morning the young man coughed. That night he coughed again. Drusilla was worried. Filially she retired into the obscure recesses of her room. When she reappeared she had a bottle in her hand. She set it on the fire escape shelf. In huge letters on the label was the admonition: "For Coughs Take Spear's Specific." Then before the young man could nod enthusiastic response she whisked j back into her room, leaving him alone j with her suggested remedy. I The next morning n similar bottle ' adorned the young man's desk, and he ( took a dose conspicuously, standing close to the window while he measured It into a spoon. Itut the cougl^oontinued, and the next day Drusilla wrote on a slip of paper: "Shut your window." The young man clicked off something rapidly on his machine and planted his reply carefully on the ledge: "I would rather die." "Well, he is devoted," said Mazle Dunn, "if he won't shut a window he- j tween you. But maybe if you talked I to him you might get him to he enrefill of himself." Don't Have an ing D I We are reo< I supplies, and h Don't pay 25c p< by parties who will be put in. will guarantee Bailey Lumb /' -~?s-DR. I: M m -PENT Crown and Bridge Work a 8r>?nialtv. "I guess I ant not responsible If lio In a fool." w as l?nuUI?'? sharp coinuiont as ahe soaked Itor linger tip* In warm water preparatory to giving them a treatment. Hut that day the sun cauio out, the dry, soft air of the spring was like balsam, and the cough stopped. So stopped also the exchange of courtesies, and the young man sighed for illness or worse if It won Id only bring a look of warmth to his lady's eyes. And worse came. It happened one day at half past fl. Dritsilla's shade was down, but the dark young man knew that she was In her room, for once her pink tipped tingel's had adjusted the curtain and a savory odor told of her supper cooking. "Clickety-ellck-click," went the typewriter. and then suddenly "Clnngelang." deadened by its distance to t the fifth floor, came the ring of the lire engine bells. The dark young man loaned out. Far below hir.i be saw great crowds gather- . Ing. The smoke floated up from the putting engines. Then all at once lie caught iris breath sharply. The win- 1 dows of the third floor of the tenement were lighted with a golden glow, gr^w- I ing rodder as ho looked. . The smoke poured out and joined the | smoke of the engines, while "the black masses drifted up the tire escape and over the blooming little garden. The young man shouted hoarsely. "Von," be began. What should be c:rtl lier? lie bad never heard lier name. "Young lady, little girl!" lie shrieked. But there was utter silence across the way. Then ho began to cough. "Help!" lie gurgled. "Help!" This brought Drusilla, in a pink wrapper, with a little frying pan in lier hand. She opened the door and looked out anxiously. ".What is itV" she demanded, coming to the railing. , ,,, , , , ,, I - i.ook: suomcu xne young man. Already tlic flumes were working up. Firemen were crawling up ladders like flies, and shrieks ennie from the people within. "Hun down; run down," ordered the young man. "It's the only way to save your life. Down the lire escape. Go at once," he continued peremptorily as Drusilla wavered. So down she fluttered, frying pan artfl all, looking like a pink blossom as she grew smaller in the distance. Then the young man, watching her, sajv her turn and come back. As she reached the floor where the flames were raging she swerved aside and ran desperately up the steps. "My gardeu, my garden!" she gasped as she saw the terror In his face. "I couldn't leave it to burn-." Hut the young man did not stop to hear the end. Like a madman he ran i to the elevator. Then he sped to the street and began the climb toward Drusilla. Far above him she was staggering with her henvy burden, half blinded by the smoke. At the fatal third floor she stopped. Across the iron lire escape swept waves of flame. Two firemen just below, unconscious of the girl above them, were trying to turn a stream of water on a wlrfdow. The noise was deafening. The dark young man shouted frantically, and at last his voice reached them. "Turn it this way; turn it this way!" iiui uiey miff me inoiion 01 ins mum and the pink gowned girl above thciu and comprehended. As the water played for a moment over the blistering iron the dark young man plunged through and dragged lJrusilla to safety. They were all drenched?Drusilla and her rescuer and the little garden. When they reached the street the dark young man led Drusilla to u socluded niche in the doorwaj* of the big ottiee building. All about them raged the excitement of a terrible catastrophe, and Drusilla, safe in the little haven, quiet-1 ly proceeded to faint away. The dark young mun caught her in his arms and mopped her face with his wet handkerchief. Then she opened her eyes and saw the informality of his nttltudn and blushed. "We haven't been introduced," she reproached faintly, but she did not draw away from him. "As if that mattered," said the blissful dark young man. y Connections M TT_i.fl IT.- f> one uuiii i oil c eiving a large stocli ave employed an ex sr foot for having corn will be gone, when We are in the busine all work. er and Manufi . 11 AIR,-ft*Office Bank Building Union, 8. 0 # FlnMlo Mnrl?Ie. In one account of Itomc .the aufnoc mentions live or six Blabs of elastic marble as being In the possession of the Prince ltorgliese. Being set on en?l they beml backward and forward. When laid horizontally nnd raised at end they form a curve. If placed on a tablo nnd a ploce of wood or any, other substance Is laid under them they fall Into a kind of curve, each end touching the table. The Abbe Fortls was told that they were dug up near the town of Mondrngon, In the king' dom of Naples. The grain Is like that of line Carrara marble or perhaps of the tlnest Greek. They seem to have suffered some attack of fire. A slab of marble similar In every respect to those described nnd highly polished has been exhibited for years at the British museum. M. Fleuvlan de Belvne sue* ceeded in making common granular limestone, a granular quartz, completely fiqxiblc by exposing It to a certain degree of heat. In Lincoln cathedra!, England, there Is an arch built of white marble which is quite elastic, yielding to a heavy tread and returning or rebounding to its original position on true clastic principles. The Top Hat. Tall bats, "pcarking up like the spire of a steeple a quarter of a yard a'bove the crownc," as a sixteenth century writer describes them, were known In the time of Elizabeth, and the Purltans affected them until they merged Into the old faslifoncd beaver of our great-grandfathers' days. Top hats of silk appeared first in Florence about 1300, nnd twenty years later silk hats with felt bodies were Introduced Jnto England. . . About 1840 the French silk hat was placed on the market and at once adopted in the familiar "chimney potf* shape. There were several varieties of it, such as the Welllngtou hat, with the yeoman crown; the Anglcsea hnt, bell shaped at the ton. and the D'Orsnv but, with ribbed silk binding and a big bow. The color also varied. Thus the Earl of Hurrington started a craze for green top hats by wearing one in his garden with the idea of not frightening the birds. He also tested his silk hats by standing upon them. The top hat, however, was never so favored ? by any great personage as to account for its general adoption.?London Answers. Two Convincing Reasons. Lord Peterborough, who lived In the reign of Queen Anne, was very frolicsome, and one day, seeing from his carriage a dancing master with pearl col orcd stockings lightly stepping over the broad stones and picking his way in extremely dirty weather, he alighted and ran after him with drawn sword in order to drive him into the mud, but into which he of course followed himself. This nobleman was once taken for the Duke of Marlborough and was mobbed in consequence. The duke was then In disgrace with the people, and Lord Peterborough was about to be roughly handled. Turning to them, he said: "Gentlemen, I can convince you by two reasons that I am not the Duke of Marlborough. In the first place, I have only 5 guineas in my pocket, and in the second they are heartily at your service." Preferred Arreat. A thief broke Into n largo mansion early in the morning and found himself in the music room. Hearing footsteps approaching, he hid behind a screen. From. 7 to 8 o'clock the oldest daughter had a lesson on the piano. From 8 to 9 o'clock the second daughter took a singing lesson. From 9 to 10 o'clock the eldest son had a violin lesson. From 10 to 11 o'clock the other son took a lesson on the (lute. At 11 o'clock all the brothers and sisters assembled arrd studied an ear splitting piece for piano, violin, flute and VOIUC, The thief staggered out from behind the screen at half past 11 and, falling at their feet, cried, "For mercy's sake have me arrested, but stop!" ade or PlumbLee Us. : o'f plumbing Dert illumhftr. flections made the plumbing ss to stay and jcturing Co. , ^ - ?