How to Walk.
When a girl walks she should be trained to hold her shoulders well back and to keep her arms close to her body. The chest will then be thrown out, not form an inward curve, and the head must be held up fearlessly. Some women go through life with the head a little forward reminding one of nothing so much as an inquisitive tortoise out on a voyage of discovery.
The foot should be placed on the ground on the ball first, not on the heel or quite flat. The latter way robs one of all grace, and to put the heel first is too ungainly for words. It is just as ugly to mince along on the toes; it looks as though the ground was overheated and not to be trodden on. Even when climbing a hill or mounting the rather dingy staircase of town-built houses and flats, the head should be held up and not drooped as though you were searching for a lost nickel.
(Original source unknown.) Printed in the Lafayette Advertiser on February 6, 1897.
And what a pride to exclaim "I have the correct time, listen to the town clock." Where to put it? At the court house. It is well and proper that time and justice should be together, as it takes time to get justice, and justice is never on proper time. Let us have our clock. May our city fathers realize this great need and give us poor folks time and a correct one. Watches. Yes, we have them but this is individual time. We were not born selfish and consequently we want a clock that shall be common property. What say ye?
Lafayette Advertiser 2/5/1898.
LAGNIAPPE:
A darky in Natchez was boasting to a grocer of the cheapness of ten pounds of sugar he had purchased at a rival store. "Let me weigh the package," said the grocer. The darky assented, and it was found two pounds short. The colored gentleman looked perplexed for a moment, and then said: "Guess he didn't cheat dis' child much ; while he was gittin' the sugar I stole two pair ob shoes."
Lafayette Advertiser 2/7/1874:
The Railway gate-keeper of an important crossing not many miles from Boston is an inveterate checker player. A short time since he became so absorbed in a game with a friend that he took no note of time, until his visitor, hurriedly jumping to his feet, said "Cars coming ; better be moving, Jim." Glancing at the clock, Jim accepted the hopelessness of the situation, and as the train thundered by the open gates at forty miles an hour calmly remarked without rising from his seat, "That's the New York Express. It's your move, Mr. Jones. --
Boston Bulletin- reprinted in Laf. Adver. 2/7/1874:
Kisses on Interest.
father talking to his careless daughter, said: "I want to speak to you about your mother. It may be that you have not noticed a careworn look on her lately. Of course it has not been brought there by any action of yours, still it is your duty to chase it away. I want you to get up tomorrow morning and get the breakfast and when your mother comes and begins to express her surprise go right up to her and kiss her. You can't imagine how it will brighten her face. Besides you owe her a kiss or two. Away back you were a little girl and she kissed you when no one else was tempted by your fever tainted breath and swollen face. You were not as attractive then as now. And through those childish years of sunshine and shadow she was always ready to cure, by the magic of a mother's kiss, the dirty, chubby hands whenever they were injured in the first skirmishes with the rough world. And then the midnight kiss with which she routed so many bad dreams as she leaned over your restless pillow, have all been on interest these long, long years. The contrast would not be so marked. Her face has more wrinkles than yours and yet if you were sick that face would appear more beautiful than an angel's, as it hovered over you, watching every opportunity to administer to your comfort, and everyone of those wrinkles would seem to be bright wavelets of sunshine chasing each other over the dear face. She will leave you one of these days. These burdens, if not lifted from her shoulders, will break her down. Those rough hands which have done so many necessary things for you will be crossed upon her lifeless breast. Those neglected lips which gave you your first baby kiss will be forever closed and those ad, tired eyes will have to appreciate your mother; but it will be too late.
(Original source unknown.) In the Lafayette Advertiser 1/8/1905.
lagniappe: #1.
The Fable of the Carrion-Crows, and the "Old Black Hoss."
[From the Abbeville Idea.]
Some carrion-crows sitting on the limb of a big live oak, observed the "old black hoss" walking in a stagger-to-fall condition in Uncle Sam's pasture. They called in their friends of the flock and announced his death at daylight next morning. But the "old black hoss" didn't die. And the air was so full of buzzards that the sun looked as if eclipsed and the limbs of the live oak broke down for the weight of the innumerable buzzards; and yet in two days after, the "Old Black Hoss" actually died, which proves that the buzzard's instinct is perfect, though a little previous.
This fable truly teaches: The Lily Whites scented the death of the nigger Webre before he died and were after his carcass a little previous.
From the Abbeville Idea and in the Lafayette Gazette 2/8/1902.
Lagniappe: #2.
Gorman is Right
[From the N. O. States.]
It appears that some of our Democratic contemporaries have subjected Senator Gorman to rather harsh criticism because in discussing the Philippine bill the other day in the Senate he said: "There is no longer any question whether we shall remain in the islands. That seems to be fixed by decree of the American people."
The correctness of Senator Gorman's view of the matter is too plain to be disputed. In two presidential campaigns the Democratic party favored the relinquishment of the islands to the Filipinos and was decided, hence, it is evident that a vast majority of the American people are determined to hold the islands and exploit them to the full.
It is the nature of the Anglo Saxon when he gets possession of a thing to hold to it with a grim determination, and this the the case now with the Philippines. No matter what may be the differences as to the theory or right of this government retaining the islands, there is no disguising the fact that we are there and are going to stay for the very good reason that the American people do not intend to get out. In view of the fact that the Democratic party has twice made an issue of the question of the retention of the Philippines and was twice turned down by the country it is well for Democrats, as Senator Gorman has done to make up their minds to drop the issue and reconcile themselves to what is plainly an accomplished fact.
From the N. O. States and in the Lafayette Advertiser 2/8/1902.
LAGNIAPPE: #3.
Why Should Boys Be Good?
A brisk fight between two boys, at the foot of Griswold street, the other day, was interrupted by a citizen, who, after releasing one of them, made the other sit down on a barrel and be talked to.
"Now, then," he began, "it is a terrible thing for a boy like you to be conducting in this manner."
"I'd a licked him if you hadn't come up!" wailed the boy as he carefully wiped his scratched nose.
"Suppose you had. Do you want to be considered a dog? Why don't you try to be a good boy and get along peaceably with everybody? Suppose you had rolled off the wharf and been drowned ?"
"S'pose I hadn't too ! It's the good boys who get drowned !"
"What?"
"It's so, and I kin' prove it! I'll bet a dollar agin a cent that more Sunday Schools boys have been drowned this year than bad 'uns !"
The man reflected and did not dispute the assertion.
"And more run over by the cars," continued the boy.
No answer again.
"And more of 'em got sick and died ; and I'll bet I've got more money and have more fun and peanuts than any good boy in town !"
"But the good are rewarded," observed the man.
"So are the bad," replied the boy. "I'll be I make fifty cents before dark !"
"But the good are respected."
"So am I. I kin go up to the post office and borrow three dollars 'thout any security, and I'll bet five to ten you can't ! Come now, - put up your lucre !"
"My boy," sadly observed the man, "you must think of the future. Don't you want to be respected when you are a man ?"
"That's too fur ahead," was the lonesome reply. "If anybody thinks I'm going to be called a clothes-pin and a wheelbarrow and a hair brush by all the boys, and not go for 'em, jist for the sake of looking like an angel when I get to be a man, they is mistaken in the house, and you dasn't bet they ain't !"
And he dasn't.
(Source unknown) Printed in the Lafayette Advertiser 2/8/1879.
lagniappe:
NEGRO INDUSTRIAL COLONY.
They are trying to establish a negro industrial colony in New Jersey. Each member of the colony is to have a farm of his own. It is to be operated on the socialistic plan. The average negro is a socialist by instinct, but there is a strong possibility that his inherent fondness for chicken and other products of the farm will cause him to abuse of his privileges. At any rate, it will not be advisable for the colony to engage too extensively in the poultry business. Lafayette Gazette 2/9/1901.
lagniappe:
Tobacco Use.
In an experimental observation of 38 boys of all classes of society, and an average health, who had been using tobacco for periods ranging from two months to two years, 27 showed severe injury to the constitution and insufficient growth; 32 showed the existence of irregularity of the heart's action, disordered stomachs, cough and a craving for alcohol; 13 had intermittency of the pulse, and 1 had consumption. After they had abandoned the use of tobacco, within six months' time one half were free from all their former symptoms, and the remainder had recovered by the end of the year.
Lafayette Advertiser 2/9/1889.
lagniappe:
THE BROOKLYN STRIKE.
The Brooklyn strike has terminated, and has resulted -- in failure. It was a fight on the part of the street-car employees for more reasonable hours or more pay, on the part of the street-car magnates against organized labor to its will. It was not a question of money with the employers for they preferred losing $55,000 , as has been shown positively, to yielding to demands which would not involve one-fourth the amount. Moreover, they chose rather to call the power of the State costing the taxpayers $40,000 or $50,000 for protection rather than to submit to the dictation of their employers, as they put it. In other words, the capitalists take refuge behind the principle that a man has the right to pay what he chooses and it rests with the laborers to take it or leave it. The strikers, on the hand claim that a day's work should be paid for in value. In one respect the capitalists were right; but since conditions are such that labor now can not "leave it," but must accept what the employer offers, it becomes necessary that labor make some effort to secure full value for its work, since justice no longer dictates the course of the employer class. The strikers acted upon that basis; they had the sympathy of all good men ; but sympathy does not avail much before the bayonets of the State.
Original source unknown. In the Lafayette Gazette 2/9/1895.
lagniappe:
THE TOUGH.
The tough is a product peculiar to American city life. In other countries, of course, you will find the rough and the cad and the brutal coster, but it is only in an American city that you will find the tough. In other lands the man who comes nearest to the tough is but a subject, and a very poor one a that, and he is constantly more or less in dread of a superior governing power. In America is a citizen, or at least claims to be one, and he feels not only the equal of everybody else and he has a profound scorn and contempt for all process of law. The tough is a terror, and there is no reason why he should escape whipping. Arrest or imprisonment he fears not, but a good dose of the cat-o'-nine-tails might bring him to reflect on the error of his ways.
From the Boston Home Journal, printed in the Lafayette Advertiser on 2/9/1889.
contact vermilionville@yahoo.com
LAGNIAPPE:
Mercury Vapor Light.
Mercury-vapor lamps produce a light as is well known, that is greenish blue in color, and which produces an unpleasant effect, not inaptly described as "ghastly," on the faces of persons illuminated by it. This is because the spectrum of the light has no red in it. It has been proposed to add a red reflector or globe to correct this, but experiments show that the light is not changed in color, but obstructed.
Lafayette Advertiser 2/10/1894.
lagniappe:
Household Gods.
The ancient Greeks believed that the Penates were their gods who attended to the welfare and prosperity of the family. They were worshiped as household gods in every home. The household god of to-day is Dr. King's New Discovery. For consumption, coughs, colds and for all affections of Throat, Chest and Lungs it is invaluable. It has been tried for a quarter of a century and is guaranteed to cure, or money returned. No household should be without this good angel. It is pleasant to take and a safe and sure remedy for old and young. Free trial bottles at Wm. Clegg's drug store.
Lafayette Gazette -February - 1898.
lagniappe:
How Louisiana Girls Kiss.
The editor of the Rice Belt Journal has been writing on a mighty interesting subject, but being very modest he is content to take hearsay evidence and pass it on for what it is worth, as witnessed:
The Alexandria girl, tall and ruddy, kisses as though she was taking an impression in her chewing gum.
The Monroe girl kisses in Greek style, flavored with the brain bread. The Jennings girl kisses with as much care and preciseness as if she was selecting a new dress.
The kiss of a Crowley girl is as fiery as a taste of applejack. The little Lafayette girl's kiss is as soft as a peach and makes a fellow want another one.
A New Iberia girl's kiss is as rich and juicy as a dish of fresh gumbo file.
The kiss of a Welsh girl is said to be like eating sugar cane, the more you eat the more you want.
In Lake Charles you are met with genuine hospitality, the girls kiss as though they want you to stay.
The Opelousas girl is described as possessing the comprehensive qualities of the St. Landry man - she wants all she can get and gets all she can.
Remember this is only hearsay, I consequently cannot vouch for the truth of it. But we are from Missouri. From the Rice Belt Journal, printed in the Lafayette Advertiser 2/17/1904.
lagniappe:#2
Just a Valentine.
Away back in old England and Scotland, years ago, there was a quaint custom of observing Valentine's day. Old writers had it that on this day - a day in springtime - brides first choose their mates. At that time each young bachelor and maid of a village received by lot one of the opposite sex as a "valentine" for that year, much as partners for an evening are now given to those who attend dancing parties. The village sweethearts and swains regard this valentine business as a kind of mock betrothal, marked by polite attentions and giving presents. The custom doubtless led many bashful couples - who could not find tongues to tell their love - to make matches and marry. It was to a business-like proposition, and yielded fruit. Then sentimental fools stepped in and polled the custom by sending to those who did not want to get them gushing words of passion, soft as baby's gurgle, idiotic as a loon's cry to the moon, sad as lovesickness, and as unreasonable as a bleeding heart skewered on a merciless arrow that never could so have pierced the blood-pumping heart of a maiden fair whose sentiment and sense is in her brain. The abuse of the valentine is the anonymous sending of vulgar and brutal caricatures to selected victims, calculated to wound their feelings. It is a fact that no lady or gentleman ever purposely wounds the feelings of another human being. But here are others, not in the class of refinement, who take as much delight in giving pain to their fellow-creatures as cruel boys do in sticking pins through buzzing flies, to see them squirm. It is not a man's fault if he as crooked legs, a bald head, a Cyrano nose, a humped back or a glass eye. Heaven knows men want to be physically perfect. When they are not they know it, and the pain is theirs to bear in secret. If a woman is too fat or too thin, had fiery hair - or none she can call her own - has a turned-up nose, or a pug nose, or is older than young fools, she should not be insulted. She is a woman. If she happens to be an old maid, there is nothing funny about that. There are many gentle women legally tied toi brutish husbands who wish they might have been allowed to live in single blessedness. There are unmarried women who are the very salt of the earth, who give their lives to lessen the afflictions of others, who have given themselves to no man that they might be with and nurse aged parents or rear the children of brothers or sisters and not their own. There are those who have kissed a dear heart good-by, and sent a lover to fight for his country, and for that only news of a death came back to be remembered as long as the kiss can be be remembered. To be an old maid is sometimes to be the embodiment of faithful lovel to be a martyr to truth; to be possessed of a crown of glory; to be always one entitled to respect. And so Valentine day should be always a lover's day, and no occasion to wound sensitive feelings.
From the New Orleans Picayune and printed in the Lafayette Gazette 2/17/1900.
LAGNIAPPE:#3
A PRISON STORY.- A prisoner in a Missouri Penitentiary, too weak to work and who had the run of the yard, one day asked the warden if he could be allowed to cultivate a small corner in the enclosure. "What do you want to raise?"
"Cucumbers, sir."
"Why, you can't raise them here, the prisoners would steal them."
"No, sir," said the man firmly, "they will steal one of them."
"Well, go ahead," if any of the cucumbers are stolen, don't come to me with your complaints."
"You will never here from me on that score, sir."
The cucumbers were planted, watered, trained and cultivated, and an immense crop was the result. At last, however, as the fruit grew it disappeared, and the warden became convinced that the owner sold if for liquor produce, or some other contraband article. He directed the man to the warden, and finally he was detected in the act of carrying his cucumbers to the hospital and giving them to the poor fellows who in sickness craved them. Not one had been stolen.
Lafayette Advertiser 2/14/1874.
Lagniappe:Buffalo Bill on French Courtesy. In a letter to the Chicago Inter-Ocean, Buffalo Bill writes concerning French politeness:
"It is genuine courtesy, and while the forms of conduct may appear extravagant to some Americans, it seems to me that they are genuine expressions of regard.
"I cannot help feeling that the French are extremely hospitable and generous. That is, they do not condemn a man before he is proved guilty. They willingly take his word for what he is, and do what they can to promote his interests.
"A great deal has been written in the past about the Frenchman's fickleness, his love of display, etc. I have not found this judgement justified by my experience. I have been concerned here in giving an entertainment characteristic of certain features of American life. We do not parade in spangled clothing, we have no grand scenery, no spectacle of the ordinary kind; in fact, nothing has been done to give any artificial effect to our performance. We appear in exactly the same costume in which we rode about the plains, and every feature of our properties, to use a theatrical term, is of the plainest description. Do the Frenchmen dislike it, accustomed as they are to seeing a wealth of splendor in their public entertainments? Not at all. They are deeply impressed with the plain genuineness of the exhibition we give. In all our experience I have not known a people who came more repeatedly than the French to see our representation. They take pains to inform me and my associates of their appreciation of the homely features which we bring into the foreground.
"All this would seem to show that the French are anything but superficial in their observations. They care more for the plain, rough representation of the pioneer's life that for the gaudy glitter of the circus. Further than that, they correctly appreciate the individual features of the Wild West. They understand what we are about when we endeavor to illustrate the life on the plains of years ago, a manner of life, indeed, that has not yet entirely gone out of existence."
Lafayette Advertiser 2/15/1890.
lagniappe:
A Romantic Wedding. There was a romantic wedding in town Thursday and this is the way a lady friend told an Advertiser reporter how it happened.
While Miss Estelle Mouton was out visiting Thursday afternoon, she received a telephone message from her sister, Miss Ida, saying to come to the store as some one wanted to see her immediately. Before she had time to get to the store, Mr. Geo. Connif met her in a carriage (she was surprised to see him as he had been confined several days with lagrippe). On getting out of the carriage he said,
"Miss Estelle, are you a friend of mine?"
She replied, "Well, I guess I am."
He said, "Then get in this carriage and go with me."
Miss Estelle could not imagine what the excitement was. They drove to Mouton Sisters' store where Mr. Coniff introduced her to Miss Sanders of Jeanerette. Still Miss Estelle could not solve the mystery as she had never met this young lady before. When she saw how nervous and excited Miss Sanders looked, she thought perhaps there was a wedding on docket, but when she looked at Mr. Connif with beard all over his face, and wearing a sweater, still she wondered. When Miss Saunders kept asking,
"Is my hat on straight? Is my hair combed well? Must I wear gloves?"
Miss Estelle wondered more. On arriving at the church Miss Estelle peeped in and spied Rev. Harper and Mr. Henry Young. Turning to Mr. Coniff she said,
"What does this mean? Is Mr. Young to be married?"
He replied, "No."
Then, "Is it it -------"
"No; it is Reuben Brown who is going to marry Miss Sanders."
After the ceremony was performed the bridal party drove to Mouton Sisters' store, where they waited until time for the bride and groom to take the west bound train. While waiting Mr. Brown telegraphed to his parents and the bride's parents that they were married and gone on their wedding trip. Mr. Brown and Miss Sanders' wedding invitations for the second of March had already been printed and while Miss Sanders' parents were in New Orleans buying the remainder of trousseau, Mr. Brown called her and said that he was compelled to leave for an extended trip through the west and persuaded her to go with him and not wait for the second of March. She agreed and he left. That evening Miss Sanders left home with a small hand grip telling the servants that she had decided to go to Franklin on a short visit to her cousins. The only regret Miss Sanders had was that she had to
After the ceremony was performed the bridal party drove to Mouton Sisters' store, where they waited until time for the bride and groom to take the west bound train. While waiting Mr. Brown telegraphed to his parents and the bride's parents that they were married and gone on their wedding trip. Mr. Brown and Miss Sanders' wedding invitations for the second of March had already been printed and while Miss Sanders' parents were in New Orleans buying the remainder of trousseau, Mr. Brown called her and said that he was compelled to leave for an extended trip through the west and persuaded her to go with him and not wait for the second of March. She agreed and he left. That evening Miss Sanders left home with a small hand grip telling the servants that she had decided to go to Franklin on a short visit to her cousins. The only regret Miss Sanders had was that she had to leave her lovely trousseau behind her wear old clothes to keep from arousing the servants suspicions.
Lafayette Advertiser 2/15/1905.
lagniappe:
THE WORLD'S HOLIDAYS.
JULY 24, Pioneer day, is a holiday in Utah.
SUNDAY is a legal holiday in all the states.
MAY 10, is Memorial day in North Carolina, and is a holiday.
MARCH 4, is a legal holiday in New Orleans. It is called Firemen's day.
JULY 4, Independence day, is a legal holiday in all the states of the union.
APRIL 26, Memorial day, is observed in the states of Alabama and Georgia.
SEPTEMBER 9, Admission day, is observed as a legal holiday in California.
NOVEMBER 25, is Labor day in Louisiana and is a legal holiday in that state.
JUBILEES, in the Roman church were instituted by Pope Boniface VIII, in 1300.
IN many parts of rural England, Morris dances are still popular at Whitsuntide.
APRIL 21, the anniversary of the great battle of San Jacinto, is a TEXAN holiday.
FEBRUARY 6, Mardi Gras, has been made a holiday in Louisiana, and also in Alabama.
A MIDWINTER festival, was known and observed in Europe long before the Christmas era.
FEBRUARY 12, the birthday of President Lincoln, has been made a legal holiday in Illinois.
IN almost all countries the birthday of the reigning sovereign is regarded as a popular holiday.
JUNE 3, the birthday of Jefferson Davis, has been made a legal holiday in the State of Florida.
Original source unknown. In the Lafayette Gazette 2/16/1895.
THE WORLD'S HOLIDAYS.
JULY 24, Pioneer day, is a holiday in Utah.
SUNDAY is a legal holiday in all the states.
MAY 10, is Memorial day in North Carolina, and is a holiday.
MARCH 4, is a legal holiday in New Orleans. It is called Firemen's day.
JULY 4, Independence day, is a legal holiday in all the states of the union.
APRIL 26, Memorial day, is observed in the states of Alabama and Georgia.
SEPTEMBER 9, Admission day, is observed as a legal holiday in California.
NOVEMBER 25, is Labor day in Louisiana and is a legal holiday in that state.
JUBILEES, in the Roman church were instituted by Pope Boniface VIII, in 1300.
IN many parts of rural England, Morris dances are still popular at Whitsuntide.
APRIL 21, the anniversary of the great battle of San Jacinto, is a TEXAN holiday.
FEBRUARY 6, Mardi Gras, has been made a holiday in Louisiana, and also in Alabama.
A MIDWINTER festival, was known and observed in Europe long before the Christmas era.
FEBRUARY 12, the birthday of President Lincoln, has been made a legal holiday in Illinois.
IN almost all countries the birthday of the reigning sovereign is regarded as a popular holiday.
JUNE 3, the birthday of Jefferson Davis, has been made a legal holiday in the State of Florida.
Original source unknown. In the Lafayette Gazette 2/16/1895.
lagniappe:
Judge from Faraway Alaska Visits his Former Schoolmates in Lafayette.
A quite distinguished visitor spent several days in our town this week, in the person of Judge Kenneth M. Jackson, of Nome City, Alaska. Although Judge Jackson is scarcely thirty years of age, his wealth is already in the millions, and seems to be continually growing larger in the way that large capital does, notwithstanding that he provides for the enjoyments of life, both for himself and his friends, with a large and generous hand. His present visit to the United States is in the interest of one of the great mining corporations of the Klondike region for which he is attorney and counselor. He has just returned from Washington upon this business, and is now returning to Alaska by way of San Francisco, after having spent a few days here in a visit to his friends and former schoolmates, Rev. Mr. Wier, and President Stephens, of the Industrial Institute.
The story of Judge Jackson's brilliant and quickly won success is quite as remarkable and interesting as a fairy-tale, and all the more pleasing because true. Fourteen years ago he was a plodding, everyday kind of half-grown Texas boy, attending school at Keachi College in North Louisiana, then under the direction of T. N. Coleman. He won friends easily, and had many of them; but he did not figure noticeably as a student or a scholar. After leaving there, however, he studied law and was successfully admitted to the Texas bar. Seeing no outlook at home (in Falls county,) he struck out for Alaska on a venture - and has succeeded beyond his greatest expectations. During the past seven years he has won his way from almost poverty to twenty-five thousand dollars, then back again to nothing, and finally to more than a million - the same fellow who ten years before would have been delighted with four dollars and thirty cents! Such is the life in Alaska! Meanwhile he has developed in every way to the fullest stature of American manhood; -- standing six feet, two inches, weighing two hundred and twenty pounds, speaking a large, full, and logical sentence, and looking you square in the eye. He was appointed Probate Judge by President Cleveland, and since his retirement at the end of the Presidential term, he has devoted himself to law-practice and to his large mining interests in Alaska and Mexico.
The Judge expressed himself as being delighted with this visit to his old-time friends, whose incredulity regarding his great wealth and good fortune was easily satisfied and silenced with a number of handsome and expensive presents. We join his friends in hoping that his fortunes may continue to flourish and that the time of his next visit may not be far hence. Lafayette Gazette 2/16/1901.
What is Snow?
Snow is defined to be "the aqueous vapor of the atmosphere precipitated in a crystalline form, and falling to the earth in flakes, each flake consisting of a distinct crystal, or more commonly of combinations of separate crystals. The crystals belong to the hexagonal system, and are generally in the form of thin plates and long needles or spicule; by their different modes of union they present uncounted varieties of very beautiful figures. The whiteness of snow is due primarily to the large number of reflecting surfaces arising from the minuteness of the crystals. When sufficient pressure is applied, the slightly adhering crystals are brought into molecular contact, and the snow, losing its white color, assumes the form of ice. Precipitation take the form of snow when the temperature of the air at the earth's surface isn't near or below the freezing point and the flakes are larger the moister the air and the higher its temperature."
Snow is often called the "poor man's manure." The question whether snow is capable of affording to lands any of the elements of fertility, is one often asked; and in reply it may be said that it probably is. The atmosphere holds ammonia and some other nitrogenous product, which without doubt brought to the soil by snow flakes as well as by rain drops.
A reference to the following statistics on snow falls in this vicinity for the past eighteen years furnished to the States by Capt. Kerkam may possibly be of interest to the reader:
In 1877 and '78 an inappreciable amount fell, melting as it neared the ground; in '79 about an about an inch fell during a heavy sleet storm; in '80 in appreciable flurries; '81 a snow of something less than g inches; in '87 and 89 an inappreciable amount came down mixed with sleet; '92 and '93 inappreciable flurries.
Lafayette Advertiser 2/16/1895.
lagniappe:
Left His Wife Behind.
The Rounder saw a funny thing while down at Lafayette a few weeks ago. A bride and groom had come down on the Alexandria branch and changed cars to go to Houston. After the husband had put his wife on the car he got off and went to the lunch stand for a cigar. When he got on he stopped a short while in the smoker, and when he came into the next car where he supposed his new wife he couldn't find her. That man was crazy in two minutes.
"Where's my wife?" he shouted as he tore up and down the car, bringing the conductor in to see what was up. While he was trying to get a coherent reply an old fellow said he had seen her get off the car after the young man and had put her on at Lafayette, and he guessed she was left. Then the groom raved and demanded that the train go back after her. To this the conductor objected, and a committee of five men waited on the groom.
"Was it your wife that was left ?" inquired the spokesman.
"Yes."
"How long have you been married?"
"A week only and the train must back after her," he moaned.
"Well, I guess not," said the old fellow emphatically. "When you've been married as long as we have you won't want to inconvenience a whole trainload of passengers for a little thing like leaving your wife behind;" and the groom had to come on to Rayne and wait for his bride to catch up.
From the Crowley Signal and in the Lafayette Gazette of 2/17/1894.
lagniappe:
Aeronautical Spiders.
They Can Build Balloons and Make Journeys in the Air.
There is a certain species of spider which is moved by instinct at certain seasons of the year to travel, and to travel distances that no one would suspect him desirous of covering. What, then, is his methods? The spider select the right kind of day, one on which there is almost a calm in the air, rather one when there is just the slightest breeze.
He crawls up on a tree or a flagstaff, or a bullrush, or anything that will give him a free position. He then begins to emit the free end of a web from his filament bag, and this is so light and fresh that it floats away in the air and is carried along by the light breezes.
He may emit one hundred or two hundred yards, and every now and then he tries whether there is enough out and floating to buoy him if he lets go his grip on the tree or other elevation. By a nice system of calculation he ascertains just what will buoy him, and then, letting go of his hold, the filament is borne off by the wind, and he himself at the end of it, and in this way he can travel miles and miles.
If he finds himself coming near the water he pays out more of his cable, and in that way he obtains more floating filament to bear him up. If, on the contrary, he finds himself going too high he draws in his cable and descends by lessening the amount of floating filament.
If you anchor a pole in the body of water, leaving the pole above the surface, and put a spider upon it, he will exhibit marvelous intelligence by his plans to escape. At first he will spin a web and hang one end while he allows the other to float off in the wind, in the hope that it will strike some object.
Of course, this plan proves a failure, but the spider is not discouraged. He waits until the wind changes and then sends another silken strand floating off in another direction. Another failure is followed by several other similar attempts, until all the points of the compass have been tried.
But neither the resources nor reasoning power of the spider have been tried. He climbs to the top of the pole and energetically goes to work to construct a silken balloon. He has not hot air with which to inflate it, but he has the power of making it buoyant.
When he gets his balloon finished he does not go off on the mere supposition that it will carry him, as men often do, but he fastens it to a guy rope, the other end of which he attaches to the island pole upon which he is a prisoner. He then gets into his aerial vehicle while it is made fast, and tests it to see whether it is capable of bearing him away.
He often finds that he has made it too small, in which case he hauls it down, takes it all apart and constructs it on a larger and better plan. A spider has been seen to make three different balloons before he became satisfied with his experiment.
Then he will snap the guy rope and suspended from a filament, will sail away to land as gracefully and as supremely independent of his surroundings as could be imagined.
From the Toronto World and in the Lafayette Gazette of 2/17/1894.
lagniappe:
Don't Box Children's EarsThe Sanitary Era warns parents and teachers against boxing childrens' ears, saying:
"There ought to be a statute in every state severely punishing this practice of rather an infliction of blows on the head, so common in families or schools of inferior grade. A recent investion of medical records reveals fifty-one cases of injury to children from "boxing" or "cuffing" on the ear - in some cases chronic and ultimately resulting in fatal brain disease, deafness, insanity, etc. It would be impossible to discipline all offenders, but much might be done by special care in giving notice of the law and penalty through the newspapers and by circulars distributed by board of health inspectors, and by instructions to the police promptly to arrest parents or others seen cuffing children - as they may be seen at all hours of the day in certain regions of every city.
From Sanitary Era, and re-printed in the Lafayette Advertiser on 2/18/1888.
Lagniappe:
IF I WERE A BOY.
If I were a boy, says Bishop Vincent, with my man's wisdom, I should eat wholesome food and no other, and I should chew it well and never bolt it down. I should eat at regular hours even if I had to have four regular meals a day. I should never touch tobacco and chewing-gum ; never go once to bed without cleansing my teeth ; never sit up late at night unless a great emergency demanded it ; never linger one moment in the bed when the time came for getting up ; never fail every day to rub every part of my body with a wet towel, and then with a dry one ; never drink more than three or four teaspoonfuls of ice water at one time. All this takes will power, and that is all it does take.
If I were a boy I should keep my own secrets, except as I revealed to them to my father or mother, for the sake of securing their advice.
I should put no unclean thoughts, pictures, sights or stories in my memory or imagination, and no foul words on my tongue.
I should treat little folks kindly and not tease them ; show respect to servants, be tender toward the unfortunate - all thus I should strive to do for the sake of being a comfort to people a joy to my parents and help in the next century.
If I were a boy, I should play and romp, sing and shout, climb trees, explore caves, swim rivers, and be able to do all the manly things that belong to the manly sports, love and study nature ; study hard and with a will when the time came for study ; read the best literature - works of imagination, history, science and art, according to my taste and need ; get a good knowledge of English, try to speak accurately and pronounce distinctly ; spend my Sabbaths reverently ; try to practical every-day, upright business boy, help on every good cause, never make sport of sacred things, "use the world and not abuse it;" treat old men as fathers, "the younger men as brethren," "the older women as mothers, the younger sister with all purity;" and thus I would try to be a Christian gentleman, wholesome, sensible, cheerful, courteous.
Original source unknown. In the Lafayette Advertiser 2/18/1899.
LAGNIAPPE:
HOW A CAR GOT AWAY.
Engineers Jack West, Bill Gordon and Jack Sprung, yesterday, were talking about old times and the experience they had on different roads, when Jack told the following story:
"It is not necessary to give the name of the road on which I was running, but let me say it was for several miles as a crooked a piece of track as I ever traveled over. One day we started out with forty-seven freight cars, and when we reached our destination we had only forty-six. No trains had been switched, and the affair was a mystery. The conductor and his crew were fired, and for two days no one knew where the missing car was. On the second day the superintendent received a letter from the agent near the worst curve on the road, stating he had found the missing car lying in the ditch. We were going over the line at a pretty good rate of speed, and the train broke in two, the missing car jumped the track, the rear section overtook the first section, bumping into it with just force enough to jar the coupling pin, which had remained up when the train broke, into place, and we pulled into the station as we thought with a full train. From the Leadville Herald and Democrat and reprinted in the Lafayette Advertiser 2/21/1891.
LAGNIAPPE:
How a "Wicked Fraud" was put upon Mark Twain in Newark.
[From the Newark, {N. J.} Press.]
It is seldom pleasant to tell on one's self but sometimes it is a sort of relief to a man to make a sad confession. I wish to unburden my mind now, and yet I almost believe that I am moved to do it more because I long to bring censure upon another man than because I desire to pour blame upon my wounded heart. (I don't know what balm is, but I believe it is the correct expression to use in this connection - never having seen any balm.) You may remember that I lectured in Newark lately for the young gentlemen of the Claytonian Society ? I did, at any vote. During the afternoon of that day I was talking with one of the young gentlemen just referred to, and he said he had an uncle who, from some cause or other, seemed to have grown permanently bereft of all emotion. And with the tears in his eyes this young man said :
"Oh, if I could but do it! If you could but do it, all our families would bless you forevermore - for he is very dear to us. Oh, my benefactor, can you make him laugh ? can you bring soothing tears to those parched orbs."
I was profoundly moved. I said :
"My son, bring the old party around. I have got some jokes in that lecture that will make him laugh if there is any laugh in him - and if they miss fire I have got some others that'll make him cry or kill him, one or the other."
Then the young man blessed me, and wept on my neck, and blew his nose on my coat tail, and went after his uncle. He placed him in full view, in the second row of benches that night, and I began on him. I tried him with mild jokes; then with severe ones; I dosed him with bad jokes and riddled him with good ones ; I fired old stale old jokes into him, and peppered him fore and aft with red-hot new ones ; I warmed up to my work, and assaulted him on the right and left, in front and behind. I fumed and sweated, and charged and ranted, till I was horse and sick, and frantic and furious - but I never moved him once - I never started a smile or a tear ! Never a ghost of a smile, and never a suspicion of moisture ! I was astonished. I closed the lecture at last with one despairing shriek - with one wild burst of humor - and hurled a joke of supernatural atrocity full at him. It never phased him. Then I sat down bewildered and exhausted.
The President and of the society came up and bathed my head with cold water and said :
"What made you carry on so toward the last?"
I said : "I was trying to make that confounded old fool laugh, in the second row."
And he said : "Well, you were wasting your time - because he is deaf and dumb, and as blind as a badger."
Now was that any way for that old man's nephew to impose on a stranger and an orphan like me ? I simply ask you as a man and a brother, if that was any way for him to do?"
Lafayette Advertiser 2/20/1869.
lagniappe: #1
A Brilliant Legal Victory.
Our distinguished friend, Judge Edward Simon, has just won a victory which does him credit both as a lawyer and a man. Some two or three years ago John Read, a negro, was brought before the court of St. Martin for having committed a most heinous murder. As is usually the case the negro had no means to employ counsel and it devolved upon Judge Voorhies to appoint a lawyer who would be charitable enough to defend the wretched murderer. Judge Simon kindly consented to do his best for the friendless negro, who seemed, from all accounts, to have no other choice but an ignoble death upon the gallows. Judge Simon soon ascertained the fact that the negro's case was almost hopeless. He mustered up his old-time vigor, rolled up his sleeves and worked with an energy that would have done honor to a younger man. The case was tried, but despite the herculean efforts of the judge Read was condemned to death. Without hope of pecuniary reward Judge Simon appealed to the Supreme Court to give his client a new trial. On the ground of some irregularity in the lower court a new trial was granted and Read was tried for his life for the second time, but the proofs were against him and the jury again decreed that he should expiate his awful crime at the end of a rope. Judge Simon, however, didn't throw up the sponge. Though a little disfigured, as the sporting fraternity would say it, he stayed in the arena and got ready for another round. He again took his case to the Supreme Court where he pleaded in person and so well did he plead that the tribunal again ordered a new trial. Upon the third trial Judge Simon persuaded his client to plead guilty, feeling confident that the jury would take in consideration the fact that the prisoner had actually suffered death and the ends of justice would be accomplished if he were sent to the penitentiary for life. The jury so considered it and Read will escape the gallows.
The Gazette felicitates the judge upon this splendid legal victory which not only shows that our honored friend possesses in an eminent degree that sense of professionalism devotion to duty so often found among the disciples of Blackstone, but furnishes a most eloquent refutation of the charge that used to be made by the enemies of the South that the Southerner delighted in persecuting the negro, for here we have an old Southerner to the manor born who has spent his life in the study of the law and who gives his best efforts to save from the gallows a wretched and penniless negro. It is doubtful if the abolitionists who prated of their love for the African slaves would have done as much for this friendless brute as did this ex-slave-holder who was actuated solely by a sense of duty.
Lafayette Gazette 2/25/1899.
lagniappe: #2
NATURE TO THE RESCUE.
A young man visits his sweetheart. He soon perceives that she is becoming pale, feeble, lifeless, cross, fretful, and unfit for anything. She can't eat a hearty meal, she can't sleep soundly, she can't laugh heartily, she has become rather melancholy and dull, she has lost her brilliant wit and sparkling eye, she complains of headache, fluttering of the heart, etc. His visits soon become few and far between. Poor girl. A married gentleman's wife is always down with some complaint ; she growls and scolds and frets ; she can't walk up a hill, nor ascend a flight of steps ; she is suffering every day ; she is thin, weak and feeble, and half of the time unable to attend to her household duties. The husband fails in his duty. Poor woman. There is a remedy for all cases similar to the above, which assists nature in toning and building up the feeble and flagging energies, it imparts vitality, adds lustre to the eye, brilliancy to the intellect, gladdens the heart and restores women to strength and happiness. The remedy is known as ENGLISH FEMALE BITTERS which is making wonderful cures. Lafayette Advertiser 2/25/1882.
lagniappe:
TRANSPARENT SHAMS.
The Scaly Schemes of Republicans for Relieving the Treasury.
Some of our Republican friends are still trying to delude themselves into the belief that the action of congress was a proper response to the president's request to to do something to relieve the treasury. "The house," we are told "prepared and passed a bill to increase the revenues of the government, taking at once the sure way of affording the gold reserve protection."
Did it? On the republican theory the only trouble with the treasury was a lack of revenue. The Dingley bill was offered as a remedy. "It will add $40,000,000 to the revenues at once," said Mr. Dingley. Well, that is more than enough revenue required if the republican theory were correct. If the only trouble was lack of revenue, and this bill supplied that lack, what more legislation is necessary ?
The republicans, however, give the lie to their own professions by immediately proposing and passing through the house a bond bill for the very same purpose that the first bill was said to be for. But neither the increased tariff bill or the bond bill was said to be for. But neither the increased tariff bill nor the bond bill will accomplish the relief of the treasury. The one is a sham measure, designed to restore a portion of McKinley's under false pretenses. The other is an alleged improvement on the present law authorizing the issue of bonds to protect the gold reserve. But the prospect of the benefit that might result from a proper law authorizing a bond issue is swept away in advance by the provisions of the bill. In deference to the populist element in the republican party, the provision was inserted for the payment of the bonds in "coin," instead of in gold. Another clause forbids the retirement of the greenbacks. The former provision will prevent the sale of the bonds for a high price. The second keeps up the "endless chain."
The president has investigated and finds that there is no prospect of any helpful legislation whatever. The house is simply trifling with a growing situation; the senate, organized as it is, cannot be relied upon for anything. Therefore, the president will proceed to use the means that the law authorizes, to maintain the credit and integrity of this country, as he has done since March 4, 1894, when the republican administration handed over to him a bankrupt treasury. There will be an issue of bonds soon, we are told, under the law of 1875, to protect the gold reserve. The republican congress simply passes two sham measures to relieve the administration.
From the Utica Observer and in the Lafayette Gazette 2/29/1896.
SWISS PEASANTS.
The Bernese peasants are described by Sophia Kirk, in a paper in the Atlantic Monthly, as follows: They are a well-to-do race, on these peasants of the canton of Berne, sturdy and strong of aspect; but they have a reputation of being a little hard and close-fisted, and it must be acknowledged that prosperity has not lent them charm any more than the mercy, often followed by the vielmal, has imparted grace to the their speech. On Sunday the men walk among their acres like lords of the soil, with a rolling holiday gait, point-device in their attire, their immaculate shirt sleeves of a fullness suggestive of episcopal dignity. The beautiful peasant dress of the women appears in its completeness only on Sunday - the sleeves a marvel of starching, the velvet bodice caught with silver chains and edelweiss. The people cling to their customs as to their dialect and costume; they cannot be said to be spoiled by contact with the purse of the tourist, as is sometimes the case with the Swiss peasantry, for Zimmerwald is not yet a popular resort; nor are they tainted by city notions, for some of them have never so much as seen Berne, which is within two hours' walk. The local spirit is strongly conservative. The youth in one Bernese commune would court a girl of another district meets with a rude reception from her fellow-villagers, who consider their claims to her favor not only primary, but absolute. Landed property descends not to the eldest, but to the youngest son, saddled, however, with obligations which constitute an indemnity. Unfortunately, too, even in this region of stately fertile farms mortgages are not unknown, and usury takes its tithe as elsewhere. Drunkeness is found here to a degree unknown in other cantons, the tax on wine, which is not a Bernese product, having led to the distillation of brandy by the farmers. Recently, however, the Government has taken the distillation of spirits into its own hands. There are customs surviving in the canton which, framed in an age of less moral sensitiveness than our own, leave much to be desired in the matter of delicacy. But to judge fairly of such things one would need to have a knowledge of the language, and a closer acquaintance with the country than can be gained by the passing tourist. We can see the Bernese peasant in the novels of Jeremias Gotthelf than with our own eyes. Even industrial occupations and agricultural methods are not to be gauged by standards brought across the water. Again and again my New England partiality has welcomed some familiar trait in this Swiss farming scene, but beside the resemblance stands a difference of larger proportions, rendering comparison impossible.From the Atlantic Monthly and in the Lafayette Advertiser of 3/21/1891.
LAGNIAPPE:
IMMIGRATION INTO THE THE UNITED STATES.
Washington, March 17. - A paper has been prepared by Mr. Pratt, a member of the centennial staff, showing from the official statistics of immigration from 1869 to 1873, that the average increase of immigration into the United States for those four years was over a hundred thousand a year over that for any preceding period of four years, and was largely due to our representation of the national resources and the products of industry at the Paris exhibition in 1867, together with the information disseminated by the commission. The lowest estimate by statisticians and political economists upon the average value of immigration is $800 apiece to the country, so that the increase of immigration for those four years amounted to $320,000,000. It was predicted by Gen. Banks, Mr. Beckwith, S. B. Ruggles and others, that a great immigration would follow such an exhibit as we made. What, then, will be the effect of a full exhibition in 1877 of all our marvelous and varied resources. These immigrants are, many of them skilled farmers and artisans of the most thrifty nations of Europe, and every State of the South which makes, at the exhibition, a proper exhibit of agricultural and mineral wealth, will secure a share of this immigration, composed entirely of the white people.
Original source unknown. In the Lafayette Advertiser 3/21/1874.
LAGNIAPPE:
NEW ORLEANS LETTER.
From Walter Parker News Correspondent.
NEW MILLIONS INVESTED IN THE SOUTH.
New Orleans: - The formation of a syndicate with a cash capital of $2,000,000 to take over the holdings of the D. H. Holmes Company of New Orleans is one of the striking and direct results of the pending construction of the Panama Canal and forestalls the wave of commercial activity which has already set in on account of this stupendous international project. The announcement of the deal was confirmed by the fiscal agents of the new syndicate, the Hibernia Bank & Trust Co., and by the deal a concern nearly 100 years old passes into the hands of a group of New Orleans financiers who assert that every dollar invested is "home capital." Several of the men behind the deal are millionaires, among them leaders of the financial and cotton markets of the South. New Orleans is bidding on Panama construction, commissary and other supplies and the new $2,000,000 corporation will now become the largest institution of its kind in the South and on a parity with Attman, Wanamaker, Macy, Marshall Field and other immense houses of New York, Philadelphia and Chicago, be in position to enter the Panama West Indian and Southern States trade as against all eastern competition.
HOME SEEKERS FOR THE SOUTH.
New Orleans:- Following on the heels of the $2,000,000 Homes deal comes the announcement by the New Orleans Progressive Union that a call will be issued for a convention of Mayors of every town in Louisiana and Mississippi, to meet in New Orleans at an early date to discuss the question of turning the tide of immigration into the South through the New Orleans Gateway. This is the outcome of the successful effort made to establish at New Orleans a big Southern immigration station where the great overflow of homeseekers from European countries can be received and instead of being turned loose in New York, Boston and Philadelphia and other crowded coast, can be freed at once in the great agricultural sections of the country. And the purpose is to enlarge the movement so as to include Texas, Oklahoma and Indian Territory, Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, South and North Carolina and even Virginia, despite its proximity to New York. The site for the immigration station has been selected at Port Chalmette, just below the City, and the cost of its construction will be largely defrayed by the various trunk lines of railroad entering here. Actual source unknown. In the Lafayette Advertiser 3/22/1905.
LAGNIAPPE:
A Lafayette Citizen Complimented.
The bar of New Iberia at a meeting held at the close of the session of the Court of Appeals on March 17, passed the following resolutions, offered by Hon. Walter J. Burke, highly complimentary to Judge Julian Mouton of this place.
Whereas the adjournment of this session of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals of Louisiana in this parish brings to a close the relations of the bar of Iberia parish with the Hon. Julian J. Mouton.
And whereas these relations existing over a period of eight years have revealed to the members of this bar his righteousness of character in its application to his decisions, as well indeed has the bar learned to esteem him as sterling man and citizen:
Be it therefore moved, that as an expression of the sentiments of the bar of Iberia, appreciative of their relations with the Hon. Julian J. Mouton in the capacities recited, these presents be spread on the minutes of the Court.
Lafayette Advertiser 3/23/1904.
LAGNIAPPE:
THE PAY THEY GET.
GLASGOW ship builders receive 16 schilling a week and work fifty-four hours.
A SKILLFUL cigarmaker in Germany can make an average of $2.86 per week.
MANTUA-MAKERS, with skill and experience, can make $2 per week in Bavaria.
A PLUMBER in St. Petersburg is paid $12 per month with board, a baker, $9.00.
BOOKBINDERS in Edinburgh receive 24 schillings a week and work fifty-four hours.
AN Afghan shawlmaker earns 48 cents a day, and works from sunrise to sunset.
A LABORER in Syria pays $15 per year as rent and $9 taxes to the government.
SAXON firefighters are paid $238 per annum; the chief gets $856 and a house to live in.
CASHIERS in the stores of Smyrna, Turkey, receive and average salary of $14 per week.
FEMALE servants in the Azores "who have there own" receive $1.95 per month.
THE average weekly wages paid to female laborers of all classes in Germany is $2.17.
THE regular salary of the superintendent of a Cuban sugar plantation is $100 per month.
NATIVE laborers in Palestine work for 15 cents a day and pay all their own expenses.
WOMEN coal carriers at the Lisbon docks receive 30 cents a day; male coal carriers, 80 cents.
Original source unknown. In the Lafayette Advertiser 3/24/1894.
THE FLOOD.
Undoubtedly no effort to relieve the sufferers from the overflow of the Mississippi and its tributaries was ever so general as the movements that have been made for the relief of those who now huddle together upon some hill or remotely drift upon a raft without food, and see but their housetops above the waters. Relief comes from the federal government. State governments and from individuals. It is worthy of note that in addition to the much needed relief granted by Congress and the States, there are two enterprises of a private character which have, ere this, surely done great good in their errands of mercy. The St. Louis Globe-Democrat and the New Orleans Times-Democrat each fitted out a craft adapted for the purpose, loaded with food and medicines and sent them to seek for and relieve those sufferers. It is some consolation to know that the upper waters of the Mississippi are falling ; it is clear that the greatest volume of water has reached the gulf. There is still a great strain upon the levees of Vicksburg down and in many localities breaks are likely yet to occur before the pressure is removed. Lafayette Advertiser 3/25/1882.
LAGNIAPPE:
DREAMS.
From Popular Science Monthly.
Dreams are night thoughts, unchecked by the judgement and uncontrolled by the will. It is not true that we do not reason in dreams, that the exercise of the judgement is wholly suspended, and that the will is entirely powerless or ceases to act. These faculties are not altogether in abeyance, but they doze while the subordinate powers of the mind - those which play the part of the picture carriers and record finders - ransack the treasures of memory, and mingle together in the direct confusion old things and new.
Imagination is not active, but it remains just enough awake to supply the connecting links which give seeming continuity to those parts of the phantasmagoria which we chance to remember on recovering perfect self-consciousness, and which being remembered, we call "dreams." No one remembers more than one dream, unless he is aroused from sleep more than once. This experience has led to the inference that dreams only occur at the moment or in the act of waking. There are dreams which take place in the process of returning to consciousness; for example, those instantaneous scenes and spectacles which are suggested by the sound or feeling that rouses the dreamer ; but in result of a long and close study of the subject with a view to discover the nature of dreams and the laws of dreaming, for medical purposes, in connection with the treatment of sleeplessness. I am persuaded that dreams occur in the course of sleep and are wholly forgotten.
That they do not and can not take place in deep sleep is probable, because deep sleep is general sleep, and when this state prevails.
From Popular Science Monthly and in the Lafayette Advertiser 3/25/1899.
LAGNIAPPE:
THE DAUGHTER'S PART.
She Can Do Much Toward Making Home Life Ideally Pleasant.
One of the sweetest things a girl can do is to receive friends graciously, particularly at home. In one's own house a cordial manner is particularly fitting. Do not stand off in the middle of the room and bow coldly and formally to the friend who has called. Walk over to meet her, give her your hand and say pleasantly that you are very glad to see her again. Stiff, cold and formal ways of greeting acquaintances are not proper in a girl welcoming guests to her father's house.
A daughter's part is to assist her mother on every social occasion. The girl pours the tea in her mother's drawing room when friends drop in at five o'clock. Quite often, when no maid is present, she helps the guests to the sandwiches and the cakes which are served at 5 o'clock tea, and herself hands the cups and takes them from the guests who would like to be relieved.
Apart from and more important even than her manner to a guest who happens in for an hour or a day is the manner of a daughter to her father and mother. The father returns to his home after a wearying day at business. He is tired in body and mind. Coming back, he throws off care, he is joyous at the thought of the dear ones he will meet after hours of absence.
His young daughter, in a pretty gown, with the bloom and freshness only girlhood wears, should be ready to give him the attention he loves - the kiss, the cheery word - to help her mother and the rest in letting her father see how much he is loved at home. Men give up a great deal for their families - their time, their strength, the knowledge they have gained in life's experiences - they spend everything for their home's sake, and the home should pay its debt in much outspoken love.
From Harper's Round Table and in the Lafayette Advertiser of March 28th, 1896.
Lagniappe:
A SEMICOLON IN COURT
A Legal Treatise on Punctuation or a Changed Method Needed.
It appears that, if the matter has been correctly reported, the force of a law before the supreme court for construction depends upon a semicolon. That mark of punctuation may change the whole tenor of an important act in the legislature. It is not the first time that the semicolon has made trouble in laws. A semicolon in two or three sections of tariff laws has led to decisions hostile to the revenue and to home industries. It was some trouble of that nature in the Morill tariff act which gave the tin-plate industry to Great Britain. It was a semicolon which caused thousands to be refunded to the importers of women's hat trimmings, though the intent of those who passed the law was perfectly clear.
In these instances, and probably in the law of Indiana, over whose semicolon the supreme court is said to be cogitating, the trouble seems to arise from an inability to fix the function of the semicolon. In the rules for punctuation in the old Webster's spelling-book, the comma indicates "a pause long enough to count one," and the semicolon "a pause long enough to count two," the colon "three" and the period "four," with a fall of the voice. If those who have been writing rules for punctuating compositions had stopped there, we would not have had all this trouble, but these teachers have been going on making new rules for years until no one can undertake to follow them, but each punctuates according to his pleasure, rather than his familiarity with rules. Many writers have adopted the plan of punctuating as little as possible, leaving the reader to gather the meaning from the clearly constructed sentences, rather than from the interjection of commas and semicolons. Unfortunately, the verbosity and intricacy of the language and construction or lack of construction, in which statutes are written, renders punctuation necessary. This being the case, it seems that so much trouble comes from the indiscriminate use of punctuation marks that were there should be a legal treatise on that subject, defining the force of the different marks as they are scattered through the statutes.
If this cannot be done, why should not those who must construe the laws consider them with a view to ascertaining what was the design of the legislative bodies which enacted them? Why not have the judges take the laws without punctuation marks the except periods, and punctuate them to be construed so as to carry out the intent of the legislators who enacted them? - a fact which could be ascertained by inquiry if it was not declared in the titles of the acts themselves. Why make an indefinite semicolon, which an engrossing or enrolling clerk might substitute for a comma or some other punctuation mark, so important as to annul or change the meaning of the law? -
From the Indianapolis Journal and in the Lafayette Advertiser 3/28/1896.
LAGNIAPPE:
Ten Commandments.
The following commandments clipped from one of our exchanges should be a good advice to some of our people:
Thou shalt not go away from town to do any trading. nor thy son nor thy daughter.
Thou shalt do whatever lieth in thy power to promote and encourage the welfare of thine people.
Thou shalt spend thy earnings at home, that they may return from whence they come and give nourishment to such as may come after thee.
Thou shall patronize thy home merchants and thy home printer for yea, verily, doth not thy home printer spread over the land tidings of thy goodness that the people may patronize thee.
Thou shalt not ask credit, as goods cost money, and the merchant's brain is burdened with bills; his children clamour daily for bread and his wife abideth at home for lack of such raiment as adorned her sister. Blessed, yea, thrice blessed is the man who pays cash.
Thou shalt not suffer the vices of pride to overcome thee and if other towns entice thee, consent not. Thou mayest be deceived. Remember the fate of the calf that left its mother and followed a steer away from home and lost its supper.
Thou shalt not ask for reduced prices for thine "influence" for guile is in thine heart and the merchant readeth it like an open book; he laughs thee to scorn and shouteth to his clerk ha, ha.
Thou shall not ask printers to take two dollars for a three dollar job, because some other poor printer will do it for less money; the other printer may steal his stock and underpay his help; if thou trade with such as he thou art an accessory to his crime.
Thou shall cast thy vote in all municipal elections, for the man thou thinketh a suitable model for thy school children to follow after, and refrain from the association of all political grafters who are ready to mislead.
Thou shalt not bear false witness against the town wherein thou dwellest, but speak well of it to men, that thy home town and its home people may be proud of thee.
Original source unknown. In the Lafayette Advertiser 3/29/1905.
LAGNIAPPE:
EXPERIMENTS IN FLYING.
A German Has Made Successful Slides Down an Aerial Slope.
A bird's wings while it is flying perform two functions. They sustain its weight and they propel it. Human beings in trying to imitate the bird have been more successful in the former direction than in the latter. Such manipulations of wings as will drive a person forward, either by muscle or power from apparatus strapped to the body, may be learned eventually, or the future. Daedalus may rely upon some entirely separate device for propulsion and retain the wings, merely for support and balancing. In either case, all attempts to find out what can really be accomplished with these latter appliances possesses interest of scientists and the public. Herr Q. Lilienthal, of Steglitz (near Berlin), Germany, has been experimenting in this direction with contrivances that resemble great wings. In the brief description at hand no information is imparted concerning the material employed. But the wings had an expanse of fifteen square meters, or one hundred and sixty-five square feet. Herr Lilienthal's plan, according to the New York Tribune, was to find a broad roof, a hilltop or other convenient elevation run a few steps against the wind and then leap into the air. Horizontal impetus was thus acquired before he left terra firma. He was them able to slide downward at an angle of only 10 or 15 degrees from a horizontal, although it was in his power, by shifting the center of gravity relative to the center of existence, to change the inclination of the wings and descend more rapidly. No mention is made of his success in steering himself laterally. As the greater part of his weight was suspended below the wings, of course he kept right side up without difficulty. To lessen the atmospheric resistance, however he drew his legs up somewhat. While he was about it, one could wish that Herr Lilienthal had made a kite of himself and tried to see how long the wind would sustain him as one of long light wire, the other end of which was in the hands of three or four stout men, or securely anchored.
Original source unknown. In the Lafayette Advertiser of March 31st, 1894.
LAGNIAPPE:
"Getting the Mitten."
"The Boston Transcript" thus explains the phrase "getting the mitten": One hundred years ago gloves were unknown in the country towns. Mittens were knitted and worn in all families. If a young man going home from singing-school with the young girl of his choice holding her mittened hand to keep it from getting cold; and took the opportunity to urge his suit, if the offer proved acceptable, the hand would remain. If taken by surprise, an effort to withdraw the hand would leave the mitten. So the suiter would "get the mitten," but would not get the hand. The use of the word "muff," meaning a foolish, blundering person, also has an easy explanation; a stupid youth was said to be a "muff" because like the article of feminine wear called by that name, if he held a woman's hand without squeezing it! The sedate old times were not without their gallantries.
Original source unknown. In the Lafayette Advertiser 4/1/1893.
Lagniappe:
NOVELTIES FOR CYCLISTS.
A purple "bike" is nothing short of a proposal, for purple is the royal color and means "you are my queen." If the rim is yellow the meaning is "Au revoir, I'm off for a voyage."
Wheels in colored enamels are used as cuff buttons and two-inch wheel is used as a chatelaine for a watch. The watch is suspended by a couple of enameled handle-bars and the watch itself resembles a fairy "bike."
The up-to-date jeweler has seized upon the bicycle and in all its forms it is now presented to the public, which will buy it this Christmas wholesale. A code of signals has also been evolved with the enameled little bicycles worn as scarf-pins.
A small "bike" for a solitary individual means "I intend to remain a bachelor;" a two-inch tandem, "we're only flirting;" a line of four or five tiny scorchers, "you're a flirt;" while the presentation of a tiny tricycle is supposed to intimate that the recipient is out of the race, old, passe.
Bicycle clocks, bicycle paper weights and picture frames may be found on my lady's table, while her beautiful ivory toilet seat is a silver wheel on the back of each article instead of the customary monogram and her note-paper is stamped with a bicycle in her club colors.
The bicycle engagement bracelet is unique, the most fetching of the designs being the wheel-link bracelet. This is made of a series of tiny bicycle wheels fastened together with different jewels, the clasp being a tiny lantern with a gem for a light. An entire girdle is also made of these wheels, the rims profusely enameled and the hubs single jewels.
Original source unknown. In the Lafayette Advertiser 4/3/1897.
Lagniappe:
THE SLAVE TRADE STILL IN EXISTENCE.
There can scarcely be a remaining trace of the African export trade in negroes, even for the benefit of Brazil, and certainly Cuba is too much occupied in other matters to attend to the importation of slaves. There is no need now for a British and American coast to seize or to suppress slavers, and the judges and arbitrators who were appointed under the provisions of the treaty of 1862 with Great Britain held sinecures. But a recent report read at the annual meeting of the English Ladies' negroes' Friend Society, discloses some frightful details respecting the internal slave trading on the East Coast of Africa. A Mr. Menson, of the Island of Reunion, who has been engaged in promoting what is called "African emigration to the French Colonies," says that he lately saw a depot where 800 negroes were herded in an enclosure without food or cover ; many who were dying of hunger, were chained to already dead companions ; some of them were prevented from stirring by a forked stick of wood attached to their necks ; and others were chained together in parcels of twenty. Mr. F. Sautier, a German missionary says that "slave-trading is going on in Cordolon and Teggeie, and on a large scale in Galabat (neutral territory between Sennar and Abyssinia) where thousands of Gallas are sold and smuggled through the Egyptian territory of transported by the Red Sea." Recent letters of Dr. Livingstone confirm these stories. This infamous traffic in blacks is conducted by blacks, where the negro is not only his own master but of such other negroes as he can catch and sell. Meanwhile, other negroes, who are only a generation or two removed from such black barbarians, are engaged in making the laws for the government of whites in ten States of the Union, and the Anti Slavery Standard is engaged in the peaceful pursuit of collecting eleemosynary cold chickens and home-made cake.
Original source unknown. In the Lafayette Advertiser 4/3/1869.
Lagniappe:
Candle Lamps.
Now that invention and science have done their part, candle lamps are becoming not only ornaments, but necessary in well-conducted households. A very dainty idea is to have a brass photo-frame lighted from the back by a candle lamp at either side. The candle lamps are now made to look as oriental as possible, and the dainty little cases in olive greens, old yellows, moslem grays and Armenian reds are exceedingly attractive. These Arctic lamp have all the appearance of the candle itself, but are really but unbreakable compositions which hold the candles in place. Inside the case there is a strong spiral spring, which is pressed down into the smallest possible compass, when the candle is a new one, but as it gradually released pushes up the candle, which is thereby kept at the same level till the very last moment of its life.
From the St. Louis Republic and in the Lafayette Advertise 4/4/1896.
Lagniappe:
"GREASERS."
MEXICANS WHO LIVE ON OUR SOUTHWEST BORDER.
They are Not All Bad, and Live a Happy, Contented Life - Their Primitive Husbandry - A Dance.
Along a zone of our southwest border, from the Gulf of California to Corpus Christi, on the Texas Coast, is found a type of being that is almost an anomaly, even among our own cosmopolitan classes. The border Mexican, or "greaser," has no nation, yet he is distinctively local. He is the evolution of that arid and sun-kissed belt characterized by flora and fauna as acrimonious and as shaggy as himself and best exemplified by the cactus, the coyote, and the burro. You cannot accuse nature of making a mistake in his creation, for he is an adaptation that rises superior to adversity. You will find him picturesque and, when better known, not at all bad. This Mexican is far below the nation's representative, yet he is not the degraded peon or serf of the land. He is rather what the peon has become in the two generations he has enjoyed the freedom of our Government, if not wiser, at least less servile. He is generally admitted to be the result of a fusion for some centuries of the Spaniard with that mild type of semi-civilized Indian of the Cortez conquests, but is nearer the Spaniard, whose beautiful language, further softened into a dialect, he still retains. This may be due to laziness, but is more probably from the liquid movement of Indian speech peculiar to some of the southern tribes, as shown by the present language of the Pimas and Maricopas of southern Arizona.
There are two classes of Mexican peasants, the Labradoes and the Rancheros. The former are the milder, simpler people, found sprinkled along the small canyons and valleys on little plots of bottom land adjacent and irrigated by simple or community ditches called accquias, which lead from the streams, winding along the bank in a gradual way till the stream's lower level will permit them finally to wander over the bottom. They bridge no arroyos, build no dams, arches or culverts, and use only nature's level, water, to give the grade required for their canals. In engineering ability they are as far behind the Aztecs, who once inhabited this valley, as are the present Egyptians behind their ancestors under Menes.
A plot of a few acres supports an entire family of a dozen, exclusive of dogs - as many more. First a crop of melons and cebada (melons and barley) ; later a crop of frejoles and calabazas (Mexican beans and pumpkins). A little pepper and onions and their commissary is complete. The Rancheros have more or less cattle, ponies, sheep or goats, are less local in their tastes, and are more hardy, so that it is among them that is sometimes found that outlaw element that has made the "Greaser" the synonym for bandit and has stamped the race as thieving and treacherous. This character is partly the result of a traditional sentiment - a spirit of adventurous resistance to tyranny. On the Mexican side a man who evades their outrageous taxes and customs is a here ; one killed in an attempt to do so, a martyr. The Government only is the robber. The men are fine horsemen, of the firm yet easy border set, always using that instrument of torture, the bocada, or Spanish bit, in the control of their ponies. Many are experts at tossing the riata and some handle a revolver well. A pueblo scene is very characteristic. Adobe buildings, thatched roofs, arbors, beneath which the stone jars left unglazed for cooling water and the stone hand-mill of grinding the corn for corn cakes, called "tortillas." The conservatism of this people would compare with that of India. The agricultural methofs are those described in the Bible. Hay is cut with a hoe, sometimes a hand knife or a sickle ; a bough whose forks embrace the proper angle is their plow, and their oxen are yoked by lashing a pole to the base of their horns.
A fiesta is usually celebrated by a "baile" or dance. If it be fall and the night air be cool you will find this hop inside a "jacal." Everything has been removed from the house but a row of sillas (chairs and boxes), placed around the sides of the room, which is lighted by a few beds of glowing coals placed at intervals on the freshly-swept, hard-packed earth floor, by a few candles cemented to brackets or projecting adobe bricks by their own wax, and by the star-beams that sift through the thatched roof and ceiling. The coals serve also as a stove and free light for cigarettes. The music will be given from an orchestra composed of a couple of guitars, a violin, an accordion and one or more harps. There are no hop cards, but the habitue can tell you in advance what the programme will be - waltzes alternating with the Mexican redowa or three-step la galopa, a polka and maybe a square dance or two., At 12 o'clock supper is served under an arbor of cottonwoods, which shades the running acequia. This midnight lunch consists usually of chicken, good coffee, some bad pastry and such strictly Mexican dishes as chilis con corne (translate literally and you have it - pepper seasoned with meat), tomales, tortillas and enchiladas, familiar to all our first class northern restaurants. After supper dancing is resumed till day, when all seek a siesta.
I was surprised that among a people so tenacious to custom in domestic matters education should have made any progress ; yet most of the children read Spanish - especially the girls.
From the Philadelphia Times and in the Lafayette Advertiser 4/5/1890.
Lagniappe:
QUICKLY DISILLUZIONED.
A Shock to the Young Man Who Promised to Give Up Cigars.
"It is a sad thing to discover that one's idols are made of common clay," said a philosophical young person between the acts of the matinee the other afternoon. But it is sadder to know that some idolizer has found you to be an ordinary mortal and not a goddess."
"Has anyone made that interesting discovery in regard to you?" asked her companion.
"Yes, and the discovery was made so painfully. You know, in the prehistoric period when I was just emerging from the school-room, I felt that it was woman's duty to 'influence' the men of her acquaintance. In the course of time I had my first proposal, and, although I was obliged to say nay to the young man's request, I felt that here was a chance to elevate him. So telling him of my purely sisterly love for him, I begged him to give up the vile habit of smoking. He promised. Well, time passed on and I had almost forgotten him, when my brother Dick brought him home the other night. He had been away for years and had always cherished this sweet and lovely memory of me in white party gown, with an angelic expression of countenance, begging him not to smoke. And Dick brought him out into my little den where Flossie and I were smoking! My dear, the utter disillusionment on that man's face almost persuaded me to give up the alluring cigarette? But wasn't it funny?"
From the N. Y. World and in the Lafayette Advertiser of 4/6/1895.
LAGNIAPPE:
JUVENILE DEPRAVITY.
A Learned Theory That Boys Are Savages at a Certain Age.
The history of our public schools affords plenty of examples of boys who have tortured their fellows in a way which would have disgraced a savage. It is to be feared, indeed, that it is accident more than anything else which says boys of this kind - boys whose feelings have become petrified - from actual crime. They are unable to feel and their lack of experience of the world make the fear of punishment but a small detriment. It is not to be wondered at that boys in such a temper of mind may be converted by a series of unlucky chances and opportunities into the thoughtless perpetrators of really grave iniquities.
Fortunately these boys of petrified feelings do not necessarily grow into bad men. The hardening of their nature as often as not undergoes a complete change with manhood. Their characters grow sensitive again, and the lad of 20 would be utterly incapable of doing things which the boy of 14 could undertake without the faintest touch of remorse. We believe that schoolmasters or experience will bear us out in this and say that they have known plenty of utterly callous boys who later have entirely lost the savage (unreadable word) and have turned into normal men. In this dangerous insensibility to which boys are so prone at 13 and 14 the boy is not the father of the man.
It is difficult to say whence this insensibility comes and why the child may be full of right feeling, the boy almost callous and the man again perfectly sensitive to the promptings of the heart and conscience. Though we are not among those who would make the normal nature nothing but an affair of physical well-being and the soul a matter of clinical treatment, we are inclined to believe that the temporary and partial petrification of the feelings and the moral sense during boyhood may be due to the great physical changes that are current with it. Those changes affect the boy's whole body and absorb all his energy left with which to give his heart its rights. Everyone knows how difficult a thing is a two-o'clock-in-the-morning courage, and how hard it is to feel kind and self-sacrificing when one is half asleep. Sleepiness or extreme weariness makes one to a certain extent callous and indifferent and insensible to the fate of others. Well, the boy who is growing up and down and across all at once and with a speed which takes one's breath away is physically as much oppressed as the man who is weary from overwork or loss of sleep. It is true that the exhaustion of rapid development takes a very different form, but it exists none the less. No doubt there are boys whose insensibility is deeper and can only be explained on the same lines as defects of character in nature. For the ordinary normal boy, however, whose insensibility is not permanent, but temporary, the best explanation is, we believe, that which we have suggested. The stress of growth to a certain extent puts the normal nature under a sort of chloroform.
From the London Spectator and in the Lafayette Advertiser 4/11/1896.
Lagniappe:
A Joke On A Reporter And A Preacher.
Newspaper reporters are human, and once in a while make mistakes. The latest and richest, since the joke comes also on a reverend lecturer, occurred in the Times office on Sunday. Dr. J. W. Rogers, a Catholic priest, but recently an Epsicopal clergyman, lectured on Sunday night in defence of Ritualism and the Roman Catholic Church. A reporter on the times was directed to report the address, but failing to be present he called upon the lecturer and obtained, as both supposed, the manuscript of discourse, from which he wrote out an abstract, and it was published under the title of "Ritualism." What was the horror of the reverend convert and the indignation of the editors on finding the next day that a manuscript given to the reporter was that of a sermon preached years ago, before Dr. Rogers had left the Episcopal Church, strongly defending his former belief, and "closing with an eloquent exhortation to all present to stand by the principles of the Episcopal Church, for in them were concerned the moral and religious well being of the world." The reporter had taken the wrong manuscript, and did not see the difference! From the Chicago Evening Post and in the Lafayette Advertiser 4/10/1869.
LAGNIAPPE:SHE GOT A SEAT.
A very pretty girl stepped into a crowded car on the College avenue line. She belonged in the high school and wasn't in the habit of standing up. Seven men held down the most available ones, and, strange to relate, not one of them appeared to be aware that a young woman was compelled to stand.
The pretty girl, with a quick glance of disgust about the car, took in the situation and blushed somewhat indignantly. She had a long distance to ride and couldn't cling gracefully to a strap. Two squares had been traveled when an idea took possession of her classical mind. Out came the miniature purse from the embroidered silk reticule, and the little hands fumbled among a few silver coins. A nickel dropped to the floor and rolled to the far end of the car. This is part of the plan, but it is executed dexterously, and the passengers pity her. She blushed and murmured, "How awkward of me." Unsteadily she started after the nickel, but seven men intercepted the movement and rushed to the point, as the artful maiden dropped into a comfortable seat with a sigh and deftly hid a roguish smile.
The 5-cent piece was tendered by a man who assumed her place at the strap. She thanked him and looked all innocence.
From the Indianapolis Journal and in the Lafayette Advertiser 4/12/1899.
LAGNIAPPE:
RATTLERS AND SCORPIONS.
They Used to Annoy Sleeping Men in an Army Camp in Utah.
Many years ago, while stationed at a post on the Beaver river, in Utah, said an army officer the other day, I had an experience with rattlesnakes and scorpions, two things dreaded so much by man, that was so thrilling that it will be difficult to make people accept it as true. Yet it is true, and as I look back upon the incidents of those few weeks in camp I can not understand how either my men or myself had the courage to remain in the place. Within two miles of the post was a mountain, over which it was necessary to have a road built in order to facilitate travel between our own post and a town some miles distance. When such work was required I was always given charge of it. So I received orders to command a detachment of sixty men who were detailed to build this road along the mountain side. We had heard many wild stories about the deadly scorpions and rattlesnakes that infested the region in which we were to work, but had put them down as exaggerated 'snake stories.' But when we arrived on the scene, we found that the tallest snake story was outdone by the facts. We found that the entire mountain side seemed to be one large rattlesnake nest, and for variety thousands of scorpions were thrown in. We selected the position for our camp in the most desirable situation, and hoped that the presence of so many men and horses would soon drive the deadly things into the wilds of the mountains. But they did not seem to be disturbed by our presence, and made nightly visits to us. Were we afraid? Well, there was some fear among the men, especially after three of the privates had died from the effects of bites.
But after this incident was erased from their memories they took things as a matter of course, went about their work killing any scorpion or rattlesnake that might make its appearance, but otherwise not being much put out by their presence. I experienced the greatest feat at night. My sleep was interrupted at regular intervals by strange sounds, the cause of which I readily discovered. The canvas of my tent seemed to amplify sound so that the scorpions crawling upon the walls of my tent made a noise which, if not loud, was startling enough to awaken me. I always slept with a lighted candle and an army fork on the table by the side of my bunk. You will agree with me that the only scorpion in my tent which was not to be feared was a dead scorpion. I found that the easiest way to kill them was to jab them with a fork, then toast them over the candle. The least number of times I was awakened during my detail there by crawling scorpions was four or five times during the night. I became an expert at killing scorpions, and as I always fastened the victim to the wall of my tent with a pin, I soon had it very uniquely decorated.
"Rattlesnakes were just as plentiful as scorpions. To find two or three sporting about your tent at night was no amusement, as you may judge. I had one man in my company by the name of Cassidy. He was a devil-may-care sort of a fellow, feared nothing and was never happy out of adventure. He amused himself about camp by catching rattlesnakes in a clever manner back of the head, then extracting their fangs and letting them go.
"A professor of an eastern college visited the camp, and hearing of rattlesnakes being so numerous, he asked me if I could not get one of my men to get him two or three young ones, as he wanted to use them for some scientific purpose. I knew of no one better fitted for the work than Cassidy, and as he seemed to find three young snakes for the professor, who was stopping at the post. I thought nothing more of the matter. Several nights after this I was lying in my bunk sleeping when I was suddenly aroused from my dreams by an unearthly rattle and something heavy being thrown upon me. I opened my eyes to find three rattlesnakes making all sorts of evolutions over my blanket and saw the flaps fall as a voice said: 'Here, captain, are your snakes.' I didn't wait to take an extra snooze, but jumping out of bed made after the fellow, who was Cassidy, and if I had caught him I am sure he would have nursed some broken bones or bruises. But he escaped, and, after thinking over the incident, my anger left me. I knew Cassidy thought no more or a rattlesnake than I would an angleworm. He had taken the fangs from those he had thrown upon my bunk when he captured them, and, without thinking of the fright he would cause, pitched them into me in what was to him a perfectly natural manner. He came around in the morning to explain and apologize, but it was weeks before my nerves regained their normal repose.
From the Pittsburgh Dispatch and in the Lafayette Advertiser 4/13/1895.
Lagniappe:
JUST LIKE OTHER MEN.
United States Senators Are Jealous of Each Other.
They Criticize Each Other's Speeches and Each One Thinks He's the Biggest Apple in the Basket - Some Notable Exceptions.
[Special Washington Letter]
Any visitor to the capitol occupying a seat in one of the galleries would suppose that naught but harmony prevailed on the floor of the senate so far as the personal relations of the dignified statesmen are concerned. Even some of the oldest habitues of the galleries and corridors are inclined to absorb the belief that, while the house of representatives may be a bare garden, the atmosphere of the senate is fairly reeking with harmony.
This is one of the most populous fallacies prevalent here, as well as throughout the country, concerning real life in the national capitol. To many men who have never seen the city nor touched elbows with the statesmen the real Washington is as much of a myth and legend of the imagination as was Homeric Troy for centuries. The real national capitol, so far as the human nature is concerned, is not unlike the town in which you live and the neighborhood with which you are surrounded.
There is a great deal less of personal prejudice, envy, jealousy and malice in the house of representatives than in the United States senate, mainly because it is a bigger body and the members are not so long in continuous service, except in rare instances where sensible constituencies re-elect again and again their superior men. The senatorial term lasts six years, and during that time every senator is struggling to have himself re-elected for another term of six years. In the procession of the days and weeks of even a single senatorial term an ambitious man has plenty of time to make enemies for himself and tie the grass in front of his own feet in the political pathway of life.
There are eighty-eight members of the senate and at least ten or twelve of them have bitter, personal enemies, so that they do not speak to each other. During the last eight years of the term in the senate of Wade Hampton, of South Carolina, he and John Sherman, of Ohio, never spoke to each other. The trouble between these men occurred while Sherman was secretary of the treasury, and a candidate for the presidency. Senator Hampton wrote some very caustic letters to Senator Sherman and gave them to the press associations, and when Sherman returned to the senate he carried his resentment with him. Consequently those gentlemen, each of them popular on his own political side of the chamber, were not on speaking terms. Senator Chandler, of New Hampshire, and Senator Blackburn, of Kentucky, have not spoken to each other for several years. During a session of the senate committee on Indian affairs Senator Chandler made some remarks reflecting upon the honor of the Kentucky statesmen, and a personal encounter ensued. It was stated by some people present that Blackburn pulled Chandler's ear and slapped his cheek; but Chandler has always denied this, but stated that Blackburn uttered threats and offered personal violence; and the honorable gentlemen look upon each other with disdain. They never speak as they pass by. During the last few years of his public career Senator Ingalls, of Kansas, by reason of his aggressive political personality, managed to make a great many enemies for himself. He came into the senate one day with a carefully prepared speech, and attacked Senator Voorhees, of Indiana, in such a manner that Voorhees never forgave him, and they were never more on speaking terms.
There is a great deal of petty jealousy on the floor of the senate of which the general public knows nothing. The speeches, casual remarks, actions, method of utterance and gesticulation of individual senators are always criticized by some of those who surround them; even members of their own party are frequently making unkind remarks concerning them. These great men, and they are all really superior men, sometimes remind me of the members of a volunteer choir in a modern Christian church. Each soprano firmly believes that every other soprano is inferior or faulty; while every basso is firmly impressed with the belief that his own voice is the only resonant, smooth and cultured one in the city. In the senate, each individual constitutional lawyers in the body are pretenders, who are claiming for themselves greater reputation for erudition that their actual acquirement's would warrant. Each individual orator within his heart, if not upon his lips, criticizes the utter weaknesses of all other pretenders to oratorical bestness; and so the story goes along the entire gamut of individual prejudices and pique, from the beginning to the end of a senatorial career.
It would not due to be present to the people this pessimistic picture concerning the individualities of the members of the greatest deliberative body on earth without presenting another side of the picture, which is worthy of commendation. Some of the warmest friendships ever made among men are formed on the floor of the senate by the members of that body. It seldom occurs that the two senators from any one state entertain an exceptional degree of personal admiration for each other; but they meet and pair with the strongest and most likeable individualities of the solons from the sisterhood of states outside of the boundaries of their own commonwealths. One of the exceptions to this rule, and it is a notable exception, is the warm personal friendships existing between the senior senator from Colorado, Mr. Teller, and the junior senator from the same state, Mr. Wolcott. Mr. Teller is now merely sixty-four years of age, and has been in public life a quarter of a century, filling many positions with honor and distinction. He is regarded as one of the ablest men on either side of the senate. His colleague, Senator Wolcott, is in his 46th year, a large, powerful man, physically, an active, cultured intellectualist, and an impressive and magnetic orator. He looks up to Senator Teller with an almost filial regard, while his colleague looks upon him and speaks of him with a tenderness of feeling almost paternal. A few years ago the venerable Senator Sawyer, of Wisconsin, and his young colleague, Senator Spooner, of the same state, maintained similar relations of warm personal friendship, but, in the whirligig of time, and in the cyclonic political disturbances of recent years, they have been both retired from the senate.
Senator Davis, of Minnesota, and Senator Pettigrew, of South Dakot, are intimate friends. Senator Pettigrew has a wollin mill at Sioux Falls, nd during his recent campaign for re-election to the Senate Davis wore suit of clothes made from cloth manufactured at Pettigrew's mill. He made many speeches in Minnesota on the subject of encouraging home manufactures and always exhibited his suit made from American wool in a South Dakota woolen mill. These speeches were quoted in the South Dakota papers, where they did Pettigrew a great deal of good; while at the same time that suit of clothes helped Senator Davis make some very good republican speeches.
Senator Brice, of Ohio, a leading democrat, and Senator Jones, of Nevada, a leading republican, are great personal friends and charming story tellers. They are also great practical jokers and sometimes play schoolboy pranks on each other.
Senator McMillan, of Michigan, and Senator Harris, of Tennessee, although political foes, are warm personal friends. They are members of the committee on the District of Columbia, and are very much interested in all legislation which affects the national capital. Senator McMillan was chairman of the committee when the republican party was in power, and Senator Harris is now chairman. The political changes in the senate have not affected their personal relations in the least degree.
Senators Jones and Berry, of Arkansas, are very intimate friends, Senator Jones is a tall, powerful,m athletic man, who walks with the tread and stride of a giant. Senator Berry would be a very strong man physically but for the fact that he lost a leg during the civil war and is therefore obliged to go on crutches. Senator Jones seems to take a great deal of pleasure in saving his colleague as many steps as possible, and they work harmoniously in everything.
Senators Voorhies and Turpie, of Indiana, are both great men and warm friends. Senators Voorhies is a statesman of experience and ability, whose fame as an orator is well earned and well deserved. Senator Turpie is one of the greatest lawyers in the senate. They are very dignified men and their friendship is not demonstrative but it is nevertheless sincere.
SMITH D. FRY.
From the "Washington Special Letter" and in the Lafayette Advertiser 4/14/1894.
A Woman's Work.
Very little, if anything of importance transpires in this world that a woman is not a potential influence on. Good or bad, the gentler sex are always in it, one way or another. Why then should she be bothering their men about women's rights, the franchise (unreadable words) why they want more when they already have more than their share of the affairs of mankind, from rocking the cradle to influencing elections and State affairs, is something we cannot understand.
Recent developments in England have shown that a woman was responsible for the escape from British waters of the Confederate cruiser, Alabama, which under the command of Capt. Semmes during the war between the States, pretty nearly swept the commerce of the United States from the seas. The Alabama was a veritable commerce destroyer, and Great Britain being held responsible for the departure from neutral waters, by the Geneva arbitration, paid the Federal government five million of dollars for her sportive career on the high seas.
A woman was at the bottom of the whole thing, and this is the way it happened:
The official documents which would have been a warrant for the detention of the Alabama was sent to the crown counsel, Sir John D. Harding, desiring to conceal the fact that her husband's suddenly becoming insane, kept the papers four days, hoping her husband would recover. An urgent government dispatch compelled her to reveal her husband's condition and return the documents. But they reached the British law officers a few hours too late. The bird had flown. The Alabama was on high seas, outside of England's jurisdiction.
Assuming to be true what is maintained in England, Lady Harding's devotion to her husband was a very costly affair to both countries. England paid 5,000,000 for lack of vigilance in permitting the Alabama to get to sea. The United States was nearly wiped out by the depredations of the Confederate cruiser. And all because of a woman's devotion to her husband and her purpose to hide his mental infirmities.
Lady Harding was not a woman howling for the ballot, and seeking to unsex herself. In this matter she was acting the true woman as God Almighty made her, and intended she should be; in other words, she was acting solely through her wifely devotion, pure, beautiful and heroic, to her stricken husband, and lo ! as if from her frail hands, sprang an episode which in its splendor and heroism is not over matched in the history of war.
From the N. O. States and in the Lafayette Advertiser of April 15th, 1893.
Lagniappe:
The Country is Infested with Tramps.
Men whose sole occupation in life is to occupy the borderline between the alms-house and the county jail, are found swarming in all the roads that lead to the great cities and larger towns of the country. They work little and steal much; they are dirty, ragged, foul in language and in person; too lazy too work for a meal if the chance to steal one is apparent. Too cowardly to move or act alone, they move in gangs, assaulting or robbing the weak, or the aged, or the unprotected. Drunken, criminal, lawless, they have become the terror and annoyance of all. To remove or to lessen the evil has become the problem which law makers are striving to solve; but so far all efforts in that line have been fruitless.
Whence they came? What causes produce such social monstrosities? What beginnings lead to such terrible endings?
A prominent manufacturer has said that the (unreadable words) laborer in Massachusetts (unreadable words) out by the Irish, (unreadable words) Canadian, the (unreadable words) the Italian by the (unreadable words) Polander. Thus was formed (unreadable words) ascending scale at the beginning of which stood an American at the end an ignorant, lawless type of humanity. Our curiosity tempts us to ask if there is any lower type to present themselves for the honor of being the tail end of such a progression ; but we leave that to the imagination of our readers. Our business is with the causes.
The lower forms of civilization, having less brains and less needs, work for smaller wages than those whose methods of though or training, or modes of living demand a greater compensation. It follows then that the higher form will refuse work offered at a less rate than that to which he has been accustomed - a rate which seems too low to satisfy the demands of a living. Measured by the experience of past years - what is there for him to do? Put yourself in his place. Conceive yourself as working at ordinary laboring work, meet with the wages thereof the ordinary demands of living, food, shelter, raiment, and then find that a newcomer, foreign to you in everything, birth, language, customs, civilities, offers to do work at a reduced rate, what would you do? Labor on by one by one side of these wretches, at their wages ; come in contact with them ; learning of them only their vices. What would you do? Look out for other avenues of labor. Alas your hands are not skilled. The ways wardness of misfortune of youth have left you stranded, almost a useless wreck, and you must work on in the old way or starve. No family to hold you to duty ; no prospects ahead to allure, only a dull round of un requited labor. What would you do? You will work with inferior men, at inferior wages ; you cannot find work in any other channel, and so abandoning home and all its associations you start along the roads looking for a little labor, possibly finding it at times, and if the alternative presents itself to beg or starve. So then, working little, begging much, never starving, drifting from place to place, alternating between the winter poor house and the summer roadside ; the spirit of the man constantly weakening, homeless, house-less, the tramp stands before you, a notable evolved by the conditions of life and living produced by the competition between American and pauper labor.
Examine the nationalities of these men and you will find that they are mainly of American birth, or men of the English class ; they are from the higher types ; they are never from the lower class of the European labor. We know to well, that some of these men are drunkards of the vilest type, who have neither air nor hope in life but the gratification of a depraved appetite. Such men, however, would exist under any circumstance, they come as much from the ranks of skilled labor as from the ranks of unskilled. The great majority of them you will find, if you take the trouble to examine, are from our own people, offering evidence, clear and indisputable, that when we open our doors to these outcasts to come in will make outcasts of our own. (Unreadable words) take crumbs that falls from (unreadable word) the children's table and feed it to the dogs.
If, in the future, from the (unreadable word) taken notions or ignorance (unreadable word) relations between capital (unreadable word) there should be an arm...(unreadable word) tramp stand? With you I (unreadable word) you with the (unreadable) at his back.
Lafayette Advertiser 2/11/1899.
agniappe #1
ALBERTO SANTIAGO.
BY GASTON GLADU.
All of us have had some experience in the amusements which picnics and excursions give. Italy as well as America follows the custom; and for this reason I will undertake to narrate some particulars of an Italian picnic.
The town of Ostia is situated in the midst of a beautiful forest, where Italian birds fill the air with their merry songs; and where the drowsy cattle return to rest, under the far spreading limbs of the stately trees that compose it. The Mediterranean is only three or four miles distant and among the means of recreating the mind, we may give the first place to sailing upon its placid waters. The laborers of that town have very little to do in their fields; for the earth produces, with little or no culture, its delicious fruits; thus the poor as well as the wealthy are happy and moreover are able to indulge often in this innocent amusement. This place seems to have been in ancient time a part of Fairy Land and it still retains some of its former glory and happiness; for those who have left their native hamlet to roam over foreign soils are often heard to recite these lines
In the pulse of my heart I've nourished a
care,
That forbid me thy sweet inspiration to
share,
The morn of my life slow departing I see,
And its years as they pass bring no hope
but in thee.
It was on the third of May 18__, that Alberto Santiago, a young nobleman, burning with the fever of frivolities and amusements, invited the prominent men and ladies to attend at a picnic which was to be given in the woods.
A day of joy and amusement seemed to approach. Preparations were made with much alacrity by the men as by the young ladies. Upon the first mentioned, devolved the procuration of food and games. To this effect they devoted, with heart and soul, their resting as well as their working hours. The ladies were as busy, although their task was, as usual, a personal one: it consisted in preparing a costume which would suit the occasion.
At length the long awaited day, the day which caused so much anxiety, which was to unite friends, acquaintances and lovers, arrived. The ladies were as busy, although their task was, as usual, a personal one: it consisted in preparing a costume which would suit the occasion.
At length the long awaited day, the day which caused so much anxiety, which was to unite friends, acquaintances and lovers arrived. As early as seven o'clock in the morning, in invited guests were prepared ; even more in their vehicles, at the entrance of Alberto's castle, awaiting him to start for the place of amusement. Anxious eyes were riveted on the door of his stately mansion, eager to see it open and let our their host. But seconds then minutes passed and still the door remained motionless.
At last an hour after their arrival a man of ordinary height and size made his appearance. His looks were of the mildest; his forehead was wide and one could read upon it the great talents which its owner possessed, his eyes and hair were very dark; his steps firm and regular; his dress which was made of the finest broad-cloth, fitted his well formed body to perfection. He entered his carriage which was drawn by two beautiful horses who seemed eager to begin their journey. Near him sat a young lady, a brunette of eighteen, who like him possessed most of the gifts of Beauty; and who from appearances seemed to have Alberto the nearest person to her heart.
In order to show the way the host took the lead and off they started. Never was a ride more pleasant: a delightful cast wind accompanied them; the sun was not yet warm; the roads are excellent and permitted them to travel at a good speed. After enjoying the pleasant ride for some time, the drivers checked their horses and the merry company, after the example of their host, alighted from the vehicles. They then found themselves at the place intended for the picnic. It was well suited to the purpose; wild flowers, of which the principal ones were various kinds of roses filled the air with their sweet smells; large and lofty trees of different species, extending their limbs, covered with their new green garments shaded the company from the troublesome rays of the sun.
As soon as the merry crowd had refreshed themselves with the cool water of the spring which flowed nearby; they then took themselves to walking in the woods, to chatting among themselves, or to playing various games. When the time for dinner came, the servant rang the bell to gather the strayed couples. Some of these were astonished to hear the dinner bell so soon, but after consulting their watches they found that it was one o'clock the hour appointed for dinner. To their effect they gathered under a large fir tree; under whose branches they had resolved to take their repast. Presently the table cloth was spread on the ground; and upon it were placed viands of the rarest kinds and prepared in every way possible; wines of every flavor; fruits of all kinds peculiar to those regions and finally pastries of different qualities. The invited guests sat around and ate with a good appetite; the wines were not less cared for than the food. it must be avowed that the ladies kept, as usual, their wits and indulged but very little in the drink. The men on the contrary drank copiously; particularly Alberto, who indulged in it to such an excess, that when the repast was over his mind and ideas were clouded.
A sail on the sea had been proposed for the evening, but it would have passed unnoticed, had not our host been reminded of it by don Julio, his most intimate friend and companion in like amusements. Soon the horses were attached to the buggies, the host and guests resumed their seats and once more are found traveling towards their favorite place of amusement - the sea.
On arriving at the shore they found the Mediterranean calm and the boats which they had engaged for the evening awaiting them. Again the merry company left their seats in the vehicles in order to occupy a more comfortable one in the boats. The boat-men cast off from the shore and the young ladies began to sing their favorite melodies and comical airs. Perhaps the Mediterranean had never before heard upon its waters so many sweet voices. The boats themselves appeared charmed by these songs and whilst leaning over the waves seemed to be beating time for these young ladies, rather than have their course disturbed by the dashing of waves.
But joy often gives place to sorrow, in an instant; and so it happened with our party. As Alberto was yet under the influence of liquor, he was unable to keep his equilibrium, still he persisted, regardless of the admonitions of his friends, in standing up in the boat; the consequences were he fell headlong into the deep blue waters of the Mediterranean.
A cry of despair was then heard, the joyful songs were changed to doleful weeping; the sweet sounding words of love ceased and sorrowful ejaculations replaced them. Regardless of their elegant dresses and costly jewels, the men leaped into the water, and at the perils of their own lives they swam about, in hopes of recovering their drowning friend, but all seemed useless. When they were beginning to give way to despair God permitted Alberto to rise once more to the surface of the water. They perceived him and though a distance of fifty feet separated them from him, they gathered strength and in a few seconds his ever true friend Julio had placed his hands upon him. But how great was his surprise to find that Alberto was among the number of those that were no more. He dragged the body towards the boats and when he reached them, placed the cold remains of his friend in the same boat where Alberto's future wife was seated. She, who, but a few minutes ago had been exchanging her sentiments of love for his; she, who with so much confidence had placed in him her future happiness, now finds him at her side - a corpse.
We have before us the effects of intemperance, the consequences of the miserable glass which can rightly be called the destroyer of the interior man. How many of those poor creatures are doomed to suffer hell's eternal fire have bargained their souls away to this destroyer of God's creature for a small quantity of this alcoholic mixture!
Those poor fathers of families, who are as it were, captivated by this craving passion, have their wives and children in a pitiful state. How often does it happen that poor and feeble children spend full days with tasting a morsel of bread; and the mothers, though courageous by nature, have their hearts wrenched, as it were, by the pains which their suffering infants cause them! Had not God taken Alberto before his marriage, this young woman might have become one of those wretched persons; for when the fatal soup has once been tasted we know not how far it will lead man.
But let us return to our poor Alberto. The funeral rites took place the next day. A large gathering of people followed his remains - rich and poor blended together and all seemed to mourn the loss of a true and honorable friend. His mother, though an aged person, and his expected bride also mingled in the procession; both (unreadable words) they valued most dearly upon earth seemed discouraged and with their (unreadable word) drooping on their breasts, weeping mournfully, they sprinkled the soil with their tears. When they had reached the cemetery and laid the remains of Alberto near the grave prepared for him, the prelate blessed the body, recited the prayers and then delivered with much eloquence thence the funeral oration. He brought to light the good qualities of the deceased with such warmth that many were moved to tears. He himself seemed affected and often his grief was so intense that his words choked him. His sermon done he blessed the body, prayed over it, and then amidst the tears and sobs of many of those present he ordered it to be lowered in the sad silent grave.
The remains were soon covered and the mourners withdrew in order to attend to their occupations. The next day a marble monument was placed over his grave, on which was engraved these words:
ALBERTO SANTIAGO,
Mememto eum in petitionibus tuis.
Lafayette Advertiser 2/22/1890.
lagniappe: #2
NEGROES ORGANIZING.
"DONALDSONVILLE, La., Feb. 10. - (Special) - About 300 young colored Republicans assembled in the Blue Bucket Hall last evening for the purpose of organizing a Colored Republican Club. It was organized and name the Young Men's Republican Club of Ascension, with Bernard Kelly as president and Ed Guedry as secretary as secretary. Resolutions were adopted endorsing Captain Pharr for governor and the ticket he leads."
The above was published in the City Item of the 11th instant. "Three hundred young colored Republicans" means in plain language 300 young niggers. It can be seen from the foregoing special that they have banded themselves together for the purpose of defeating Foster and electing Pharr, the candidate of the Republican and People's parties. The Donaldsonville coons have named their organization "The Young Men's Republican Club," which under the leadership of Kellogg and Cage, will help to overthrow white government so that Mr. McCall and Mr. Warmoth might be able to persuade the National Republican party that it must give them a bounty on sugar. The 300 young bucks who have just made their entrance into Louisiana politics are not after bounty and social recognition. They have been told that when the Republican party was in power in this State members of their race were elected to high positions; that Dunn, a negro barber, was lieutenant-governor; that Pinchback held the same office, and that a white man in those days was as good as a nigger if he behaved himself. No one knows for sure if he behaved himself. No one doubts that the negro will doubt for an instant that the motive of the 300 "young colored Republians" in organizing is political equality, and knowing that as long as Democracy rules this State they will remain in the background, they have taken Kellogg's advice to support the ticket headed by Pharr.
Lafayette Gazette 2/22/1896.
lagniappe#3
Parading the Streets.
The disgusting spectacle of 600 negroes parading the streets and yelling themselves hoarse for a nigger politician is enough to make any self-respecting white citizens hang their heads in shame. And this what the nigger-dickering that has been conducted by a few white politicians has brought matters to at last. Serious trouble between the races is bound to result from such methods and when it does come on the blame will be laid at the door of the white politicians where it properly belongs. The streets were full of drunken, swaggering negroes all Saturday afternoon, and before this proceeds much further no lady will be safe on the streets unprotected. This condition of affairs will not be tolerated by the whites of this city and it is well for those interested to take warning before it becomes too late.
From the Baton Rouge Advocate and in the Lafayette Gazette 2/22/1896.
lagniappe #4
Miles =
The Irish mile is 2240 yards.
The Swiss mile is 9153 yards.
The Italian mile is 1766 yards.
The Scotch mile is 1984 yards.
The Tuscan mile is 1808 yards.
The German mile is 2143 yards.
The Arabian mile is 2143 yards.
The Turkish mile is 1826 yards.
The Flemish mile is 6869 yards.
The Vienna post mile is 8295 yards.
The Roman mile is 1628, or 2025 yards.
The Werst mile is 1167, or 1337 yards.
The Dutch and Prussian mile is 6480 yards.
The Swedish and Danish mile is 6480 yards.
The English and American mile is 1760 yards.
Lafayette Advertiser 2/22/1890.
contact vermilionville@yahoo.com
lagniappe#1
Determining Corporate Influence.
A test has at last been discovered for determining when a paper is under corporate influence. If the editor becomes violently agitated when any reference is made to the common people the chances are sixteen to one that his paper is a defender of every scheme whereby the organized few seek to obtain an advantage over the masses of the common people.
From The Commoner and in the Lafayette Gazette 2/23/1901.
lagniappe#2
THE EFFECTS OF WORRY.
That the effects of worry are more to be dreaded than those of simple hard work is evident from noting the classes of persons who suffer most from the effects of mental over-strain. The casebook of the physicians shows that it is the speculator, the betting man, the railway manager, the great merchant, the superintendent of large manufacturing or commercial works, who most frequently exhibits the symptoms of cerebral exhaustion. Mental cares accompanied with suppressed emotion, occupations liable to great vicissitudes of fortune, and those who involve the bearing on the mind of a multiplicity of intricate details, eventually break down the lives of the strongest. In estimating what may be called the staying power of different parts of the mind under hard work, it is always necessary to take early training into account. A young man cast suddenly into a position involving great care and responsibility, will break down in circumstances in which he had been gradually habituated to the position, he would have performed its duties without difficulty. It is probably for this reason that the professional classes generally suffer less than others. They have a long course of preliminary training, and their work comes on them by degrees ; therefore, when it does come in excessive quantity, it finds them prepared for it. Those, on the other hand, who suddenly vault into a position requiring severe mental toil, generally die before their time.
Original source unknown. In the Lafayette Advertiser 2/23/1878.
lagniappe:
ALL ABOUT A HANDKERCHIEF.
The good women of Dallas, who figuratively speaking of course, made a kick because Miss Alice Roosevelt did not send them a $50 handkerchief have made an unfortunate exhibition of themselves. They wrote Miss Roosevelt asking her to give a handkerchief to be used to raise funds for some good cause sought to be promoted by a fair to be held at Dallas. Miss Roosevelt very kindly complied with the request, but as she is called upon every day to respond to many similar demands for the handkerchief sent to the Dallas ladies was necessarily not a very expensive article. But the recipients of this modest gift from the president's daughter were very much displeased because the handkerchief did not represent a big round of sum cash, and they proceeded at once to give the widest publicity to their disappointment. By ignoring the common amenities in this case the Dallas ladies have naturally earned for themselves a great deal of notoriety.
There is absolutely no reason why Miss Roosevelt should be expected to spend her father's salary buying things for the dear women of the Lone Stare State. To say the least of it, it was very clever to send anything at all to the Dallas committee, and it was exceedingly bad taste for the recipients to raise a great howl because the cost of the object given did not come up to their expectations.
Original source unknown. In the Lafayette Gazette of 2/28/1903.
LAGNIAPPE:
THE PENALTIES OF LUXURY.
Wealth and Position Bring in Their Train Many Undesirable Accompaniments.
Almost everybody who is poor or of moderate means is given to occasional, if not continual, attacks on the follies of the wealthy, and of the absurdities that people with riches are guilty of.
Great wealth and position, the latter especially, have their penalties. The children of royal houses are restricted in their pleasures and amusements, and from the earliest existence are receptacles into which precepts and knowledge of all sorts must be crammed in order to fit them for their future usefulness.
In some of the ages of the world, it was not supposed that a king could do or have anything like ordinary people. One monarch had kitchen utensils, pots and pans, made of solid gold; another went angling with gold fish hooks. In neither of these cases was the precious metal equal to that in ordinary use, but they were made for royalty and nothing else would answer. Heirs to the throne are likely to lead exceedingly lonely lives, unless they happen to be pleased with a large circle of brothers and cousins who can share their amusements with them. They cannot play with the children of subjects, as that would be contrary to all rule and precedent. They must not do certain things, simple in themselves, but subject to criticism because they do not smack of the imperial. Some of the feasting of olden times, as it is described, strikes us as exceedingly ridiculous. We would scarcely care to have seen mixed with our rice in order to give it a royal flavor, neither would we care for a salad dressed with shreds of gold; but these things were done in those days, and the brains of thrushes and the heads of parrots were esteemed necessary dishes for the royal table. Beans were served with scraps of amber and similar absurdities which would make present-day guests inwardly resolve to do almost anything rather than accept a second invitation to a royal banquet.
All through the management of royal affairs we find rules and regulations that would, according to our way of thinking, make life miserable for the unfortunate victims. Louis XVI is said to have had 30 doctors detailed specially to look after him. The he lived was probably one of the most remarkable features of the situation.
A royal princess was always kept in new clothes. It was contrary to court etiquette for her to wear the same garment again and again, and she was by court regulations required to wear four pairs of shoes in a week. Imagine the distress of a poor little royal girl who could never indulge in the luxury of old and comfortable shoes, but who must for appearance' sake always be seen in new ones.
It is useless to ridicule women in items of extravagance, when it is a well understood fact that men have exceeded them a thousandfold. One of the ancient Romans had his horse's collars set with pearls and a trough of ivory was provided for him to drink out of. A nobleman, among other useless and absurd extravagances, had 40 ladders of silver made for use around the palaces.
In the matter of feasts, men seem to have gone beyond all sense and reason, and have gormandized in a fashion never even approached by a women.
While wealth has its consolation and compensations, it has its penalties and pains. A young woman suddenly raised to enormous wealth by marriage was scandalized throughout her husband's entire family because she sat down on the floor to play with a kitten. It was such an undignified proceeding and so entirely inconsistent with her position that it was months before she recovered from the consequences of such a serious indiscretion.
Much is expected of the wealthy, and one may sometimes seriously question whether great possessions are worth the responsibilities that come with them.
From the N. Y. Ledger and in the Lafayette Advertiser of 4/18/1896.
LAGNIAPPE:
Five Jacks Beat Four Aces.
During the session of the United States District Grand Jury, a witness was called before them, named Scipio Choteau, a half-breed Creek Indian and negro, bright sharp and intelligent. He was the last witness to be called before adjournment that day. After his examination, someone of the Grand Jury who knew him, asked if he was the man who had four aces beaten.
He answered: "Yes, sah, I's de man."
"Will you have any objection to telling it?"
"I's-afeared it will get me into trouble, but if the Judge is willing," appealing to the foreman, "I will tell it."
The Judge consented, when Scipio said:
"You see I lives on the cattle trail from Texas through the Creek country to Kansas, and I was out on the road one day, and I meets a gentleman ahead of a big drove of cattle.
"He says, 'Old man, do you live in dis country ?'
"Says I 'Yes, sah.'
"He says, 'It's a mighty poor country. How do you make a livin'?'
"I says, 'Sah, 'tis putty good country ; we has plenty of meat and bread, and I makes a good livin' a---------.'
"He says, 'Old man, do you ever play keerds ?'
"I says, 'Yes, sah ; I does, sometimes."
"He says, 'Would you have any objection to play a little draw ?'
"I says, 'No, sah.'
"So we gets off our horses along side de road, and sat down, and I pulls out de keerds. Well, in a short time I beat de gentleman out of sixty-two dollars and a half, and I t'ought I had him ; so I puts up a hand on him - for I is, do I say it myself, a mighty smart hand at keerds - and I know'd he would hab tree jacks and I would hab tree aces, and in de draw I would get the other ace. So he raises a bit and I raises back, till at last I put up all de money I had from de gemman and all de change I had, and I knowed I had him. Well, in the draw de gent got de odder jack and I got de oder ace. De gent wanted to bet, but I claimed a sight for de money, and told him I had an inwincible hand dat couldn't be beat.
"He says, 'Old man, dem is right good is right good bitches you got is on ; how much did day cost ?'
"I says, 'Yes, sah ; day cost me ten dollars.'
"He says, 'I puts up ten dollars agin' em.'
"I says, 'Bery well, sah, ; but I tells you I got an inwincible hand.'
"He puts up de money, and I holds up my legs and he pull off de britches and lays dem down.
" 'Now, sah,' I says, 'I told you I had a inwincible hand what can't be beat ; I's got fo' aces.'
"De gent says, 'Old man, did you ever hear of five jacks beatin' fo' aces ?'
"I says, 'I'se heard it, sah, but I never seed it ; and if you conwince me ob it, de money's yourn.'
" 'Berry well,' he says, laying down one keerd, 'ain't dat de jack ob clubs ?'
"He lays down anoder keerd ; 'Ain't dat de jack of spades ?'
" 'Yes, sah,' I says, 'dat is de jack ob spades.'
He lays down anoder ; 'ain't dat de jack ob diamonds !'
" ' Yes, sah, dat is de jack ob diamonds.'
"He puts down anoder, and says, 'Ain't dat de jack ob hearts ?'
"I says, 'yes sah, dat am de jack ob hearts.'
"Den he runs his hand in his bosom, and pulls out a great long pistol and points it at me, and says : 'Ain't dat jack haul !'
"I say : 'Yesm sah '
"And he says : 'Ain't dat five jacks ? and don't dat win de money !'
"And I says : 'Yes, sah, dat is Jack Haul, and dat is five jacks, and five jacks beats a inwincible hand.' "
"So he puts de money in his pocket and ties my britches on hind of his saddle and tells me to scatter, and I did.
"You see, it sarved me right, for 'I t'ought de man was a green Missourian when I put up the hand on him, but he was an Arkansaw chap, and I finds dem mighty sharp, judge."
The above is vouched for by the foreman and several members of the Grand Jury as fact - every word of it.
Original source unknown. In the Lafayette Advertiser of April 18th, 1874.
LAGNIAPPE:
A DUEL. - Last Wednesday a duel took place at Toulme station, on the New Orleans and Mobile Railroad, between Messrs. Wallace Wood and J. A. Bachemin, of New Orleans, in which the latter was wounded in the thigh.
Lafayette Advertiser 4/18/1874.
MORE (on duel) FROM THE NEW Orleans Times:
MORE CHIVALRY AT NEW ORLEANS.
A. J. Bachemin Shot in a Duel by W. Wood.
From the New Orleans Times, April 17th.
It is within lively recollection that sometime in March, one Wallace Wood published a card wherein-one A. J. Bachemin was held up to public gaze as the possessor of numerous very ; bad qualities. This card was posted about the streets, and of course attracted a deal of attention. Bachemin was then a member of" the ' grand jury, and in a published newspaper stated- I meant declared that being a grand juror be was ' forbidden by bis oath of office from taking any ! active steps in answer to the calumny," but stated that in due time it would receive his proper attention. Meanwhile he caused Wood to be indicted before the grand jury for libel, in which cause is still pending. On the 4th of J April Bachemin's term as grand juror expired, I and on that day be delegated two friends — John ! P. Montamat and Charles Ramel— who, waiting on Wood, presented the customary demand for honorable satisfaction for the alleged insults. It appears that Wood declined to notice the challenge because it was a verbal one, and so he stated in a newspaper card the next day. The result ot such refusal was that on Monday April 6 the, there appeared placarded on two streets a poster, signed A. J. Bachemin, and intimating that, Wallace Wood was anything but a brave man and a truth-teller. On Tuesday, 7th instant, Wood placed himself on the war-path, and with his little double-barreled shotgun he marched to the store' of Bachemin, and taking a seat therein at an early hour in the morning, expressed himself to the effect that he intended to await the arrival of the proprietor, whom it was his purpose to blow full of holes on sight. Of course, as in duty- bound, one of Bachemin's clerks rushed wildly forth to give the alarm to his employer, who, upon learning the startling intelligence, at once shouldered his shotgun, prepared to earnestly meet the emergency. Meanwhile the police got wind of these warlike preparations, and straightway they roamed through the space, to the end and Bachemin and Wood were arrested before they encountered each other. They were taken before Justice Staes, and being charged with intent to commit a breach of the peace, were bound over in the sum of $1,000 each to keep the aforesaid peace tor the space of six months. This episode, it was thought, would restore serenity, and that, for a time, at least, all would be lovely. The hope was, however, a delusive one, for on the 10th inst.. after efforts at reconciliation made by friends- of both parties had failed, Wood came to the front, through two friends — B. Whitney and Frank 11. Wilson— who" presented to Bachemin a challenge to mortal combat as the only means of satisfaction, and the challenge was promptly accepted by 8., who referred the bearers thereof to bis friends, Montamat and Baroel. On Tuesday, 14th inst., the four met for the arrangement of preliminaries, and these involved the selection of smooth-bored dueling pistols as the weapons, Wednesday morning, lot'u, as the time, twelve paces as the distance,- Toulme station,' on the Mobile and Chattanooga Railroad— forty miles hence— as the place. Off for the battle ground. In pursuance, therefore, of these arrangements, on Wednesday the 8 a. m. tram over the Mobile and Chattanooga road bore away from the Canal street depot the party of principals and seconds, bound for Toulme station, which was reached at about 10 o'clock. The Wood- Bachemin party arrived at Toulme station, forty-three miles from the city, at 10:05 A. m Charles E. Whitney and Frank 11. Wilson appearing as friends of Wood, accompanied by Dr. J. Finney; Montamat and Charles' Ramel as the friends of (unreadable word) ; attended by Dr. A. de Bausset. Repairing at once to a point 200 yards south of the station-house, the around was measured oil— distance, twelve paces. The choice of position fell to Bachemin, and his friend, Montamat, selected that nearest with his man lacing the railroad track. .** Whitney, as Wood's second, had the word, and after "both ! principals had assumed their respective positions gave instructions regarding the manner in which the firing was to be conducted, and in which was to the effect that the pistols were to ' be discharged after the word -'fire," and before at the word " three." Whitney, in a clear voice, asked : .' Are you ready one—," and at the word "one" both men fired simultaneously, and both stood unmoved for a few seconds when Bachemin made one step forward and it was discovered that he bad been struck The ball passed through the right thigh, six inches below the hip, inflicting a severe though not dangerous wound. Both gentlemen appeared upon the ground cool and collected, and, when brought face to lace, acted with unrivaled gallantry. After the shots were exchanged "an amicable adjustment was concluded. There were about fifteen persons on the ground.
From the New Orleans Times. April 17th, 1874.
LAGNIAPPE:
1889/WHITE HOUSE NOW ALL-WHITE?
Mrs. Harrison has dismissed all the colored servants at the White House and replaced them with white ones. The negroes do not at all appreciate this move, and are at a loss to understand it. A Richmond, Va., paper says: "This announcement has cast a gloom over the Richmond negroes. The negro is unable to comprehend the seemingly awful significance of such revolutionary action on the part of the wife of a Republican president. Many of them believe it is the first blow aimed at their civil rights, if not their actual freedom." The first thing Mrs. Harrison knows she will find herself "boycotted" by Mr. Cuffy.
Original source unknown. In the Lafayette Advertiser 4/20/1899.
LAGNIAPPE:
An Affecting Tale.
Barber - "Poor Jim has been sent to an insane asylum."
Victim - (in chair) - "Who's Jim?"
"Jim is my twin brother, sir. Jim has long been broodin' over the hard times an' I suppose he finally got crazy."
"Hmm! Not unlikely."
"Yes, he and me has worked side by side for years and we were so alike we couldn't tell each other apart. We both brooded a good deal, too. No money in this business anymore."
"What's the matter with it?"
"Prices too low. Unless a customer takes a shampoo or something it doesn't pay to shave or hair-cut. Poor Jim! I caught him trying to cut a customer's throat because he refused a shampoo, and so I had to have the poor fellow locked up. Makes me very melancholy. Sometimes I feel sorry I didn't let him slash all he wanted to. It might have saved his reason. Shampoo, sir?"
"Y-e-s, sir!"
From the New York Weekly and in the Lafayette Advertiser 4/21/1894.
THE AIRSHIP.
One man saw it in New Orleans Last Night.
[From the N. O. Picayune April 21st.]
At 12:30 o'clock this morning, Camp street in the vicinity of the newspaper offices was aroused by an unearthly yell of "There it is," and as quick as a flash the man who saw it disappeared up a stairway, and the racket as he jumped four steps at a time could be heard a block away. He had seen the airship, so he told his colleagues on the papers, and instantly every window in both offices were filled by the newspaper men and printers all searching the heavens for the wonder, while the fortunate young man who saw it tried to describe it. He seemed very much excited, but he managed to say that he saw it going in a northwesterly direction, and it was about 50 or 60 feet long. It had a powerful searchlight which played around. As he described what he had seen every body craned their necks and looked and looked in vain, for there was nothing to be seen but the blue ether of night, dotted here and there with a twinkling star, which some startled their companions by saying it was the searchlight of the aerial wonder. As the moments flew by, and nobody saw anything which could by any possibility be distorted into an airship, the laugh began to grown on the man who saw it. He denied the soft impeachments which were cast at his veracity by his co-workers but it was hard to convince them. His general reputation for truth and veracity as such, however, that his friends cannot help but believe that he saw something, and as the airship was seen in the vicinity of Natchitoches yesterday, it is not unlikely that it may have come in this direction, the navigators bent on having a little fun at the expense of the people of New Orleans.
A young man connected with the Picayune claimed to have seen the airship here on April 1, but all he saw was the searchlight, as it was dark at the time. It was generally treated as an April fool's joke but the subsequent excitement caused the alleged appearance of the strange craft in other cities leads to the belief that there may be some truth in it.
The two supposed navigators of the airship, Dolbear and Tillman, as they gave their names to the people of Stephensville, Tex., were supposed to have been in the city last night. Their names were registered at one of the hotels, but it was in all likelihood a hoax, as cards sent to their room failed to get any response.
Natchitoches, La., April 20. - Last night at about 1:30 o'clock, as a gay crowd were returning from a reception given by Company 1 at the Armory Hall, they were treated to a strange sight from the western heavens. That spectacle came as a massive airship, the first story being balloon shaped, and the under cart connected in some form. When the (unreadable words) animated spark which when it came nearer, gradually grew brighter. After a few moments its entire form was clearly perceptible, and developed a (unreadable words) to semi-darkness. Its destination appeared to be northerly, and it gave indications from its course, is coming from Texas. It was evidently a machine of unique invention as its movement was of an (unreadable word) character and bore striking resemblance to the movement of some huge bird. It was visible, though about a thousand feet high, for nearly half an hour, and was a rare curiosity to those who had the good fortune to witness the phenomenon. The remarkable fact in connection with its visitation was that, as its course neared the city, the light that illuminated it became suddenly low, and did not again rise until the city was left in the darkness.
Lafayette Advertiser 4/24/1897:
LAGNIAPPE:
GOVERNING AN OCEAN STEAMER.
Reports Are Received by the Captain Daily from All His Subordinates.
Just as the government of the city is divided among the mayor, alderman and boards of commissioners of various departments, so the administration of a giant steamship is divided into specialties. The mayor is the chief officer of the city. The captain is the chief officer of the ship. He is more than that. From the time she leaves port until she enters port he is master of the life and liberty of every person aboard the ship, as well as all property in it. He is an autocrat. Of course, he must administer his authority wisely. Unwise autocrats don't last long, whether afloat of ashore.
The head of each department is responsible for all that goes in it. The first officer is at the head of the crew, or navigating the department. The chief engineer directs everything connected with the engines. The chief steward has full control of all that has to do with the comfort of the passengers and crew. Each of these chiefs makes a written report at noon every day. Thus the captains is kept informed of everything pertaining to the ship's welfare.
Every one of the senior officers of the ship is a duly qualified master, capable of taking her around the world if need be. The day is divided into "watches," or tours of duty, of four hours each. One junior officer is on the bridge with each senior officer on duty. The senior officer directs the ship's course. He never leaves the bridge while he is on watch. Should he do so he would be dismissed at once. There is no excuse possible. It would be just as if he had died suddenly. His friends would all feel sorry, but nothing could be done to help him. Two seamen are always on watch in the bow of the ship and two more in the foretop. Twice as many are on the lookout in thick weather.
Observations are taken every two hours. In the good old sailing ship days the captain was content to "take the sun" at noon every day. If the sky was cloudy for a day or two it really didn't matter much, for he could jog along on dead reckoning. But on the ocean greyhound, rushing over the course between New York and Europe at the rate of 20 miles an hour, it is highly important that the ship's position be known all the time. Fog may come down at any moment, observations may not be obtainable for ten or twelve hours. The position of more than 100 stars are known. By observing one of these the ship's whereabouts can be ascertained in a few minutes. of course, the "road" becomes more or less familiar to a man who crosses the ocean along the same route year after year. Yet this familiarity never breeds contempt or carelessness. No man knows all the influences that affect the currents of the oceans. You may find the current in one place the same 40 times in succession; on the 41st trip it may be entirely changed. Sometimes a big storm that has ended four or five hours before the steamship passes a certain place may have given the surface current a strong set in one direction. There is no means of telling when these influences may have been at work, save by taking the ship's position frequently.
From Harper's Round Table and in the Lafayette Advertiser 4/25/1896.
PAY FOR SLAVES.
An Act of Justice to the Southern People.
One of the most interesting questions of the day is will the South ever get pay for her slaves. Sectionalism answers no. Conservative statesmanship asks why not? And for the great body of American people who are fair-minded it just sets itself to thinking.
Twenty or 30 years ago, the man who suggested such a thing would have marked himself for malevelence of his countrymen. To-day the man who insists upon this point is listened to as a thinker who is perhaps a little ahead of his time, he who has a logical basis for his idea.
History showed that no civilized nation has ever emancipated her slaves and failed to compensate the owners. This was true of the French in Hayti and the West Indies, of the British colonies, of the Russians with their serfs, and has been true of every enlightened nation. Gradual emancipation and compensation has been the rule everywhere except in America where the thing was accomplished by one stroke of the pen; 4,000,000 slaves were set free and $800,000,000 worth of property were lost in a moment's time.
It must be remembered that this property was recognized and protected by the constitution and the law; that these slaves had been bought and paid for, thousands purchased from New England, which subsequently formed their emancipation and that the men who owned them enjoyed the right just as man who owned a horse or a plow. We are not now speaking of the moral or political view of the case, although the horrors of slavery were very much exaggerated during the abolition times for political effect. The rule among southern masters was humanity, and this rule held for practical as well as other considerations. The man who treated his slaves best got more work out of them and held them longer than he who mistreated them.
The men who owned slaves and this species of property guaranteed by the constitution as distinctly as if he owned lands or houses. The debates in congress from Calhoun to Douglas showed this. So thoroughly was slavery recognized and guaranteed by the constitution of these United States that Wendell Phillips and other New England agitators declared it was a "union with hell and a covnenent with the devil". Even Mr. Seward in his war upon the institution of slavery was forced to surrender the point that it was outlawed by the constitution and was driven to the position that there was a higher law than the constitution of our country, a theory so abhorrent that it defeated him for president of the United States.
Mr. Lincoln, who was nominated and elected president in 1860, never favored the policy of interfering with slavery where it existed nor of taking the slaves without compensation to owners; and it is believed that had he lived he would have used his great influence to have justice done between the government on the one side and a large number of its citizens on the other. But he was removed by the assasin at the close of the war, and since then have supervened pecuniary gain, bounties, tariffs, and pensions. The great issue of the war and the great injustice wrought by the emancipation proclamation have been lost sight of.
But it is true that "justice travels with a leaden heel and strikes with an iron hand." Nothing in this world is ever settled that is not settled right. Here we have the spectacle of a nation despoiling, not aliens, but its own citizens, of $800,000,000 of property by force of arms, by right of might, and not caring to requite the people of the property seized and condemned. These states, according to the theory of northern writers, were never out of the Union, and yet they were made at the point of the bayonet to yield up nearly $1,000,000,000 in property without receiving a cent in all the light of facts and right; was the monstrous injustice of the century.
Is the man who looks forward to receiving some of the compensation for his slaves a Utopian dreamer? Is it absurd to believe that some day this govenment will do justice to her own people? Is the man who comes forward with the record of his slaves and ask some return for the great spoilation act a traitor and a madman? Those who have given the subject shy thought believe that it is not an equitable claim but that under the influence of an enlightened public opinion its realization may be brought about within the lifetime of those people now living.
Every body will recall the history of abolition itself - how it commenced with a mere handful of earnest and determined men and how it grew into a dominating principle. This may be the history of an altogether just and reasonable claim that we have some compensation for the slave property wiped out in the maelstrom of civil war. Its beginnings may be modest and its aims may be considered in some quarters preposterous, but if it has merit it must prevail.
For the purpose of practically enforcing these ideas there has been organized in the United States an ex-Slave Owner Registration bureau, an incorporated concern, now doing business in Washington city. The office has been established for the purpose of arriving at the loss sustained by the different ex-slave owners, owing to the proclamation of emancipation issued by President Lincoln January 1, 1863. The first thing owners are do is to file with any one of the sub-offices an affidavit setting forth the number and sex of slaves they or their families owned prior to January 1, 1873.
This will be a basis of proof of ownership and will be carefully preserved in the bureau of archive of the bureau at Washington, D. C.
It is the intention of the bureau to urge upon the government the importance of settling these claims at an early date. As soon as a sufficient number of affidavits have been filed to form a basis of legislation a bill will be introduced in congress praying the repeal of the striking out of that portion of section 4 of the 14th. amendment to the constitution which reads "or any claims for the loss or emancipation of any slaves."
Under article 5 of the constitution should a two-thirds vote be secured in congress, the matter ratified by the state legislatures, and the clause referred to be stricken out a proper bill will be introduced praying the payment of the loss caused to the southern and border states as well as the District of Columbia by the proclamation of emancipation on a basis similar to the adjustment of the Haytian government claims by France. Those who are familiar with the times appreciate that the military necessity plea never originated with Mr. Lincoln or Mr. Seward, but was a trumped up excuse to cover an act which was influenced by the extremists.
The conservative and fair minded people of the north, east and west never believed in any other form of emancipation but that idea which Mr. Lincoln himself so fully promulgated during the early part of this administration and congress actually passed a resolution that the United States ought to co-operate with any state which may adopt gradual abolishment of slavery, giving to such states pecuniary aid to be used by such state in its discretion. Mr. Lincoln even goes further and declares that there was no possible intention or occasion to interfere with the subject of slavery except in considering the admission of the territories as states. Mr. Seward remarks :
"Experience in public affairs has confirmed my opinion that domestic slavery existing in any state is wisely left by the constitution of the United States exclusively to the care, management and disposition of that state, and if it were in my power I would not alter the constitution in that respect."
Mr. Lincoln discussing emancipation declares himself in no un certain say. Says he :
"I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."
On September 15, 1862, Mr. Lincoln expressed these views :
"The question of salary is difficult and good men do not agree. What good would a proclamation of emancipation from me do? I do not want to issue a document that the whole world would see must necessarily be inoperative."
A few months later, the pressure of the extremists being more than he could up under, he issued his well remembered proclamation of emancipation to obtain January 1, 1863. A large number of the non-slave states were pronounced against the policy of the executive, their sentiment being that emancipation should be gradual and compensated. It is equally well known that it was not a question of the enforced freedom of the slaves in the south which led up to the differences existing between the sections in the sixties, but the administration of the territories as slave or free states. From the opinions of the men who were at the head of the head of the Union you really observe that the freeeing of the slaves was only considered two years after the Kansas-Nebraska bill had done its work.
The writer is satisfied that were section 3 of the 4th amendment offered to congress to-day on its passage it would not become a part of the constitution. When these measure were offered to congress it was in the heat of passion and malevolence and not after that mature and careful deliberation which characterizes the American people. They did not pause to consider right or wrong; it was at the moment with those who enacted the law the triumph of factional and vindictive sentiment rather than a calm desire to make all men free and to do justice one to another.
It is fallacy for prejudiced minds to incline to the opinion that to make an effort for compensation is impossible. The creature can never be more omnipotent than the creator, and as congress enacted the amendment with only a partial number of the states represented, there is no reason to doubt the present consensus of opinion with all the states voting, and the conservative north, east, and west largely in sympathy, that justice can and will be obtained at the hands of an impartial congress. This is the view taken at least by conservative people who have given this great question any study.
From the Farmerville Gazette and in the Lafayette Advertiser 4/25/1896.
LAGNIAPPE:
CHILD'S WILL POWER.
Remarkable Manifestation in a Three-Year Old Youngster.
Baby Rae had always been very nervous, so nervous that on several occasions, while he was getting his teeth, he frightened his parents by going into convulsions, and frequently when crying lost his breath so far as to lose consciousness altogether. Consequently were obliged to humor him more or less to prevent his crying.
At a very early age he found his thumb, and until the day of which I write his chief comfort lay in sucking that unoffending member. He could not go to sleep at night without having his thumb in his mouth. As he grew older we tried to break him of the habit, but it made him so very unhappy that we could not bear to insist. By the age of three Rae had lost all signs of spasms. He had always been "mother's darling," although he was my fifth boy. At the time I of the arrival of my wee sister had awakened some sense of jealousy, and also, I suppose, made him feel an increase of dignity, as he was no longer the baby of the family.
One morning the "big carpenter" was in the nursery repairing the hinges of a shutter. Rae stood with a handkerchief carefully wrapped around his second finger, sucking his thumb as usual, and looking with wistful eyes at the tempting display of hammer, awl and screwdriver that lay on a cloth near the window. For a moment the thumb was taken from his mouth, and the baby boy said very distinctly, as he always spoke: "I want to be a carpenter," and instantly the thumb was replaced in its accustomed receptacle. "Carpenters don't suck their thumbs," remarked the big man.
For a moment Rae looked at him, then he slowly put his two little hands behind his back and held them tight. His grandmother noticed the action, and, taking advantage of the occasion, promised to give Rae a tool chest all his own if he would never suck his thumb again. The child was very quiet and thoughtful all day. Occasionally he would jerk his thumb out of his mouth and hold his right hand tight with his left, as if determined not to forget again that he was to be a carpenter. At bed time he carefully put his hands under his pillow. He was very restless; he could not go to sleep; he was fretful too, and his nurse sat near his crib singing to him. Presently a little hand came between the bars, and a baby voice said: "You hold it, Eliza; I can't remember." It was midnight before he went to sleep that night and the next, but he never put his thumb in his mouth again. He earned his little chest of tools if ever a reward was won, and a happier little boy was never seen.
Rae is eight years old now, a fine, manly boy, always thoughtful of others. He is full of life and spirits. His nervousness has disappeared. He often shows the same earnestness of purpose that he displayed so young. We feel strongly the responsibility of leading this remarkable will in the right direction.
From A Mother in Babyhood and in the Lafayette Advertiser 4/25/1896.
LAGNIAPPE:
A Catechism of the States.
Question - Which is the best State for fresh pork?
Answer - New ham, sure.
Q. - Which is the best for an early summer hotel?
A. - May inn.
Q. - In which should surgeons dwell?
A. - Connect-a-cut.
Q. - Which furnishes the best writers.
A. - Pencil-vanin.
Q. - In which should laundrymen prosper?
A. - Washing done.
Q. - In which do impudent people dwell?
A. Can sass.
Q. - Which is the best for deer hunting?
A. - Collar a doe.
Q. - Which is the best to steal a walking stick in?
A. Cane took, eh!
Q. - Which is the best for locksmiths?
A. - New brass key.
Q. - In which would you look for a morning attire?
A. Day coat, eh!
Q. - In which is one likely to fail in getting a drink?
A. - Miss a sip.
Q. - In which can you find a red letter?
A. - Florid A.
Q. - In which does the bustle make one sick?
A. - Ill o' noise.
Q. - In which is one likely to lose his farming implements.
A. - I'd a hoe.
Q. - In which can one acquire real estate by marriage.
A. - Mary land.
Q. - What would be the most useful in the event of another deluge.
A. - New (Y) ark, of course.
Q. - In which is the one letter of the alphabet taller than the others.
A. - O higher.
Q. - In which are bodies of land surrounded by water given a ride?
A. - Rhode Island.
Q. - Which is called to your mind by beholding two $5 bills?
A. - Ten I see.
Q. - Which would a woman rather have if she can't get a new sealskin sacque?
A. New Jersey.
Q. - Which does the farmer's wife mention when she asks you to partake of apple sauce.
A. - Take sass.
From the Pittsburg Chronicle and in the Lafayette Advertiser 4/26/1890.
LAGNIAPPE:
Feeding a Big City.
The business of producing and providing food for mankind furnishes a livelihood to a majority of the race. Generals in command of armies of 20,000 or 50,000 men have been brought to ignominious defeat and flight for the lack of power to supply them with food; and yet with a population of two and one million people in and around New York is supplied with food every day and for every meal from all parts of the world.
Ten thousand head of cattle are slaughtered every week to provide New York with beef, and that is not more than one-half the beef that is consumed there. Some of the beef comes in on foot, the rest in refrigerator cars from the West. Swine are brought in dressed; but sheep are all killed in the city. The greater parts of the fresh fish supply of the city comes in refrigerator cars from Boston and Gloucester, the rest comes to market in fishing boats. Enough fish is kept ahead in the cold storehouses to last the city two or three weeks. The vegetables come from almost everywhere. Lettuce is mainly brought from near Boston, where one firm ships $100,000 worth of it each year. Enormous amounts of celery come from Kalamazoo, Mich. The South supplies the early vegetables, and some of them come from Florida. They come on refrigerator cars, and because they can be safely shipped and easily kept they no longer command fabulous prices. But the bulk of the green vegetable business is still done in the old way by farmers who come in from places five to thirty and more miles away and sell their produce from the wagons. Some of them start in the afternoon and drive all night, often sleeping on their wagons and only waking when their trained horses have brought them to the ferries at 1 and 2 o'clock at night. The Gansevoort market is the only place where they are allowed to expose their "truck" for sale in the city, and there it is sold to dealers. In summer time as many as 3000 wagons a day are driven in. The cattle on a thousand hills daily contribute the milk that New York consumes the next day. The farmer gets from one and one-half to two and one-half cents a quart for it and the consumer pays 8 and 100. The difference is divided among the railroads, commission merchants and peddlers, the latter getting several cents a quart. One of the curious things in the provisions business is that eggs laid in Holland and Germany get to New York in less time than from some Western States and are actually cheaper than fresh eggs laid in this country, the reason being that they are rated as "limed eggs."
From Good House Keeping and in the Lafayette Advertiser 4/27/1889.
LAGNIAPPE:
DROVE HIM AWAY. Mark Twain, during his early days, did not stand well among boarding house keepers. The drawing youth was too lazy to pay his board. Once, while working on the St. Louis Republican, Twain, after many boarding house hardships, cast his hungry lot with a hard featured widow named Perkins. The printers had told him that she was a woman of gentle nature. They gleefully awaited the end of the first week. Monday morning when Mark came to the office his face wore an anxious expression.
"How are you, Clemens?" said the foreman.
"Slow."
"That's a fact. Glad to see that you have entered upon the week in so truthful a way. How is your landlady?"
"Bad."
"Did you pay her Saturday night?"
"No."
"What did she say?"
Nothing, but she looked as though she were chiseled out of stone."
"I should think," a tramp printer rejoined, "that she looked as though she were chiseled out of board."
Twain cast a quick glance at the speaker, and lazily reaching for his coat said: "My immortal soul is too tender to stand the cruel shafts of sarcasm. Good bye."
He dragged himself out of the office. His career as a printer was at an end.
From the Arkansas Traveler and in the Lafayette Advertiser 4/27/1894.
LAGNIAPPE:
A GREAT DESERT.
Plans to Lesson the Dangers of the Great Mojave Waste.
The great Mojave desert is no longer to be a trackless waste. The loss of hapless prospectors who have perished from year to year has finally moved the board of supervisors of San Bernardino county, which includes within its 20,000 square miles of this desert, to take some action to make it possible for prospectors to travel that arid region in comparative safety.
Recently a number of mining men petitioned that a complete map of the desert be made, showing the roads, trails and sources of water supply, and a committee was ordered to investigate and report. The result of their investigations has just been made public and they recommend all that was asked and more. There are trails and roads leading all over the desert to the various mining camps which dot that waste of sand, and it is proposed to have maps made, with blue-print copies, which will be supplied to desert travelers, with all the landmarks designated, thus enabling them to follow the trails with much less danger of losing their way. But in addition it is proposed to establish a system of signboards and guideposts at intervals along the trail, giving information as to directions and distances, and, more important than all, the nearest point where water may be found. Nine-tenths of the people lost in the desert die of thirst.
Not, infrequently their bleached bones have been found within a short distance of the spring they sought. By the new system which is planned the unlucky prospector will know how far he is from water and will lay his plans accordingly.
Rewards are to be offered to anyone discovering new springs or developing any water at points where none is known to exist. Springs already known will be cleaned out and the water protected from pollution by wild animals or by careless handling.
The mining men are intensely interested in the proposed innovation. It is estimated that in the 30 years in which mining has been followed in the desert not less than $20,000,000 has been taken out, while in that time scores of men have been lost whose lives might have been saved had such a system been in vogue as is now proposed. The desert is now fairly swarming with prospectors, and others will go out as soon as the weather becomes more tolerable.
From the San Francisco Examiner and in the Lafayette Advertiser 5/2/1896.
LAGNIAPPE:
THE MISSING LINK.
Professor Virehow Says That It Is as Remote From Discovery as Ever.
We know that man existed in the quaternary epoch, that he lived through long ages miserable and depressed, while stone, wood, horn and bone constituted the material of his arms and of his few instruments. We are convinced that a long interval separated the age of stone from the age of metals and that only in particular places was the use of stone immediately replaced by thy that of metals. These are the data which now make part of the general knowledge acquired by civilized nations since the foundation of the congress, but further studies respecting the origin and the regions whence the different branches of civilization have sprung have advanced relatively but very little. We seek in vain for the "missing link" connecting man with the monkey or any other animal species.
There exists a definite barrier separating man from the animal which has not been effaced - heredity, which transmits to children the faculties of their parents. We have never seen a monkey bring a man into the world, nor a man produce a monkey. All men having a simian appearance are simply variants. It was generally believed a few years ago that there yet existed a few human races which still remained in the primitive inferior condition of their organization. But all these races have been the objects of minute investigation like ours, often indeed superior to that of the supposed higher races. Thus the Eskimo head and the head of the Tierra del Fuegians belong to the perfected types.
Some races have the same skulls very small, of about the same volume as the microcephalous skulls. For example, the inhabitants of the Andaman islands and the Veddahs of Ceylon have been regarded as microcephalic. A more exact study has, however, shown a difference between them and the real microcephalic races. The head of the Andaman islander or of a Veddah is very regular, only all its parts are a little smaller than among men of the ordinary races. Nanicephalic heads (dwarf), as I call them, have none of those characteristic anomolies that distinguish really microcephalic heads.
A single race, that of the Orang-Simaings and the Orang-Cekaui of the peninsula of Malacca, still remains unstudied. The single traveler who has penetrated into the mountainous country inhabited by them, the bold Russian Miklukho Maklai, as ascertained that certain isolated individuals among Simaings are small and have curled hair. A new expedition has been sent into that country to study the anthropology of the Orang-Cekai, from which I have received a skull and a few locks of hair. The stock is really a black race with curly hair, the brachycephalous head of which is distinguished by very moderate interior volume, but it does not offer the most trifling sign of bestial development.
Thus we are repulsed at every line of the assault upon the question. All the researches undertaken with the aim of finding continuity in progressive development have been without result. There exists no paranthropus, in man-monkey, and the "connecting link" remains a phantom.
From Professor Rudolph Virchow's Lecture and in the Lafayette Advertiser of May 3rd, 1893.
LAGNIAPPE:
GUESTS BEING TAKEN IN.
HOTEL GUESTS FLEECED BY BIG DOCTOR'S FEES.
Any Hotel In the Big Metropolis and In Chicago Are In League With Conscience -Less Members of the Medical Profession to Extort Money.
Every large hotel in the city nowadays has a physician resident in the building. His presence in the hotel is one of the proofs of the completeness of the modern hostelry, so far as the provision and comfort of the guest is concerned. The idea of having a doctor within instant call is beyond all question an excellent one, but it seems that it has of late been subject to grave abuses. The fact has got out that some hotel physicians make use of their position to levy extortionate charges for the treatment of guests who have been luckless enough to fall ill among strangers.
Complaint is made that far from being a blessing to the guest, the ease with which medical attendance can be secured has in such cases become of source of genuine dread to visitors to the big city who have to stop at hotels. The guests fear even a trifling illness while in the hotel, because it they make the fact known that they want to see a doctor they will be charged a fee out of all proportion to the service rendered by the doctor, whose chief claim to patronage is that he is "always at hand."
Complaint has been made against the doctors' charges in two of the best known hotels in the town to a prominent consulting physician.
"When I was taken sick a the hotel the other night," one of the complainants said, "I asked the head clerk to send me Dr. S. P."
"Dr. S. P." said the clerk in in seeming astonishment. "I never heard of him. But we have a competent physician in this hotel whom I will send to your room."
The hotel doctor did go to the room in response to the request of the clerk. He made several visits during the night, although the guests didn't want and didn't need more than one visit. A fee of $10 was charged in the bill, and the guests had to pay it. Subsequent investigation made it clear that the hotel physician had made an arrangement with the hotel proprietor by which the latter got a third of this big fee. The guests also learned that this sharing of the fee had been the custom at the hotel for a very long time, and that guests submitted to it rather than have any wrangle at the clerk's desk over charges, a thing that self-respecting persons naturally dread and will avoid even where the charge is a manifest imposition. The abuse has recently attracted the attention of the professionals, who do not practice in hotels, and has evoked an earnest protest and a demand for reform.
The Medical Record, under the heading "Doctors and Hotels," handles the subject in vigorous style:
"Every person of sensitive morals, and a good many with only every day sensibilities would be shocked if the whole story of the relations of doctors to hotels were written. There is a fashionable hostelry in this town where the hotel doctor charges $7 a visit, and there is the best reason for believing that the hustling landlord gets $2 of it. It is stated on good authority that in many hotels the official doctor is obliged to give up from one-fifth to one-third of his charges to the business management. People who are taken ill in hotels must have a doctor and are not disposed to question about terms. They do not find out what these are until they settle the bill, and then expostulation is too late."
It is only just to say that all the hotel physicians are not parties to this mean sort of swindling. Many of them are physicians of high repute who live at the hotels and pay for their board and lodgings the same as any other guests and have a regular and legitimate schedule of charges based upon the market value of their professional services. In cases where there is a "divvy" between the doctor and the hotel the physician gets his lodgings and board at a reduced rate. He is appointed by the hotel proprietor, and he excuses the high fee on the plea that he has to charge more than his regular rate in order to make good the bonus to the proprietor. This bonus is demanded for the privilege of practicing in the hotel.
"This abuse is worse in Chicago than it is in New York," a prominent physician said.
"This bonus system is certainly an outrage on the traveling public," said another physician, "but at the same time the hotel doctor should not shoulder the entire blame for it. The responsibility rests with the hotel proprietor who is mean enough to look for gain from the sickness of one of his patrons. It is not using very strong language to call this barbarism. Hotel proprietors who favor the fleecing of the sick in their establishments ought to be tabooed by every honorable and self respecting man and woman. If guests were to stay away from such hotels the bonus system would be quickly suppressed.
From the New York Sun and in the Lafayette Advertiser 5/3/1893.
LAGNIAPPE:
The Drift of Population Southward.
The Picayune, some days ago, contained an account of a project to colonize large numbers of people from Northern States in Georgia on contiguous tracts of land.
It is natural that persons emigrating from one country to another would wish to go in groups or companies, and to settle near together, so as to establish their own circles of society and preserve as much as possible their social customs and peculiarities. This sort of thing has been put in practice in the large communities of settlers who have come from the Northern and Western States to Southwest Louisiana, and to the truck farm regions along the Illinois Central Railroad. People who were friends and neighbors in other states have come here together, and, settling near each other, still preserve in their new homes the relations of friends and neighbors. This is as it should be for such association prevents the lonesome and forlorn feeling which is so apt to beset persons who find themselves in, to them, a new country, far away from the cherished friends and familiar associations.
Within a few years past thousands of Northern and Western people have come to Louisiana and found homes under conditions that are so satisfactory that their statements have done more than anything else to attract immigration to this State and particularly to those sections where the Northern people have settled. The Georgia colony of Northern people is according to accounts, to embrace some 40,000 souls who are to settle on lands about 140 miles southeast of Atlanta, on the route of Sherman's devastating march to the sea in the closing months of the civil war. Many veterans of the Northern army are said to be in the colony, and they will now devote themselves to rebuilding and enriching the country they once devoted their energies to laying waste with fire and sword. This is truly one of the victories of peace.
It is given out that the colony has been organized upon a regular system. Large bodies of contiguous and connected lands, to the extent of some 200,000 acres have been secured. The financial arrangement is for the formation of a stock company, with shares placed at $10 each, stockholders being allowed to hold no more than ten shares each, so as to make the plan available for people with small means. The colony will reserve 1000 acres about the center for a city, and about June 1 will begin the division of the lands by survey into city lots and farms. The farm lands nearest the city will be divided into five-acres lots, the next adjacent will contain ten acres, thus gradually increasing until the 100 acre farm is reached. The members of the colony will be located by drawing under the most approved methods. Inferior city lots and inferior or objectionable farms will be thrown out of the drawing and be made a part of the common stock. Such lots and farms will be reserved for advance in value after improvements of lots and farms sold. The sale of these properties at advanced prices will make the returns to come from the investment.
It is stated that, in addition to the above, there will be other such settlements in Georgia. One of these is a Pennsylvania colony, which has purchased 15,000 acres in Twiggs county, on the Oemulgee River, about twenty-five miles from Macon.
There is, as announced by the Baltimore Manufacturer;s Record, what is known as the Home Combination Company, of Redfield, S. D., which has arranged to place about 5000 families from the Dakotas on 50,000 acres of land lying along the St. Louis Iron Mountain and Southern Railroad, in Hempstead county Ark., where they will engage not only in farming, but in stock-raising on an extensive scale, as much of the territory is especially adapted to that purpose. This company reports that a great many people in the Northwest are preparing to move South.
This is the advanced guard of a movement of population which will grow to enormous proportions. During a half century of violent sectional agitation and prejudice the movement of population in the United States was westward. This movement was continued until the best lands of the West were occupied. Still the flow of population went on until the blizzard-swept and drought-parched plains of the Northwest was reached. Even they have been to a certain extent people with hardy settlers, but the country has few charms and now all eyes are turning southward. Prejudice and sectional hostilities are passing away, and the genial climate and fertile lands of the South are attracting attention. People from the North are coming hither, and the more they come the more others will be attracted, so that the movement southward will be for years in a constantly increasing ratio. There are five years more to the taking of the next census. By the time those years shall have passed away there will have taken place a wonderful shifting of population and the South will show a great increase.
The current of development is now southward, and it will bring vast results in material growth and power.
From the N. O. Picayune and in the Lafayette Advertiser of 5/4/1895..
LAGNIAPPE:
ONLY MEN AND MONKEYS.
Of all Animals These Alone Fail to Swim Naturally.
Man is almost the only animal that has no instinctive knowledge of swimming, which is regarded as remarkable considering the vast period of time throughout which this accomplishment has been nearly essential to him. There is every evidence that man has almost always lived in proximity to water. Among the fluvial drift are found the ancient stone implements, and where relics of human handiwork are discovered along with the remains of extinct animals it is almost always in riverside caverns. Men have, therefore, always been swimmers, just as all savages are at the present day. And yet, withstanding this long experience, mankind has not acquired an instinctive, a hereditary knowledge of swimming. Dr. Louis Robinson considers that the inability of man to swim instinctively is a proof of his descent from apes. Dr. Robinson thus explains the ability of animals to swim as soon as they are thrown into the water: A dog or a horse is able to swim, not because he has an intuitive knowledge of the art of swimming, but because it so happens that his usual terrestrial method of locomotion, will keep him afloat. It is natural for an animal, when under a strong state of excitement, to employ its usual methods of locomotion. For instance, if we pick up a rabbit, and it is frightened, it will immediately begin to work its legs as in the act of running. Or if we hold a bird in our hands it will flap its wings as in the act of flying. Now, an animal, when it finds itself in the water for the first time, is no doubt in an excited state of mind, and it immediately begins to employ its ordinary methods of locomotion. It so happens that these are of the kind to keep it afloat, and the animal thus has at once the accomplishment of swimming. Animals like the cat and and donkey, which have a decided antipathy to water, nevertheless swim as soon as they find themselves in that element.
A man, too, when he finds himself in the water without a knowledge of swimming immediately begins to put forth his natural method of locomotion. But it so happens that the method is not of the kind to keep him afloat. He reverts to the arboreal habits of his ancestors, the apes. He proceeds to climb. This he does both with his arms and legs. He gets his arms out of the water and his head is immersed. He grasps at floating twig with the instinct of his arboreal ancestor when he was running upward, frightened by the apparition of a snake on the ground. Of course any man knows that he ought to keep his hands down when in the water, but ninety-nine men out of a hundred who have not learned to swim will, when the find themselves in the water, do precisely the opposite of this. In spite of their knowledge that such an action is fatal, they revert, as Dr. Robinson would have us believe, to the instinct of their arboreal ancestors. There was, indeed, a time when men's ancestors were quadrupeds and ran away from the an enemy on the ground on all fours, but that was long ago, as long as the close of the secondary epoch. Since then has intervened the vast period of his arboreal existence, which anatomy and geology show in the opinion of men of science to have been much longer than its existence as a biped. But the question at once occurs, are apes and monkeys unable to swim? Upon this point Dr. Robinson does not appear to have very exhaustive information. Baboons can swim, but baboons have a quadrupedal mode of progression, even when climbing a tree. A man's gait in mounting a ladder is said to be much like that of a true arboreal animal than the gait of a baboon. Alfred Russell Wallace says that South African monkeys seldom or never cross stream, rivers being the boundary lines between allied species. Dr. Robinson claims that there is a strong presumption that the more bulky ones, like the gorilla and the orang-outang, are as helpless in the water as a man. It is an interesting question and one which could, we should suppose, be very easily decided by experiment.
From the New York Times and in the Lafayette Advertiser of 5/5/1894.
Lagniappe:
THE HOME DOCTOR.
Biliousness.
Biliousness is a condition of the system in which there is too little bile produced, instead of too much. The waste elements, which ought to be removed from the blood by the liver in the form of bile, are left in the body, and accumulate in the tissues. It is this that gives the dingy color to the to the white of the the eyes, the dirty hue to the skin, and the coppery taste to the mouth, and which produces giddiness, the floating specks before the eyes, and the general feeling of languor and discomfort which characterizes the condition commonly as biliousness. This dingy hue of the skin is actually due to the accumulation of waste matter, or organic dirt. The skin is dirty, perhaps not upon the surface, but all through its structure. Not only the skin, but the muscles are dirty. The brain and nerves or dirty. The whole body is clogged with dead and poisonous particles which ought to have been promptly carried out of it, but have been retained on account of the insufficient action of the liver.
The causes of biliousness are various. One of the most frequent is overeating. If you press your fingers close up under the ribs on the right side of the body you can feel the lower border of the liver about an inch above the lower edge of last rib. If you do the same after eating a hearty meal, you will find the lower border of the liver half and inch lower down. This is due to the fact that the liver becomes enlarged through absorption of digested food after a meal has been taken. If you eat a very large meal, say twice as much as you usually eat, and then feel the lower border, you will find it reaching down to a level with lowest rib, showing that the liver is greatly enlarged, much more than it should be. If you go on eating too much in this way, day after day and week after week, after a while the vessels of the liver will be so relaxed by frequent distensions that the organ will grow permanently enlarged and congested. When in this condition the liver cannot make the bile readily, and so does not do the proper amount of work, and the waste elements which it ought to remove from the body are left to accumulate in the tissues, and all the symptoms of biliousness follow.
Biliousness is sometimes the result of eating to freely of fats. Animal fats being particularly difficult to digest, and likely to be taken in too large quantities in the shape of butter, lard, suet, and fat meats, are apt to produce this condition.
Some years ago a French physiologist fed two various animals liberal supplies of fat, and then observed the quantity of bile produced. He found that the amount of bile was lessened just in proportion to the amount of fat added to the food. In order to ascertain the reason for this result, he killed some animals, after having fed them freely with fat, and examined their livers with a microscope. By this means of discovery that the little cells which chiefly compose the liver, and which form the bile, were crowded with drops of fat and were thus so burdened and hampered in their work that, they were obliged to work very slowly, and hence produced only a small quantity of bile.
Similar experiments show that the excessive use of flesh food also renders the liver torpid, and produces biliousness. Flesh food generally consists of albumen, a nitrogenous substance, which can be used in the body only in a very limited amount. The average person can use only three ounces of this kind of material each twenty-four hours.
But if a person eats several times this amount in the form of beefsteak, mutton chops, or any other flesh food, the superfluous amount must all be removed in the form of waste matter. That is, if the person eats meat sufficient to supply four ounces of nitrogenous matter, the extra ounce must be carried off by the kidneys in the form of urea, or uric acid, and this must be acted upon by the liver to prepare for its removal by the kidneys. If the liver has more of this work to do than it should have, the work will be imperfectly done, and much waste matter which ought to be removed will be left in the system, producing biliousness, rheumatism, muscular pains, sick headaches, and many other uncomfortable symptoms.
From Good Health and in the Lafayette Advertiser 5/7/1887.
LAGNIAPPE: METEORIC SHOWERS.
THEIR VISITATIONS OF PERIODICAL OCCURRENCE.
Explanations as to Their Cause - Their Frequency - The Light They Produce - Peculiar Tints in Their Flame.
"There are certain epochs in the year when particular meteoric showers are due. Assiduous observation has given a list of nearly 100 such, showers in the course of a year, each of which may be expected on a certain date from a certain part of the heavens.
"Particular showers have characteristic features that is, some are very swift; others rather slow. Some vanish and leave no trace, while others are accompanied by tails and leave streaks after the nucleus has disappeared. Few of these showers last more than one or two days, though there are some instances where it is suspected that successive meteors belonging to the same group appear during several weeks. Certain dates have been noticed to be more especially fireball epochs. That is, the rare event of an exceptionally large and brilliant meteor or fireball is more apt to occur on certain dates.
"January 25 is the date of the meteoric shower characterized by the swiftness of its components, which are usually attended by streaks. The radiant point of this shower is in the constellation called Bernice's Hair, a star cluster - one of the morning constellations. AS this meteor is claimed to have been seen in the evening it is more likely to have been one of the unclassified sporadic meteors. Information as to the position or motion, apparent brilliancy, color, time of appearance and length of time during which the appearance lasted is likely to be valuable in the recovery of the principal characteristics of an event which is necessarily seen by by few."
"How do you account for these meteoric showers coming at regular periods?" was asked.
"All we can say is that the celestial spaces are thinly populated in every direction with these scattered fragments, which are veritable miniature planets traveling in different orbits around the sun in many instances, and serving as messengers from one star to another in others.
"The number of them is simply countless. They make up in number what they lack in size, so that if we could gather together all the minute members that go to make up a group, it might make a body of very respectable size, although the individual components are so small that they seldom escape complete disintegration and and dissolution in their passage through the atmosphere."
"What produces the great light which always follows the passage of meteor?"
"The light which is seen while the passage of a meteor through the air lasts may be due partly to the combustion or the materials of the air of life, but it is mainly an incandescence of the condensed atmosphere which accumulates which accumulates in advance of an object which is moving many times the rapidity of a cannon ball, often, I may say, with many hundred times the rapidity of a cannon ball. Under these conditions even the seemingly flimsy resistance of the air becomes as great as that of a solid body producing intense heat, and in the case of a large meteoric stone, frequently resulting in the fracture and demolition of the object.
Colored meteors are sometimes seen with a peculiar tint of the flame, being due to the burning of some special ingredient of the meteor.
We have yellow, green and occasionally red meteors, but the majority are white like the majority of the stars. It cannot be said that any one part of the earth can be more affected by these visitants than another. There is, however, a diurnal periodicity, the largest number being seen in the early morning hours when that portion of the comes in view toward which the orbital motion of the earth is carrying us. We then see not merely the comparatively few meteors whose speed is sufficient to enable them to overtake the earth, but that larger number composed of all those which are gathered up in the track of the advancing earth, whether moving with, against or athwart its course."
From the Pittsburgh Dispatch and in the Lafayette Advertiser 5/10/1890.
The Anhueser Busch Company, of St. Louis, is establishing beer gardens in several cities in Mexico, similar to those we have in the United States. Verily the Mexicans are fast becoming civilized. 5/10/1890.
It seems that the "vendetta" has been imported to New Orleans along with the Italians, Corsicans and Sicilians. Tuesday morning, as six Sicilians were returning from unloading a vessel of fruit, at about 12:30 o'clock, in a wagon, about twenty-five shots were fired at them by some parties in ambush. Three of the men in the wagon were dangerously wounded. This is only one of many similar crimes and murders that have recently been committed in New Orleans by this pernicious and worthless element. Laf. Adv. 5/10/1890
LAGNIAPPE:
A Kansas Cyclone.
Its Irresistible Advance Described by an Eye Witness.
Being an enthusiastic wheelman, I frequently take long rides into the country. The evening of June 21 found me on the road from Topeka to Lawrence.
The heat of the noonday sun had given way to a slightly cooler temperature, and the blue dome was dotted here and there with floating white clouds. There was scarcely breeze enough to move the wilting foliage of the lofty trees on the bluff north of the road. The whole world seemed at peace. I could hear in the distance the peculiar cry of the farm hand calling the pigs to their evening feeding. The milkmaid was busy with the cows.
As I moved slowly along delighting in the glorious beauty of the landscape, and in its peaceful activity, I noticed that the air felt so close and sultry that I found exertion difficult, and this, with a rustling of the trees and the veiling of the sun's face, prompted me to turn to the west, where it seemed that a thunderstorm was gathering. It moved along rapidly - only a summer shower. To the left, along the bluff, the gentle drops of rain were falling with lullaby-like patter on the thickly clustered trees of the hillside forest. I had dismounted from my wheel, and was watching the progress of the storm that passing so near me, had not touched me.
But, all at once, with a mighty roar like the rending of the heavens, a dark greenish cloud with tints of yellow and black, its massive folds writhing in and out like serpents at battle, emitting vivid flashes of lightning, came over the bluff a quarter of a mile east of me. It was shaped like a huge top, its irregularly-formed upper half revolving rapidly while the lower end swept the earth along a path a quarter of mile wide.
Startled as I was, I could not take my eyes from this awful messenger of destruction. The crash of the buildings first struck filled the air with flying debris, in which fragments of houses, furniture, trees, farming implements, haystacks and telegraph poles - all were propelled by a wonderful, irresistible current of ruin and disaster.
Eighty rods wide the death-dealing cyclone swept along, skirting the bluff, where it stripped foliage and bark from the trees, and now and then swooping down on some farm. So suddenly did the storm burst that many had to flee with all speed to their cyclone cellars, the only safe refuge from these fearful storms.
After a course of half a mile along the bluff, the funnel-shaped monster swerved to the right. It swept through huge wheat fields where it snapped off the drooping heads of the almost ripened grain, and then tore on through the little village of Williamstown, transforming what was the the moment before "a lovely village of the plains" into a scene of devastation. Houses, barns and other buildings were destroyed, and human beings carried through space as if they were but feathers.
Many lives were lost and many homes literally swept from the face of the earth. There were many miraculous escapes. A baby, sixteen months old, was discovered by the roadside several hundred yards away from the house, asleep and uninjured. An old lady sixty years old was carried a mile from her home and lodged safely in the wide-spreading branches of an oak tree, unhurt. A family of six sought refuge in a small space under the stairs; the house was carried away with the sole exception of that portion, and the family escaped injury. A house was completely swept away; but the family cat and her kittens under the porch were not disturbed.
From John M. Steele, in St. Nicholas and printed in the Lafayette Advertiser in May of 1894.
LAGNIAPPE:
A BICYCLE RAILROAD?
Something entirely unique in the construction of railroads is about to be put into practical operation between two New Jersey towns. The motive power cost nothing, there are not engineers, firemen, brakemen or conductors to be employed, and every passenger has their own train to suit himself. The new system is a bicycle railroad. It is to run from Mount Holly to Smithville, in a direct line over fields, roads and creeks, a distance of two miles. It is to be completed in about two months, and when completed will look just like a fence with an inverted bicycle running on top of it. Each passenger has the exclusive use of one of these bicycles for a trip and can whiz along the rail at the rate of a mile in two minutes. The run from one town to the other may easily be made in five minutes. This railroad requires for its use a special type of bicycle, although the ordinary saddle, handle-bar and propelling mechanism are employed. An important feature of the system is that the bicycles can not jump the track and that anyone can ride them without previous experience or skill at the art. The track being elevated is adopted to use at all seasons of the year. The machines will be provided with head and rear lights for night use.
From the Times-Democrat and in the Lafayette Advertiser of 5/10/1890.
LAGNIAPPE:
Why Women Know More than Men.
[From the Boston Courier.]
Thimblethorpe came home rather late the other night with five hundred dollars, more or less, in his vest pocket. Before he went down stairs he recollected that there ought to be a good deal of money in the lower right hand pocket of his vest, and he felt there to discover it it was all right. It was all wrong, however, for it was not there. During the night it had mysteriously disappeared, and this filled him dismay, for he had a large note to meet that day. "Perhaps," he said to himself, for he had not yet informed Mrs. Thimblethorpe of his loss, "perhaps it has dropped upon the floor." He therefore searched in every nook and corner of his chamber, but the missing treasure was not to be found, and Thimblethorpe made his way slowly to the next story below, where his mournful face at once attracted the attention of his wife.
"What is the matter with you, Timothy," she gasped ; "are you ill?"
"Yes," he replied, "I have lost my appetite."
"Is that all ?" she continued, in a relieved tone that was not untinged with asperity.
"No, five hundred dollars has gone with it," thundered Thimblethorpe, who could contain himself no longer.
"Oh, you must have it in your pockets somewhere," answered his wife ; "have you looked in them all ?"
"Only in one where I put it ; why should I turn all my garments inside out ?"
Mrs. Thimblethorpe approached him, and insisted upon feeling in his vest pockets, and he was too dejected to resist. Finally, from the upper right hand vest pocket she drew forth, with a triumphant air, the missing roll of bills. It was a pocket he only used for the reception of cigars, and he could not account for the presence of the money there. Mrs. Thimblethorpe, however, could, though she said nothing, for after extracting a fifty dollar bill from the pile some time before, she had quite naturally placed the money in the wrong pocket.
From the Boston Courier and in the Lafayette Advertiser 5/13/1882.
LAGNIAPPE:
Barbados.
The island of Barbados is the most densely populated part of the earth. This island, with an area of 106,000 acres, contains a population of over 175,000 souls, that is to say, an average of no less than 1,054 people to each of its 166 square miles of territory. The Chinese province of Keang-su, which was at one time ignorantly imaged to be the most uncomfortably crowded district under the sun, contains but 850 moon-eyed Celestials to the square mile, while East Flanders, in Belgium, the most thickly populated neighborhood in Europe, can boast of only 705 inhabitants to the square mile. Coming nearer home, Westchester Co., New York, with a territory three times as large, has only four-sevenths as many people packed upon this thronged, man-ridden Carribee island. If the Empire State were as thickly settled as the Barbados, it would boast a population of 60,000,000. Of the 175,000 souls of this island 9 per cent are whites and 91 per cent are blacks or mixed blood.
From the Scientific American and in the Lafayette Advertiser in May of 1886.
LAGNIAPPE:
In Washington D. C. The Radical Hotspurs of the United States Senate having resolved in haste to "kick up the rumpus" with the first maritime power of the world, are just now being edified at their leisure with evidence that their own country is is without a navy to speak of. This startling evidence is furnished by Admiral Porter, the officer who is practically head of the Navy Department. He testifies that the United States is no condition to cope on the sea even with Spain. And yet in the course of the late war more than two hundred millions were expended in naval architecture and armament - principally in iron clads and mammoth guns. Combined imbecility and rascality account for the beggarly result. Original source unknown if not by the Advertiser. In the Advertiser 5/15/1869.
LAGNIAPPE:
THE MILLENIUM PICTURED.
A fascinating picture of the possibilities of future development on the earth is portrayed in "The Story of the Millennium," which is inside a special feature of the June number of Demorest's Family Magazine. It depicts the condition of mankind on the earth in the ten thousandth century, when interplanetary communication has been established, and the "dream of the ages" has become a vivid and magnificent reality. Novel views concerning the progressive evolution of mankind during the intervening epoch are included, and the narrative is related in an easy, conversational manner, the events being supposed to transpire through the publication of the proceedings of the Optimists' Club, an institution established for the purpose of foretelling the future of the world. The story is illustrated by Beard, and is from the pen of Arthur Field. This is the first attempt at anything like a complete pictorial representation of the future appearance of the earth and its inhabitants. Lafayette Advertiser 5/17/1893.
LAGNIAPPE:
Girls, Please Don't...
Try to mix to much in discussions of men.
Become fussy over affairs which in nowise concern you.
Say sharp things which are calculated to wound the feelings.
Carry tales among men about the queer doings of your girlfriends.
Express an opinion of a man in places where it can be overheard.
Pretend to social standing when your position is otherwise well defined.
Talk of young fellows as though they were persons of great consequence.
Take hold of a man's hand in a way to create a false impression as to your feelings.
Show how greatly you desire to be regarded with consideration by men companions.
Go places which you prefer should not be known to your mother.
From the Philadelpha Bulletin and in the Lafayette Advertiser 5/24/1905.
LAGNIAPPE:
Wonderful Armless Men.
Bulwer, in his "Artificial Changeling," makes mention of one John Simons, native of Berkshire, England born without arms or hands, who could write with his mouth, thread a needle, tie a knot, shuffle, cut and deal a pack of cards, etc. This wonderful personage exhibited in London in 1653.
Stowe gives an account of a Hollander, born without arms, who, while on exhibition in 1581, exhibited surprising feats of activity. such as flourishing a rapier, shooting an arrow at a target, etc.
John Scar, a Spaniard, also born without arms, was exhibited in London during the reign of King William. He could comb his hair, shave himself, fill a glass, thread a needle, embroider, write six different styles of "handwriting," and play on several different kinds of musical instruments, with his feet and toes.
But William KIngston, of Ditch-heat, Somersetshire, England, was "the most wonderful of all that wondrous drew." Concerning him a write of the London Chronicle says: "I put half a sheet of paper, with pen and ink, on the floor before him. He threw off his shoes as he sat ; took the inkstand in the toes of his left foot (having been born without arms), and held the pen in those of the right. He then wrote three fine lines, better than most with the fingers. He feeds himself, and can bring both his meat on his broth to his mouth by holding the fork or spoon in his toes. He showed me how he shaves.
"He can dress and undress himself. He is farmer by occupation ; milks his cows with his toes, cuts his own hay and binds up his bundles and carries it about field for his cattle. In saddling and bridling his horse he does it with his teeth.
"He is so strong in his teeth that he can lift ten pecks of beans with them, and he can throw a hammer as far as his feet as most people can with their hands. -
From the St. Louis Republic and in the Lafayette Advertiser 5/23/1891.
The Gospel of Hustle.
The Shreveport Journal says editorially:
The word "hustle," no longer a species of slang, is written in large letters over the threshold of every city, town, village and community of this section of the State. Progress in education, in agriculture, in manufacturing, in industry, and all the avenues of trade, in every walk of life, is the watchword. It is sufficient to awaken the enthusiasm of the native, and it has awakened him to a slight glimpse of the vast possibilities of the place which he loves to call home. He has been caught in the tide that is sweeping over the South. He is putting his shoulder to the wheel of endeavor and that the wheel is moving forward is due to the strength which his faith is lending him.
It matters little that there are some laggards in the race. No march worthy the name was ever made that stragglers were not left along the rear. Some of them will "recover" and overtake the vanguard. Others will not, but when the march is ended will loudly proclaim what "we" have done. Some of them will doubtless prosper, because prosperity, like rain, falls often on the just and the unjust without discrimination. Still he who is surer of the prize is the man who reaches for it.
In the hands of the young men of Louisiana rests a large share of the responsibility that is coming with increased industrial activity. He must prepare himself for it else he will be pushed aside by the fellow from Illinois or Iowa. What he needs is the ambition to lead the affairs of his home town or his home community. The greatest handicap that ambition ever carried is the lack of knowledge of the thing a man most aspires to do. We have heard that some men are born great, while others still have greatness thrust upon them. The man who, in this age, waits to find out whether or not he was born to succeed or whether success will be thrust upon him is nearly always hidden from view by the dust that the fellow ahead is making. And, depend on it, the fellow who is raising the dust is he who has started out with the determination to succeed.
The day is not far distant when the South will be dotted by a vast network of interurban lines. Louisiana should get its share early, for in the development of this method of transportation is the solution to many industrial problems. Agriculture will not be superseded by manufacturies. It is a mistake made to suppose that because Massachusetts, for example, is rich and is a manufacturing State, this result was at the sacrifice of the State's agricultural interests. Massachusetts is not an agricultural State and it is rich because its people have devoted themselves to the only work that lay before them. They educated their children with the purpose of developing this work and success has crowned their efforts.
In the South, and in Louisiana particularly, the agricultural resources are as yet only half developed. We have yet to see that close tilling of the soil by which many of the Northern States have become enriched. With this system. when it comes, will come the manufactory. Le us hasten the time. Lafayette Advertiser 5/24/1905.
LAGNIAPPE:
HUNTING WILD HORSES.
A Novel and Exciting Sport Indulged In by New Zealanders.
In the center of the north island of New Zealand there are large acres of poor volcanic country of no value to the agriculturist, and of small use to the squatter. Here are to be found herds of wild horses, the progeny of animals which have escaped from statios and homesteads. A favorite, is to arrange hunts, when the sport afforded as generally of the most exciting description. The essentials for success are utter fearlessness in the saddle, a quick eye, and the possession of considerable bodily strength, combined with a medium weight. Given these, and the rest - a general knowledge of the country and hardness with the lasso - may be readily acquired. As regards the latter, one has only to try the experiment to explode the hoary tradition that years of apprenticeship are required to make a man an expert in the use of the green hide lasso. I know a young farmer, who is now on a visit to England, who became tolerably proficient after two days' practice, and his is by no means a solitary instance. The rope employed is generally between 30 and 40 feet long, and the throw is given from a distance of some 20 feet. Mexican saddles are but rarely used, the New Zealanders preferring to depend upon the strength of the arm to pull up the flying animal with a jerk round the neck, which chokes it almost into insensibility, and brings it with a thud to the earth. The first time of going out to hunt wild horses must ever remain a red-letter day in the novice's life. A party may consist of two or three or four, but it seldom exceeds the latter numbers. There are sometimes a couple of ladies, and although their want of muscular strength and their unwillingness to practice make them poor hands with the lasso, still their light weight and magnificent horsemanship not infrequently renders their aid of no small value. It goes almost without saying that all must be well mounted, and the fact that the work is so rough on horses and "uses" them up so soon, is the chief reason of the pastime not being more followed than it is.
On nearing where the wild horses are known to be, some eminence as ascended from where a good view of the surrounding scrubby and sparsely timbered country may be obtained. As a rule, the herds number from ten to twelve, made up of mares and one stallion. No stallion will allow another stallion into his herd, and stubborn fights frequently occur between horses owing to this. The beaten males, after being expelled, join herds exclusively of stallions. On any herd being sighted by hunters, a good idea can generally be formed by the experienced man as to which route the animals will take on their way to the rugged, hills, for which they invariably make when disturbed. A scheme is mapped out to cut them off if possible, and the party scatters, each to take up his allotted position. Of course while doing this, every advantage is taken of the natural inequalities of the ground so as to escape observation. When the alarm is given, however, all need for caution is at an end, and each hunter puts his steed to full gallop. The stallion, the head of the herd, boldly comes out to meet him, and endeavors to distract attention from the rest. In some rare instance he is lassoed and captured at once, but he generally manages to rejoin his wives, which by this time have trooped into single file with his favorite mare in the lead. Should the herd be turned and get into difficulties, the stallion takes up his position in the van, and the great object is to cut him off from the rest. Should this be accomplished, both he and the mares become confused, and the lassoers often manage to take two or three per man. Instances have been known where horses have been thrown to the ground by the hunter giving a violent jerk to the animal's tail when it was making an abrupt turn. When his quarry is brought down, either by this method or the use of the lasso, the rider jumps from his steed, whips a "blinder" (a handkerchief is used when there is nothing else procurable) over the prostrate horse's eyes, and straps up one of its fore-legs securely. If this is properly done, the animal may safely be left "until called for," for no horse thus secured can stray far. Should a man be so unlucky as to capture a branded horse, or a foal running with a branded mare, he cannot keep it; but all others become the property of the hunter, and after they undergo a rough-and-ready process of breaking-in, are sold at prices ranging from 25 schillimngs to 15 pounds each. The latter figure is, however, seldom, unless in the case of exceptionally fine stallions. Great numbers of these wild horses die from starvation in the winter time, but still the herds show no signs of dominion.
From the Chambers Journal and in the Lafayette Advertiser 5/23/1896.
LAGNIAPPE:
HUNTING WILD HORSES.
A Novel and Exciting Sport Indulged In by New Zealanders.
In the center of the north island of New Zealand there are large acres of poor volcanic country of no value to the agriculturist, and of small use to the squatter. Here are to be found herds of wild horses, the progeny of animals which have escaped from statios and homesteads. A favorite, is to arrange hunts, when the sport afforded as generally of the most exciting description. The essentials for success are utter fearlessness in the saddle, a quick eye, and the possession of considerable bodily strength, combined with a medium weight. Given these, and the rest - a general knowledge of the country and hardness with the lasso - may be readily acquired. As regards the latter, one has only to try the experiment to explode the hoary tradition that years of apprenticeship are required to make a man an expert in the use of the green hide lasso. I know a young farmer, who is now on a visit to England, who became tolerably proficient after two days' practice, and his is by no means a solitary instance. The rope employed is generally between 30 and 40 feet long, and the throw is given from a distance of some 20 feet. Mexican saddles are but rarely used, the New Zealanders preferring to depend upon the strength of the arm to pull up the flying animal with a jerk round the neck, which chokes it almost into insensibility, and brings it with a thud to the earth. The first time of going out to hunt wild horses must ever remain a red-letter day in the novice's life. A party may consist of two or three or four, but it seldom exceeds the latter numbers. There are sometimes a couple of ladies, and although their want of muscular strength and their unwillingness to practice make them poor hands with the lasso, still their light weight and magnificent horsemanship not infrequently renders their aid of no small value. It goes almost without saying that all must be well mounted, and the fact that the work is so rough on horses and "uses" them up so soon, is the chief reason of the pastime not being more followed than it is.
On nearing where the wild horses are known to be, some eminence as ascended from where a good view of the surrounding scrubby and sparsely timbered country may be obtained. As a rule, the herds number from ten to twelve, made up of mares and one stallion. No stallion will allow another stallion into his herd, and stubborn fights frequently occur between horses owing to this. The beaten males, after being expelled, join herds exclusively of stallions. On any herd being sighted by hunters, a good idea can generally be formed by the experienced man as to which route the animals will take on their way to the rugged, hills, for which they invariably make when disturbed. A scheme is mapped out to cut them off if possible, and the party scatters, each to take up his allotted position. Of course while doing this, every advantage is taken of the natural inequalities of the ground so as to escape observation. When the alarm is given, however, all need for caution is at an end, and each hunter puts his steed to full gallop. The stallion, the head of the herd, boldly comes out to meet him, and endeavors to distract attention from the rest. In some rare instance he is lassoed and captured at once, but he generally manages to rejoin his wives, which by this time have trooped into single file with his favorite mare in the lead. Should the herd be turned and get into difficulties, the stallion takes up his position in the van, and the great object is to cut him off from the rest. Should this be accomplished, both he and the mares become confused, and the lassoers often manage to take two or three per man. Instances have been known where horses have been thrown to the ground by the hunter giving a violent jerk to the animal's tail when it was making an abrupt turn. When his quarry is brought down, either by this method or the use of the lasso, the rider jumps from his steed, whips a "blinder" (a handkerchief is used when there is nothing else procurable) over the prostrate horse's eyes, and straps up one of its fore-legs securely. If this is properly done, the animal may safely be left "until called for," for no horse thus secured can stray far. Should a man be so unlucky as to capture a branded horse, or a foal running with a branded mare, he cannot keep it; but all others become the property of the hunter, and after they undergo a rough-and-ready process of breaking-in, are sold at prices ranging from 25 schillimngs to 15 pounds each. The latter figure is, however, seldom, unless in the case of exceptionally fine stallions. Great numbers of these wild horses die from starvation in the winter time, but still the herds show no signs of dominion.
From the Chambers Journal and in the Lafayette Advertiser 5/23/1896.
LAGNIAPPE:
The All Seeing Eye.
With the new eye which science has recently given us, some of the hitherto most closely guarded secrets of Nature are clearly unveiled. Through it the dark becomes light, and the opaque transparent. When the world was startled with the results and the possibility of the Roentgen ray we predicted that we were on the eye of discoveries in the physical and spiritual world unequaled in human history, and at no distant day the photographic plate would cease to be a necessity in recording the image, as science would perfect some process by means of which the eye could follow the rays through hitherto impenetrable substances. Edison has already reached that point. With the powerful cathode light behind his patient he gazes through a screen of prepared chemicals and sees every organ of the body as plainly as he sees the dishes on the dinner table. The fluorescent substances used in the screen are tungsten and calcium. These two elements are fused in a furnace, and at a proper degree of heat from little crystals. These crystals are glued to a piece of paper by a transparent celluloid paint, and form a coating whose sensitivities is six times greater than a similar coating of platinum barium cyanide.
If the subject stands very close to the light the body is imperfectly transparent, and nothing whatever is seen. The light goes through bone and everything just as sunlight goes through glass. If the patient steps a foot or two away from the light the human skeleton stands revealed. A step further from the light and the muscles, tissues and organs of the body appear as plainly as if there was on outside covering of the flesh. We can thus, by changing the focus, diminishing or increasing the light by a large or smaller number of tubes, see just as little as we desire.
A man comes to a surgeon with a bullet in his arm; the surgeon takes his X-Ray lamp and his fluorescent screen and locates the bullet. He looks through the arm, through the bone if necessary, and sees just where the bullet is lodged. The bone may be fractured. The ray is turned on, and the surgeon is no longer compelled to pull and twist, for he can see the fracture with his open eyes, and can as readily join the parts together as the cabinetmaker can unite pieces of wood to form an almost invisible joint. No photograph is needed for the fluorescent screen, and the rays have made darkness visible. If these rays had been turned on the stricken Garfield, the track of the bullet and the bullet itself might have been seen, and possibly the life of the President saved.
These onward steps in science necessitate a corresponding change in college curriculum of study and the aids to investigation in hospital and private practice. Hereafter every well equipped college and every well equipped hospital must include in their facilities for study and work bacteriological culture and the Roentgen Ray with Edison's fluorescent spectacles. The attention of scientists is now being directed to the action of the ray upon the germ-life which kindles into active force so many forms of disease. What at first seemed a mere scientific toy is opening one of the broadest avenues of scientific investigation upon which the mind has ever entered.
In this connection the recent statement of Mr. Denshah, one of the few remaining followers of Zoroaster, in a recent lecture, is of interest, from his high position as a general scientist and electrical expert. Mr. Denshah identified the X ray as one manifestation of what has for several thousand years been known to Eastern scientists as astral light; the seventh dimension of matter. He said that Western scientists were several thousand years behind the times; and predicted that as a result of Edison's experiments with the X ray he would soon be able to see through fifteen feet of solid matter.
From the New York Medical Times and in the Lafayette Advertiser 5/30/1896.
Lagniappe:
Frugal Dinners of Rich Folk.
It is rather an accepted idea with a great many persons that New York's wealthy citizens feast daily and perennially on costly viands and rare delicacies. Such notion is erroneous. There are a great many talented cooks employed by the rich residents of the city and a great many choices and exquisite dinners are served in the course of the year, but these alternate with very simple ones. Here is an actual dinner eaten last week in the house of three-times millionaire by birth as well as of fortune. There was a cream soup, a puree to begin with, a steak with two vegetables, a salad of lettuce with French dressing and a dessert of stewed rhubarb, with coffee and bit of cheese and wafers to finish. What farmer's wife would not consider beefsteak and stewed rhubarb a sufficient homely repast?
But this meal as it was eaten lacked nothing of relish or elegance. It was served by a butler in a beautiful dining room, soft with wax lights and rich with tapestries and handsome furnishings. The diners, consisting simply of the family, were in conventional dinner dress; every article of food was deliciously cooked; the steak was four inches thick and broiled to a turn ; a single wine of choice vintage gave a zest to the repast ; and if ever art lurked in stewed rhubarb it did in that particular dish of the compound - clear, square pieces of the fruit floating in a transparent syrup of absinthe green. It is the manner, not the matter, of New York's private dinners which gives them their reputation.
From the New York Times and in the Lafayette Advertiser 5/23/1891.
LAGNIAPPE:
What Energy and Perseverance Can Accomplish.
To the Editor of the Advertiser:
Among the recent law graduates in New Orleans, none deserves more credit than our genial friend Mark Neuhauser.
Mark was born in New Orleans on the 28th of December 1854, commenced railroading in 1875 as a brakeman at which he worked for 2 years, when he was promoted to conductor, which position he has filled with credit to himself, to his employers and the general public for 16 years. About 2 years ago Mark commenced studying law, and in despite of the exceedingly busy and active life of a conductor, put in his spare moments to such good use, that he passed his law examination successfully and received his sheepskin recently, this is an illustration of what energy and determination can accomplish. Mark received his preliminary education in the public schools of New Orleans. He is the secretary and treasurer of the Order of Railroad Conductors Division 108, New Orleans, which position he has held for the past 5 years.
Neuhauser is prominently spoken of for the Legislature in his ward and on the whole there is no doubt he will yet make his Mark. Believing that you fully appreciate the efforts of this young man to enter the arena of professional life where, let us hope, he will hold his own, I remain
A. FRIEND.
Lafayette Advertiser 5/27/1893.
Lagniappe:
New Orleans Correspondence.
New Orleans, May 22nd, 1869.
For the Lafayette Advertiser
After a prolonged spell of cooler weather than is generally experienced in a New Orleans Spring, our summer appears now to have decidedly set in. Hope are consequently raised that crops which are reported to have been everywhere retarded will now progress vigorously to a bountiful harvest. From most portions of the State and adjacent regions the reports of the condition and prospects of agricultural affairs are quite favorable. The break in the Old Grand Levee will cause considerable local and particular damage, but not, it is hoped, of such an extent as to be felt very far. New Orleans is becoming duller as Summer approaches ; but during the past week there has been a good business done for the season, both in quantities of cotton sold and prices obtained. In the mean time our places of amusement are rapidly closing, and in a week or two will be found beginning preparations for next season.
Our schools have commenced their "commencements" or "exhibitions" preparatory to closing for the Summer vacation. One of these coming events which is looked forward with great interest is that of Mrs. Stamp's School, Mrs. S. being a lady who has gained a very enviable celebrity and popularity as an educator of young ladies. It may be that her being a daughter of Gov. Humphreys, of Mississippi and a niece of Jefferson Davis helped call attention to her ; but her own personal merits alone could have given her such a reputation as she has achieved.
As to political matters, the main subject of local interest the high handed action of the Metropolitan Police. The most infamous of their proceedings consists in their having attacked the city authorities of Jefferson, at night and forced a collision with them in order to enable Warmoth and Mower to parade it before the Congressional Investigating Committee, as coincidence of the aggressive spirit of our people, while the fact that the people were calmly appealing to the law when the assault was made on them under cover of night. They are attempting similar oppressions in New Orleans and Heaven alone knows how it is to end. Such ruthless violations of the rights and will of a people cannot lead to anything but resentment and resistance.
Among the most interesting events of the past week, is the departure of Professor Hilgard, the eminent Geologist, on a partial survey of the State under the auspices of the Academy of Sciences. It is to be hoped that the appeals which the city papers have made to citizens residing on the route which will be pursued by Mr. Hilgard will afford to him as well as those accompanying him, all the hospitality and assistance and information. The result of his survey cannot but prove of great interest and advantage as well in a practical scientific point of view. The latest news with regard to crevasses is favorable. The river is falling and it is believed the worst has been reached.
There have been two or three painful cases of alleged delinquency in unexpected quarters during the past week. In one a young man standing high in confidence and having a good situation, has forfeited them by gambling away funds belonging to the Insurance Company by which he was employed. In another public charges have been insinuated, or indeed, preferred against another who stood yet higher. In this case the friends of the young man believe that he will prove family difficulties and attendant malice have led to the attack upon him.
REGINALDUS.
Correspondence from New Orleans printed in the Lafayette Advertiser of 5/29/1869.
Lagniappe:
Saved From His Whipping.
A little urchin seven to eight years old, in a school where a Miss Blodgett was teacher, composed the following and wrote it on his slate at prayer-time, to the great amusement of the boys.
"A little mouse ran up the stairs,
To hear Miss Blodgett say her prayers."
The teacher discovered the rhyme, and called out the culprit. For punishment she gave him his choice to make another rhyme in five minutes or be whipped. So after thinking, and scratching his head till his time was nearly out, and the teacher was lifting the cane in a threatening manner, at the last moment he exclaimed:
"Here I stand before Miss Blodgett ;
She's going to strike and I'm going to dodge it!"
Original source unknown. In the Lafayette Advertiser 5/30/1874.
Lagniappe:
He Wanted Some Scenery.
On a train coming East over the Michigan Central road the other day was Californian bound for New Jersey, and the train had scarcely left Chicago behind when he stopped the conductor and said:
"On which side of the car can I best see the mountains?"
The conductor told him that there were no mountains along the route, and the man indignantly replied :
"What in blazes did you build the road for? What do you suppose I'm traveling for? This must be a one-horse road if it don't take in at least one mountain?"
He cooled down for a while, but in half an hour he tackled the brakeman with the query :
"Does this road pass by any old ruins of interest?"
The brakeman couldn't remember any ruins except an old log house here and there, and the Californian was made in a minute.
"Do you think I shipped on this as freight or livestock?" he called out. "if you don't run past any old ruins, why don't you say on the time-cards, and not be deceiving people?"
When the conductor next came along the Californian was looking from the window to catch sight of the bridges, and he turned and said :
"If we come to any bridges over 800 feet long just give me the word. I don't care about seeing any shorter ones."
The conductor had to admit that the road was trying to get along with a few short bridges, and the passenger bobbed around in his seat and replied:
"What did you build your old road for? If you haven't any long bridges on the line, why didn't you hunt for a new one?"
About thirty miles west of Detroit the Californian caught sight of a lake afar off, and going out on the platform, he asked the brakeman :
"Don't we run along the shore of that lake over there?"
"No ; we are near it as we shall go."
"You are, eh? Then that settles this road with me! When I come back I'll ride in a lumber wagon. You can take your confounded old railroad and eat it, but you can't fool me again. Looks to me as if the folks who built it simply wanted to connect Detroit and Chicago, and didn't care a cent for scenery. I'll get off at the next station and walk." Original source unknown. In the Lafayette Advertiser 5/31/1879.
LAGNIAPPE:
1882 - Lincoln and the South.
[Vicksburg (Miss.) Herald.]
When President Lincoln died the South lost incalculably. He was killed in the zenith of his power, and, as President Garfield said, "in the fullness of his fame." There are few in the South who do not believe he would have been, had he lived, the true friend of the Southern people ; few who do not believe the South lost more than the North by his death. We believe he would have made it his chief object to build up the States that suffered so much from war. We believed he would have healed the wounds with kindness and won the mass of the people by standing like a stone wall between them and revengeful oppression. His son "is a chip of the old block." He has let no opportunity pass to show the Southern people kindness. He has worked side by side with the Southern Governors for the relief of the overflow sufferers, and we are sure Robert T. Lincoln has been praised oftener since he has been head of the War Department by Southerners than by Northerners. His thoughtful kindness, and his attention to the details, are proof that his heart was in the work. The Southern people are impulsive, warm-hearted, and extremely grateful, and we correctly expressing their sentiment for the Secretary of War.
From the Vicksburg Herald and in the Lafayette Advertiser 6/3/1882.
LAGNIAPPE:
WAS AFTER A RECORD.
Fair Damsel Wished to Remain Quiet for Five Minutes.
The beautiful girl in the parlor scene was strangely silent.
"Ethel, dear," queried the young man on the other end of the sofa, his voice quivering with tremulous pathos, "have I offended you?"
The maiden fair shook her head, but never uttered a word.
"Then," he continued, "why don't you speak? You haven't uttered a word for nearly three minutes."
Still more silence on the part of the party of the feminine part."
"Darling," he said, as he placed his arm gently about the waist line of her person, "I cannot bear this strenuous quiet. Answer me - why don't you say something."
"Oh, George," she exclaimed, as her head - bargain counter pompadour and all - dropped with a dull thud on the solitary cigar in his uppermost pocket, it has been my ambition to accomplish something out of the ordinary - something that would make me famous - and now, just as I was about to grasp fame right by the back of the neck, you butted in and snatched it from me. I know I am only a weak woman, but had you allowed me to remain silent for five consecutive minutes I would have broken any previous records."
From the Cincinnati Inquirer and in the Lafayette Advertiser 6/7/1905.
Lagniappe:
1954 -13 Negroes Attempt to Register Due To SLI Ruling.
Thirteen Lake Charles colored youths were turned down by the registrar at McNeese State College here today when they attempted to register for summer classes.
The registrar, Mrs. Inez Moses, said the would-be students left in an orderly manner after she told them that she had no authority to accept their applications.
Mrs. Moses says she was following instructions given her by the college president, L. E. Frazar, who said that a ruling permitting their entrance at McNeese must come from the state board of education.
The 12 girls and one boy were accompanied to the school by Mrs. Doretha Combre, chairman of a citizens committee of the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. She said that the move was made on the assumption that a court ruling legalizing the enrollment of colored students at Southwestern Louisiana Institute in Lafayette would permit, in the opinion of the NAACP, enrollment of colored students at the local school since it is also state owned.
Frazar reiterated a statement made last year when colored students applied for registration at the school. "We have a state law which prohibits the enrollment of colored students in white schools. We are under the supervision of the state board of education and until we are authorized by the board to admit them, we can't do it."
Three of the girls who attempted to register today were among the four who filed suit for admittance to McNeese after they were turned down last year. Their suit is now pending in the federal court for the western district of Louisiana.
The three judges of that court recently ruled in the similar case against SLI that the Lafayette school would have to admit the colored applicants.
Presient Frazar said this morning that he intends to call the president of the state board of education later in the day to determine if any change has been made in its instructions regarding admittance of colored students.
Those who sought admittance to McNeese this morning were Joyce Richard, Lenora Chandeler and Hattie Coleman, parties to the pending suit against McNeese, and frances Fonell, Ruthie Fondell, Barbara Fruge, Mary Jane Silas, Florence Cooper, Thelma Phelmpugo, Lucille Kane, Delorius Toussand, Marva Thibadeaux and Marshall McGowan.
"We did not seek to apply for entrance on the basis of the Supreme Court's ruling, but on the basis of the ruling in the SLI case," Mrs. Combre said. "Inasmuch as these students wanted to go to school here, and there is no Negro school, we felt we had a right to enroll at McNeese State College."
Lake Charles American Press 6/7/1954.
LAGNIAPPE:
SPEAKING OF COMETS.
The Old Man Felt Nervous and All Broke Up About Them.
There were a score of men seated around in the waiting-room of the depot, when an old man, who had been holding a newspaper within an inch of his nose for the last half-hour, suddenly let it fall and exclaimed:
"Wall, by gum, but it's no wonder I felt nervous and all all broke up."
"Are you speaking to the me, sir?" asked the man on the right.
"I'm speaking to the hull crowd o' you," said the old man, as he rose up and looked around. "Do any of you know how nigh that blamed comet cum to hittin' this airth before she turned and scooted back into space?"
"I never trouble myself about comets," replied the man who had spoken before.
"Oh, you don't. Some folks are jest that way. Do you know, sir - do you know how nigh that comet come to knockin' this old globe and you with it into a continental cocked hat?"
"I don't know and I don't care, and there's no particular call for you to stand up there and make a show of yourself!"
"You don't care, eh!" shouted the old man. "Then sir, that proves that you are a durned mean man! That comet, sir, was a-boomin; right straight through space fur this terrestrial globe, and there was every reason to believe that there would be the blamedst old collision anybody ever heard tell of, when -- "
"When you'd better sit down and let comets and other things run their own business," interrupted the other.
"I had eh! Gentleman, look at that man! Here this world has cum within an ace of being knocked into the middle of next week by a comet, and he's just that selfish that he don't care a copper about it. There ought to be a law to take a human hyena like him by the neck and chuck him --"
At that moment the depot policeman came up and took hold of the old man, and warned him that he must sit down and be quiet or take the consequences.
"I won't sit down in here with that man, though, I'll go outside," shouted the indignant astronomer, as he reached for a bundle wrapped in bedticking, "he ain't got no more feelin's about him than a sawlog, and he's selfish 'nuff to steal turnips from a poorhouse farm."
"How near did the comet come?" asked one of the group, as the old man was going out.
"None o' yer bizzness," he vigorously replied. "This 'ere has learned me a lesson. I've allus tried to be square and white, with everybody, and it has allus come just about this way. I quit right here. If the rest of ye can stand comets I kin, and if that 'ar feller thar who sassed me and raised all that row will step outdoors and knock a chip off my shoulder and agree to clear me of the law I'll make him think a comet as big a haystack has hit him right between the eyes!"
From the Detroit Free Press and in the Lafayette Advertiser 6/9/1894.
Lagniappe:
What The Moon Does.
[Virginia City (Nev.)Enterprise.]
Professor Legate, of this city, has been experimenting for some time for the purpose of ascertaining what effect the moon has upon fish, and the result of his investment goes to substantiate what old fishermen have always said, namely, that it spoils them. The rays of light or something carried in the rays, cause the fish to decay very rapidly. Even catfish all alive and kicking when exposed were in a bad state in a few hours.
Prof. Legate is a firm believer in the influence of the moon on man and on all things mundane. The atmosphere being attracted by the moon the same as the waters of the ocean only to a much greater extent, he is of the opinion that effects are produced by the aerial tides which are generally attributed to other causes. A gentleman in this city, hearing of the fish experiments, says that some years ago, while on the west coast of Africa he one night slept on the deck of the vessel under the rays of a full moon, and the result was that he was totally blind for three days.
The bad effect of the rays of the moon appears to have been known, or at least suspected, ages ago. In the Bible i Psalms we read : "The sun shall not smile thee by day, nor the moon by night."
From the Virginia City Enterprise and in the Lafayette Advertiser 6/10/1882.
Lagniappe:
A Type Setting Machine.
ANOTHER IMPORTANT INVENTION.
[From the Norfolk Virginian.]
For some time past we have noticed with interest progress made upon a machine for setting type, invented by our young townsman, Mr. M. Unstadter, and perfected and arranged by the skill and ingenuity of Mr. David Morris. At the time the model was first made to be exhibited at the Patent Office, we called attention to the enterprise as being one of the simplest and most feasible of all schemes yet broached for this purpose, and now, the composing part of the machine is complete and in working order, we are the more confirmed in our opinion.
Other machines have been invented and put into operation, but the trouble with all has been the want of any appliance for "justifying," or making the lines of the same length, with due regard for the space between the words and the proper division upon syllables. This has in every instance heretofore been done by hand; and thus as labor saving implements the previous inventions have been of little value. To obviate this difficulty has been the chief care of the inventor in this instance, and he claims that this machine will set and "justify" as many type in a given space of time as six men. The justification is effected by a space of his own invention, of this shape, )( formed of brass or steel strips riveted together in the middle, and capable of being compressed into one-half of the ordinary thickness.
It is impossible, in the limited space of a newspaper paragraph to give any minute description of a machine necessarily as complicated as this one, but we will endeavor to give our readers some insight into the manner in which it is manipulated.
The machine proper is two feet wide and thirty inches long, divided into as many compartments as there are different type ; into these compartments the type are placed in the proper position, filling the chamber, in which they fit loosely, their own weight keeping them pressed down to the bottom. In front of the machine is a double row of iron keys, lettered to correspond with the chambers of type. By pressing upon one of these keys, a type is forced from the bottom of one of the chambers into an iron trough fitted to the exact thickness of the size of type used, so that when once in the trough or slide it impossible for it to fall over on its side. Underneath this trough runs a belt, furnished with steel hooks or teeth and driven by a treadle beneath. These hooks convey the type along the trough to an apparatus at the end of the machine, where they placed in regular order until the line is full, when the striking of a bell announces the fact to the operator, who by simply pulling a small lever places the line in an upright position on a frame.
The machine can be seen at Mr. Morris's establishment, on Union street, where he is busily engaged upon an automatic distributing apparatus to be attached to the machine, when it will be the most perfect invention for the purpose yet brought before the public.
Lafayette Advertiser 6/12/1869.
Lagniappe:
Origins of the Phrase "To Cut and Run."
The phrase to "cut and run" originated from a peculiar custom of the ancient Egyptian embalmers. A low caste official was employed to make the first incision in the corpse, a process viewed with much superstition and hatred by people, who held all mutilatore of the dead as being accursed.
As soon as the incisor made his "cut" he took to his heels, pursued by sticks stones and curses. For his living the poor wretch "cut" and to save his life had to "run."
From the St. Louis Republic and in the Lafayette Advertiser of 6/14/1890.
Lagniappe:
Origins of the Phrase "To Cut and Run."
The phrase to "cut and run" originated from a peculiar custom of the ancient Egyptian embalmers. A low caste official was employed to make the first incision in the corpse, a process viewed with much superstition and hatred by people, who held all mutilatore of the dead as being accursed.
As soon as the incisor made his "cut" he took to his heels, pursued by sticks stones and curses. For his living the poor wretch "cut" and to save his life had to "run."
From the St. Louis Republic and in the Lafayette Advertiser of 6/14/1890.
LAGNIAPPE:
WHEN IT IS HOTTEST.
Heat of the Sun as Affected by the Spots on Its Surface.
The fact has long been recognized that the sum is a variable star. Of course its variations are slight, else they would have a disastrous effect upon the earth. The regularity with which the sun spots gradually increase and then decrease in number and size is, however, a sufficient indication that, as viewed from a great distance of space, and with sufficiently delicate means of observation, the sun would run through a cycle of variations in brightness once in every eleven years.
It might well be supposed that if such changes take place they would be more easily perceived from the earth than from a greater distance. As a matter of fact, however, there are practical difficulties which render it almost impossible to get an accurate measure of the variation from year to year in the amount of the sun's radiation that falls on the earth.
It has even been undecided whether the sun is hotter or colder when it is most spotted. Some observations have indicated that the sun is hotter when the disturbances that create sun-spots are most active, while other observations have, at the same time, tended to show that less heat is then received on the face of the earth than when there are practically no sun-spots.
Recently, however, M. Savelief has reported to the Academy of Sciences in Paris the result of experiments and calculations made by him since 1890 which strongly go to show that not only is the sun hooter when it is most spotted, but that it is precisely at such times that the surface of the earth feels the greatest intensity of solar radiation.
If Mr. Savelief's conclusion remains unshaken, it will settle a question that has long been more or less a puzzle, and will aid in the solution of the problem of the sun's influence upon the earth's weather.
In Connection with this it is not uninteresting to remember that, at present, we are not far from a maximum period of sun-spots, or in other words, according to M. Savelief, from a time when the sun's heat is most intense upon the earth.
From the Youth's Companion and in the Lafayette Advertiser 6/16/1894.
LAGNIAPPE:
From Mark Twain.
In all likelihood, the following musing was written when Mark Twain lived in Nevada.
(The saving of most of his articles was because of the pick-ups made by papers around the country, otherwise it might almost be all lost.)
Here's what was in the Lafayette Advertiser of Lafayette, La.
It reads:
Mean. - Mark Twain produces one of the most striking cases of meanness on record. He says he knows of an "incorporated society" which hired a man to blast a rock, and he was punching powder with a crowbar, when a premature explosion followed, sending the man and crowbar out of sight. Both came down again all right, and the man went to work promptly. But though he was gone only 15 minutes the company "docked him for lost time."
Mark Twain circa 1868.
Lafayette Advertiser 6/18/1870.
Lagniappe:
DIDN'T WANT TO BE INSULTED.
From the Columbus Sun
A few days ago a recently married couple from the Country - not Quindare - spent a portion of that romantic season denominated the honeymoon in our burg, and of course put up and enjoyed the hospitalities of the Garbo House. During dinner the young lady was observed to turn red and pale by turns, but this was laid to her new position as a wife, But Scroggs, who has a sharp ear, heard her ask her husband :
"Is my face dirty ?"
"Dirty! No. Why do you ask ?"
"Because that insulting waiter insists on putting a towel beside my plate. I've thrown three under the table, and yet every time he comes around he puts another before me."
From the Columbus Sun and in the Lafayette Advertiser 6/19/1869.
Lagniappe:
From the N. O. Times-Democrat.
The Grandfather Clause of the Suffrage Law.
The New York Republicans Club is exciting itself unnecessarily ever the suffrage question in the South. One of the speakers likened the question to prairie fires, and thought that there would be a revival of civil war passions because of it. The speeches and resolutions attacked "the grandfather clause," "the intent of which," said the chairman, "is to discriminate against the negro. This discrimination could not have been made plainer if the negro's exclusion from the suffrage had been expressed in the most specific and descriptive terms."
Here then is "the front of our offending" - "the grandfather clause." No objection is raised to the educational provision in our suffrage laws, and indeed none could be raised, as is borrowed from the Constitution of Massachusetts and other New England States. The grandfather clause, we are assured, is aimed directly at the negro, yet, as a matter of fact, negroes can and do register under it. A Massachusetts negro settling in Louisiana can register as a voter, however illiterate he may be, by showing that his father was a voter prior to 1867.
But even if the "grandfather clause" is unconstitutional, as the New York Republican Club insists, and violative of the fourteenth amendments, and even if the United States Supreme Court of any other Federal tribunal can reach the question as one within its jurisdiction, what can it do? Nothing more than declare this part of the suffrage laws of Louisiana, Alabama, North Carolina and Virginia unconstitutional leaving the rest of the law under which the negroes are in a disenfranchised standing. The grandfather clause gives the Republicans no reason for complaining about the treatment of the negro, but they are seizing on this least important item in the suffrage because they think it offers them a good point of attack.
"If all they propose could be carried out, if "the grandfather clause" were proved faulty and unconstitutional, if it were completely wiped out, it would not restore the ballot to one negro in the South; as a matter of fact, it would increase the number of disenfranchised darkeys. The negroes are disenfranchised under a statue borrowed from New England, in operation in a dozen States, and in many of them in force since the very foundation of the government and the constitutionality of which has never been attacked can not be attacked. The power does not exist in the federal government, and and cannot exist, to restore the ballot to the negroes in the South who have been disenfranchised because of illiteracy. The present pro-negro campaign cannot, therefore, under any circumstances, whether Congress or the courts act, accomplish the slightest relief to the negro voter. If the grandfather clause of the war amendments - it is at best a negative violation, for it does not franchise any one because of race, color or previous condition or for any other reason; indeed, it is an enfranchising measure - and this view can be sustained by Congress or the courts, all that either can possibly accomplish is to strike from the permanent registration rolls those illiterate whites who have been admitted to the ballot because of their fathers or grandfathers. It would slightly reduce the number of white voters - that is all, it would not affect the negro in the faintest degree, nor the political conditions in the South.
There are thousands of people in the South not particularly enamored of the grand clause, and its disappearance would cause very little regret. It was passed for purely sentimental reasons, as a tribute to those men who because of their service in the cause of the Confederacy or because of the demoralization incident to reconstruction were unable to secure an education; and it is a purely temporary relief, for it applies only to voters previous to 1898. The number of illiterates on that list in Louisiana is very small. Three parishes have less than ten voters enrolled under the grandfather clause and seventeen of the wards and parishes have less than a hundred; and this roll of illiteracy must grow smaller with every year from death and emigration. Its complete abolition would not cause a political ripple in the South. It is the only thing the negro suffrage orators in the North can attack; and they are wasting energy in attacking it, for even if successful they would utterly fail to accomplish what they are after - the re-enfranchisement of the negro. From the N. O. Times-Democrat and in the Lafayette Advertiser 6/20/1891.
LAGNIAPPE:
A Remarkable Blind Man.
One of the most remarkable blind men in America is John B. Herresnoff, of Britstol, R. I., the head of one of the largest shipbuilding firms - Herresnoff Brothers - in the Republic.
He lost his sight at fifteen, and is now sixty years old. He supervises the financial affairs of the house and personally superintends every department of his business, employing hundreds of men. No one seeing him dictating letters, receiving reports, strolling about his shipyards giving orders to his foremen, would suspect his blindness. Not for nearly fifty years has he seen the vessels that ply on the bay ; but he carries their outlines clearly in his memory and draws on these for his designs for a new craft. He can get an accurate idea of any model, or material body, by running his hands over it, and of any kind of machinery by hearing a description of it. He has great executive ability ; has all the requisites of an eminent inventor, and it is believed John Ericsson but for his blindness. He has built some of the finest steam yachts now afloat, and he feels a pride in his calling that has grown with his years. His personality and character are full of interest.
From the Commercial Advertiser and in the Lafayette Advertiser of 6/21/1890.
Louisiana Negroes Recognized as the Only Republicans at Chicago. The Republican National Committee at Chicago, preparatory to the meeting of the National Republican Convention, was in session yesterday, settling contests among delegations from the several States.
There were two delegations from Louisiana contesting for recognition as the simon-pure article. One was the "Black and Tan" delegation, made up of negroes and whites, under the chairmanship of Walter Cohen, a negro of this city. The other was the "Lily White" element, under the leadership of Chairman Williams and Ex-Governor Warmoth. Both parties presented their respective claims, favor of the Cohen crowd, the Lily Whites having been hopelessly turned down.
Thus it has been settled by the highest Republican authority that the negro element makes up the only Republican Party in Louisiana. It may mean something serious if Roosevelt is re-elected President. From the N. O. Picayune and in the Lafayette Advertiser 6/22/1904.
The Throw-Down of the Southern White Republicans at Chicago.
The iridescent hope, to unsubstantial to be classed even as a dream, of a white Republican Party in this State has vanished into thin air. The leopard cannot change his spots, and the Republican Party, like Ephraim, who has joined to his idols, still lovingly clings to the descendants of Ham, as it they were not the Republican Party would necessarily cease to be.
There is a natural affinity between the Republican Party and the negro, which our "White Supremacists" failed to consider.
The negro was the cause of its very being, and, therefore, how could he be denied a front seat in the pantheon of there household gods.
How could the cause of its existence be relegated to the rear, particularly where that cause has a large vote in New York, Indiana, Ohio and Illinois? The spectacle of the meeting of the present Republican National Committee had its element of humor, but it had one phase so pitiable, so grim as to bring the blush of shame to Caucasion cheeks.
Upon the one side were largely the dignity, the culture, the refinement of the Caucasian civilization of the Republican Party in this State. On the other side, the negro contingent, led by one Walter Cohen, a negro ex-divekeeper and gambler from the Redlight District, aided by a few white men whose cry for the political equality even with the whites. And before a jury of white men, numbering white Senators of the nation, the negro gambler and divekeeper won, and the gentlemen and the Caucasian went down.
"By their fruits shall ye know them." A party that chooses for its standard-bearer, for its national committeman to represent a sovereign State, a negro ex-divekeeper and gambler from the Redlight District, is not worthy of the support of worthy white men either North or South. A party that panders to its worst and most vicious and degraded element to catch and hold the Senegambian vote deserves only the excretion and contempt of all right-minded white men. Lafayette Advertiser 6/22/1904.
Lagniappe:
Non-Producers?
The idle and worthless negroes in the cities of the south are not only non-producers, but they are a menace to the peace and prosperity of the State in every way. They congregate in the cities, towns and villages, and at all places where day labor can be had, and refuse to work on the farms and plantations. They live by stealing outright or making their women who work for the whites, steal for them when they fail to get work. And yet there are people who contend that it will not do to enact a vagrant law that will reach the loafers. Listen to what Commissioner Lee of the State agricultural department said along this line in his latest report:
"During the year 1902 our supply of farm labor was entirely inadequate to the demand. Owing to short crops in neighboring States and the shortage of the sugar crop in this States, there was some improvement in 1903; but even then there was a scarcity of labor during the harvesting season. I hardly think we can look for any permanent relief in the labor situation unless there is some legislation to prevent the congestion of idle negroes in the larger towns at a time when they are most needed on the farm. I think a law that could accomplish this, in whole or in part, would not only benefit our farmers, but would materially less the work of our criminal courts."
From the Shreveport Times and in the Lafayette Advertiser of 6/22/1904.
lagniappe #1 Comfort from the Conductor. The train had stopped at a station and several men had alighted, as was their custom, to stretch their legs on the platform, and when it started again one of the men, who had strayed a little too far off, was left behind.
In a minute or two there was a loud scream and a woman rushed up to the conductor and exclaimed excitedly: "You left my husband behind at that station!"
"Never mind, Madam," replied the official, "calm yourself. We shall be at Chicago in three hours and then you can get another husband." - Judge.
In the Lafayette Advertiser 2/24/1894.
lagniappe #2
NATURAL GRACE,
A Beautiful Quality, But When Assumed a Detriment.
Gracefulness, when natural, is a very pretty accompaniment to youth and beauty in women, but when it is assumed, or rather imitated in an exaggerated form by women of mature years for purposes of coquetry and flirtation, it becomes most distasteful to those possessed of any refinement. Naturally graceful women in this country are by no means common nowadays. Indeed, the compression of corsets and the religiously tight-fitting tailor-made gown appear almost incompatible with gracefulness. Gracefulness belongs essentially to freedom and nature, and, as a rule, it is easy to discover when only acquired. Nice manners are far preferable to acquired gracefulness, which requires a continuous effort to keep up. Doubtless much of the grace of the ancient Greek and Roman women was due to their loose style of dress, the corset being an unknown infliction of later years. However this may be, certain it is that the women to to-day do not possess the gracefulness of Helen of Troy or Cleopatra.
From the Chicago Post and in the Lafayette Gazette 2/24/1894.
lagniappe #3
GENESIS OF THE STEAMBOAT.
Ancient Craft That Foreshadowed the Modern Greyhounds of the Sea.The first steamboat was built by Dennis Papin, who navigated it safely down the Fulda as long ago as 1707. Unfortunately this pioneer craft was destroyed by jealous sailors, and even the very memory of it was lost for three-quarters of a century. In 1775 Perrier, another Frenchman, built an experimental steam vessel at Paris. Eight years later, in 1783, Jouffroy took up the idea that had been evolved by Papin and Perrier and built a steamboat which did good service for some time on the Saone.
The first American to attempt to apply steam to navigation was John Fitch, a Connecticut mechanic, who made his initial experiments in the year 1785. To what extent Fitch was indebted to the three illustrious French inventors named above we are not informed, but that his models were original there is not the least doubt. In the first he employed a large pipe kettle for generating the steam, the motive power being side paddles working after the fashion of oars on a common rowboat. In the second Fitch craft the same mode of propulsion was adopted, with the exception that the paddles were made to imitate a revolving wheel and were fixed to the stern - clearly foreshadowing the present sternwheeler.
This last mentioned boat was the first American steam vessel that can be pronounced a success. It made its first trip to Burlington in July, 1788. But, after all, it was not until after the opening of the present century that steam navigation started into actual life. In 1807 Robert Fulton (who every school child knows was an American), in conjunction, built the Clermont and established a regular packet service between New York and Albany.
The success of this undertaking was so satisfactory that four new boats were built before the end of 1811, at least two of them being designed for service in the other rivers.
From the St. Louis Republic and in the Lafayette Gazette February 24, 1894.
lagniappe #1
TOO POOR TO BURY ITS DEAD.
The action of the State department in accepting the offer of the Spaniards to bear the expense incurred in the burial of the victims of the Maine disaster may have been in accord with the laws that govern international relations, but it will hardly be approved by the great body of Americans. The administration at Washington was too busy receiving, and replying to, messages of sympathy from the Spanish government to attend to the proper burial of the unfortunate fellows whose remains now lie in alien graves, thousands of miles away from their homes. It was bad enough for this country to allow the interment of the sailors of the Maine, to take place in Cuba, but to the mind of the average American, it was far worse for it to grab at the offer of the Spaniards tom bear the expenses of the funeral. This country is rich enough to squander untold millions to support an army of public beggars, but the recent ill-advised action of the State department would show that it is too poor to bury its own dead and that Uncle Sam has grown so niggardly that he refuses to give a tittle of his vast denominations in which to bury the bones of his children. The endless palayer of Spanish sympathizers will will never soothe the sorrow of the widows and orphans of the dead seaman.
The Times-Democrat has very aptly said:
Nor do we think the bodies of American seamen should be placed at rest in a foreign land - and a semi-hostile one - where they have no friends or relatives at hand, especially when the shores of their native country are only sixty miles distant. It would be far better to bury the bodies on American soil, even though it be a sand spot on the coast of Florida, than have their graves to be cared for by "the Dons."
Capt. Sigsbee says that it would be difficult to remove the bodies to his country, and so it would be if they were to be carried to New York or New Orleans, or to the homes of the men; but the bodies could certainly have been kept to be interred in Florida as easily as preserved for a public funeral in Havana.
Lafayette Gazette 2/26/1898.
lagniappe #2
WASHINGTON NEWS.
How much longer Congress can stand the strain which has been imposed upon it by the action, or rather non-action of the administration upon the destruction of the battleship Maine and the killing of 250 of its men, in Havana harbor, without an explosion, is problematical. Mr. McKinley has disappointed many of his supporters, and nothing but the unwritten law under which Congress has always supported the President in all questions of policy affecting a foreign nation has prevented an outbreak before this. Inasmuch as there are probably not 50 men in Congress who do not believe that the Maine was blown up intentionally, it is difficult to understand why Mr. McKinley and the Secretary of the Navy should so persistently assert their belief that the awful calamity was the result of an accident on board the Maine. The naval attache of the Spanish Legation, has publicly announced the same belief, and added that the accident was the result of carelessness and lax discipline. Ye gods! and this meddlesome fool has not been sent after de Lome. It could have been understood if Mr. McKinley and his Secretary of the Navy had said that they had no opinion to offer in advance of the finding of the naval court of inquiry, which has been appointed to investigate the awful affair, but why they should take a position that is a reflection upon Captain Sigabee and the other brave officers of the Maine, is only explainable upon the theory that they are afraid of offending Spain, and that in the event of the failure to find direct and conclusive evidence that the Maine was blown up by Spanish treachery, Captain Sigabee is to be made a scapegoat. It was the general opinion in Congress that Mr. McKinley should have ordered the entire U. S. fleet, now off the coast of Florida, to Havana harbor, to remain during the investigation, but so far, not even a single warship has been ordered there Secretary Long says that one will will be. It is not surprising that the Spaniards should think and say that we are afraid to send another warship to Havana.
Up to this time, Mr. McKinley has only done one thing that has met the unqualified approval of Congress, and the indications point to his having done that under that compulsion. That was to refuse to grant the request of the Spanish authorities at Havana, to have a Spanish diver accompany every American diver who made an examination of the hull of the Maine. Just who is entitled to credit for his having done that has not yet been ascertained, but it is certain that somebody is, as Secretary Long had seated before the official request reached Washington, and before it was known that it would granted. Congress doesn't wish the world to know that it differs with the President; hence it has so far done nothing further than to appropriate $200,000 to be used in saving as much of the Maine and her equipment as possible, but the strain is terrible, and it is still on.
There is a difference of opinion as to whether Senator Mason chose just the right time to make that red-hot speech of his, and also as to the good taste of some of his remarks, which were certainly not such as would be likely to increase our prestige abroad, but the truthfulness of the following is fully apparent: "Why should the administration now hesitate? The President hesitated because of autonomy. Why should he not set when the minister has confessed that it is not real, but a fraud and a sham? Autonomy, by the confession of the Spanish Minister, is a fraud, a delusion, and a snare-a common confidence game of a common thief, confessed out of his own mouth. No one could doubt the contempt felt by Mr. Mason for Spanish diplo mata and Spanish diplomacy, after he said: I would not sit down at the same table with a Spaniard unless I had an ironclad wall between his stiletto and my architecture. There is nothing in Spanish diplomacy for a hundred years which prove them anything but common scoundrels."
- Nothing yet seriously proposed in the line if paternalism goes further than a joint resolution offered by Representative Lovering, of Mass., providing for an amendment to the Constitution, authorizing Congress to regulate the hours of labor in all the states. The House Judiciary Committee has actually been giving hearings on that resolution. A delegation of cotton mill men from the South appeared before the Committee to protest against the resolution, but they could have saved money by staying at home. We may come that sort of thing in time, but not yet.
- Only 12 democrats and one populist voted for the Bankruptcy bill which passed the House by a vote of 159 to 124. The bill passed is a substitute for the Nelson bill passed by the Senate at the extra session, and it provides for the voluntary and involuntary bankruptcy.
Original source unknown. In the Lafayette Advertiser of 2/26/1898.
lagniappe:
A BATTLE IN MID-AIR.
One day the cat was trotting out toward the barn, carrying in her teeth a piece of meat for her young. A bald eagle, which had been in the habit of hovering over the place, suddenly descended upon pussy and whirled her upward in a vertical flight. The path of ascent to the eye of a spectator, watching the scene, was clearly indicated by loose feathers violently tossed from the the point of combat.
In the time the struggling pair attained a (unreadable words), and came to a stand still. The eagle's wings had dropped. Now and then he had given plain evidence of pain and terror, yet not once did his awful grip appear to relax.
At length a descent was begun at a rapidity which every moment increased, and the two animals struck the ground at the very point where they had just encountered each other, but the eagle was dead, and pussy as soon as she felt terra firma beneath her feet, shot away for the barn, still carrying her bit of meat. Investigation showed that the cat had cut the eagle's throat and so lacerated his breast, that his body was literally laid open. After his death in mid-air, however, she had been too clever to relax her hold and thus fall to the ground had let her enemy serve as a parachute to ease the descent. At last account pussy was none the worse of her aerial fight and battle.
From the Union Point Bee Published in the Lafayette Advertiser 3/1/1890.
lagniappe:
Oysters Found on Trees.
The coast waters at Sierra Leone, Africa, are full of oysters of the finest grade - fully as good as Blue Points. The tides rise eighteen feet at Sierra Leone, and in many places the mango swamps stretch hundreds of yards out into the sea. Oysters in their curious migrations are often lifted by waves and carried about among these trees, and it is a sight by no means uncommon to see them when the tide has run out clinging to the branches as comfortably as though they enjoyed playing as fruit. Natives paddle about in their canoes, gather the bivalves and bring them to the traders and officers for sale. In size West African oysters are the largest I ever saw. In 1883 one oyster was served to three of us at the quarters in Lagos, and Captain Davis of the African Steamship Company, Mrs. Lieutenant-Governor Griffiths and myself made a bounteous meal from it. The shell was preserved and is now in the steamship office in Liverpool. - Chicago Herald reprinted in the Lafayette Advertiser 3/1/1890.
lagniappe:
Senator Caffery's Last Week.
This is Senator Caffery's last week in Congress. All in all, the senator has made a very creditable representative. He has shown more independence of character than is usually found in public men now-a-days. He opposed the administration's land grabbing policy from start to finish. He was among the first to point out to the people the dangers of imperialism, and we believe it can be truly said of him that he was never lured from the path of duty by pelf or promise of reward. His course on the tariff question may not have gained for him any popularity at home but who will say that it was not in accordance with Democratic principles. His last word in the Senate was uttered against the ship-subsidy fraud. It is true that he made a most grievous mistake in 1896 when he opposed the Democratic nominee for president and in 1898 when he supported Don Caffery, Jr., for governor of Louisiana. He was never surely wrong, but his deviation in '96 and '98 a greater sin against his party than that his colleague, Senator McEnery, who voted for the Dingley bill?
Lafayette Gazette 3/2/1901.
lagniappe:
A Model Factory Village.
John G. Richardson, the great manufacturer of lines, seems to have successfully solved the problem of giving employment to a community of 4,000 persons, while at the same time greatly benefiting them by surrounding them with every incentive to temperance and moral restraint. Mr. Richardson is the owner of 8,000 acres of land at Bessbrook Ireland, on which are quarries of blue granite and farms that are successfully worked, and in the midst of which is the village of Bessbrook, with the great mill, offices, and warehouses of the Bessbrook Spinning Company. The village is laid out with streets that are lined with little cottages for workmen, with larger houses for the mill officials, and there also is a beautiful villa occupied by the owner of the vast estate. Every cottage has dooryard decorated with beautiful flowers, and the property includes a public square to add to its attractiveness. There are shops of different kinds for the sale of articles required to meet the wants of the village, but the sale of beer and ardent spirits is forbidden, and there is not a police officer, a police judge, or a police station in the village, nor a pawn shop.
The different denominations, of which there are five (including the Catholics), all live together in harmony, and four churches stand in close proximity upon a hill that looks out upon a beautiful landscape with its green fields and undulating surface as far as the distant Newry mountains. The streets of the village are kept scrupulously clean, and the whole aspect of the place is one of extreme neatness.
Original source unknown. In the Lafayette Advertiser 3/2/1878.
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