he Valentine euocrnt ROBERT GOOD Editor and Prop VALENTINE NEBRASKA Grants greatest monument Is not to Riverside Park If Captain Sug Cbigger of Wyoming ver enters politics it Is a safe bet that lie will come right up to the scratch Llentenant Peary says he can find tne north pole for 150000 It would be about as easy to find one as to find the other nowadays The local headline Big Circus in Our Midst is slightly misleading The ar rival pf cucumbers in the market has nothing to do with it Colorado has passed a law admitting women to membership in the State militia It is about time to dramatize the new woman as a burlesque The best description of that mysteri ous nocturnal air ship comes from a Kansas City man who says it looked to him about as big as a beer glass A girl in Uniontowu Pa shot a burg lar the other night But the corre spondent doesnt explain what she was shooting at when the accident oc curred The New York papers which issued their Easter number several weeks be fore Easter hope to be able to taring out their Christmas editions this year about the Fourth of July According to the Globe an Atchison twonian has figured it out that be tween the ages of 16 and 17 her heart was broken eleven times Court plas ter does wonders in such cases Philadelphia proposes to unveil a monument to Washington next month which was begun in 1811 only eighty six years ago Why they should be in such a hurry about it no one seems to know A New York paper offered a prize for the best definition of news and a clergyman walked off with it for say ing that news is anything that the general public ought to know The ten commandments for instance A dispatch from Lancaster Pa says -that Mrs Jake Elliot shot her hus band three times yesterday and grave fears are entertained for his recovery If his recovery is feared perhaps Mrs Elliot would better shoot him again The Coroners jury viewed a body which had been taken from the Chicago River and returned a verdict that the decedent came to his death by drown ing from a cause unknown This is fully as clear as the Chicago River it self A Boston paper says Spring is here at last A butterfly was caught at the South End yesterday This may be the proper way to catch a butterfly but when you grab a wasp it is better to catch it about the middle shifting northwesterly toward the head All virtue is cumulative Exception al deeds of moral excellence or heroism are but the richest of the fruits which a noble character is continually yield ing Our admiration and respect thus called forth should not be confined to them but should extend far back into tlie past life which has made such things possible The Buffalo News calls attention to the case of Noah Baby a Jerseyman 125 years old who started to smoke his mothers clay pipe 120 years ago and has smoked ever since and asks How would it have been if he had smoked cigarettes If he had smoked cigarettes he probably wouldnt have been over 75 years old now The aimless in life are to be pitied They drift with the current They are of little account to themselves or to so ciety A worthy object is essential to Tring out the best that is in us The man of high and useful ideals intent upon their realization is full of push and energy He gets the most out of existence and gladdens enriches in spires and helps as he has opportunity The Tennessee Coal Iron and Rail road Company which employs S000 coal miners and whose wage scale gov erns that of 10000 miners in Alabama Las asked its miners to accdpt a re duction of 12 per cent beginning June 1 The President says that this will enable the company to take several large contracts for export shipment In other words if the men will work for one eighth less than their present wages the company will e able to pocket a lot of money Chicago Ghronicle A word with the advertiser who stuffs the mail boxes f nil of printed matter It doesnt pay Lde instead of attracting it ler who sees through the it appears to be a mail lis box only to find soap or Jones sons 3 pants is liss Smith Jones i he is in need of or pants He Ls only human kt even if he Lvho not only mail box or 11 to attract is coming It will servant Ijlity by flits of mans ring and armed with a broom or a kettle of hot water as an expression of resentment The mail box adver tiser will do well to leave off his ne farious practices He is defeating his own object and Is courting reprisals The mall box is provocative of enough worriment without being made the target for obtuse persons who dont know enough to advertise in the proper way that is to say in the newspapers Lieutenant Peary has been detached from the Brooklyn navy yard and or dered to report for duty on the Pacific coast but announces that his plans for reaching the north pole will go on all the same He is at present hoping that some person or persons will give him 150000 and he will then start on his trip The greatest part of the money he explains will be needed to maintain a colony of Eskimos at a point further north than any previous colony has ever located There might be some thing that would thrill the world in the accomplishment of this plan and yet there are practical minded people who will think that the money asked for could be better used in founding a col ony of poor white people in some lower latitude The gamblers have a maxim on which they base their calculations for their daily bread that a sucker is born ev ery minute a sucker in their par lance being a gullible person who de spite repeated warnings stands ready to give up his money to the first sharper he meets In fact the sharper does not always have to go to much pains to get the suckers money as he is ready to deliver it on the first plausible op portunity Of course a sucker being born every minute it is always harvest season for the sharpers but we do not remember of reading an account of so big a haul as that recently made by the E S Dean Company of New York a bucket shop concern that has just con veniently failed leaving a host of pa trons to mourn their losses The head and front of this corcern the match less contriver of this colossal fraud is said to be a woman and if this is true she most assuredly hath the voice par excellence in roping in victims Oth er schemes are but mere patches to hers Through plausibly worded ad vertisements pointing out how easy it is to get rich she attracted patronage from half the States and V en ready snaped the spring of the trap and got away with a million and a half of money The only ambiguity about her advertisements was that they did not explain wLich party was to ret rich She knew all the time Th3se tricks are played every year but no one ever seems to profit by tbir exposure A dozen years ago the great fund W scheme in Chicago was brought to grief but nobody knows how many fund schemes on the other letters of the alphabet had brought fortunes to the projectors This was to be their final coup and it failed but nobody suffer ed much except the victims Truly the gamblers are right for the crop of suckers seems inexhaustible A fe v weeks ago Mr Hill of the Chicago Board of Trade exposed the modes of bucket shop keepers but they might be exposed every day in the week and there would still be an abundance of flies to walk into the bucKet shop par lor The web is too beautiful and too attractive to be resisted And the game looks so easy A man can sit down pencil in hand with the reports and statistics of the wheat or stock market before him and figure up a for tune in less than n time Let him try it in actual practice and his money van ishes as if it were fairy money For while it is the maxim of the gambler that a sucker is born every minute it is the maxim of the bucket shop man that the suckers money when paid is his and under no circumstances to be paid out except as bait lhis is the reason why the bucket shop man or woman can fail and yet grow rich GODS PUNISHMENT At Last the Little White Box Became Ki I rison The tailors wife took her little boy out for a walk the day after they moved next door to the undertakers The little fellow stopped just outside the wide windows and pointed his chubby fore finger ait the white coffin within Whats that mother he asked He had never seen a coffin Thats what they put little boys in when theyre naughty said the moth er Thats the way God punishes Every day after that the brown eyed boy stood for many minutes and looked at the tiny coffins behind the heavy glass He grew very obedient too but the mother had become so accustomed to fault finding that she never noticed how well -he minded but continued to scold just the same With every re proof his beautiful brown eyes would grow dark witih a mist of tears and he would ask half fearfully Wall you put me in the white box for that mother Will God punish me now Months passed One day the restless feet went astray again and the moth er in the moment of ber extreme vexa tion punished him more severely than usual Dont put me in that white box mother he pleaded over and over again between his sobs So saying he fell asleep When he awoke the fever was on him and the pattering feet wandered away no more Another week passed Then the brown eyes looked up into bers the pale lips quivered and lie said feebly Have you gotthenvhite box mother Has God punished me yet Two days later the carriages came and bore him away in state Gods pun ishment had come Chicago Tribune Considering how bad some can b they deserve credit for being as good as they are X UUJJeBiW - DEPRESSIONTON THE FARM J There are quite a number of people who having passea all their lives in a city are disposed to regard the farm er as the luckiest of all individuals and the one who is always assured of a comfortable living The usual idea of the farmer by those who have had no experience in farm ing is that he is sure of his sustenance from what the ground yields him and that the surplus products mean so much clear cash in his pocket But the working of the farm necessitates help which while the pay is not large eats considerably into the receipts Then to keep up the production of the land fer tilizers have to be utilized and large sums are expended yearly for agricul tural machinery After the ground is planted and even up to the time the crop is plucked the farmer is constantly facing the pos sibility of having the entire seasons labor swept away Too much wet weather means the ruin of crops a drought means that they will be burned up by a blistering sun while sudden storm may sweep away in an instant property which he has been years in ac quiring or the produce which is ready for the market The past few years have been decid edly unfortunate for the farmers in every section The price of produce has been small and the demand light be cause the masses have had no money In many instances crops did not pay for their cultivation and within a few miles of some of the big cities potatoes and many other lines of farm produce have been allowed to rot in the ground because the price would not repay for the labor of marketing No matter how disastrous the season taxes pile up upon the farmer and as a climax to the period of depression the laAV steps in and dispossesses him Not until the volume of money is largely in creased and comes in a medium which will be placed in circulation instead of being hoarded away will there be any real and practical relief for tlie iariner The Tariff and the Trusts The account in the San Francisco Examiner of the manner in which the different trusts have been allowed to write their own schedules of the Ding ley tariff sufficiently explains why the sponsors of that measure did not wel come a proviso that articles controlled by trusts should be placed on the fre list It would have been rather queer if they had been willing to punish the men that made their bill This easy method of framing a tariff bill by farming out the work to the various interests that expect to profit by it is nothing new in Republican tar iff legislation Precisely the same course was followed in the preparation of the original McKinley law The trusts and capitalists to whom the par ty managers felt under obligations wrote the schedules that affected their respective interests and in many cases these schedules were adopted word for word The people who were to pay the taxes had nothing to say until the following November when they spoke with considerable emphasis It ap pears evident however that the im pression made by their remarks at that time has faded out and that they will have to speak again at the next oppor tunity Canadian Resentment The story coming from Montreal that the new Canadian tariff will be pro British and anti American and that the Liberals will pursue a policy the very reverse of that they have been advo cating these many years is not entitled to much regard It bears marks of Ca nadian toryism and American protec tionism It is certain however that the rep resentatives of the Liberal Govern ment who were recently in Washing ton did not return home in an amiable mood They were treated in a manner which they might have expected but which in their commercial good will it seems they did not expect They were treated with downright incivility and contempt and given to understand that while the party in power professed to favor reciprocity in the abstract or with certain countries it had no thought of anything but strangulation for trade with Canada Very likely protectionst hostility which was so ostentatiously mani fested in Washington will have its ef fect upon the tariff policy of the Lib erals Rebuke to Tariff Boomers If the Republican party is correct in its claim that the election of McKinley indicated a great popular demand for more tariff the elections this spring do not indicate it Why if the Dingley tariff rates were just what the people wanted wouldnt the elections this spring have been the most enthusiastic kind of jubilation meetings over the jamming of the bill through the House If more tariff were all that is necessary for prosperity the jamming of the Ding ley bill ought to bring the dawn in sight Utica Observer The Rush for Office That the rush for office under the new administration is tremendous is well known But that it assumes the proportion of a torrent is something which the great majority have not yet considered Some idea of the tremen dous pressure can be gleaned from the statement that since the inauguration th Pnstnfnce Department baa reAlfcd 95000 letters relating to appointments If this immense number of letters is poured into one department the entire torrent of applications to all the depart ments must be something appalling But there is one pleasant thought to be gleaned from this craze for office If all the letters are properly stamped the applications ought to net a snug sum to Uncle Sams receipts and thus contrib ute something toward paying the vast army of those who hold public place Philadelphia Item Patent Reversible Protective Tariff The protective tariff is marvelously adapted to meet the wants of all emer genciesaccording to the claims of its various advocates It lessens the cost of the thing you have to buy and in creases its price when you have the same thing to sell It shuts out foreign importations yet increases the reven ues collected on such importations The foreigner pays the tax on goods im ported to this country but it is an out rage on the poorer classes in Germany and France for those countries to in crease the cost of meat by tariff taxing cheap American hog and cattle prod ucts in the interest of German farm ers Grand Rapids Democrat Brief Comment The newspapers which have under taken to explain why the good times are postponed have a difficult and per haps protracted job on hand Water bury Conn American The sons of their fathers do not seem to be getting the glad hand from the present administration The Major has no boys and he doesnt know how it is himself Binghamton N Y Leader Cannot Congress pass a law making all of Mr McKinleys appointments retroactive so that they may draw their salaries for the four years Cleve land kept them out of office Louis ville Post Many Ohio cities which went Repub lican in November have gone against the Republicans this spring in spite of a wool schedule which it was thought Would appeal to the blooded ram rais ers Dubuque Herald If any newspaper thinks of printing what Senator Hanna thinks of the Ohio municipal elections it would do well to take time by the forelock and lay in a large supply of asbestos paper Omaha World Herald Mr Hanna has formally and firmlj refused to attach any importance to the recent municipal election results Mr Hanna is enough of a politician to shut his eyes when he doesnt care to view unpleasant things New York Journal The flint glass makers who were told that they were to have their wages raised when McKinley got in fail to see through the contradiction of a proposed cut in wages Perhaps they do not use the right kind of glasses Boston Globe Corporations can go on in their pres ent reckless course and invite retalia tiona retaliation which is sure to come or they can be contented with the rights and privileges enjoyed by their poorer fellow citizens Is it not time they began to appreciate their re sponsibility Indianapolis News According to the New York Hide and Leather Club free hides brought more than 20000000 into the country and gave employment to over 100000 men last year Of course the logic of Ding leyism will throw these men out of em ployment and drive this money to Ger many and England New York World It was just as unreasonable and mis chievous to promise good times as the result of McKinleys election as it was to attribute the hard times to the elec tion of his predecessor But the Repub lican press and orators were as prodi gal with their predictions as with their slanders Rochester Herald Ever since the McKinley idea came in the annual appropriations have been larger than ever This is the real source of the woes under which the country is suffering It cannot be cured by piling up taxes by taking more money out of the earnings of the people to make good what has already been taken out of the same place The means of real relief is the reduction of expenditures it is economy Boston Post Pith of Opinions The retroactive clause in the Ding ley tariff act has had its answer in the retroactive vote from the big cities in the different States says the Dover Index With reference to the retroactive clause of the Dingley bill the Boston Post says The House of Representa tives has in effect set up a Government lottery in every custom house and in vites merchants to risk their money on the chances of one rate of duty or an other turning up on the final drawing In the view of the Baltimore Sun the great danger is that the Dingley bill will be so loaded down with pro visions that are practically prohibitive that it will reduce revenue instead of increasing it while it will impose ad ditional burdens upon the masses of the people The protectionist newspapers are busily engaged in explaining the causes of political reaction as evidenced by the results of the recent municipal elections says the Philadelphia Rec ord There is one cause for dissatis faction which they have not yet urged and that is the dilatoriness of the Sen ate in passing the Dingley tariff ML The people are so anxious to be nxtre heavily taxed I THE CEDARS OF LEBANON Several Groups of the Famous Trees Arc Still Standing In St Nicholas there is an article en titled Silk and Cedars by Harry Fenn the artist describing a visit to the mountains of Lebanon He says Every girl and boy of the Christian world has heard and read over and over again of the Cedars of Leban on but very few have any Idea of the locality and surroundings of the fa mous grove It is a popular error by the way to suppose that there are no other cedars remaining besides this group at the head of the Wady val ley or canyon Kadisha There are to my knowledge ten other groves some numbering thousands of trees This particular group that we are about to visit is called by the Arabs by a name which means Cedars of the Lord They number about four hundred trees among them a circle of gigantic fellows that are called by the natives The Twelve Apostles upon the strength of an old tradition that Jesus and his disciples having come to this spot and left their staves standing in the ground these staves sprouted into cedar groves There is every reason to suppose that in the time of King Solomon these scattered groves were part of an enor mous unbroken forest extending the entire length of the Lebanon range of mountains about one hundred miles running nearly parallel with the Med iterranean shore from a little below Beirut The summits of the range are from fifteen to twenty miles from the coast The Lebanon that is the White does not derive its name from glitter ing snowpeaks but from the white limestone cliffs of its summits The first historical mention of the trees is in the Bible 2 Sam v 11 And Hiram King of Tyre sent messengers to Da vid and cedar trees and carpenters and masons and they built David an house From that day to this the people have been almost as reckless and wasteful of these noble giants of the mountains as our own people are of these cedars first cousins the redwood trees of the California coast range As we approach the grove which stands upon the top of a small hill the foliage is almost black against the snow covered crags of Dahrel Kadib which rears its high est peak over ten thousand feet above the sea There is a Maronite chapel in the grove its patriarch claiming the sole right to the sacred trees and luckily the superstition with which the trees have been surrounded has been their salvation -All the cedars of Lebanon would have been demolished for red wood years ago were not the people threatened with dire calamity should they take a single stick Industrial Progress in Russia The recent industrial growth of Rus sia has been one of the marvels of the present decade In addition to her ex tensive sulphuric acid industry Russia is opening up important manufactures of chromate salts vitriol phosphates lead zinc tin strontium and copper salts and mineral dyes and platinum is almost a Russian monopoly In med icinal plant growing the progress in Russia is very great Six castor oil factories all working from native grown seed were represented at the exhibition and oils of peppermint wormwood caraway fennel anise and pine needles were also shown The output of Russian benzine has grown from 31500 gallons in 18S2 to nearly 1570000 gallons in 1S9 1 The petro leum industiy is the second largest in the world One firm alone owns 1SS miles of petroleum pipe lines It has an enormous fleet and owns 1157 tank wagons for the conveyance of its prod ucts by rail The industry of the dry distillation of wood in Russia is only just beginning In northern Russia away from the railways there are still many thonsands of square miles under wood yet up to the present only one half per cent of all the resin but a slightly larger proportion of the tur pentine used in Russia has been of home manufacture It has generally been assumed that the Russian fir could not be made to yield turpentine and resin of equal quality or abund ance to the French or American pines but experiments show that Russian turpentine if collected by the French process does not differ materially from the French except that it is dextro gyre to the same degree that the French is laevogyre Moreover a bal sam was obtained from one variety that will advantageously replace Can ada balsam for technical and micro scopic purposes The day of the chem ical exploitation of the Russian forests is therefore dawning and within a few years the country o the Czar may ex port instead of buy from abroad acetic acid wood naphtha acetone wood vinegar and acetate of lime The im portance of the Russian licorice juice and licorice root industry is generally known A Ready Response Whats the matter said the way farer who was approached by a men dicant Something on your mind No sir was the reply Wot wor ries me aint somethin on me mind Its nothin on me stomach Washing ton Star Her Dearest Friend Dora sweetly Fred didnt blow his brains out because you jilted him the other night he came right over and proposed to me Mand super sweetly Did he Then he must have got rid of his brains some other way Tid Bits Self Sacrifice Hubby Yes dear you look nice in that dress but it cost me a heap of money Wife Freddie dear what do I care for money when it is a question of pleasing you Tit Eits It is said that the first harbinger ol spring has died from neglecting to bring his overcoat with him Boston Traveler In all their history the stock of the lower Mississippi banks has never been watered to snch an extent as now Chi cago Tribune Weylers soldiers may desert him but as long as his typewriter holds ont victory cannot be wrested from his grasp St Louis Republic The Indiana girl who tried to stroke a circus tiger will be disfigured for life But think of the experience she had Buffalo Express After we all get through talking about it we must admit that only the Missis sippi could stand such a long run on its brik St Paul Dispatch If eternal perseverance is genius as Michael Angelo asserted then a great deal of genius is going to waste in office seek ing Baltimore American The latest school house in New York has a roof play ground Here is an idea which may be old but which is certainly practical Baltimore American The United States must do for the Paris exposition in 1900 what it wished France r to do for us at the time of the Worlds- Fair at Chicago Boston Journal The House of Representatives has noth ing to do and it is discharging the obliga tion with all the earnestness and energy of which it iscapable Chicago Record The man who tries to get back his pres ents after the engagement has been brok en knows how hard it is to make a retroac tive resolution work Baltimore Ameri can The senatorial fight in Kentucky has now reached the indictment stage and it looks as if somebody might be chosen to a seat in the penitentiary Boston Herald It is ridiculous to assert that Ken tuckys senatorial deadlock is costing that State 1000 a day That wouldnt set tle the bill for wet goods alone Chicago Times Herald Cigarette ashes are said to be great to make palms and rubber plants grow La dies who want to see their palms and rub ber plants prosper will know now what to do Boston Globe We observe that the adjectives infam ous iniquitous corrupt crooked and mis chievous are being terribly overworked in all States that have Legislatures in ses sion Baltimore American If impossible to give President Angell the protection of a man-of-war at the Turkish mission he should at least be allowed to take along the Michigan Uni versity football team Detroit Free Press There has been more talk and less war in the past two years than during a simi lar period at any time in history The examples set by the great American prize fighters have demoralized natious Chi- cngo Journal Tuesday night was a busy one for the airship It exploded in Kalamazoo Mich ran aground in Carlinville III and made its debut in Washington D G It now seems to be a three ringed circus affair Chicago Tribune It looks as if a typewriter was at the bottom of the latest bank smash in Chi cago and the queer thing about it is that she isnt particularly pretty She must have been quite fascinating just the same Boston Herald Gen Weyler has again announced that the backbone of the Cuban insurrection has been broken The facility with which this article is produced down there seems to indicate that the insurrection has got backbones to burn New York Press Reports of a monster flying machine or sea serpent near one of our seaports will not necessarily mean that the aerial mys tery has taken a new form It may be one of our battleships trying to cross a corn field St Louis Globe Democrat Many a man who denounced as idiotic the vocal celebrations on election night is now busily arranging his plans so as ttf enable himself to go out to the baseball grounds and howl maledictions on the um- J pire and otherwise root boisterously Chicago Record Cobs of War Let Loose By the powers is the favorite objur gation in the Island of Crete just now Boston Transcript Greece just at present is the bat eared bull pup of the powers great interna tional bench show New York Press The maxim to the effect that discretion is the better part of valor ha3 evidently not commanded much respect in Greek literature Washington Star The war footing of Turkey seems to be composed chiefly of men and arms while that of Greece is confined largely to the spirit of Marathon Chicago Tribune The airship ought to sail over to the Graeco Turkish frontier Its owner could make a fortune selling reserved seats to the war correspondents Cincinnati Trib une Considering the national dres3 of the Greek soldiers it seems a palpable defi ance of the fitness of things that then army is not equipped with a bicycle corp3 Baltimore American The breaking out of the Graeco Turkish war on the mainland makes the naval blockade of Crete appear ridiculous The powers are left holding the bag- In dianapolis Journal If the European powers could hit upon an equitable plan for distributing the Otto man empire among themselves their sym pathy with the Turk would not last over night Chicago Record It is an interesting coincidence that the last European war was begun twenty years ago under almost exactly the same- circumstances as the one now declared It was that of Russia against Turkey Boaton Herald The English papers have it that Osman Pasha of Plevna fame is now practically at the head of the Turkish army and that preparations for this war have been care fully made This is not encouraging to the Greeks Chicago Inter Ocean The Hetairia Ethnike of Greece is the biggest kind of a union Just now it is running the Government at Athens and has on the Turkish frontier a large num ber of walking delegates wiio are doing things to disturb the poise of the Sultan3 turban Columbus Dispatch