A LIFE OF HARD SACRIFICE.
Louisiana's A\elancholy Leper Colony on the Banks si
the Mississippi.
There is a place behind the levee
on the east bank of the Mississippi
eighty miles above New Orleans that
the rirer boats pass in the early morn
ing long before the passengers leave
their berths, so it is not pointed out
as one of the sights of the river. Per
haps it would not be pointed out, any
wmy, as it could hardly be expected to
enhance the attractiveness of the
route. The lazy plantation negro,
passing it on the river road, “gets a
gait on" his mule, because of a super
stitious dread, and to those even. wrho
fear only the material, the eerie at
mosphere brings a shudder. The char
acter of the place is little known, ex
cept to the creoles of Iberville, the
parish in which it lies, and to the
steamboatmen who bring supplies to it.
An uninformed person would suppose
it was only one of the several deserted
plantations to be seen along the Mis
sissippi. relics of Louisiana’s “ 'to de
wah’’ glory, though a larger and grand
er ruin than the others. Such it was
until 1894, w hen put to its present use
is almost unknown among these unfor
tunates. They await the inevitable end
with a quiet and touching patience,
treating each other with unfailing
sweetness and tenderness. They are
a devoutly religious body. Marriage, of
course, is not permitted among them
The children of the settlement w'ere
ail legally assigned there with one or
the other of their parents. Though
leprosy Is more prevalent among the
negroes than among the whites, there
are but seven negro inmates of the
colony. There has been but one es
cape from the Inclosure; that of a lad
who scaled the fence and got safely
away. About a month after he had
gone the sisters received a letter
thanking them for all their kindness
and informing them he was on his
way to the Sandwich islands, where
there was more scope for those of his
affliction.
Products of Ireland.
Potatoes have ceased to be the prin
cipal root crop of Ireland, If they are
.. i
THE LEPER HOME.
It is now a leper colony, the only In
stitution of its kind in the United
States.
The identity of those confined at the
institution is maintained a profound
secret and few outsiders are allowed to
enter the place. A permit, by no
means easy to obtain, must be pre
sented before a visitor is admitted.
The most tragic cases at the institution
are two young girls, both of them
beautiful, cultured and members of
prominent Louisiana families. Not a
mark has yet appeared upon the face
of either—but they wear gloves, al
ways. When the writer visited the
inclosure these girls were sitting in
the garden reading to several children
and old men. A sister introduced the
writer to the girls without mentioning
their names. Both talked cheerfully
to be compared with turnips by weight
of yield—last year, for example, only
about 1,842,000 tons, against 4,426,000
tons of turnips. Nor was the potato
acreage, though twice as great as that
of the heavier root, nearly the largest
given to any crop. That of oats was
larger by 450,000 acres. The Irish prod
uct of oats was much greater than the
Scotch and Welsh put together, and
amounted to 504,000,000 bushels,
against 73,500,000 bushels raised in
England. What has to be deplored
nowadays in Irish agriculture Is not
dependence on a single crop, but a
general tendency to a shrinkage in
! area of all areable land. In spite of an
increase of 46,000 acres devoted to
! mangel wurzel and beet, this shrink
| age has been one of the 32 per cent
I since 1855. The distinctively Irish crop
FRONT VIEW OF A LEPER COTTAGE.
and without reference to their terrible
fate. Their cases are, of course, hope
less, all leprosy cases are.
Life in the settlement is by no means
as terrible for the most of the lepers
as one might suppose. Many of them
are perfectly able to do a good day's
work, but no labor is required of them
What work they do is done of their
own free will. Many of them take a
great pride in their gardens. For
recreation the liveliest of them play
croquet and even lawn tennis; while
those who are partly incapacitated
carve wooden ornaments and crochet.
They have all sorts of indoor games,
and friends keep them supplied with
reading matter. Complaining, petu
lance or rebellion against their fate
of flax has lost ground since 1870 to
the extent of nearly 75 per cent. Land
either becomes meadow, or more large
ly, goes out of cultivation. In these cir
cumstances it is gratifying to see that,
a rally to tlax last year was rewarded
by an exceptionally fine harvest. As
compared with the year before, the
area given to it was 3a per cent great
er. and the yield 43 per cent greater.
Much more than as much honey was
also produced as the average weight
for ten years back.
Scotland's Friend, the Salmon.
It has been said that more laws hav<
been passed for the protection of tIn
salmon than for that of any other liv
ing creature save man himself, says a
I Dundee newspaper. But, then to
Scotland the salmon Is worth a good
deal. The rental of the Tay alone runs
to over £20,000 a year. Indeed, the
amount paid to Scotland lairds for the
privilege of catching the salmon, and
his lesser kinsman, the trout, Is believ
ed to b* considerably over £ 100.000 a
year. And the benefit to Scotland does
not end here. Sportsmen must live.
They usually live well, and have to pay
well.
i NECKLACE OF NUGGETS \
J GIVEN TO A DUCHESS.* J
♦♦♦♦♦ ♦♦♦♦ ♦♦♦♦ • »
In commemoration of her visit to
the West Australian court-of the Glas
gow exhibition the Duchess of Fife has
been presented with a necklace of vir
gin gold nuggets. The necklace,
which was presented by H. W. Venn,
president of the royal commission of
Western Australia for the Glasgow ex
hibition, is inclosed in a sandalwood
casket inlaid with Australian woods.
The nuggets are of flake gold and to
the necklace is added a pendant of
gold-veined crystal. The inscription
on the box runs: “Presented to H. R.
H. Princess I^ouise, Duchess of Fife,
on behalf of the government of West
ern Australia, by the West Australian
royal commission to the Glasgow In
ternational exhibition. 1901, as a
souvenir of the exhibition, and of the
visit of her royal highness to the West
Australian court on May 3, 1901."
*****.’ * * *.*'**
t LADDER WITH A PLATFORM *
j IS INVENTED FOR WOMEN, ♦
That the ordinary stepladder is
• neither safe nor convenient for women
rm -—_
can readily be seen, and for this rea
son a new ladder has been invented.
Its merit lies in the fact that it is
provided with a platform and a balus
trade, the platform opening automatic
ally as soon as the ladder is placed in
position, and a fall being rendered im
possible by the balustrade which sur
rounds the platform. Furthermore, this
ladder can be fitted with a large table
! board on which can be placed kitchen
! utensils or other articles necessary for
i cleaning purposes. If windows have ta
be washed or walls to be cleaned the
work can be done with perfect safety
and convenience.
In other respects the ladder is con
structed in the ordinary manner, and
it is so light that it can easily be trans
ported from place to place.
The lint ton-llook Han lent.lied.
What has become of the button
hook? Once upon a time every other
man you met would have a button
hook on his key-ring, and rew careful
chaps would have one in some handy
place In his desk for emergencies. That
was because men were wearing button
shoes. Hut that day is past and the
button-hook has vanished, presumably
because button shoes are no longer
popular.—Washington Star.
HOW A HORSE STEALS
HIS COMRADE'S OATS, j
There is a clever postoffice horse in
Brooklyn which for some time past has
been getting double rations, and will
probably continue to do so until the
postoffice men discover his trick. From
the substation at the corner of Ninth
street and Fifth avenue are sent out
a number of mail collecting carts
through the surrounding district. When
horses drawing these carts come
• ‘ t
in they are driven up in front of the
station to stand until it is time for
another collection While thus stand
ing they are fed. On the curb in front
of each horse is placed a bag of oats
None of the horses are tied, for stand
ing is a part of their business.
This is when the horse with a dou
ble appetite has his opportunity to par
form a skillful maneuver at each meal.
He waits until all the rations are dis
tributed, then, paying no attention to
hi* own allotment, he begins slowly to
back. Slowly but surely he backs Into
the horse below him, which in turn
pushes back further anil further until
in a few moments the clever horse In
front who started the backward proces
sion is standing In the place of his
neighbor in the rear with his head
at the animal's feedbag. Then he be
gins to eat ravenously, finishes his
neighbor's oats as soon as possible, and
steps nimbly back to his own place,
eats his own oats, and settles content
edly for a stand-up nap with a well
fed air of placid innocence.
Hut the horse at the end of the line
suffers. That Is no affHlr of ths elevsr
inventor of the scheme, however.
m
TOWN BOYS THE "FARMERS.’*
Far l m Quirk anil (llia*rnat Than
the Country Chllilren.
Principal Tnomas W. Boyce of the
First District school is of the belief
that city children are the real ■ farm
ers,” in the matter of observation,
says the Milwaukee Sentinel. The
country cousin has long been scoffed
at for his open-mouthed wonder at
what to his city-bred playmates are
objects of every-day knowledge, and
plenty have been the jokes sprung at
the expense of the country gawk upon
his visits to the city. But now the
tables are turned and the city boys
and girls may well look out for their
j laurels as world-wise youngsters. "We
have been reading ‘Snow Bound' in
our eighth grade recently,” said Mr.
Boyce, "and it is a matter of surprise
and wonderment to note how little the
children know about farm life and
; nature. Some passages which one
1 would think every intelligent boy or
girl of 14 or 15 years of age ought to
know leave a perfect blank in the
minds of the city scholars. Take, for
instance, the passage, ‘The oxeu
hooked, and lashed their tails.’ The
scholars could not imagine what
‘hooked’ meant. They thought that
the word hook meant to snatch, to
steal, to grab, to swipe, but not one
associated the word with the tossing
of the horns of the impatient brutes.
The passage describing the well sweep,
‘like Pisa's leaning miracle,’ was so
much Greek to them. Although they
understood the reference to the lean
ing tower of Pisa, they knew nothing
of the old-fashioned well sweep. 'The
sun-circled day, portent of the storm,’
they had never seen. They expostu
lated at believing such a thing. ‘You
cannot look at the sun,’ they said. ‘It
is too bright. It hurts your eyes.'
Now, I venture to say that there is not
a boy in this state who has lived on
a farm to whom the sun-circled day
is not the portent of a storm. They
have noticed it from their childhood
days. The city children were non
plussed in reading of the gray banks
of clouds with the rising of the sun.
The sun they see is over the housetops,
through some dining-room window. It
is an interesting study for me to ob
serve how little the city people are
taught to observe nature. That is
where the country children have the
advantage over their city cousins.”
SUPERFLUOUS ACTIVITY.
Women Speak of "The Complex Dutlee
of the Moment.'*
The fact that the world—the world
of women, at least—is too busy is now
put forward so often that its utterance
amounts to a truism. The most com
mon phrase in our language seems to
be that which proclaims the want of
leisure. "I am so busy;” "If I can ever
get the time;” "Life is such a pressure
these days;’’ "The complex duties of
the moment;” "The busy modern pub
lic”—these are. all of them, most fa
miliar sentences to us, and are on our
lips time and again in explanation of
business, social, and even moral short
comings. It is not putting it too
strongly to say that in the present
rush of living we are losing some of
our best characteristics and painfully
dwarfing our lives. We are too busy
to be neighborly, hospitable, to be
sympathetic—a good many, indeed, of
the finer traits of humanity are finding
less expression among us.
The question of better control of the
leisure which the old century gave to
women, and which the new will in
crease, is a large one, and admits of
elaborate presentation. It is only in
tended in this brief paragraph to em
phasize a single point, which is, the
value of a quick weighing of every ef
fort in which one is about to engage,
or is now absorbed, to be sure of its
necessity to yourself, or yourself to it.
—Harper’s Bazar.
l-angnage* Difficult of Acquisition.
Former Assistant Secretary of the
Treasury Frank A. Vanderlip recently
returned from a trip of four months in
Europe, where he visited nearly all the
continental capitals and had inter
views with the several ministers of
finance. "My plans for the future are
not definite at present," he said, "and
the work I shall have will not be de
termined for some time. I have rap
idly come to the front as the great
American accepter. I have been re
ported to have accepted in the last few
months more places than I ever expect
to have offered me in a lifetime. For
the present I am going to rest and get
acquainted with my mother, of whom
I have seen very little in the past four
years. During my sojourn abroad I
discovered that English is fast becom
ing the commercial language of the
world. In Europe every minister of
finance and most of the prominent
business men I met were able to speak
English well. This excepts the
French. They seem to think in
France that everyone must know
French and that it is not necessary
for a Frenchman to know any lan
guage but his own. I found the most
finished linguists among the peoples
whose languages are the most difficult
of acquisition by foreigners.”
Wanted HU Own PerquUlie.
An Englishman staying at an Eng
lish itn ordered a bottle of wine for
luncheon, but only consumed a third
.,f it at that meal. When he asked for
the remainder at dinner he was told
that all the wine loft at table went to
waiter as a perquislti The landlord
supported this statement, but wtT.m a
summons was Issued for the value of
the missing wine the claim and costs
were paid.
As soon ns a woman falls In love
her complexion gets better.
Railroad
Earnings
QUEER MATHEMAT,
ICS USED IN SCHEMA
ingfor profits, a; a;
Railroading, in its beginnings and
throughout its exuberant youth, says
Carl Hovey in Ainalee's Magazine, was
a business which made use of nerve,
a big head for planning and plotting
and a constant slap-dash application,
after which the returns were pretty
sure. Nowadays it is all as sophisti
cated as a cash register. A successful
year indicates that some one has
taken enormous pains to study the fig
ures, and that the result of his dili
gence has been a pretty accurate
knowledge of the class of business that
would pay. A railroad carries freight
and passengers for a living. The
managing head, in order to direct the
business profitably, must know what
it costs him to provide the service for
which the public pays. Common sense
and the instinct of self-preservation
demand this course at once, bnt they
are not so forward in suggesting what
is to be done first. How can one come
at such a knowledge? It costs so much
annually to maintain the track and
the terminals, so much to pay the sal
aries of the train crews, yardmen,
clerks, officials, and a law department,
too. How much, then, will it cost to
carry six carloads of potatoes 150 miles
out on the main line to Berryville?
The problem looks like one by which
cunning pedagogues advise little boys
that it is impracticable to add hens
and geese together in the same sum
or useless to seek to know the cost of
seven-eighths pounds of butter in a
catch question where you are told only
the price of a pound of lard. The dif
ference is that the railroad figures do
show a glimmer of sense. But this
proves to be a will-o’-the-wisp leading
nowhere. Nothing can be done with
them until you have slaughtered most
of the items wholesale and arbitrarily
have selected a few promising ones
with which to do business. "Let us
say the line carried in the year 1889
50,000.000 tons of freight a distance of
one mile; the work has been meas
ured, with this result, which stands on
the books as 50,000,000 ‘ton miles.' The
pay for doing the work, measured also.
averages four mills to a ton mile, so
that the total revenue from the freight
business for that year amounted to
$200,000. The expense is to be meas
ured by a unit which Is called the
'train mile.' In this instance it is the
freight train mile. The immediate
cost of running a freight train a mile
can be computed readily, and it in
cludes: Cost of fuel for the locomo
tive, and the wages of an engineer, a
fireman, a conductor, a couple of brake
men and a flagman. The number of
cars may be anything you please so
far as these expenses are concerned, for
it will not affect them much. In tho
present case say that the average*
trainload was 400 tons, a large, but
a sound figure. Therefore the number
of train miles that had to be run to
earn the $200,000 was 125,000. Train
mile cost wras reckened at 75 cents.
Therefore we have: Expenses, $93,750;
profit. $106,250. Not the actual profit,
to be sure, but we get on better by
keeping the geese separate from the
hens, and the figures have their use.
Take the company’s report for the
following year. 1900. The same work
was done, let us say, 50,000,000 ton
miles. The average trainload, how
ever, was 500 tons. No wonder the
road found itself with more money
to divide than it had in the year 1899.
For, by increasing the trainload the
number of train miles was lessened,
and train expenses were inevitably re
duced to the tune of nearly $19,000.
The gross revenue remained, of course,
the same. The figures are disgrace
fully rough, but they tell the truth.
They shout it through a megaphone.
The way to make money is to increase
the trainload. A well-known technical
writer in Wall Street calls this ‘the
touchstone of successful or economical
railroading.’ To save train miles is
to save money drop by drop, to save it
with a sure promise of drops enough
in all to make an ocean.—New York
Press.
It is estimated that one crow will
destroy 700.000 insects every year.
The Enlarged
Congress...
It XXJill Ha-ce 38b Mem
ber j, and the Electoral
College 4-7b
Probably the people of the country
do not yet fully realize that the house
of representatives which they will
elect next year will be allotted on a
new ratio, and will be much larger
than any house ever chosen before. In
the house of representatives which
was elected last November, and which
will meet next December, there are
357 members. In the house which will
be elected in 1902 there will be 386
members. The ratio for representa
tion in the house established just after
the taking of the census of 1890, was
one member for every 173,901 inhabi
tants. The ratio established under the
census of 1900, which will go into op
eration in the election of November,
1902. is 194,182. The next house will
be 29 members larger than the pres
ent one. Of course, the electoral col
lege will be enlarged to the same ex
tent. The electoral vote in the can
vass of 1900 was 417. The vote in the
election of 1904 will be 476 through
the recent addition to membership in
the house, and there is a chance that it
may be still further enlarged, be
cause the admission of Oklahoma and
perhaps one or two other territories to
statehood between now’ and the next
presidential campaign is decidedly
probable.
No state lost any members through
the recent adjustment of representa
tion in tTie house and vi the electoral
college. On the other hand, many
states gained. Arkansas, California,
Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Louis
iana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Mis
souri, North Carolina, North Dakota,
Washington, West Virginia, and Wis
consin will each have to choose one
member more next year than they
chose last year. Minnesota, New Jer
sey and Pennsylvania will each gain
two members. Illinois, New York and
Texas will each gain three members.
Sub«taoc« Similar f Kubbrr.
M. Col of Paris has discovered that
a substance similar to rubber may be
obtained from the Japanese spindle
tree. The announcement w’as made tp
the Academle des Sciences.
I REINCARNATION OF MAN. I
L ™ > BUBi SBK -1
"There are in Theosophy two central
doctrines—the doctrine of Reincarna
tion. and the doctrine of Karma. The
first is startling, the second soothing;
both are so eminently rational that
| conviction almost certainly follows
comprehension, says a writei in be
half of the new theory of life. Both
are rooted in the profound fact of evo
lution (of which science has seen a
part), the fact that all life expands and
rises from poor and low to rich and
high plateaux.
"Stronger than woe Is will; that which
was Good
Doth pass to Better—Best.
"The doctrine of reincarnation is
that each man dwells in the flesh not
once, but often. His internal, inde
structible self comes again and again
into earth life, each time in a different
race, family, condition, so that he is
confronted successively with every
form of test and experience, assimilat
ing into that Self the <;sser.ee of each
incarnation, and at last emerging with
an exhaustive knowledge of humanity
and a perfected character. He is not
a thousand men compounded into one,
but one man who has had a thousand
lives. Asa world-wide traveler learnstlie
peculiarities of each region and people
himself becoming mentally more sup
ple and more vigorous ns the result of
travel; so the Ego learns humanity
through having been identified for a
time with each section of it, and be
comes not a Chaldean, a Roman, or an
American, but a man. And a« the trav
eler dwells, now In a tent, now in a
palace, now in a hut. now in a hotel,
ever imagining that his surroundings
are other than transient and unessen
tial; so, too, the Ego dwells in tempo
rary homes of body, a craftsman, a
slave, a student, each being an en
casement for a single life, not one be
ing any real part of the Being which
outlasts them all.”
“The great, doctrine of Karma ts In
itself axceedingly simple. It is thw doc
trine of perfect, inflexible justice. The
word has two meanings. It means first,
as defined by Col. Olcott, ‘The law of
ethical causation-—Whatsoever a man
soweth, that shall he also reap.’ But It
also expresses the balance sheet of
merit and demerit in any individual
character. Thus in the former sense,
we say, 'The quality of incarnations is
determined by Karma'; in the latter
sense we say, 'A man's Karma is form
ing during each day of life.’
“The belief that every one of us re
ceives with absolute precision his ex
act deserts commends itself at once
to reason and to justice."—Wilkes
barre Letters on Theosophy.
Oolrihoater* »t Yfork.
It is Interesting to watch goldbeaters
at work in a gold leaf factory. These
men, whose skins are sallow from the
stains of gold, take up ingots first of
the virgin metal, pass them between
steel rollers, whence they come forth
like pie crust, and pass them then
through closer and closer rollers, un
till they are but little thicker than pa
per. The sheets of gold are next
placed between pieces of leather that
are called goldbeaters' skins, and men
beat them through the skins with mal
lets until they are reduced to an un
imaginable tenuity. It has often been
proved that a skilled goldbeater can
turn out gold leaves so thin that it
would take 282.000 of them to make
the thickness of an inch; so thin that
if formed in a book, 1,500 of them
would only occupy the space of a sin
gle leaf of paper.
Ifnrglar* Ring t’p
Burglars in New Rochelle, N. Y
have adopted the scheme of ringing
up residence telephones to learn if any
one is at home before proceeding to
loot the house. Four dwellings were
robbed in one night by that ffcaus last
week.