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About The Loup City northwestern. (Loup City, Neb.) 189?-1917 | View Entire Issue (April 26, 1917)
CYRUS TOWNSEND BRADY and CYRUS TOWNSEND BRADY, Jr. Author and Clergyman Civil Engineer Copyright by Fleming H. Rev ell Co. THE FAMOUS ENGINEER LEARNS THAT HE MADE THE BIG MISTAKE OF HIS LIFE AND MANY LIVES MUST PAY THE PENALTY. '1!: Manl- ! <’• - rii' i"ii company is putting up a groat interna ti-u.. ; !.i|>luimnl l*> Bertram Meade, Sr., famous engineer. His Ir .. n Milent ' ineer at the bridge, loves Helen III » .rtii. ■ i . tighter of Colonel Illingworth, head of the construction . ; .. ! •!.. v uill :: :;rr> a* -O" i ns the bridge is completed. Tile young i r «jm •■ti.'n.s! his father's judgment on the strength of certs* * ju.jM>rt:int girders but was laughed at. His doubts are veri fied alien tie- bridge suddenly collapses, with heavy loss of life. CHAPTER VI. The Failure. In spite of buu>e!f ami hi* «»nM«ire la ih«- bridge Al Urtt felt n llule un teqr tbr ihai moniiug. Al Ixittom bo K»ii itji»rr re*|*ect for Mridr'i tech nical ktum Inljo than he ha*! displayed or nm admitted to hlmm'lf. The foviiCH' rtisiiioor'* torritinl alarm, his Ittrf forgetfulm—s <>f tin* amenities be t«tvo theta, hi« frantic hut futile ef forts to telephone, of which the op erator told Abbott In the morning. his harried dei«arture to New York, were, to aajr the least, somewhat disquieting, much more so than he was fain to ad mit to himself. Although it iuvolved n hard and •usrsbit dangifou* cittnh downward and took upward* of a half hour of his valuable time, the first thing the erecp * n.f mpnwr did iu the mornitig was to fo down to the |der head ami make a thorough and careful examination of the huekU-d nietuleT. was. of Course, a |*art of the great lower chord Of the huge dlamoud-Khu{>ed truss, which, with it* parallel sixty feet away Mi the other *-i*!e of the bridge and its two opl•**s-bt• ,-s aero** the river, stipport Od the whole structure. If anything were wrong, seriously. irr«-parahly wrong with the member and It gave way. the whole truss would go. The other truss would inevitably follow cult, ami ibe cantilever would immedi ately oaUapse. Ai.lM.rt realized that. 9f course as he ciiml*ed carefully down to the pier head and stood on tlie Aw AM-' ', as he by the member sad aprveyed it throughout its length could *41 y see that It had buckled. ai tbou-!t :h> deviation vvn*> slight, about two Inches at its maximum in sixty feet- lie brought with him a line and. with infinite care and pains. he drew It taut wcraaa the slight concavity like a bow-«triug. He had estimated the Camber. or the distance between the Center of the bow and the string, at one and a half Indies. As he made careful neaanrementa. he discov that It was slightly over one and three-quarter inches. In seven hun dred and twenty that was scarcely no ticeable. am! It did not seem very me'-h to Abbott. As he strswl there feeling himself a.i Insignificant figure amid this great Interwoven mass of ■tael again the sense of Its strength and stability came to him overpowering |y, ao ruu< h so that he laughed aloud In a rather grim fashion at the un ■rooted nervousness which had been tado>ed in hts mind by Meade's words •nd action*. Bet be was a conscientious man. so he pursued his Inve-tigations further. He Hlmlted up on top of the mem tier, which was easy enough by means of the crian-crossed lacing, and carefully Inspected the lacings at the center of the eoocarlty. or sidewise spring from the right line. He noticed, by getting down on his face and surveying the lu<-lng burs Closely, a numtier of fine hair-line crack* m the paint, surface traceries apparently, running here and there from the rivet holes. The rivets them arives had rather a strained look. Some of the outer rivets seemed slightly loose, where before they must have been tight, for the members, like all other parts of the bridge, had been carefully inspected at the shop and at looseness of the rivets would cer tali bare been noticed there. Hut Abl» , nhses-iou as to the strength of ! • bridge had grown stronger. Llu Ing i? twt. erav. iing over it. feeling its rigS'iity. he i!'.that these evident ■train- were to be eX)-ecte<L Of course the 1 .icing- ihat held the webs together w*Atld have to take up a terrific stress. They hud ie-en designed for tluit pur ptiM- Lar-'.-iy because be did not find anything very glaring, and because he Wanted to brlievp what he believed, the Chief of construction left the pier head and clambered up to the floor with more satisfaction in Ids heart than his •otnewhat surprising anticipation which had «o unwillingly grown under the stimulus of Meade's |H'rsistence. bad led him to exnect. Tt»* whl»;!e v\ a» Just blowing for the ui* !it «f work when he trot bark in the bridge floor. He could not but reflect, tlie men dime swarming ■iomr the tracks to ttegta their day's work, that the n-aponsthUtty for their tlire» lay with him. Well. Abbott was • big m m In his way. he had assumed responsibilities tiefore and was per fectly willing to do so again, both for nett and bridge. The workmen at least bad no suspicious or premonitions of disaster. WTlchings. the chief erecting fore stall. knew about the camt»er. It had sot bothered him. As he approached the two exchanged greetings. “You're out early, Mr. Abbott,” said TT11rMi~ “Yea. Fra been down to examine C-10-E.” W1 Ichings laughed. “That little spring U nothing." He lookod over the track and through the Stage of bracing at the member. “If to* had a pier somewhere we could ' In*1(1 up the earth with that strut. You didn't find out anything, iliil you?” "Not a thing except some hair-line cracks in tin* paint around the rivets.” “You'll often find those where there’s a heavy load to take up. This bridge will stand long after you and I and every man on it has quit work for good." Now Wilehings was a man of experi ence and ability, and if Abbott had needed any confirmation of his opinion . lids careless expression would have ' served. lie did send him across the river to examine the half-completed cantilever on the other hunk, upon 1 which work had been suspended, awalt ; log shipments of steel. Wilehings later : re|>orted that it was all right, which 1 was what he expected, of course, and 'his also added to Abbott’s confidence. The day was an unusually hard one. A great quantity of structural steel that had been delayed and which had threatened to hold up the work, arrived that day and the chief of construction ' was liusi. r than he had ever been. He was driving the men with furious energy. Even under the best conditions i it would he well-nigh impossible to | complete the bridge on time. Abbott ! had pride in carrying out the contract and the financial question was a con | sblerable one. Had it not been for i that, perhaps, he would liave paid more attention to Meade's appeal. So he ' hurried on the work at top speed. l.nte in the afternoon, without say ing anythin*; to Wllehings, who had re ~utned Ids regular w ork, or to anybody in fact. Abbott went down to look at the member again. He climbed down a hundred feet or more to make an other examination at the expense of 1 much vnluatile time, for he had not passed so busy a day as that one since the bridge begun. Everything was ex actly as it had been. Those hair-line cracks had troubled him a little despite Wib hing's remark. He studied them a second time. They were just as they had fieen, so far as he could tell, no larger, no more numerous. The lacings rang exactly the same under his ham mer. He climbed hack to the floor of the bridge and sjient the next half hour in specting the progress of the work. The suspended span had nlreudy been pushed out far beyond the end of the cantilever. The work on the other side of the river had been stopped. As soon as they got the suspended span halfway over they would transfer the workmen and finish tin- opposite canti lever. Abbott calculated that perhaps in another week they could get it out if he drove the men. He looked at his watch, grudgingly observing that it was almost five o'clock. The men were nothing to Abbott. The bridge was everything. That is not to say he was heartless, hut the bridge and its erec tion were supreme in his mind. Tlie material was arriving and every thing was going on with such a swing and vigor that he would fain have kept them at work an hour or two longer. The men themselves did not feel that way. Some of the employees of the higher grades had got the obsession of the bridge, hut to most of them it was the thing they worked at, by which they gnt their daily bread—nothing more. Those who worked by tire day were already laying aside their tools, and preparing for their departure. They He Made Another Careful Examina tion. always would get ready so that at the signal all that was left to do was to stop. The riveters, who were paid by the piece, kept at it always to the very last minute. Abbott had been standing near the outer end of the cantilever and he turned and walked toward the bank. The pneumatic riveters were rat-tat tatting on the rivet heads with a per fectly damnable iteration of insistent sound. A confused babel of voices, the clatter of hummers, ringing sounds of I swinging steel grating against steel, 1 clanking of trucks, grinding of wheels, ihe deep breathing of locomotives, I mingled in an unliarmonious diapason I of horrid sound. Abbott was right above the pier head now. He looked down at it through ! the struts and floor beams and braces, fastening his gaze on the questioned member. There it stood satisfactorily, of course. Vet, something impelled him to walk out on the nearest floor beam 1 to the extreme edge of the truss and look down at it once more, leaning far out to see it better. He could get a better view of it with nothing between it and him. It still stood bravely. It was all right, of course. He wished that he had never said a word about it to anyone. He did not see why he could not regard it with the indifference that it merited. As he stared down at it over the edge of the truss the whistle lor quitting blew. Every sound of work ceased after the briefest of intervals, except here and there a few riveters driving home a final rivet kept at it for a few sec ond. but only for a few seconds. Then, | for a moment a silence like death it I self intervened. It seemed ns if the ever blowing wind had been momen | tarily stilled. That shrill whistle and the consequent cessation of the work j always affected everybody the same | way. There was inevitably and in variably a pause. The contrast be tween the noise and Its sudden stop page was so great that the men in ! stinetively waited a few seconds and ! drew a breath before they began to | light their pipes, close their tool boxes, i pick up their coats and dinner pails, and resume their conversation ns they strolled along the roadway to the shore. It seemed to Abbott that it had never been so silent oi\ the bridge before. There was almost always a breeze, sometimes a gale, blowing down or up the gorge through which the river flowed, but that afternoon not a breath was stirring. Abbott found himself waiting in strained and unwonted suspense for the next second or two, his eyes fixed on the member. The long warm rays of the afternoon sun illuminated it clearly. In that second immediately below him. far down toward the pier head he saw a sudden flash as of break ing steel. Low, but clear enough in the intense silence, he heard a popping sound like the snap of a great finger. Then the bright gleam of freshly broken metal caught his excited glance. The lacing was giving way. Meade was right. Tlie member would go with it— The first pop or two was succeeded by a little rattle as of revolver shots heard from a distance, as the lacings gave way in quick succession. Abbott was a man with a powerful voice and he raised it to its limit. The idle workmen, just beginning to laugh nnd jest, heard a great cry: “Off the bridge, for God's sake!” Two or three, among them Wileh ings, who happened to be within a few feet of the landward end, without un derstanding why, but impelled by the agony, the appeal, the horror in the great shout of the master builder, leaped for the shore. On the bridge itself some stepped forward, some stood still staring, others peered down ward. The great sixty-foot webs of steel wavered like ribbons in the wind. The bridge shook as if in an earth quake. Tltere was a heavy, shuddering, swaying movement nnd then the (300 foot cantilever arm plunged down ward. as a great ship falls into the trough of a mighty sen. Simrp-keyed sounds cracked out overhead ns the truss parted at the apex, the outward half inclining to the water, the inward half sinking straight down. Shouts, oaths, screams rose, heard faintly above the mighty bell-like re quiem of great girders, struts and ties smiting other members and ringing in the ears of the helpless men like doom. Then, with a fearful crash, with a mighty shiver, the landward hiftf col lapsed on the low shore, like a house of cards upon which has been laid the weight of a massive hand. The river section, carrying the greater load at tlie top and torn from its base, plunged, like an avalanche of steel, 200 feet down into the river, throwing far ahead of it, ns from a giant catapult, the traveler on the outward end of the suspended span and a locomotive on tlie floor beneath. \Y ilchings. and the few men safe on the shore, stood trembling, looking at the hare pier head, at the awful tan gled mass of wreckage on the shore between the pier and the bank; floor beam and stringer, girder and strut, bent, twisted, broken in ragged and horrible ruin, while the water, deeper than the chasm it had cut, rolled its waves smoothly over the agitations of the great plunge beyond the pier. They stared sick and faint at the tangled, interwoven mass of steel, ribboning in every direction—for in the main the rivets held so it was not nny defect of Joints, but structural weakness In 'he body of the members that had brought tt down—and inclosing as In a net many bodies that a few seconds >efore had been living men. They had seen body after body hurled ‘‘ou? 1 V e air fro,u the outward end and. as hey gazed foarfo„ , , here and there dark . ‘ , the surface of the water ^h®oated *° glimpses of white, dead faces mighty current rolled them under swept them on. And no sound eam« from the hundred and fifty who had gone down with the bridge. The 200 foot fall would have killed them with out the smashing and battering and crashing of the great girders that had fallen upon them or driven them from the floor and hurled them, crushed and broken, into the river. Meade hn<l been right. Abbott bad one swift flash of acknowledgment, one swift moment packed with such re grets as might fill a lifetime—an eter nity in a hell of remorse—before he. like the rest, had gone down with the bridge! CHAPTER VII. For the Son. The message was received in ghast ly silence. No one spoke for a moment, None moved. Colonel Illingworth's face was fiery red. Bertram Meade was whiter than any other man in the room. He was thinking of his father. The girl moved first. Her father and the young engineer were the two most deeply touched. They were both in agony, both in need of her. Unhesi tatingly she stepped to the side of the younger. And the father saw and un derstood even in the midst of his suf fering. She hail chosen. “We are ruined,” gasped the colo nel, tugging at his collar. “We could stand the financial loss, but our reputa tiou! We’ll never get another con tract. I might as well close the works. And it is your father’s fault. It's up to him. The blood of those men is upon his head. Well, sir. I'll let the whole world know how grossly incompetent he is, how—” “Sir," said young Meade, standing very erect and whiter than ever, “the fault is mine. I made the calculations. I checked and rechecked them. No body could know with absolute certain ty the ability of the lower chord mem bers to resist compression. But what ever the fault, it is mine. My father had absolutely nothing to do with it. He is—” “He’s got to bear the responsibility,” cried the colonel passionately. “It has his name—" “No, I tell you,” thundered the younger man. "For I’ll proclaim my own responsibility. The fault is all mine and I’ll publish the fact from one end of the world to the other.” “It’s a load I wouldn’t wunt to have on my conscience,” said Colonel Illing worth. “The ruin of a great establishment like the Martlet,” added Doctor Sev erence. “The dishonor to American engineer ing,” said Curtiss. “And the awful loss of life,” con tinued the colonel. “I assume them all,” protested the young man, forcing his lips to speak, although the cumulative burdens set forth so clearly and so mercilessly bade fair to crush him. “It was only a mistake.” protested Helen Illingworth, drawing closer to her lover’s side, and with difficulty re sisting a temptation to clasp him in her arms. i “A mistake!” exclaimed her father bitterly. “You said yourself,” urged the wom an, turning to the chief engineer, “that j you didn't know whether the designs would work out, that nobody could know, but you were convinced that they would.” “Wait,” interrupted the father. "Meade, there is one consequence you have got to bear that you haven’t thought of.” “What do you mean?” “Do you think I’d let my daughter marry a man who had ruined me, an incompetent engineer by his own con fession. a—” “It is just.” said Meade. “I have nothing further to d(*llere. gentlemen. I must go t(5 my father.” “Just or not,” cried Helen Illing worth, “I can't allow you to dispose of me in that way, father. If he is as blamable ns he says he is. and as you say he is, now is the time above all others for the woman who loves him to stand by him.” “Miss Illingworth, you don’t know what you are saying,” said Meade, forcing himself into a cold formality he did not feel. “I am disgraced, shamed. There is nothing in life for me. My chosen profession—my repu tation—everything is gone.” “The more need you have for me, then." “It is noble of you. I shall love you forever, but—” He turned resolutely away 'and walked doggedly out of the room. Hel en Illingworth made a step to follow him. “Helen, interposed her father, I catching her almost roughly by the arm in his anger and resentment, “if you go out of this door after that man. I’ll never speak to you again.” “Father, I love you. I’m sorry for you. I would do anything for you hut this. You have your friends. That man yonder has nothing, nothing hut me. I must go to him.” She turned and went out of the room without a backward look or an- ; other word, no one detaining her. Now it happened that by hurrying down the hill in the station wagon, Meade had just caught a local train, which made connections with the Heading express some twenty miles away, and Helen Illingworth In her car reached the sta tion platform just in time to see It de part. She remembered that ten miles across the country another railroad rnn and if she drove hard she could possibly catch a train which would land her in Jersey City a few minutes j before the train her lover caught. She told the chauffeur, who scented a ro mance and drove as he had never driven before. The girl caught the express and rode to the Hudson terminal in the city. The newsboys on the street were al ready crying the loss of the bridge. She saw the story displayed in lurid red headlines as she sprang into the taxi and bade the chauffeur hurry her to the Uplift building downtown. The bill she handed him in advance made him recklessly break the speed limit. • * * * * • Bertram Meade, Sr., had not left the office during the whole long afternoon. He sat alone, quietly waiting for the end. As to the drowning life unrolls in rapid review, so pictures of the past took form and shape In his mind. He recalled many failures. No success is uninterrupted and unbroken. It is through constant blundering that we urrtve. He had learned to achieve by ailing, as everybody else learns. But ilonable thT‘g** wUch were par could not b* b^“uxng of his career, should have taught “°W; those 8 t him. reaUzed too late that his later achievement had begot In him a kind of conviction of omniscience, a belief in his own infalli bility, bad for a man. His pride had gone before, hard upon approached the fall. He had been so sure of himself that even when the possibility that he might be mistaken hnd been pointed out and even argued, he had laughed it to scorn. His son’s arguments he had held lightly on account of his youth and comparative inexperience—to hts sorrow he realized it, too late. Again came that strange feeling of pride, the only thing which could in any way alleviate his misery or lighten his despair. It was his own son who had pointed out the possible defect. Youth more often than not disregards the counsel of age. In this case age had made light of the warnings of youth. It was a strange reversal, he i thought, grimly recognizing a touch of | sardonic and terrible humor in the sit* uation. “Whom the gods destroy they first : make mad.” Well, he had been mad enough. If he had only listened to the I boy. And now there was nothing he | could do but wait. Yes, as the long ' hours passed and the sun declined, and 1 the evening nppronched, there sudden ly flashed upon him that there was still something he could do. He had ex perienced some strange physical sen sations during that afternoon, unease in his breast, some sharp pains about j his heart. He forgot them for the mo ! ment in the idea that had come to him. When the bridge fell he would avow the whole responsibility, take all the blame. Fortunately for his plans, his son had reduced to writing his views I on the compression members, which | had almost taken the form of protest. “Mr. Meade, What Is the Matter?" and this letter had been handed to his father. His first mind had been to tear it up after he had read it and had overborne the objections contained therein, but on second thought he had carefully filed it away with the origi nal drawings. It was. of course, in the younger Meade’s own handwriting. He went to his private safe, opened the drawings and found the letter at tached to the sheet of drawings. He put back the other drawings and closed the safe without locking it. Then he went back to the desk and considered the document. He had been blind, mad. He laid the paper down ou his desk and put his hand to his heart. Of course he would submit those pa pers to the public at once. Was there anything else he could do? Yes. He sat down at the desk and drew a sheet of paper before him and began to write. Slowly,_ tremblingly, he perse vered. carefully weighing his words be fore he traced them on paper. He had not written very long before the door of the outer office opened and he heard the sound of soft footsteps entering the room. He recognized the new comer. It was old Sliurtliff, a man who had been his private secretary and confidential clerk lor many years. He stopped writing and called to him. Shurtliff was an old bachelor, gray, thin, tall, reticent. He had but one passion—Meade, Sr.; but one glory— the reputation of the great engineer. Yes, and as there is no great passion without jealousy, Shurtliff was filled with womanly jealousy of Bertram Meade because his father loved him and was proud of him. Shurtliff knew all about the private affairs of the two engineers, father and son. He knew all about the protest of the younger Mende.** The father had told him just what he intended to do with it. Shurtliff might have been a great man if left to himself or forced to act for himself. But pursuing a great pas sion so long as he had, he had merged himself in the more aggressive person ality of his employer and friend. He had received a good engineering edu cation, but had got into trouble over a failure, a rather bad mistake in his early career, too big to be rectified, to j be forgiven, or condoned. The older j Meade had taken him up, had been ' kind to him. had offered to try to put ■ him on his feet again, but his big fall- i ure had increased his natural timidity, j so he stayed on. He had become a j part of the old man’s life. \oung Meade had never been able to get very far is to the personality of Shurtliff, but he liked him and respect ed him. He realized the man's devo tion to his father, and he understood and admired him. Aside from that jealousy the old man could not but like the young one. He was too like his father for Shurtliff to dislike him. The secretary wished him well; he wanted to see him a great engineer. Of course he could never be the engineer that his father was. That would not be In the power of man. But still, even If he never attained that height, he could yet rise very high. Shurtliff would not admit that there was anything on earth to equal Meade, Sr. The secretary was greatly surprised ns he stopped beside his own desk to hear his name called from the inner office. He recognized his employer’s voice, of course, yet there was a strange note In It which somehow gave him a sense of uneasiness. He went into the room at once and stonned aghast. “Good God, Mr. Meade!” he ex claimed. Ordinarily he wns the quietest and most undemonstrative of men. There was something soft and subtle about his movements. An exclamation of that kind had hardly escaped him in the thirty years of their association. He checked himself instantly, hut Meade, Sr., understood. The day be fore Shurtlitf had left him a hale, hearty, vigorous somewhat ruddy man. Now he found him old, white, trem bling, stricken. Meade looked at Shurt liflf with a lack-luster eye and with a face that was dead while it was yet alive. “Mr. Meade,” began the secretary a j second time, “what is the matter?” “The International bridge,” an j swered the other, and the secretary no ticed the strangeness of his voice more and more. “It’s about to collapse. Per haps it-has failed already.” Meade passed his hand over his brow and then brought it down heavily on the desk. “As we sit here, maybe, it is falling,” he added somberly in a sort of dull, impersonal way. Into the mind of the secretary came a foolish old line: “London bridge is falling down, falling down!” lie must ; be mad or Meade must be mad. “I can't believe it, sir. Why?” “There’s a deflection in one of the lower chord members of one and three quarters inches. It’s bound to col lapse. The boy was right, Shurtlitf,” explained Meade. “I was wrong. I am ruined.” “Don’t say that, sir. You have never failed in anything. There must be some means.” “Shurtiilf, you ought to know there is no power on earth could save that member. It’s only a question of time when it will fall.” The secretary leaned back against the doorjamb, put his hand over his face, and shook like a leaf. The old man eyed him. “Don’t take it so hard,” he said. “It’s not your fault, you know.” “Mr. Meade,” burst out the other • man, “you don't know what it means to me. A failure myself, I have glo ried in you. I—you have been every thing to me, sir. I can’t stand it.” “I know,” said Meade kindly. He rose and walked over to the man, laid his hand on his shoulder, took his other hand in his own. “It hurts more, perhaps, to lose your confidence in me than it would to lose the confidence of the world.” How the gods conspire to make complete the wreckage of reputations and how young Meade is cast into outer dark ness is told in the next install ment. (TO BE CONTINUED.) IS PATRON SAINT OF BIRDS Squirrels Depend on Asylum Inmate for Their Supply of Butternuts in Winter. “The patron saint of birds and squir rels’’ is happy. And though he is sixty years old and has been a patient of the state hospital for the feeble-mind ed for 36 years, his hair is brown and wavy, his eyes are bright and spark ling and his health is good. He has been in the institution more than half of his life, but his life seems to be more sane than "the lives of the thou sands who have outstripped him in the life race—and have become wrinkle-cheeked, blear-eyed and hard fisted. Albert Gentle has forgotten the world, says the Milwaukee Sentinel. He was entered in the hospital in 18SG because he loved the small animals and food of the forests. He has been there since, spending most of his time gathering nuts or communing with na ture, never expressing the slightest de sire to get back to the outside world “Last year I picked 27,500 butter nuts for my squirrels,” he said. “J need just that many to feed them all They get so hungry in the winter time, I make so many of them happy. 1 must be here always to care for them." He said It quietly, with dignity. Im aginatively he somehow emerged from the character of an old simpleton, clothed in an absurd, rusty frock coat, trousers of another d5y and general appearance of Washington Irving's schoolmaster and became the sancti fied keeper of a great trust. Whal was more important than caring for those little animals? “Most people do not know how im portant it is that we should always think of the tiny bits of life that God has put on this earth,” he said slowly “Often they do not think of each other.” Europe’s Largest Dam. The lnrgest dam in Europe has just been completed near Barcelona, Spain It is built across the chasm through which the Noguera Pallaresa rivet flowed. Abutting on almost perpendic ular cliffs, the dam is constructed ot concrete, and measures 330 feet in hi lght and 700 feet in length. The thickness is 230 feet at the base, grad ually decreasing to 14 feet at the top. The valley above the dam was bought front the various landholders at a cost of near $1,000,000, and now filled with water forms an artificial lake 15*4 miles long and 8% miles wide. The water that now passes through the power house yields an electric current of 20,000 horse power. Later it will b« increased to 40,000 horse power. The wnter is carried by a system of canals into an arid district, where it Irrigates a surface of nearly 100 square miles. Greatest Coal Production. Coal production records were smashed in 1916, when the output was around 597,600,000 tons, compared with 570,000,000 tons, the previous high rec ord established in 1913. The quantity 1 of bituminous coal mined was 509,000,- i 000 tons, an increase compared with 1915 of 66,500,000 tons, or 15 per cent, according to estimates by C. E. Lesher of the United States geological survey, department of the interior. The quan- ! tlty of Pennsylvania anthracite was about 88,812,000 net tons, a decrease of 000,000 tons. Approval. The nod of an honest man is enough. •‘•Proverb. WOMAN SICK TWO YEARS Could Do No Work. Now Strong as a Mam. Chicago, 111. —“For about two years I suffered from a female trouble so I was unable to walk or do any of my own work. I read about Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Com pound in the news papers and deter mined to try it. It brought ai; im mediate re . ‘ My weakness h tirely disar and I never ha ter health. I v. 166 pounds and am as strong as a rr. 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PRICES REASONABLE Kussia is to create a men li;i: : . A rine. RED FACES AND RED HANDS Soothed and Healed by Cuticura—Sam pie Each Free by Mail. Treatment for the face: On rising and retiring smear affected part' \\ \ Cuticura Ointment. Then wash off with Cuticura Soap and hot water. For rh hands: Soak them in a hot lather of Cuticura Soap. Dry. and n. m Cuticura Ointment. Free sample eacli by mail with !'• . Address postcard. Cuticura. It I Boston. Sold everywhere.—Adv. WOULD MAKE PREACHER FARM Each Should Be Given Small Tract to Till to Increase His Income, a Minister Declares. That every minister throughout country, particularly in rural distri ~ should be made to become a till*-r f the soil in addition to his spiritual ! ties, is the belief of the Kev. John .! Neighbor, rector of St. James' Epi pal church at Bradley Beach N. J. H emphatically advocated the project in a recent sermon, the Brooklyn Eagle states. The Rev. Mr. Neighbor expressed the opinion that every student for the min istry should be required to take a course in an agricultural college a< a part of his training for the pulpit. The: each parish should set apart a cer tain amount of land for the minster t till, the proceeds of which would - help pay his salary and incidentally increase his income. The preach, said: “Such a plan would he beneficial t both the parish and i>s reefer. It would give him the means of >■ lvti.. a large part of the financial difficulty that often hampers him in his work and make him more independent and efficient. Certain hours in the daj or so many hours a week, should be set apart and prescribed as a time f.>r his agricultural duties. This would benefit him physicaily-as well as aid g him to make both ends meet." You cannot fan away a fog. Scientific facts prove the drug, caffeine, in coffee is harmful to many, while the pure food-drink— POSTUM is not only free from drugs, but is economical, delicious and nourishing. Made of wheat and a bit of wholesome mo lasses, Postum is highly recommended by phy sicians for those with whom coffee disagrees. Postum is especially suitable for children. “There’s a Reason” Sc Id by Grocer*.
