The McCook tribune. (McCook, Neb.) 1886-1936, January 13, 1893, Image 2

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    -T-. .—— - .
8. M. COCHRAN * CO.,
ARE AGENTS FOR THE CELEBRATED
Union Press Drills and
One Horse Hoe Drills,
WAGONS AND BUGGIES.
ALSO KEEP REPAIRS FOR ALL KINDS OF MACHINERY.
Absolutely Rust Proof Tinware
Their prices on all goods are as low as the
lowest possible.
S. M. COCHRAN & CO.,
Dennkou Street, .... IHcCOOK, NEBRASKA.
W. C. BULLARD & CO.
1
-tot
——tot—
BED CEDAR AND OAK POSTS.
SrU, J. WARREN, Manager.
5. & M. Meat Market.
F. S. WILCOX, Prop.
Hotary Public. Justice of the Peace.
s. is. coiL'viisr,
REAL:-: ESTATE,
LOANS AND INSURANCE.
Nebraska Farm Lands to Exchange for Eastern Property.
Collections a Specialty.
McCooz, - - - EBBASXA.
i 40 TO 2000 ACRE TRACTS, 9
S$5 TO $15 PER ACRE. I
\^mSend stamp for Price List and Descriptive I
Circular of Southwestern Nebraska to fl
S. H. COLVIN. McCook, ted wntow Co., Neb. I
A Cure for the Ailments of Man and Beast
A long-tested pain reliever.
Its use is almost universal by the Housewife, the Fanner, th*.
Stock Raiser, and by every one requiring an effective
liniment.
No other aoplication comp^es with it in efficacy.
This well-known remedy i.as stood the test of years, almost
generations.
No medicine chest in complete without a bottle of Mustano
Liniment.
Occasions arise for its use a;most every day
411 ciruggists and dealers Kaye ’*
...... _
IN LETTERS OF SOLO.
Full fifty years, sweet love, together
We wandered on ’gainst wind and weather;
Beneath love's fond, impulsive away.
It seemed but like a single day.
Not quite a week the grasses wave,
Dear heart, upon thy hillside grave—
And yet a thousand years to be
It seems since thou art gone from me.
—New Orleans Times-Democrat.
OLD jESON.'
Judge between me and my guest, the
stranger within my gates, the man whom
in his extremity 1 clothed and fed.
I remember well the time of his com
ing, for it happened at the end of five
days and nights during which the year
passed from strength to age; in the in
terval between the swallow’s departure
and the redwing’s coming; when the
tortoise in my garden crept into his win
ter quarters and the equinox was on us,
with an east wind that parched the
blood in the trees, so that their leaves
for once knew no gradations of red and
yellow, but turned at a stroke to biown
and crackled like tin foil.
At 5 o’clock in the morning of the
sixth day I looked out. The wind still
whistled across the sky, but now with
out the obstruction of any cloud. Full
in front of my window Sirius flashed
with a whiteness that pierced the eye.
A little to the right the whole constella
tion of Orion was suspended clear over
a wedgelike gap in the coast, wherein
the sea could be guessed rather than
seen, and traveling yet farther the eye
fell on two brilliant lights, the one set
high above the other; the one steady and
a fiery red, the other yellow and blazing
intermittently; the one Aldebaran, the
other revolving on the lighthouse top,
fifteen miles away.
Halt way up the east, the moon, now
in her last quarter and decrepit, climbed
with the dawn close at her heels. At this
hour they brought in the stranger, ask
ing if my pleasure were to give him
clothing and hospitality.
Nobody knew whence he came, except
that it was from the wind and the night,
seeing that he spoke in a strange tongue,
moaning and making a sound like the
twittering of birds in a chimney. But
his journey must have been long and
painful, for his legs bent under him, and
he could not stand when they lifted him.
So, finding it useless to question him
for the time, I learned from the servants
all they had to tell—-namely, that they
had come upon him but a few minutes
before, lying on his face within my
grounds without staff or scrip, bare
headed, spent and crying feebly for suc
cor in his foreign tongue, and in pity
they had carried him in and brought
him to me.
Now for the look of this man. He
seemed a century old, being bald, ex
tremely wrinkled, with wide hollows
where the teeth should be, and the flesh
hanging loose and flaccid on his cheek
bones; and what color he had could have
come only from exposure to that bitter
night. But his eyes chiefly spoke of his
extreme age. They were blue and deep,
and filled with the wisdom of years, and
when he turned them in my direction
they appeared to look through me, be
yond me and back upon centuries of sor
row and the slow endurance of man, as
if his immediate misfortunes were but
an inconsiderable item in a long list.
They frightened me. Perhaps they
conveyed a warning of that which I was
to endure at their owner’s hands. From
compassion I ordered the servants to
take him to my wife, with word that 1
wished her to set food before him and
see that it passed his lips.
So much I did for this stranger. Now
learn how he rewarded me.
He has taken my youth from me, and
the most of my substance, and the love
of my wife.
From the hour when he tasted food in
my house he sat there without hint of
going. Whether from design, or be
cause age and his sufferings had really
palsied him, he came back tediously to
life and warmth, nor for many days
professed himself able to stand erect.
Meanwhile he lived on the best of our
hospitality. My wife tended him, and
my servants ran at his bidding, for he
managed early to make them under
stand scraps of his language, though
slow in acquiring hours—I believe out of
calculation, lest some one should inquire
his business (which was a mystery) or
hint at his departure.
l mysen oiten visited tne room he had
appropriated, and would sit for an hour
watching those fathomless eyes while 1
tried to make head or tail of his dis
course. When we were alone my wife
and I used to speculate at times on his
probable profession. Was he a merchant,
an aged mariner, tinker, tailor, beg
garman, thief? We could never decide,
and he never disclosed.
Then the awakening came. 1 sat one
day in the chair beside his, wondering as
usual. I had felt heavy of late with a
soreness and languor in my bones, as if
a dead weight hung continually on my
shoulders and another rested on my
heart.
A warmer color in the stranger's cheek
caught my attention, and I bent for
ward, peering under the pendulous lids.
His eyes were livelier and less profound.
The melancholy was passing from them
as breath fades off a pane of glass. He
was growing younger. Starting up I ran
across the room to the mirror.
There were two white hairs in my fore
lock, and at the corner of either eye half
a dozen radiating lines. I was an old
man.
Turning, I regarded the stranger. He
sat as phlegmatic as an Indian idol, and
in my fancy I felt the young blood
draining from my own heart and saw it
mantling in his cheeks. Minute by min
ute I watched the slow miracle—the old
man beautified. As buds unfold he put
on a lovely youthfulness, and drop by
drop left me winter.
I hurried from the room, and seeking
my wife laid the case before her. “This
is a ghoul,” I said, “that we harbor; ho
is sucking my best blood, and the house
hold is clean bewitched.” Sue laid aside
the book in which she read and laughed
at me. Now my wife was well looking,
and her eyes were the light of my soul.
Consider, then, how I felt as she laugh
ed, taking the stranger’s part against
me. When I left her it was with a new
suspicion in my heart. “How shall it
be,” I thought, “if after stealing my
youth he go on to take the one thing
that is better?”
In my room, day by day, 1 brooded
upon this—hating my own alteration
and fearing worse. With the stranger
there was no longer any disguise. His
head blossomed in curls; white teetli
filled the hollows of his mouth; the pits
in his cheeks were heaped full with roses,
glowing under a transparent skin. It
was .Eson renewed and thankless, and
he sat on, devouring my substance.
Now having probed my weakness, and
being satisfied that 1 no longer dared to
turn him out, he, who had half imposed
his native tongue upon us, constraining
the household to a hideous jargon, the
bastard growth of two languages, con
descended to jerk us back rudely into
our own speech once more, mastering it
with a readiness that proved his former
dissimulation and using it henceforward
as the sole vehicle of his wishes. On his
past life he remained silent, but took
occasion to confide in me that he pro
posed embracing a military career as
soon as he should tire of the shelter of
my roof.
And 1 groaned in my chamber, for
that which I feared had come to pass.
He was making open love to my wife.
And the eyes with which he looked at
her and the lips with which he coaxed
her had been mine, and 1 was an old
man. Judge now between me and this
guest.
One morning 1 went to my wife, for
the burden was past bearing, and 1 must
satisfy myself. 1 found her tending the
plants on her window ledge, and when
6he turned I saw that years had not
taken from her comeliness one jot. And
1 was old.
So 1 taxed her on the matter of this
stranger, saying this and that, and how
I had cause to believe he loved her.
“That is beyond doubt.” she answered
and smiled.
r>y m v ueau, i ueueve ms iancy is
returned 1” 1 blurted out.
And her smile grew radiant as, look
ing me in the face, she answered, “By
my soul, husband, it is.”
Then I went from her down into my
garden, where the day grew hot and the
flowers were beginning to droop. 1
stared upon them and could find no so
lution to the problem that worked in my
heart. And then 1 glanced up, east
ward, to the sun above the privet hedge
and saw him coming across the flower
beds, treading them down in wanton
ness. He came with a light step and a
smile, and 1 waited for him, leaning
heavily on my stick.
“Give me your watch!” he called out
as he drew near.
“Why should 1 give you my watch?” 1
asked, while something worked in my
throat.
“Because 1 wish it; because it is gold,
because you are too old and won’t want
it much longer.”
“Take it,” I cried, pulling the watch
out and thrusting it into his hand.
“Take it—you who have taken all that
is better! Strip me, spoil me”
A soft laugh sounded above, and 1
turned. My wife was looking down on
us from the window, and her eyes were
both moist and glad.
“Pardon me,” she said; “it is you who
are spoiling the child."—Arthur T. Qail
ler-Couch in Noughts and Crosses.
Some Famous Dunces.
Literary history is crowded with in
stances of torpid and uninteresting boy
hood. Gibbon was pronounced “dread
fully dull,” and the utmost that was
predicted of Hume in his youth was
that “he might possibly become a steady
merchant.” Adam Clarke, afterward
so deeply skilled in oriental languages
and antiquities, was pronounced by his
father to be “a grievous dunce,” and of
Boileau, who became a model for Pope,
it was said that he was a youth of little
understanding. Dry den was “a great
numskull,” who went through a course
of education at Westminster, but the
“stimulating properties of Dr. Busby’s
classical ferrule were thrown away upon
the drone who was to be known as
‘Glorious John.’”—London Standard.
One of Grant's Pictures.
The original picture of “Sheridan’s
Ride,” painted by T. Buchanan Read,
now hangs in the private office of Presi
dent Thomas L. James, of the Lincoln
bank. It is about five by four feet in di
mensions, and is especially notable for
spirited figure of the horse upon which
Sheridan is mounted. The picture is
the property of Mrs. U. S. Grant, and
was sent to the Lincoln storage ware
house pending some alterations in the
Grant residence. It was purchased from
the artist by a few western men and
presented to General Grant soon after
the close of the war.—New York Times.
Tracheotomy Advocated.
Some of the most experienced practi
tioners express the opinion that the ex
pected fact that intubation would, on
account of its simplicity, take the place
of the knife and add materially to the
resources of the profession, has not been
fulfilled. It is urged by those who take
this ground that the operation necessi
tates a degree of manual dexterity which
the average physician, with his tew op
portunities, is not able to acquire, and the
objection made is that the patient is sub
jected to a certain amount of exhaustion
which can be ill borne in one suffering
from diphtheria.—New York Tribune.
The Influence of Politicians.
When one, not being a professional
politician, looks at the question widely
and considers the penalties of political
greatness, one begins to wonder whether
politics have that influence on the real
life of a nation which they are supposed
to have, and whether eminent politicians
are not merely the puppets of the hour.
But that is a question on which the fates
forbid that we should enter! Probably
in no case are the penalties of greatness
so irksome as in the case of the eminent
politician.—All the Year Round.
IN TENEBRI8.
I beard her song
Low In the night
From out her casement steal away,
Nor thought it wroDg
To steal a sight
Of her—and lo* she knelt to pray.
I heard her Bay:
“Forgive him. Lord!
Such as he seems he cannot be."
I turned away,
Myself abhorred—
She prayed—and lol she prayed for me.
—T. W. Hall in Munsey's Magazine.
NERVE.
While Murat was in Madrid he was
anxious to communicate with Junot in
Portugal, but all the roads to Lisbon
swarmed with guerrillas and with the
troops composing Castanos’ army.
He asked Krasinski, the commandant
of the lancers, to find him a brave and
intelligent young man. Two days after
ward the commandant brought the
prince a young man of his corps, for
whom he pledged his life. His name
was Leckinski, and he was but eighteen
years old.
Murat was moved at seeing so young a
man court 60 imminent a danger, for if
he were detected his doom was sealed.
Murat could not help remarking to the
Pole the risk he was about to run. Tho
youth smiled.
“Let your imperial highness give mo
my instructions,” answered he respect
fully, “and I will give a good account
of the mission I have been honored
with.”
The young prince augured favorably
from the young man's modest resolu
tion. The Russian embassador gave
him his dispatches; he put on a Russian
uniform and set out for Portugal.
The first two days passed over quietly,
but on the afternoon of the third Leck
inski was surrounded by a body of Span
iards, who disarmed him and dragged
him before their commanding officer.
Luckily for the gallant youth it was
Castanos himself.
Leckmski was aware that he was lost
if he were discovered to he a French
man; consequently he determined on
the instant not to let a single worif of
French escape him, and to speak but
Russian and German, which he spoke
with equal fluency. The cries of rage
of his captors announced the fate which
awaited him, and the horrible murder
of General Rene, who had perished in
the most dreadful tortures but a few
weeks before as he was going to join
Junot, was sufficient to freeze the very
blood.
“Who are you?” said Castanos in
French, which language he spoke per
fectly well, having been educated in
France.
Leckinski looked at the questioner,
made a sign and answered in German,
“I do not understand you.”
Castanos spqjte German, but he did
not wish to appear personally in the
matter and summoned one of the officers
of his staff, who went on with the ex
amination. The young Pole answered
in Russian or German, but never let a
single syllable of French escape him.
He might, however, easily have forgot
ten himself, surrounded as he was by a
crowd eager for his blood, and who
waited with savage impatience to have
him declared guilty—that is, a French
man—to fall upon him and murder him.
But their fury was raised to a height
which the general himself could not con
trol, by an incident which seemed to cut
off the unhappy prisoner from every
hope of escape. One of Castanos’ aids de
camp, one of the fanatically patriotic
who were so numerous in this war, and
who from the first had denounced Leck
inski as a French spy, burst in the room,
dragging with him a man wearing the
brown jacket, tall hat and red plume of
a Spanish peasant.
The officer confronted him with the
Pole and said:
“Look at this man, and then say if it
is true that he is a German or a Rus
sian. He is a spy, I swear by my soul.”
The peasant meanwhile was eying the
prisoner closely. Presently his dark eye
lighted up with the fire of hatred.
“Es Frances, he is a Frenchman!” ex
claimed he, clapping his hands. And
he stated that having been in Madrid a
few weeks before he had been put in
requisition to carry forage to the French
barrack, and, said he, “I recollect that
this is the man who took my load of
forage and gave me a receipt. I was
near him an hour and recollect him.
When we caught him I told my comrade
this is the French officer I delivered my
forage to.”
This was correct. Castanos probably
discovered the true state of the case, but
he wras a generous foe. He proposed to
let him pursue his journey, for Leckinski
still insisted he was a Russian, and could
not be made to understand a word of
French. But the moment he ventured
a hint of the kind, a thousand threaten
ing voices were raised against him and
he saw’ that clemency was impossible.
“But,” said he, “will you then risk a
quarrel with Russia, whose neutrality
we are so anxiously asking for?”
“No,” said the officer, “but let ns try
this man.”
Leckinski understood all, for he was
acquainted with Spanish. He was re
moved and thrown into a room worthy
to have been one of the dungeons of the
inquisition in its best days.
When the Spaniards took him prisoner
he had eaten nothing since the previous
evening, and when his dungeon door
was closed on him he had fasted for
eighteen hours. No wonder then what 1
with exhaustion, fatigue, anxiety, and
the agony of his dreadful situation, that
the unhappy prisoner fell almost sense
less on his hard couch. Night soon
closed in and left him to realize in its j
gloom the full horror of his hopeless
situation. He was brave, of course, but
to die at eighteen—'tis sudden. But
youth and fatigue finally yielded to the
approach of sleep and he was soon buried
in profound slumber.
He had slept perhaps two hours when
the door of his dungeon opened slowly
and some one entered with cautions
steps, hiding with his hand the light of
a lamp. The visitor bent over the pris- J
oner's oonch, the hand that shaded the
lamp touched him on the shoulder, and
a sweet and silvery voice—a woman's
voice—asked him, “Do you want eat?”
The young Pole, awakened suddenly
by the glare of the lamp, by the touch
and words of the female, rose up on his
couch and with eyes only half opened
said in German, “What do you want?”
“Give the man something to eat at
once,” said Castanos, when he heard the
result of the first experiment, “and let
him go. He is not a Frenchman. How
could he have been so far master of him
self? The thing is impossible.”
But though Leckinski was supplied
with food he was detained a prisoner.
The next morning he was taken to a spot
where he could see the mutilated corpse
of the Frenchman, who had been cruel
ly massacred by the peasantry of Truxil
lo, and he was threatened with the same
death. But tho noble youth had prom
ised not to fail, and not a word, not an
accent, not a gesture or look betrayed
him.
Leckinski, when taken back to hia
prison, hailed it with a sort of joy. For
twelve hours he had had nothing but
gibbets and death in its most horrid
forms before his eyes—exhibited to him
by men with the looks and the passions
of demons. He slept, however, after the
harrassing excitement of the day, and
soundly, too, when in the midst of his
deep and deathlike slumbers the door
opened gently, some one drew near his
couch, and the same voice whispered in
his ear:
“Arise and come with me. We wish
to save your life. Your horse is ready."
And the brave young man, hastily
awakened by the words, “We wish to
save your life; come,” answered still in
German, “What do you want?”
Castanos, when he heard of this experi
ment and its result, said the Russian
was a noble young man; he Baw the true
state of the case.
The next morning early four men
came to take him before a sort of court
martial, composed of officers of Castanos’
staff. During the walk they uttered the
most horrible threats against him, but
true to his determination he pretended
not to understand them.
When he came before his judges he
seemed to gather what was going on
from the arrangements of the tribunal
and not from what he heard said around
him, and he asked in German where his
interpreter was? He was sent for, and
the examination commenced.
It turned at first upon the motive of
his journey from Madrid to Lisbon. He
answered by showing his dispatches to
Admiral Siniavin and his passport.
Spite of the presence and the vehement
assertions of the peasant, he persisted in
the same story and did not contradict
himself once.
“Ask him,” said the presiding officer
at last, “if he loves the Spaniards, as he
is not a Frenchman?”
“Certainly,” said Leckinski, “I like
the Spanish nation, and I esteem it for
its noble character. I wish our two na
tions were friends.”
“Colonel,” said the interpreter to the
president, “the prisoner says that he
hates us because we make war like ban
ditti; that he despises us, and that his
only regret is that he cannot unite the
whole nation in one man, to end this
odious war at a single blow.”
While he was saying this, the eyes of
the whole tribunal were attentively
watching the slightest movement of the
prisoner's countenance, in order to see
what effect the interpreter’s treachery
would have upon him. But Leckinski
had expected to be put to the test in
some way, and was determined to baf
fle all their attempts.
“Gentlemen,”said Castanos, “itseems
to me that this young man cannot be
suspected; the peasant must be deceived.
The prisoner may pursue his journey,
and when he reflects on the hazard of
our position he will find the severity
we have been obliged to use excusable.”
Leckinski’s arms and dispatches were
returned, he received a free pass, and
thus this noble youth came victorious
out of the severest trial that the human
spirit can be put to.—H. K. in New
York News.
Peculiarities cf Nervous Women.
Says a physician who is a specialist in
nervous diseases: “The vagaries of nerv
ous women would fill a volume. I have,
however, a profound respect for their
sincerity and a deep sympathy with
their victims. One of my patients, a
fine looking woman, with a splendid
physique, is reduced to a condition bor
dering on insanity by a high wind. If
she is out in it her misery is heightened.
She says she has a dazed, confused feel
ing that amounts to bewilderment, and
she feels as if any moment she would
lose her hold on reason and sense.
‘ ‘Another of my patients cannot endure
to hear toast crunched between the teeth
of another person. She can eat it her
self, but has to leave the table if another
does, so great is her distress. In other
respects she is a woman of strong char
acter. It would be interesting to trace
the origin of such apparently causeless
conditions.”—New York Times.
Tl»e Zither.
The zither is a stringed instrument
which has not as yet a very great follow
ing in New York. It has the sweetness
of the guitar and mandolin, with the
depth and richness of the harp. In the
hands of an expert performer, who thor
oughly understands the scope of the in
strument, no music can be more deli
cious. It is somewhat difficult to learn,
is played with both hands, a shield being
worn on the thumb of the right hand,
and has from thirty-one to forty-four
strings.—New York Press.
Fine Clothes.
“The soil of California is so fruitful,”
said a native of the Golden State, “that
a man who accidentally dropped a box
of matches in his field discovered the
next year a fine forest of telegraph poles. ”
“That’s nothing to my state,” said a
native of Illinois. “A cousin of mine
who lives there lost a button off his
jacket and in less than a month he found
a brand new suit of clothes hanging on a
fence near the spot.”—'Texas Siftings.