Puny Children Need Vinol

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A Comb In the Claw

1907

Many birds possess a useful comb in the claw of the middle toe of the foot. This has been noticed in owls, nightjars, herons, bitterns, cormorants, gannets, etc.

It has been explained as a means of holding the prey securely. The comb is sometimes replaced by a curved blade with teeth, which runs along the inner side of the claw. Such a blade is found in razorbills, wild ducks, gulls, starlings and many other birds.

Where a comb is required the inner edge of this blade becomes divided into teeth. Young nightjars or goatsuckers have only the blade, but old ones have a well developed comb.

Labor of Ants

1907

It would perhaps be pushing metaphors to an unwarranted extreme to speak of "dignity of labor" in connection with the occupations of ants. But if by the phrase we mean that labor is the honorable lot of all citizens and that all labors of whatever sort are upon the same level of respectability then we might venture to apply the saying even to the labors of an ant hill. For therein all are workers, from the newly fledged callow to the veteran of a second summer. — Harper's Magazine.


Armenian Marriages

An Armenian mother usually chooses her daughter's husband. After all business preliminaries are settled between the families the bridegroom's mother, accompanied by a priest and two matrons, visits the bride and gives her a ring in token of espousal, and with this ring the couple are ultimately married. Among the fishing communities very ancient and elaborate rings are used, and they descend as heirlooms from generation to generation.

The Old Suez Canal

1907

Few people are aware that there had been a canal across the isthmus of Suez before De Lesseps ever conceived the idea of his monumental enterprise.

A canal across the isthmus was actually constructed 600 years before the Christian era and served as a waterway for small vessels until about 1,000 years ago, when it was allowed to fall into disuse. Napoleon revived the idea and instructed one of the great engineers of his day to investigate the matter, but though a favorable report was presented to him, in which M. Lepere recommended the restoration of the canal, the work itself was never touched.

When M. de Lesseps undertook the task of cutting the canal he thought at first to follow the idea of Napoleon and restore the ancient waterway, but this plan was abandoned and the present plan determined upon.

Ocean Heart

1907

The throbbing, and vibration of the engines of a modern steamer have a most extraordinary effect upon the human heart.

Let it be said at once that ocean traveling does not in any way injure the heart; on the contrary, it benefits it, with the general health. But the vibration of the machinery is transmitted to this vital organ with the most extraordinary results so far as medical examination is concerned.

A ship's doctor will tell you that when he listens through his stethoscope to the beating of a man's heart at sea it seems as if every moment the heart would stop. With sturdy and invalid passengers it is just the same. The heart appears to the doctor as if every beat would be its last. This being the case, it is exceedingly difficult for the physician to ascertain the true condition of the traveler's health, and he generally resorts to the expedient of slinging his patient in a hammock, where the vibration is considerably lessened, though no device can overcome it altogether. — London Answers.

Death of Venice Cecil Creveling.

1907, Leon, Iowa area

Venice Cecil Creveling, daughter of Clemul and Joannah Creveling, was born Dec. 8, 1896, at the old Creveling home near Lamoni, where she lived with her parents to the time of her death which occured Aug. 31, 1907, by falling from her father's load of lumber and being crushed by the wheel of the wagon. The only words she spoke were, "Papa, take me home."

By faith we are assured that the good Father hastened to this mournful plea and received the spirit to give it light and immortality and forever to dwell in that blest land where flowers, youth and beauty will never fade. We rely in the promise of Him who said: "Suffer little children to come unto me, for of such is the kingdom."

The funeral was from the home Sunday evening at 4 o'clock, conducted in the grove near the dwelling by Rev. Frank Spurrier of the Baptist church. The remarks were very appropriate, from the text: "Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of Man cometh." — Matt. 25:13. The funeral was largely attended with many sad hearts and sympathizing friends who with words and flowers paid their last tribute to all that was left of the mortaled innocence of the loved one. May the word of the Lord come to those sorrowing ones as in Abram's vision, saying "Fear not; I am thy shield." Submissive then may they reply: "Thy will be done."

This lovely bud, so young and fair,
Called hence by early doom,
Just came to show how sweet a flower
In Paradise could bloom.

Thou no more will join our number;
Thou no more sorrows know;
Yet again we hope to meet thee,
When this toiling life is done.

J. F. M.

Note: This article is from an old scrapbook from the Leon, Iowa, area. The last poem is inset slightly and each second line is indented. The signature J.F.M. is original to the article.

The Queer Joke That Eugene Field Played on a Printer

1907

A Maddening Prank

When Eugene Field was city editor of the Kansas City Times he found great amusement in annoying one of the characters employed on the paper. Ferguson was one of the "makeups" on the paper, and in Wyandotte, where he resided, just over the line from Kansas City, he was the leader of a local temperance society. For over a year Field, on coming down to the paper to go to work, would write a personal concerning Ferguson. Generally it ran like this: "Mr. John Ferguson, the well known 'makeup' of the Times composing room, appeared for work yesterday evening in his usual beastly state of intoxication." This entertaining bit Field would send down in a bundle of copy, and the others of the composing room would set it up and say nothing.

Poor Ferguson knew that this awful personal was in their midst and every night would go carefully over every galley for the purpose of locating and killing it. It gave him vast trouble. Every now and then Field would not write his personal about Ferguson, and then the bewildered Ferguson was worse off than ever. As long as he could not find it it might still be there. It almost drove the poor man off the paper. Now and then it escaped his eagle eye and was printed. On such occasions Ferguson's burdens were beyond the power of even a Christian spirit to bear.

Death at the Supper Table (and Other Unfortunate News)

1907

MUSKEGON, MI. — Charles Bromstra, 37 years old, while working complained of pain in the region of his heart and said he thought he would die. At the supper table he expired.

MONTROSE, MI. — A broken brakebeam tumbled 14 box cars of a Bay City to Durand train on the C., S. & M., four miles south of here. Four of the cars were reduced to kindling wood and the track torn up for a long distance. Nobody was hurt.

DETROIT, MI. — Florence W. McGill, upon looking into the bathroom, found her mother lying dead in the tub, face downward, with water covering her head. She had been taking a foot bath and it is presumed that she was overcome and fell head foremost into the water.

PORT HURON, MI. — Guests at the Windermere hotel, Gratiot beach, have complained because of the fact that the waitresses employed at the hotel bathe in the lake at the same time as the guests take their daily plunge. The lake being very large, however, no attempt has been made to put a stop to the practice.

LANSING, MI. — William Henry Harrison, a quaint character, 72 years old, who worked for years at Delta and refused to accept any employment from his employer, dropped dead on the street here from apoplexy. He had just emerged from Beck's clothing store when he toppled over against a passerby and was dead before he could be lowered to the sidewalk.

AMERICUS, GA. — Bram Goodwin, a Sumter county farmer, dropped dead in a cotton field. His brother Arnold summoned and at the sight of the body he fell on it and expired.

JOLIET, ILL. — William Myers, a young man of McKeesport, Pa., who was stealing a ride on top of a coach of a passenger train was struck by the viaduct under the Michigan Central tracks at New Lenox and beheaded. Two companions, with whom Myers boarded the car in the yards at Chicago, escaped because they were lying flat on the car roof.

NEW YORK — Mrs. Catherine Gillighan, at the age of 107 years and four months, is dead at her home in the Bronx. She had lived in New York 35 years, coming here from Ireland at the age of 79 to join her eight children. Mrs. Gillighan ascribed her longevity to her habit of eating onions at every meal and her refusal to worry about anything. She never tasted medicine.

LIGONIER, IND. — Pat Summers, one of the best known horse breeders in this section and owner of Edifice, was killed by lightning while in a barn at his stock farm near this city during an electrical storm. Summers had just returned from Kendallville where he was training a large number of horses for the fall track. Several valuable colts were saved by Summers' son from the burning barn.

— Daily Eagle, Traverse City, Michigan, Aug. 3, 1907, p. 5.

Catching Grasshoppers to Feed to the Poultry

1907

Use a Hopperdozer

That grasshoppers are good food for poultry is recognized, but in most cases the poultry have to catch their own grasshoppers. We do not commonly hear of anyone taking the trouble to catch grasshoppers for the poultry. The Colorado station this summer tried the experiment successfully.

The fields were visited by innumerable multitudes of grasshoppers, and the station men determined to catch a few bushels of them for the fowls. A hopperdozer was used and run behind a mowing machine at the time the hay was being made. The hopperdozer was mounted on wheels, so that it would not catch in the hay. Usually kerosene is used in the hopperdozer, thus killing the insects as they fall into it. But this would make the insects unfit for food.

A little experimenting showed that water would hold the insects for some time or until they could be flipped out for the use of the fowls. A hopperdozer was used on a six-acre field of alfalfa and it succeeded in catching from nine to ten bushels of grasshoppers, estimated at 3,000 to the bushel.

Nerviest Little Man in Nebraska

1907

Raymond Weber, Aged 4

He didn't cry, although his father did when the latter found him alive at bottom of a well.

NEBRASKA CITY, Neb., March 9 — Raymond Weber, of this city, is only 4 years old, but he has won distinction of being the nerviest little man in Nebraska. Raymond is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Frank Weber. He was playing in the yard with his 7-year-old brother, and the two went to the well and looked down.

There they saw a silver speck, and they wondered if it were really water and if there were gnomes and fairies and things down there. Raymond leaned way over to see. Suddenly he lost his hold and down he went. His brother ran screaming away, but soon the neighbors for a mile around were on the scene.

It was twenty-five feet to the bottom, and a windlass had to be rigged. Soon the father was going down with a load on his heart as heavy as lead, but hoping also. At the bottom he found his boy, standing in a foot of water, cool and with not a tear. "Me wet, papa," he said, as the sobbing man gathered him up.

Art of the Etruscans

1907

Mysterious People Who Left Traces of a Remarkable Civilization

Why did the Etruscans devote their whole lives to the incessant making of pottery until it accumulated in such quantities that they were compelled to bury it in order to keep room for themselves in their streets and houses?

Then, again, there is the mystery of the Etruscan inscriptions. These inscriptions are fairly numerous, but hitherto they have proved to be utterly undecipherable. The Etruscan is the only dead language that has defied investigation. Considered as a language, nothing could seem more improbable than the hieroglyphics of the Egyptians, but Egyptologists can read them with such ease that almost any given series of hieroglyphics can be read in three or four ways by an equal number of rival Egyptologists. Any language more utterly impossible at first glance than the Assyrian arrowhead language could not well be imagined, but there are many learned men who can read, write and speak arrowhead with facility. And yet no man can make the least sense of the writings left by the Etruscans, although they are written in Roman characters.

All that we know of the Etruscans seems unreasonable and preposterous. Naturally this makes them fascinating to every one who delights in mystery and the solution of puzzles. — Putnam's Magazine.

The Zoo By Night

1907

Gleaming Eyes In the Blackness Give a Flavor of the Wilds

The average grownup who visits the zoo thinks it rather a dull sort of show, for the fact that the animals are captive robs them of all the romance that would attach to them in their native forests.

But let the blase sightseer obtain permission to visit the zoo at midnight, and his impressions will be very different. Darkness hides the bars and the boards, and the eyes of some wakeful creature gleam maliciously at you. For the moment you imagine that you are in the wilds, on equal terms with the creatures around.

Poised on the swings and platforms at the top of their cages sleep the monkeys, instinct surviving their loss of freedom, for in the forests they had to sleep thus to avoid the beasts of prey.

Here rests a lioness, prone upon her back, her legs rigid in the air and her paws hanging limply down. There reclines her lord, asleep upon his side, his paws turned in and his general pose not unlike that of a dog.

The more cunning and more cowardly of the animals do not seem to sleep at all, for as soon as they hear our approaching footsteps they give us their greeting with snarls and malevolent glowering and watch us suspiciously till we depart. — Pearson's.

Happy Marriages Through Compromise

1907

Value of the Spirit of Compromise In Wedded Life

If marriage meant the wedding of a saint and an angel there would be no problems to solve, no perfections to attain, no progress to make. This may be why there are no marriages in heaven.

On earth it is different. Husband and wife are strongly human. No matter how lovingly united or how sweet their accord, they never have the same temperaments, tendencies or tastes.

Their needs are different, their manner of looking at things is not identical and in varying ways their individualities assert themselves. At any critical moment if both express at the same time a desire to defer to the other's taste the result is foreordained — happiness. This makes matrimony not merely union, but unison and unity.

The spirit of compromise does not mean a continuous performance in the way of self surrender and self sacrifice; it does not mean ceasing to be a voice and becoming an echo; it does not imply or justify the loss of individuality. It means simply the instinctive recognition of the best way out of a difficulty, the quickest tacking to avoid a collision, the kindly view of tolerance in the presence of weakness and errors of another, the courage to meet an explanation half way, the generosity to be first to apologize for a discord, the largeness of mind that does not fear a sacrifice of dignity in surrendering in the interests of the highest harmony of the two rather than the personal vanity. — Delineator.

Character In the Eyebrows

1907

An arched eyebrow does not indicate the highest order of intelligence, but is expressive of great sensibility. Scant growth of the eyebrows denotes lack of vitality. On the contrary, heavy, thick eyebrows indicate a strong constitution and great physical endurance. They are not beautiful on a woman's face, however much they may signify either mental or bodily vigor, and when they are not only heavy, but droop and meet at the nose they are disagreeable and are said to accompany an insincere and prying nature. Long, drooping eyebrows, lying wide apart, indicate an amiable disposition. Where the eyebrows are lighter in color than the hair the indications are lack of vitality and great sensitiveness.

Faintly defined eyebrows placed high above the nose are signs of indolence and weakness. Very black eyebrows give the face an intense and searching expression. When natural, they accompany a passionate temperament.

Very light eyebrows rarely are seen on strongly intellectual faces, although the color of the eyebrows is not accepted simply as denoting lack of intelligence. The form gives the key to the faculties and their direction. Red eyebrows denote great fervor and ambition; brown, a medium between the red and black. — Exchange.

An Extinct Animal — Saber Toothed Tiger

1907

The Saber Toothed Tiger Was a Formidable Creature

The most remarkable of all the extinct feline animals are those known to naturalists as the saber toothed cats or tigers, a group comprising the greater part of all the fossil forms. They date back to the earliest times of which we know anything about the family in North America and reach down to the time of man himself.

A large and powerful species described from the Indian Territory by Cope lived contemporaneously with the hairy mammoth, as evidenced by the commingling of their skeletons. There can be little or no question but that the hairy mammoth was contemporaneous with man in North America as well as in Europe. Its geological range is from the close of the Eocene to the latter part of the Pleistocene.

The chief peculiarity of the animal is the extraordinary elongated canine teeth. The tail is of unusual length and the legs are short. The animal measures about seven feet in length aside from the tail. The lower jaws have a downward projection in front, due to a flange-like widening of the jawbones, which doubtless served as a protection to the teeth, preventing their injury or loss. In some of the larger forms from South America this flange was not present, while the canine teeth were even more elongated than is the case with this species, attaining a length of over six inches and protruding far below the jaws when closed.


A Chinese Solomon

Two Chinamen, brothers, well advanced in age, quarreled over a piece of land which they had jointly inherited from their father and went to law. The native magistrate heard the testimony on both sides and determined that both were wrong and both right, according to the different points of view. Therefore, instead of rendering a judgment in favor of either, he ordered that both be locked up in a cangue with their heads fastened face to face and kept there until they settled their quarrel. The cangue is a sort of cage in which prisoners are placed with their necks locked into a hole in a board. It resembles somewhat the stocks which were used for the punishment of malefactors in olden times. When the brothers were placed in the cangue, they were both very stubborn and indignant, but toward the end of the second day they began to weaken and on the third day reached a satisfactory settlement and were released.

What a Good Circus Rider Can Make

1907

They Earn Good Salaries, but Their Careers Are Short

A man horseback rider receives from $75 to $125 a week, and his career as a principal rider lasts about ten years. It is short not so much because these men get stiff and lose their agility as because they lose their nerve. Nearly all circus folk marry young, and with their added responsibilities comes a lively sense of danger which they ignored in younger days.

A man rider who cannot turn a somersault on a horse cannot command more than $50 a week. A woman rider who can perform this feat gets from $150 to $200 a week if she is a finished rider.

This isn't much when all the disadvantages of the calling are taken into consideration, but it should be remembered that all the expenses are paid, including the care, feeding and of course the transportation of their horses. All they have to provide is their own clothing. For the men riders clothes do not constitute much of a factor, and the women nearly always make their own, except those provided by the management.

Making Artificial Pearls

1907

What a Little Silver Fish Taught a French Beadmaker

"I'll tell you," said a jeweler, "how the wonderfully perfect artificial pearl came to be invented.

"A rich French beadmaker, Molse Jaquin — he lived in the seventeenth century — found a pond in his garden covered one morning with a lovely silvery luster. Amazed, he called his gardener, who said it was nothing — some albettes had got crushed; that was all.

"Albettes were little silver fish, bleaks the Leuciscus alournus. The gardener explained that if you crushed them they always gave the water a pearly sheen like that. Jaquin put on his thinking cap.

"For six years he worked with beads and bleaks, wasting millions of both, but finally he achieved success. He learned how to extract the pearly luster from the bleaks' scales and to cover a glass bead with it.

"What he did — and his method is still used — was to scrape the scales from the fish, wash and rub them and save the water. The water, decanted, gave off a lustrous fluid of the thickness of oil, a veritable pearl paint, a magic fluid that imparts a lovely pearly sheen to everything it is applied to.

"It takes 1,000 bleaks to yield an ounce of this pearl paint. — New Orleans Times-Democrat.

The Longest Year on Record — 46 B.C.

1907

The year B. C. 46, by order of Julius Caesar, the then reigning Roman emperor, contained 445 days. To clear away all the confusion which had previously existed in reconciling the lunar with the solar year, Caesar, with the help of Sosigenes, an Alexandrian astronomer, undertook a thorough reform of the calendar. He effected it by making the year now called 46 B. C., "the year of confusion," consist of 445 days and the succeeding years of 365 days, with the exception of every fourth year, which was to consist of 366. This method is called the Julian calendar.

The number of days in the months from January to December before Caesar's time had been respectively 29, 28, 31, 29, 31, 29, 31, 29, 29, 31, 29, 29. These numbers Caesar changed to 31 and 30 alternately, with the exception of February, which was to have 29 in ordinary years and 30 in leap years. In honor of himself he changed to July the name of the month that followed June. The pontiffs in applying the Julian calendar went wrong by inserting leap year every three years instead of every four years, and this continued till the year now called 8 B. C., when the Emperor Augustus ordained there should be no leap year for twelve years, which made leap year occur in 4 A. D. At the same time Augustus gave his own name to the month following July, adding one day to it, which he took away from February.

Joys of a Collector

1907

Picking Up a Valuable Painting at an Auction Sale

Collecting will always have its romances. I know of one that occurred at the sale at Christie's of the effects of the late Sir Henry Irving. Some one I knew had been to see the collection before the sale. He came across a portrait with which he was familiar because he had seen it thirty years before.

On consulting his catalogue he discovered that the portrait was described as being that of a man unknown, and, further, the artist was also unknown. Now, he knew that the portrait was that of a famous actor by a famous English painter. He longed to buy it, but decided that it would go at too high a price. He went to the auction with very little hope. The Whistler and the Sargent were sold, and then it was the turn of this picture. Nobody recognized it. Finally he had to start the bidding himself, and this he did. Only one man bid against him, but he soon stopped, discouraged, and then the picture was knocked down to the man who had never expected to get it.

He hurried to the desk to pay the small amount and to carry off his prize. "Do you happen to know anything about that portrait?" the auctioneer asked him as a porter took it down to a cab. "I know it very well," said the new owner, conscious that it was now safely his property. "It is a portrait of Buckstone, the actor, by Daniel Maclise. There is an engraving of it in the Maclise portrait gallery." — Mrs. John Lane in Pearson's Magazine.

Nuggets — "Genius is Inspiration"

1907

Genius is inspiration. Talent is perspiration.

Do not measure your enjoyment by the amount of money spent in producing it.

Education turns the wild sweetbrier into the queenly rose.

A vigorous initiative and strong self faith make up the man of power.

Be sure that the honors you are striving for are not really dishonors.

What men get and do not earn is often a curse instead of a blessing.

You can purchase a man's labor, but you've got to cultivate his good will.

Ignorance itself is a disease, the deepest, most treacherous and damning malady of the soul.

Worry poisons the mind just as much as a deadly drug would poison the body and just as surely.

While you stand deliberating which book your son shall read first, another boy has read both. — Success Magazine.