{ title: 'Poughkeepsie eagle. (Poughkeepsie, N.Y.) 1889-1889, May 25, 1889, Page 2, Image 2', download_links: [ { link: 'http://www.loc.gov/rss/ndnp/ndnp.xml', label: 'application/rss+xml', meta: 'News about NYS Historic Newspapers - RSS Feed', }, { link: '/lccn/sn92061519/1889-05-25/ed-1/seq-2/png/', label: 'image/png', meta: '', }, { link: '/lccn/sn92061519/1889-05-25/ed-1/seq-2.pdf', label: 'application/pdf', meta: '', }, { link: '/lccn/sn92061519/1889-05-25/ed-1/seq-2/ocr.xml', label: 'application/xml', meta: '', }, { link: '/lccn/sn92061519/1889-05-25/ed-1/seq-2/ocr.txt', label: 'text/plain', meta: '', }, ] }
Image provided by: New York State Library
? 0 . b ^ : ^ E E P S I E SEMI.iWE£KLY EAGLE. m Y 25, 1889 J^tjcricg, Written for the Eagle. TRATTALiNO. A SEJiTCH. ByiQuids. A U T H O R OF ^‘i w a X IT H i E \SV^OODEN s h o e s , ” “ u n d e r t w o f l a g s ,” e t c . [All E ights Eeserved.] Trattalino came singing through, the lanes j it was a day in early summer, with light fragrant winds which blew the riband-like leaves of the canes to and fro, and ruffled into gentle ripples the green waters of the stream by which they grew. Trattalino had received many mofe names from holy church; but none of them was over used. Re was Trattalino to all the world, though 'he]^was_now^twenty-one years of age. He was a very pretty lad, small but admirably made, and lithe as a deer. He had a round face, with . laughing eyes, auburn curls, a mouth like a pomegranate flower, and shining, snow-white teeth. He was always gay and merry. He was a baker’s boy, and\ went about the country with the big moon-like loaves piled in a small blue-covered cart with a white awning, drawn by a donkey, which was very small, too, but sturdy and swift, and on the best of terms with Trattalino. What business was it ot any one’s if Trattalino and his donkey took a nap on the roadside grass, or loitered where the fish^were leaping in the river, or plucked a peach or two from a way- side tree, or strayed now and then into the grassy paths under the vines ? The customers waited for their bread, indeed, bur then'when Trattalino did agree his laugh was so irresistible as he inurmured “Pazienza!” that none could ever find it in their hearts to scold or report him. Trattalino could sing very cheerrily, too, and h e . had >n old mandoline tucked in the* bottom of the cart, which, when he traversed lonely lanes or bits of solitary mooreland, he would take out, and with the reins safely tucked away on his arm, would waken the echoes with its chords, while he sang Avith a full gay tenor voice the songs of the country side. Many a lonely cottage and waterside mill had its doorway filled with women and children as these echoes floated to them— “e il Trattalino,” they say to each other, and would laugh and call out and ask him in ; and though the delivery of the loaves was sadly hindered by his popularity and his melodies, his days were much the brighter for both. Hot very many years ago Tuscan peo ple all made their own bread, and would no more have thought of eating bakers’ bread than of eating the smooth white stones of the river-bed; but now, except in farmhouses, no home-made bread is seen, and everyone goes to the bakers, to the injury of their digestions and finances, in the curious increase of im providence and indolence, which is the especial sign of all modern progress, so that Trattalino’s rounds were long and his halting places many in the fragrant, fertile country side which he traversed. Peppino knew as well as he every house by heart, and would quicken his steps of his own accord whenever they drew near any doorway more hospitable than others, where a draught of go mno for his driver was likely to be accom panied by a wisp of tares or an armful of grass for himself, Trattalino’s master was\'more honest than most, and his loaves were solid and of fair weight; he was a big brawny man, who spent most of the day upon his threshold, stripped to the waist in warm weather, and wearing a red conical cap. His share of the business was to display himself thus. The bread was made and baked indoor=?’‘by his women and his ap prentices. Trattalino did little with oven or dough; his meaner mission was to scour the country with the little blue 'His people wefe poor—his father was a bricklayer and his brother a mason. There were three sisters—pretty, saucy girls—^younger than he, who were always straying about the road with straw plait ing as an excuse for being idle. They had a little cottage at the angle of a wood, a mile from the village, where the bakery was. It was old and tumble- down, but the sweet-smelling firs stood around and above it, and near it. The little green river purled over its stones, carrying trout and perch in its elear ripples, and often brushed by the low-flying wings of fresh-water birds. The mother and grandmother did the housework, cooked, sewed, span, and kept the family together; they were happy, cheerful, afiectionate people, and it was the pride of their hearts to see Trattalino in the blue cart winding up the sandy path into the pinewood, or dis appearing behind the tall cane-brakes by the river. He was a favorite with his employ< His small weekly wage was a vast help to his family, and the baker’s daughter, who was sixteen, looked with favoring eyes on his auburn curls; herself a pretty blonde, she was always called Biondina, so that the couplet— O,Biondina! Gome stee? Oggi stee ben’, ma doma’ che sa ? was often shouted by him to the pastoral solitudes, while the hoofs of Peppino went pit-pat, tic-tac, on the sand of the roads. It was a high-vaulting ambition, BO doubt, to dream of wedding Biondina and succeeding to the bakery. But less likely things had happened, and the baker was known to look on with an indulgent smile when Trattalina tone endimanche brought the girl on Sundays a bunch of carnations or a few China r«^ses from his own strip of garden ; and Biondina, who was a gentle child and no coquette, put them in the front of her bodice or in her waistband, and went with them, thus konored. to mass or to vespers. “Hbw can you encourage it?” said the baker’s wife, “the son of a iracciante, a lad who drives your ass!” And the baker laughed and answered with good humor. “Eh 1 he might be an ass himself! That would be worse. Trattalino has stuff in him, though he is always - laughing and singing; he has doubled'the custom, aM'never is.there a Centime w-rOng. , These are qualities, my woman, these are qualities that\ are not picked up eyery day. Let things wag as they will, they are children as yet, but if they keep in the same-mind when he has served his time I am not sure that I shall Say no. He is small you say ? Yes; he is not a giant. But a bee is a very little thing, and where will you find anything that beats a bee ter work?” This complacency in his master was more or less known to the lad, andl made him feel secure as to his future; he was in love with Biondina, but in a simple, innocent, youthful way, with a touch of self-interest in it which made him gay and sanguine. Always in the open air, and living with the utmost .frugality, the fumes of passion were unknown to him, and his courtship was a playtime. He would talk a great deal about Biondina to the donkey, who moved his soft ears at her name because he often got a sour apple to munch from her*hand; and Biondina was always in his head as he sang of lilies and roses and stars and doyes and fountains and all the other gems of the starrelle. But it was a boyish love, sweet, eager, content to wait, into which neither impatience nor bitterness enter ed. Trattalino, too, always saw every thing as he wished it to be, to live in the same place all his life, and go his daily rounds, and laugh, and sing, and chatter, and dance in the farmhouses at vintage time and carnival time. This was paradise to him; he could conceive no other life that could possibly be better. Everybody was his friend, and every door stood open to him. He was startled in his happy uncon scious optimism when one day a miller, to whom he had gone for some flour for his master, said suddenly to him— “Do you know that they will take al most all the lads of your years next au tumn? They want so many men for Africa; the height standard has been lowered again, and the numbers also.” ‘'Trattalino’s fresh face lost its ruddy color.” . “Do you mean—-no you don’t mean—” he stammered. “Yes; I mean very^^likely you will have to serve, my poor ^rattalino,” said the miller, who was an authority in the neighbourhood, being a rich man, and one who read the newspapers, and had even been known to contradict the vicar. “All the lads go into the regiments ; all grist comes to the mill, anybody is •good enough to be shot by tbe blacks or killed of thirst; that is what we pay taxes for, to lose our lads and bury good money in foreign lands. It is all wrong, Tratta lino ; all damnably wrong; the boys and the money are the strength of the coun try, and they throw them both away as if they were mildewed barley.” Trattalino, caring nothing for generali sations, stared at the speaker with dis tended, horrified.eyes. “I made sure, we made sure,” he mut tered, “they always ^said there was no sort of fear for me.” “Times change,” said the miller. “Who could tell they would go and make fools of themselves in Africa ? You are short, to be sure, but they have lowered the standard, and you are very well made*. Mark my words, come September, they will take you!” The first tears that he had eyer shed in his life rushed into Trattalino’s eyes, and he hid them on the short, thick mane of Peppino. “1 could n o t!.. I could not I” he said piteously. * The miller, who was not an unkind man, yet who liked to thrust unwelcome truths home to other people, patted his shoulder. — “Hundreds of them say that, but they go. You will see, it will be as I say. You won’t get out of it. And it won’t be playing the leute and petting the donkey and ogling Biondina all day long. 5%ere, my poor fellow.” The mill stood on the river some little way distance from Trattalino’s home. It was a lovely laughing day in April, with the furrows of the green corn starred with hyacinths, and daffodils, and roots of primrose blossoming all along the grassy banks. But all the gladness of it was clouded over for Trattalino, and th^ blue heavens ceased, to wear a kindly smile for him. He let Peppino amble on his own pace unhurried, and crop mouth fuls here' and thereat pleasure, and he went past more than one open door not even hearing the cries from within of “Trattalino! eh, Trattalino!” The dread terror of the conscription had laid its cold hand on him, and frozen the laugh on his lips, and hushed the music in his soul. It was late, and when his rounds made him late, he was allowed to stable the donkey in a shed at home, on condition that he presented himself at the bakery by daybreak. He was met some yards from home by his sisters, who, laughing and full ot glee, climbed up into the cart, and, seized the reins, and chattered like so many sparrows in an acre of green peas. But Trattalino had no heart nor head for them. When he reached his father’s cottage, he .bade them see to Peppino, which they often did, and he. himself walked up the gardm path of shingle. ' “ Granny—mother,” he said, in a low, unsteady voice, to the women sitting in the evening shadows in the porch. “ They say they lowered the standard;: when autumn comes they will take me; every body is going to Africa.” “Ah, no!” shrieked the women to gether, while the girls left Peppino at the entrance and ran in terrified to listen. “ Oh, no I The Madonna forbid! Hever! never! Take you, Trattalino— you, our one comfort, our one treasure, our bread-winner, om* staff, our darling, —never! never! The dear Master in heaven will never permit it.” “ Our Mother in Heaven never moves a finger for a conscript,” said Trattalino sadly. “ Does she not let all the lads be taken till half the land lies untilled ? They always said I was too short, hut it seems they have lowered the standard. They want soldiers so much for Africa.” “ Where is Africa ?” said the eldest girl, while the mother and the grand mother rent the air with the outcries and supplications to Mary, who had been a mother, and ought to know. “iLfricais—^is—” muttered Trattalino. “ I don’t know what it is. It is a place where they bury men and money every day; a sort of oven, I think j far away beyond the seas. It is a pit, a furnace ; I don’t know what exactly, but they keep on trying to fill it, and it is, never filled.’^s ihg lashes, and roll^qwh his cheeks, onc;e A shudder of horror seized thb Women' and checked in awe for a moment . their frantic outcries. “ But what haye we to do with it ?” asked Rosa, who was of a clear and logi cal mind. - - ., “ I don’t know. It has to be so’” said Trattalino, with that acquiescence in in scrutable and undisputed authority which is so embedded in the'national character, and is as passive as the fatalism of the oriental. But I cannot go!” he cried aloud. ‘‘ I cannot go ! Oh, Granny! Oh, mother! I cannot g o ! I shall die if they take me away from Biondina and Peppino and the cart, and all of you!” Then he threw himself down on the threshold, and sobbed, and writhed, and moaned. It was indeed the end of all things for him, poor boy. A moment later his father and brother came in, tired and hot, their bare feet wet with dew, their hempen shirts wet with perspiration. They had been digging trenches to plant young vines. But the miller .had been right in his foreboding; and Trattalino, with other lads of the district born in the same year with himself, was forced to go in due course to the neighboring town, and be stripped and examined, and draw his number like the rest. The Government wanted men, and the standard of height was lowered, and even many youths far from healthy or well-shaped were ac cepted. Trattalino,who was of spare stature, but as healthy as a fine gracely colt, and as admirably shaped as the Faun statue, had no possible physical chance of es cape. He drew a fatal number; and was doomed to serve. All his agony was of no avail. He had to go. In vain the women at home wept, and knew that their chief mainstay was to be torn from thern, for the father was weak of health, and the elder lad a drunkard. If the wheels of the conscrixDtion could be stopped by women’s tears, it would rest inactive for ever. In due course he had to go. “You will wait for me BiondinaJ” said the boy impioriagly. “Oh, who knows ?” said the girl, light ly, and unkindly. “I could not promise that, Trattalino. Who can say what one will do to-morrow, or next year ?” “But if you love me you will wait,” stammered Trattalino, aghast and timid. “E h !” said the little maiden, with a shrug of the shoulders. “I like you now you are here. When you are gone cM saV’ Trattalino did not protest. His spirit was cowed. All his sunny, merry, care less life was kOled in him, as a blue lupin months, there growing in the grass is cut. down by a mower’s scythe. 'Biondina was cruel, but so was fate. It seemed natural, inevita ble that one calamity should come on the top of one another. It always was so. The king, or the Yirgin, or the saints, or somebody, was angry with him, and would have it so. Trattalino was wretch ed, unspeakably wretched, but he did not rebel. The lamb bleats, but goes meekly to the slaughter. So did he. And in a little while the village knew him no more. The baker bought the donkey, and sent a man out with the loaves, a surly, silent, uninterested person, who delivered the bread as a machine might d o ; tlie man doline hung on a rusty nail for awhile, and then was sold, too, by the eldest girl that she might buy a necklace of colored beads for herself. The mother and grand mother sighed and grumbled and wept for the lost help and the vacant chair. The weeds grew thick in the little garden, and the soup pot rarely saw a slice of meat, “What a lad he was to %ork. I nev er saw his like, and so merry with it all as if it were so much play!” said the baker now and then, when angry with others, and Biondina cried a little when she heard her father say this, and looked wistfully at the palm with its knot of ribbon and sprig of olive and everlasting flower which Trattalino had given her at Easter, and which hung over her lit tle narrow bed. But no one can sorrow for ever, and Biondina was a little girl much converted, and before long she ceased to give the donkey an apple on feast days for old remembrance sake, and began to smile on one of her suitors. Jean el Mar one or Big Black John, a master-farrier, who had a forge at the other end of the hamlet, and was hand some and jolly and well-to-do: and who helped to draw closer the veil of oblivion which absence had already gathered over the memory of the absent. “Poor Trattalino !” thought Biondina sometimes plaintively: “but he had been was far away-^far away- tor a person gone right away into remote, invisible, unimaginable scenes ?” His master might do that, but Biondina could not. Then Jean, the farrier, had money, and a fine house next his forge, all yel low stones and green blinds, as if it were a house in the town; and she would wear a bonnet and a silk frock if she married him, and have a char-woman to do the dirty work, and eat fried liver 'every day. and be the envy of all her companions. What chance had a mere memory against all this, or the mute, pathetic, small-leaved reproach of the bunch of palm and olive hung above her bed ? Meanwhile Trattalino, far away, toiled, and sweated, and suffered, and broke his heart under the heavy pack and musket, and the brutal orders of the barracks, his pretty, thick, loose curls shorn, his limbs aching, his lungs panting, his body starv ing, and all his soul sickening, too, for the l i f ^ e had loved, and the affections he had left. Poor little Trattalino. One amongst thousands of the country lads, torn from their peaceful hills and vales, their quiet meadows, and their gladsome vineyards, to swell the ranks of ill-clad, ill-fed. ill- treated conscriptSjkennelied in filth,pushed to and fro in cattle trucks, weighted with loads like-panting pack^ mules ; forced down under the brutalizing machine of military life, which presses out nature from the Very veins and bones of its vic tims and shapes from the warm living flesh, a puppet, a tool, a thing, a creature without eyes, or ears,or sense,or will of its own, a plaything for death, a missile in the merciless hand of the state. Poor little Trattalino I They sent him far away, to some town of which he had never heard the name; he was miserable, and oftimes on the rosy as the roses before his- cottage , door at home. \ \ - - , He \^as perpetually at fault, ana per petually punished; he was agile as I, goat, lithe as a squirrel, had once been gay as a lark. He did-not wish to dis obey, but obedience was impossible to him; such blind, stupid, dull obedience against all\the the laws of nature as was now exacted from Mm. At home, never in all his life had he disobeyed his mother or his master; he had run to do their bidding like a docile dog. But here in the barracks, they brutalized, bewildered, stunned, stupefied, maddened him; he was always in fault, often he knew not why or wherefore, and punishment rained on him as blows will rain upon a willing horse from cruel hands, until his happy and buoyant spirit was broken and .beaten down into a sullen silence which was as unnatural to Mm as it is to the rippling and murmuring river to grow still, and fetid, and stagnant under the pressure of factory wheels and the burden of factory refuse. They kept Mm there, in the ugly city of the South, with its baked and dust-strewn plains, its blinding, stony streets, its scorching drought, dragging his feet in seemingly unending marches, lying dazed with fatigue, and fiungry ou the benches of the barrack yard, always tired, always footsore, always aching fro m head to foot, longing with a dim, pas sionate longing, like a chained dog’s, for his familiar roads, his grassy hillside, his merry, simple life, his people, and his home. And Biondina! Biondina could write a very goodl stiff school-taught hand-wri ting,but she never sent him a line nor even a message. The rare letters he got were from his mother and grandmother, written for them by the village priest. They were short and sad; there was always some bad news in them; once his father had driven the pitchfork through his instep, and was useless for months; another, the oldest brother had the fever got in making ditches; another, the big grey cow had died, and the hens had chicken-cholera. Of Biondina there was never a word. In the rude scrawl which he had learned to write that he might keep account of the bread sales, he an swered^ their letters faithfully, though he had ^ to go without tobacco to find money for the postage ; and he asked al ways, “ What of Vamie Biondina ? Tell me always of Biondina I ask Biondina, for the pity of heaven to send me some word!” But Biondina never sent him any word; in his mother’s letters, which came to him .about once in three or four a n y h i n t qon— never was cerning her. And the time went oh- one heavy, hot season, passing into a muddy, chilly winter, and then again drifting into another burning, arid sum mer, for it seemed to him that there was neither spring nor autumn, or anything sweet or fresb, but only blinding heat and piercing cold in this hideous bar racks ot a manufacturing city, and then, when four seasons had thus gone by, Trattalino, who was only one of the rank and file of an infantry regiment, was drafted off and sent to Naples with his battalion on board of a transport ship. They were going to Africa. He heard the fools in the streets shout ing aud cheering them as they tramped to the docks; he heard the still greater fools around him on the dock shouting back, poor lads! and telling one another all the fables narrated to them by the of ficers—fables of the ruby mines, and the rivers of wine, and the king’s palaces, and the black slave girls, and the ropes of peads that they would all have as loot when they should touch the African shores. Trattalino could not see the shores he left for the great tears that blinded Ms eyes, and all he did see was what he never would see again—a little cottage in a green garden of herbs and roses, grassy roads winding between thickets of cane, a little donkey trotting merrily along the margin of a stream, a fair-faced maiden, with blue smiling eyes and braided hair the color of ripe wheat, coming coyly out with an apple in her hand. That was all he saw as the crowd ed transport ship, under its cloud of foul smoke, steamed out of the harbor, bear ing its living freight to suffer and pii and sicken, and swelter, and perish un der the brazen skies of Africa. He was not Trattalino. He had long ceased to be Trattalino. He was only a private in a marching regiment bound for Masseen; only one of the many pieces of throbbing flesh with which war builds up its arch of triumph. And his place . knew him no more, and no on'e remem- only a boy, and had had nothing, and he bered him, except now and then his 3 far away—far away—who could care mother and orandn mother and grandmother, who, as they sat shivering over a little pot of charcoal in long winter evenings, when the girls were away dancing at farmhouses, shook their heads together, and said to one an other : “How warm and well it was when Trattalino was here I What big branches he used to bring down from the woods, and always a merry tongue, and always a useful hand!” When the next Easter-tide \came round there was a fine wedding in that village under the hill. Jeanel Marone espoused Biondina, and so splendid a bridal had not been seen in those parts for many a day. Both the father and the bridegroom were' men who could spend when they chose to open their purse strings. Such eating and drinking, such dancing and singing, such uproar and gaiety have never been as were heard in the baker’s house in honor of Ms little daughter. It was mid-April, and all nature seemed to rejoice with the red tulips and the blue crocus. The wild roses and the may in the hedges all blossoming all over the wild fields! Only the donkey was' left hungry in his stable while the men feast ed. And two women who had not been bidden to the feast thought sadly as they dug up their patch of vegetable ground in front of their hut, “My poor lad I Hot a thought of him, though once he was half promised he should have the bridegroom’s place I Hot a single thought of Mm! and the little blue-eyed doll is smirking, and blushing, and kissing, and making a fool of Black John, and thinking herself a fine lady with the string of pearls round her neck, and all the village wishing her joy.” It was hard. It seemed very hard to _ ___________ _ __ _ , Trattalino’s mother and grandmother as march big tears would falter on his curl- they painfully hoed the heavy blaek eaHh, and weeded^ the ispeedwell hnd vetch out from the rdws of peas. I t was the-way of th^world, no doubt; but the way of the world is apt to seem hard to simple folks. . Somh months later, .when the green peas had long been gathered and spld, *and the heat of the summer had been heavy on the earth, though the vines lov-. ed it and flourished m its sultry dust, the miller who lived at the watermill,and who was a kindly man, though rough and sarcastic in speech, walked down by the side of the stream one evening, when Ms wheel was at a.standstill because the water was so low, and said to the two women working together as usual, hang ing out linen on lines under the pear trees: “Say, wife, do ever you hear from your lad in Africa ?” The women shook their heads. They had heard nothing since March; then he had written only a few lines; said it was hot as hell in those foreign parts, and he had been ill with fever. Ever since then never a word. If only the king would please send him hack! His father had been bedridden ever since that accident to his foot, it was though it would end m gangrene; and the girls were giddy-paced wenches, good for naught, and Bindo spent all he got on wine and tobacco, at the village drinking places, and the Lord only knew how things would end; two women could not keep the roof over their heads, and find bread for everybody. Was there any way in which Trattalino could be got back ? He had been away nigh on two yearsj and what. would he say when he heard that Biondina had got married, and was big with child already ? The miller shook Ms head. He some times bought a newspaper. He had bought one in the town the previous day, and he had seen a story of Africa, of a forced march, of men gone mad from heat and thirst of young soldiers shot by their officers, ot others shot by their own hand to get out of their torture. There had Deen the names given except those of two captains and some subalterns who were dead, but eighty-five privates were said to be killed or missing, and what he had read had made him think of one young lad who was in Africa, and come down through the lanes to ask if there had been of late any news of Trattalino. He said nothing of what he had read to the two women, but went sadly , to his home where the mill wheel was standing still in the blue evening shadows,the swallows and the bats wheeling above its waters. All the evening long he saw in memory the pretty,merry brown face of Trattalino, with its blowing curls, and its laughing lips, and its grey eyes, so wide open to the sunshine. All the evening long he seemed to hear the notes of the old.man- doline as it had used to sound above the muttering of the mill water and the trot of the little‘donkey’s hoofs. ' “A good lad, a happy lad,a useful lad,” thought the old man as he sat in the porch, smoking his last^pipe before bed time. “And the fools send him to go mad and rot like spoiled fruit, far away at the other end of the world. Tax, tax, tax! slaughter, slaughter, slaughter! That is the only tune they play to us, and we are such besotted asses that we turn our purses inside out, and give our boys to feed the carrion birds to please them I” And a few months later on, when the olives were being gathered, and the child of Biondina was being carried to the font, baptised in all its finery, and the old man who had died of' gangrene in the foot, was being shuffled into a nameless hole under the rank grass where the poor were buried, they heard at last- that Trattalino was dead. He had been dead many months; dead as the palm which Biondina had thrown out upon the dust heap a year before. On that awful day of 'which the miller had read, under the brazen skies of Africa, in the sand, and amid the thirst, and the plague of stinging insecyife, and the agony of blinded, festering eyes he had dropped down as the patient camel drops when its last breath of life is pass ing, and one of his officers had yelled at him aud cursed him as a skulking cur, and when he had failed to obey and rise had shot him; the vultures, already gorged by blood, heavily floating about him, then settling slowly to their work. His. village talked of him a little while, not long, not much; he had been only a baker’s lad. But a simple, happy, usefiil life was gone for ever, and by its loss the world was so much the poorer. He had been blythe and harmless as a swallow in the April air, as a leveret in the fields of June, and the shot had taken him and jammed him under its iron heel, and crushed Mm into nothingness, body and soul. And it is for this fate that ■ women bring forth male children, to this end that the people strain and are stripped of their hard-won earnings. “War hath three daughters,” said a great king once, “Eire, and Blood, and Famine.” And these three devour the nations, yet the nations crawl in the dust and kiss their feet! A man who tarried too long on the steamer Saratoga the other night, was ear- ried to Hew Fork. An hour after leaving the wharf he asked the captain if he couldn’t telephone back to liis wife that he wouldn’t be home that night.— Tvoy Telegram, __________ _ ______ _ He—“ Well, if Yale gets the Mott Ha ven cup, she’ll have to break some records to do it.” ' She—“ But can she do it ?” He—“ I don’t know. Yale would break the Ten Commandments any day to heat Harvard .”—Sarmrd Lampoon. Minister—“ Isn’t your mamma coming to church to-day, Mabel?” Mabel—“ Ho, sir. She can’t.” Minister—“ Why, is she sick?” Mabel—“ Ho, sir. She’s been eating onions !”—Utica Ob%6V%cr. About this time of the year the family woodpile becomes so distasteful to tbe small hoy that he thinks seriously of ship ping as a pirate—preferring the sea to the saw. _________________ Young Doctor—“Well, I ’ve got a case at last.” Young Lawyer—“Glad to hear it. When you get him to the point where he wants a will drawn, telephone over.”— Life. ^ __________________ A Man who puts off his enjoyment too long will find it mislaid by the time he gets it. Customer—“Say, waiter, this shad tastes very fishy,” Waiter—“Yes, sah; had is fish, sah.” KASKINE The N e w Quinine. Ho bad effect No Headache, Ho|Hausea. Ho R i n g ! n Ears. k Cures Quickly,. ’Pleasant, Pure, A rOWERFDL TONIC. A SPEOIEIO F ob mal / bia , : eheumatism , NEBVOUS PKOSTBA T IO N , debilitatiDj? effeo.s. helped L l « 7 ' * s i s a T c a f 168 d S m EtT- Im p ortant to Railroad Men. ' A, E.lSm itli has been for forty-nine years road m aster on the Boston & Maine system, and is now resid at Great F alls, w. H. He says :traclimen, brakemen, fireoaen. engineers and conductors, as well as ba<?gage masters aadj.expressmen, are sub ject to kidney diseases above all others.3 All, there fore. will be interested iu the s tatement of ;his ex perience. “i:have used Brown’s Sarsaparilla for Kidney and Liver troubles, and can truly say it has done more for me than all the Idootors I ever employed,;and I ’have h ad occasion to require tije services of |the best physicians in the State, My wife also has been greatly benefltted by its use. : a . e . smith . B e a d M a ster B. &IM, B. E .” Tbeliianeys have beAi labored b ard all winter, as the pores of the skin have been closed, b u t now the spriagliine has come, and they need some aid. May be you have that pain across the b ack; that tired feeling: those drawing down pains,\ If^so, you canlget immediate relief by following the example of Mr. Smith and h is wife, and use that never-fail- ng and grand corrector for the kidneys, liver and “ brown ’8 Sarsaparilla. None genuine u n less made;by TAra Warren & Co, Bangor. Me 8 wmh26 @ 1 ESTABLISHED ISSF, l®\PorSalcby W.E.PEABODY mwf«swly5el8 365 Main St.. Do’keepsle. I-. V I^JAEDMiiN i i ^ & 6 RAYv IPIMBS ^ g |> j T ll.A T O R 5 etc. from mills, stores and dwellings; cures smoky chimneys. Perfectly storm-proof. Galvanizediron and copper cornices and gutters. Sheet metal work for buildings. Send for illustrated E. VAN NOGRDEN & GO., 883 Harrison Ave., BOSTOH, Mass. mwf&w9mF6 ___________________ INVESTMENTS ^ F E Capital. S750,C00 Surplus, 400,470 Guarantee Strength, S {,150,470 Record of our IS Y E A R S ’ business. 1G.854Mortgages negotiated, aggregating$11,763.S1S 6,342 “ in. force, . - 6,358,1G2 9.912 » paid, ■ “ . . 6,410,855 Interest paid aggregating . - - - 3,345,435 Total paid to investors - . - - 8,756,151 \We have 3,014 patrons, to whom we can refer. W e do not claim to do the largest, but the SA F E S T business. S a v in g s D e p a r t m e n t fo r S m a ll A m o u n ts. Full information famished by J.B.W A TKmS LAND MORTGAGE CO., L A W R E N C E , KANSAS ; or Hev/ York Mana’r. HEKRY OtSKiHSGli. 319 Broadway E. 0 . ADRIANOE, 838 “Main Street, — —O P P O S ITE iKOEQABI SHOIJSE—— . LAGIS. A SPECIAL LIKE OF 43 Inch Black Chantilly Plounek and Drapery Nets, ALSO HANDSOME DESIGNS IN 65 iBcii Empire Patterns AT MABKEJD REDUCTION III PRICES! L ace N ovelties Neck Wear, Beaded Buchings, Lord Fauntleroy COILAES AHD COFFS, &C. S ash E ibbons . EXCLUSIVE DESIGNS AT POPULAR ^ PRICES. N. B.-8T0EEI0PJBS IVEBXIXYEHISG TJLh 8 O’CLOCK.