1895 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



27 



knife-blade. He had been paying a dollar a 

 bottle for said water, for curing rheumatism. 

 When I told h m how he had been humbugged 

 he stopped wasting his money, and concluded 

 t was something besides the water in the bot- 

 tle that had affected his rheumatism. In re- 

 gard to the sparks of electricity, if you will on 

 any frosty night hold your hand in escaping 

 steam from a boiler you will, if the conditions 

 are right, see these same electrical appearances. 

 In fact, this whole thing is mentioned in the 

 books on electricity. IJut here in Lebanon 

 they had built a great hotel, costing ever so 

 many thousands of dollars, and put in an elec- 

 tric street-railway, and advertised far and near 

 those wonderful waters of the electric well at 

 Lebanon. Of course, visitors were shown the 

 experiments in magnetism and electricity ; and 

 reasoning from what they saw with their own 

 eyes they were not slow to have faith in this 

 beautiful water with such strange properties. 

 Some weak invalids could not stand a bath in 

 the water, as it was so highly charged with 

 electricity — that is, they could not until they 

 got used to it, so it was said. Well, the propri- 

 etors of the scheme made lots of money for a 

 time; but the hotel is now shut up and deserted. 

 The electric-car line does not pav expenses. 

 The water is given away to anybody who 

 wants it. Let me say, however, that the water 

 is remarkably pure. It is almost absolutely 

 pure soft water, and I can readily imagine la 

 people who do not have nice pure water at 

 home may receivo great benefit by going to 

 Lebanon and drinking its pure water. I think, 

 however, the benefit will be just as great if 

 they would set some tin pans out during the 

 latter part of any summer shower. Keep this 

 water and store it up: or save the water during 

 the atter par of a shower from any good slate 

 roof. Store i in clean stone crocks, or have a 

 real nice c stern, with some sort of pump that 

 is not made of old wooden tubes or rusty iron 

 machinery. 



We soon made up a load and went to see one 

 of the strange caverns scattered through the 

 Ozark Mountains. Away out in the woods, 

 almost on the summit of a good-sized hill, we 

 found a great hole, perhaps 30 or 40 feet across. 

 The inside of the hole had fallen out — or you 

 might say with much truth the hottom had 

 dropped out; and then away out under the side 

 of the hill was an enormous cavern roofed with 

 sloping rocks. At one side, by using care, one 

 could climb down through the sand and gravel 

 and broken stone. Inside there was nearly if not 

 ■quite a quarter of an acre roofed over with 

 limestone. Now, as this was on high land, and 

 inside a good-sized hill at that, and during the 

 most excessive drouth, almost, that Missouri 

 has ever known, I hardly expected to find 

 water; but. sure, enough, we soon heard water 

 dropping. It was dripping from the roof in 

 different places. I soon satisfied myself, how- 

 ever, that this water did not come from water in 

 the ground or in the rocks. It was produced by 

 condensation. The day was quite hot and sul- 

 try outside. Well, this hot sultry air, coming 

 in by circulation, as it struck the comparative- 

 ly cold stones deposited its moisture, like dew 

 ■on the side of a cold pitcher. When the drops 

 were sufUciently large they ran together and 

 trickled down to the lower portions of the roof 

 of the cavern. Here they dropped off. By set- 

 ting a tin cup in the right place, one could, in a 

 little while, get a drink of pure soft water. In 

 former times people had placed tubs (and we 

 saw the remains of these) in order to catch this 

 beautiful " spring water." 



A few days after, we visited what is called 

 ^Saltpeter Cave on the banks of the Gasconade 

 Kiver. There are acres of underground cav- 



erns here in the cliffs beside the river. Stalac- 

 tites and stalagmites are so plentiful that the 

 dooryards all over Laclede Co are decorated 

 with them. Everybody who goes to the cave 

 takes an ax and a lumber-wagon, and breaks 

 off the icicles, some of them nearly a foot in di- 

 ameter, and takes them home to place among 

 the flower-beds in the front yard or beside the 

 doorstep. Now, my impression is, although I 

 have never seen the matter mentioned in works 

 on geology, that these stalactites, etc., are 

 formed principally by the condensation of the 

 moisture in the atmosphere, especially during 

 our hot summers. These cliffs .are so honey- 

 combed with caverns that warm air from the 

 outside is continually rushing through in cur- 

 rents depositing its moisture on the rocky ceiling 

 overhead, and then going back to be warmed 

 up and charged with moisture again. Here in 

 Saltpeter Cave, as it is called, the whole opera- 

 tion can be seen going on all the time. The 

 icicles, as you might call them, are soft, and 

 many of them feel quite greasy. The drop of 

 water on the end is thick with minerals, some- 

 times almost like molasses. The currents of 

 cold air rushing through take up the moisture, 

 and the mineral accumulates. The strange 

 part of it is, that, although the icicles are so 

 soft and pasty on the tips where they are 

 forming, and on the outsides, they are, in the 

 center, a flinty rock. Some of the rooms in this 

 cave are very beautiful. There are figures, and 

 shrines and pulpits and gardens, and. in fact, 

 one can imagine almost any thing wrought out 

 in Nature's laboratory; and in this cave, at 

 least, Dame Nature builds pretty fast. My 

 friends told me that, even in a few years, great 

 changes have been going on. I should not be 

 surprised if these icicles grew an inch a month, 

 or a foot a year. 



There hadn't been rain for months. In fact, 

 farmers were seen at all hours of the day, and 

 on almost every road, driving their stock to the 

 springs or to the larger pond-holes where the 

 water was not yet exhausted. By the way, in 

 some places in Missouri the only water they 

 have to drink during such a season of drouth 

 comes from these pond-holes dug in the ground. 

 Now, in such cases is it any wonder that great 

 cures should result by going to some celebrated 

 spring, and putting up at an expensive hotel ? 

 Of course, the people were longing for rain. It 

 en me on the second Sunday of our visit, in the 

 afternoon. We had been to church; but it was 

 so rainy that the general conclusion was no one 

 would be over to that Sunday-school in the 

 woods. I decided once to stay at home, but I 

 felt, uneasy. Suppose just a few boys should 

 gather there in spite of the rain, with no one 

 for a teacher. I knew from experience that I 

 could get through the path in the woods on my 

 wheel, even if all the rest did say that the 

 thing was impossible. The falling leaves kept 

 the tires out of the mud; and as I had learned 

 to dodge the bushes, and scorch when neces- 

 sary, I got along pretty well. When I got out 

 of the underbrush into the clearing, however, 

 imagine my surprise at seeing a dozen or more 

 saddle-horses hitched to the trees. Sure enough, 

 the schoolhouse was almost as well filled as on 

 the previous Sunday. Some of the women- 

 folks had come a couple of miles in the rain. 

 There was no superintendent, and nobody to 

 take the lead. I finally volunteered ; and if 

 you will take my statement for it I should say 

 we had a grand good time. I did not do all the 

 talking either. The superintendent came in 

 pretty late, but he refused to take my place. I 

 did get him to talk, however: and one of his 

 remarks I shall remember a long time. He 

 said the greatest trouble with a good deal of 

 our religion is that it is of a kind that will not 



