1895. 



THE AMERICAN BEE-K'.lEPIJl. 



197 



a inarKea degree rrom your own, that 

 ■we should scarcely be able to distiu- 

 gaish the difference. You must admi* 

 yourself that one must possess good eye- 

 sight to tell a mau from a woman 240,- 

 000 miles away. " 



'"Oh, but," answered the old mau, 

 ■with a touch of family pride, "she is a 

 fine woman! Not bent and bowed wnth 

 age like me. Indeed she is really 6, 000, - 



000 years younger than am I. Then, of 

 course, she dresses in — in" — 



"The habiliments suitable to her 

 sex," I ventured to say. 



"Precisely, and, like all the women 

 here, is fond of dress. Why, when I last 

 ■visited her, some 25,000 years ago, al- 

 most her first question was, 'How do the 

 women di'e&s now on the earth?' Of 

 course there wasn't much to tell her be- 

 cause — well, the women of that day 

 didn't trouble themselves much about 

 dress, but I am thinking of paying her 

 another visit soon, and then I shall have 

 a different budget of news for her. " 



"But tell me," I interrupted, fori 

 ■was not much interested in the old fel- 

 low's sister, "something about the 

 earth. You must have seen almost as 

 great changes in the earth as in the 

 moon. " 



"Almost, " was the answer, "but not 

 quite. My world is cold and dead. 

 Yours is still alive, as was mine once, 

 but your turn will come some day, and 

 then wo shall both go circling through 

 space, cold, silent and lifeless. But 

 that," he continued, "will be many 

 millons of years from now, almost as 

 many millions as it is since I first set 

 eyes on your planet. Then, as I said be- 

 fore, it was a mere mass of molten mat- 

 ter — a vast white hot ball whirling 

 round the sun and carrying me with it. 



1 remember as though it were yesterday 

 the first beginning of earthly life. At 

 first the seas covered everything, and 

 beautiful specimens of marine flora 

 floated everywhere upon the surface of 

 the water, while in its translucent 

 depths fishes of strange form and glo- 

 rious coloring disported themselves. 

 Then the dry land began to appear, and 

 by slow degrees the great forests that 

 shrouded as with a mantle all the earth 

 not covered by the waters. For millions 

 of years what you are pleased to call 

 the lower animals were the only deni- 

 zens of their somber denths. ajid even 



after man came 'it 'was huiiureds ol 

 thousands of years before he even par- 

 tially don)inated the face of nature." 



"But was there not, " I asked, "an 

 ice age?" 



"A what?" heexclaimed, with a puz- 

 zled expression of countenance. 



"An ice age," I repeated. "A period 

 of time when the ice, which, as you are 

 aware, is always present at the poles, 

 spread northward and southward until 

 it enveloped almost the entire globe." 



"Oh, yes," responded mine host, 

 with the air of a mau trying to recall 

 some long forgotten and altogether triv- 

 ial incident. "I believe something of 

 the kind did happen, and not more than 

 100,000 or 150,000 years ago either. 

 But it only lasted about 20,000 years, 

 and I had quite forgotten all about it 

 until yon mentioned it." 



This concluded the interview, for 

 although I would have liked to have 

 pursued my inquiries further the old 

 chap suddenly snatched up his bundle, 

 bent his back and resumed his orthodox 

 position, at the same time indicating by 

 a gesture that he was not inclined for 

 any further conversation. "We are right 

 over Greenwich observatory," he ex- 

 plained in answer to my look of sur- 

 prise, "and I don't want the astrono- 

 mers there to see me without my bun- 

 dle and talking to a stranger too. It isn't 

 respectable." — London Amusing Jour- 

 nal. 



Paper Money and Disease. 



There is no place in the world where 

 more dirty paper money is handled 

 from day to day than in the national 

 bant redemption division of the treas- 

 ury department. There are in existence 

 some 3,500 national banks, each of 

 which has outstanding bank notes rang- 

 ing in amount from $10,000 or $12,000 

 up to nearly |o00,000. Every dollar of 

 these notes passes through the hands of 

 the men and w^omeu employed in the 

 national bank redemption division. 

 This office has been in existence nowr 

 for about 30 years. There are employed 

 in the division somewhere about 25 

 girls and women. They handle "untold 

 millions" of bills in the course of a 

 year, and if there was any danger from 

 contagious and infectious diseases in old 

 bank notes it would seem as though 

 this would be the place to find symn- 



