56 



THE AMERICAN BEE KEEPER. 



Fehruary 



A Real Bargain. 



"Dear," she said, and her sweetest 

 imd most engaging smile illumined her 

 face, "if you had a handsome lap robe, 

 could you use it?" 



"Certainly not, " he replied. "You 

 know very well that we haven't a vehi- 

 cle of any description. " 



"That's what I thought, " she return- 

 ed, "so I have packed it away. Later, 

 when we are wealthy and keep horses, 

 we can" — 



"Packed it away!" he exclaimed, in- 

 terrupting her. "Packed what away?" 



"Why, the lap robe, " she answered 

 iweetly. 



"But we haven't a lap robe," he pro- 

 tested. 



"Oh, yes, we have," she returned. 

 "I happened to stumble into that de- 

 partment of one of the big stores today, 

 and they had marked them down so 

 Jow that I felt I ought to get one of 

 them before the opportunity slipped 

 away." 



"But we don't need" — 



"Not now, but we may," she inter- 

 rupted. "It's just as well to get these 

 things when they can be had at a bar- 

 gain, and this was a real bargain. You 

 men are very thoughtless about such 

 things. You would never have thought 

 of buying this robe now. You wouldn't 

 have the foresight, but would have 

 waited until you had a horse, and then, 

 very likely, you would have to pay a 

 dollar more for it." — Mercantile Jour- 

 nal. 



Photography Beats the Fakirs. 



The Indian "mango" trick, in which 

 a plant is seen to grow up from the 

 seed in a few minutes, has been done 

 in a new way by M. Michael Oorday of 

 the Ecole Polytechnique in France. M. 

 Oorday employs the well known cine- 

 matograph, or apparatus for producing 

 ''living photograph" — that ia to say, 

 photographic images endowed with 

 movement and apparently with life. A 

 rose plant is photographed at intervals 

 during its growth until the flower bude 

 and blooms. The photographs thus 

 taken are combined by the cinemato- 

 graph and projected on a screen, so as 

 to represent the development of the 

 plant in a short time. The number of 

 photographs taken in six months should 



be equal to the number which the sen- 

 sitive band of the cinenmtograpli will 

 continue. Obviously the same plan will 

 be able to show the changing aspects of 

 the country during the seasons in one 

 progressive illusion, and we venture to 

 suggest that it might be employed with 

 advantage in illustrating various scien- 

 tific experiments and natural processes 

 of an evolutionary or gradual sort. — 

 London Globe. 



Two Pistols and a Bowie In One. 



Chief of Police Keefe has in his pos- 

 Gessiou probably the most unique weup- 

 on ever seen in the city of Jacksonville. 

 It is a combination double barreled pis- 

 tol and bowie and was used in Mis- 

 souri by a "regulator" when that state 

 was going through the throes of the pre 

 and anti slavery discussion. 



The blade of the bowie is about 12 

 inches long and protrudes from a hilt 

 between two small pistol barrels, eii'jh 

 about 6 inches long. The hilt and the 

 hammers are one and the same. VVhej.> 

 the hilt is cocked into position, two 

 triggers, concealed in the stock, come 

 forth, and then the weapon is ready loi 

 busiuehs, with both barrels and 13 inch- 

 3S of cold steel. 



A number of men, it is said, belong- 

 ing to one organization in Missouri 

 were armed with these weapons, which 

 were secured direct from Paris. This 

 one in particular seems to be almc?t 

 new. — Florida Times-Union. 



Uniform Size of Circus Rings. 



The one ring circus of our grandfath- 

 ers' day had a ring no larger than each 

 of the three used by the big shows to- 

 day. Circus horses are trained to per- 

 form in a standard ring 42 feet in diam- 

 eter. In a liu-ger or a smaller ring their 

 pace becomes uneven, irregular and uu 

 reliable, and the riders in turning som- 

 ersauUs are liable to miscalculate the 

 curve and mif-is their footing. One of 

 the "greatest .'^^iiows on earth" — there 

 are several — gave a series of pcrform- 

 au(!es in Madison Square Garden, New 

 York. By mistake the rings wt i-e made 

 42 feet 6 inches in diameter. On the 

 first performance three riders fell, a" I 

 one was severely hurt. Before the sec- 

 ond performance the rings were reduced 

 to the regular size. — Chicago Times- 

 Herald. 



