3z6 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
May 6 
THE BELL ON THE MILK-HOUSE TOP. 
In no belfry It stood, but exposed to the storm, 
It was swayed by a wire In place of a rope, 
The duties were varied It had to perform— 
That old metal bell on the milk-house top. 
Vou ask what they were—I’ll begin with the morn 
When Jim, the hired man, by It did arouse 
The house. Ere the sun the gray hills did adorn 
Half asleep in the barn we were milking the cows. 
The herd was a large one, It numbered two score, 
And when from each “bossle” we'd got the last drop 
The summons to breakfast came in through the door; 
'Twas the toll of the bell on the milk-house top. 
In the long summer days, when the weather was 
warm, 
And we were engaged cutting hay on the knoll 
Half a mile from the homestead, a part of the farm, 
How welcome to us was the sound of Its toll. 
Even Jack, the gray horse, our feelings did share, 
And neighed at that sound, inspired with a hope 
Of a dinner to him and his mate, the old mare— 
By the toll of the bell on the milk-house top. 
What’s that you ask? had It no other use 
Than the calling of horses and men to their meals? 
O yes, and perhaps I have been too profuse. 
And dilated too much on these hungry appeals. 
The children at school, on learning all bent, 
At noon, In the midst of their lessons would stop; 
To the door they would rush, to their feelings give 
vent, 
When they heard the bell ring on the milk-house 
top. 
More often than once did that old metal bell 
At midnight peal forth and the neighbors all warn 
That our horses and cattle, and our lives, as well 
Were In danger—a foe had set fire to the barn. 
Of course, we're Insured, but we ne'er can divine 
Wncn such a calamity on us may drop. 
Now stranger, I think you can surely opine 
Why I extol the bell on the milk-house top. 
Methought, as I listened—those peals day by day, 
In the gray of the morning, at noon-time or night, 
May have been the death-knell of loved ones far 
away. 
Whose faces, though absent, appeared to my sight. 
They spoke of a time when a b«ll, too, shall ring; 
When Nature’s machinery within me shall stop, 
As to the churchyard they my body shall bring; 
But ’twill not be the bell on the mllk-houBe top. 
AI.EX. WALLACE. 
REMINDERS. 
The Swindler Abroad. —The swindler 
of farmers is particularly busy at present. 
There’s a Chicago concern, for instance, 
which by circulars through the mails, 
and by advertisements in unscrupulous 
papers, offers to send, prepaid, a fine 
steel engraving of the landing of Colum¬ 
bus, on the receipt of only $1. The gull 
who sends the dollar gets, in return, a 
splendidly engra-ed two-cent Columbian 
postage stamp. Then in Ohio and Indiana 
several rasea’s are making lots of money 
out of farmers by representing them¬ 
selves as agents for a large dairy firm in 
Cincinnati. They have lots of printed 
documents to show that their house is 
doing the largest business in the coun¬ 
try, and they assure their intended vic¬ 
tims that they themselves are doing a 
tremendous busiress in buying butter 
from farmers everywhere. Then they 
offer prices considerably higher than 
those obtainable from country stores or 
from city dealers, and thus secure lots of 
customers. After the contract has been 
signed, they say that their firm is so very 
careful as to the quality of the goods it 
buys that it will accept no butter except 
that made in a particular churn, and 
then they sell the churns at from §25 to 
§30 apiece for cash. The goods are to be 
shipped at once, but, of course, the 
farmers never get them, nor can any 
trace of the concern be found in the 
Queen City. This new little game is 
certain to be extensively tried through¬ 
out the country, but of course Rural 
readers are too wide-awake to become 
victims, but, being charitable, they might 
drop a word of warning to their neigh¬ 
bors. Another gang of schemers are 
working in numerous places at once. 
Their plan is to lease a barn for the pur¬ 
pose of showing machinery and agricul¬ 
tural implements, and making sales to 
neighboring farmers. Just as you ex¬ 
pected, sir, the lease signed by the 
farmer soon turns up for collection as a 
promissory note. 
By Weight Instead of Measure. —The 
New Orleans Fruit and Produce Protec¬ 
tive Association has decided that in fu¬ 
ture potatoes, onions and other esculents 
shall be sold in the markets of the Cres¬ 
cent City by weight instead of by meas¬ 
ure. This is the general practice through¬ 
out Europe as well as on the Pacific 
coast, and is steadily gaining ground 
elsewhere. The resolutions passed by 
the New Orleans organization controls 
only shippers and wholesale dealers, but 
it will try to induce retailers, too, to 
adopt the plan. It claims that it is the 
only fair way of selling all fruits, vege¬ 
tables and similar “stuff,” and indeed 
all articles of food, and that buying in 
any other way is like buying “ a pig in a 
poke.” 
Hard Cider. —The Women’s Christian 
Temperance Union is strongly opposed 
to the sale of hard cider on the ground 
that “it produces the worst kind of in¬ 
toxication.” When cider first comes from 
the mill, it is a mild and harmless bever 
age, but as it grows harder, it becomes 
stronger and more mischievous, and is 
often the cause of a world of ill-temper, 
shiftlessness, domestic misery and finally 
degradation and ruin. Probably the 
worst feature about it is that it is laid in 
by people supposedly temperate and 
drunk freely as an innocent beverage 
even by those who pride themselves on 
being patterns of sobriety. In the heat 
of the old temperance agitation hundreds 
of reformers went so far as to cut down 
their apple orchards as productive of the 
material for strong drink ; can the mem¬ 
bers of the W. C. T. U. hope for a reform 
by no less drastic means? Shouldn’t the 
advocates of such a measure also plow 
under their rye and corn fields, tear up 
their blackberry and currant bushes and 
eradicate the elderberries ? Would a law 
shutting up the cider mills be an effec¬ 
tive preventive of the production of the 
obnoxious beverage ? And then what 
would orchardists do with their surplus 
and inferior apples ? 
Effective French. —The New York 
Sun gives this bit of history : “ An 
American naval officer says that once 
when a great function took place in the 
harbor of Cherbourg, several vessels of 
our Atlantic squadron were present and 
were drawn up in line to salute the Em¬ 
press’s yacht as it passed. The French 
sailors manned the yards of their ships 
and shouted: ‘Vive l’Imp6ratrice.’ Know¬ 
ing that he could not school his men to 
repeat those words in the brief time left 
to him, the American Admiral ordered 
his crews to cry: ‘ Beef, lemons and 
cheese! ’ The imperial yacht came 
sweeping on, and as it reached the fleet, a 
mighty roar went up of ‘ Beef, lemons and 
cheese ! that entirely drowned the voices 
of the Frenchmen. And the Empress 
said she had never been so compli¬ 
mented.” 
A Terrible Moment. —In the Common¬ 
wealth a woman gives this bit of personal 
history: “The worst moment I ever 
lived through was once I went to church 
when I first got my new set of teeth; 
‘ whereof I hadde not yette gotten ye 
righte pitch and adjustment.’ They 
weren’t in very firmly, and I sneezed 
’em out into the aisle. And the senior 
warden picked them up and handed them 
back.” 
“He never !” 
“ He did. And that wasn’t much worse 
than the time my brother shot an owl, 
and gave me the claw for my hat. I 
wouldn’t give him time to cure it prop¬ 
erly ; and I put it on my new hat and 
wore it to church. And a colony of ants, 
that had taken up lodgment in it, were 
wakened by the heat, and came marching 
in a shameless, everlasting, ticklesome 
procession, down and down over my nose, 
all service time. The rector’s wife told 
somebody next day that it was such a 
pity I was developing St. Vitus’s dance. ” 
IN writing to advertisers please always mention 
Tmi Rural. 
KRAUS SULKY CULTIVATOR. 
ANY BOY CAN WORK IT. 
PIVOT AXLE. 
Entire Machine controlled with the Foot Levers. 
Wheels and Shovels guided at the same 
time and with the same movement. 
the only successful hillside worker in 
the world, also 
A if D (111 Q 111 IfV combining parallel movement with 
AMlUN CULM, pivot axle and adjustable wheels. 
One and Two-Horse Walkers. 
DON’T BUY A CULTIVATOR until you have 
asked your dealer to see our line, or send to us for 
catalogue, prices, terms, etc. 
THE AKRON TOOL CO., 
Akron, Ohio, 
Or, AUIiTMAN, MILLER & CO., Akron, Ohio, General Eastern Agents. 
Branch Houses at 18 Warren Street, N. Y. City; Rochester, N. Y.; Harrisburg, Pa.; Baltimore, Md. 
THE PEPPLER SIX-ROW SPRAYER. 
The Best Horse-power Sprayer on Earth for Spraying 
POTATOES, VINEYARDS and ORCHARDS. 
Manufactured only by THOMAS PEPPLER, Hightstown, N. J. 
illustrated catalogue free. 
JUST THINK OF IT 
25 GOLD MEDALS. 
MOKE than all competitors combined can boastof. 
No Cream Raiser or Separator can show 
a record of as thorough and complete 
skimming. It Is the only apparatus In the World 
that can show Laboratory Tests by the gravi¬ 
metric system, having absolutely no trace of fat left In the milk. 
It has many records by gravimetric process, under one-tenth of one per 
cent, which shows It to be without a peer. 
"When run according to directions it is absolutely unapproach¬ 
able in its work. 2UADE IN 4 STYLES audio SIZES. 
Don’t be influenced to purchase any other Cream Raiser or Separator, 
until you have sent for Illustrated Circular and read it carefully. 
THE VERMONT FARM MACHINE CO., Bellows 
Falls, Vermont, 
manufacturers of full lines of factory and dairy apparatus. 
BARDEN CABINET CREAMERY, 
DIAHOND BALANCE CHURN, 
make dairying a pleasure. BUTTERWORKERS, RAILROAD AND 
CHEESE MILK CANS, and general DAIRY SUPPLIES. 
Send for Illustrated Catalogue. 
Barden Automatic Cream Separator Co., 
Agents Wanted. MIDDLE GRANVILLE, N. Y. 
AS yet commercial fertilizers have not been generally 
popular with tobacco growers ; they are afraid of 
them. Why? Because the plant food in them is not 
suitable to tobacco requirements. It doesn’t give 
QUALITY. 
Those who grow the best Connecticut Wrapper Leaf 
use “ Pinney’s Formula.” It is as familiar as the 
sun in certain sections of that State. (They have long 
ago discarded barnyard and stable manure.) 
Do you want to become acquainted with “ Pinney’s 
Formula ” Fertilizer for your tobacco crop ? 
WE MAKE IT!! 
THE CLEVELAND LINSEED OIL CO., Cleveland, O. 
Mailed free, illustrated pamphlet and valuable information regarding 
OLYMPIA 
GUARANTEED CURE 
OR NO PAY. 
Nothing Fairer Than This. 
When we say cure, we do not mean simply to 
stop it for the time being, but a 
PERMANENT AND POSITIVE CURE 
For Rheumatism, Neuralgia, Dyspepsia, 
Headache, Constipation, Biliousness, Ner¬ 
vousness, Sleeplessness, Impure Blood, 
and all diseases arising from a disordered 
Liver. Write for Treatise, Testimonials, and 
Free Sample Bottle of 
DR. ROC’S LIVER, RHEUMATIC, 
and NEURALGIA CURE to 
CULLEN & NEWMAN, 
160 GAY ST., Knoxville, Tenn. 
On the Sound. The Capital of the State of Washington. Fifty dollars buys a 
lot in East Park Addition. $5.00 first payment, $3.00 per month until fully 
paid. In a few years these lots will be in the center of the city. Olympia is 
growing fast. We can furnish hundreds of testimonials from leading business 
men throughout the country who have made profitable investments through us. 
Mothers, send for copy of, 1,000 copies of our little book, 
our little story book, “ Girl \ “ John,” a TRUE and interest- 
Baby.” We will give away (ing story of the success of a 
1,000 copies. Send quickly. (young man of that name. Send 
They will be in demand. \ for one. They are free. 
Address RUSSELL &l RUSSELL, 
FINANCIAL AGENTS. 1414 O. 
BURLINGTON, VT. ASHLAND BLOCK, CHICAGO, ILL 
(Main Office.) 
