46 
JAN 17 
■ 
he is to receive §767 at the end of 18 months! 
As the association was organized on October 
1, 1884, no benefit will be due until May, 1866, 
and we venture nothing in prophesying that 
the credulous dupes of the concei n will then 
search in vain for the managers on this side 
of the Canadian line or of the Atlantic. We 
have given so much space to this, because it 
is an example of many other swindles. 
To Many Inquirers. —Some frauds are 
exceptionally active in their efforts to swindle 
the public at. particular times; and one of the 
most active at present appears to be the 
Mouarcb Novelty Co., of Cincinnati, Ohio, 
judging by the number of inquiries we are 
constantly receiving from all parts of the 
country about its character. We have briefly 
denounced it here several times: but the in¬ 
quiries still come pouring in, either about the 
“Company” itself or about “J. C. Emory,” 
who is really the “Company” although many 
seem to think him a separate, independent 
entity. The circulars say that the "Company,” 
or ,7. C. E. deals “in standard household uov- 
elties,” and is seeking for agents to sell them, 
agreeing to pay a salary of §00 a month and 
allow §75 a month for traveling expenses, or 
§165 a month for salary and expenses! 
What a beuofactor to all theunemployed men 
in the country at this season of general de¬ 
pression, is the M. N. Co., alias J. C. E.! And 
how comes it that, iu spite of the multitude 
of employment seekers, aud the generous 
terms offered bv M. N. C. J. C. E., the latter 
finds it necessary to do so much advertising 
through the mails for “fresh” help? Surely 
there ought to be gudgeons enough to snap at 
that bait, even although §3 are first required 
for an “outfit”—worth 50 cents quite possibly, 
though probably not more than half that 
sum. The M. N. Co., alias J. C E., reserves 
the right, after 30 days’ trial, to judge of the 
capacity of the agent, aud discharge him 
without paying a single cent or taking back 
the outfit. This right is pretty certain to be 
employed, hence the constant demand for 
fresh greenhorns. 
King & Co., Owego, N. Y., are entirely 
trustworthy. We cannot by auy means re¬ 
commend the United States Medicine Co., of 
Bond Street, this City, or the “Hudson M. 
F. G. Co.," of Sixth Avenue. There is no 
such Concern as the Globe Mutual insurance 
Company in this city. Foster & Thomson 
form a firm of lawyers in Wall Street, but 
who can vouch for the standing of lawyers in 
a large city? We don’t recommend E. C. 
Bough ton, of this city. Henry Griffith, Zanes¬ 
ville, Ohio, we are assured by several parties, 
is one of the Bain nest of poultry sharpers, 
whom we have frequently denounced here 
These fellows advertise under so many names 
as sometimes to deceive even those on the look¬ 
out especially for them We do not recom¬ 
mend the Popular Monthly of Chicago; nor 
the Warren M’i’g Co., of this city; nor the 
Poultry Keeper, Chicago; nor the Western 
American Farmer, of the same center of 
swindling advertisements. 
Varitms. 
Valuable Christmas Presents. —On the 
day before Christmas the famous cow Aaggie, 
owned by Smiths & Powell,of Syracuse,N. Y., 
presented her owners with a fine, large, hand¬ 
somely marked, vigorous heifer calf, sired 
by Netherland Prince. On the day previous 
Lady Netherland, the dam of Netherland 
Prince, also gave them a splendid heifer calf, 
sired by Neptune, son of Aaggie. These two 
calves are so thoroughly in-bred in these won¬ 
derful milking strains, that their growth aud 
development will be watched with much in¬ 
terest. Of course, they will receive all the 
care and attention that intelligence can sug¬ 
gest, and the public will have an opportunity 
to know if, in milk production, blood will 
really tell. 
Thk Dutch-Friesian Association,— The 
annual meeting of this association will be 
held at Detroit, Mich,, commencing Feb. 4, 
1885, and lasting two days. Many valuable 
papers are promised, and the occasion is likely 
to be one of much interest. For fuller par¬ 
ticulars address S. Hoxik, Sec’y, Whites- 
town, N. Y. 
We hope an effort will be made at this aud 
the Holstein Conventiou to drop these mis¬ 
leading names, and that all will agree that 
these noble animals shall hereafter be called 
by their true name, Hollands, or Netherlands. 
Change ok Firm Name. —Some Hmesiuce 
Mr. Maule succeeded to the business of the firm 
of Benson, Maule & Co , aud hereafter he 
will drop all reference to that firm, aud do 
business simply as Wui. Henry Maule. 
The Minnesota Horticultural Socie¬ 
ty’s Annual Meeting will be held at the 
State House at St. Saul, commencing on 
Tuesday, Jan. 20. A fine program has been 
prepared, truman m. smith, sec'ty, 
St. Paul. 
for lllomnt. 
conducted by mis: ray clark. 
SKETCHES OF GERMAN LIFE. 
BERTHA A. ZEDI WINKLER. 
WIZARDS AND WITCHES. 
They abound iu the imagination of the 
people; which does not signify, however, that 
they are not duly embodied iu the person of a 
man whose great air of mystery and impor¬ 
tance on the strength of a little medicinal, and 
herb knowledge, is sure to earn him that title; 
and in the person of a woman who happens to 
be the unfortunate possessor of a prominent 
nose, a projecting chin, an unamiable temper, 
and an uuhospitable house. 
Why it is that only a woman’s unfortunate, 
or bad characteristics, should give occasion 
for fixing the traduced aud ignominious 
fame of the superstition upon her, while 
masculine knowledge aud erabbeduess gets 
the creditable part ot it, is one of the mys 
teries which may find its solution along 
the path of woman’s disputed equality. 
Meanwhile the deplorable fact remains 
not only in Germany, but in all unen¬ 
lightened parts of Europe, that wizards are 
regarded as oracles, doctors, sooth-sayers, and 
tamers of evil powers, while witches are in 
vested with all those lower principles of evil 
which call forth nothing but hatred and de 
testatiou. The wizard’s masculine strength 
and reserve, coupled with reputed virtues of 
efficacious power, receives the compliment of 
mystified awe, and conciliating fear. The 
witch’s feminine weakness aud garrulity, 
coupled with traditioned evil doing, receives 
the insult and persecution of deep-seated, 
searching hatred. A wizard's name is men¬ 
tioned as often in connection with a cored 
cow, a saved crop, a successful fishing excur¬ 
sion, as a witch's mine is execrated in connec¬ 
tion with any disease, failure, or wreck. Aud, 
though both are socially ostracized, it is with 
the relative leniency and severity with which 
we ostracize the still ever eligible bachelor 
and the undesirable in-tbe-way old maid. 
Perhaps it is only the old-fashioned, rude, 
European way of expressing a similar disap¬ 
probation for the celibate state, as those 
reputed wielders of supernatural powers are 
generally unmarried. A solitary, unsocial 
uature and mode of life is, at least, the first 
stigma of their unenviable reputation. 
Curious enough, this ostracism does not pre¬ 
vent people from availiug themselves of their 
supposed supernatural knowledge or aid when¬ 
ever occasion requires it for their interests; 
aud any smart wizard or witch may eke out. a 
scanty income with the proceeds of concocted 
herbs aud schemes for the furtherance of a 
patron's interests. Superstitious people are 
usually the most prone to evil, because of the 
darkness which envelopes their mental aud 
spiritual functions. What would be scouted 
as unworthy and ridiculous by au euligbtened, 
and well balanced mind are considered help¬ 
ful expedients by them. Thus, they seldom 
disdain to seek a wizard’s abode for informa¬ 
tion relating to their enemies, rivals, or any 
object of envy; aud the part'es in question 
seeking the same doubtful oracle, the wizard 
has very easy and natural means of giving 
double satisfaction for the time. Should the 
fomented trouble finally burst in a storm, he 
is safe from a direct visitation of wrath in the 
secrecy which guilt} - consciences find neces 
sary for the maintenance of their own repu¬ 
tation. The love-powders, the advice aud 
plots that are bought from a witch by jealous 
rivals, husbands, and wives, for the attain¬ 
ment of seldom lawful ends, has furnished the 
subject of many a thrilling story, and cul¬ 
minated in many a real tragedy. An instance 
within our own recollection is that of n wile 
who, suspecting her husband’s fidelity, obeyed 
a witch’s advice, and, on a given night, was 
to flourish the razor over his head during his 
sleep. If his sleep continued unbiokeu he was 
true to her; if not, the reverse. It so hap¬ 
pened that the husband’s paramour sought 
the same evil oracle, aud obtained this infor¬ 
mation in time to apprise the husband of bis 
danger. Of course he feigned sleep, discover¬ 
ed his wife in the suspicious act, and forth¬ 
with accused her of murderous intentions 
The result was a separation, aud nothing but 
the fear that his own guilt might also be dis¬ 
covered prevented the husband trurn making 
a public accusal. That the witch merely in¬ 
tended to fill her own pocket with the rewards 
of a smart piece of busiuess, without dream¬ 
ing of the possible result; and that the real 
evil lies in the nature or' the people who seek 
her, is evident. The end of superstition aud 
ignorance would be the end of witchcraft, 
which people nurse iu their own nature, and 
persecute iu the person who mirrors their own 
defects with the sharpness of cupidity. 
Not the less pernicious, though conducted 
on rather negative principle, is the influence 
of wizard’s, they art* supposed to counter-act 
all the evil invocations of witchcraft with a 
superior power, of the same darkness, how¬ 
ever. If a cow’s milk is red. or a child has 
suspicious spasms the wizard is called to undo 
the spell. It is to his interest to attribute 
every misfortune to the influence of his infe¬ 
rior sister in the craft. Thus, superstition is 
encouraged for his advantage, while the popu¬ 
lar hatred is directed solely towards the witch. 
The popular appellation of “ Hexen meister” 
(witch-master) denotes the common belief 
that they are the lords aud the governors of 
witches, that the latter ore subject to their 
superior power. Why these lords of 
witchcraft are uot considered equally, or more 
culpable, than witches, in proportion as they 
are supposed to have more power to harm, is 
explained by the fact that wizards act on the 
restraining and negative principle. 
And such is the power of established preju¬ 
dice that should a witch attempt her art on a 
similiar principle, the people would sooner 
believe her a man in petticoats than a real 
woman. This masculine prerogative in witch¬ 
craft is as exclusive and stubbornly guarded 
as other distinctions between the sexes in 
ordinary life. 
The popular sayings, beliefs, aud fears, 
would be amusing were it not for the deplor¬ 
able state of ignorance and intellectual tor¬ 
por which they exhibit. Everybody’s grand¬ 
mother can point with awe to a particular 
window, key-hole, or chicken-coop through 
which one of these disreputable spirits has at 
some time or other effected au entrance. Bats 
fluttering around castle-ruins at dusk, are 
wizards chasing witches. The scorched, black 
circles left by charcoaled wood in the forest, 
are their rendezvous, and dancing grouuds; 
pig’s hoofs, their driukiug vessels with which 
they stea' the wine from people’s cellars, and 
make merry at midnight. If a spider spins 
her web over a broken window-pane it is 
solicitously guarded as a charmed barrier 
against a witch’s entrance. Leavings of a 
meal left by a suspicious begging women, are 
put aside like so much poison, aud watched in 
its different stages of decay. If the potatoes 
turn black, aud the milk green, it proves that 
she was a witch,aud meant harm to some one in 
the family. Almost every village has its differ- 
rent signs and test proofs; aDd woe to the wom¬ 
an whose appearance does not. answer their 
description of respectability. Happily beg¬ 
ging women are as scarce as long-nosed ones; 
and it is owing to the rarity of these two 
phenomenas that t hey are pronounced upon as 
evil omens. Whatever is unusual excites 
curiosity, talk, apprehension. Because it is 
the custom of journeymen, seeking work, to 
go from place to place begging their victuals, 
no one dreams of harboring a wizard. With 
women it is quite different; and their wants 
must lie extreme indeed, to venture on a beg¬ 
ging tour. If they do, a knowing one is care¬ 
ful to pocket the leavings, swallow all the 
milk and leave no trace behind by which she 
might be identified into witchcraft. 
MUSINGS OF A QUIET LIFE.—NO. V. 
ZKA MAYS. 
I have been cutting rags again. I should 
think that I have enough sewiug for a num¬ 
ber of papers, if taought flows with sufficient 
freedom; especially where many have beeu 
cut beforehand there is apt to be a good deal 
of tangliug. They get locked together iu 
some way as thoughts do in our brains, and 
you can’t pull one out without starting an¬ 
other, perhaps several. 
Let us be thankful for lead pencils! One 
does not have to be bothered with pen and 
ink. I can write a few lines, clap the pencil 
in my mouth, and sew away. I am in my 
orchard parlor again. The great judicial 
chair I brought out the other day is too high, 
so 1 occupy a one urtned rocker. The upper 
eud of the orchard, which I face, meets the 
sky iu nearly its whole width. It looks as il 
the sky were some distance off; if 1 did not 
know better I might think it the jumping-off 
place of a flat world. But I do know there 
are strawberries and green corn growing a 
little farther on, and that beyond are hills 
and valleys, a river, aud lulls again. Aud 
how close to us is the horizon that bounds our 
mental vision! That is the end to us. We do 
not see the strawberry fields just over there, 
nor the meadows, nor the bill ranges. Now 
and then one plunges through the fog that 
closes us in and brings us buck a meadow lily 
or a sheaf of wheat. One looks over the 
water-shed and sees living streams coursing 
dowuward, aud wuteriug fertile valleys of 
which wo had never dreamed. Era old in 
went beyond to fly bis kite, and Morse fol¬ 
lowed after him, and lo! we can flash our 
thoughts on wires across continents, and 
through cables, uuderseas! An Edison makes 
excursions into the unknown and returns 
with a telephone through which friends may 
hear each other’s voices though a hundred 
miles apart, and serenade each other at long 
distances. He brings back an electric light 
to make our night like day. 
What a little man a bigot is, to be sure! 
Content to stay in bis walnut shell, and re¬ 
main chiefly cotyledon, when he might put 
forth stems and brauches and be a tree, and 
more tlmu thjt, stoutly asserting that there 
is no such thing as a tree; that all the uni¬ 
verse there is is wrapped up in his one dark, 
little room, hating and quarreling with his 
enterprising brother w r ho has broken open his 
shell aud begun to grow out into the sunlight, 
and who sees his might}’ father walnut with 
its branches spread wide for a shelter to some¬ 
thing, and waving iu the wind, A new truth 
received into the soul is a fertilizing power. 
A germ may lie waiting within its corolla for 
the wonderful truth which shall make it 
quick with the seeds of a great new life. 
I sat cutting rags this morning with the 
“Autocrat” before me. I had been reading 
that “Memory, imagination, old sentiments 
and associations are more readily reached 
through the sense of smell than by almost 
any other channel,” and the strange explana¬ 
tion suggested that it is because “the olfactory 
nerve is really a part of the brain, in intimate 
connection with its anterior lobes.” Phos¬ 
phorus and marigolds were his fragrant (?) 
reminders. Suddenly, as if to illustrate the 
proposition, there greeted my sense of smell 
the perfume of the honey locust. A handful 
of blossoms bad been brought in and lay 
withered on the table. That smell took me 
hundreds of miles away aud brought this to 
memory: “There was a common, and a single 
locust tree upon it, and a little girl running 
over the common and crying fire! fire! and 
into her house to save the baby. The chimney 
was burning out. There was a church on the 
common. ‘A sprig of green caraway’ would 
have carried me there as well as the locust 
blossoms—there where the high pulpit was 
fixed against the wall, and wffiere the pews 
were closed apartments, and where I some¬ 
times sat in the high gallery, aud where were 
sung such sacred songs as Ariel and Stow. 
There was a red school bouse on the common, 
too, with desks against the wall, long benches 
in front, and little benches with backs; before 
them a rusty stove was in the middle of the 
room. There was a great red house, the front 
part of which had contained a store, and had 
an unpainted “lean-to” behind it, and a large 
wood house. Water was brought Into the 
house. There were apples stored in the un¬ 
furnished chamber. There was a garden, a 
little orchard and a bit of meadow. This was 
the little girl’s home, A blaeksmith’s shop 
was near by, and there all day long while 
"Her noble father tolled and sang 
The music of the anvil rang.” 
I might have painted pictures for hours, 
just because that sweet smell came to me 
from the table. 
Ball No. 1 done—a little ball. Bread to be 
baked at the house, and I must go in. 
i - 
Music Rack. 
DIRECTIONS FOR A SHOULDER CAPE. 
In answer to D. P. H.’s request in the Wom¬ 
an's Department of the Rural of the loth of 
Dec., I seud the following:—It is worked 
throughout iu double crochet, that is, throw 
the thread once around the needle. It takes 
four hanks of Germantown worsted for the 
body of an ordinary sized cape, aud one hank 
of contrasting color for the border. Iu work¬ 
ing, only take up one side of the stitch, the 
one farthest from you in each row: it gives a 
very pretty ribbed appearance to the work, 
Set up a chain sufficiently long to go 
around the neck easily, rd(1 tbo number of 
