582 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
August 12 
▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ TTTT TTTTTVTTTf 
f Woman and Home ] 
From Day to Day. 
Sweet friend, perchance both thou and I, 
Ere Love is past forgiving, 
Should take the earnest lesson home— 
Be patient with the living. 
To-day’s repressed rebuke may save 
Our blinding tears to-morrow; 
Then patience, e'en when keenest edge, 
May whet a nameless sorrow! 
’Tis easy to be gentle when 
Death’s silence shames our clamor, 
And easy to discern the best 
Through memory's mystic glamour; 
But wise it were for thee and me. 
Ere Love is past .forgiving, 
To take the tender lesson home— 
Be patient with the living. 
—Boston Watchman. 
* 
A woman at Niagara, Ontario, was re¬ 
cently married, it is said, to her sixth 
husband. She is 80 years old, and her 
husband, an old soldier, is 90. It is said 
that all her previous husbands were sol¬ 
diers, also. 
* 
One of the original champions of dress 
reform, Miss Susan Fowler, is still liv¬ 
ing at Vineland, N. J., where she works 
her own farm, even to the plowing, al¬ 
though she is 75 years old. She still 
wears bloomers, which, as she says, befit 
her occupation. Miss Fowler has receiv¬ 
ed many offers of marriage, in spite of 
her unusual dress and opinions, but she 
says that she has remained single be¬ 
cause she has not succeeded in meeting 
her ideal man. 
* 
Ahizona has a woman mail-carrier, 
who carries the mail twice a week from 
St. Johns to Jimtown, a distance of 52 
miles. The road leads through a rocky, 
barren and desolate region, traveled by 
few white men. Generally the mail-car¬ 
rier is alone, but she is always armed, 
and is a crack shot and good rider. The 
mail-carrying contract was given to her 
father, but he has become incapacitated 
through ill-health, and the courageous 
daughter fills his place. 
* 
A doctor explains that the habit of 
bending over when going upstairs is 
very injurious, because in such exercise, 
the heart is excited to more rapid action, 
and it is desirable that the lungs should 
have full play. The crouching action in¬ 
terferes with this, and the blood is im¬ 
perfectly aerated. It is also advised 
that, instead of treading on each step 
with the ball of the foot only, the feet 
should be placed squarely on the step, 
heel and all, this securing a more per¬ 
fect distribution of the weight. One 
should go upstairs deliberately, thus 
avoiding strain on any particular mus¬ 
cles. Running up and down stairs may 
be graceful, but it is not hygienic. 
* 
Tins is the season when a generous 
porch or veranda adds enormously to 
the comfort of a country home. It is a 
great mistake to build a farmhouse with 
a little stoop, too small to accommodate 
a single chair comfortably. The veran¬ 
da, or gallery, as our southern friends 
call it, ought to be large enough to serve 
as an outdoor sitting-room for the en¬ 
tire family. With a rug of rag carpet, 
an old lounge with a washing cover, and 
pillows covered with gay gingham, and 
some chairs and settees, which may be 
of home manufacture, such a porch will 
be as restful and inviting as that of a 
luxurious Summer residence. When the 
sun shine* in, reed screens are a corn- 
rings sewed along the upper and lower 
edges, to slip over hooks in the porch 
frame. We have seen unbleached sheet¬ 
ing used for this purpose, but a colored 
or heavier material would soften the 
glare more effectually. A roomy porch 
with the comforts of a sitting-room will 
not only add to the pleasure of the fam¬ 
ily, but will also save work, being more 
easily cleaned than an indoor sitting- 
room. Some of our friends have a big 
square back porch, easy of access, pro¬ 
vided with inexpensive furniture, where 
they take mcny of their meals during 
warm weather; an outdoor breakfast is 
especially pleasant. 
* 
Tiie New York papers recently told of 
a well-dressed and gentlemanly-looking 
bicycle rider, who makes a practice of 
picking up an acquaintance with wheel- 
women in the city for the purpose of 
robbing them. His victims appear to be 
women with handsome jewelry, with 
whom he enters into conversation, final¬ 
ly inviting them to take a little spin 
with him. The next step is a drugged 
drink, from which the woman slowly re¬ 
covers, to find that her valuables are 
gone. No one has yet lodged a com¬ 
plaint with the police, because the vic¬ 
tims are ashamed to publish their folly. 
A simply-dressed woman, who knows 
enough to decline the overtures of total 
strangers, need not fear this particularly 
contemptible thief. 
* 
Mrs. Elizabeth Thompson, who died 
recently at Littleton, N. J., aged 78, was 
widely known as a temperance worker 
and philanthropist. The daughter of a 
poor Vermont farmer, she began to earn 
her own living at an early age, as a do¬ 
mestic, but at the age of 23, she married 
a Boston millionaire, who was well 
known for his philanthropy. After his 
death, she determined to devote her 
fortune to the assistance of worthy 
charities. She spent freely in giving aid 
to families or individuals who had suf¬ 
fered from the intemperance of others, 
and she did much for the advancement 
of temperance. Mrs. Thompson was a 
woman who regarded her wealth as a 
sacred charge—a stewardship for which 
she must render account, and her life 
was spent in endeavors to make the best 
use of it. 
* 
Miss Annie Wheeler. General Joe 
Wheeler’s daughter, is going to the Phil¬ 
ippines with her father to serve as a 
nurse. Miss Wheeler was of great ser¬ 
vice last year in the fever-stricken camp 
at Santiago, after that city surrendered, 
and she was also a valuable worker at 
Montauk Point. Miss Wheeler is espec¬ 
ially devoted to her father, and it is said 
that she asserts she will go to any war 
that he does. Manila is not a very de¬ 
sirable place for women at present, un¬ 
less they are engaged in active profes¬ 
sional or official work, and a recent 
dispatch from the military authorities 
discouraged American women from 
going there on account of climatic con¬ 
ditions, it was said. There is no doubt 
that the permission given, months ago, 
for some army officers to take their fam¬ 
ilies with them to the Philippines, was 
premature, and this fact now seems to 
be fully realized. 
* 
During the period when Greater New 
York was nervously watching its abor¬ 
tive trolley strike, and wondering 
whether Cleveland’s situation would 
reach the Borough of Manhattan, an¬ 
other strike developed, which presented 
some amusing features. The newsboys 
afternoon papers 
known professionally as red-headed ex¬ 
tras, otherwise the yellow journals, and 
refused to sell them. It was not, how¬ 
ever, the character of these papers which 
induced the strike, but the fact that the 
boys were overcharged for them. They 
expect to make a profit of one-half cent 
on one-cent papers, but the yellow jour¬ 
nals charged them 60 cents per 100 in¬ 
stead of 50 cents, thereby reducing their 
profits. This boycott has continued for 
several days, at time of writing, and few 
of the interdicted papers are sold upon 
the streets, except by men or tough-look¬ 
ing half-grown lads, who are paid by the 
day. The boys are following the tactics 
of older strikers in assaulting those who 
disobey their orders, even snatching the 
hated papers from their purchasers. The 
strikers felt some uncertainty concern¬ 
ing their course towards women who 
sell papers, several of them continuing 
to handle the hated sheets; their sense 
of chivalry made them feel that con¬ 
ciliation must be used because, as a 
leader expressed it, they “couldn’t swat 
a loidy.” However, most of the women 
joined them. Public feeling is strongly 
on the side of the boys, who go about 
wearing in their caps, cards boldly in¬ 
scribed, “Please don’t ask for the World 
and Journal,” “Help us by refusing to 
buy the World and Journal,” etc. 
Women Gold Miners, 
A Little-Known Country. —As a 
contrast to the rigorous Klondike, we 
may consider the gold-bearing regions 
of Colombia, South America. Some of 
our orchid-collecting friends have told 
us of their journey from Cartagena 
along the Spanish Main to the Magda¬ 
lena River finally leaving the steamer to 
journey over the mountains on mule- 
back. W. E. Curtis, describing this trip 
in the Chicago Record, says that they 
steam up the river for 220 miles through 
a low jungle alive with alligators, rep¬ 
tiles, wild beasts, birds of brilliant plum¬ 
age and chattering monkeys, and with 
a foliage more dense and luxurious than 
can be found anywhere else on the earth. 
There are little villages of palm- 
thatched huts along the river, at which 
the steamers stop to leave and gather 
freight, and finally, after a six days’ 
voyage, they reach a place called 
Quidbo, a picturesque collection of huts, 
and the center of a considerable popula¬ 
tion who live in a primitive manner, 
fishing, hunting, cultivating cocoa and 
washing out gold. They bring the gold 
dust and cocoa beans into town from 
all directions, and trade them for mer¬ 
chandise. There is very little money in 
circulation. Gold dust and cocoa beans 
pass for currency, and everything is bar¬ 
tered. The boatmen say that the mer¬ 
chants often do not have a coin or a 
ptece of paper money in their tills for 
months at a time, for all their merchan¬ 
dise is exchanged for gold and cocoa 
beans, and the natives would not take 
the cash if it were offered them. 
The Toiling Women. —The women do 
all the mining. No man with any self- 
respect can be induced to engage in that 
occupation, because in Spanish times it 
was the work of slaves. No freeman 
was allowed to touch a pick or a miner’s 
basin, because the working of the mines 
were monopolies granted by the crown 
and private individuals were not allowed 
to compete or interfere. The conces¬ 
sionaires employed slaves to do the 
labor, and gold washing and slavery be¬ 
came synonymous. Therefore the proud 
natives, who are half-breeds of Spanish 
and Indian blood, leave that sort of 
work for their women, while they hunt 
and fish and sit around smoking tobacco 
and watching their wives and daughters 
wash out the gold. In some places 
where the streams are deep, the methods 
are novel. Well-formed, saddle-colored 
girls, wearing nothing but breechclouts, 
dive from the banks into 12 or 15 feet of 
water, and each brings up two handfuls 
of sand. They wash their fingers in a 
gourd, and dive again until the gourd is 
filled with sparkling particles. Then 
they separate the gold from the sand, 
and carry the dust to their liege lords, 
fort, or a cheap substitute may be found 
in some inexpensive material having struck against the 
who have been calmly watching the 
operation. They usually make from $2 
to $4 a day, but the work is irregular, 
and depends upon the conditions of 
streams. During the rainy season, this 
method of mining is entirely abandoned. 
The merchants at Quidbo usually send 
up to Cartagena by every steamboat 
from 15 to 20 pounds of gold dust. 
A Country of Pestilence, —The jun¬ 
gles are full of decaying vegetation, 
which stews under the tropic sun, and 
when night comes, it exudes a dense 
vapor, which settles down upon every¬ 
thing and is so full of malaria that the 
boatmen say they can carry it off in 
cans. No white man has ever been able 
to live there more than a few weeks 
at a time without taking a fever that is 
usually fatal. The air is so humid that 
clothing rots, leather will be covered 
with mildew over night, metals and 
tools of all kinds are soon destroyed by 
rust, salt and sugar dissolve into liquids 
in a few days, and nothing animate can 
survive the climate unless it was born 
there. 
Primitive Housekeeping. —The na¬ 
tives live in settlements of the rudest 
construction. Their houses are built of 
bamboo poles with roofs of palm leaves. 
Sometimes the walls are plastered with 
mud, but that luxury occurs only among 
the nobility. The floors are mud, the 
beds are mats, hammocks or piles of 
rushes, the household furniture consists 
of a few homemade earthen pots and 
calabashes for cooking; a machete and a 
few rude knives are the only tools, mats 
and hammocks the only furniture, bows, 
arrows and blowguns the only weapons, 
while their food consists of fish, game 
and plantains, which grow abundantly. 
It would not be possible to induce the 
natives to labor. They are more indo¬ 
lent than the North American Indians. 
Their wants are few and easily supplied. 
A woman can wash enough gold in a 
week to provide her family with cloth¬ 
ing and other necessaries for an entire 
year, and they wouldn’t know what to 
do with money if they had it. 
-In the chaos of the Civil War, James 
Russell Lowell wrote a private letter in 
which he frankly admitted his anxiety, 
but against it all he placed supreme con¬ 
fidence in “the nerve and sense of the 
people,” pointing out how, in other days 
of gloom and foreboding, they had kept 
the Ship of State steady on her course, 
and themselves faithful in the path of 
duty. So it is now. Even the calamity 
person will not deny the nerve of the. 
American people, and although he may 
question their sense, he is useful as the 
exception that proves the rule. The 
nerve has been shown on many a battle¬ 
field, the sense in many a crisis, and 
both in the unrecorded events which 
make up the daily life and mold the 
character of the nation. By these the 
past was made, in them the present is 
safe, and because of them the future is 
secure.—Saturday Evening Post. 
REFLECTOR^ 
TUBULAR M 
LANTERN 
/ /V our belief this is, 
on the whole, the 
very bestLan tern ever ^ 
made for all-around1 
use. It first produces; 
an amazing volume of light, and then 
by means of its broad andpowerful re- '■ 
Jlector, concentrates that light in a I 
luminous flood upon a comparatively 
small space. It will not blow out nor 
shake out, consequently it makes a] 
Driving Lamp of unique excellence ,, 
while as a Walking Lamp the U. S. 
Life Saving Service regard it as good) 
enough for the exacting demands off 
their patrol service. We issue a specially 
Circular of this Lantern, which wfjft- 
shall be pleased to mail you, as also a fCY 
copy of our complete little Catalogue of\f 
Lanterns and Latnps — free, of course. 
^ R. E. Dietz Co., x ‘new^ork. 1 ’’ 5? 
ixjT ESTABLISHED IN 1840. 
Look for name , the “ DIETZ , 11 when you buy. 
