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Show . . a . MISSING LINKS. Two Lewiston, Me., liquor constables raided a drug store which was provided with a surprising outfit of trap doors, pitfalls, vaults and strong rooms. By climbing to the top of a partition ana dropping twenty-two twenty-two feet into a cellar-like abyss one of the constables reached a stairway which led to a secret chamber, built of brick and having a brick door framed with iron. A strong room was provided with an oaken door six inches thick. A big haul of liquors was made, and after settling his case the druggist drug-gist will not only have to get a new stock but also devise new means of secreting his goods. Kev. Francis Marsten, a Pnsbyterian clergyman, of Columbus, Ohio, evidently doesn't believe that a prayer should be a string of pious platitudes. " He was invited the other day to open the session of the lower house with prayer, and this is how he did it: "Remember, 6 Lord, the welfare of these, thy servanU, gathered here in this maelstrom of iniquity, fraud and corruption. Thou knowest with what suspicion this legislature leg-islature is looked on by the people of this great state. Lord, deliver us from the bribes, bribers and bribetakers in our midst, and keep them from tho ways of temptation which surround them on every hand, and may their acts be righteous and not corrupt." cor-rupt." A Maine paper tells of the queer predicament predica-ment in which a Biddeford man is. He owns fifty acres of land in the suburbs of Biddeford which his grandmother left him, but he can't find it The boundary lines haven't been run for generations. There is some dim record of the original grant at Alfred, but not clear enough to enable him to find out just what he owns. He has had a surveyor at work trying to run the lines, but each time he has encroached on land to which others have clear titles. Now the property is advertised for taxes and a possible possi-ble solution has preeented itself to the owner. He says he is going to let the city sell the land for taxes, bid it in himself, and let the city find it for him. The city, he argues, can't' sell anything it can't deliver, and can't deliver anything it can't find. "fhe blind faith of the Italian fishermen in the efficacy of holy relics is pathetic. "Many of them," says a correspondent, "keep themselves iu a state of utter impoverishment impoverish-ment in providing necessary amulets and charms. Not only is the fisherman's person covered with these, but his boat must also possess all possible saving power through these religious appliances. -Should some great storm arise and genuine danger come, one by one of these objects are cast upon the waves with a faith that is positively sublime. Meanwhile his wife ashore, possessed of the same implicit and pious x-ontldence, gives her most precious relics to the. sea that her husband may come safe to land. And I have no doubt that when fatal disaster conies, as it aiwajs does, this man sinks into the silence si-lence beneath the tempest with his last spark of vital consciousness an unditnmed flame of trust and faith." Not half a lifetime ago a wealthy New Yorker, who died recently, missed from his picture gallery two small but very valuable canvases. He suspected everybody in the house. Tt was said at the time that he accused ac-cused one of his sons, who was a little wild, of having stolen the pictures in order to raise on them money which his father had refused him for his extravagances. However, How-ever, the facts remained a mysterj" for some years. Then an expressman delivered a package at the banker's door. In it were the missing pictures, intact, as they had been taken from their frames. There was no mark or sign upon them or the package to denote the source from which their restoration restor-ation proceeded. The owner was as curious now as he had been furious before. He seta detective on the matter. The pictures were traced backward, through the express office, to the widow of one of the owner's most intimate in-timate and trusted friends. This man, himself him-self a millionaire, crazed by cupidity, for he was a collector of pictures himself, had stolen them one night after he had dined with their owner. |