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Show the pack rapidly, so that the bottom is now the top card, and thus all the other cards are turned face upward, I unseen by the spectators. Among them was a little maid Hold the pack firmly in your fingers Who sweetly glanced at me. and request those who have drawn to While others laughed and raced and replace their cards in the pack. Thus danced With many a graceful air, all the drawn cards will lie with their 8he stood aside alone and glanced faces downward, while all the other With glad eyes at them there. cards will lie with their face upward. You now step aside, select the drawn Her face was beautiful and sweet. But, hapless little one. cards, and show them to the company. She stood on twisted, withered feet. By The Little Heroine. a schoolyard where the children played paused a while to see; The Flour MercnanL The one who personates the flou merchant will try every way to dis- pose of his stock of flour, by asking question after question of the others, who must, in their answers, be careThat neer were made to run. ful not to use these words: Flour. I, to Answer Plot Problem. I thought of God's mysterious way. or no; as they are forbidden, and This is the way in which the plot yes And watched her where she stood; one who is caught using them will the I wondered if she gave Him praise of land should have been divided in to have And deemed Him wise and good. pay a forfeit. order to let each person get to flour merchant must persevere The Her playmates joined their hands ere in his endeavors to make the players long. use one of the interdicted words. And, hedging her about Danced around her with a merry song For instance: And many a happy shout. Do yoh wish any flour There is none required. I saw her clap her hands, her voice In gleeful accents rang, But you will soon want it; let me 8he had the courage to rejoice you to take some. persuade With those who danced and sang, That is impossible." 1 left them where they gladly played Why so? It is the very best of A sweet voice seemed to cry: flour; just look at it; it is so very fine "While she can laugh, poor little maid. and white. Why should you ever sigh?" ' , The Chicago Record-Heral- The quality is a matter of indifference to me. ' But it will make such good, sweet d. Shout Breaks a Glass. Every one knows that windows will 'rattle when a loud noise is made in a room, but very few persons know 'that a glass can be broken by shouting into it. Any ordinary glass which has a clear tone will do for this trick, and the exact nature of its tone can readily be ascertained by passing a moistened finger around its rim. This point being settled, the performer should hold the glass in front of his mouth and shout into it in a tone about an octave higher than that of the glass. The result will be that the glass will break Immediately, and for the reason that it will not have strength r--4 v ready, any one in the company may call it out and change places. In this way a number of clever rhymes may be forthcoming, and the game may he kept up till the ingenuity of the players is exhausted. to resist the force exerted against it by the waves of air. The thinner the glass is the more easily will it be broken. A common beer glass, however, is the one which ' is generally used. enough Dickens School Pets. When Charles Dickens was a boy at Wellington House Academy it was the secret pride of the students there that they owned more white mice, red polls and linnets than any other set of boys within their ken. These they kept in hatboxes, drawers and even A small but in the school desks. very accomplished mouse, which lived In the corner of a Latin dictionary. In Dickens desk, and could draw Roman chariots, fire paper muskets and scale pasteboard ladders, fell at last into an overfull inkpot and lost both Its whi;e coat and its life. Dickens, nevertheless, won a prize for his Latin, and a well thumbed and blotted Horace which he once presented to his coach recently fetched a high price at an exhibition in England. bread. Do take some." You have had my answer." Have I? I must have forgotten it. What was it? his own property without trespassing "My answer was, decidedly not on that of others. The problem was any. given last week. How many of you But, madame, consider; It Is a solved it? very reasonable price." I will not take any. The flour merchant having succeedIt Blackens. There is an old story about a Greek ed in making her say I," proceeds to maiden named Eulalie; she wanted to the next one. be friends with Lucinda, a very gay To Decorate Candles. and wordly woman. One day she said Candles can be decorated by rolling to her father, Sophronius, "I would like to call upon Lucinda; may I go pictures tightly round them and warming the backs of the pictures by passI cannot allow you to do that, my ing the flame of a match or another candle over them. To get the best daughter, replied Sophronius. exmust me think But, father, you ceedingly weak if you suppose I should be injured by going, saiij. r Eulalia, Crossly. Her father stooped down and picked up a piece of dirty coal and held it out Take that in your hand, my child; it will not hurt you." She did, her fingers became smudged. Eulalia did not understand. Why, she said, did you give me this? It blackens. Yes, came the reply. Coal, when it does not burn, blackens. Do you see the lesson of the old Greek? Bad company will blacken if results the engraving should be newly printed on thin paper with plenty of it does not burn. ink, and, if they are half tones, should be coarse grained. Effective Rhyming. can be found in great variety This game is never old, and for designs in many illustrated periodicals. rainy days there is nothing like it. There are so many topics which can Wealth of Manchuria. be jingled into funny rhymes, if the resources of Manchuria, mineral The have rhymers ingenuity. The fun consists in the head person as shown even by the surface scratchstarting the first line. The person ing that has been done,r are simply it may next must give the rhyming line stupendous. As a wealth-givebefore a given number of seconds seDd more to St. Petersburg for the than India will to have passed. Usually one minute is next the allotted time. Then, if he is not London. ? half-centur- y good-size- d Magic Rings. dex-trous- ly A words. In the above picture are objects illustrating five These words rhyme, and by beheading all of them and prefixing the same letter to each, you will find that they all have suddenly become the same word. What are the five words? one-syllab- le Rotation a Local Question. Crop rotation is a subject that has engaged the attention and study of the very best talent among agricultural investigators and practical farmers for a great length of time in all of the older parts of the world where agriculture has reacbri its highest s Professor state of development .etin of the R E. Chilcott, in a South Dakota Experiment Station. If we could appropriate the results of their investigations and experience we e would find a rich of facts in the literature of the subject, particularly the records of the long line of experiments carried on by Sir J. B. at Lawes and Sir J. H. Gilbert Rothemsted, England. It would be almost impossible to overestimate the value to the whole civilized world of the work of these investigators, nor do we undervalue the work done by the army of agricultural investigators connected with the United States Department of Agriculture and the various state Experiment Stations. But, unfortunately, in the matter of crop rotation their results have a value to us in only a very broad and general way. This Is essentially a local problem and can be solved only under local conditions. Nor ,is this matter of locality confined to a comparison of this state as a whole with other states or countries. Each of the several sections of the state has its local conditions, peculiar to itself, and in the ultimate analysis every farm will have its peculiar conditions, and every farmer his individual problems to store-hous- solve. ; Fattening Hogs in Montana. Bulletin 37 of the Montana station says: Fattening hogs is most economically accomplished by finishing in the pea lot or grain stubble. The pigs should be turned on the peas as soon as the pods are filled and the peas begin to harden. It sufficient pigs are used, say ten per acre, hot a pea will be wasted and even a portion of the vines consumed. One acre of peas, producing at tho rate of 35 bushels per acre, which is an average for Montana, will provide a fattening ration for ten 150 to 200 pound hogs for from 40 to 45 days. Climatic conditions permit the pea harvesting by even as lats as December This pls is one of the easiest fatteninglymeththese animals will hardly prove ef- ods now practiced in Montana. The fective. The point is that while we area over which peas can be grown are making the poultry house secure is very large and the time of foragwe should make it so secure that no ing so extended by favorable weatner loss can be occasioned by these ani- that the product need not all be marketed at one time. In order, however, mals. Incidentally we might criticise the to make the best use of forage condi-- . practice of many poultry owners leav- tions, winter litters must be raised. ing the doors and windows of their Pigs from spring litters do not reach houses open during the summer a large consuming capacity soon nights, with no protection whatever. enough to take advantage of the early This was the case with the man that forage. Both late fall and early lost the White Leghorn cock. A door spring litters should be raised in and window made of inch mesh wire order to get the most out of the foods would have been entirely effective in and the market conditions. keeping out animals, even rats. The writer has used this wire and has found it very strong and durable. It is not expensive and there is no reason why it should not be extensively used. Where there are young chicks, this wire should be used to keep out rats. Rats become very destructive of chicks after they once get a taste of chicken. On the other hand rats will frequently live on a farm for years and never touch a chick. It is largely a question of forming a habit. When rats once get the taste for spring chicken, a relentless war will have to be waged upon them. At one time the writer had a great deal of trouble in this respect. The rats got so they would attack a chick of almost any size, and it was not unusual to find in the morning a half grown chick killed and partly eaten by the rodents. One day the fowls were making a fuss and the writer hurried to find the cause. A big rat had a chicken by the leg and was pulling it under a broken board in the floor. In such cases it will sometimes he found necessary to use poison. Electric paste of some make has always proven the most effective in the experience of the writer. But it is better to so construct the poultry house that no rats or other animals of any size can get in. This can be done in various ways. Cement always makes a good floor and prevents rats getting in from that point Where a board floor is to be used, it should be so far above the ground that the rats can find nothing to stand on in their attempts to gnaw a hole through the boards. Rats never attempt to cut their way into a building from the outside, and this point may well be left unguarded. The trouble is that most floors are put within a few inches of the ground, or else cross beams and foundation stones are so carelessly placed that the rodents find an abundance of support in their operations. Brag is a good dog, but seldom worth the value of a license. half-grow- Either large beads or rings may be used in this trick, which is of classic origin, as it was performed long ago by Greek jugglers. Prepare beforehand by getting two ribbons exactly alike and the same length; double each so the ends come together; tie the ribbons at the folds with a thread exactly the same color. Slip on the rings and give two of the spectators the ends to hold. They will believe that each is holding the ends of the Have them two different ribbons. hold the ribbons slackly, and then ask each of them for the ends they hold and exchange with them the ends they before held. Take hold of one of the rings at the centre, break the thread that holds the ribbons and slip off the rings. Telling Drawn Cards. clever way is here given in which to discern one or more drawn cards: Turn unperceived the bottom card of a pack face upward; then let several of the .company drew a card. Reverse Predatory Animals. Could a census be taken of the fowls lost by the ravages of animals of prey the results would be truly astonishing. In the newer settled sections of the country forest animals are so persistent in their attempts to get at the poultry that the raising of chickens is frequently discontinued. One would hardly expect to hear of large losses from the ravages of coons, weasels and minks inside of the limits of Cook county, Illinois, yet such losses are frequently reported. The writer knew of a neighbor who lost a big white Leghorn cock. The animal had entered the hen house at night, selected the largest bird obtainable and had carried it off, climbing a post and walking along a board fence eight feet high. Indications pointed to a coon as the mischief doer, but it was not thought probable that a coon was In that vicinity. However, the next day another neighbor shot a coon in the neighborhood and the case was proven. Another man living in a Chicago suburb told the writer that some wild animal had destroyed his whole flock. He got through the wires one night and killed a part of the flock. The man the next day made everything secure, as he supposed; but that night the animal dug a burrow under the walls of the house, got in and killed the rest of the flock. A weasel was suspected. This goes to show that a little precaution against n Breeding Age for Swine. When size Is desired in the boar and sow they should not he bred too early. One year is probably young enough to permit them to be bred in that case. If a sow is not bred till she is a year old she will have obtained a good growth, and will be of good size and vigorous at the time she produces her first litter, at sixteen months of age. Her weight at that time, if a Poland-Chin- a or Berkshire, would be in excess of 400 pounds, perhaps 500. A sow will generally produce a better litter the second time than the first,' if she is mature at the first breeding time. Many such sows have proved to be good breeders up to ten years of age. The rule of using only young sows for breeding purposes is followed by many, but is not to be commended. It gives early maturity, but seems to decrease the stamina. Dairying in New York. to the Department of Agriculture there were in New York state last year 448 creameries and 193 establishments making both butter and cheese. The product of butter was over 59,000,000 pounds and of cheese over 124,000,000 pounds. The increase in butter over the census year was 20,000,000 pounds; but there was a decrease of 2,000,000 pounds of cheese. A good many establishments in the state are making both butter and cheese. According A. Oemler: can The cauliflower never become a vegetable of universal cultivation, for the. reason that it will not succeed if far removed from the moisture and the saline atmosphere of its native locality, the sea coast, unless Indeed, the required moisture can be supplied by irrigation. Erfurt, in the interior of Germany, produces perhaps the finest cauliflowers of the European continent. They are grown between open ditches or small canals, on lands so narrow as to admit of water being thrown by hand from each marginal ditch to the middle of each "land. |