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Show Mrs. Piper, a disciple of 'Prophet Dowie, has had her leg lengthened three and a half inches by. prayer, so a Boston dispatch tells us. That is. not so much. Dowie prayers usually pull the leg three feet or more, says the Catholic Union and Times. Harper's "Weekly suggests a new national holiday, holi-day, one to commemorate the date of the framing the national constitution. It conies too late. We have had a war with Spain and other trifling matters which make the constitution look like the-dunce the-dunce at school. William J. Bryan has settled the estate of Philo S. Bennett, and settled it so that no charge lurks b.-hind that "sealed letter" over which there was contest. The proceeds will be distributd to edu cational and charitable institutions. Xow let -verybody hold his tongue about Bryan. . Archbishop Ireland and Father Lambert were army chaplains in the civil war and both njen afterwards attained prominence in the church md literature. But neither got into the limelight so suddenly as the old priest from Kansas who was i elected national chaplain of the G. A. 11. at their I encampment in Denver. His name is. Rev. J. F. ! Leary of Chapman, Kan. I . ' I In Norway on pay days saloons ate closed and savings banks open until midnight. Servant girls hire for half a year at a time by contract at public pub-lic registry offices. There is a telegraph box on -.-very street car. One writes the message, puts on the right number of stamps, and drops it in the bos. Fanners can borrow money from the government gov-ernment at 3 per cent. The average wage earnings earn-ings are 5ss a year. There are more reindeer than horses, more sheep than cows. Xorway is a country others might wisely pattern after. Sew cases of yellow fever increase at Xew Orleans. Or-leans. The death of Sister Marie, at the Mount Carmel asylum, calls attention to the fact that the Catholic church has suffered quite severely during I-- the Psent sickness. Sister Marie was the second reiigieuse to die, and besides them the church has sustained the loss of its archbishop and Father 1 Green, one of its ablest priests in that city. In 1 the fact; of those facts, complaints are made that j Catholic priests neglect a public duty when they 1 preach other than .yellow fever sermons on Sun- I days. C alike the ministers, the priest finds his I vineyard in the hospital instead of in the pulpit. j : j A press dispatch states that "nearly 1.000 Epis- eoplians clergymen and laymen will next week I go into a 'retreat' from the" world and for four j days lead a communal, life in Chicago, much like j 'hat of monks in a cloister. The 'retreat' will be j the lower group of buildings at the University of j Chicago. The participants will be the delegates to I i16 twentieth annual convention of the Brother- 1 hood of St. Andrew. This great denominational fraternity numbers 18,000 members. The idea of the 'retreat' will be carried out consistently during I the four days the delegates will be in Chicago. They 1 vill- Tint. tipmccotiIt- li.-, .4T t il, - t i v.iiV yju. iUim lXiU worici, out thowi who wish may live so as to see no one except members of the brotherhood from Wednesday to Sunday evenings. The university authorities have furnished many of the lower group apartments with almost monastic simplicity." j Catholics cannot regard this Episcopalian ; "retreat" in no other light' than a hopeful sign j of that unity with Home which has been I ' the constant prayer of the last two pon- j tijI WTio can guess the doubts that may dis- 1 ixxrh tlie minds of serious men iu meditation over ? tlie welfare of their eternal salvation? Who can j I ' reckon ihe light that may illuminate conscience ; lid dirwt e fcoul to the. one , fold and the one "'V'1'd- Pfrrliups this is n too Iptiniistie vfcw of the proposal Episcopalian "retreat' r.t CLieaso, but at least wc may conclude that a "retreat" is a good way to -begin serious contemplations. The result may confidently be left to God. . ; . Headers of the Sunday Herald, many of them at least, do not begrudge the time spent over the most wonderful but impossible exploits of the great "Sherick Holmes." The same is A. Conan Doyle, and the English author certainly stumps all others in fiction of the impossible, not excepting Jules Verne. ... But there is another side to A. Conan j Doyle. He does not write fiction for the pure love j of fiction or for the same purpose that inspired Charles Dickens. Dickens novels aroused public sentiment against public abuses under government ' control, so strong that such abuses were greatly modified even if uet entirely" extinguished. Dickens Dick-ens was a thorn in the side of official British humbug hum-bug and graft. On the other hand some paragraphs para-graphs in. "Sherlock Holmes" strongly suggest that A. Conan Doyle is in the employ of the British state department, and is insidiously planning to make his readers prisoners to the proposed Anglo-American Anglo-American Alliance. For instance, this: "It is always a joy to meet an American, Mr. j Moulton, for I am one of those who believe that j the folly of a monarch and the blundering of a min- J ister in far-gone years will not prevent our chil- dren from being some day citizens of the same world-wide country under a llag which shall be a quartering of the 'Union Jack with the Stars and Stripes." , "Under a flag which shall be a quartering of the Union Jack with ihe Stars and Stripes T' at-cning your ureatn alter sucn speecn, what more natural than the vulgar exclamation, "Xow, wouldn't that eork you V But let those insinuations and suggestions of "Sherlock Holmes" appear more frequently and be digested along with the other matter in the story, and soon our tone of derision yields to the spirit of carelessness.. In a short time we may. be led to regard such proposed flag of the Union Jack and Stars and Stripes as a thing not humiliating but altogether lovely and American. Then Conan Doyle may laugh at the nonsense which made Anglo-Saxons out of the descendants of real Americans. |