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About The west shore. (Portland, Or.) 1875-1891 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 1, 1886)
THE WEST SHORE. 007 weight of his present, or his voioo, to- accept his Bhare of this lodgment of the power for good That is help, fulness; it is moral activity in behalf of the common weal. In God's univoree, none of these things are lost; not a doedj not an influence; not a whispered prayer for that which is right 1 ara not saying that all men will, but that every man cnn, rise to the point of an interest ed factor. Men eduonted to beer halls and dog fights and the lower kinds of amusement, will not rise to the level of these finer things. They have no dosire to do so. It takes the touch of the Infinite to make such mon something else than sodden, egoistic, lower forms of life. The Greek culled man anthrojwa, one with face turned upward. And what shall be the uso of all our wealth and wealth-creating inventions, all our civiliza tion, nil our arts and sciences, if these do not turn man's face upward and creato a higher range of persoual feel ing, ambition and action for the race. Not only are we entitled to luxury and culture and refinement, but we should have a high spirit of beneficence, guided by jus tice, and justico adorned with the garlands of a judi cious benevolence. Under this our charities should be multiplied, that we may lift from the weak and uufor tuuate a portion of that woight of Cano which crushes into dumb despair halt the human race. Horn of such a spirit, will come honor and honesty and courage and self denial and modesty and charity, qualities which en large their influence from the fireside to the neighbor hood, until they permeate the community, and publio sentimont will at Inst become imbued with the spirit of personal worth. 0. 1). Caiii.Ihi.r. In the struggle of lifo is it not well for the farmer to pause a few moments to consider whore ho is drifting, what he is working himself and his family so hard for, what he expects to accomplish in the end? We can name a hundred Montana farmers to-day, who have, in a mancr, worked themselves and their families to death. True they are not literally doad, only dead on their feet, as it were, dead to evory enjoyment but making money, and are candidates for the graveyard ore the primo of life is reached. Yes, we can name a hundred farmers, who, with their families, have worked and are working every spark of ambition out of their lives, simply to get rich. How rich they cannot tell, for the man has never yet lived who has accumulated enough. Many who slave and toil thus have obtained a competency, obtained at a cost of every comfort that goes to make lifo pleasant, at a cost of their strength and ambition, and even now had they the dis;osition and capacity to enjoy themselves, have not the health to do so. This is a mistake. The chief object of every farmer should I the comfort of his family. His home should I his Mecca. It should l)e his palace; and while it is well to practice economy, and to impress such habits on rising generations, it will not do to enslave one's self or the members of his house, hold. There is nothing in wealth to justify it There is more in a contented mind, a pleasant and hnppy borne than in all the gold of Ophir. Ilu$lanlmtin. The .-liriitr Milituire gives ns somo particulars con cerning a toredo cannon ball invented by Captain Coud ray, of the navy. Four yean ago the captain presented his projectilo to tho authorities, who at onoe ordered ox. perimonts to be made with it at (laves, near Loriont We are told that for some time ptutt the luodual iuvuuUr has boon engaged in manufacturing his projootlo under the supervision of a spociid commission named by the Minister of Marino. At first it was found that all pro jectiles discharged at tho mean velocity of one hundred and fifty meters a second rebounded ou striking tho ol jeot at which they wore fired. Time was afforded to Captian Coudray to improvo his invention, and it seems that, iu spite of such hard striking ou the part of tho uivinnt, he has succeed! in curing the defect com plained of. Tho torpedo cannon Imll, wo are assured, now travels at the rate of three hundred meters a second, and instead of rebounding on striking a ship, glides along its side, and never loses contact until it explodes. The last cannon balls constructed contain a charge of forty pounds of guncotton, although twenty-five pounds is said to be sufficient to blow up tho biggest vessel. It is stated that these projectiles can bo fired to a much great er distanco than tho Whitehead. A project is on foot for tunneling tho " (treat Divide." The divide is tho llocky mountains, and tho tolnt pro. posed to 1h) tunneled Is under Gray's peak, which riws no less than fourteen thousand four hundred and forty, otio feet nlsivo the level of tho sea. At four thousand four hundred and forty-one feet Wow tho xnk, by tun neling from east to west for twenty-five thousand feet direct, communication would lo oened between tho val. leys on the Atlantic slope and those on the I'scifiu side. This would shorten the distance between Denver, iu Colorado, and Halt Lake City, in Utah, and consequently the distanco hotweeu the Missouri river, say at HI Iouis, and Han Francisco, nearly three hundred miles; and there would 1m little more required iu the way of ascending or descending or tunneling mountains. Tart of the work has already been accomplished. The country from the Missouri to tho foot of tho Jlnckli-a rises gradually iu rolling prairie, till an elevation is reached to five thoinuuid two hundred feet above the sea level. The llockies (hem. selves rise at various places to height exceeding eleven thousand feet Of the twenty most famous pannes, only seven are Mow ten thousand feet, while five are upward of twelve thousand feet, ami one, the Argentine, is thirteen thousand feet Of the seventy-three iniM irtnut towns in Colorado, only twelve are Mow five thousand feet, tan are over ten thousand feet, and one is fourteen thousand feet I'ssses st such s height are, of course, a Iwrrier to ordinary traffic, and the railways from the At Untie to the I'sellc have, in consequence, made detours of hundreds of miles, leaving rich plains lying on the wes tern sloiiee of the great snowy range pmclieally cut off from D"iiver ami the markets of the Knt. The point from which it is proposed to tunnel U siity miles due west from iMivcr, and slthoogh one of the highest aks, it is by far the narrowest in the great Uck Una of the American (umiiwutHriimliJte Amrrirtin.