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About The Sunday Oregonian. (Portland, Ore.) 1881-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 1, 1908)
- - - - - - - - THE SUXTAY ' OREGOyiAy. ' PORTLASt?. NOVEMBER 1. 19Q8. : ' inn i ' II urn K w ifi m id mm iuTciles or the U&7 MA o -TOT? KIVCTEDIAIIC WMIOT 111YT MMTO .WXfiS&f 2. r7 J Editor Noi. "On Vvernmnt Ordn" 1 a rtes of interacting atorlva that arc Inndf.-.tf in th of a formerly wen- known hut now rertred Bfrrst -service officer. of Jor.j and faithful rvice. Now that h im off duty. lie ha ben Induced to tell rf the mora drajnatlc of hi many fac:nattor expr.eiic In ome there l the love emint. In others there . mye- tery. and all breathe a aptrit 01 aawniar. 'T PT HAS often been my fortune to tart rut on some Insignificant matter and stumble Into something big una Important by merely keeping my eyes open and my wits about me, remarked Captain Dlrkson aa we wanned our hands before tha cheerful fire tn hl anus den and listened to tha howllnn storm without. Tha adventure 1 am now going to relate happened In one of the larger Southern cities. I had been rent down there on aome minor matter, tho real nature of which Is Immaterial. It a a case that required time and aenrecy. For thla reason I did not take quarters at a hotel, but searched out & quiet boarding-house on a side street, where I secured a room and excellent table board at a, figure surprisingly reason able. "There were three young men besides myself In the house. The family con sisted of a gentleman and his wife. If I had searched the city over I could not have found & place more completely suited to my necessities. I pretended that I represented a Northern wood working concern and that I was In the South to buy . timber lands. This char acter wss easily borne out. as 1 was often out of the city, and at such times I save It out that I waa looking over tracts of timber. "The city, like many of those In the Pouth. possessed a large negro popula tion, and It was a strange thing to me when I first went there to see negro shanties sprinkled along the best resi dence streets wherever there was a low place or a bayou, several of which wound about through the downtown districts. The place where 1 boarded was a small brick house, one of a block, all of the same design, and Just between It and town was a frame building that was occupied by a negro family. I learned that this was a spite-house, built by the owner of the adjoining lot as a matter of annoyance to the owner of the fcricR Mock, against whom he eherishel an old grudge. "Some days after my arrival, the lady with whom I boarded announced one even ing, when we came in for supper, that the negro family was moving out of the cot tage and that she Relieved It was going to he torn down. In this last she was mistaken, for next morning when I went to town I noticed workmen repairing the shanty. "1 gave the matter no further thought for several days. One night I noticed smoke Issrting from the chimney of. the litue cottage and on closer Inspection I saw the windows were fitted with fine lace curtains and there was a lock of ex pensive make upon the front door. That Hlght I casually asked my landlady about her new neighbors. She seemed surprised, and told me she did not know any one had moved Into the 'house. Women are naturally curious, and the next night at supper she waa in a flutter of excitement. She said the people next door must have moved In during the night: that none of the neighbors had seen their furniture de livered and. although she had watched the house all day, she hadn't seen a. soul about It and no sign of life except the smoke she had noticed coming from tho chimney. "At the breakfast table the next morn one of the boys, trho had been out late the night before, said he had seen a private carriage drawn by two handsome bays, and with a driver In fur coat and top-hat, top before the door of the humble little cottage. He nad been some distance away and the vehicle had paused but a. moment. Just long enough to allow two persona to Copernican Theory of the Universe Is in Danger Its Soundness Attacked by the Korcshans, Who Declare Karth Is Hollow Shell. BI J. I- JONES F3W people understand what a won derful science astronomy is. If they did they -would not take so much Interest in trifling worldly matters Ilk., residential elections. They would all become star-gazers. The system at present accepted Is called the Copernican-, being named after Coper nicus, a Prussian astronomer who Invent ed or -worked K out about 400 years ago. The theory Is the sun Is the center of the solar system and that the earth Is one of a number of planets revolving round It through space In orbits of immense di mensions. The earth m placed at a dis tance of over 90.000.OPO of miles, thun mak ing Its annual circuit cover nearly eoo.OuO.- of miles. This whole earth la thus reduced to a mere speck. Invisible to the naked eve from tho-tuore distant planets. And It files at the rate of nearly 2.000.XI miles a day. a speed many times greater than that of a rifle bullet or cannon ball. The moon Is a smaller body. 0 miles In diameter, and Is supposed to be frisky enough to keep up with the earth In Its race wnd waits around It 13 revolutions a year In an orbit of Its own at a distance of i'.'1"!) miles. This Is not the worst. The fixed stars re tutpoi- to be off at such lmmere distances that the position of the earth at any part of lis great circuit makes no deference in their1 apparent places in the heavens. They always occupy the same relative positions. That Is the reason thev are called fixed stars. But they are not so very well fixed after all. for according to this theory, they also are Immense bodies revolving In orbits of their own. Our own- solar svstem. including the sun and all the planets, is flying in a mystic circle around Alcyone, one of the group of the l'leiades. The distance is so vast and the spr-ed eo terrific, that we do not know anythir-g about It and would not know we were moving at all if we did not read books on astronomy. And the end Is not yet In ight. for this great center Alcyone Is moving itself around another center and so on ad Infinitum. 9o we see there is nothing In all this universe securely fixed except It be the "principles" of the different political parties. Let us hang onto them. This theory of astronomy is accepted by the whole civilized world. It is taught in the schools, colleges and universities. It is supped to be believed In as firmly as the Mohammedan believes In the Koran or the Christian In his Bible. But now there comes a new and terrible kind of people called Koreshans and declare that It la not true at all. that it Is all a pipe dream and that the Copernlcans have wheels In their beads. They say that such a theory Is absurd. Incredible, ridiculous, unreasonable and unscrtptural. We ruay recall in this con nection that the Roman Catholic Church denounced It as unscriptural In the first alight. It had driven away instantly. : Tills had happened aome time after 1 o'clock. "My landlady was especially Interested In her invisible neighbors, often talked of them, and speculated on who might live there and why they should preserve auch secrecy about their movements. She of fered many wild suggestions In solution of the mystery, but none of them seemed to fiil the bill, and there seemed to be no way to teil whether the one or the other or none of them was right. The thing finally got on my nerves, and I never passed the cottage without looking at U and wishing I might be allowed to see through its walls. "I waa called out of town about this time, and didn't think of the cottage again until my return. My train arrived after midnight, and I caught an owl-car up town, whioh put me off within two -blocks of my boarding-house. The streets were deserted and the echo of my foot-fall rant loud and clear in the still streets. Some distance ahead I noticed a. man slouching along. looking about with that nervous, stealthy air of a man who fears he Is being followed. This attracted my attention, and I walked slowly so I would not overtake" nlm. I wanted to aee where he was going, and for some reason the thought of the nivsterlous house popped Into my mind. We were on the opposite side of the street from the house, but at the nearest corner he crossed, and I had a fairly good view of his face under the street lamp. He was evidently a for eigner, but I could not make out the na tionality. He wore a heavy brown beard and dark goggles. For a moment he paused In front of the little cottage. I stopped in the shadow of a building and watched him. After looking carefully in every direction he stepped up on the porch and the door opened to admit him before he had knocked. This looked interesting, and I decided to .vatch the house for a while and see if any others went tn. "There was a vacant house directly across the street, and I slipped into the side yard and took a position in the heavy shadow cast by the building. I had a fine view of the front of the cottage. Smoke was pouring out of Its chimney, but there was no light visible at any of Its windows. "I did not have to wait long. Scarce ly had I taken my position when an other man entered the cottage. He was nicely dressed, but I did not get to see his face. He wore a long or-ercoat and had the collar turned up about his ears. "A little after this a carriage turned Into the street. It drove directly to the cottage and stopped. A lady, heavily veiled, accompanied by a gentleman, alighted from it and entered the shan ty. In every Instance the door had swung open before the visitors knocked. Their coming had been ex pected. In a short time another man entered the cottage. He limped per ceptibly, and carried a package of some kind under his arm and a big paper sack In one hand. These mat ters looked interesting, so I decided to wait and watch for developments. No one else came. "The carriage had driven away as soon as the occupants had alighted, and I felt sure It would return. I looked at my watch, and was surprised to find it was a few minutes of 3 o'clock. The waiting was beginning to tell on me and I was suffering for sleep. I yawned a time or so and was thinking of going to my room when I heard the carriage returning. "About the same time a messenger boy came skimming noiselessly down the pavement on a bicycle. I hailed him softly, and called him Into the shadow of the building, and asked him if he did not want to make a couple of dol lars. 'Sure.' he replied. "I told him to hide himself and fol low the carriage when it drove away, reporting hack to me at an appointed place where it went. I gave him a dollar In advance and promised him place and excommunicated Its advocates: but the Copernlcans routed the Catholics and compelled them to accept this theory as science. The Koreshans declare that It Is not science at all. but a bug story or clum aily devised fable, that it has never been proven and cannot be, and that the most eminent astronomers admit that It Is only a theory. They say that they have discovered the true form and function of the earth, that it is a great hollow cell, with the atmospheres, physical heavens and heavenly bodies n the In side, and that we, the people, live on the Inside, on the solid shell that In closes It like an ecg shell. This shell is the firmament of the earth and 3 eternal and immovable. The whole universe is within the shell and constitutes a great cosmic battery. The sun is In the center, a focalization of forces that perpetuate themselves. There are three atmospheres. This lower atmosphere extends about 1000 miles up. Above that is a hydrogen atmosphere, ami within and above that a more eth ereal atmosphere encircling the central sun. The central sun is not visible through the atmospheres, tmft hemisphere of It Is dark, the other light. One-half the In side of the earth Is thus always In dark ness. The sun revolves with a slightly oscillating motion. The light of the bright side 1 projected and focalized on the surface of the hydrogen atmosphere, then refocalixed on tho surface of the lower atmosphere, and this last focaliza tion Is the visible sun. moving round the heavens like a great searchlight. The whole works, sun, moon and stars, are in the Inside, like the works of a watch and answer the same purpose of measuring time, days, moons, years, dis pensations and greater cycles In eternal procession. I cannot attempt to explain Living Without Phones No Longer an Easy Matter In These Days of Rash. New York Times. Now that Paris has been deprived by a fire of its telephone service, the city Is heartily to be congratulated on the fact that Its service was extremely bad. Had It been better the present situation of the Parisians -would be more desperate than it is, for they would have come to depend upon the telephone much more than any of them except their humorous paragraphers and cartoonists, have ever been able to do would have come to depend upon It In almost every relation of public and prl-ate life as have the New Yorkers, for Instance, and In a hardly less degree the Inhabitants of every American city, town and village, and of a not very small minority of American farms. Kven in Paris, however, the burning out of the great central station has so Interfered with the conduct cf business two more if he executed the commis sion without attracting the attention of the persons tn the carriage or of tile driver. "The vehicle had now paused before the little house, and no sooner had it stopped than the lady and gentleman came out and entered It. Immediately It drove away, the messenger boy fol- owlng it at a distance on his wheel. 'In a few minutes one of the men came out and made off down the street. He was followed by the suspicious looking foreigner. After he had gone block or so the man with the limp stepped out and hobbled off. I let him get a good start and went after him. He had left his packages In the house. "For several blocks I followed mm. until he entered a small family hotel on a side street. After he had disap peared In the elevator I went In the office and engaged the clerk in con versation while I made a pretense of looking .up an address in the city dl- It all In one article, and I don't know it all. anyhow, but a duly qualified Kore shan can explain it all and knock out the alleged proofs of the Copernlcans as deftly as any political orator can demol ish the arguments of his honorable op ponent. I have studied the thing a little. Just for entertainment, to while away the lonesomeness of long nights, and I con fess that to my mind the .Koreshan is the more comfortable faith for a Winter evening. It Is more consoling to the spirit to be firmly planted In the Inside of a solid structure, than to.be flying madly through space, at a terrifio speed, to an unknown destination, on a little whirling ball, like a baseball or a marble. If a person should be spilled off along J ine zoaiac somewnere or into tne milKy way and left behind at the rata of 80.000 miles an hour, there would be no cUance to recover his remains. I know that the Copernican faith sits lightly on the conscience of its nominal believers. Not one In a million of them ever thinks of It or is aware that he has any faith or knowledge on the subject. But the Koreshans are coming, and there is. going to be a war between these two systems. It will bo a war In the heavens. A naval engagement or the fight be tween the Socialists and the Roman Catholics will be insignificant compared with this. There will be comets flying and stars falliiwr and meteors flashing and flaming. There will he a wreck of systems and a crash of worlds. The only safe place for timid people will be to crawl Into the Inside of the earth Into a bomb-proof hole. One thing Is certain, and that Is that If the Koreshans win out, Copernicus will be promoted to the Ananias Club and canonized as the biggest liar that ever lived outside of California. Corvallis. October 24. that the French capital Is described In the dispatches as "practically prostrat ed, commercially," and the suddenly In creased demand for means of transpor tation through the streets for men carrying messages that hitherto have been sent over the wires has thrown everything Into Inadequacy and con fusion. Many of us can remember the ante telephone days, and people hardly middle-aged can recall when telephones began to come into anything like gen eral use, even In the larger cities. Their employment was confined, long after they had ceased to be a novelty, to business houses. In homes, except of the rich, they were rare until only a few years ago. Now they are to be found In every residence of what is called U:e better sort, and the very though of getting along without them rectory. From the clerk I learned that the man of the limp was named How ard Brown. He didn't know anything else about him except that he was registered from Boston. - - "At the appointed time, I met the messenger boj He had done his work well. He gave me the street address where the carriage stopped, saying the man and woman had entered the house with a pass key, and the carriage had been put up in the barn at the rear. The driver then went into the house through a back door. "In the afternoon I looked up the house. It was a pretentious, stone veneered residence on a fashionable street I learned that Its occupants were foreigners, presumably French. Jules Lfevre was the man's name. He represented himself as a cotton buyer for an export firm In Paris, but Inquiry among the cottonmen showed he didn't buy much cotton He main tained an office uptown, but was rarely Is almost appalling to multitudes of peo ple who regard themselves as poor. That the telephone makes It as easy to talk to a person ten miles away as With one In the same room, marvelous as that would have seemed to the parents of most adults and to the grandfathers of all of them. Is now taken as a matter of course, but we can still experience a mild thrill of wonder when the distance reached by a gently spoken word covers the better part of a continent. Italian Law . Is Leisurely. New York Sun. Two little boys tn Rome were carry rying their father's pistol to a gun smith's to be mended. They quarreled, and the pistol was not so much out of order as to keep Pletro, aged 11, from shooting Paola, aged 8. The little fratricide was at once ar rested, the magistrate committing him to prison while they prepared to deal with the case. Unfortunately for Ple tro, the day on which he shot his brother wcjt September 18, 1870. On that day General Blxlo began his march toward Rome, and two days later he entered the city. The papal magistrates had ample ex cuse for forgetting Pletro, and Pletro was forgotten for about six months, when the newly appointed functiona ries took up his case. So deliberately did they take It up that It was not un til 1S82 that all the material for the prosecution had been completed. Then the abolition of the death pen alty In Italy caused a fresh delay. Three specialists were appointed to In quire into Pietro'a state of mind, and they disagreed, causing the affair to be shelved Indefinitely. There Is no one now who remembers at first hand the incident of the crime. Pletro Is 49, having spent 38 years In the house of detention, and once more efforts are to be made to bring him finally to trial. To s City Tree. Youth's Companion. Pad sifter ef the forest, can it be God meant that you should dream. Here where the enolesa traffic, like a stream. Flows ceaselessly? How lonely Is your fate! How doubly desolate Your pallid life, that seems a mockery I Around you all day long You hear the avrful city's thundering song You who should hear Only the winds, the clean winds, bluff and strong. That maks wild music as they shift and veer. But In the Summer noon perhaps you know How many a heart, sick with the clash of trade. Has watched your soothing shade. And dreamed an ancient dream of some lost glade Where quiet blossoms blow; And then your soul has known How eweet it Is to linger here alone, A glory in the desert of the streets Where the sun mercilessly beats! 'EDITED ttT VlSkT. In It. His bookkeeper, a young man of dark complexion, whom I Instantly recognized as the coachman, never seemed to have anything to do but smoke cigarettes and write letters he never mailed. These matters made me decide to sift the mystery of the little cottage to the bottom and see If I wouldn't find something of conse quence in the ashes. "For three nights I shadowed the house without seeing any one enter or leave it, although the continual outpour ing of smoke from the chimney showed that some one was always at home. The fourth night I again saw Lerevre and his wife and the three men I had observed on the former occasion enter the house. They arrived a little after I o'clock. "I telephoned for my friend, the mes senger boy, and when the house party broke up and the mysterious members began to slink away In the night I fol lowed the suspicious-looking foreigner. Will Offer the This Is One of the. Features By. F. WT. Fitzpatrlck. El who have battled so strenu ously for postal savings banks have been keeping tab on the newspapers for comment upon the Bank ers' Association doings at Denver, but through some inadvertence we had not seen The Oregonian until a marked copy was received here this morning from Mr. T. trook White, of the U. S. Reclama tion Service, now a fellow-citizen of yours. We owe, him our thanks, for your editorial on postal savings banks on September 30 ranks, in our estimation, away above and beyond any and all of the many favorable comments made by the so-called leading' papers, and even the great financial ones of the country that favor the movement. It Is clear, succinct, to the point, and covers the ground thoroughly, and with your per mission we shall ha-e It reprinted with credit to The Oregontan. of course, and scattered to the four corners of the coun tryand to all Intermediate points as one of the best bits of reading matter we have In our campaign for postal sav ings Banks. A postal savings bill has been before Congress regularly every session for seemingly aeons of time: Congressmen come here, particularly from the West, pledged to rts support and enthusiastic in Its favor, but their enthusiasm soon dwindles and the bills find their way into a capacious but well-crammed pigeon hole marked "Postal Savings." But the movement Is gaining strength withal, and, Allaih willing, It Is only a question of a little while now when we will have it, spite of banking opposition and cajoling. To look for approval or support from the Bankers" Association Is a good deal like expecting contributions to and moral support of a temperance movement from a convention of brewers. It Is the bank ing Influence that has kept 'postal sav ings so long in limbo, and yet it Is legis lation that would help them tremen dously, for it would put vast sums Into circulation that now they never see or touch, and It would accustom people to banking and give them a confidence In these institutions that is noticed chiefly by ita absence under present conditions. The very greatest benefit postal sav ings would be to us Is the facility, the wheat we might call the temptation to us to save money. We are a most prod igal people, -wasteful of our resources, rutnless devastators of the great nat ural riches to which we have fallen heir and scandalously uneconomical In our mode of living. What is the result? Ninety-six per cent of our merchants fall In business at some time or other cT.&g&CW and got the messenger boy on the trail of the gentleman of the big overcoat. "My man gave me a long chase. He traversed many streets, cutting from side to side and back again and acting In ev ery way like a criminal who seemed to fear he was being followed. It required all my skill In shadowing to prevent him from discovering I was watching him. On one occasion be almost caught me. He turned a corner and I had stopped to allow him to get some distance away. I could hear the ring of his footsteps for a while, and then all noise ceased. He had either stopped or entered a build ing. I was afraid to peer around the corner lest he should see my. head. Some thing prompted me that he was coming back, and I slipped Into . an alleyway between two buildings. It was well I had done so, for I had scarcely concealed myself when .the man came sneaking around the corner like a vagrant cat, doubling on his track. He passed al most In arm's length of me and dodged Into a stairway that entered the build ing at the side of which I was hid. After making sure that he did not leave the building by some back stairway, I went to the appointed place to receive the messenger boy's report. His man had gone directly to one of the best hotels of the city and had retired. He was registered under the name of James Whltcomb. New York City. "My mind was now made up to find out something about the mysterious lit tle cottage and the Invisible persons who lived in It. "That afternoon I looked over the sur roundings of the cottage both from the street and from the side window of my boarding house. The shanty was raised on brick piers and the space be tween them was Inclosed with trellls work. It abutted directly on the walk beside my boarding house, the cottage serving as the dividing fence for Its length. This gave me an Idea, "About midnight I removed a section of the trellis-work and crawled under the cottage, armed with a sharp chisel. It was the night for the queer charac ters to assemble. With great caution 1 cut a tiny hole through the floor, under the back room. Just large enough to determine if the room was carpeted, a matter on which depended the success of my plan. Of this I was reasonably certain, for the house appeared to b well furnished. My surmise was correct, and I enlarged the hole sufficiently to allow me to hear all that transpired In the room. I could hear each of the. rhree men as they arrived, but beyond a curt word of greeting they did not talk. They appeared-to be watting for some one. I surmised that it was Lefevre. He must be; the leader. "When the carriage arrived I fairly held my breath, for I felt Intuitively that I would now learn the secret of the little house and of Its visitors and occupants. "Lefevre acknowledged the greeting of the others curtly and then began. In excellent French: " "We are all here. Let us get to work.' "And to work they went with a will, first one making reports and then an other; one reading a letter, the others commenting on It, Lefevre dominating the meeting as if the others were chil dren. As. I listened my heart began to beat like a force-pump until I was afraid H would be heard by the six persons In the room. It did not take me long to hear enough, and I crawled out and set off for the police station on a run. "The night captain and desk sergeant were iplaying seven-up when I burst in on them, hot and disheveled, and they looked up at me a bit suspiciously. The tale I told them almost mad a their hair stand on end. They hastily summoned the patrolmen from the nearby wards and In less than 30 minutes we had every avenue of escape from the little cottage guarded by blue-coated officers. "I had given them descriptions of all the persons within the shanty, and had Temptation to Save Money of a Postal Savings Bank; Charge of Paternalism Is Unjust. I and but 3 out of every 10M of our mer chants and business men have as much as $5000 at the age" of 65. The art of saving la almost a lost one with us. Our banking friends prate about "ex perience" In postal savings. Why, bless you, we are the only civilized nation that has not postal savings, though we have recently given it to some of our "colonies' a queer, an anomalous term In a republican form of government. The Knglish postal savings banks have doubled in their deposits and in their assets since 1S90. Canada wouldn't give up her postal savings for anything; Japan already has 1,000,000 depositors. The real milk In the cocoanut is that the banks fear that postal savings would compete with them and cut them out as being safer and more accessible depositories. As a matter of fact, postal savings actually fosters private savings banks. In France, postal sav ings was instituted In 1881 and may be said to- have given birth to private savings banks, of which in 1904 there were 550, with 14fil branches, doing business with nearly 8.030.00.1 deposi tors. Spite of postal savings there Is a private savings bank In England to every 3000 people; In France one to 6000; In Sweden, one to 1250, and so the figures run, while in this country we have but one savings bank to 67,000 peoplel That Is the figure for the en tire country, but remember that in 18 Southern states there are but 120 sav ings banks, and in all the Southern and Western .and Pacific states there are but 700, or less than one bank per 100,000 Inhabitants. Not one person out of 600 families has the opportunity of patronizing a savings bank except at grand personal discomfort and trouble. Do you wonder at people keeping money In mattresses and under the front stoop? What a godsend it would be to have every village postoffice a bank and whose soundness is vouched for by a guarantee that has never been repudiated, and means wherever it Is placed Just one hundred cents on the dollar, the guarantee of the United States. They tell us that private savings banks will meet every demand made upon them and will be located where they are needed. It may be news to our banking friends that the country over our average citizen has to travel 30 miles or more to reach a private savings bank! In panicky times peo TIe, particularly your foreign-born citi zens, beg the postal officers to store their savings for them, money that they probably have taken out of the private savings bank. It is almost invariably that same class of people who start the "runs" on the private savings hanks, perhaps Incipient alarms, but that often lead to great national tribu lations. Last year nearly $72,000,000 in postal orders was transmitted to Eu rope. Much of that went Into foreign postal savings Institutions, and there aro banks today here that make a spe cautioned thorn particularly to let each victim get far enough away before ar resting him so that tho others would not become alarmed. I wanted to bag the entire outfit and not have ny alips or blunders. "We caught the three men and Mr. and Mrs. lefevre without difficulty. Only the bearded foreigner showing fight. The officers overpowered him before ho could use the pi.ol and knife with which he was armed. Mr. and Mrs. Lefevre were indignant at what tliey termed a base Insult. a "The most dangerous part of the art venture was still before us. ' There were two persons now In tho house, a woman, and a man with a voice like the roar of a waterfall and evidently of gigantlo build, for he shook tho little house to Its foundation when he walked across the floor, as I had learned in my spying beneath it. I had thought a good deal over the best method of effecting their capture, and finally decided to employ again my friend, the messenger boy, I summoned him and gave him his In structions. I bad learned the name of the man while listening under the h?ui--e, and I addressed a dummy letter to liliu, which the boy was to deliver. "Two policemen and I took positions on the porch and the messenger noy knocked at the door. It was opened hy the woman, who peered through a env.'l crack suspiciously.. When the boy cnlled her by name and exhibited the letter she became excited and Rllowed the door to swing wide open as she took the en velope with trembling hands. "This was our opportunity. One or the officers seized her and clapped a big hand over her mouth. The captain and I rushed into the house, our vs volvers held ready fc- Instant use. The front room opened directly on the porch. We had made some disturbance, and a we crossed the threshold a bass voice bellowed: "What Is it. Katrlna?" We flashed our electric lamps toward the corner from which the voice came. Sit ting up in bed, a large revolver in either hand, was the most powerful specimen of a man I have ever ,een outside c-r a sideshow. He was bearded like a Hon. and the huge muscles of his arms showed like knots through the thin sleeves of his night shirt. "He seemed to divine the trouble. Quick as thought both his revolvers flashed. One bullet sent the capwui's cap sailing from his head and the other spat by my eAr uncomfortably closr. Before he could fire again our revolvers had replied, and he sank back groan ing upon the bed, staining it red with his life's blood. "We searched the house, and what we found made us glad the aflair had not terminated more seriously. In the back room were enough explosives to . have blown the cottage and every building in the neighborhood into the middle of next year. There were bomlw of all sizes and shapes, all of masterful workmanship. There were bottles and Jars and cans of explosives of the most powerful kinds. There were documents and letters which showed we had cap tured the most dangerous company of anarchists that had ever Infested this country. "The man we -had killed was an es caped Russian convict, for whose arrest a large reward was outstanding. The woman was his wife. There was also a price upon her head. Lefevre was a French terrorist, well known to the Paris police. The three others were all no torious criminals, men whose names made crowned heads tremble and thrones to totter. "Among the papers we captured in the cottage and at the rooms of the others was correspondence relating to several contemplated assassinations of European sovereigns. There was evidence, also, of a cunningly conceived plot to murder a certain high official of our own Govern ment who was soon to visit this particu lar city while on a tour -of the South." (Next week Captain Dickson will relate the story of "The Affair of the Iron PH." cialty of sending money to foreign postal savings banks for foreign-bom people. Our private savings banks are patron ized by the well-to-do. The average de posit is $433. In the average postal sav ings bank of other countries it is $(t6. A class of people is reached by postal sav ings that never thinks of saving a penny here. What we want Is a banking sys tem for the plain "peepul." In all our land we have hut 1319 savings banks, with" 8.037.000 depositors. Judging by w hat other nations have done. If our. 60.() postofflces were made savings depositor ies, too, we would soon have 27.400.000 de positors, and within a very short time of their organization the billion and a half of money now in the hands of the peo ple, and much of it in hiding, would find Its w-ay through those postal repositories into the private banks, and thus into clr-: culation. They prate to us that the thing is "pa ternalistic." Why not? Can anything that a government of the people, by the p?ople, for the people, does for the peo ple be dubbed "paternalism," in the op problous significance of the term? Not only would the people be benefited in-dlvlduallj-, but likewise would it re dound to the welfare of the Govern ment or of the people as a whole. In vest an individual with a selfish Inter est In the maintenance of the Naiton's credit, and although he may have been careless and Improvident, he would at once bo transformed into a conserva tive and dutiful citizen, charged . with the Inspiring obligation of voting In telligently upon all questions affect ing the well-being, the stability and the perpetuity of the Government. It would bring to him a keener realization of the fact that between him and tho Gov ernment there had been established a species of partnership. Imposing upon him peculiar obligations which he would be prompted to respect. With that would come the elevation of- the standard of citizenship, the cementing of the ties that bind the people to the Government, the strengthening of the public credit and the ultimate better ment of all concerned. Is it not rea sonable to believe that If the masses of the people were Induced Into greater thrift and saving In their habits, they would be more likely to be contented and happy; and if their hard-earned savings could be placed in the hands of the Government, upon whose soundness they could rely. In which they have abso lute confidence and In the welfare of which they are so deeply concerned, they would come to a better, a higher realiza tion of the duties they owe to the coun try and to each other? Washington, D. C. Prescott, Ontario, has become an ent?r ln port for American coal. One firm landed 300.000 tons there during the navi gation pcrltxl of layt year. A lai'ne un loading and loading plant hai been installed.
