Till; SL'AUAl Ur,UU.ilA.i, J uihai, H dX rlANY HAD WON utRrUL OO ldF LUCK VISIT THEM. no -w J I T P "GeNCKA: . - , s . : v2r j 1 . ... ll-,,- , ill " NINETEEN-THIRTEEN has been a lucky year. If yon don't believe it ask the British workman who picked op from a London gutter a strlns; of pearls worth more than $500. 600. Or inquire of the man in Chicago who, with but 45 cents in his pocket, received news that he had fallen heir to $20,000. And if neither of these instances sat isfies yon. torn bsck through the flies of the dally papers and read how pearls of price have been discovered in the embrace of lowly oysters; how dull, ugly pebbles. Ions forgotten, have sud denly been Imbued with rare beauty through the discovery that they were uncut diamonds: how a doctor woo "grubstaked" a luckless prospector be came part owner of a valuable mine: how employes, as an appreciation of faithful service, have been rewarded by large sams of money, and how lonely men have' died to leave vast fortunes to distant relatives who did not even know of the existence of their benefactors. With the coming of each New TeaT day most folks are prone to regard it as the failing of the curtain on what ever of ill fortune they may have had, and to look forward to the new tjrelvemonth with a hope for better luck and fairer fortune. Perhaps the most stupendous piece of luck that fell without warning dur ing the year was the finding of the pearl necklace in the London gutter. A firm of Parisian jewelers assembled the wonderful bauble, using in Its man ufacture 6 pearls of the finest luster, weighing 1250 grains. On July 16, while the bauble was en route from Paris to London by registered mail. It disappeared. Two months later, to the day, an English workman was plodding through Highbury, a northern district of Lon don. His heavy hrogans struck a little ball of paper. The workman stopped, looked and started to pass on. Then he saw that what appeared to be a bead had rolled from the paper. He picked up the little, package. Within were 68 of the pearls, with two loose pearls which bad not belonged to the original necklace. Hurrying to the nearest police sta tion, the workman surrendered his find. The pearls were taken to (Scotland Yard, where Max Mayer, the owner. Identified 'them. The workman received $50,000, the reward offered by the firm of Jew elers for the recovery of the gems. The death on hia little farm near Mantua. Itnly. in 1913 recalls one of the moat interesting pieces of luck which ever came to a iowly man. An nlbale Toscl was a Neapolitan beggar. He was as ragged and as worthless as any Italian mendicant who ever begged for alms. And like all of his class, was possessed of an lsatiable curiosity. In Naples, at the beginning of the nineteenth century. an eccentric Frenchman erected a monument which bora the inscription. "On Way 1 every year I have a golden head." It was such an lnserlpiton as might ba ex pected to raise to the highest pitch excitement and speculation among the Neapolitans. On the first day of May following the erection of the statue crowds gathered to see whether, by some mir acle, the head of the statue would turn to gold. But they were disappointed. Then the authorities, believing that the Frenchman had buried treasure beneath the statue, caused it to be torn down. Finding nothing, they had it rebuilt. But while Tosci basked in his rags in the warm Italian sunshine he fell John SAT! did you ever get reckless and give a New Tear's dinner to an assorted collection of petrified relations? Take it from me. dodging benzine buggies on the boulevard is sleepy work in comparison. Friend wife concluded it was up to us to squeeze a tew uncles and aunts Into our four by nine dining-room and throw turkey wings at them, so I coaxed my nervous system to behave and told Peaches to cut loose. She sat down and invited Uncle Peter Grant and Aunt Martha, Uncle Gregory Smith and Aunt Bessie. Then she went In, took another look at the dining-room and stopped. I invited Bud Hawley. his wife, Sybil, and Hop Hardy and explained to them that we would all have to sit edge-on at the table and get our meat cut in the kitchen, so as to avoid hitting each other on the funny hone, and it was so ordered. Hep arrived early. He always does. He generally breezes in with the in formation that four pages of Tango music are waiting for him in some hoof palace and he has to hurry away, but on this occasion be had conclud ed to see the fight to the finish. While we sat waiting for the bell to ring I had to tell him all about the rest of the cast. "Uncle Peter." 1 ex plained, "used to be a money-coaxer in Wall street in the palmy days be fore the fatheads turned if into a pea nut farm. He was one of those old ginks with mucilage on the mitts you couldn't drag the money away from him without tearing it Finally he got so rich that he used to trip and fall over the day's winnings when h tried to lock up shop in the evening. II then decided to build a fort around his rakeoff. so he grabbed his lid. shook day-day to the street, and dipped for the woods." "Let's have (3 bars rest on this Uncle Peter solo." Hep put in. "I rea lize that he's the man who invented money and then sat down hard on his invention, but why tease ourselves by walking around the mint when the gates are all locked?" "Hep. you give me a pain In the waist." I got back: "ever since you fell in love with Jessie Gray you've done nothing but stand around and throw the hammer at Uncle Peter. The fact that Jessie's Uncle William Gray and Peter Grant are ancient enemies doesn't give you the right to Jab the harpoon into my favorite uncle. What are you trying to do. cook up one of those Kentucky feuds Just to make good with Jessie?" "Nix on the feud thing." Hep laughed uneasily, "but you must remember. John, that Uncle William Gray was the author of a few fancy financial stunts in Wall street berore he crawled away into the high grass to cool off. Peter Grant wasn't the only cockoo on the curb in those days!" "Why. Uncle Peter put it all over Bill Gray every time they bumped." I went back. "Every time they clinched X'ncle Peter used to push Bill Gray un der the safe and hit him with the com- to pondering' upon the inscription of the statue across the street from fcls loafing place,. Gradually a solution of the puzzle came to him. and on one first day of May. at sunrise, he ap peared in the square with a pick and hivol. Carffullv noting where the shadow of the head on the monument fell, he beean digging. A few feet below the surface ho brought to ngm . .mall air-hel He shoved the satchel under his rags and sneaked to his home, where he found that the bag contained 5000. Twenty-eight years ago a young man who had been a world wanderer re turned to Ravenswood. W. Va. He gave to one of his woman relatives a dull pebble, assuring her that it was worth a good deal. She thought that he was merely teasing her and threw the pebble into the tray of her trunk, where it lay forgotten until January 4. 1913. when the woman fn rummaging through the old trunk came across It. She took it to a Jeweler, where the pebble was pronounced an uncut dia mond, worth about $r200. m A man down at the heel and Jing ling his last 45 cents in his pocket, called at the general delivery window of.tho Chicago city postoffice May 1 last and inquired for mail. To his surprise he was handed a letter which informed him that his father was dead and that he was heir to an estate worth more than $30,000. It was the first word the man had received from his home since he had run away aa a boy, 13 years before. Ten years ago a New York dentist hmry5 J wfve .'4? bination. Old Bill Gray is only an im itation financier. Whenever he lost two dollars he made the office boy Jab the hypodermic needle Into his shoulder in order to put strength enouKh in his arm to pay up. I'm wise to that old jojo. Every time he won eight dollars he used to rush out in to the street and faint, so as not to wear out his office floor. Don't unveil any Bill Gray stautes around me. Hep, or Til get critical." We clinched, but the bell saved ns. The members of our dinner party were arriving and the mad revel was on. Uncle Peter brought a friend with him the famous food expert. Doctor Smotherjoy. The Doctor is a high card with Uncle Peter. He is one of those old ginks with beady eyes and a license to hunt for germs, and everything he eats has first to give the countersign and then go through a written examination. He loves to display his scientific knowledge and put Latin crimps into low foreheads. Uncle Peter believes every word that leaves Doc Smotherjoy's face, but for my part I think he's an old Caraem bert At any rate, no sooner were we seat ed at the table than Doc parted his whiskers carefullyr coughed to attract attention, then picked up a little-neck clam on the end of bis fork and pro ceeded lo give it the third desree. The adulteration of food stuffs these dsys is being carried on to an extent worse than criminal." the old fluff began solemnly. "Ah, even here I see traces of sally-sllllc acid with was traveling: through Arizona. A "desert rat" prospector who had never made a "strike" In his life met the New Yorker and poured into his ears all the tales of hidden gold which the great American desert has produced. So that before the two parted the den tist had "grub-staked" the old pros pector on an agreement that he was to snare any striae mt mo ?:ac eat of Jify- borax-phosphos over here on this dam." v "Put a little tabasco on it and cut loose." suggested Bud Hawley. "Have a lemon," said Hep. "Squeeze It over the clams and make a wish." Uncle Peter and Uncle Gregory were the only ones at the table who seemed to take the doctor seriously. Uncle Peter listened with marked at tention, while Uncle Gregory glanced at his clams and shuddered. ' The doctor ate his unconcernedly. When the soup came on the Doc lifted a spoonful thoughtfully, then sloshed It slowly back into his palate, while the two old unkies eyed him nervously. "It's bullyon," whispered Uncle Peter, anxious to prove the soup's in nocence. "Booyon," corrected Aunt Martha In a stage whisper to Uncle Peter. "Here." said the doctor, examining his spoonful critically, "here are traces of hydrophosphates and about 10 per cent philharmonic acid." "I never eat soup." gurgled Uncle Greg, "because it's a waste of good space." The doctor said nothing more, but quietly surrounded. his soup. When the fish was served the doctor lanced over hie plate with his fork and said. "Hydrostatic acid with here and there symptoms of manganese germs and a few sulphide microbes." Uncle Gregory pushed his plate back with a sigh that was pitiful to hear. Peaches was now so nervous that her hands were doing a shaker duet, and thrre was a bright pink spot on each cheek. The others at the table, with the ex made. Then the doctor returned to his Long Island home and almost forgot his transaction. But January I, 1912, there came a ception of nervous old Uncle Gregory, paid not the slightest attention to Doctor Busyface. Even Uncle Peter threw away his germ fear after the clam episode, and took a long chance with everything from soup to nuts. Next we had some turkey with mashed potatoes, green peas and asparagus tips. When Uncle Gregory saw all this his face broke out in a smile, and we could see his appetite roll up its sleeves. "In this," the doctor began again, holding up a turkey wing on his fork, "in this wo have a cold storage turkey which has been treated with oxalic acid and chloride of potassium to keep it in a shivering state." "Pardon me. Doctor." exclaimed Peaches indignantly, "but it isn't a cold storage turkey, because it was sent me as a present by some friends on Long Island only this morning." "Possibly." went on Caterpillar Charlie, "possibly my hurried diagnosis was at fault, but we can never bo sure about these things, because here, on the elbow of the wing, I find traces of calisthenic acid over the membranes." "No, thank you," said Uncle Gregory, "I never eat turkey: it gives me the heartburn." And the poor old guy struck such a note of hunger that I wanted to throw that dam doctor out of the window. By this time" several others at the table were becoming more or less im pressed, and the dinner party was be ginning to assume the cheerful aspect of a meeting of martrys an hour be fore the arena opened. "Please pass me some mashed po tatc.'S," Whispered Uncle Gregory, after letter out of the reaches of the West a letter which carried the news that the old "desert rat" had at last found his eldorado and a few days later Dinn i i ... I II 8 the pangs of hunger had beaten him to the ropes. "Here we find," croaked the doctor, raising a forkful of mashed potatoes. "here we find one of the most evil effects of food adulteration. This po tato was grown in the Ffil of the year 1889, but it has been washed in alum water to give it the appearance of being modern, while its eyes have been treated with belladonna to make them bright and snappy." Uncle Gregory groaned pathetically, and the rest of us, out of politeness, tried to look interested, but only suc ceeded in looking seasick. When the ice cream and cake were brought out. Dr. Smotherjoy drove his spoon down deep into the chocolate and vanilla mixed, and said: "Here is a pitiful illustration of what dishon est tradesmen will do for money. Here we find that some of this ice cream was pale originally, but it was treated with aniline dye to give it this choc olate effect, and then baked In the sun to deceive- the eye. On the other head, we find this vanilla was orig inally dark and forbidding, but it has been treated with peroxide of hydro gen to make it more of a blonde." "Pardon me, doctor," snapped Peaches, her teeth chattering with ner vousness, "but this ice cream was made In our own kitchen by our own cook with first-class cream, and we never have any but home-made Ice cream so there!" "Ah." said the doctor, "then in that case it must be traces of thanatopsis which I see, and the evidence is con clusive Uiat a .great deal of artificial -ame a sample of ore which assayed $700 to the ton. The mine turned out to be worth $7,000,000. f .. - rama-wA ra nnmMfmiL Total- 1 Cm-m anv nf tlPH and VPt falling under the same general head ing comes tne case oi in ' son Burke estate. Mr. Burke died sev eral years ago, but testimony in con nection with the appraisal of his estate last July brought to light several in teresting facts. Chief among these was the item or mo iiz left in his will to his house keeper, Vincenta M. Fensley. Such a sum as this would be a welcome addi tion to any one, but further testimony also revealed the fact that previous to his death Mr. Burke had given his , , oenn afearAK nf TTnlnn Pa- cific stock, the value of which is $460,- 000. Mr. Burke In 19UZ put in irusi real estate worth $4,000,000 for the es tablishment of a home for convales cents, and in his will lett more man 000,000 additional for the same fund, -nr.. .1.3 ha nrlillrnT to accent S3000 a year for your spare time? That Is what William jerireys, an utmiui -the Southend-on-Sea Public Library, . ; .-j ,-c lnhnr Wnrklno a8 a youth in a nautical Instrument mak er's shop. Mr. jenreys acquirer a. JU" for the work. A Londoner by birth. Mr. Jeffreys went to Canada, where he lived several years. Then he went to GX)RGE YTIOB frappe has been used nevertheless." "No, thank you," said Uncle Gregory, : . m Waiia. it CTOP A never eai t . ... " -- -- to my head and makes me cold to my irienas. ; "Take this coffee, for instance, chortled the doctor, juggling a spoon ful with the left hand and four lumps of sugar with the right. "Herein you will tind copper salts. Iodide of chicory, a 4 per cent solution of gladiolus, to gether with about a sixteenth ofa grain of mocha to the cupful." "No, thank you," gasped Uncle Gregory, "I never drink coffee; it. gives mo the hiccups." . . ,i : maa AV.r TTnrIA Alter mo uiii.i-. " T7 Gregory took me outside and whis pered: Jonn, tor tne love oi unomui i . av ttm. vnn rivn a dinner flenveu, v..v j -J party cut out that bug doctor, or let me wear earmuns: Dn,A fensn't snoken ' a sensible word since that bitter evening. Can you oiame neri (Copyright, 1913, by the McClure News paper Syndicated London Shops and Clerks. Theodore Dreiser's "A Traveler at 40." Tn th stores in London the clerks ii-t attracted my attention, but I may say the stores and shops themselves, after New York, seemed small and old. New York is so new; the space given . v, imnivrtflnt shoDs is bo con siderable. In London it struck me that the space was not much and that the woodwork and waii wait ilugy. Pas Southend-on-Sea nearly 30 year age a hathinft- mftRhfnA attendant, and. this business falling, he found work in the public Horary. iui no cuuiu never forget his love for nautical in ... . . an rtur fiv. vAn.ru work. au uiucu to, uv, . - " - he completed a marine engine which made greater speed in Doais posoiuic For this he received $15,000. Not Many More. (Montgomery Journal.) He had proposed to a beautiful girl something like a dozen times, and on each occasion the answer had been a negative one. Still he persevered and one night on a moonlight walk with the soft wind blowing caressingly he once more started to tell her of his won drous love. Delia, dear," he tenderly remarked, throwing away the cigarette to give his eloquence fuller play, "there is some thing that I must tell you before we return. You have heard it before but" "Look here, Jimmy," impatiently in terjected the beautiful girl, "how many more times are you going to ask me to marry you?" "Not many, , I guess, Delia, dear, " answered the young man - with real frankness. "One of the other three girls I am proposing to is beginning to show signs of weakening." can tell by the feel of a place whether It is exceptional and profitable, and all of these were that; but they were dingy. The English clerk, too, had an air of civility, I had almost said servil ity, which was different. They looked to me like individuals born to a con- 1 1 .- W a nntnt nf V1AW! &nd I think they are. In America any clerk may subsequently be anything he chooses (ability guaranteeaj, out xm.uwv en sure that this is true in England. Any how, the American clerk always looks his possibilities his problematic fu th F.niHish clerk looks as if bt were' to be one indefinitely. English Train Service. Theodore Dreiser's "A Traveler at Forty." I can prove in a moment by any traveler that American trains are in finitely more luxurious than the trains in England. I can see where there isn't heat enough, and where one lava tory 'for men and women on any train, let alone a first-class one, is an abomi nation; and so on and so forth. But still, and notwithstanding, I say the English railway service is better. WTjy? Because it's more human; it's more con siderate. You arent' driven and urged to step lively and called at in loud, harsh voices and made to feel that you are being tolerated aboard something that was never made for you at all, hut for the employes of the company. In England the traitiB are run for the people, not the people for the trams. ?