ONE OP THE DEATHS OF Christmas day was that of Mrs. Maud Durbin Skinner, wife of Otis Skinner, famous actor. Marital adventures of stage people furnish material for sensational writers and diligent moralists. But the relations of Otis Skinner and his wife were of little use to the paragraphers, for the couple remained happi1y wedded to each other for more than forty years. Back in the early nineties, when Otis Skinner was leading man in Modjeska's company Maud Durbin joined the county 26 4-H clubs with a mem-company while it was playing in Denver. Skinner and the young actress worked together as members of that company for two years, when they formed their own company, and about a year later were married. Mrs. Skinner played many prominent roles, including Juliet to her husband's Romeo and Ophelia to his Hamlet. Shortly after the birth of their daughter in 1902 Mrs. Skinner retired from the stage. The daughter, Cornelia Otis Skinner, now adorns the stage of which both parents were distinguished members. LORD NUFFIELD, WEALTHY British motor car manufacturer, made a Christmas gift of $10,000,000, not to King George and Premier Baldwin, but to a board of trustees who are to use the fund in co-operation with and augmentation of the efforts of the government to improve conditions in the country's most distressed areas. The gift was accompanied by an expression of confidence in and admiration for the new king and the premier.

LORD NUFFIELD, OF WHOM few of us ever hear, is known to have given away millions in charities of which there is no public record. Among his larger single benefactions during the past eleven years are the creation of a trust fund of about $11,000,000 for employees in his motor works and $16,000,000 for the endowment of a post-graduate school of medical research at Oxford.

SUCH GIFTS ARE SELDOM noted by "share-the-wealth" agitators who, having nothing of their own, are eager to share the wealth of others. Yet every year great wealth, accumulated in commerce, finance and industry, is being de- voted to the public welfare under wise and far-sighted management. The most conspicuous illustration of this kind is the manner in which the Rockefeller millions have been devoted to the spread of knowledge, the improvement of health and the raising of living standards in every continent on the globe. The foundations established by Andrew Carnegie, Russell Sage and others in this country are well known, and in other countries there are numerous men of great wealth who regard themselves as trustees rather than selfish owners.

EVERYONE KNOWS OF THE existence of 4-H clubs. Not everyone knows just why those clubs exist, or what they do, and still fewer, even of the members themselves, know that they owe their existence to a man who is soon to retire from active work at the age of 70. Albert B. Graham, who has seen many years of service in the federal department of agriculture, and is now approaching retirement age, is credited with founding the first agricultural club for young people, out of which grew the imposing 4-H organization and its companion organization, that of the Homemakers, which includes only girls in its membership. In these organizations there has been erected a monument to Mr. Graham finer than anything that could have been fashioned of bronze or marble, and one of the fine things about it is that Mr. Graham has been permitted to witness the growing of that monument into the magnificent thing that it has become.

IN A REPORT JUST MADE County Agent Page tells us that there are now in Grand Forks county 26 4-8 clubs with a membership of 267, and 21 Homemakers clubs in which 374 are enrolled. In these clubs farm boys and girls are receiving training which will make its impress on their whole lives, increasing their efficiency in every way and adding to the sum total of their happiness. STATIONED AT CAMP LEE, Virginia, during the war, C. O. Tverberg amused himself during leisure hours visiting historic spots in and around the old town of Petersburg, which was founded in 1733 by Colonel William Byrdand Peter Jones and named in honor of the latter. The city was the center of the closing struggle of the Civil war and its capture by Grant was followed closely by Lee's surrender at Appomattox. From his notebook Mr. Tverberg has selected a number of interesting bits of information.

THE CRATER, SAYS MR. Tverberg, is a place of great interest, as part of the siege of Petersburg took place there. What is now the Crater was once an ammunition dump, which was blown up during the Civil war, leaving a great excavation in the earth. Around the battlefield the fields are still full of bullets, and the boys at Camp Lee amused themselves wandering through the fields and kicking bullets out of the dirt. The home of the Stedmans, of historic memory, still stands. It was from that building that President Lincoln watched the progress of the battle.

ONE OF THE FAMOUS OLD Petersburg buildings is the Blandord Bristol parish church, which was erected in 1735. It ceased to be a place of worship in 1800, and the walls were crumbling into ruins when in 1901 it was taken over by the city. In 1912 the property was turned over to the Daughters of the Confederacy, who restored it and have maintained it in excellent condition. Each of its windows has been dedicated to one of the states of the southern Confederacy. On one of the walls of the church is the following poem, said to have been written in 1841 by Tyrone Power:

Thou art crumbling to the dust, old pile, Thou are hastening to thy fall; And round thee in thy loneliness Clings the ivy to the wall. The worshipers are scattered now, Who knelt before they shrine, And silence reigns where anthems rose In days of "auld lang syne." And sadly sighs the wandering wind Where oft in years gone by Prayers rose In my heart to Him, The Highest of the High. The tramp of many busy feet That sought thy aisles in o'er, And many a weary heart around Is still forever more. How doth ambition's leaps take wing; How droops the spirit now. We hear the city's distant din; The dead are mute below. The sun that shone upon their paths Now gilds their lonely graves; The zephyrs which once fanned their brows The grass above them waves. Oh! could we call the many back Who've gathered here in vain, Who've careless roved where we do now, Who'll never meet again, How could our very hearts be stirred To meet the earnest gaze Of the lovely and the beautiful, The lights of other days.

IN THE AD JOINING CHURCH-yard are the graves of many of Virginian's first inhabitants, and on the tombstones are epitaphs quite in keeping with the customs of two centuries ago. One, of an English baronet, reads as follows:

Here lyeth the body of Sir William Shipwith Created baronet by James I. Was honored for raising men to aid against the usurpers of the throne and always remained faithful to the King; was driven to exile to Virginia by the usurpers where he remained a refugee. Deceased Feb. 25th, 1764.

IF THE DATES ARE Correct Sir William must have lived to be a very old man, as James I died in 1625. Tombstones do not always tell the truth. HAVE WE EVER HAD AS open a winter as this has been, or a New Year's day with as little snow?" Questions like that are often asked. The answer is "Yes, often." We have had many milder early winters than this has been, and several times the New Year has come in without any snow at all. Without checking the years one by one, I am sure that January 1, 1889, holds the record as the finest New Year's day that this territory has yet seen. There had been some snow and some sharp weather earlier in the winter, but the weather had turned mild and the snow had all disappeared. Cattle turned loose, instead of seeking the shelter of straw stacks and burrowing in the chaff for stray gernels of grain, roamed at large over the fields and grew fat on the scattered grain which they found in the stubble.

NEW YEAR'S DAY DAWNED bright and clear, and not a cloud obscured the sky all day. The air was like summer, with not a breath of wind stirring. Lakota had a baseball game that day, not as a midwinter stunt, but because the day was so pleasant that the boys just couldn't keep from playing ball.

THOSE WERE THE DAYS OF New Year's calls, when the matrons of a community and their daughters made it known that they would be receiving, and the young men made the rounds, calling at the several homes, and at each being regaled with eatables and drinkables. A new touch was given to the season by about a dozen Grand Forks young men who went calling on horseback, and in recognition of the mild weather they wore long linen dusters to protect them from the heat. Clarence Hale or E. J. Lander may remember whether or not all in that party were able to remain upright in their saddles during the entire pilgrimage.

TO MAKE THE OCCASION perfect the day closed with a total eclipse of the sun. As the great orb approached the horizon it was possible to watch the progress of the eclipse without the aid of smoked glasses, and the combination of clear sky, warm air and darkened sun sinking out of sight was one long to be remembered.

"OLD FISH" DIED IN Brooklyn the other day. Few knew his real name, which was Christopher Hassett, and his sobriquet had been given him because for more than 20 years he had peddled fish each Friday around the Navy Yard district of Brooklyn. On other days he peddled fruits and vegetables. For many years he had occupied the same small room in an attic, although the building had changed hands several times. "Old Fish" went with the property.

RECENTLY THE OLD MAN was taken ill, and his landlady urged him to spend a dollar for a chicken, that she might make him some broth. He declined to buy the chicken, but, ever alert for a bargain, he said, "You buy it and I'll give you 10 cents a bowl for the broth that you make from it." She declined and there was no chicken. He refused to have a doctor because that would cost three dollars. Then he died.

BANK BOOKS AMONG HIS effects led to a checking of his deposits and an examination of his safety deposit box and it was found that in bank deposits, mortgages and other assets he left an estate of $83,000. Stowed away in the box were several old big league baseballs. Inquiry among the few who had known Hassett years ago disclosed that in his younger days he had been a star player in semi-professional leagues, and one man said that he had been one of the fastest third basemen in that sport. He had been a professional umpire and had been invited by President Wilson to umpire games at Princeton.

WHAT A STRANGE LIFE, Devoted to the piling up of dollars, making his rounds as a peddler day after day, denying himself ordinary comforts, begrudging the expenditure of a dollar for food, yet clinging to the recollection of days of sport. Who can say whether "Old Fish" treasured more highly the thousands of dollars which he had accumulated or the baseballs which reminded him of a youth when life meant more to him than dollars? SOME OF US WERE TALKING the other day about spring floods, and I recalled something that I had read about the flood of 1877, which must have been one of some proportions, though that was before official measurements were made. At that time Fisher's landing on the Red Lake river was the head of navigation. The Canadian Pacific was being built around Lake Superior, and a section was also being built around Lake Superior, and a section was also being built east from Winnipeg. The only way that construction material could be got to Winnipeg was to ship it down the Red river, and the town had no rail connection.

FOR A SEASON OR TWO Material was shipped over the new Northern Pacific to Moorhead and sent thence by the river to Winnipeg. But low water in the upper section of the river made navigation difficult, and James J. Hill offered the services of his road which had then been built north as far as Crookston. Freight was shipped to Crookston and then loaded on river steamers for the north. But there were shoals in the river this side of Crookston, and again there was trouble. To overcome this Hill extended his road to Fisher, which remained the head of navigation until the road was extended to Grand Forks.

INCIDENTALLY, THE FIRST locomotive whistle ever heard at Pembina sounded some years before there was a mile of track anywhere near the place. A northbound steamboat carried a locomotive for the Canadian Pacific, and on the way north crew and passengers built a fire in it and got up steam. The arrival of the boat at Pembina was signaled, not only by the usual hoarse blasts from the steamboat, but by the toot-toot of the locomotive whistle.

JUST HOW HIGH THE Water was in the Red River in the spring of 1897 we have no means of knowing exactly, but it was high enough to flood some of the buildings at Fisher. The Fisher hotel, where travelers spent the time be- tween train and steamer, was one of the flooded buildings, and the water stood six inches deep on the dining-room floor. The management had thoughtfully provided plant rests on which diners could rest their feet while enjoying their meal.

HIGHEST OF THE FLOODS ever officially recorded was that of 1897 in which the water at Grand Forks reached 47 feet 6 inches above what was then the official zero mark. I believe the zero mark has been lowered since, so that the reading would now be different. The water at that time flowed in the gutters at Third and DeMers, but did not cover the center of the street, which was some inches higher.

IN 1882 THERE WAS Another river flood which is often compared with that of 1897, but I think it was not quite as high. Old river men have often spoken of the flood of 1857 as the highest ever known, but there are no official measurements of it, and mere recollections are apt to be inaccurate.

THERE ARE ALWAYS Possibilities of a flood until winter is actually over, for it is possible for heavy snow, falling during the last few weeks of the season, to be carried off by heavy spring rains, a combination which invariably means high water.

THUS FAR THERE ARE NO indications of anything of the sort. A peculiarity of most of our rains last fall, and of the snow thus far this winter, has been the reluctance with which the air seemed to part with moisture. Most of the rains were merely exaggerated mists, the drops being so small as to be scarcely perceptible, and our snow thus far has been of the same type. If we could have a foot or two of real snow, with the air filled with soft flakes an inch in diameter, we might conclude that the drouth is really broken. EVERY ONE IS FAMILIAR with the appearance on the roadway a mile or so ahead on a hot summer day of "lakes" which, on being approached vanish into thin air. That phenomenon is characteristic of all level countries, and it is perhaps most commonly seen in sandy deserts. Thirsty travelers have often been deceived by such mirages, and have found that the beautiful tree-lined lakes which promised rest and refreshment were not there.

THE MIRAGE, HOWEVER, IS not confined to summer weather. Some remarkable examples of it have been seen in Arctic and Antarctic regions. Some of these were recently described by Professor William H. Hobbes of the University of Michigan, who is also president of the Association of American Geographers. Dr. Hobbes told of the difficulty encountered in mapping those far northern and southern regions because of the distortion of light rays which give an entirely false impression of distances and of elevations. Corroborating his statements Dr. Elmer Elkblaw told of having watched Eskimos hunting on the shores of Greenland 200 miles from the point of observation.

ON A MORE MODEST SCALE we may observe evidences of that distortion in our own territory, which seem to be more marked in winter than in- summer. I suppose there are few North Dakota farmers who have not noticed on some winter morning that they could see the landscape clear over the top of some grove or distant building which, under ordinary conditions rose far above the horizon.

OVER IN RUSSIA THE Profit system may have been eliminated, but there were those in Moscow on New Year's Eve who had their doubts. New Year's parties were held all over the city, and at four of the principal hotels the charge was 115 rubles—about two weeks' wages for the ordinary worker—for a light supper, a half bottle of Soviet champagne and the privilege of dancing until dawn.

YEARS AGO THE SOVIET authorities prohibited Christmas celebrations, but the regulations have been relaxed so as to permit the use of trees on New Year's. And, while the celebration was postponed a few days, the eagerness with which the populace revived the customs associated with the Christmas tree seemed to indicate that the religious spirit has not been quite suppressed in Russia, after all.

THE SUDDEN DEATH OF Rev. Dr. J. Graham Machen of Philadelphia at Bismarck on the eve of the New Year has attracted attention anew to the difficulties which are often encountered in holding religious bodies together. Dr. Machen was the leader of a group within the Presbyterian church who opposed tendencies within that church which they held to be unwarrantably modernistic. After several years of conflict with the authorities of his denomination, during which he was suspended, he organized a rival group known as the Presbyterian Church of America, based on the fundamental doctrines to which, among others, the late W. J. Bryan was committed. The seceding group has a considerable membership in the east and it is being extended as rapidly as its sponsors find possible.

EFFORTS HAVE BEEN MADE, with some success, to bring together certain groups of great religious bodies which have worked apart. Progress has been made toward the union of several Presbyterian groups,' and the movement for union of the several Methodist groups in this country is well under way. But such movements are usually opposed by vigorous minorities. In Canada a few years ago the Presbyterian, Methodist and Congregational churches combined to create the United Church of Canada, but about one-third of the Canadian Presbyterian churches refused to co-operate, and they still maintain their separate existence. Thus one of the purposes of the movement is defeated, and often there will be found in the same country village, instead of one strong church, a United church and a Presbyterian church, both struggling to maintain existence. COMMON COLD, INFLUENZA, pneumonia—at the onset the first two are scarcely distinguishable, while either extends a hospitable invitation to the third. In this territory, while colds and their attendant c o implications are numerous, the conditions here do not yet approach those farther east, where in many places influenza and pneumonia appear to be about as prevalent as in 1918. Whatever other curative or preventive methods are employed the authorities are agreed that careful diet, avoidance of exposure and, if possible, complete rest in bed will contribute greatly to recovery, and that ah attempt to "fight it off" is about the worst course that can be pur- sued. Therefore, at about the third sneeze, I shall hunt for cover.

IT HAD TO COME SOMETIME, so it is just as well to get it over. Almost everybody who is anybody has been debunked, but until now "Alice In Wonderland" has escaped. Now it is her turn. Dr. Paul Schidler, research professor of psychiatry at New York university, has just given Alice the kind of dressing down that George Wash- ington, Julius Caesar and Horatius at the bridge have received, and there is nothing left of the poor girl but a collection of Freudian complexes and sadistic impulses.

LEWIS CARROLL, OTHER-wise Dr. Charles L. Dodgson, was a distinguished mathematician who was also a very human being. To some little girl friends he told nonsense stories which they found so entertaining that they asked for more, and at the earnest solicitation of friends the author consented to have the stories published in book form. Dr. Dodgson was a little ashamed of the publicity which the book brought him, as it seemed to be beneath the dignity of a sober scientist to spend his time spinning frivolous yarns for the amusement of children.

THE BOOK, HOWEVER, TOOK like wildfire, and children by the million have laughed until their sides ached at the weird adventures of Alice, and their elders as well have found something to enjoy and to admire in the comic distortions and inversions which they found in the story and its entertaining dialog. It has been supposed to be just pure, unadulterated, sparkling fun. But Dr. Schidler knows better. Beneath the sparkling surface of the Alice stories he finds a deep and dark significance.

THIS AUTHORITY FINDS that the creator of Alice was in his subconscious mind an unhappy creature, full of doubts and anxieties, and as an unconscious expression of his unfortunate mental state he made poor Alice the victim of fears and uncertainties, plunged her into an atmosphere of cruelty where the cutting off of heads was a regular pastime, and laid violent hands on the King's English in the coining of fantastic words which themselves express cruelty and profound unhappiness.

AS TO THE EFFECT OF ALL this in the child reader, Dr. Schidler says: "This is a world of cruelty, destruction and annihilation. One may be afraid that without the help of the adult the child may remain bewildered in it and may not find his way back to the world in which he can appreciate love relations, space, time and words." Wouldn't that be awful?

OF COURSE, AFTER THAT Alice must be put out of the reach of children, or nobody knows what harm may be done. And of course "Jack the Giant Killer" and "Tom Thumb," and Mary and her lamb, and all the rest of the nursery stories and rhymes, must go along with Alice, for who knows what malignant qualities may be hidden beneath those apparently harmless words whose chief and most engaging quality is their absurdity?

ONE OF THE THINGS ABOUT the theories of Dr. Schidler and others of his kind which I have never been able to understand is their emphasis on the subconscious. Most of us, we are told quite gravely, are suffering from some form of subconscious unhappiness. But if one is unhappy and doesn't know it why not leave him alone and let him go along thinking he's happy? If he doesn't know that he's miserable, what's the difference? TWO MARRIAGES, AND ONLY two, were solemnized in Holland on Thursday. While Holland is not a large country geographically, it has a population of about 8,000,000 and probably there is not another country of similar population in the world in which there are not several weddings every day in the year. Holland's marriages on January 7 were restricted to two, not because there were no other couples ready to wed, but because the government of the Netherlands prohibited other marriages on that day.

THE TWO BRIDES WERE born at the same hour of the same day twenty-seven years ago. Both were named Juliana. One is the crown princess of Holland, whose husband is a young German prince, while the other is the daughter, of a peasant family, who married a friend from her home village. Because of the coincidence in the time of their birth the two girls became acquainted through correspondence early in life, and between them a warm friendship has developed. When the time for the marriage of the princess was fixed it was the intention of the government to permit no other wedding in the country on that day, but when the princess learned that the other Juliana was about to marry, at her intercession the edict was so worded as to permit the two marriages to be solemnized on the same day. May the princess enjoy greater happiness than usually falls to the lot of royalty, and may the lot of her peasant friend be cast, in pleasant places.

IN THE LABORATORIES OP the University of Pennsylvania it has been demonstrated that when whiskey is subjected to loud noise for seven hours it is aged as much as if stored in wood for four years. On that basis when a gang has sung "Sweet Adeline" all night, what's left in the bottle ought to be thoroughly mellowed.

UNCLE SAM SENDS ALL HIS children who are eligible the customary New Year's remembrance in the form of income tax blanks. Filed in a convenient place the set of blanks will serve to remind the recipient from time to time of the head-aching job that he must tackle before the first of March.

JUST AS THE WEATHER here is getting down to regular business for the winter comes a letter from J. H. Griffin boasting of a temperature of 78 at Braden-ton, Florida, where he and Mrs. Griffin are spending the winter. Bradenton is on the west, or Gulf coast, and its inhabitants and those of Palm Beach, Miami and other cities on the Atlantic seaboard view each other with lofty hauteur when they meet, for those of each coast are sure that their own locality and climate are superior to the other.

MR. GRIFFIN SAYS THERE are big crowds in the south—tourists from all over the northern and central states, well-dressed and prosperous-looking, with business in all lines booming. Much building and repair work is in progress, with plenty of work for all the natives, but none for outsiders. But who wants to go to Florida to work?

GYPSY CAMPS ARE FOUND in every available place, with great crowds of house cars of every description. Special provision is made for these at most Florida resorts and there is a much larger number than ever before of elaborate outfits costing from $1000 upwards, with all the comforts of home.

THE AREA AROUND Bradenton is agricultural, devoted chiefly to citrus and other fruits and vegetables for the northern market. Farms are usually of about 10 acres each, and the cost of clearing land of the palmetto scrub is about $100 per acre. Commercial fertilizer must be used to obtain any crop at all, but with them three crops may be grown each year. The colored man and his mule provide practically all the labor that is used. SWING MUSIC HAS BEEN A mystery to me. Many things about music are mysterious to me. One of the mysteries is that some of the things called music should be so named. Swing music is one of them. The mystery has been partially cleared up by an article by a writer who seems to be an authority on the subject. In swing music, it appears, each player is on his own instead of being subject to the whims of a conductor. He gets into the swing of the thing, so to speak, waits for a favorable opportunity, then goes in and blazes away, expressing his own individuality in the way most consistent with what he has had for dinner. Hearing swing music over the radio I suspected that it was something like that, and I am glad to have my suspicions confirmed.

SWING MUSIC, HOWEVER, IS not new, although its name is. In its impromptu characteristics and unrestrained individualism it resembles what we used to do way back yonder in our boys' calithumpian band, in which we used whatever noise-making instruments were most easily accessible. My part was to rattle a stove-poker up and down the teeth of a cross-cut saw. But the people who heard our performance didn't call it swing. Neither did they call it music.

ANOTHER THING THAT THIS country needs, Mr. Roosevelt, is more raisins in the rice pudding.

EVERY NOW AND THEN ONE runs across a name, once familiar, but almost forgotten, and is surprised to learn that the person who bore it many years ago, is still on earth. Thus it seemed to me like going back to the middle ages to see in the newspaper today the name of Opie Read and to learn that he is still living. He is living in Chicago, where he has just celebrated his 84th birthday.

IN HIS ACTIVE YEARS OPIE Read was a notable figure in the American literary field. He began newspaper work at an early age, and in his middle twenties he edited the Arkansas Gazette at Little Rock, Ark. A few years later he founded the Arkansas Traveler, which he made famous. He then moved to Chicago, where most of his remaining life has been spent. He was a prolific writer of books, of which he has produced more than fifty, some of them best sellers. One of them, "The Jucklins," he sold for $700, and he now thinks of the millions he might have made if he had retained the copyright. "A Kentucky Colonel" was one of his popular works, and "The Wives of the Prophets" and "A Tennessee Judge" were widely read. Notwithstanding his years he says he intends to write still another book, about what, he doesn't know yet, but he is sure that one day, on one of his contemplative strolls, the right idea will strike him.

IN HIS DAY OPIE READ Enjoyed the friendship of many notable men, among them Mark Twain, Eugene Field, James Whitcomb Riley, Theodore Roosevelt, Warren G. Harding and William J. Bryan, of each of whom he has interesting recollections. He accompanied Mark Twain on the latter's last trip down the Mississippi river and heard that veteran writer say "Of all the streams known to man, the Mississippi is the most romantic."

LUNCHING WITH MR. AND Mrs. Harding at a small eating place in Iowa in Chautauqua days he heard Mrs. Harding urging her husband to move forward. "When are you going to run for president?" she asked. "Better wait until I get into the senate." replied Harding with a laugh. But Mrs. Harding was never content to wait.

OPIE READ WAS NOT A great writer. He was an entertaining story-teller. If he should write another novel now, probably it would create no great sensation. But what a book of recollections he could write, after such a long life, crammed full of interesting experiences and contacts with interesting people! Such a book would surely be a best seller. TODAY I AM TURNING OVER the column to an old friend, J. E. Stevens, a former Grand Forks man, member of the North Dakota state senate, and for many years active and influential in the public affairs of North Dakota. Mr. Stevens, who is now living at Lewiston, Montana, writes as follows: "I recall that in your in- teresting "That Reminds Me column in the Herald you referred to the old McGuffey series of school readers, and when I read that article it "reminded me" of my school days back at the old log school house down in Wisconsin where I spent my boyhood days, and where the McGuffey reader was our textbook. Little did I think, however, that I would ever again see a copy of that old Fifth reader, but since coming here I have found an old copy, thumb-marked, somewhat dilapidated, and evidently long used. I have enjoyed very much time spent in reading again its contents, particularly such selections as "The Battle of Blenheim," "King Charles and William Penn," "Mrs. Caudle's Lectures," '"The Relief of Lucknow," "The Soldier of the Rhine," and many others. I HAVE WONDERED IF OUR young friends in school now have a better collection of prose and poetry than is found in that old McGuffey series. If so, they are to be congratulated. Of particular interest to me, however, is the chapter written by the great Ornithologist Audubon descriptive of the passenger pigeons. It is of special interest to me because many of the scenes and incidents he relates I witnessed down in Wisconsin in the late 50's and early 60's of the last century. Some of his statements will no doubt be looked on as questionable by those who have never seen passenger pigeon, but as for me, I can give them full credit, as I have seen them and realize that unless seen they are difficult to believe.

"PROBABLY I NEVER SAW the pigeons in such incalculable numbers as he did, but I can truthfully say that I think I have seen more of them in a single day when they were making their annual spring flight from South America where they spent our winter months up into our northern states and to Canada where they spent the summer and reared their young—a greater number than I saw of migratory waterfowl in the 55 years spent in North Dakota. When Audubon tells you that he saw them in such flocks as to obscure the light of the sun as in an eclipse, do not doubt it. I have seen the same sight.

"AUDUBON ALSO WRITES that at one time when he was traveling along the Ohio river he saw pigeons passing in such great numbers that he decided to check the passing of those flocks to find out how many passed in an hour. Locating himself where he had a clear vision both to right and left he commenced a check of the flight, but soon found that the check was a failure as the birds came so fast and furious that he was obliged to give it up. Looking at his watch he found that in 21 minutes he had checked 163 flocks, and when one who has seen those flocks and wondered how many thousands of birds each contained, he would wonder how those birds could be exterminated as they have been.

"SUCH STATEMENTS Coming from the pen of Audubon I can well believe, for he spent his life in the study of bird life. His book 'The Birds of America,' consists of ten volumes, is reliable and was classed by the great Cuvier as "the most magnificent monument that art has ever erected to ornithology." Naturally, after reading it and seeing such countless numbers of passenger pigeons as I have, I can hardly realize that they are no more—just literally banished from the face of the earth.

"IT WAS MY FORTUNE, OR should I say misfortune? when a mere boy to see from a well hidden retreat the process of slaughter that no doubt had much to do with their destruction, and which I will try to describe. At that time we lived in a rather heavy oak-timbered section of country in Wisconsin where the clearings were small and usually planted in the fall to, winter wheat. In the spring the young and tender shoots of grain and the previous year's growth of acorns, or 'mast,' as we called it, lying on the ground made ideal feed for hungry birds. At that time it was a business proposition, with no law to prevent it, for men to spend two or three weeks in the spring netting the birds for the eastern markets, and in that manner thousands of them met their doom. The net, like a fish-net, but larger, was placed in a favorable spot near the edge of the timber line with the side next to the operator securely staked or weighted to the ground. The opposite side and center of the net were supported on light props that raised it usually about two feet from the ground. From the ground ends of those props cords were attached leading to an€ attached to the main cord that led to the bough house where the operator was hidden."

THE REMAINDER OF MR. Stevens' letter on passenger pigeons will be published in this columns Tuesday. CONTINUING HIS Description of the method of capturing passenger pigeons as he witnessed it in his boyhood in the 50's and 60's in Wisconsin, J. E. Stevens writes: "After corn had been scattered for bait under and near the spread net the operator would proceed to take from a coop or net a live pig eon, attaching to its leg a line about 30 feet long. The other end would be attached to a stake driven into the ground a short distance from the net. Usually about a dozen birds were so placed near the net, care being taken that they could not interfere with each other.

"WHEN ALL THIS HAD BEEN arranged the operator would conceal himself in his shelter. Soon the "stool pigeons, finding that they could not get loose would alight on top of the stake, sitting there apparently innocent and free from guile. As soon as they saw a flock of wild birds approaching they would rise and try to join them, flying to the length of their tether and then being checked by the cord. This action on their part always seemed to interest the passing flock in such a manner as to cause them to circle and alight among their fellows. It would be only a short time until some of them discovered the scattered corn, and then it was just a scramble with them to see which could get the most of it. Soon the ground under the net was covered with live pigeons and now the hidden operator, by a quick and deft pull of the cord, would cause the net to drop and trap the birds. Then the slaughter would commence, and when all the trapped birds had been killed and removed the net was prepared for another haul.

"IN THAT MANNER THOU-sands of birds were destroyed. They were hauled away to the nearest railroad town, stripped of feathers, entrails drawn, and packed and shipped to an eastern market. It was from the use of this method that the term "stool pigeon" originated, as applied to the person who lures another into some undertaking for the purpose of entrapping him.

"ANOTHER TERM WHOSE meaning is not now generally understood is "pigeon roost." Naturally one who had never seen one would take it to mean just a place in the woods where the birds gathered to spend the night. This they did in countless numbers, but it was also a rendezvous where the birds assembled to nest and hatch their young. I remember that in 1862 my father, my older brother and I drove down to the Kickapoo wood, fifteen miles, down in Wisconsin, to see the "pigeon roost" that we had heard so much about, and when we arrived we surely saw a wonderful sight.

"THE TRACT WAS A DENSE forest of oak trees, covering, we were told, about two congressional townships, and wherever we went it seemed that every tree had as many nests as the growth would permit, often a dozen or more nests in a single tree. The nests were crude affairs, just a few dry sticks or twigs, lined with a cushion of dry leaves. When we were there the birds were about half grown and unable to fly. There appeared to be just two birds to a nest. I remember seeing men go from tree to tree with poles, knocking down the nests and killing the young squabs, which were said to be a rare treat. Somehow they did not appeal to me, and I have been glad that we did not join in the slaughter.

"I HAVE OFTEN RECALLED a remark which my father made on the way home. He said 'The time will come when we will regret such a slaughter of wild life,' a remark which was prophetic, for surely no greater crime was ever committed against wild life than the complete annihilation of the once numerous passenger pigeon.

"THE LAST ROOST KNOWN in the United States was, I think in the year 1882, near Petoskey, Michigan, where the few remaining flocks gathered to reproduce their kind. I read in a sportsman's magazine an article by a sea captain who said that in crossing the Gulf of Mexico he sailed for hours over water that was literally covered with dead pigeons. His theory was that when crossing the Gulf on their annual fall flight to their South American winter home they were caught in a violent electric storm that completely exterminated them. Be that as it may, they are gone. The last one known died many years ago in the zoo at Philadelphia. For a long time Dr. Hornady and others offered rewards for a pair of those birds, but they could not be found. "THE SHOTGUN CAME IN for a share of the blame for the destruction of pigeons, but personally I am willing to acquit the shotgun. The shotgun of that period was- just the single-shot muzzle-loader. No automatic breech- loading or repeating guns were known then, and few double-barreled ones. The dirty black powder used cost a dollar a pound, and dollars were not plentiful in those days. All kinds of theories have been advanced concerning the disappearance of the pigeons, and while there may have been many such causes, I am convinced that one of the important ones was the wholesale trapping of the birds and the destruction of squabs another. The destruction of the passenger pigeon was one of the tragedies of the 19th century, and I would suggest to this generation greater care with reference .to wild life. THE DESCRIPTIONS GIVEN by J. E. Stevens of the great flocks of passenger pigeons which were common less than a century ago, and of their complete destruction, interested me, as I hope they have interested readers of this column. Not only have the passenger pigeons disappeared, but there are left only a few of those who ever saw their migrations. Mr. Stevens is one of these remaining eye- witnesses who retains a clear recollection of this interesting episode in the history of our wild life.

IN THE LOCALITY IN Southern Ontario near where I was born there had been a pigeon roost, but it had been abandoned before I was old enough to know anything about it. I have heard my grandparents tell of the enormous flights of pigeons that passed each spring and fall along in the 1840's, of branches of trees being broken down by the weight of the birds roosting on them, and of the wholesale slaughter of the birds, which, in that locality, were not shipped, for there were no railroads, but were salted down in barrels for winter use. WHAT CAUSES LED TO THE extinction of the passenger pigeon is still a matter of doubt. That slaughter such as has been described was a contributing factor is granted. But the number of birds was so great that it is scarcely conceivable that all the shooting and trapping that was done could make much impression on the size of the flocks, especially when it is remembered that the process of extinction was well under way while there was still a great area of uninhabited territory in which the birds could nest and through which they could migrate. The naturalist Wilson estimates that in one flight which he observed there were 2,230 million birds. At one time the birds wrought such havoc on the crops that farmers petitioned their church authorities to bring to bear on them the sacred ministrations of the church that they might be driven away. The destructive effect of storms such as that mentioned by Mr. Stevens, doubtless had an important bearing, and there are those who believe that disease carried off millions of the birds.

MR. STEVENS' DESCRIPTION of the use of "stool-pigeons" in trapping the birds was interesting because some weeks ago I had mentioned a mechanical "stool-pigeon" which W. A. Vanderhoef saw in a collection of antiques in New England last fall. That was a mechanical bird whose wings could be moved by means of a cord pulled by the concealed operator, and its purpose, like that of the tethered live birds described by Mr. Stevens, was to decoy the members of the flying flocks and induce them to enter the trap.

MR. STEVENS' LETTER WAS suggested by the reading of an article by Audubon in an old copy of McGuffey's fifth reader. It happened that when I received his letter I had on my desk a review of a recently published biography of Professor McGuffey to which I intended to refer.

PERHAPS BECAUSE THE McGuffey readers belonged to the era of the "little red schoolhouse" they are regarded with something of the tolerant humor which attaches to the popular estimate of the country school and the type of education of which it was the center, and Professor McGuffey is apt to be considered a well-meaning old fogy, well enough in his way, but not to be plassed in this scientific age as a real educator.

WILLIAM McGUFFEY WAS anything but an old fogy. Born in 1800 on his grandfather's farm in Pennsylvania and migrating with his family to the new lands of Ohio, he won for himself a classical education, serving success- ively as country teacher, college; professor, university president, and on his retirement from that position, as college professor until his death in 1873. He taught moral philosophy—which included metaphysics, logic and ethics—in the University of Virginia from 1845 until his death.

IT WAS OUT OF HIS OWN experience with the need of people for books and the lack of books designed for school use that he developed the idea of a series of readers containing selections from the best literature, adapted to the needs of children in the various grades. The first and second readers were produced in 1836 and the third and fourth in 1837. The fifth reader was added in 1844. In 1853 there was a revised edition of the entire set. In 1857 there was a further revision, with the addition of a sixth reader, and in 1879 the complete series was revised.

WHILE MORAL INSTRUCTION was stressed in the readers, there was nothing preachy about them, and real educators of that day must have welcomed them for their contrast with the dull dissertations which had combered the readers in use up to that time. Modern readers contain material which did not exist in McGuffey's time, but no readers, old or new, have contained finer selections than those in the McGuffey readers. Much of the material which McGuffey used is found in the standard readers of today, and there is probably no exaggeration in the statement of Hugh Fullerton that "from 1836 until near the close of the century Professor McGuffey exerted the greatest influence, culturally, of any person in American history." I HAVE JUST FINISHED reading the autobiography of Dexter W. Fellows, something which has been deferred since the publication of the book early last year either because I had not the time or because the book was not immediately available Appropriately entitled "This way to the Big Show,” the book gives an outline of the career of the man who is known as the "dean of press agents," and who is known in practically every newspaper office in America for his fund of information and his engaging qualities.

BORN IN BOSTON IN 1871, HE was called Dexter after the world's most famous race horse of that day, although his father never owned a horse or frequented the races. From childhood he was fascinated by everything pertaining to the show business, and his career as a publicity agent began with such jobs as peddling bills and carrying banners in the parades of the minstrel and other shows that visited his home town, Fitchburg, Mass., where his family had mov- ed while he was a child.

FELLOWS GOT HIS FIRST job on the road as press agent for Pawnee Bill's Wild West show and with scarcely perceptible intermissions he has been engaged in that work ever since. He knew and worked with Wild Bill, Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley and the other Wild West celebrities of that period, joined up with the Ringlings when those future giants of the circus world were just getting started, spent several years with Barnum and Bailey, and since that show was combined with the Ringlings' he has had charge of publicity for what has undoubtedly been the "Greatest Show on Earth."

FELLOWS WISHES IT Understood that he was not the friend and boon companion of Phineas T. Barnum, as he lacks a lot of being the centenarian that he would have to be to qualify for such an experience He writes that in his boyhood he saw the famous showman once, but his association with the Barnum show was after Barnum had passed on. The book, however, gives interesting reminiscences of Barnum by others who had known him and who were familiar with his originality and versatility. One of the entertaining stories is of the controversy between Barnum and Adam Forepaugh over the "sacred" white elephant. Forepaugh advertised that he had obtained from Siam the white elephant which was worshipped by the people of that country, and he invited a group of newspaper men to view the animal, which they did. The guests conceded that the beast was more or less white, but one of the number was not quite convinced that its color was fast. Secretly obtaining a damp sponge, he applied it to one of the elephant's legs, and found that the animal was whitewashed. Barnum got hold of that fact and made it the basis of a broadside against his rival.

THE RINGLINGS, IN THE opinion of Fellows, were better organizers and better showmen than Barnum had been, and he gives some interesting descriptions of the marvelous organization which is represented in the modern circus. It is interesting, also, to read of the rise and decline of Buffalo' Bill as described by a man who was intimately familiar with that colorful figure. The most popular showman of his day, William F. Cody was for years rolling in wealth, but his last public appearance was as the hired employee of a small show in whose ownership he had not a dollar's worth of interest.

BARNUM WAS NOT, AS MANY have supposed, the originator of the circus. Fellows quotes from a letter written by P. A. Older, who describes a small circus which he owned in Wisconsin in the 1840's, which used candles for lights and whose billboards were fastened with tacks, as the use of paste for that purpose was not understood.

ANOTHER BIT OF Information which was new to me, as it will be to many others, is that according to Dan Rice, the most famous clown of his day, the Rice show, which traveled on the Ohio and Mississippi in 1852, used electric light for illuminating purposes and when in 1879 the Cooper and Bailey show featured its "new" electric light, Rice published a warning against it, telling of the injurious effects of the chemicals which were used in producing the light.

I REMEMBER WELL THE first time that I saw an electric light It was featured by a, small circus which visited our town about 1879, and which was probably Cooper and Bailey's. The show tent was illuminated by a single dazzling open arc light which almost blinded the spectators and cast intense shadows. The light was generated by a threshing engine stationed just outside of the tent. But if Dan Rice told the truth his circus had used an electric light more than a quarter of a century earlier. A NEW USE HAS BEEN found for airplanes, or at least for their engines and propellers. During the recent freeze in southern California dozens of plane engines were kept going to make the wind blow through the orchards. This is the nearest approach that has yet been made to bringing about a change of weather by artificial means. The idea is full of possibilities. Given enough such outfits properly spaced throughout the country we could draw from the humid east some of the moisture-laden air that is so badly needed in the northwest.

FROST IN CALIFORNIA IS A serious matter. In the recent freeze damage running into the millions was wrought. Imperial valley, one of the nation's hot spots, where the thermometer often registers up to 130, was in the frost belt, as was southern Texas. Up here, where the winter temperature is not always balmy, no actual damage is done by winter frost. We know it is going to freeze, and we govern ourselves accordingly. A few degrees more or less makes little difference, except in the fuel bill.

IN THE NEW Congressional directory three congressmen record with modest pride that they were born in log cabins. Several say that they were born on farms, and a few maintain that they are still farmers. Thus far there is no such official record of a congressman having been born in a sod shack, but out here in the west we have several persons who may yet be congressmen who first saw the light in sod shacks.

THE FACT THAT ONE WAS born in a log cabin is often accepted as evidence that his early life was one of hardship. That does not necessarily follow. Some of those log buildings were really not "cabins" at all. They were houses, some of them quite pretentious and mighty comfortable. In the matter of comfort they were vastly superior to many of the thin-walled shells in which the descendants of some of the pioneers now live. Their walls were thick and tight, and were impervious to all sorts of weather, and with a good fire going in the fireplace they were as snug and cozy as could be desired. I know of one log house in Grand Forks county which was built by a homesteader in the early days and is now occupied by his son and a large family of children. Forty years ago it was as comfortable a house as I ever entered, and since then it has been kept in excellent repair, improved and supplied with modern conveniences. But it is still the same log house, good enough for anyone to be born in.

DESCRIPTIONS OF THE poultry show recently held in New York mention the great variety of types of chickens shown, ranging all the way from bantams to the larger breeds and including every imaginable style of coloring. Our common barnyard fowl, which is the most widely dispersed of the poultry kind, has no distinctive name of its own. It doesn't do to call it a hen, for it may be a rooster, and a chicken may be the young of almost any bird.

DERIVED, WE ARE TOLD, from the wild jungle fowl of India, the domestic fowl has been developed in more diverse forms than almost any other creature, and the manner of its evolution has been used as the basis of one of their arguments by those who place emphasis on heredity rather than environment as the controlling influence in the shaping of character.

ALL OF OUR BREEDS OF chickens have been developed by means of selection and cross-breeding. Environment seems to have had nothing to do with it. From the same ancestry, through the selection and mating of individuals there have been produced all the breeds from the diminutive bantams to the mammoth Shanghais, with such distinctive strains in between as the fighting games, the heavy-laying Leghorns and other breeds distinctive in size, form and plumage.

IT IS MANY YEARS SINCE I saw a Shanghai chicken, but once there was a mild craze for them. I have no idea what one of those birds would weigh, but I have seen a Shanghai rooster stand on the ground and eat off the top of an opened barrel. The Shanghais were enormous eaters, and intolerably lazy. They considered it beneath their dignity to scratch for a living, and they were generally voted unprofitable live stock. IF YOU HAVE ANY Expectation of visiting Florida by trailer this winter, leave Palm Beach out of your itinerary. You will not be welcome there. The town council of Palm Beach has decreed that it would be a nuisance to establish an autom obile trailer camp in that resort. Nor may a trailer be used for an office within the town limits, while two or more trailers parked on a private lot will also constitute a nuisance. One may park a trailer on the highway for not more than one hour, but no meals may be cooked in it. Pretty choosey, that Palm Beach outfit, I'll say.

A STRAY PIGEON MADE ALL sorts of trouble at the New York poultry show. Many cages of pigeons were among the exhibits, and in some way a bird escaped from one of those cages. Every once in a while it would fly from the rafters overhead in search of food, and whenever it did so every bird in the building would become excited. At the last report the stray had not been captured.

I NOTE IN THE PARAGRAPH about the stray pigeon that food for the pigeons exhibited must be of round grains, and the diet provided consists chiefly of Canada field peas. I can recall that fact from my boyhood experience with pigeons. They were fed all sorts of grain but always they would pick up all the peas before the buckwheat, corn or other grain was touched. Also, the fact that the pigeon drinks like a cow, drawing up water while its bill is submerged instead of holding up its head and letting the water run down by gravity, is a fact well known to pigeon fanciers.

MRS. LEWIS M. GOSSETT, who as Hannah Ross attended the University of North Dakota in 1911-12 and again in 1915-17, writes: "There used to be a bit of prose in one of the old readers (those incomparable readers of so much worth) which I do not remember by name, nor the reader in which it appeared, but it was about an old man and his faithful dog. "Roger, my dog," he would say. They would go about the streets together and into various places of business. If you could find the piece for me I should appreciate it very much."

I HAVE NO RECOLLECTION of a selection which quite fits the description given. Perhaps some reader will recognize it and will be able to supply the necessary information. In the meantime it occurs to me that what Mrs. Ross has in mind is a poem—not prose—by J. T. Trowbridge entitled "The Travelers" in which a dissipated old fellow tells the story of his life to a stranger and has his dog Roger perform tricks for a drink or a bit of silver. The opening lines read: "We, are two travelers, Roger and I. Roger's my dog. Come here, you scamp! Jump for the gentleman. Mind your eye! Over the table! Look out for the lamp!"

SIXTY YEARS AGO THAT selection was a favorite number for declamation. Sometimes it was published in prose form. If Mrs. Ross recognizes it and it is the one she wants I shall be glad to forward it.

RECEIVING A COPY OF THE editorial page of the Decorah, Iowa Journal with one editorial marked for my benefit I couldn't imagine at first who had thus remembered me. George Stardvold edits the Posten, so I absolved him. Then I noticed that the Journal is published by J. C. Hammond, and then I remembered that one of my "boys" after progressing through several stages had established himself in Decorah and built up a fine business.

HAMMOND RECALLS HIS days as a Grand Forks Herald reporter, and the time when he was rebuked for coloring his report of a baseball game with criticism of the umpire. He was informed, he says, that so long as we choose umpires and judges to make our decisions for us, we should accept those decisions or appeal from them through proper channels. SEED CATALOGUES ARE Beginning to show up and I have just been looking over the first of the lot to arrive at my corner. A seed catalogue is some thing like an adventure story — it affords an infinite quantity of pleasant vicarious experience. Thus one may get a lot of the thrill of mountain climbing, big-game hunting or bringing to confusion the dastardly schemes of robbers and pirates while sitting comfortably at home in an easy chair, smoking a pipe and reading about those things in a book. That sort of thing is convenient, inexpensive, and perfectly safe.

SO, WITH A SEED Catalogue to provide the suggestions, one can revel in velvety lawns, banks of shrubbery and gloriously colored flowers without expenditure of a cent or the slightest sym-tom of back-ache. And when the first plan laid out proves defective in spots, as it always does, it can be revamped without waiting for the slow processes of the seasons to do their work.

ASIDE FROM THESE Pleasures, which are purely of the imagination, the seed catalogue is of assistance in making plans for the touching up and rearrangement of the garden which actually exists. One of the main delights of gard- ening is based on the fact that no garden is ever just right or quite complete. The original plan may represent in every detail the designer's idea of perfection. All the lines are to blend as perfectly as those of a Greek statue and all the colors are to harmonize like the notes of a symphony. But before the end of the first season of growth it is discovered that this shrub needs to be moved a few feet back and that little bed of annuals is not in quite the right place, and next spring there must be some more digging, and transplanting, and still the need for change will become apparent before fall.

IF PERFECTION IN A Garden were attainable gardening would be deprived of most of its kick. Imagine the garden so completely right that there would be nothing to do but keep it just as it is. How tiresome, how montonous it would become! There would be neither doubt nor fear, hope nor anticipation, and after a season or two the gardener would be impelled in desperation to sow a few dandelion seeds and plant a few thistles just to have something upon which to exercise his combative facilities, something to improve.

AND IN THOSE RESPECTS perhaps the garden is not unlike life itself. There are so many things wrong that the thought of a perfect world is attractive. Philosophers have painted glowing pictures of a world in which everything will be just right. But if there were no wrongs to right, no mistakes to correct, on imperfections to improve wouldn't we all become ossified amid that deadly, dreary, monotonous perfection? I don't know, and there isn't any danger that I shall have to try it. In the meantime, I have a lot of fun figuring out how to make the garden different, with an eye on the perfection which will never be attained.

A HONOLULU PAPER Describes a Christmas concert given by Honolulu choirs of 320 voices under the direction of Hedvig Rice Finkenbinder. The director is a daughter of Dr. and Mrs. H. J. of Thief River Falls and a graduate of the University of North Dakota. Of the concert, given by children away out in mid-Pacific, so far from the Christmas surroundings with which we are familiar, the Honolulu paper says:

"TO SAY IT WAS AN Impressive program is mild. It was one of the most perfect programs to have been presented in Honolulu. The young students in their white robes, singing with natural untrained voices, were perfectly disciplined and controlled." "The director, Mrs. Finkenbinder, is a graduate of the University of North Dakota. She received choir training in choir work at the world-famous St. Olaf's college in Minnesota. When one realizes that the director was guiding such a number of young people in the field of song and doing it in the perfect manner—that is achievement." "The program consisted of numbers well known to everyone, but it was the direction of untrained and natural voices that commanded attention of the audience. Mrs. Finkenbinder has a special talent in knowing how to discipline students. They reacted in an enthusiastic manner to her command." The final number sung was "Silent Night." The audience was hushed, the murmur of a sigh could have been heard as the audience listened to the melody of the age old tune. It was the season of Christmas that was near. It was a message of peace that was being given the world by youth. And the audience came away moved by what a director of young voices had accomplished." "Mixed double octette and combined choirs sang many numbers. An antiphonal choir was heard m various songs and as the melodies passed from choir to choir one was grateful for the privilege of being there." MARK FORKNER, Publisher of the Langdon Chronicle, who is also secretary of the North Dakota Press association, is usually in some part of the so-called sunny south at the time of the winter meeting of the Press as- sociation. This year he is in California, but he never forgets the press meeting. At the meeting in Fargo the other day a letter was received from him, extending greetings to the rs, and incidentally mentioning the weather.

PRESS DISPATCHES HAVE told of the snow and frost in southern California, but they have not told half of it. This California winter has been atrocious, cold, rainy, frosty and generally disagreeable. Fruit growers have lost immense sums in injury to their crops, and in the effort to ward off the frost they have created atmospheric conditions compared with which a prairie dust storm is but a mild annoyance. Millions of gallons of black oil have been burned in smudge pots in order to lay a blanket of smoke over the orchards, and so far as creating the blanket is concerned the effort was entirely successful. Everything was blanketed. The smoke-fog was so thick that traffic on the highways was practically suspended because headlights would not penetrate the gloom. But that was not the worst of it. Every building was filled with black, greasy smoke which found its way even into such places as closed dresser drawers, and bed and table linen and other fabrics were smudged, as well as orchards. So much for California.

DOWN AT THE OTHER Corner, in Florida, they have been sweltering in heat. A few days ago the thermometer registered 85 in the shade at Tampa, and 85 in the humid atmosphere of Florida is about equivalent to 110 in the drier air of the north. Florida fruit growers fear the effect of the heat on their crops.

THEN UP NEAR THE Northeast corner New York has been slopping around in slush, and the mild weather there has stimulated the growth of vegetation, as reported thus in the New York Times:

"SEVERAL VARIETIES OF early blooming flowers have mistaken the recent warm weather for the coming of spring, according to officials of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Snowdrops near the laboratory building are in full bloom and the vernal witch hazel has been in flower for some time. Tulips were pushing up yesterday in a Greenwich village garden on West Eleventh street, Manhattan.

THE LIGHT YELLOW PETALS of the Japanese witch hazel are opening while a few branches of forsythia are showing their golden bell-like blooms. The public may see these premature blooms if they will. The witch hazels grow close to the Willow brook in the central part of the garden, and the forsythia may be seen near the entrance of the Japanese garden." ACROSS THE OCEAN THEY have had snow in Sicily, which is almost unheard of. Next thing, we shall be hearing of skating on the Grand Canal in Venice.

SAMUEL HARTSHORN DIED a few days ago at his home in New Jersey. To most persons the name will mean nothing, but whenever one raises or lowers a window-shade of the kind most generally used he operates a device invented by Samuel Hartshorn, and out of which the inventor made a fortune. Hartshorn was born in Tennessee in 1840. His father invented a shade roller which did not prove satisfactory, but Samuel tinkered with the thing until he hit upon the idea of the little ratchet which utilizes born gravity and centrifugal force in its operation. That was in 1875. The device proved a success. Millions of those rollers have been manufactured, and several factories are now engaged in turning them out.

UNLIKE MANY INVENTORS, Hartshorn was a good business man, and he reaped in person the reward of his own ingenuity. He became immensely wealthy. He remained active during his long life, and up to his death he was active in the management of several large corporations which he headed.

MR. HARTSHORN WAS A man of great public spirit, and he had his own ways of getting things done. He undertook the development of a small New Jersey town as a residence center. He had streets built according to the contour of the hills. He built a railway station and hired a station master and then invited the railroad to stop its trains there, which was done. He celebrated his 96th birthday last summer by going fishing up in Maine. He caught 110 bass during the trip, but he complained that "they were not biting very well. He had a thick mop of white hair and a long, full, white beard, which gave him the appearance of a patriarch out of Genesis, and according to Rotary International headquarters he was the oldest Rotarian in the world.

"STORIES OF HYMNS WE Love" is the title of a little book by Cecelia Margaret Rudin which is published by John Rudin & Co. of Chicago. For this work the author has selected a group of familiar hymns and has given facts concerning author and com-poser, and in many cases has told of the circumstances under which the hymn was writ- ten. The story of each hymn is told in simple language, and the book is one to be prized by lovers of hymns everywhere. The selections are representative in character, but the book might well have been expanded into a much larger and more comprehensive volume, for there is great wealth of material.

IN THE STORY OF MARTIN Luther's great hymn "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" the reader is reminded that until Luther's time congregational singing was almost unknown, the singing in churches being by the clergy or specially selected choirs. Luther wrote hymns for the use of the common people, and in their language, and under his influence Germany became a singing nation.

NEARLY TWO CENTURIES later Isaac Watts performed a similar service for England. Before his time congregational singing had been a feature of the worship in English churches, but it was of an uninspiring kind. In some of the branches of the Reformed church there was no singing except of the Psalms, of which a metrical ver- sion had been prepared for this purpose. That version is still found attached to older editions of the Bible, and while it is a monument to the industry and ingenuity of the arranger, the phraseology leaves much to be desired.

IN THE USE OF THIS Version of the Psalms it was customary for the leader to "line out" the number. The first line was read and then sung, then the second, and so on. The effect was anything but that of "making a joyful noise unto the Lord." Watts was innately musical. It is told of him that once during family prayers he burst out laughing. When called to task he confessed that he had seen a mouse run up the bell-rope that hung by the fireplace and he had made up this rhyme: A mouse for want of better stairs Ran up a rope to say his prayers.

NATURALLY HE FOUND THE music in the churches which he attended dull and dreary, and when he complained about this to leaders in the church where his father preached one of them said "Give us something better, young man." The young man accepted the challenge, and during the next two years he wrote some 200 hymns which he published in what was the first hymn-book in the English language.

WATTS CONTINUED THE writing of humns during the rest of his long life. He wrote some of the noblest hymns in the language, among them "Joy to the World, the Lord Is Come," "Oh God, Our Help in Ages Past," and "Jesus Shall Reign Where'er the Sun." A great lover of children, although unmarried, he wrote numerous songs for children, among these being "How Doth the Little Busy Bee," "Let Dogs Delight to Bark and Bite," and "Birds in Their Little Nests Agree."

FACTS SUCH AS THESE ARE given in the book, together with others relating to the work of Charles Wesley, one of the great hymnologists, Cardinal Newman, whose "Lead, Kindly Light" is conceded to be one of the greatest hymns ever written and many others. It is stated of Newman that he attributed the popularity of his great hymn, not to the words which he had written, but to the music composed for it by Dr. John B. Dykes.

THE STORY IS TOLD OF THE work of Fanny Crosby, the famous blind hymn writer, of P. P. Bliss, whose life was cut short by a rail way accident, and of the writing of "Home, Sweet Home," by John Howard Payne. The reader is reminded, also, that the composer of the music for "Onward Christian Soldiers" was Sir Arthur Sullivan, whose genius was exhibited in the composition of hymn tunes no less than in the famous "Gilbert and Sullivan operas. IT WAS WITH THE Keenest regret that I learned of the burning of the main ranch building on the Christenson ranch in McKenzie county, for it was my privilege to spend a night there last summer and to enjoy the beauty of the place. The building was a large log structure built many years ago by Mr. Christenson's father when he started ranching in a modest way. Since the father's death the property has been operated by the present owner, Vic Christenson, who enlarged and modernized the house and made of it an ideal country home, with all the conveniences to be found in a city dwelling.

OUR FIRST VIEW OF THE ranch gave the members of our little party a pleasant surprise, as the place is not visible from a distance. To reach it we had traveled over a trail that led for miles through broken country in which there was no visible evidence of habitation. Reaching the crest of a hill we found spread beneath us a pleasant little valley with the great ranch house nestling among trees which almost concealed it, and near by the corrals and out- buildings appropriate to a great ranch property. It was truly a beautiful site in summer, and since visiting it I have had visions, of what that generous living room must have been in winter, with its great fireplace, its comfortable chairs and its well-stocked library, with the thick log walls impervious alike to heat and cold. A newspaper account of the fire places the value of the building at $15,000, but there were values there which cannot be expressed in terms of dollars. Mr. Christenson has announced his intention of rebuilding, which will be pleasant news for those who have enjoyed his hospitality in the past.

A PARAGRAPH IN THE Minneapolis Journal tells of the discovery at Tucson, Arizona, of several hundred letters and documents once the property of Hjalmer H. Boyesen, the famous Norwegian writer, the existence of which had been unknown until the recent discovery. The papers were contained in a trunk which Hjalmer Hjort Boyesen, a 16-year old lad living in Tucson had sent over from Norway because it had belonged to his grandfather, the author. In the trunk were found manuscripts by the elder Boyesen, copies of letters which he had written, and letters received from literary men of his day, among them Bjornsterne Bjornson, Longfellow, Lowell, Emerson, Hawthorne, Holmes, Mark Twain, Bill Nye, Edmund Yates, George W. Cable and James Whitcomb Riley. The family of the elder Boyesen seems to have become widely distributed. Old residents of Grand Forks recall one of its '"members, Otto, as having practiced law in Grand Forks.

A CALIFORNIA PAPER brings a beautiful picture of the grounds of a Hollywood estate, the centerpiece a large fountain from which hang icicles up to two feet long. Just as might be expected in the frigid north. The strange thing is that any California paper would publish such a picture, beautiful though it is. The news department of the paper tells of the continuous smudging which it was believed would be necessary for another day or two.

IN PLEASING CONTRAST comes a letter from Gerald Dobmeier, of Park River, who writes: "On New Year's day, while walking through the woods with another boy we saw three robins sitting on a tree, singing. I wonder if anyone else saw robins that early in 1937 in North Dakota." Gerald's robins were probably the first to be seen this year. Let's hope that they don't get too badly chilled before spring.

A RELIC OF FENIAN DAYS in Canada has been found on the beach near Toronto in the form of pieces of planking, an oak keel about 25 feet long, and several ship ribs, which once formed part of the structure of the lake fug W. T. Robb. In 1886, when the Fenians were active along the Niagara river the tug was used to transport troops from Toronto to Niagara. After the trouble was over the tug was used to tow lumber rafts, to be beached later on the lake shore. Vandals set the hull on fire, and wind and waves completed the destruction. The fragments of the old boat have been buried for many years in the sand. A LITTLE CALENDAR ISSUED this year by the American Book company gives selections from the McGuffey readers in which the text is accompanied by illustrations reproduced from the original readers. The selections are all from the first, second and third readers, which suggests one reason for the mild amusement with which mention of the McGuffey readers is often received. Usually when selections from those readers are made the topic of conversation the discussion is of the selections which appeared in the junior readers, and the literary value of the books is measured by what appeared in the volumes intended only for the use of very young children. Modern readers are issued in series, and there are some excellent ones. But who would base judgment of the literary readers by the lessons that appear in the books intended for the primary grades?

YET THAT IS WHAT IS DONE, often and, I am sure, unconsciously, when reference is made to the McGuffey readers. Their contents were intended for children of all grades. For the lower grades there were chosen simple stories, told in simple language. In addition to its use as a reading lesson, each story was intended to teach some moral lesson, surely a laudable pur- pose. If the moral purpose were made more obvious than is now the custom, it is to be reminded that the books marked a great advance from what had preceded them, for they presented their moral in a pleasing form rather than to the accompaniment of fire and brimstone.

BUT THE M'GUFFEY Readers for advanced students had real literary quality. They contained examples of the best that had been written in prose and poetry, and in that respect they do not suffer in comparison with the best readers that are published today.

MY OWN EXPERIENCE DID not include a course in the McGuffey readers. Those were American books and mine was a Canadian school. Several series of Canadian readers had been published before I became acquainted with any of them. The series on which I had my bringing-up was the Campbell series. The selections in them were quite similar to those in the McGuffey books, which was natural, for the compilers of both had access to the same material. The fact is that We youngsters of sixty or more years ago on both sides of the line, enjoyed the privilege, through our school readers of access to examples of the best that had been written in the English language, which was no small privilege for country children in a period when books were not easy to obtain.

THE RECENT SNOWFALL, locally the heaviest of the season, had one characteristic that has been common to both snow and rain for many months. Namely, the smallness of the particles which fell. With a very few exceptions such rains as we had last summer seemed more like falling mist than real rain, and this winter the snow has resembled those same bits of mist changed into miniature snowflakes. Big, soft snowflakes the size of quarters seem to have become a thing of the past.

MRS. ANNA L. HAZEN OF Grand Forks inquires about a sentence which she and her sister, Mrs. W. S. Lauder of Wahpeton, found at the latter's home while looking over old papers in a collection of their aged mother's. Written on a yellowish paper in what appears to be their mother's hand are these words:

"THIS IS THE LUXURY OF music: It touches every key of memory and stirs all the hidden springs of sorrow and joy. I love it for what it makes me forget, and for what it makes me remember."

MRS, HAZEN WOULD LIKE to know if this is a quotation, and if so by whom and if there is more of it. Is any reader familiar with it? IN TWO BOOKS RECENTLY published Pearl Buck has added to her notable series of pictures of Chinese life, and has given remarkable full-length portraits of two intensely interesting persons, her father and her mother, Am- erican missionaries in China. Though born in the United States during one of her mother's rare visits home Pearl spent her childhood and girlhood in China. She spoke Chinese as fluently as English. She played with Chinese children. She breathed Chinese atmosphere, and in three books, the first of which made her famous, "The Good Earth," "Sons," and "A House Divided," she told the story of three generations in the life of a Chinese family as it could be told only by one familiar with Chinese life through intimate and sympathetic experience.

IN "THE EXILE," THE FIRST of her two new books, the author told the story of her mother, to whom she refers always as "Carie." Born in Virginia, Carie had a rich and varied inheritance. From her father she inherited an artistic nature and a love of beauty; from his Dutch parents came the deep religious sentiment that had brought them across the ocean that they might worship freely; and from her French Huguenot mother a talent for untiring industry and the practical things of life.

SO ENDOWED BY NATURE Carie was trained in a school of religious idealism which prompted her to accept with joy an offer of marriage from a young man who lived only that he might carry on the work of the Lord in the Chi- nese mission field. Other than that religious exaltation the two had scarcely anything in common, for Andrew was a stern, hard man, devoted to what he called the Work, and to that alone, to whom wife and children were but incidents and to whom beauty and sentiment were unknown terms. Yet they lived and worked together through long years.

CARIE'S STORY IS AN Entrancing one. She was quick and passionate, tender and forgiving, loving people for their own sake, while Andrew was interested in them only for the Work's sake. She longed for America, yet she re- mained and served, and when at last she found that America had changed and was no longer home, she returned to China and the Chinese people whom she knew and loved, and spent her days serving them. There were moments of rebellion, moments when she resented the harshness and rigidity of her husband's theology, but she never wavered in her care for him and in her solicitude for his comfort. To the Chinese she became "America," and because of her to those who knew her America was good.

IN "THE EXILE" PEARL Buck deals only sketchily with her father, and fearing that she had failed to do him justice she wrote "Fighting Angel." A better title could not have been chosen, for Andrew was an angel of the sterner, sort, almost above human emotion, and a determined and irreconcilable fighter for whatever he believed to be right.

HE CAME OF STERN parentage. His father was a Virginia landowner who ruled his seven sons with a rod of iron, and they inherited his profound religious dogmatism and all but one became preachers. Andrew chose the mission field, for he had no sympathy to waste on unsaved Americans. They had the opportunity and could be saved if they chose.

HE WENT TO CHINA, AND his absorption in the Work lifted him above most of the conventions which influenced other lives. Positive that the will of the Lord had been revealed to him, he yielded to no discipline other than that which he himself prescribed. When members of mission boards disagreed with him concerning methods, Andrew listened to them patiently, but no matter what their decision was, he went his own way, and neither persuasion nor threat could move him. Why should he change when he was right? It was for others to change, who were obviously wrong.

THESE TWO BOOKS SHOULD be read together. Neither is complete without the other. And one cannot read them without loving the patient, loving the woman, who sacrificed much that she might made others happy, or admiring the strength and farsightedness of the man who cared little for the comfort of others, but who was willing to go through fire in order that their souls might be saved in the precise way that he knew to be right. A FEW DAYS AGO I HAD A note about three robins being seen at large on New Year's day. Robins seem occasionally to be able to withstand our severest weather, but when one learns of a butterfly flitting about in 30 below zero weather, that is something different. That butterfly, however, was not out of doors, but in Mrs. E. C. Haagensen's dining room. Where it came from and how it got there nobody knows, but there it was, apparently enjoying life just as if it had been summer.

WHEN I LEABNED OF THE butterfly I was reminded of my two Cecropia cocoons, which, stored in a safe place, have been overlooked for some time. Inspection showed the cocoons to be intact, with no sounds of movement perceptible. As the basement temperature where the cocoons are kept is about 60 the moths will probably take their time about waking up.

JANUARY TEMPEBATUBES seem inclined to dip low and still lower, and we mustn't forget that February is still ahead of us. And it is in February that we often have some of our coldest nights. Somebody reported a temperature of minus 70 in Montana the other day, but that was away off. The weather bureau says that the lowest temperature that day was 65 below, somewhere in Nevada. According to a stray news paragraph the lowest temperature ever officially recorded in the United States was 66 degrees below zero on February 9, 1933, in Yellowstone park. But as park altitudes range from about 7,000 to 10,000 feet, temperatures there will normally be much lower than at levels where people usually spend their winters.

FLOODS ABE EBBATIC things. The Ohio valley is all afloat in midwinter, and they can't blame it on the loosening of torrents from the headwaters. Those floods are due entirely to local rains, a condition which has characterized most floods in the Mississippi and Ohio valleys. Up here we could use to advantage a lot of that water that is now running to waste. Thus far in this territory that points to a flood this spring, but one never can tell. Last spring, after a summer of less than normal rain and a winter of only moderate snowfall, the Red river flooded low lands, and over about Ada they had a veritable flood.

AN OLD COPY OF THE Walhalla Mountaineer, sent by Mrs. Charles H. Lee, of Washington, D. C., whose husband published the paper until his death several years ago, contains the text of a paper read by Miss Lulu Cavileer describing some experiences of her father, the late Charles Cavileer of Pembina. Among other things mention is made of the flood of 1851, which is described as the forerunner of the flood of 1852. A foot of water covered the site of Pembina, and it was necessary to vacate the newly constructed Kittson store. Barges were borrowed from the Hudson's Bay company, one for the family and one for the goods, and these were floated in five feet of water to Hyde park where carts met the party and conveyed them to St. Joseph, now Walhalla.

ONE INCIDENT DESCBIBED by Miss Cavileer involved her father in a ducking which was not in any way related to a flood. Mr. Cavileer was in charge of a brigade of carts en route from St. Paul to Walhalla. Each morning the brigade got under way about daylight, and it was Mr. Cavileer's practice to have a bed made up for him on one of the carts so that he might finish his sleep while the caravan was moving. A stream had to be forded, and just as the cart on which Mr. Cavileer was sleeping was going down the steep bank the ox that hauled the next cart in some way got his head under the rear of the Cavileer cart and cart and man went tumbling into the water.

THOSE BBIGADES Contained from 60 to 90 carts, and the shortest time made on the trip to St. Paul was 22 days and the longest 36 days, the latter when the trail was flooded and carts would sink deep in the mud. Going south the carts were loaded with furs which were sold at auction: The proceeds of the annual sale amounted to about $60,000. SOME INTERESTING FACTS relating to weather are reported by O. W. Roberts, federal meteorologist at Bismarck. When the facts relating to precipitation a s compiled from the official records are compared with the observed conditions in particular localities it becomes apparent that while average figures as applied to long periods or to great areas have their place in the statistical picture, there are other facts which must also be taken into consideration in a study of the relation of rainfall to crop production.

ACCORDING TO THE Record, which covers many years, the normal average precipitation is 17.19 inches. This figure is reached by averaging the figures compiled at many stations distributed throughout the state. Obviously that figure has little bearing on the normal precipitation in any given locality in the state. Normal precipitation in the Red river valley is about 2 inches, while the figures diminish to 15 inches or less; in the far western counties.

THE COMPILATION Discloses the curious fact Bowman is the only reporting station in the state where the average precipitation during the past eight years has been in excess of normal. Bowman's average for those years was 14.42 inches, which is about half an inch above normal for that point. Yet last year Bowman was in the center of one of the driest and worst-burned districts of the state. The presumption is that the excess was due to one or more freakish storms—so-called cloudbursts—the water from which ran off before it had time to saturate the earth.

A DEFICIENCY OF ABOUT an inch is reported at Napoleon, while at Moorhead-Fargo, which is fairly representative of the Red river valley, the annual deficiency for the eight years had been about 8 inches a year. Nevertheless, during most of those years the valley has had at least moderate crops, while the Napoleon district has not. The valley had more to spare from its general average than had the western section.

LAST YEAR VALLEY CROPS ranged from good to very poor. This was due to wide variations in precipitation in the valley itself. In the sections of the valley less favored the greatest deficiency in rainfall was in the spring and early summer, the growing months. Total annual precipitation has an important bearing on soil saturation, but unless rain comes during the growing period crops will fail, regardless of other conditions.

IN NORTH DAKOTA LOCAL taxes are collected by county officials and by them passed on to the state, townships, cities and school districts. In Ontario the township is the tax-collecting agency, and the township passes on to the county the county's share of taxes. Merely a difference in method. This year the Ontario county of Hastings, down near the eastern end of Lake Ontario, accepted from one of its townships, Faraday, fifty cords of wood in payment of the township's tax due the county. The township supervisors reported that they had no money, but could pay the tax in wood, which, by the way, had been cut and prepared for market by relief labor. Looks like a sensible arrangement all around.

FIFTY CORDS OF WOOD AT $7 a cord would be worth only $350, which seems like a small sum to represent the county tax on the property of one township. This recalls another feature of administration not familiar here. In Ontario the township is the important administrative unit. The county board has fewer functions than here, and its expenses are relatively small. Hence the county tax is low.

C. C. FLEMING, THE CHELAN, Washington, man who has been started out with a $200 pension— for one month—thought seriously of using part of the money to buy a set of false teeth. On thinking the matter over, however, and consulting his wife, he decided to buy more groceries with the money that the teeth would have cost. With a good set of teeth he could have done a better job of chewing, but without something to chew what would the teeth have been worth? Mr. Fleming may be a little visionary on the matter of pensions, but there is a streak of shrewdness in him, after all. MBS. J. BELL DEREMER has seen no robins at large this I winter, but three bluejays have refused to leave. Each morning they present themselves near the house for their breakfast, accompanied by a number of chickadies and nuthatches, which have learned where food is to be obtained most easily. Up where I live, only a few blocks from the river, there are seldom any birds to be seen in winter, except sparrows, even of those which habitually spend the season here. As a rule the birds stay close to the native timber, where, in one way or other, they are able to find both shelter and food.

A PICTURE IN A PAMPHLET descriptive of Canadian mining shows a plane discharging its load of freight in one of the far northern mining districts, while standing nearby is a reindeer hitched to a sled, waiting to convey the load to its ultimate destination. Thus there are brought together in the operation of one industry one of the most primitive means of transportation known to man, and the most modern.

MOBE FBEIGHT IS CARRIED by plane in northern Canada than anywhere else in the world. Machinery of all kinds is sent by plane into the far north, hundreds of miles from a railway, usually in parts, to be assembled on the ground. One picture in the mining pamphlet shows the loading onto a plane of a tubular boiler for a steam plant. One of the freight shipments by air consisted of a yoke of oxen to be used in heavy hauling at some distant mine. Not only are machinery and supplies shipped north, but tons of valuable ore are shipped out, to be smelted and refined.

OVERLOOKED FOB SOME time has been a little poem submitted by Mrs. L. Roy Pickard of Niagara, who would like to know the author's name, and, if possible, the incentive for writing it. Can any reader answer? The poem reads: GENTLENESS. When would-be conquerors complain In loud, imperious shout, I think how gently calls the rain That brings the flowers out, How quietly the deepening dark Bids countless fireflies light their spark. Oh, may I tune my voice and know This power of God with me, That hearts may burn with lovelier glow Who keep me company While David's words are mine to state: "Thy gentleness hath made me great."

MAXWELL ANDERSON'S latest play, "High Tor," is now attracting attention. High Tor is a pinnacle in the Catskills, near that stretch of the Hudson known as the Tappan Zee. There, according to an ancient legend, the Flying Dutchman, doomed forever to sail without reaching port, makes its ghostly appearance on summer nights. Long ago the phantom ship was seen on the lower Hudson, sailing up the river with all sails taut, although no wind was stirring, and when she failed to heed a challenge a shot was fired through her main sail, but it passed through without leaving a hole. Since then the ship has not been seen on the lower river, and she is said to have been seen often in the vicinity of High Tor.

ANDER SON HAS WOVEN around this legend what is said to be a splendid play, fanciful and imaginative, and full of rollicking comedy. Brooks Atkinson, dramatic critic of The New York Times, says of the play:

"AT THE OPENING Performance a week ago I had the highest respect and the greatest liking for "High Tor," which Mr. McClintic has blessed with one of his most vigorous performances. Now that I have had the opportunity of reading it, in the volume that Anderson House has just published, my admiration, especially for the verse, has on the whole increased, and the scene transitions that occasionally seemed bewildering in the theater now seem like reasonable modulations in the playing of an imaginative fantasy. For 'High Tor' is an American fantasy, founded on the premise that the natural course of civilizations should not be resisted and mocked by the thesis that 'Nothing is made by men but makes in the end good ruins. All this Mr. Anderson has shown in the caustic, rag-tag and bobtail comedy of some infamous modern rogues and in the nocturne singing of his meditative verse. "Winterset" developed a theme that is more passionately bound up with the practical life of today. As a job of writing 'High Tor' is freer and terser, which shows that Mr. Anderson is mastering a difficult medium; but the theme is more general and perhaps a trifle platitudinous. In this column's opinion 'High Tor' ranks next to 'Winter-set' in the gallery of Mr. Anderson's works. Although fantasies are not conspicuously popular with the American playgoing public, which wants its entertainment plain and in the vernacular, Mr. Anderson has had the courage to write the most trenchant fantasy our dramatic literature contains, and to put it into words that are a tonic to ears gone dull from the drone of insignificant talking. THIS MORNING, WITH THE thermometer at 20 below zero, I watched a sparrow flitting about with something in its beak that evidently was not food. The object proved to be a feather, which the bird must have had some trouble in finding with the ground all covered with snow. Apparently the sparrow was seeking some suitable place to build a nest. If that isn't an example of optimism, what is?

ONE OF THE SPEAKERS ON the Red Cross program on Monday night was Dr. Charles Mayo, one of the world's most distinguished surgeons. He spoke of infantile paralysis, the mystery surrounding its origin, the effort that science is making to determine its exact nature and immediate cause and thereby to learn the way to combat it, the symptoms that usually attend it and the precautions which should be taken during its prevalence. It was an address full of information and valuable suggestion without the waste of a word.

PARTIC ULARLY Interesting to me was the language in which the address was given. Once and once only, was the technical name of the malady mentioned. Except in that case reference to the disease was by the term by which; it is popularly known, "infantile paralysis." No other technical term was used in the address. There were no many-syllable words, no mysterious, suggestions. The address was as simple and understandable as a child's reading lesson, and yet there was in it nothing to suggest that the speaker was "talking down" to hearers of limited understanding. It was a frank, forthright address by a recognized authority who spoke, not to give an impression of his own wisdom, but simply and earnestly for the purpose of being understood.

APOLOGIES ARE OFTEN made for speakers whose work is in advanced professional fields for the incomprehensibility to lay hearers of the speeches which they make. It is explained that the work in which they are engaged, law, medicine, physics or what not, demands exactness which can be attained only by the use of technical terms which lie outside the sphere of lay understanding, and that therefore their address, though in- tended for the general public, are necessarily incomprehensible. Dr. Mayo had no difficulty of that kind. He made himself understood without being either somophoric or patronizing. I have no doubt that if he were speaking to a gathering of physicians on the technical features of infantile paralysis he would use whatever technical terms might be necessary to convey his precise meaning, but he realizes, apparently, that the place to talk shop is in the shop, and are addressed the shop should be that when non-technical persons left behind.

"WALLY" HUFF'S PASSING removes from Grand Forks a figure that has been familiar in the city for more than 50 years. Though forced into retirement in recent years by advancing age, Wallace Huff had long been one of the active members of the community. He had served in many occupations, quietly and modestly, but faithfully. Those who knew him soon came to respect his integrity and price his friendship, and the lives of many were made happy by his presence. The younger generation knew him but slightly, but there are still living a host of those who will miss him.

MUCH CAN BE DONE through the creation of reservoirs and similar works to minimize the effect of some floods, and in certain cases to prevent floods altogether, and it goes without saying that whatever can be .done in this way should be done. But once in a while nature seems determined to take matters into her own hands and to set at naught the efforts of man. When the meteorological conditions are such as to create a great flood, as they have been in the Ohio valley, it seems that nothing that man can do will avert disaster. Torrential rains falling over a great area have swollen streams far beyond the retarding influence of dams and reservoirs, and in several cases where costly levees were built to keep rivers in their channels, those works ha now been destroyed by dynamite to let the flood waters escape. We speak sometimes of letting nature take its course, but there are times when nature will take its course regardless of our willingness. A LETTER FROM PROFESSOR J. Duane Squires of Colby Junior college, New London, N. H., brings an interesting bit of North Dakota constitutional history which came to his attention through a conference with Oswald Garrison Villard, who recently visited the college, Mr. Villard's father was one of the important figures in the building of the Northern Pacific railway, and the son was one of the party on the train that attended the ceremonies attending the driving of the golden spike which marked the completion of the road. Oswald Garrison Villard still has that spike in his possession.

"THIS REMINDED ME," writes Professor Squires, "of the influence of the senior Villard, and I recalled the story that at the time of the Constitutional Convention he had used his influence to shape the emergent document. I checked through various sources and found that James B. Thayer of the Harvard Law School is said to have aided Villard in the preparation of the document. The sketch of Thayer in the Dictionary of American Biography is by Professor Williston. No mention is made of this phase of Thayer's life in the sketch, but an application for information to Professor Williston, author of the sketch, brought this reply."

PROFESSOR WILLISTON gives the following facts relating to the drafting of the North Dakota constitution:

"HENRY VILLARD (AND Perhaps others) financially interested in the Northwest desired to have a suitable Constitution for North Dakota. Mr. Villard, I think, lived in Boston before he became prominent as a financier, and was a client of Professor Thayer's, when the latter was a practicing lawyer. Professor Thayer's distinction in Constitutional law was well- known and it was natural under the circumstances for Mr. Villard, in either 1888 or 1889, (I think the latter year) to apply to Professor Thayer to draft the desired Constitution. No restrictions were imposed upon him. Professor Thayer, accordingly, went to work and there being some pressure of time, he employed me, recently graduated from the Law School, and Henry W. Hardon (Later of the New York Bar and recently deceased), who graduated from this Law School two or three years before me, to make preliminary drafts of portions of the Constitution. In doing this work we went over all existing state constitutions, choosing what seemed desirable provisions and often, of course, slightly changing the wording. We then submit- ted the work to Professor Thayer.

"HE WAS ALWAYS AN Advocate of broad general provisions, which would allow elasticity of interpretation. The late Justice Holmes was, when both were in practice, a junior partner of Thayer's and has expounded in his judicial opinions on the Constitution the view held by Professor Thayer. "The Constitution .as drafted was presented to the North Dakota convention. It was not adopted in its entirety, but my understanding has been, though I have never made comparisons," that a great deal of the draft was incorporated into the Constitution adopted."

PROFESSOR THAYER'S Belief that the constitution should be "one of broad general principles which would allow elasticity of interpretation" was also that of Judge Thomas M. Cooley of Michigan, who at the time of the constitutional convention was chairman of the Interstate Commerce commission and widely recognized as an authority on constitutional law. Judge Cooley, invited to address the North Dakota constitutional convention, said:

"DON'T, IN YOUR Constitution making, legislate too much. In your constitution you are tying the hands of the people. Don't do that to any such extent as to prevent the legislature hereafter from meeting all evils that may be within the reach of proper legislation. Leave something for them. Take care to put proper restrictions upon them, but at the same time leave what properly belongs to the field of legislation to the legislature of the future. You have got to trust somebody in the future, and it is right and proper that each department of government should be trusted to perform its legitimate function."

THE ADVICE GIVEN BY such authorities was not closely followed. The draft of the constitution as originally prepared was amended and expanded until the document became in considerable measure a code of statutory legislation instead of a declaration of principles.

A RECENT ISSUE OF THE Cando Record devotes a full page to an article on the early history of Sidney township. Towner county, prepared by Mrs. Hugh Lymburn, of Hansboro. There are given the records of the first settlement, first church, first school and many other "firsts pertaining to the settlement of the township, and the names of scores of settlers are given, with the location of their farms and often bits of personal history. The collection of this data must have required careful research and infinite patience and the author is to be commended on the completeness of her work.

RICHARD D. COWAN IS Listed as the first settler in the township. He came from Woodstock, Ontario in the fall of 1883 by way of Brandon, Man., and filed on land near Rolla, but the following spring he came west again with his effects by way of Devils Lake, and not being satisfied with his first filing, he sought and found a permanent homestead in Sidney township. On his search for land he carried with him a vaulting pole by means of which he crossed ravines and coulees. HOW OLD IS A BIRD? IT may be replied that some birds are older than others, which would be quite correct, as far as it goes. But how old may any bird become? Again the answer will depend to some extent on the kind of bird. A goose is a bird, and somewhere I have read of geese living to the age of 30 or more. And ostriches are said to have a much greater span of life. The general rule seems to be that life expectancy is proportioned rather loosely to the size of the creature. The smaller the bird or animal the more quickly does life run its course.

THIS BRINGS US TO THE smaller birds with which we are most familiar. How long do they live? My neighbors, the Danusers; have a canary which is 13 years old, and which still seems to enjoy life. A friend of theirs has an 8-year-old canary whose existence is a constant round of pleasure. Wherever the owner goes the can- ary accompanies her, traveling in a miniature cage provided for that special purpose.

THESE ARE TAME BIRDS, accustomed to the sheltered life, and shielded from the dangers that would encompass them if they were at large. As to wild birds, I have never seen an estimate of the probable duration of life with them. Attempts to domesticate wild birds are rarely successful. That domestication from the wild state can 13 accomplished is evidenced j by the fact that we have canaries which, through successive generations have become accustomed to captivity and thrive in it. Yet the ancestors of our canaries were once wild, as were the ancestors of all other caged birds.

THERE ARE IN THE UNITED States no wild canaries. We have here birds which resemble them, the golden- bronze goldfinch, sometimes called the thistle-bird, and the brighter-hued yellow warbler, both of which are sometimes called canaries. I have often wondered what would be the result of studied effort to domesticate these birds and develop from them songsters which would be healthy and happy while caged.

EVERY SUMMER WE SEE thousands of birds, but how many dead ones do we see? Most of them are young birds which have been killed in falling from their nests before being able to fly. An adult dead bird is rather a rarity. Thousands of sparrows inhabit even a small city. Their nests are built in all sorts of sheltered places. Each pair, if undisturbed, will produce several broods in a year. The natural increase must be tremendous. Yet we have only approximately the same number of sparrows year after year. The mortality must about equal the birth rate. Yet how often does one see a dead adult sparrow? How many of them die of old age, and to what age do they live?

PROBABLY FEW WILD BIRDS die of natural causes. With them the hazards of existence are numerous and great. Inclement weather takes its toll, and during its entire life the wild bird must be on its guard against fierce enemies which seek its life. Cats, dogs, weasels, skunks, foxes and other predatory animals lie in wait, and birds themselves prey on each other. The simile "free as a bird” is an accurate one, but the freedom is experienced through a life of constant danger.

ROBERT E. LEE SENDS IN A tail from a striped gopher. The little animal was playing about in the snow on January 23, and Robert thinks he may have come out for the inauguration and stayed too late.

RUDYARD KIPLING'S OWN story of his childhood days is now being published by the poet's widow. Born in India Kipling was sent to England by his parents while a child. For six years the boy lived in a boarding house at Portsmouth, just across the river from the suburb in which Charles Dickens was born. Kipling's boyhood was even more difficult than that of Dickens, for his early schooling was of the most rigorous kind and was accompanied by frequent and severe beatings. He writes that when his mother came from India and leaned to kiss him while he was in bed he raised his arm instinctively to ward off the blow that he had learned to expect from grown persons who approached him.

KIPLING'S ACCOUNT OF HIS early reading is good. He writes: "I was made to read without explanation, under the usual fear of punishment. And on a day that I remember it came to me that reading was not 'The Cat lay on the Mat,' but a means to everything that would make me happy. So I read all that came within my reach. As soon as my pleasure in this was known, deprivation from reading was added to my punishments. I then read by stealth all the more earnestly." AFTER HAVING BEEN Engaged on a number of important engineering works and having accompanied Admiral Byrd to the Antarctic, Richard B. Black, former Grand Forks man and University student, has become virtual dictator of an island "empire” in the south Pacific. He has three tiny islands under his control, and his "subjects" number twelve, four to each island. Representing the Interior department Black has been placed in charge of three formerly uninhabited dots in the Pacific which may be required as airway stations on an air route to Australia and New Zealand, and it is his job to keep the Stars and Stripes flying over those few acres of soil. These islands, unmarked on most maps, are Howland, Baker and Jarvis islands, treeless and grassless, and not more than a dozen feet above the water level. Concerning the plans in view and the work already undertaken the Literary Digest

"WAY- STATIONS ON THE air-line to Suva, Fiji (British), Auckland, New Zealand and Melbourne, Australia, they are as coveted today as if their coral were gold. They lie in a strategic position along this sky-trail. "Few persons ever had heard of them until the Coast Guard cutter Itasca slipped down there last summer from Honolulu. On each were landed four boys from the Kamehameha school to take and keep possession for the United States. Their first job was to set up leaden plates warning trespassers that this was American soil. "As colonial administrator, Mr. Black has twelve citizens under his jurisdiction, four on each islet. America's newest frontier—the air frontier—is governed from Honolulu, though these islets are not yet part of the Territory of Hawaii. Only means of communication is by the Itasca.

"THE CUTTER, ON HER first trip, took along building materials, seedlings and cuttings of ironwood, cashew, mango, breadfruit, Hawaiian oranges, passion-fruit and sea-grapes. On her second voyage, there were tractors and plows to turn bumpy natural landing-fields into smooth tarmac runways. "This week, another Coast Guard cutter, the Duane, is enroute for Howland Island with Mr. Black, Robert Campbell, Divisional Airport Inspector for the Department of Commerce; a naval air pilot, six army enlisted men and several WPA workers. Two tractors and a cement-mixer will be landed for constructing two airplane runways.

"LAND - PLANES RATHER than flying-boats will be used on the 5,000-mile service to the antipodes. Already, these landing-areas could be used for emergencies, but water surrounding the islands is too rough for seaplanes to make a safe landing and tie up for refueling and inspection. These landing-fields are a mile long, face directly into prevailing winds and are sufficiently wide for their purpose.

"ANGRY SEAS BEAT Directly on the shore, surf booms and piles up in wintry weather until landing even by skiff is dangerous. It is a lonely life the twelve native-boy colonists lead, but a life that any live American boy would jump at. They are bound there for six months until others replace them, but they all want to stay if they can.

"FLOTSAM AND JETSAM ON the beach where they landed tell of shipwrecks and survivors who stayed years until they were taken off. Back in the 'fifties and 'sixties these three were guano islands where laborers shoveled into sacks deposits left for centuries by mewing sea-birds, sent them to fertilize rocky soil of far-off New Eng- land. Weathered boards still mark graves of sailormen buried by skippers of Yankee clippers of another era.

"ON HOWLAND ISLAND there is a trench several hundred feet long and a hundred-odd feet wide, ten to fifteen feet deep, landmark of bygone Polynesian colonists who dug down for water to grow their favorite taro crop. "Then, these three islands were nameless. Today, their status is complicated by different theories of annexation. To satisfy British laws, it is necessary only to discover a pin-point on the map and plant the Union Jack. For the United States, continuous possession must be established. Some sort of "gentleman's agreement" is the likeliest solution."

NOTING THAT AT THE Recent meeting of the North Dakota Press association at Fargo the portrait of the late F. A. Wardwell of Pembina was unveiled, to be given a place in the newspaper Hall of Fame at the University of. North Dakota, a correspondent writes that he has in his possession a copy of the first issues of the Pembina Pioneer, published August 7, 1879. The Pioneer was established by P. A. Gatchell and M. A. Brown. Later the Pioneer and the Pembina Express were bought by Mr. Wardwell and his partner, G. G. Thompson, and combined as the Pioneer Express. Wardwell edited the paper for many years, until failing health compelled his retirement from newspaper work.

PROBABLY THERE ARE few, if any, other copies of the first issue of the Pembina Pioneer in existence. The Pioneer-Express building was destroyed by fire a good many years ago, and presumably the files of the paper were burned.