Pittston Gazette

              - Oldest Newspaper in the Wyoming Valley. PITTSTON, LUZERNE CO., PA., FRIDAY, MAY 27, 18CD2. ESTABU8HKI) 1H««». i VOL. X LI I. NO. i:s. I A Weekly Local and Family Journal C*1.50 J'KR VVM'M i !\ ADVANCE. TI SCARLET LETTER motherly affection, as that she might thereby conceal a certain token which wan wrought or fastened into her dress. In a moment, however, wisely jndgiDg that one token of her shame would bat poorly serve to hide another, she took the baby on her arm, and with a burning blush and yet a haughty smile, and a glance that would not be abashed, looked around at her townspeople and neighbors. On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery aud fantastic flourishes of gold thread. apyieared the letter A. It W!i9 so artistically done, and with so much fertility and gorgeous luxuriance of fancy, that it had all the effect of a last and (itting decoration to the api«rvl which she wore, and which was »)f a splendor in accordance with the liste of the age, but greatly beyond fchat was allowed by the sumptuary rgulations of the colony. individual parts—Hester Prynne might have repaid them all with a bitter aud disdainful smile. But, under the leaden infliction which it was her doom to endure, she felt at moments as if she must needs shriek out with the full power of her lungs and cast herself from thescaffo'd down upon theground. or else go mad at once. stranger, with another smile, "should come himself to look into the mystery." was a person ot very striKinj/ asjiect. with a white, lofty and impending brow, large, brown, melancholy eyes, and a mouth which, unless when he forcibly compressed it, was apt to be tremulous, expressing both nervous sensibilitv and a vast uowerof self restraint :er. He was lodged in the prison, not as suspected of any offense, but as the most convenient nrd suitable mode of disposing of him nnlil the magistrates "hould have conferred with the Indian -sagamores respecting his ransom. His name was announced as Roger Chillingworth. The jailer after ushering him into the room remained a moment, marveling at the comparative quiet that followed his entrance; for Hester Prynne had immediately become as still as death, although the child continued to moan. miss, wnicn is scattered rar anu wiae for all mankind to gather up, might yet be mine. And so, Hester, 1 drew thee into my heart, into its innermost chamber, and sought to warm thee by the warmth which thy presence made there !" NYE ASA NATURALIST to think against, anil lDv moans of a graduated scale the oHicml can tell whether a man knows more or less than the law allows.  "It behooves him well, if he lie still in life.'' responded the townsman. "Now, good sir, our Massachusetts magistracy, bethinking themselves that this woman is youthful and fair, and doubtless was strongly tempted to her fall, and that, moreover, as is most likely, her husband may be at the bottom of the sea, they have not been bold to put in force the extremity of om righteous law against her. The penaltj thereof is death. But in their great mercy and tenderness of heart they have doomed Mistress Prynne to stand only a space of three hours on the platform of the pillory and then and thereafter, for the remainder «;f her natural life, to wear a mark «if shame upon her liosom.'' CINCINNATI FURNISHES SOME ZOO-' LOGICAL THOUGHTLETS. By NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. In this way the smart Aleck wlio know** it all. and who tells his parents how to grow np to be gc*xl men and women, will be compelled "to fork over some of his ability to the poor fellow who has failed as a sand pounder. CHAPTER L THE MARKET PLACE. Notwithstanding his high native gifts and scholarlike attainments there w.ta an air about this young minister—an apprehensive, a startled, a half frightened look—as of a being who felt himself quite astray and at a loss in the pathway of human existence, and could only be at ease in some seclusion of his own. Therefore, so far as his duties would »ermit, he trod in the sha.lowy bypaths and thus kept himself simple and childlike, • oming forth, when occasion was, with I freshness and fragrance and dewy purity of thought which, as many people said, affected them like the speech of an "1 have greatly wronged thee," murmured Hester. Mr. O'Hoolihan'* View* on IDiv«r» Sub- • * * The grass plot before the jail, in Prison lane, on a certain summer morning not less than two centuries ago, was occupied by a pretty large number of the inhabitants of Boston, all with their eyes intently fastened on the iron clamped oaken door. Among any other population, or at a later period in the history of New England, the grim rigidity that petrified the bearded physiognomies of these good people would have augured some awful business in hand. It could have betokened nothing short of the anticipated execution of some noted culprit, on whom the sentence of a legal tribunal had but confirmed the verdict of public sentiment. But in that early severity of the Puritan char- Vet there were intervals when the whole scene, in which she was the most conspicuous object, seemed to vanish from her eyes or, at least, glimmered indistinctly before them like a mass of imperfectly shaped and spectral images. Her mind, and especially her memory, was pretematurally active and kept bringing up other scenes than tlii;- roughly hewn street of a little town on the edge of the western wilderness: other faces than were lowering u|kiu her from beneath the brims of those steeple crowned hats. Reminiscences the iwwi trifling and immaterial, passages of in fancy and school days, sports, childish quan-els and the little domestic traits of her maiden years came swarming back upon her, intermingled with recollections of whatever was gravest in her subsequent life; one picture precisely as vivid as another, as if all were of similar importance or ail alike a play. Possibly it was an instinctive device of her spirit to relieve itself by the exhibition of these phantasmagoric forms from the cruel weight and hardness of the reality D » • ject*—ISeeing tlie Elephaut-A SaCl Tale "We have wronged each other," answered he. "Mine was the first wrong, wheu I betrayed thy budding youth into a false anil unnatural relation with my decay. Therefore, as a man who has not thought and philosophized in vain, 1 seek no vengeance, plot net evil against thee. Between thee and me the scale hangs fairly balanced. But Heater the man lives who has wronged us both! Who is her of a Fight with Flames anil How Funi Souls Were Saved. _ ICopyright, 1892, by Eilgar W. Nye.] Cincinnati has one of the most attractive zoological gardens in the United States, the fauna displayed there being of an unusually robust and attractive Quality. Fondness for a clCx»c stadv of animal life has ever lDeen a characteristic of mine, and on arrival in any city of considerable size I register, send np mv luggage and inquire at once for the zoological gardens. Soon afterward yon may see me engaged in stndving the sloping shoulders of the giraffe or the low. retreating forehead of the crocodile. Mr. O'Hooliban favors more rigid marriage laws, especially requiring those who marry to refrain from shooting each other within the first year, and also restraining them from publishing their divorce proceedings, so that children are liable to get hold of them. He lDelieves in having suitable places, with sanitary plumbing connected with them, where people may go to get their divorce business and soiled linen attended to. 'Prithee, friend, leave me alone with my patient," said the practitioner. 'Trust me. good jailer, yon shall briefly have peace in your house; and 1 promise you Mistress Prynne filial] hereafter be more amenable to just authority than yon may have found her heretofore." "A wise sentence," remarked the stranger, gravely bowing his head. "Ask me not!" replied Hester Prynne, looking firmly into his face. "That thou shalt never know!" •Thus she will lie a living sermon against sin until the ignominious letter be engraved upon her tombstone. It irks me. nevertheless, that the partner of her iniquity should not, at least, stand on the scaffold by her side. But he will be known—he will be known—he will be known!" angel. "Nay, if your worship can accomplish that," answered Master Brackett, "1 shall own you for a man of skill indeed I Verily, the woman hath been like a possessed one, and there lacks little that 1 should take in hand to drive satan out of her with stripes." The vouiig Wvfitan was tall, with a figure of perfect elegance on a large scale She had Cjark aim abundant hair, so glossy that it threw off the sunshine with a gleam and a face which, besides being beautiful from regularity of fea- Such w«s the young man whom the Reverend Mr. Wilson and the governor had introduced so openly to the public notice, bidding him speak in the bearing of all men to that mystery of a woman's aoul, so sacred even in its pollution. The trying nature of bis position drove the blood from his cheek and made bia lips tremulous. "Never, savest thou?" rejoined he. with a smile of dark and self relying intelligence. "Never know him! Believeme, Hester, there are few things—whether in the outward world or, to a certain depth, in the invisible sphere of thoughtfew things hidden from the man who devotes himself earnestly and unreservedly to the solution of a mystery. Thon in ay est cover up thy secret from the prying multitude. Thou mayest conceal it, too, from the ministers and magistrates, even as thou didst this day, when they sought to wrench the name out of thy heart and give thee a partner on thy pedestal. But, as for me, 1 come to the inquest with other senses than they possess. 1 shall seek this man, as 1 have sought truth in books; as I have sought gold in alchemy. There is a sympathy that will make me conscious of him. 1 shall see him tremble. 1 shall feel myself shudder, suddenly and unawares. Sooner or later, be must needs be mine!" Asked his opinion regarding English humor as compared with Irish and American humor, he said: "The English humor of today is of a restful character and used mostly as a means of relaxation. In the days of Thackeray and Dickens Englishmen seemed to enjoy a mirth provoking humor of the American order, it seems to me, but now it runs largely to puns and petty larceny. It is a sadder humor than ours, a good style to adopt during Lent. English humor with sulphur and treacle can do no harm, I think. acter an inference of this kind could not so indubitably be drawn. It might be that a sluggish bond servant, or an «i-' dutiful child, whom his parents mid given over to the civil authority, was to be corrected at the whipping post. It might be that an Antinomian, a Quaker or other heterodox  was to be scourged out of the town, or an idle and vagrant Indian, whom the white man's fire water had made riotous about the streets, was to be driven with stripes into the shadow of the forest, it might be, too, that a witch, like old Mistress Hibbins, the bitter tempered widow of the magistrate, was to die upon the gallows. In either case, there was very much the same solemnity of demeanor on the part of the spectators; as befitt«d a people among whom religion and law were almost identical, and in whose character both were so thoroughly interfused that the mildest and severest acts of public discipline were alike made venerable and awful. Meager, indeed, and cold was the sympathy that a transgressor might look for, from such bystanders, at the scaffold. On the other hand, a penalty, which in our days would infer a degree of mocking infamy and ridicule, might then be invested with almost as stern a dignity as the punishment of death itself.rand richness of complexion, had iinpressiveness belonging to a marked brow and deep black eyes. She was ladylike, too, nfter the manner of the feminine gentility of those days; characterized by a certain state and dignity, rather than by the delicate, evanescent and indescribable grace which is now recognized as its indication. And never had Hester Prynne appeared more ladylike, in the antique interpretation of the term, than as she issued from the prison. Those who had before known her. and haa expected to behold her dimmed and obscured by a disastrous cloud, were astonished and even startled to perceive how her beauty shone out and made a halo of the misfortune and ignominy in which she was enveloped. The stranger bad entered the room with the characteristic quietnde of the profession to which he announced himself as belonging. Nor did his demeanor change when the withdrawal of the prison keeper left him face to face with the woman, whose absorbed notice of him in the crowd had intimated so close a relation between himself and her His first care was given to the child, whose cries, indeed, as 6he lay writhing on the trundlebed. made it of peremptory necessity to postpone all other business to the task of soothing her. He examined the infant carefully and then proceeded to unclasp a leathern case, which he took from beneath his dress. It appeared to contain medical preparations, one of which he mingled with a cup of water. He bowed courteously to the communicative townsman and, whispering a few words to his Indian attendant, they both made their way through the crowd. "Speak to the woman, my brother," 6aid Mr. Wilson. "It is of moment to her soul, and therefore, as the worshipful governor says, momentous to thine own, in whose charge hers is. Exhort her to confess the troth!" While this passed, Hester Prynne had beeu standing on her pedestal still with a fixed gaze toward the stranger; so fixed a gaze that at moments of intense absorption all other objects in the visible world seemed to vanish, leaving only him ana tier. t.uch an interview perhaps would have been more terrible than even to meet him as she now did, with the hot. midday sun burning down upon her face and lighting up its shame; with the scarlet token of infamy on her breast; with the sin born infant in her arms: with a whole people, drawn forth aa to a festival, staring at the features that should have been seen only in the quiet gleam of the fireside, in the happy shadow of a home or beneath a matronly veil at church. Dreadful as it was, •he was conscious of a shelter in the presence ot tnese tnousana witnesses. It was better to stand thus, with bo many betwixt him and her, than to greet him face to face, they two alone. She fled for refuge, as it were, to the public exposure, and dreaded the moment when its protection should be withdrawn from her. Involved in these thoughts, she scarcely heard a voice behind her until it had repeated her name more than once in a loud and solemn tone, audible to the whole multitude. Lastly, in lieu of these shifting scenes, came back the rude market place of the Puritan settlement, with all the townspeople assembled and leveling their stern regards at Hester Prynne—yes, at herself—who stood on the scaffold of the pillory, an infant on her arm and the letter A, in scarlet, fantastically em broidered with gold thread, upon her bosom. "An Englishman came over on a Cunarder the other day, and the passengers put the customs officers 'on to him' lDecause he seemed to have swollen up so rapidly the day before reaching New \ ork. But how do you suppose he got out of it? He told the officers that the day before he landed the passengers got him to talking on the tariff, and before be had an idea what he was doing lie had enlarged tipon it! The Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale bent his bead in silent prayer, as it seemed, and then came forward. "Hester Prynne," said he, leaning over the balcony and looking down steadfastly into her eyes, "thou hearest what this good man says and seest the account* bility under which 1 labor. If thou feel est it to be for thy soul's peace, and thai thy earthly punishment will thereby be made more effectual to salvation, 1 charge thee to sjieak out the name of thy fellow sinner and fellow sufferer! Be not silent from any mistaken pity and tenderness for him; for. believe me, Hes ter, though he were to step down from a high place and stand there beside thee on thy pedestal of shame, yet better were it so than to hide a guilty heart through life. What can thy silence do for him except it tempt him—yea, compel him as it were—to add hypocrisy to sin? Heaven hath granted thee an open igno tniny. that thereby thou inayest work out an open triumph over the evil within thee and the sorrow without. Take heed how thou deniest to him—who perchance hath not the courage to grasp it for him self—the bitter but wholesome cap that is now presented to thy lips!" Could it be true? She clutched the child so fiercely to her breast that it sent forth a cry; she turned her eyes downward at the scarlet letter, and even touched it with her finger to assure herself that the infant and the shame were real. Yes!—these were her realitiesall else had vanished I "lie turned out to be the song and dance editor on the staff of Punch, who was coming over to America for his health, also for the purpose of organizing a school of what is called Whitechapel humor, which is quite popular in England now." It may be true th.it. to a sensitive ob server, there was something exquisitely painful in it. Her attire, which, indeed, she had wrought for the occasion, in prison, and had modeled much after her own fancy, seemed to express the attitude of her spirit, the desperate recklessness of her mood, by its wild and picturesque peculiarity. But the point which drew all eyes, and, as it were, transfigured the wearer—so that both men and women who had been familiarly acquainted with Hester Prynne were now impressed as if they beheld her for the first time—was that scarlet letter, so fantastically embroidered and illuminated u)xDn her liosom. It had the effect of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations with humanity and inclosing her in a sphere by herself. "My old studies in alchemy,"observed he, "and my sojourn, for above a year past, among a people well versed in the kindly properties of simples have made a better physician of me than many that claim the medical degree. Here, woman! The child is yours, she is none of mine, neither will she recognize my voice or aspect as a father's. Administer this draft, therefore, with thine own hand." The eyes of the wrinkled scholar glowed so intensely npon her that Hester Prynne clasped her hands over her heart, dreading that he should read the secret there at once. AT THE ZOO. '•Thou wilt not reveal his name? Not the less he is mine," resumed he, with a look of confidence, as if destiny were at one with him. "He bears no letter of infamy wrought into his garment as thou dost; but I shall read it on his heart. Vet fear not for him! Think not that 1 shall interfere with heaven's own method of retribution, or to my own loss, betray him to the grip© of human law. Neither do thou imagine that 1 shall contrive aught against his life; no, nor against his fame if. as 1 jndge, he be a man of fair repute. Let him live! Let him hide himself in outward honor, if he may! Not the less he shall be mine!" Professor Louis Agassiz, with whom 1 have lectured a number of times to standing room only, divides the earth into three fauna, viz.: 1. The arctic. 2. The temperate. 3. The tropical. The arctic fauna was homogeneous, and embraced the northern extremities of the several boreal continents down to the isothermal zero. Possibly 1 do not make myself quite plain, but a little thought will make this perfectly clear. The arctic fauna embraced those animals which, like the polar bear, prefer a strictly meat diet during the winter, ex hibiting a strong repugnance to oatmeal and adhering to their heavy jaegers the 7ear round. The Cincinnati zoological works possesses the tallest and handsomest giraffe grandiflora that there fs in America. so I am told. It can easily eat out of a third story window, and belongs to Rescue Hook and Ladder company, No. 3, of Cincinnati. CHAPTER O. THE RECOGNITION. From this intense consciousness of being the object of severe and universal observation, the wearer of the scarlet letter was at length relieved by discerning on the outskirts of the crowd a fig are which irresistibly took possession of her thoughts. An Indian, in his native garb, was standing there; but the red men were not so infrequent visitors of the English settlements that one of them would have attracted any notice from Hester Prynne at such a time, much less would he have excluded all other objects and ideas from her mind. By the Indian's side and evidently sustaining a companionship with him stood a white man, clad in a strange disarray of civilized and savage costume. Hester repelled the offered medicine, at the same time gazing with strongly marked apprehension into his face. it was a circumstance to be noted, on the summer morning when our story begins its coarse, that the women, of whom there were several in the crowd, appeared to take a peculiar interest in whatever penal infliction might be expected to ensne. The age had not so much refinement that any sense of impropriety restrained the wearers of petticoat and farthingale from stepping forth into the public ways and wedging their not unsubstantial persons, if occasion were, into the throng nearest to the scaffold of an execution. Morally as well as materially, there was a coarser fiber in those wives and maidens of old English birth and breeding than in their fair descendants, separated from them by a series of six or seven generations; for throughout that chain of ancestry •very successive mother has transmitted to her child a fainter bloom, a more delicate and briefer beauty and a slighter physical frame, if not a character of less force and solidity than her own. "Wonldst thou avenge thyself on the innocent babe?" whispered she. The elephant was feeling very poorly when I saw him. His skin looked dry and feverish. When he walked his overalls rattled together like tin clothes fastened together with wire. "Foolish woman!" responded the physician, half coldly, half soothingly "What should ail me, to harm this misbegotten and miserable babe? The medicine is potent for good; and were it my child—yea, mine own, as well aa thine—J could do no better for it." "Hearken nnto me. Hester Prynne! said the voice. "She had good skill at her needle that's certain.*" remarked one of liei female spectators: "but did ever a worn an. before this brazen huzzy, contrivt such a way of showing it'/1 Why. gossips, what is it but to laugh in the facet of our godly magistrates, and make a pride out of (what they, worthy gentle men, meant for a punishment?" The young pastor's voice was trem ulously sweet, rich, deep and broken The feeling that it so evidently inani fested, rather than the direct purport of the words, cansed it to vibrate within all hearts, and brought the listeners into one accord of sympathy. Even the poor Imby at Hester's bosom was af fected by the same influence, for it directed its hitherto vacant gaze toward Mr. Dimuiesdale and held np its little arms with a half pleased, half plaintive murmur. So powerful seemed the min ister's appeal that the people could not believe but that Hester Prynne wonld speak out the guilty name, or else thai the guilty one himself, in whatever high or lowly place he stood, would be drawn forth by an inward and inevitable necessity, and compelled to ascend the scaffold. It has already been noticed that directly over the platform on which Hestef Prynne stood was a kind of balcony or open gallery appended to the meeting house. It was the place whence procla mations were wont to be made, amid an assemblage of the magistracy, with all the ceremonial that attended such public observances in those days. Here to witness the scene which we are de scribing, sat Governor Bellingham him self, with four sergeants about his chair bearing halberds, as a guard of honor He wore a dark feather in his hat, a border of embroidery on his cloak and a black velvet tn«ic beneath—a gentleman advanced in years with a hard experi ence written in his wrinkles. He wa* not ill fitted to be the head and repre sentative of a community which owed it* origin and progress and its present state of development, not to the impulses of youth, but to the stem and tempered er ergies of manhood and the somber sa gacity of age. accomplishing so much precisely because it imagined and hoped so little. "Thy acta are like mercy," said Hester, bewildered and appalled. "But thy words interpret thee as a terror!" The arctic fauna also embraces the walrus, the penguin, and the peunnican. The salt horse and Cincinnati quail are also found as far north as the utmost limit of exploration and human verte-' brate. As she still hesitated, being, in fact, in no reasonable state of mind, he took the infant in his arms and himself administered the draft. It soon proved its efficacy and redeemed the leech's pledge. The moans of the little patient subeided: its convulsive tossings gradually ceased, and in a few moments, as is the custom of yonng children after relief from pain, it sank into a profonnd and dewy slumber. The physician, as he had a fair right to be termed, next bestowed his attention on the mother. With calm and intent scrutiny he felt her pulse, looked into her eyes—a gaze that made her heart shrink and Bhudder, because so familiar and yet so strange and cold—and finally, satisfied with his investigation proceeded to mingle another draft. "One thing, thou that wast my wife, I would enjoin upon thee," continned the scholar. "Thou hast kept the secret of thy paramour. Keep, likewise, mine! There are none in this land that know me. Breathe not to any human soul that thou didst ever call me husband! Here, on this wild outskirt of the earth, I shall pitch my tent: for, elsewhere a wanderer and isolated from human interests, I find here a woman, a man, a child, among whom and myself there exist the closest ligaments. No matter whether of love or hate; no matter whether of right or wrong! Thou and thine. Hester Prynne, belong to me. My home is where thou art and where he is. But betrav me not!" He was small in stature, with a fur rowed visage, which aa yet could hard ly be termed aged. There was a re markable intelligence in his features, as of a person who had 60 cultivated his tDental part that it could not fail to mold the physical to itself, and become manifest by unmistakable tokens. Although, by a seemingly careless arrangement of his heterogeneous garb, he had endeavored to conceal or abate the peculiarity, it was sufficiently evident to Heater Prynne that one of this nian'a shoulders rose higher than the Jther. Again, at the first instant of perceiving that thin visage, and the slight deformity of the figure, she pressed her infant to her bosom with so convulsive a force that the poor babe uttered another cry of pain. But the mother did not seem to hear it Rodentia and pachyderms do not do well in the arctic fauna. The season is too short. I would never take my pachyderms too far north. Insectisni does well here, and some gallinaceous birds, notably the penguin and the toboggan, but pachyderms and articulata are very seldom found here. "It were well," muttered the rnosl iron visaged of the old danies. "if we stripped Madam Hester's rich gown off her dainty shoulders; and as for the red letter, which she bath stitched so curiously. I'll bestow a rag of mine own rheumatic flaunel to make a titter one!" "Oh, peace, neighbors, peace!" whispered their youngest companion; "do not let her bear you! Not a stitch in that embroidered letter, but she has felt it in her heart." t ~ Cincinnati has two good specimens of the polar bear. This animal is found in the extreme north, subsisting mainly on kippered herring and young explorers. The white or polar bear can sit for hours on a cake of ice without taking cold. What a wise arrangement of nature this is which enables the polar bear, even when heated and perspiring after a long hard chase after an explorer, to seat himself on an iceberg with impunity while eating his explorer. This animai is also enabled to go for days without food. Last winter, for instance, is said to have been a very severe one on arctic fauna. Toward spring, it is said, thousands of arctic animals were driven from their usual haunts by cold and hunger, many of them barely eking out a wretched existence by licking the axlegrease off the north pole. The women who are now standing about the prison door stood within less than half a century of the period when the manlike Elizabeth had been the not altogether unsuitable representative of the sex. They were her countrywomen; and the beef and ale of their native land, with a moral diet not a whit more refined, entered largely into their composition. The bright morning sun therefore shone on broad shoulders and well developed busts and on round and ruddy cheeks that had ripened in the far off island, and had hardly yet grown paler or thinner in the atmosphere of New England. There was moreover a boldness and rotundity of speech among these matrons, as most of them seemed to be, that would startle us at the present day, whether in respect to its purport or its volume of tone. * Hester shook her head. The giim beadle now made a gesture with his staff. "Woman, transgress not beyond the limits of heaven's mercy!" cried the Rev erend Mr. Wilson more harshly than before. "That little babe hath been gifted with a voice to second and confirm the counsel which thou hast heard. Speak out the name! That and thy repentance may avail to take the scarlet letter off thy breast.'' "1 know not Lethe nor Nepenthe," remarked lie, "but 1 have learned many new secrets in the wilderness, and here is one of them—a recipe that an Indian taught me in requital of some lessons of my own that were as old as Paracelsus. Drink it! It may be less soothing than a sinless conscience. That 1 cannot give thee. But it will calm the swell and heaving of thy passion, like oil thrown on the waves of tempestuous sea." "Make way, good people, make way, in tbe king's name!" cried he. "Open a passage, and, I promise ye, Mistress Prynne shall be set where man, woman and child may have a fair sight of her brave apparel, from this time till an hour past meridian. A blessing on the righteous colony of the Massachusetts, where iniquity is dragged out into the sunshine! Come along Madam Hester, and show your scarlet letter in the market place!" "Wherefore dost thou desire it?" inquired Hester, shrinking, she hardly kuew why, from this secret bond.. "Why not announce thyself openly, and cast me off at once?" THE ELEPHANT WAS NOT FEELING WELL. The mandrill is a strange looking beast with a brief but spirited tale. It has a blue nose, but flashes easily if taken by surprise. It then goes and buries its face in its hands in au «nbarrassed way, erroneously thinking that it is secure from view. The other eminent characters, by whom the chief ruler was surrun tided were distinguished by a dignity ol mien, belonging to a period when thf forms of authority were felt vto possessthe sacredness of divine institutions They were, doubtless, good men, jnsl and sage. But, out of the whole ho man family, it would not have been easy to select the same number of wise and virtuous persons who should be lestcapable of sitting in judgment on an erring woman's heart and disentangling its mesh of good and evil than the sages of rigid aspect toward wl.om Hester Prynne now turned her face. She seemed conscious, indeed, that whatever syni pathy she might expect lay in the larger and warmer heart of the multitude; foi as she lifted her eyes toward the balcony the unhappy woman grew pale and trembled. At his arrival in the market place, and some time before she saw him, the stranger had bent his eyes on Hester Prynne. It was carelessly at first, like a man chiefly accustomed to look inward and to whom external matters are of little value and import unless they bear relation to something within his mind. Very soon, however, his look became keen and penetrating. A writhing horror twisted itself across his features, like a snake gliding swi|tly over them and making one little pause, with all its wreathed intervolutions in open sight. His face darkened with some powerful emotion, which nevertheless he so instantaneously controlled by an effort of bis will that save at a single moment its expression might have passed for calmness. After a brief space the copvulsion grew almost imperceptible and finally subsided into the depths of his nature. When he found the eyes of Hester Prynne fastened on his own and saw that she appeared to recognize him, he slowly and calmly raised his fin ger, made a gesture with it in the air and laid it on his lips. "It may be," he replied, "because 1 will not encounter the dishonor that besmirches the husband of a faithless woman. It may be for other reasons. Enough, it is my purpose to live and die unknown. Let, therefore, thy husband fce to the world as oue already dead, and of whom no tidings shall ever come. Recognize me not by word, by sign, by look! Breathe not the secret, above all. to the man thou wottest of. Shouldst thou fail me in this, beware! His fame bis position, his life will be in my hands. Beware!" "Never!" replied Hester Prynne, looking not at Mr. Wilson, but into the deep and troubled eyes of the younger clergy man. "It is too deeply branded. Ye cannot take it off. And would that I might endure his agony as well as mine!' It was on board a train between Wheeling and Pittsburg the other day that I heard a sad tale. It was told to me by a refined Kentucky gentleman who was selling ballot "boxes under the Australian system. He said that he could also provide voters when it was desired. He said that nothing for years had called forth so much genuine ingenuity as the Australian ballot system, not only on the part of those who wish to defeat its operations and effects, but on the part of chose who wish to make the successful ballot box booth, etc., so as to be the official manufacturers of voting furniture. He told me of a Swiss gentleman from Tell City, Ind., who has perfected a portable booth, ballot box, guard rail, rope and six chairs, all of which fold up into a space inches thick, and the package •loes not look larger than a good sized itlas. 1 : - He presented the cup to Hester, who received it with a slow, earnest look into his face—not precisely a look of fear, yet full of doubt aud questioning as to what his purjtoaes might be. She looked also at her slumbering child. A lane was forthwith opened through the crowd of spectators. Preceded by the beadle and attended by an irregnlar procession of stem browed men and unkindly visaged women, Hester Prynne set forth toward the place appointed for ber punishment. A crowd of eager and curious schoolboys, understanding little of the matter in hand, except that it gave them a holiday, ran before her progress, turning their heads continually to stare into her face and at the winkmg baby in her anus, and at the ignominious letter on her breast. "Speak, woman!" said another voice coldly and sternly, proceeding from the crowd about the scaffold. "Speak, and give your child a father!" The polar bear, however, pulled through without great suffering and in very fair condition, while thousands of other arctic animals died off, owing to the fact that curiosity regarding the open polar sea is apparently falling off, and the carnivorous animals of the polar region are now often seen to pause and look at each other as who should say: "Goodwives," said a hard featured dame of fifty, "111 tell ye a piece of my mind. It would be greatly for the public behoof, if we women, being of mature age and church members in good repute, should have the handling of such malefactresses as this Hester Prynne. What think ye, gossips? If the hussy stood up for judgment before us five that are now here in a knot together, won Id she come •off with such a sentence as the worshipful magistrates have awarded? Marry. J trow not!" "1 have thought of death," said she— "have wished for it—would even have prayed for it were it fit that such as 1 should pray for anything. Yet if death be in tliis cup 1 bid thee think again ere thou beholdest me quaff it. See! It is oven uow at my lips." "1 will not speak!" answered Hester turning pale as death, but responding to this voice, which she too surely recog nized. "And my child must seek a heav enly father; she shall never know an earthly one!" "I will keep thy secret as I have his," said Hester. "Swear it!" rejoined he. "Drink, then," replied he, still with the tame cold composure. "Dost thou Know me so little, Hester Prynne? Are my puriDo8e8 wont to be so shallow? Even if 1 imagine a scheme of vengeance what could 1 do better for my object than to let thee live—than to give thee medicines against all harm and peril of life—bo that this burning shame may still blaze upon thy bosom?" As he spoke he laid his long forefinger on the scarlet letter, which forthwith seemed to scorch into Hester's breast as if it nad been red hot. He noticed her involuntary gesture and smiled. "Live, therefore, and bear about thy doom with thee, in the eyes of men and women— in the eyes of him whom thou didst call thy husband—in the eves of yonder :hildl And, that thou mayest live take off this draft." And she took the oath. "Don't it seem to you that it is getting to be a pretty long time between polar expeditions?" "She will not speak!" murmured Mr Dimmesdale, who, leaning over the bal cony with his hand upon his heart, had awaited the result of bis appeal He now drew back with a long respiration 'Wondrous strength and generosity of a woman's heart! She will not speak!' "And now. Mistress Prynne," said old Roger Chillingworth, as he was hereafter to be named', "1 leave thee alonealone with thy infant and the scarlet letter! How is it. Hester? Doth thy sentence bind thee to wear the token in thy sleep? Art thou not afraid of nightmares and hideous dreams?" It was no great distance in those days from the prison door to the market place. Measured by tne prisoner's experience, however, it might be reckoned a journey of some length, for, haughty as hei demeanor was. she perchance underwent an agony from every footstep of those that thronged to see her, as if her heart had been flung into the etreei for them all to spurn and trample upon In our nature, however, there is a pro vision, tlike marvelous anil inon"'-' that the sufferer should never know the intensity of what he endures by its present torture, but chiefly by the pang that rankles after it With almost a serene deportment, therefore, Hester Prynne passed through this portion of her ordeal. and came to a sort of scaffold at the western extremity of the market place. It stood nearly beneath the eaves i»f Boston's earliest church and appeared to be a fixture there. About the only real merit attached to the arctic regions, it seems to me, is the fact that there is said to be absolutely no malaria there and very few mosquitoes. On the other hand, the tropical fauna must continually grapple with a very malarial climate, The very sine quinine of a climate, as it were. The voice which had called ber atten tion was that of the reverend and fa mous John Wilson, the eldest clergy man of Boston, a great scholar, lik* most of his contemporaries in the pro fession, and withal a man of kind and genial spirit. This last attribute, however, had been less carefully developed than his intellectual gifts, and was, in truth, rather a matter of shame than self congratulation with him. There he stood, with a border of grizzled locks beneath his skull cap; while his gray eyes, accustomed to the shaded light of his study, were winking, like those of Hester's infant, in the unadulterated sunshine. He looked like the darkly engraved portraits which we see prefixed to old volumes of sermons, and had no more right than one of those portraits would have to step t jrth, as he now did, and meddle with a .jnestion ol human guilt, passion and anguish. "People say," said another, "that the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, her godly pastor, takes it very grievously to heart that such a scandal should have come upon his congregation." Discerning the impracticable state of the poor culprit's mind the elder clergy man, who had carefully prepared himself for the occasion, addressed to the inulti tude a discourse on sin in all its branches but with continual reference to the igno minions letter. So forcibly did he dwell upon this symbol for the hour or more during which his periods were rolling over the people's heads that it assumed new terrors in their imagination, and seemed to derive its scarlet hue from the flames of the infernal pit. "Why dost thou smile so at me?' inquired Hester, troubled at the expression of his eyes. "Art thou like the Black Man that haunts the forest round about us? Hast thou enticed me into a bond that will prove the ruin of my sonl?" This gentleman was attending church •4 few weeks ago when the shrill cry of file burst forth on the street of the village. The pastor had been unusually interesting in his talk aud untisuallv strong in ins vigorous attacks, especially upon gambling, drinking and the dese cration of the Lord's day. Every one was greatly interested, for the pastor's heart was in the work and his burning words were listened to with rapt attention. for his language was as powerful as it could be without violation of clerical etiquette and the statutes in such case made and provided. "The magistrates are Godfearing gentlemen, but merciful overmuch—that is • truth,"wadded a third autumnal matron. "At the very least, they should have put tbe brand of a hot iron on Then, touching the shoulder of a townsman who stood next to him, he addressed him in a formal and courteous manner. The tropical fauna is represented in the Cincinnati zoological collection by a number of good specimens, among others a pair of chimpanzees, called Mr. and Mrs. O'Hoolihan. Mr. O'Hoolihan is Comewhat below the medium height and resembles the late Mr. Crowley, of New York. Mr. O'Hoolihan has a pale gray eye and John C. Calhoun whiskers. "Not thy bouI," he answered, with another smile. "No, not thine!" Hester Prynae'a forehead. Madam Hes- "1 pray you, good sir," said he, "who is this woman—and wherefore is she here set np to public shame?" ter would hav« winced at that, 1 warcut me. But sfee—the naughty bag- [to be continued. I "You must needs be a stranger in this region, friend," answered the towns man, looking curiously at the questionei and his savage companion, "else you would surely have heard of Mistresf Hester Prynne and her evil doings. Slu hath raised a great scandal. I promise you, in godly Master Dimmesdale'ii church." The Scieuce of Shopping. C*ge—little will she care what they put See the lady. Is she a pretty lady: She is a pretty lady—that is to say, if accused of being pretty she would deny it; if not so accused she would be a* mad as a wet hen. Is the lady rich? It looks like it. She does not see anybody else in the world. Oh, yes, she is rich. What is the lady doing? Let us see. lpon tbe bodice of her gown! Why. | tok you, she may cover it with a brooch Oi vouch like heathenish adornment and to walk the streets as brave as ever!" In politics he favors a republican form •Df government with a Democratic majority. Socially he is rather liberal, and would no doubt lead a double life if he had not been placed where his actions ire constantly under the public eye, as t were. One of the most touching pictures I have ever seen, I think, and one well worthy of the brush of a Rembrandt or a McDougall, is that of Mrs. O'Hoolihan on a Sabbath morning fussing around among Mr. O'Hoolihan's John C. Calhoun whiskers with a fine •omb. Hester Prynne, meanwhile, kept her place upon the pedestal of shame, with glazed eyes and an air of weary indiffer ence. She had borne that morning all that nature could endure, and aa her temperament was not of the order that escapes from too intense suffering by a swoon, her spirit could only shelter itself beneath a stony crust of insensibility while the faculties of animal life remained entire. In this state the voice of the preacher thundered remorselessly but unavailingly, upon her ears. The infant, during the latter portion of her ordeal, pierced the air with its waitings and screams; she strove to hush it, mechanically, but seemed scarcely to sym pathize with its trouble. With the same hard demeanor, she was led back to prison, and vanished from the public gaze within its iron clamped portal. It was whispered by those who peered after her that the scarlet letter threw a lurid gleam aloug the dark passageway of the interior. Without further expostulation or de.ay Hester Prynne drained the cup, and At the motion of the man of Bkill seated aerself on the bed where the child was sleeping, while he drew the only chair which the room afforded and took his Dwn seat beside her. She could not but t.emble at these preparations, for she felt that—having now done all that humanity or principle, or, if ao it were, a refined cruelty, impelled him to do, for the relief of physical suffering—he was next to treat with her as the man whom she had most deeply and irreparably iniured.Fire, however, had broken out in the hotel near by, it seemed, and so in the midst of his eloquent and fearless battle against these vices he broke off suddenly to aid in saving property. He formed a bucket brigade, and aided by the foni other pastors, who had also hastened to the scene, a line of pails soon extended from the nearest pump to the laddei running np Ihe side of the building. but," interposed more softly a yon ttf wife, holding a child by the hand, "let her cover the mark as she will, the pang of n will be always in her heart." vat do we talk of marks and lirands , wht 'ther on the bodice of her gown or th e flesh of her forehead?' cried another female, the ugliest as well P2 the most ph Mless of these self constituted judges. ' 'This woman has brought ihunft upon iuD all and ought to die. Is there not law for it? Truly, there is, both in the Sea ipture and the statute book. Then let the magistrates, who btve made it of n o effect, thank themselves it their owi wives and daughters go astray r in fact this scaffold constituted a portion of a penal machine, which now, for two or three generations past, has been merely historical and traditionary among as, bat was held in the old time to be as effectual an agent in the promotion of good citizenship as ever was the guillotine among the terrorists of France, it was, in short, the platform of the pillory, Mid above it rose the framework of that instrument of discipline, so fashioned as to confine the human head in its tight grasp, and thus hold it up to the public gaze. The very ide;i of ignominy was embodied and piade manifest in this contrivance of wood and iron. There can be no ontrage, methinks, against our common natur—whatever be the delinquencies of the individual—no outrage more flagrant than to forbid the culprit to hide his face tor shame, as it was the essence of this punishment to do. "You say truly," replied the other. "1 am a stranger and have been a wanderer sorely against my will, i have met with grievous mishaps by sea and land, and have been long held in bona* among the heathen folk to the southward, and am now brought hither by this Indian to be redeemed out of my captivity. Will it please you, therefore, to tell me of Hes ter Prynne's— have I her name rightly— of this woman's offenses and what hac brought her to yonder scaffold?" 'Hester Prynne," said the clergyman. See her go into the store. Did she step on the pretty boy who opened the door for her? Not quite, but the boy had to hustle to escape. Why does the baldheaded man behind the countei have such hard work to look pleasant': Some people find it hard to look pleasant anyway. Does he enjoy pulling down all the goods in the store, as the rich, pretty lady requests? He should. She will probably buy large amounts of the goods. But no. See! She is leaving the store without buying anything. Does the baldheaded man seem tired? He seems tired. He has half a day's work before him to put the goods back where he found them. •1 have striven with my young brothei here, under whose preaching of the word yon have been privileged to sit"— Here Mr. Wilson laid his band 011 the shoulder of h pale yonnjr man beside him. "1 have sought, 1 say to persuade this godly youth that lie should deal with yon here in the fa.-e oJ heaven and before these wise and upright rulers and in hearing of all the people aa touching the vileness and blackness of your sin Knowing your natural teCni»er bettei than I, he could better jndpe whatnrgu uients to use. whether of tenderness oi terror, such as might prevail oyer youi hardness and obstinacy, intoiuuch that you should no longer hide the name of him who tempted yon to thin grievous fall. But he opposes to me (with n young man's oversoftnest.. albeit wise beyond his years) that it w«;re wronging the very nature of woman to force her to lay open her heart's sec rets in such broad daylight and in tbf presence of so great a multitude. Truly, as 1 sought to convince him, the shame lay in the commission of the sin, and not in the showing of it forth. What say you to it once again. Brother DimmeCdale? Must it be thon or 1 that shall deal with this* poor sinner's rouI'/" Mr. O'Hoolilian favors the election of senators directly by the people, and also urges that in this day of popnlar prices Tor good entertainments that seats in he senate are too high. He would favor making them ten, twenty and thirty cents. For hours the good man fought the flames without ever pausing for breath. The hook and ladder company did the swearing while he carried water. They pulled down ivy vines, ate hotel pie, filled the air with imprecations and ever and anon rolled up their sleeves to see if their muscles had grown any since they last examined them. "Hester," said he, "1 ask not wherefore nor how thou hast fallen into the pit or say, rather, thou kast ascended to the pedestal of infamy, on which I found thee. The reason is not far to seek. It was my folly and thy weakness. 1, a man of thought, the bookworm of great libraries, a man already in decay, having given my best years to feed the hungry dream of knowledge, 1 to do with youth and beauty like thine own? Misshapen from my birth hour, how could I delude myself with the idea that intellectual gifts might veil physical deformity in a young girl's fantasy? Men call me wise. If sages were ever wise in their own behoof 1 might have foreseen all this. 1 might have known that as 1 came out of the vast and dismal forest and entered this settlement of Christian men the very first object to meet my eyes would be thyself, Hester Prynne, standing up, a statue of ignominy, before the people. Nay, from the moment when we came down the old church steps together, a married pair, 1 might have beheld the balefire of that scarlet letter blazing at the end of our path!" "Truly, friend, and methinks it must gladden your heart, after j our trouble? and sojourn in the wilderness,'" said the townsman, "to find yourself Ht length in a land where iniquity is searched ont and punished in the sight of rulers and people, as here in our godly New Eug land. Yonder woman, sir, you must know, was the wife of a certain learned man, English by birth, but who had long dwelt in Amsterdam, whence, some good time agone, he was minded to cross over and cast in his lot with us of the Massachusetts. To this purpose he Bent his wife before him, remaining himself to look after some necessary af fairs. Marry, good sir, in some two years or less, that the woman has been » dweller here in Boston, no tidings have come of this learned gentleman Master Prynne, and his young wife look you, being left to her own mis guidance"  "Mercy on us. ft oodwife," exclaimed A man in the crowd, "is there no virtue in woman save wl» springs from a •wholesome fear of tbt gallows? That is the hardest word yet! Hush, now, gossips! for the lock is turning in the prison door, and here comes Mistress Prynne herself." The door of the iail bel'w flnnsr wide open from within, there apj eared, in the firrt place, like a black shad* Dw emerging into sunshine, the gnm and f rizzly presence of the town beadle, wit\ 1 a sword by his side and his staff of ofiifle in his hand. This personage prefigured and represented in hiiuwpect the wihcfle dismal severity of wb Puritanic code of law, which it was his business t ok administer in its final and closest applcation to the offender. Stretching forth the official staff in his left hand, he laid his right upon the shoulder of a young woman, whom he thus Clrew forward tin til, on the threshold of the prison door, she repelled him by an action marked with natural dignity and force of character and stepped into the open jur, as if by her own free will She bore in her arms a child, a baby of some three monthsold, who winked and turned aside its little face from the too vivid light of day, because its existence heretofore had brought it acquainted only with the gray twilight of a dungeon or other darksome apartment of the prison. When the young woman—the mother •of this child—stood fully revealed before the crowd, it seemed to be her first impulse to clasp the infant closely to her bosom; not go much by an impulse of Mr. O'Hoolilian also favors the free ind unrestricted coinage of silver, together with a more rigid rule regarding ita absorption by those who already have some. His theory is that the government should offer a certain percentage of premium to those who now have money, and by that means ascertain truthfully what amount each citizen has. Then it should announce that it had made a slight error as to the meaning of the law, and turn right around with what silver it has and what it can coin by means of a new brick and tile machine which will make money as fast as a big factory can make carpet tacks, and even up the whole thing so that all mankind may start in square again. Finally, seeing that the hotel could not be saved, and that a little cottage near it was threatened, the pastor said: "Let us save this little-home at least. Put blankets ~Dn the roof and keep them wetted. Work with a will, boys, and we may save this little 'cot' even though the hotel perish."' See the lady. Is she having lots of fun? It is to be hoped so. Nobody else is. Does she work other stores in the same way? She works a large number of other stores in just the same way. Does she buy anything? Not a solitary blamed thing. What is she doing? She is shopping. CHAPTER IIL THE INTERVIEW. In Hester Prvnne's instance, however, aa not unfreCruently in other cases, her sentence bore that she should stand a certain time npon the platform, bnt without undergoing that gripe about the neck and confinement of th# head, the proneness to whictolvas the most devilish characteristic of this ugly engine. Knowing well her part, she ascended a flight of wooden steps, and was thus displayed to the surrounding multitude, at a boat the height of a man's shoulden above the street. • • • The unhappy culprit sustained herself as best a womaa might, under the heavy weight of a thousand unrelenting eyes, all fastened upon her, and concentrated at her bo«om. It was almost intolerable to be borne. After her return to the prison, Hester Prynne was found to be in a state of nervous excitement that demanded constant watchfulness, lest she should perpetrate violence on herself or do some half frenzied mischief to the poor babe. As night approached, it proving impossible to quell her insubordination by rebuke or threats of punishment, Master Brackett, the juiler, thought fit to introduce a physician He described him as a man of skill in all Christian modes of physical science, and likewise familiar with whatever the savage people could teach in respect to medicinal herbs and roots that grew in the forest To say the truth, there was much need of professional assistance, not merely for Hester herself, but still more urgently for the child; who, drawing its sustenance from the maternal bosom, seemed to have drank in with it all the turmoil, the anguish and despair which pervaded the mother's system. It now writhed in convulsions of pain, and was * forcible type, in its little frame, of the norai agony which Hester Frynne naa borne throughout the day. Finally, after hours of struggle in the choking smoke and heat and discouragement, the flames died down and, surrounded by ruin and wreck, the little house stood by itself safe and unscathed. The pastor went in to see if everything still remained unharmed ami to receive the thanks of the occupants. There was no one there, but on the table, face down, were four unusually good hands, running all the way from the straight to the bobtail, flush, while in the center of the table stood the tempting jackpot, and near by, on a sideboard, a tall receptacle with willow environments containing spirits, arranged and dramatized by a gentleman named Pepper. Is the lady shopping? She is shopping. Do many ladies shop? They all shop. Is there any cure for the habit; No.—St. Louis Globe-Democrat. Any Wttw Would Do. There was a murmur aiming the dig nified and revereud occupints of the balcony, and Governor Belhngham gave expression to its purport, speaking in an authoritative voice, although tempered with respect toward the youlhful clergy man whom he addressed When Colonel Bob Ingersoll lived in Peoria, Ills., a man came to him one day to have him prepare the papers for the incorporation of a company to handle a new mineral water. He exhibited a very handsome bottle and a beautiful label, with an impressive name for his spring. The colonel admired the label as a work of art, and mildly inquired where the spring was located. "Oh, that has not been looked after yet," said his client. "We have got the name, and we have got the label, and we have got the bottle. We can get the water any place."—Argonaut. Mr. O'Hoolilian favors also the apportionment of brains in the same way if jKwsible, otherwise the able men would fool the other folks out of their money again in a week, and all this apportionment would have to be gone through with again. He does not know yet very fully how he will even up the gray matter business, but he thinks it can be done. He claims that when surgeons are able to open the skull of a foolish person that has failed to grow, thus giving room to the brain bo that the idiotic, by having a gore or a gusset put into a skull, have been able to almost think inside of a week, whereas they formerly did not know enough to ache when they got hurt, he thinks the day is not far distant when the man who knows too much may be made to "whack up," as it were, with the mental pauper. Proper officials will go around vlth a brain tester for iDeot)le "Ah 1—aha!—1 conceive you," Raid the stranger, with a bitter smile. "So learned a man as you speak of should have learned this, too, in his books. And who, by your favor, sir, may be the father of yonder babe—it is some three or four months old, I should judge—which Mistress Prynne is holding in her arms?' "Thou knowest," said Hester—for, depressed as she was, she could not endure this last quiet stab at the token of her shame—"thou knowest that 1 was frank with thee. 1 felt no love, nor feigned any." "Good Master Dimniesdale," said he, °'the responsibility of this woman's soul lies greatly with you. It betooves you therefore, to exhort her to repentance and to confession as a proof ami conse quence thereof." Of an impulsive and passionate nature, she had fortified herself to encounter the stings and venomous stabs of public contumely, wreaking itself in every variety of insult; but there was a quality so much more terrible in the solemn mood of the popular mind that she longed rather to behold all those rigid countenances contorted with scornful merriment and herself the object. Had a roar of laughter burst from the multitude—each man, each woman, each little shrill voiced child contributing their The cottage was what is called in that country a "Speak Easy." "Of a truth, friend, that matter re maineth a riddle; and the Daniel whc shall expound it is yet a-wanting," answered the townsman. "Madam Hester absolutely refuseth to speak, and the magistrates have laid their heads to gether in vain. Peradventure, the guilty one stands looking on at this sad spectacle, unknown of man, and forget ting that God sees him." The pastor put on his coat and princess vest and went home, and as he went some one heard him say: "Whoso is simple, let him turn in hither. He that reproveth a scorner getteth to himself shame, and he i hat rebuketh a wicked man getteth himself a blot" A "Speak Easy"' is not a moral place. "True," replied he. "It was my follyt I have said it But, up to that epoch of my life, 1 had lived in vain. The world had been so cheerless! My heart was a habitation, large enough for many guests, but lonely and chill, and without a household fire. 1 longed to kindle one! It seemed not so wild a dreamold as I was, and somber as I was, and misshapen as 1 was—that the simple The directness of this appeal drew the eyes of the whole crowd upon the Ileverend Mr. Dimmesdale, a young clergyman who had come from one of the great English universities, bringing all the learning of the age into our wild forest land. His eloquence and religious fervor had already given ihe earnest of hytii Mbiuence in his profession. He Mrs. Grumpps (looking over new house) —What in the world is this vast attic for? Needed Koom. Closely following the jailer into the dismal apartment appeared that indi vidual of singular aspect whose preernce in the crowd had been of such deep In fVD» vMMr rS tli* vttrW l«t- Mr. Grumpps—It's to hold the things that you buy and can't use.—New York Weekly. Nickel Plate sells Decoration Day excursion tickets. May 38 and 30, at one fare for the ronn 1 trip, good returning until June "The learned man." observed tha (QDnd,