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V * ■ • • SO* f Oldest Newspaper in the Wyoming Valley. PITTSTON, LUZERNE CO., PA., FRIDAY. FEBRUARY 28, 1896. A Weekly local and Family Journal. Sngar Lrfjai mountain, where some ot the enomy were still in view. Thus this lively adventure, which threatened us with direst disaster, proved to be of inestimable advantage to us, covering our advance from the only enemy we had to fear. We continued, however, to be mistaken all day for the rangers and frequently saw men retreating from the houses we passed in the direction of the mountains. On the following day we saw the same party as it came Into garrison at Loudon after a fruitless scout WlLKEiBAKUK'S NEW DEAL. THE PITTSTONS IN '44. barns and cribs stood over the way, i.. such an air of thrift ami comfort pi. vailed on every hand tliuf I blessed t). Rev. Mr. Deal for his guiding sngge:: tions. No one being in sight, I climber over the bars to find only the hon.=e dog at home. The doors were open, disclosing wide fireplaces and ample beds in every room covered with curious conceits in patchwork. bages that fairly hid tin fc.ivuii.i. didn't know much about politics, but sho had always allowed that if I came back to the valley I would tell her what was right. "Ye must come agin an stay all summer. Ye can merchandise a little to pay expenses," was Auut Lucy's parting admonition. rounding country, Dr. NathanielQlddinga, who oame to Pittaton from Connect ont towards the close of the last oentury, and Dr. Curtis. Dr. Udder wood had not np to this time ommenced work here. Theae doctors were neually kept very busy in the antamn, dealing ont qalnlne to "fever and ague" patients, who, it was said, « upended foroe enough in shaking to ran a saw mUl." Olnb, of which any city eight be prond. In fact we have a city equipped with all the appllsnoes for comfort and improvement and progress that belong to any city. The transformation that has been effected here in the past half centnry, to these who "ere familiar with it at that time, appears like the work of a magician's hand. Further Particular* About the 4Jreat feclM'iiia to Secure Spring Bro Dk Water, It Is etared upon good anHority that the men behind the wtter combination are ex- Lieutenant Oivemor Witres, fx Congressman A met uan, coal op-rCtor Claren je D. Simpson, ooul operator Taomas H. Watfclne, E L Fuller and William Connel, all of Sjranton The Crystal Spring Cj stock Las alreaiy been purchased from the L'high & Wllkesbarre Coal Co. at about $250 000, and, as has already oeen stated, an option has been secared «Dn the Wllkesbarre WaDer Co stjck at $65 a share. The com piny Is capitalized at $440,000, which would amount to $573,000 at $6 D a share Then there 1s a bonded indebtedness of $95 000 and a fl Dating debt of $2 )0 000, which would make the price of tha ooaopany abont $86;;.000, The stock of the company at $05 a share is considered a good price. (Wilfceabarre Record.) The Year in Which Rev. Dr. Parke In all this region the mountaineers divide politically just as they bushwacked during the war, and if parties swapped policies not a man would swerve from his allegiance to tho party name. They are jubilant over the tariff on mica, but up in arms at the-mention of the force bilL The old wartime fqpds still control public opinion. Kegan Work Here. INTERESTING STORY OF DAYS PAST. Personally I am glad that I oame here when I did, that I knew this valley in its oomparitlve yontb and beanty. We have grown together, and every stege of growth has b:en like the new picture that comes in the turning of the Kaleidoscope. The great rivers that excite our admiration as they sweep toward the ocean and bear on their bosoms the commerce of the world, bad their charms in the mountain streams they left before they were prepared for their burdens. The Plttston of fi:ty years ago is to the P.ttston of t xlay, as the mountain streams to the maj setic rivers. I uave had no reason to regret coming here. My early ministry was , in all regards as satisfactory as that which came later. I found congenial work here, which there is no greater blessing in earthly life. I fonnd here kind, qniet, intelligent, peaceable, ho jpltable people, who took in the latch strings of their houses and prepared to retire at the ringing of the curfew bells; people who were ready to do what they oould for the advancement of any work that gave promise of good fruit. Modern improvements in the way of living that belong to what is known as advanced civilization are all right in their way, but they are essential to no types of rational enjoyn ent or earthly blessings anymore than a "swell" we-ding is essential to the highest type of blessedness in married life. We cau be happy without them. Bational enj lyment Is confi jed to no type or stage of clvlliz »tlon, and with • contented mind, a pure heart and an honest purpose to do what he can for the gloryof God and the good of our fellow men, we may be happy [anywhere. Asphalt pavements, bicycles, g?s and electric lUht, oottly attire, trolley cars, steam caw, horses and carriages, servants, operas, theatres, concerts and elegant entertainments, are luxuries, not essentials. Inordinate ambition to shine in social circles that may be utterly heartless, worldllness, envy, pride, Jealousy, selfishness and sensuality, are the things that rob life of its sweetest charms, and they are not driven away by any type of clvlliz ition or lnznrione living, 'ihey gather strength by gratification. Returning to the carriage I found a tall mountain woman talking with the driver. The men folks were gone, she said, and she had no corn to feed the horse "Madam, " said I, "some broad and milk—anything will do for us. Please see if you can't find something for the horse." She turned back and I followed to the barn to find her on the scaffolding examining little bundles of oat straw. "Nary thing for the boss," she said, "but some rye." She was powerful sorry, but they were "plum out of hess feed." The driver declined to feed rye and we drove regretfully toward Hamburg, two miles farther on. It was getting dark whon we arrived at "Brown's," and,I looked with disgust upon the small frame house painted white, and compared it with the pictur«sqro home fit plenty in everything ex- Hlstorlcnl Address Delivered by Rev. Dr. The ohief ocoupatlon of the people In and around Plttston was farming, and they literally lived off their farms. There was no market for their proinje short of Eas ton, seventy miles away. Peter Petty and Peter Wagner cultivated the "big farm" at the foot of Campbell's Ledge. They were both Intelligent men and indastriouj farmers. They raised wheat, converted it into fl jut and carted It to Carbondale, where the D. & H. Coal Company were commencing operations, for whioh they «e oeived some money. Wilkesbarre was very mnoh more of a town than Carbondale, but it was abundantly supplied from the Plymjwtfh and Kingston farms with everything in the line of grain. Mr. Z inua Barnum, who owned the land on which the Birnum shaft was sunk, did some farming. Be was a bright, enterprising man Taere were few more pleasant homain the valley than his, and few mors attractive girls thau his daughters. Blohard Brown and Peter Nagle, who lived further up the valley; Nathaniel Glddlngs, who had a large farm In Uppsr Plttston; Jacob Lince, Adam Toanoh, Newman Brown, John D. Stark, John Blanchard, 'iqulre Winters and William Apple were repressntative farmers in the community. There were others. Thesa I became acquainted with very soon after coming here. James W. Johnson and Abal Bennlt were enter prising men who bad taken np their abode in Plttston. They had purchased the land where the Miners' Savings Bank now stands, and aa far south as Railroad street. They were really the projectors of Kast Pittaton. They built and ooonpled the cottage that stands back from the street, now owned by Mr. Cntler, and among the very few booses that remain of those that were here in 1814. This cottage was tastily painted. They sank the first coal shaft put down in Plttston, and shortly after sinking thla sold ont to the Pennsylvania Coal Company. The venerable Oapt. J. B. Smith was the only stoae mason and brick layer in Plttston in 1844 There were no batchers, or bakers, or plumbers, or wagon makers, or engineers, or house painters, or brewers, or barbers, or millers, or bankers, or brokers, or lawyers, or gaa man, or book agents, or druggists, or insurance agents, or dentists or printers. The result was, there were few bills to pay and that, under these circumstances, was a fortunate thing. We spent one night at a mill whose owner had been shot from his mule and left dead in the road by the rangers in a former raid, and on the following morning, which was the 4th of March, 1865, we walked into Loudon and under the folds ot the old flag again. It *»s the samef,4th of March on whioh Abraham Linobln was inaugurated for the second time, and I learned for the first time of the result of the election. Parka Before the Wake Robin Club, of West Plttston, at the Home of Hon, Theo. Strong, on Monday Rvenlng, February 16th. As we came down into tliii valley behind the horse and mule team, my driver, who happened to be of Confederate antecedents, told me the story of the murder of his uncle during the war. A crowd of "outliers" had surprised him in the night and dragged liim from his bed. After rffling the house and burning the books, they riddled their victim with balls and finished by crushing his skull with the butts of their rifles. I mentioned this to Mr. Hooper, who said it was true and that he deserved it. His (the uncle's) party haH captured a Union man shortly be$re, and after shooting him and belictnig liim dead Abe's uncle had gone back and snapped a rusty old pistol again and again at his head. Tho Union man, having recovered, organized a counter attack and did up Abe's uncle in mountain fashion for snapping his old rusty pistol so freely. asleep. I had noticed a bed tn the room which seemed to have been hastily left by its occupant, probably frightened by our approach. Before I fell asleep tho door was' cautiously opened and two strapping mountain women, barefooted, but otherwise completely dressed, even to their pasteboard sunbonoets, made a rush for the bed and covered themselves out of sight without bo much as removing their bonnets. I saw Plttston for the first time on the Monday luocsedlng the first Sabbath of Jane, 18 i4 I fix the date by the fact that during the week previous I learned that James E. Polk had been nominated oy the Dsmocratlo party as a candidate for President of the United States. I had spent the Sabbath in « llkesbarre, where I supplied the pulpit of the Bsv. Dr. Dorianoe, who was absent attending a meeting of the Presbyterian General Assembly, and on Monday morning came here on horsebaok, having traveled in this way duting the previous week about two hundred miles from my father's. I stopped at a public house kept by George Laztrn*, where I was properly oared for. After dlnnei I looked np Theouore Strong, to whom I had letters of introduction and recommendation from Princeton Theological Seminary, having come here under the care ot the Board of Home Missions to labor "In the Laokawanna valley and surrounding country." As 1 remember, we spent only two eights an the road, lying concealed in a thicket of laurel over the first day and walking on the second. Just as the sun was sinking out of sight we arrived on "Chunky Gall" mountain overlooking Shooting Greek. CHAPTER VIL cashiers revisited. "That," said my guide, pointing to a house in the valley, "is where my oocle lives, and over there among the trees— that cabin with long roofs and the lean to —that is Mrs. Kitchen's, where I will take you." * Just before the publication in The Century Magazine for October, 1890, of the facts embodied in the foregoing chapt'jwr I was sent by The Century company to Johnson's island, at Sandusky, to Chicago and Indianapolis in search of material needed in the illustration of other prison articles then in preparation. The Spring Brook Water Co. stock has nearly all been by Abram Neabltt, tbe heirs of the late Hon. L. D. Shoemaker and Messrs Watres and Amerman, the latter two parties to the new deal. This company is capltallz d at $600 000 and has a bonded Indebtedness of $300,000 It is said that all this stock was bought at $10 below par for oash. Wfe spent the following day in a log horse barn, and when it wad sufficiently dark, the farmer mounted his horse and led' ub across the fields to the river, which was a narrow stream flowing BWiftly between high banks. One by one the farmer put us across, seated behind his saddle, the horse struggling against the current. By this time it had grown much colder, and as we struck into the mountains and soon passed the last house we should Bee before reaching the border, we were met by a blinding snowstorm, against which we struggled along until we had gone far enough into the wilderness to camp with safety, when we built a rousing fire and made our beds around it. I was to find guides here who made it their business to take parties ot officers into our lines, receiving $100 as fee from each officer, the money to be paid on arrival at the first pay station. Lientenants Sill and Lam son had passed here, and one of their guides was in the next valley. Going in search of him in the morning, I met two men with long rifles crossing a branch, and to my surprise one of them was wearing the snuff colored sack coat I remembered so well as belonging to Lieutenant Lamson. These men were Quinoe Edmonston and Mack Hooper, and they turned about and took me to Edmonston's eabin, telling me that there were two other officers concealed near by, and that an expedition would soon start for Tennessee under their guidance. cept "boss feed." Two "hacks" had arrived before us, one of which carried a girl who was returning from "college" in the Cullow- After finishing my business at Indianapolis I proceeded by way of Louisville and Knoxville to Asheville, to oarry out my long cherished purpose of paying a visit to tbe mountaineers who had harbored our party in the winter of 1864. The purchase price of these companies Is neariy $8,000,000 and to this mus1: be added $75,0J0 or $100,000 more for new reservoirs In the Spring Brook water shed and piping to this city, the details for which have not yet been considered. The hree coopanles furnish water to evety town in Wyoming Valley except Nantlcoke, or a population of abont 150,000. The three companies under one management can be run much more economically than when separate and for this reason the capitalists hope to make a profit. On the second day, with "C'olum" tiong for guide, I made an expedition on foot, seven miies up the Yellow mountain in search of my old guide, Man Heady. Long carried a rifle and I a camera as we worked up the same trail my party had gone over in 1861. We found Headen's cabin lor.Ucd, but- in reply to my "iieiiot" came a voice rrom the hillside above the cornfield. As the morning train rolled south oat of Asheville the rain was falling steadily and I thought with foreboding of the afternoon drive into the mountains from the railway terminus. In half an hoar, however, the san was shining brilliantly and the bine ridges were emitting puffs of gray fog. I had been in Asheville bat once before and between the two visits 26 years had intervened. Where the guests of the superb Battery Park hotel now look from its wide verandas on to the peaks of the Blue Bidge, a field battery then ranged across the valley, and along the western front of the town a wide belt of timber had been slashed to give free range to the guns. Yesterday I had rolled into the town along the windings of the French Broad in a vestibuled train, thinking of that wtlier time when we tramped in under a oonvoy of loaded muskets. Pitta ton was then, as now, '.'beautiful for situation" and environments, bnt with out either ooal breakers or onlm piles to dttract from its charms, at the oonflaenoe of the Lack twanna and Susquehanna risers, where the Wyoming valiey ends and the Lackawanna begins Mrs. Sigonrnej, in a beautiful little poem, speaks of Lack awanna as Susquehanna's "dujky bride." This may have been a very happy union at the time the union took place, but the Impression prevails that the bride in these latter days has very greatly degenerated. We were now on the Wacheesa trail and our march would be by day. In view of what we knew was going on in front of us. our guards counseled delay, xhe trail for the most part followed the tops of the ridges, distinctly marked in the black mold, as it wound among the gnarled chestnuts rooted in the rocks and over the higher tops, where long, ooarse grass dropped down into a convenient hollow, where wood and water abounded, and where we made our camp. "Are you HeadenV" I cried. "Yes." "Well, come down hero; yon've got just 15 minutes to live." The streams were so high, particularly the Valley river, which we had to cross, that it would be necessary to wait a few days before starting. So Mack and I returned to Mrs. Kitchen'& Those were the words Major Parker had addressed to him one morning after onr capture at his house and just before stringing him up three times in the orchard. Soon wo saw his long figure coming down through the stalks. Going out at the back of the honse to meet him, "Well, Headen," I said, "do you know me?" The et Dck of the Wilkeebarre Water Co. has not yet been transfemd to the combination, but this ib only a question of a few days hee valley to Cashiers. Mrs. Brown said she could take in another hack if we would sleep two in one bed. "My dear madam," I said, "you can put my driver on the roof, if you like, but I am accustomed to sleeping alone." MOUNTAIN MILL. Mrs. Kitchen's husband had been shot in the first year of the war while salting his cattle in the mountains. Her home consisted of two log bouses united by a deep porch, the back side at which was occupied by the loom. One house was the living and sleeping room and the other was the kitchen. The family owned two slaves, which were the only negroes I saw in the mountains bond or free. * It is altogether fprobable that by next summer pure Spring Briok water will be furnished to the entire cltf of Wilkeebarre and all other towns in the valley. The Spring Brook Water Co already supplies P.ttston and m .ins will be laid in Parsons, Miner's Mills and Plains Probably the Campbell's Ledge scheme will also be perfected, sD thD.t the water from the rlvei may be used in case the Soring Brook sup ply runs dry. This would Involve only a little additional txpenee, as the river supply could be taken within a short distance of one of the Spring Brook reservoirsOn the morning of about the fourth day we arrived on the ciest of the last ridge overlooking the open plain of east Tennessee. It was a glad sight to us, the boundless plain covered with farms. At our feet the Tilco river flowed out of the mountains, and away on tho eastern horizon a suspicious column of smoke rose into the air. Of what I found here in 1844,1 am asked and expeoted to speak, and this will be my text. I oannot make mention of all I have found since coming here. That would be a record too extended for the ocoasion, a record of more tnan half a oeatury of active life, interwoven with almost every department of Plttston's history. Here I did my first work, and in conneotlon with Pltteton I have done all my lffe work. I propoee to speak of "the town" and "men and things," as they were when I came here. What they were previously we may know from history, as Profeeeor Winchester, who has been entertaining the people of Wilkeebarre, knows the London of a hundred years ago What Pltt*ton now is, the young people of the Wake Robin Club know ae well as I d ». The two drivers whose wheel tracks we had been speculating on all the afternoon were sitting by an empty fireplace, and on my suggestion of a fire one of them started to find an ax. I went out to the back porch with my bands in my pockets and in the opposite door in the glow of the kitchen fire stood a small barefooted boy, bursting with fat, with his' bands also deep in his pockets. At the same moment some dark object came flopping round the oorner in the chips. "Hello, Jumbo I" I said. "Who killed that chicken?" "Mammy. My name ain't Jumbo." "Well, I can't tell you rightly till 1 get a little nearer." Before quite reach ing me he added, " Woll, I reckon hit'? Henry Shelton." My destination was the point in the mountains where my party had been recaptured and my object to revisit the friends who had fed and harbored us. Who of them would be living and who dead? Who of my guides, guards, captors and harboring friends would re member me? My former visit had been such a thrilling adventure and the memory of it was so much like a vision that for weeks before I started and at several of the great hotels on the way I had dreamed queer things about my old friends away up in the mountains. At the Gait ]House in Louisville I dreamed that one little red aheeked maiden of the old times had married a barber, and that the professional chairs, draped with dirty towels, stood in the family sitting room. In one family at least whero our former advent had been an event in the isolated lives of the household, and which family by the marriage of the young people "had ramified into several neighboring homes, I knew my return would be of as much importance as the coming of a kinsman. "Yes," I said, "old man, yon ore quite right, and I am delighted to see you." Down in a gorge to the right was a cabin, and to this Mack Hooper was dispatched to learn all he could of the whereabouts of the Texan rangers. He soon returned with the information that on the night before the bushwhackers had burned Philadelphia depot, on the Knoxville and Chattanooga road, and that they wore probably in full retreat back into the mountains. So we made •our way down to the iron works and to the house of the owner, a Mr. Johnson, who was a graduate of West Point, and who, although friendly to us, had remained a neutral in that neutral land. He came to the gate and gave us water, and at the same time expressed his regret that we had shown ourselves so soon, for, Baid he: Daring the early part of that winter Quinoe Edmonston and a guide of the name of Birch had conducted a party of officers safely to Nashville and bad re oeived therefor $1,000 in greenbacks. Tha trin had hem over the same trail we intended to take. Reaching the mountains on their return Birch determined to go in by the road, having business to attend to. Edmonston, after remonstrating in vain, oontinued alone over the trail. A few days thereafter the body of Birch was found on the road minus the ears. This particular mutilation was the defiant mark of a band calling themselves Texan rangers, who were in constant antagonism with the oompany of home guards to which oar guides belonged and which was commanded by a son of the murdered Birch. Poor at the rangers soon after fell into the hands of the Union oompany, and Edmonston and Mack Hooper were among the party detailed to take the prisoners to jail, bat with private instructions at a very different nature. Having proceeded a few miles into the moon tains, well away from any settlement, the prisoners were drawn ap in line and shot Their remains were buried under driftwood after appropriating the better articles of their clothing, and the report was spread abroad that the prisoners had escaped. "I hearn toll yon was comin," said Headen, "but I allowed you wouldn't git here. What has become of Sill and where is Lamson?" There were In this historic and poetic valley of Wyoming, fifty years ago, just as contented, happy, efficient, humble wives and mothers as it has now, and there were jast as bright, pretty girls here then as are here now. Tnere were n t so many of th°m. Thofaas Campbell, the Scotch poet, in his "Qertrude of Wyoming," has given ns a picture of one ot these bright, magnetic girls as she existed in his imagination, for, like Hoses, it was not his privilege to see the "promised land." It is a charming piotnre, possibly to ethereal and spiritual for a girl of the forest, and open to the criticism of some one greatly wanting in imagination and good taste, who has said by way of rldlou'e, "that on Busquehanna's banks, in fair Wyoming, Qertrnde often penned poems, bat oftener penned pigs " Perhaps sbe did, and if she did, she is not the first bright, pretty girl that has done the sams thing, and we think none the lees of her for it. Those who earn their bread by milking cows aud making batter and hoeing' corn and digging potatoes and going to mill and washing and ironing and swsaplng, as oar grandmothers did, and as the wives and daughters of the first settlers in new oonntries have to do, are not apt to barn mnsh " mlda'g'it" oil writing poetry nor to have white soft hands. We admit that there was leas demand for poetry than for oorn in Wyoming a hundred years a40. If Coleridge and Soathy had been able to carry oat their ideas of immigration to Amerioa and had established their grand " pantisooraoy," and nothing bat lmpecanloeity and marriage prevented them, and were obliged to earn their living by cultivating the soil as they expected to do, we #onld have heard very muoh less of the "Like Foete" of England than we have done. I wouldn't go into his house until 1 had posed him on the steps, planted my camera on a bee gum and taken advantage of the sun which was shining clearly through a break in the clouds. THREE MEN SUFFOCATED. The driver came back to say that he had "done found the wood pile, but couldn't find nary ax. " So we groped ont together, and finding some logs already cut we soon had a roaring fire. The girl from college was helping Mrs. Brown in tbe kitchen, and supper was soon smoking on the table, including tbe flopping chicken crisply fried. Overpowered Ity n Volume of Escaping G»« in Wllkeabarre. Headen had been separated from his wife for 16 years, and here ho was, living alone, making his own butter and keeping his own house on one end of his domain. Several years before, I learned, be had taken up with a morganatic wife, but the court at Webster interfered and after trial sentenced him to a term of imprisonment A man in Georgia bid off the convict and poor Headen worked ont his sentence. (Wilkesliarre Record.) There was one, and bnt one, ooal mine in Pittston. It was operated by men reeiding in Wilkesbarre, John and Lord Bntler. It was back from the town some dlstanoe, at what is now known as the "burning mine." The ooal waa brought by rail to the top of Bntler Hill, near where Mr. Anderson and Mr. Craig reside, and let down to the canal by a plane. This colliery never paid its owners any dividends, but swamped them financially. George and Samuel Maxtield, brothers, and John 7. -rby, employed at the works of the Coneumei'i Gas C) , on Dana street, In a sadden and awful manner oa Tuesday, Feb. 19. prrrero* firry. On a Philadelphia paper that I subscribed for soon after coming here, the addrees is, nnlem it bas been ohanged very lately, "Bev N G Parke, Pltteton Ferry." That was the name of onr olty fifty yean ago. An attempt was made to change it to Port Mallory at one time, but it failed. Taere were no brl ee connecting the East and Weet sides of inr river, exoept occasional ice bridges hat served a good pur pose. There was a Pltteton Ferry by wbi'ih tbe traveler could "get over" If he oould call loud enongh to make the ferryman hear; and this ferry was one of the oldeet, if not the oldeet, In this part of the St tte. With this name, Pittston Ferry, Pittston is not second to Wilkeebarre in point of age. Frtm the time the Susqaehanna Land Con cany came here from Connecticut and 1 d out the valleys Into seven township*, of whioh Pittston was one, people from Connecticut and the East, going to Exeter and Kingston and Plymouth, came down the valley through Providence and crossed the Susquehanna at Pittston Ferry, and returnlog they crossed the eame ferry. The route from the Delaware River to the valley was through Pittston, rather than Wilkeebarre.The supper was good, but tbe tables in the expressive language of the mountains, "Hit was the powerfulest curiosity thet ever was." It was a round dotlble decker covered with oilclotfc rudely nailed on. The outer rim was » space a foot wide, on which the plates, knives, forks and napkins were placed The center of the table was six incboe higher, and on this tbe body of the repast was spread. A big and little oil lamp faintly lighted the gloom, and when one of the drivers buw anything be wanted on the opposite side of tbe table round came the center with a creak and a groan. Sometimes my plate was in total eclipse, and sometimes Jumbo's bead was lost behind the big yellow bowl of apple sance. I laid mj bunk of hot corn bread on the movable rim, and away it went to the opposite side of tbe table. About 4 o'clock the three men who were in charge of the works, went to the purifying room on the second fl oor of the large brick build ng ji*t north of the engine honse to clean ont one of the purifying boxes. Theie are several of theee boxes, filled with oxide, through wh ch the gas passes in the mains. Tale is the last stage In the proceee of making gas, and is designed to remove whatever Impuritlee It may contain. Tae box in question was fed by a twelve Inch pipe, thn ugh which an Itnmenee volume of gas passed constantly. Underneath the box Is a trap door, which, when opened, allows the impure oxide to paee out, bo that the box can be refill'd. "Last night the rear guard of the cutthroats camped by yonder Sugar Loaf mountain," pointing to a hill on the opposite side of the river, "and I fear some of them are hanging around there yet." He went up the hill to the old place, with us, to see the old woman and Jnlin Ann, who lived together on the scene of onr capture, in a house which he hue! been building in 1804, and which was now, in turn, old and weather stained. Then wh no hooae of worship la the township of Pltteton. Neither was there • resident minister of the Gospel here. Elder Miller, of Ablngton, and Dr. Dorrsnoe, of Wlikes barie, buried the dead and married the yonng people. There was preaching onoe in two weeks by Elder tfott, who resided in Hyde Park, in a small sohool house near the Junction. There were not to exoeed a dozen professing Christians in the town. These represented different denominations, bat they all worshiped together happily. There had been ohnreh organisations at an sarller day, but they had all disappeared. There were none at this time. There was a Sabbath Sohool in the sohool house where Elder Mott preached, conducted by Mr. Strong, with which some of the giey-haired men and women of today were eonnected. He told us that it was 30 miles to our lines at Loudon and advised us to make all baste to that point. At high Boon I was set off the train to find myself 80 miles from my destination. The local liveryman, instead of replying to my question as to the price for which ho wonld send me to Cashiers valley, stated that he wonld provide me a horse, wagon and driver at $2.50 per day, I to bear all expenses of feed and lodging. At the hotel where I repaired for dinner before starting I found a fat and rosy Episcopal clergyman on the "gallery," who, having just washed his face and hands, was standing in a bent and dripping attitude awaiting a dry towel. As they say in that country, he "suspicioned" my identity and politely asked me where I was bound. I told him.. The door was open, on the porch and entering I stood in the presence of the woman who, 25 yoars ago, wanted to "stomp the men through the turnpike" and who turned out of bed at all hours of the night to spin. She was totally blind, sitting at the corner of the empty fireplaoe chewing tobacco and spitting in the ashes. Her yellow face, mottled with whit e spots, was shaded by a pasteboard suubonnet standing erect on her head, and her thin fingers were pulling the strings off bean pods, several bushels of which were spread on the floor. After the greeting, in which she said my voice didn't sound "nat'ral," she wanted to know if I was married. Leaving Mr. Johnson leaning on his gate, which commanded a view directly np the road leading in the direction of London, we acted on his advice without a moment's delay. As he looked after ns moving away in single file like a band of Indians it was possible for him to keep U8 in view for a third of a mile along a straight road parallel with the narrow river, which flowed on the left hand. At that distance he saw a small hill thickly covered with undergrowth and trees, around which the road disappeared to the right. A line drawn to the left at a right angle to this road from the wooded hill aforesaid would pass through a ford in the river and terminate a half mile distant in the Sugar Loaf mountain where the Texan rangers had last been seen. . — While we were still waiting for the Valley river to subside, Mack Hooper and I sat in Mrs. Kitchen's living room on a memorable Friday afternoon deploring the continuance of the rain, which was falling in torrents outside. Mack was sitting by the door opening into the connecting porch and I before the fire, with my back turned to him and reading in a small Sunday school book which I had found in a basket Startled by a rustling sound in Mack's direction, I looked aronnd just in time to see bis heels disappearing under the nearest bed. I got on to my feet, intending to do likewise, when I found myself confronted by a stalwart Confederate officer armed and uniformed and occupying the doorway, backed by his quartermastei sergeant. This proved to be a government party collecting the tax in kind, which at that time was a tenth part of all crops and other farm products. The men turned off the gas, opened the trap and proceeded to clean the box Saving finished work, they turned on the gas forgetting, however, to close thi trap underneath. This allowed the 4*8 to fl Dw through the box and ont Into the room from the big twelve Inch pipe. Tne overpowering odor told the men that something was wrong, but they did not know what It was. It is thought that they went back to the box aud endeavore t to locate the leak, bu' were overpowered by the gas, which had rapidly filled the room When too late they made a desperate effoit to escape. Bnt they were too dsz*l ay the vapor to open the big doors or any Df the numerous windows in the balldlng 9ad they done this th-ir lives might hate 0 *en saved. But they staggered blindly toward the small ttairway leading to the lower fl Dor, hoping to escape in that way. Death overtook them almost within reach of safety, for by the time they had reaohed thr stairs the great volume of gas had Ailed every nook and cranny in the ro m, and the poor fellows fell In their tracks and choked to deati. I dismissed my conveyance in thC morning and arranged to go the rest ol the way with the "hack" bound lot Cashiers valley. The girl from Collowhee college shared with me the one mat in the wagon, and the driver sat on tlx end board over the traces. The woodet top was so low that I whs forced to hold my hat in my hand and so came to the end of my journey in no great state behind a horse and a mnle. '"May I ask whom yon are going to see over there?" "I am going to Riley Hooper's," I said. "No," I said, "Mrs. Headen, I am a miserable old bachelor." There were not to ex seed over two hundred people living in Pit ston at this time, between Sebastopol and the Junction. They resided for the most part along the Main street. Tae homes were "few and far between"—magnlfloent distanoev, but not magnlfloent houses, and as orderly arranged as stumps in a olearing. There oertalnly was not much that was tempting to one who was looking for a place to make a nice, cosy home for himself. On Main street, whioh was oiooksd as a ram's horn, the houses were so scattered that some one who was travelling to Pltlston from Wilkeebarre did not know he was In town until he was through It. At the head of the oanal he enquired for Pittston. There were no sidewslks hsre, and In muddy weather the pedestrians "wadsd." Cows and swine and geeae had perfect freedom to wander where they pleased, with none to make them afrali}. On one occasion jne of our prominent oltiz Dns had a free Dlde on the back of a huge porker that attempted to ran between his legs, possibly "to escape a mnd hole." "Ah," said she, with a sigh, "that's what all of nm says when they come down here from furrin parts." "Ah," said he, "I thought so. I know all about von. Thev lire looking for you, and will be delighted to see On my arrival here I found two public hous*, one kept by John Sax, at the foot of Parsonage street, and the one at whloh I stopped, and at whloh the stage connecting Carbondale and Wilkeebarre stopped This was a two-hone »tage. It carried the mall and passengers when there were any to oarry. It was the only publlj conveyance in the valley, and Its arrival at Pitta ton was the sensational event of every day There were no saloons in the town. It was as free from them as West Pittaton is now, and a drunken man on the street, exoept on pnblic occasions, wh rarely seen. Taera were not to exoeed half a doz in foreigners, and these were from England, Scotland, Ireland and Franoe. Tha father of Thomas Ford, of West Plttston, was from England, James McFarlane wa* from Sootland, 'Sqnire Redding was from Ireland, and the father of B D. Laioe, who has made for himself a nation D1 reputation at the Smithsonian Institute, was from France. The people were for the most part "to the manor born." There was, so far as I remember, no poor honse in the county and no call for one. Very rioh men and paupers are usually found in the same locality. Neltner of these classes wai represented here. There were two stores. One was kept by the postmaster, a thrifty, intelligent Irishman, Mr Bedding, who opened his snuff box to all his customers. His store stood near where the Windsor Hotel now stands. The other store, which stood near the foot of the plane, was superintended by Theodore St'ong for the Butler Coal Company. These stores reoeived and paid out very little money. They were largely stores Of exohange. For butter and eggs and oh tokens, the farmers oould buy sugar an d tea and tobacco. The merohants did not pay cash for anything, for the best of reaeons —they did not have It. An old oountry letter, which oost twenty five oenta, to be paid for on delivery, was sometimes left In the postoffioe some daye, for want of money to take it out. The preacher's salary, whloh amounted to fifty dollars a year, was paid in trade. In fact, everything was paid in trade, exoept marriage fees, and they were sometimes paid in promises. There was but one bank kD the oounty, the Wyoming Bank, of Wllkesbarre, and that discounted sparingly Nothing but "gilt edged" paper would Cashier Lynoh look at. Tills bank had the monopoly of the banking business la this part of Penn- It had been raining in the early morning. The air was cool and bracing, and every man had his blanket or bedquilt thrown over his Bhoulders, and each walked with a stout staff. Quince Edmonston was file leader, and I close on his heels, as with a swinging gait we cauie to the turn in the road. We were very much on the alert for rangers, and with the first view around the turn we who were in the advance spied a burly countryman mounted on a powerful gray horse ooming lefsurely toward ns. He wore a Yankee blue overcoat, a red fur cap and had a rifle slung across his back. you." We had retained most of the altitude gained in the climb np the Cullowhee mountain so that the passage over thr Bine Ridge was little more than the as cent and descent of an ordinary country hill Cashiers valley is swnng like a hammock between the tops of the mountains, 8,600 feet- above the sea. Rock mountain and Chimney Top present hnge granite facesto the valley. Whitesides.-with its vast expanse of sheer rock on the hither side, is mostly wooded on the Cashiers face. Yellow mountain, the highest peak of the Blue Ridge at this point, the huge mass of Hogsback, the two Sheep cliffs and Big and Little Terrapin complete the blue walls surrounding Cashiers valley. A clean, sanrly road winds through the settlement, along which onr horse and mnle wagon trotted quietly to the mnsic of cowbells and gnrgling trout streams, and in the.sweet morning sunshine drew np before a low honse of hewn logs and wooden additions, with beds of asters and all the old fashioned odorless fall flowers bordering the walks. The wood pile was opposite the gate, the barn on a neighboring slope and gardens of corn and cabbage swept round tho rear of the house. Host and hostess were waiting in the porch and had remained np the night before until the unprecedented hour of 10 o'clock, awaiting me. I had written from Indianapolis that I should probably be one day behind my letter and Mrs. Hooper had assured her husband that I would come on time unless something broke down, as I was the most restless man she ever saw. We renewed our acquaintance before the log fire in the stone.chimney and I was soon ready to start ont in search of the. other members of the Hooper family. We persuaded her to be led ont into the sunlight by the gateposts, the same cedar sticks I well remembered with the slender bar mortised in the top, and there I photographed the family group. After dinner, a light top buggy crusted with the mnd of a hundred journeys drove up to the door. As we were not to reach our destination that day I took the clergyman's advice as to a halting place for the night. We believe that whioh, under the circumstances, could reasonably be expected of the people of Wyoming fifty yea re ago we found here. The day for poets, and artists, and gentlemen and ladles of assthetio tastes will come i if due time, and in the work of the Wake Bobln Club we reoogniz) the dawn of that day quickly but surely lifting and rolling back tne curtain of night. Then Headen conducted us a mile around the side of Yellow mountain to see the "rock house," whore we had been directed to stay the night of the capture, aud which we recklessly left because the wind blew the smoke of the fire into onr eyes. As we drove into Webster, the conrt town of Jackson county, three miles from the station, a mass of white thunder oaps rolled over the mountains anfl the big drops were beginning to patter down. I found shelter in the village storo and the driver sought cover for his trap. Webster is a sorry oounty town, where tho razor backed hogs root wallowing places about the door of the store undisturbed by the village loungers, who chew tobaoco, jocked back in splint bottomed chairs on the porch. I felt very jolly, however, when I recalled a certain faraway morning when I tramped out of the town shivering, with the mud and snow oozing through my broken shoes at every step. The old brick jail stood in the next yard, and despite the tain I jumped over the gate and ran into the hall and inspected the corner •room where wo three ragged boy lieutenants had once passed a night. Keeping their eyes riveted on my hostile uniform, the two advanced to the opposite corner of the chimney. I was still standing, and seeing no wdy of escape, in order to make my captors more at home, I ventured a remark on tho weather. They stared and asked for Mrs. Kitchen. A plan of esca])e flashed through my mind like an inspiration— one which required a show of delibera tion—so I seated myself quietly for an instant and affected to continue my reading. I was so much interested in that book that when I was seized with a severe fit of ooughing, with one hand upon my chest, I walked slowly past the men and laid it carefully, opened face down, on a chest With another step or two I was in the porch, and bounding into the kitchen I sprang out into the garden through a window opened by the women for my exit Away I sped, bareheaded, through the rain, crashing through the underbrush and plunging through the streams like a frightened deer and making for the gap leading into the next valley. I brought up finally behind a group of haystacks overlooking the road, and presently I saw Mack ooming with my oap and our haversacks, which-were already provisioned for the journey. He had remained concealed under the bed and had heard the women .state that I was a Confederate scout. Convinced to the oontrarj by my flight, he bad gone away swearing that he would have that Yankee if he had to search the whole settlement Returning down the lii 11 toward Head en's cabin, wo stopped to shake hands and say "howdy" to a son, whose wife and children filled tho cabin door. This son in the old davs was No. 6 in the family bed when we three lieutenants slept on the floor before tho fire. BOUGHT BY THE LEHIGH VALLEY. "Here they are," wo thought. The Elmlra, Cortland mod Northern Ball- "There they are!" he cried, and bringing his gnn to bear and putting spurs to the gray he came thundering down upon Edmonston and me, bawling tones of surrender and indulging in epithets more picturesque than polite. Close behind him suddenly appeared two Confederates in gray and gold lace and behind them a motley squad of irregular oavalry brought up the rear of the charge, shooting and brandishing their weapons. Shortly before six o'olock last evening KUpeilntendeot John attempted to light the gas in hie offiie, but found that there was none in the pipe. Suspect ing that something was wrong, he boarded a car aud went at once to the works He searched in vain for the three men he had left at work there, nntil he came to the purifying room. Throwing open the door he was horrified to find the dead bodies of Zerby and Grorge Maxfield at the foot of the steps Rnshing into the roam he soon discovered Samuel Maxfield lying on the fl ior at the head of the stairway. Bastlly summoning a physician he had the bodies removed and carefully examined for some tlgn of life. But it was too late. Tie men were dead and beyond the reach ot the doctor's skill. They had died alone, with n a few feet of the pure air, wUhont a eonl to succor them. road Adds to Its System. Offioials of the Valley Railroad oompany state that the Elmlra, Cortland and Northern railroad has bnen bought by the Lehigh Valley company from Austin Corbln, Henry W. Maxwell and J Rogers Maxwell, who for years have been the owners. The statement in a New York dispatch that Austin Corbln and Henry W. Maxwell purchased for the Lthlgh Valley Is dec'ared to be an error. The pucchaee price could not be le Drned, nor could any of the terms of the sale. On the rafters of Headen's cabin were great bunches of pennyroyal aud summer savory, which he said was "right good for table tea." High up in the corner the clean chnrn dasher was thrust through the siding. After lunching on cold corn pone and sweet milk we sat on the beanbags and hoard the story of his escape, fording tho iey Tnekasegoe and reaching home half starved in the deep snow, and of his subsequent trip to Tennessoe with Kiiapp and old Tom Hancock. I had brought the old man a wonderful jackknife with endless tools and blades unfolding from the handle, which pleased him greatly. There was real ly nothing here to make the tjwn grow, nothing to stimulate the spirit of improvement. The time had not come for " shedding lta old ooat." The Edmonston and I were too far in advance of our party to escape, whilo all the others, hearing the oaths and clatter of the horses, while they were still masked by the hill took to the underbrush like sheep. We were speedily (unrounded bv our cantors, who certainly had a very dangerous and Confederate look. The main body following tho then leaders - was mounted on horses and mules. Some had blind bridles, and soaroely two saddles were alike and the only uniformity about them lay in the rubber pouches which depended wet and glistening from each man's shoulders and concealed his uniform, which we had no doubt was as various as the beggarly born equipments. •sleeping oral measures In the valley of Wyoming that have male It one of the rloheet valleys In the State of Pennsylvania, It not In the world, had not been aroused. A eanal had been ooastruoted connecting Pittston with the Oheepeake Bay at Havre-de Grace, bnt the cost of transportation was so great and the prioe. of coal so low that there was absolutely no money in the coal business There certainly was no money here. I had reason ti know this as I had something to do In a flnanolal way with building the first ohurch erected in the towoahlp. The per pie generally felt kindly toward the enterprise. They were pleased with the Idea of having a sanotuary, but the funds neoecsary for •retting the ohuroh oame very largely from' abroad. For six miles farther onr road wound along tho picturesque bank of the Tockasegee river, the same road along which we had come to Webster under guard Crossing to the opposite brunch by a pole bridge, we past-ed into the Cullow bee valley, with its frequent cabins and cornfields and orchards, dotting the fertile bottom lands along the winding creek. Here was abundance for consumption, but evidently no market for the surplus. We passed little groups of haystacks which had been rotting for yearf in the meadows, some of the stacks al most hidden under the vines which were rapidly growing over them. Fifth Anthracite District. From advance sheets Huz'.eton Sentinel Is enabled to give the statistics of mine Inspector James E. RxUrlck's report of the Flfth'or Hazlston anthracite district for 1895. The total production of coal, Including that sold for home conenmptlon and that need In generating steam in and abont the mines, was 6,590,998 tons, an Increase over the prodaotlon of 1894 of 458,- 371 tone. The total namber of accidents for the year were 53 fatal and 96 non-fatal, leaving 87 widows and 53 orphans. Ia 1894 there were 58 fatal, 95 noa fatal, 30 widows and 66 orphans. There are 18,465 employee in the distrist, an increase of 104 over 1894. There Is decrease in the number of kegs of powder used for 1895. In 1894 there were 118 80 J kegs med, agalnet 109.307 for the past year. There «re 1,477 steam boilers, 1,991 borses and mnles and 99 mine locomotives In use In the district. Tone of coal produced par fatal accident for 1895, 124,358; for 1894, 105,735. Tone of coal prod need per non-fatal accldont for 1895, 68,655; for 1894. 64 554 Fatal accidents per employe, 348, against 316 6 In 1894. Non fatal accidents per employe 198, against 120 for 1894 Average number of days worked in 1895,19\9; for 1894 196.2. ' It was a constant disappointment to find so few of tho houses remaining whoro we had been voluntary aud involuntary guests. Old Roderick Norton's, whore we spent the first night of onr captivity, had been burned soon after the war. Squire Hooper's house in tho valley was a hay barn, the apple trees interlacing a thicket of boughs close against the kitchen windows. Rankweeds grew before the open door over which tho sqnire had been wont to keep his rifle and powder flask, bnt the stanch walls and stone chimneys were as sound as ever they were in the squire's day. UEATII OF FRANK KASI'KR. This Mrs. Hooper was the seoond of the four daughters of Squire Hooper and retained the family name, as did the elder sinter, through having married within the clan. The squire, whom the connty judges were wont to consult on knotty law points, died soon after the close of the war, but his widow, who was an invalid bolstered up in her easy chair a quarter of a century before, was still living, although confined to her bed. She seemed to live altogether in the past and to retain all the animosity of the wartime against her Confederate neighbors and was rather surprised at my more amiable views of the dead and gone past. She never tired of telling me "what store" her husband thought of me and Lieutenant Sill, and yet up to the very day of my leaving there was something on her mind. When taking final leave of Aunt Lucy, the old woman said to me in a trembling voice choked with emotion, "There's one thing I want to ask ye—it won't hurt ye to tell me—be ye a friend of the south?" lie \V»* a l'lttston Hoy, But Resided In IltiD'tlOi Frank Kaeper, of Buffalo, son of Mr. and Mrs. John Rasptr, of West Pitts'on, died at six o'click on Feb 19, at a hospital In the former city. He had been ill for •light weeks First he was seized with an attack of pleuro-pneumonia AfterwarJ an abecess formed on the lungs, for the rtmoval i f which an operation wis performed. Fron the effects of the operation, he recovered several times but snffered Mack and I crossed a range of mountains into a third valley and spent that night in the loft of a horse barn. Prom Shooting Creek to Tennessee by the route we intended to take was a distance of 75 miles. After crossing the Valley river we continued by an Indian trail winding over and along the divides. We were a party of 18 as we assembled on the slope above the settlement Captain Holt and Lieutenant Wallace had appeared from some mysterious hiding place, and a number of refugees had flocked to the standard of Edmoneton and Hooper. We timed our start so as to arrive by evening at the settlement of Peach Tree, where we were to cross the Valley river and get the latest news of the movements of the rangers. At the same time they hoard the rest of onr party crashing through the brush on the hillside and were shouting to them to come out or take the consequences. This episode gave me a moment to think, so that when the leader came forward and demanded to know who we were, I threw off my blanket, disclosing my ragged uniform and my riding jacket with one shoulder strap which had once been scarlet, with the remark: At the farther end of the valley wc commenced the ascent of Cullow hoe mountain. Glad to walk for awhile, I tramped up the winding road for a couplo of miles in advance of the carriage. Believing we were now nearly on the crest, I exchanged with the driver and took the reins. Soon the good road changed to shelving rock and quagmire, and for two miles more we toiled up, giving frequent rests to the jaded horses. We were two hours in making the ascent, and to describe the granite rocks we drove over and the springy places we toiled through to readers who bowl over park roads and level country lanes would be as hopeless as to make finite creatures understand the infinite. We began to trundle down grade at last and to meet barefooted children of the mountain tops with bags of nuts, whose sodden faces indicated that they lived far up above the schools. A few miles farther in the gathering twilight we came to the mountain farm where we had been advised to stop. Two log cabins with twin stone chimneys nearly covering the ends of each house were joined by a middle roof. Fruit trees grow in front, and in a broad garden at the side was a mass at sreat blue oab- Two y«ars after I came here, in 1816 •boat the time the firat oharoh building was dedicated, bueineee b-gsn to brighten, and It has grown brighter ever elnoe. Enterprising business men oame here with their families, and they have transformed Pltteton Ferry into a olty and bnllt np a town in Weat Pltteton of six or seven thousand inhabitants that is m inviting as a place of resldenoe as any town in Pennsylvania, where in 1814 were only farms. While East and West Flttaton are entirely separate municipalities they are nnlted by bridges that gracefully span onr beantlfnl river. To all Intents and purposes they Tom Hancock's house, tho first we had entered in the mountains, bereft of its twin structure, was no longer fcheltered by tall forest trees, but surrounded by bristling cornstalks and hemmed In by rail fences. An old woman who lived here, without a pano of glass in the windows, allowed us to look in the familiar rooms and at the blackened stone chimney where old Tom had heuped Uie green wood when wo came fit. 8 nV»lAf»1- in f'lO \ [to be c ntinvbd J relapses. Frank Kasper waC near'y thirty-five years of ago. He was one of tbe moat expert teleuraph operators in the country. In 1870 -7 he learned the buelness in the office ot the Wtstern Union Company in this city, when it was located in Dr. Knapp's drug store, a('j lining the Gazkttb otli;e. For eighteen years he had teen absent from Plttston, though coming here frequently/to visit his parents He worked in various places for the Weetern Union Company, but for the putt nine years had been em ployed by tbe United tress Association. Of ihe latter jeara, seven have been spei.t in Bnflftlo, and at tie tlm* ot his death be was night manager of t'le Uulted Press offloe in that city. . " You can see who I am." If they were the cutthroats we believed them to be, my uniform would give me a better standing with them than if I were a refugee. After a few rapidly put questions as to my battery, where we came from and who wetfe my companions it transpired that our captors were a detachment of the Second Ohio heavy artillery from tho garrison at London, hastily mounted and in pursuit of the rangers. The countryman on the gray horse was their loyal guide, and the two men in Confederate uniforms were their scouts. They advised oa to push on for the Union lines along the Knoxville and Chattanooga railway and hardly waited to see our comrades oat of the bushes before they dashed Apross ihe ford ip tli® direction of the sylvania Senator Kline Decllnea, aker In the U; one tat? Edmonston found the man he was seeking and we learned that a company of rangers had just gone into Tennessee on a marauding expedition. It was decided to remain here, in hiding, 24 hours, giving the enemy, who were mounted, time to complete their expedition and be on the return by the time we arrived on the ground. We lay down In a semicircle on the floor in front of the fire in oar wet, steaming clothes and the old oauuaigsere were poou sound 8fate Senator C. W. Kline has mhde publio , the following card: "After carefully conslderlrg the matter from the standpoints of health and business, I have oonoluded that I will not b% a candidate for re-nomination. I thank the kind friend* who have been so loyal to me in the past and who are now Importuning me to again be a candidate. I feel th*t In justice to myself I must decline to be considered aa a candidate. 0. W. Kline " There was one shoen. nortl end of town, Jamee He. or, Mr. McCjaeghj; one undertaker, Kllsha Black-" roiio, and one blacksmith, Thomas Benedict These were the Pittaton mannfac Cnrers fifty years a«o. Harris Jenkins, a jat-tice of the peace, was a representative man In Plttston, and his daughters, Anneita and Mary, were among the prominent and attractive yonng ladles of the town There were two dootors, whose homes were In Plttston, and who practiced In the snr-' Prominent Man Falls Dead. as Plttebnrg and Allegheny, and New York and Brooklyn are one. Here we now him elegant chnrohes and grow log and intelligent congregations and Sabbath schools, and Christian EnJeavor societies, and T. M C. Association, representing all denominations, and palatial homes and first olass public sohools, and manufactories, and barks, and liuslo Halls, and, last t at not least, a Wake Robin Captain Erastus T. R bblns, a prominent farmer residing three miles west of Gillets, Bradford county, dropped dead in the Erie passenger station at Elmtra on Tueeday, 1». Duiing the Civil War he was a captain in the Sixteenth Pennsylvania Cavalry. "I hope so," I said, "Aunt Lucy." "If the war was to be fit over, would ye on the same side?" she continued, pursuing her point. "Certainly," I said, "if I took any part, but I think I should leave fighting to the boys next time." A few years ago be was united in marriage to a Buff ilo young lady, who survives him To the yC uog wife and theagfd j arents Mr. Kasper's death la a baid blow. Burdock Blcod Bitters never falls to cum all lmpuritlee of tbe baod, from a common pimple to the worst scrofla sore. - After some further conversation she molndftd with the statement that she
Object Description
Title | Pittston Gazette |
Masthead | Pittston Gazette, Volume 46 Number 30, February 28, 1896 |
Volume | 46 |
Issue | 30 |
Subject | Pittston Gazette newspaper |
Description | The collection contains the archive of the Pittston Gazette, a northeastern Pennsylvania newspaper published from 1850 through 1965. This archive spans 1850-1907 and is significant to genealogists and historians focused on northeastern Pennsylvania. |
Publisher | Pittston Gazette |
Physical Description | microfilm |
Date | 1896-02-28 |
Location Covered | United States; Pennsylvania; Luzerne County; Pittston |
Type | Text |
Original Format | newspaper |
Digital Format | image/tiff |
Language | English |
Rights | http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/ |
Contact | For information on source and images, contact the West Pittston Public Library, 200 Exeter Ave, West Pittston, PA 18643. Phone: (570) 654-9847. Email: wplibrary@luzernelibraries.org |
Contributing Institution | West Pittston Public Library |
Sponsorship | This Digital Object is provided in a collection that is included in POWER Library: Pennsylvania Photos and Documents, which is funded by the Office of Commonwealth Libraries of Pennsylvania/Pennsylvania Department of Education. |
Description
Title | Pittston Gazette |
Masthead | Pittston Gazette, Volume 46 Number 30, February 28, 1896 |
Volume | 46 |
Issue | 30 |
Subject | Pittston Gazette newspaper |
Description | The collection contains the archive of the Pittston Gazette, a northeastern Pennsylvania newspaper published from 1850 through 1965. This archive spans 1850-1907 and is significant to genealogists and historians focused on northeastern Pennsylvania. |
Publisher | Pittston Gazette |
Physical Description | microfilm |
Date | 1896-02-28 |
Location Covered | United States; Pennsylvania; Luzerne County; Pittston |
Type | Text |
Original Format | newspaper |
Digital Format | image/tiff |
Identifier | PGZ_18960228_001.tif |
Language | English |
Rights | http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/ |
Contact | For information on source and images, contact the West Pittston Public Library, 200 Exeter Ave, West Pittston, PA 18643. Phone: (570) 654-9847. Email: wplibrary@luzernelibraries.org |
Contributing Institution | West Pittston Public Library |
Sponsorship | This Digital Object is provided in a collection that is included in POWER Library: Pennsylvania Photos and Documents, which is funded by the Office of Commonwealth Libraries of Pennsylvania/Pennsylvania Department of Education. |
Full Text | V * ■ • • SO* f Oldest Newspaper in the Wyoming Valley. PITTSTON, LUZERNE CO., PA., FRIDAY. FEBRUARY 28, 1896. A Weekly local and Family Journal. Sngar Lrfjai mountain, where some ot the enomy were still in view. Thus this lively adventure, which threatened us with direst disaster, proved to be of inestimable advantage to us, covering our advance from the only enemy we had to fear. We continued, however, to be mistaken all day for the rangers and frequently saw men retreating from the houses we passed in the direction of the mountains. On the following day we saw the same party as it came Into garrison at Loudon after a fruitless scout WlLKEiBAKUK'S NEW DEAL. THE PITTSTONS IN '44. barns and cribs stood over the way, i.. such an air of thrift ami comfort pi. vailed on every hand tliuf I blessed t). Rev. Mr. Deal for his guiding sngge:: tions. No one being in sight, I climber over the bars to find only the hon.=e dog at home. The doors were open, disclosing wide fireplaces and ample beds in every room covered with curious conceits in patchwork. bages that fairly hid tin fc.ivuii.i. didn't know much about politics, but sho had always allowed that if I came back to the valley I would tell her what was right. "Ye must come agin an stay all summer. Ye can merchandise a little to pay expenses," was Auut Lucy's parting admonition. rounding country, Dr. NathanielQlddinga, who oame to Pittaton from Connect ont towards the close of the last oentury, and Dr. Curtis. Dr. Udder wood had not np to this time ommenced work here. Theae doctors were neually kept very busy in the antamn, dealing ont qalnlne to "fever and ague" patients, who, it was said, « upended foroe enough in shaking to ran a saw mUl." Olnb, of which any city eight be prond. In fact we have a city equipped with all the appllsnoes for comfort and improvement and progress that belong to any city. The transformation that has been effected here in the past half centnry, to these who "ere familiar with it at that time, appears like the work of a magician's hand. Further Particular* About the 4Jreat feclM'iiia to Secure Spring Bro Dk Water, It Is etared upon good anHority that the men behind the wtter combination are ex- Lieutenant Oivemor Witres, fx Congressman A met uan, coal op-rCtor Claren je D. Simpson, ooul operator Taomas H. Watfclne, E L Fuller and William Connel, all of Sjranton The Crystal Spring Cj stock Las alreaiy been purchased from the L'high & Wllkesbarre Coal Co. at about $250 000, and, as has already oeen stated, an option has been secared «Dn the Wllkesbarre WaDer Co stjck at $65 a share. The com piny Is capitalized at $440,000, which would amount to $573,000 at $6 D a share Then there 1s a bonded indebtedness of $95 000 and a fl Dating debt of $2 )0 000, which would make the price of tha ooaopany abont $86;;.000, The stock of the company at $05 a share is considered a good price. (Wilfceabarre Record.) The Year in Which Rev. Dr. Parke In all this region the mountaineers divide politically just as they bushwacked during the war, and if parties swapped policies not a man would swerve from his allegiance to tho party name. They are jubilant over the tariff on mica, but up in arms at the-mention of the force bilL The old wartime fqpds still control public opinion. Kegan Work Here. INTERESTING STORY OF DAYS PAST. Personally I am glad that I oame here when I did, that I knew this valley in its oomparitlve yontb and beanty. We have grown together, and every stege of growth has b:en like the new picture that comes in the turning of the Kaleidoscope. The great rivers that excite our admiration as they sweep toward the ocean and bear on their bosoms the commerce of the world, bad their charms in the mountain streams they left before they were prepared for their burdens. The Plttston of fi:ty years ago is to the P.ttston of t xlay, as the mountain streams to the maj setic rivers. I uave had no reason to regret coming here. My early ministry was , in all regards as satisfactory as that which came later. I found congenial work here, which there is no greater blessing in earthly life. I fonnd here kind, qniet, intelligent, peaceable, ho jpltable people, who took in the latch strings of their houses and prepared to retire at the ringing of the curfew bells; people who were ready to do what they oould for the advancement of any work that gave promise of good fruit. Modern improvements in the way of living that belong to what is known as advanced civilization are all right in their way, but they are essential to no types of rational enjoyn ent or earthly blessings anymore than a "swell" we-ding is essential to the highest type of blessedness in married life. We cau be happy without them. Bational enj lyment Is confi jed to no type or stage of clvlliz »tlon, and with • contented mind, a pure heart and an honest purpose to do what he can for the gloryof God and the good of our fellow men, we may be happy [anywhere. Asphalt pavements, bicycles, g?s and electric lUht, oottly attire, trolley cars, steam caw, horses and carriages, servants, operas, theatres, concerts and elegant entertainments, are luxuries, not essentials. Inordinate ambition to shine in social circles that may be utterly heartless, worldllness, envy, pride, Jealousy, selfishness and sensuality, are the things that rob life of its sweetest charms, and they are not driven away by any type of clvlliz ition or lnznrione living, 'ihey gather strength by gratification. Returning to the carriage I found a tall mountain woman talking with the driver. The men folks were gone, she said, and she had no corn to feed the horse "Madam, " said I, "some broad and milk—anything will do for us. Please see if you can't find something for the horse." She turned back and I followed to the barn to find her on the scaffolding examining little bundles of oat straw. "Nary thing for the boss," she said, "but some rye." She was powerful sorry, but they were "plum out of hess feed." The driver declined to feed rye and we drove regretfully toward Hamburg, two miles farther on. It was getting dark whon we arrived at "Brown's," and,I looked with disgust upon the small frame house painted white, and compared it with the pictur«sqro home fit plenty in everything ex- Hlstorlcnl Address Delivered by Rev. Dr. The ohief ocoupatlon of the people In and around Plttston was farming, and they literally lived off their farms. There was no market for their proinje short of Eas ton, seventy miles away. Peter Petty and Peter Wagner cultivated the "big farm" at the foot of Campbell's Ledge. They were both Intelligent men and indastriouj farmers. They raised wheat, converted it into fl jut and carted It to Carbondale, where the D. & H. Coal Company were commencing operations, for whioh they «e oeived some money. Wilkesbarre was very mnoh more of a town than Carbondale, but it was abundantly supplied from the Plymjwtfh and Kingston farms with everything in the line of grain. Mr. Z inua Barnum, who owned the land on which the Birnum shaft was sunk, did some farming. Be was a bright, enterprising man Taere were few more pleasant homain the valley than his, and few mors attractive girls thau his daughters. Blohard Brown and Peter Nagle, who lived further up the valley; Nathaniel Glddlngs, who had a large farm In Uppsr Plttston; Jacob Lince, Adam Toanoh, Newman Brown, John D. Stark, John Blanchard, 'iqulre Winters and William Apple were repressntative farmers in the community. There were others. Thesa I became acquainted with very soon after coming here. James W. Johnson and Abal Bennlt were enter prising men who bad taken np their abode in Plttston. They had purchased the land where the Miners' Savings Bank now stands, and aa far south as Railroad street. They were really the projectors of Kast Pittaton. They built and ooonpled the cottage that stands back from the street, now owned by Mr. Cntler, and among the very few booses that remain of those that were here in 1814. This cottage was tastily painted. They sank the first coal shaft put down in Plttston, and shortly after sinking thla sold ont to the Pennsylvania Coal Company. The venerable Oapt. J. B. Smith was the only stoae mason and brick layer in Plttston in 1844 There were no batchers, or bakers, or plumbers, or wagon makers, or engineers, or house painters, or brewers, or barbers, or millers, or bankers, or brokers, or lawyers, or gaa man, or book agents, or druggists, or insurance agents, or dentists or printers. The result was, there were few bills to pay and that, under these circumstances, was a fortunate thing. We spent one night at a mill whose owner had been shot from his mule and left dead in the road by the rangers in a former raid, and on the following morning, which was the 4th of March, 1865, we walked into Loudon and under the folds ot the old flag again. It *»s the samef,4th of March on whioh Abraham Linobln was inaugurated for the second time, and I learned for the first time of the result of the election. Parka Before the Wake Robin Club, of West Plttston, at the Home of Hon, Theo. Strong, on Monday Rvenlng, February 16th. As we came down into tliii valley behind the horse and mule team, my driver, who happened to be of Confederate antecedents, told me the story of the murder of his uncle during the war. A crowd of "outliers" had surprised him in the night and dragged liim from his bed. After rffling the house and burning the books, they riddled their victim with balls and finished by crushing his skull with the butts of their rifles. I mentioned this to Mr. Hooper, who said it was true and that he deserved it. His (the uncle's) party haH captured a Union man shortly be$re, and after shooting him and belictnig liim dead Abe's uncle had gone back and snapped a rusty old pistol again and again at his head. Tho Union man, having recovered, organized a counter attack and did up Abe's uncle in mountain fashion for snapping his old rusty pistol so freely. asleep. I had noticed a bed tn the room which seemed to have been hastily left by its occupant, probably frightened by our approach. Before I fell asleep tho door was' cautiously opened and two strapping mountain women, barefooted, but otherwise completely dressed, even to their pasteboard sunbonoets, made a rush for the bed and covered themselves out of sight without bo much as removing their bonnets. I saw Plttston for the first time on the Monday luocsedlng the first Sabbath of Jane, 18 i4 I fix the date by the fact that during the week previous I learned that James E. Polk had been nominated oy the Dsmocratlo party as a candidate for President of the United States. I had spent the Sabbath in « llkesbarre, where I supplied the pulpit of the Bsv. Dr. Dorianoe, who was absent attending a meeting of the Presbyterian General Assembly, and on Monday morning came here on horsebaok, having traveled in this way duting the previous week about two hundred miles from my father's. I stopped at a public house kept by George Laztrn*, where I was properly oared for. After dlnnei I looked np Theouore Strong, to whom I had letters of introduction and recommendation from Princeton Theological Seminary, having come here under the care ot the Board of Home Missions to labor "In the Laokawanna valley and surrounding country." As 1 remember, we spent only two eights an the road, lying concealed in a thicket of laurel over the first day and walking on the second. Just as the sun was sinking out of sight we arrived on "Chunky Gall" mountain overlooking Shooting Greek. CHAPTER VIL cashiers revisited. "That," said my guide, pointing to a house in the valley, "is where my oocle lives, and over there among the trees— that cabin with long roofs and the lean to —that is Mrs. Kitchen's, where I will take you." * Just before the publication in The Century Magazine for October, 1890, of the facts embodied in the foregoing chapt'jwr I was sent by The Century company to Johnson's island, at Sandusky, to Chicago and Indianapolis in search of material needed in the illustration of other prison articles then in preparation. The Spring Brook Water Co. stock has nearly all been by Abram Neabltt, tbe heirs of the late Hon. L. D. Shoemaker and Messrs Watres and Amerman, the latter two parties to the new deal. This company is capltallz d at $600 000 and has a bonded Indebtedness of $300,000 It is said that all this stock was bought at $10 below par for oash. Wfe spent the following day in a log horse barn, and when it wad sufficiently dark, the farmer mounted his horse and led' ub across the fields to the river, which was a narrow stream flowing BWiftly between high banks. One by one the farmer put us across, seated behind his saddle, the horse struggling against the current. By this time it had grown much colder, and as we struck into the mountains and soon passed the last house we should Bee before reaching the border, we were met by a blinding snowstorm, against which we struggled along until we had gone far enough into the wilderness to camp with safety, when we built a rousing fire and made our beds around it. I was to find guides here who made it their business to take parties ot officers into our lines, receiving $100 as fee from each officer, the money to be paid on arrival at the first pay station. Lientenants Sill and Lam son had passed here, and one of their guides was in the next valley. Going in search of him in the morning, I met two men with long rifles crossing a branch, and to my surprise one of them was wearing the snuff colored sack coat I remembered so well as belonging to Lieutenant Lamson. These men were Quinoe Edmonston and Mack Hooper, and they turned about and took me to Edmonston's eabin, telling me that there were two other officers concealed near by, and that an expedition would soon start for Tennessee under their guidance. cept "boss feed." Two "hacks" had arrived before us, one of which carried a girl who was returning from "college" in the Cullow- After finishing my business at Indianapolis I proceeded by way of Louisville and Knoxville to Asheville, to oarry out my long cherished purpose of paying a visit to tbe mountaineers who had harbored our party in the winter of 1864. The purchase price of these companies Is neariy $8,000,000 and to this mus1: be added $75,0J0 or $100,000 more for new reservoirs In the Spring Brook water shed and piping to this city, the details for which have not yet been considered. The hree coopanles furnish water to evety town in Wyoming Valley except Nantlcoke, or a population of abont 150,000. The three companies under one management can be run much more economically than when separate and for this reason the capitalists hope to make a profit. On the second day, with "C'olum" tiong for guide, I made an expedition on foot, seven miies up the Yellow mountain in search of my old guide, Man Heady. Long carried a rifle and I a camera as we worked up the same trail my party had gone over in 1861. We found Headen's cabin lor.Ucd, but- in reply to my "iieiiot" came a voice rrom the hillside above the cornfield. As the morning train rolled south oat of Asheville the rain was falling steadily and I thought with foreboding of the afternoon drive into the mountains from the railway terminus. In half an hoar, however, the san was shining brilliantly and the bine ridges were emitting puffs of gray fog. I had been in Asheville bat once before and between the two visits 26 years had intervened. Where the guests of the superb Battery Park hotel now look from its wide verandas on to the peaks of the Blue Bidge, a field battery then ranged across the valley, and along the western front of the town a wide belt of timber had been slashed to give free range to the guns. Yesterday I had rolled into the town along the windings of the French Broad in a vestibuled train, thinking of that wtlier time when we tramped in under a oonvoy of loaded muskets. Pitta ton was then, as now, '.'beautiful for situation" and environments, bnt with out either ooal breakers or onlm piles to dttract from its charms, at the oonflaenoe of the Lack twanna and Susquehanna risers, where the Wyoming valiey ends and the Lackawanna begins Mrs. Sigonrnej, in a beautiful little poem, speaks of Lack awanna as Susquehanna's "dujky bride." This may have been a very happy union at the time the union took place, but the Impression prevails that the bride in these latter days has very greatly degenerated. We were now on the Wacheesa trail and our march would be by day. In view of what we knew was going on in front of us. our guards counseled delay, xhe trail for the most part followed the tops of the ridges, distinctly marked in the black mold, as it wound among the gnarled chestnuts rooted in the rocks and over the higher tops, where long, ooarse grass dropped down into a convenient hollow, where wood and water abounded, and where we made our camp. "Are you HeadenV" I cried. "Yes." "Well, come down hero; yon've got just 15 minutes to live." The streams were so high, particularly the Valley river, which we had to cross, that it would be necessary to wait a few days before starting. So Mack and I returned to Mrs. Kitchen'& Those were the words Major Parker had addressed to him one morning after onr capture at his house and just before stringing him up three times in the orchard. Soon wo saw his long figure coming down through the stalks. Going out at the back of the honse to meet him, "Well, Headen," I said, "do you know me?" The et Dck of the Wilkeebarre Water Co. has not yet been transfemd to the combination, but this ib only a question of a few days hee valley to Cashiers. Mrs. Brown said she could take in another hack if we would sleep two in one bed. "My dear madam," I said, "you can put my driver on the roof, if you like, but I am accustomed to sleeping alone." MOUNTAIN MILL. Mrs. Kitchen's husband had been shot in the first year of the war while salting his cattle in the mountains. Her home consisted of two log bouses united by a deep porch, the back side at which was occupied by the loom. One house was the living and sleeping room and the other was the kitchen. The family owned two slaves, which were the only negroes I saw in the mountains bond or free. * It is altogether fprobable that by next summer pure Spring Briok water will be furnished to the entire cltf of Wilkeebarre and all other towns in the valley. The Spring Brook Water Co already supplies P.ttston and m .ins will be laid in Parsons, Miner's Mills and Plains Probably the Campbell's Ledge scheme will also be perfected, sD thD.t the water from the rlvei may be used in case the Soring Brook sup ply runs dry. This would Involve only a little additional txpenee, as the river supply could be taken within a short distance of one of the Spring Brook reservoirsOn the morning of about the fourth day we arrived on the ciest of the last ridge overlooking the open plain of east Tennessee. It was a glad sight to us, the boundless plain covered with farms. At our feet the Tilco river flowed out of the mountains, and away on tho eastern horizon a suspicious column of smoke rose into the air. Of what I found here in 1844,1 am asked and expeoted to speak, and this will be my text. I oannot make mention of all I have found since coming here. That would be a record too extended for the ocoasion, a record of more tnan half a oeatury of active life, interwoven with almost every department of Plttston's history. Here I did my first work, and in conneotlon with Pltteton I have done all my lffe work. I propoee to speak of "the town" and "men and things," as they were when I came here. What they were previously we may know from history, as Profeeeor Winchester, who has been entertaining the people of Wilkeebarre, knows the London of a hundred years ago What Pltt*ton now is, the young people of the Wake Robin Club know ae well as I d ». The two drivers whose wheel tracks we had been speculating on all the afternoon were sitting by an empty fireplace, and on my suggestion of a fire one of them started to find an ax. I went out to the back porch with my bands in my pockets and in the opposite door in the glow of the kitchen fire stood a small barefooted boy, bursting with fat, with his' bands also deep in his pockets. At the same moment some dark object came flopping round the oorner in the chips. "Hello, Jumbo I" I said. "Who killed that chicken?" "Mammy. My name ain't Jumbo." "Well, I can't tell you rightly till 1 get a little nearer." Before quite reach ing me he added, " Woll, I reckon hit'? Henry Shelton." My destination was the point in the mountains where my party had been recaptured and my object to revisit the friends who had fed and harbored us. Who of them would be living and who dead? Who of my guides, guards, captors and harboring friends would re member me? My former visit had been such a thrilling adventure and the memory of it was so much like a vision that for weeks before I started and at several of the great hotels on the way I had dreamed queer things about my old friends away up in the mountains. At the Gait ]House in Louisville I dreamed that one little red aheeked maiden of the old times had married a barber, and that the professional chairs, draped with dirty towels, stood in the family sitting room. In one family at least whero our former advent had been an event in the isolated lives of the household, and which family by the marriage of the young people "had ramified into several neighboring homes, I knew my return would be of as much importance as the coming of a kinsman. "Yes," I said, "old man, yon ore quite right, and I am delighted to see you." Down in a gorge to the right was a cabin, and to this Mack Hooper was dispatched to learn all he could of the whereabouts of the Texan rangers. He soon returned with the information that on the night before the bushwhackers had burned Philadelphia depot, on the Knoxville and Chattanooga road, and that they wore probably in full retreat back into the mountains. So we made •our way down to the iron works and to the house of the owner, a Mr. Johnson, who was a graduate of West Point, and who, although friendly to us, had remained a neutral in that neutral land. He came to the gate and gave us water, and at the same time expressed his regret that we had shown ourselves so soon, for, Baid he: Daring the early part of that winter Quinoe Edmonston and a guide of the name of Birch had conducted a party of officers safely to Nashville and bad re oeived therefor $1,000 in greenbacks. Tha trin had hem over the same trail we intended to take. Reaching the mountains on their return Birch determined to go in by the road, having business to attend to. Edmonston, after remonstrating in vain, oontinued alone over the trail. A few days thereafter the body of Birch was found on the road minus the ears. This particular mutilation was the defiant mark of a band calling themselves Texan rangers, who were in constant antagonism with the oompany of home guards to which oar guides belonged and which was commanded by a son of the murdered Birch. Poor at the rangers soon after fell into the hands of the Union oompany, and Edmonston and Mack Hooper were among the party detailed to take the prisoners to jail, bat with private instructions at a very different nature. Having proceeded a few miles into the moon tains, well away from any settlement, the prisoners were drawn ap in line and shot Their remains were buried under driftwood after appropriating the better articles of their clothing, and the report was spread abroad that the prisoners had escaped. "I hearn toll yon was comin," said Headen, "but I allowed you wouldn't git here. What has become of Sill and where is Lamson?" There were In this historic and poetic valley of Wyoming, fifty years ago, just as contented, happy, efficient, humble wives and mothers as it has now, and there were jast as bright, pretty girls here then as are here now. Tnere were n t so many of th°m. Thofaas Campbell, the Scotch poet, in his "Qertrude of Wyoming," has given ns a picture of one ot these bright, magnetic girls as she existed in his imagination, for, like Hoses, it was not his privilege to see the "promised land." It is a charming piotnre, possibly to ethereal and spiritual for a girl of the forest, and open to the criticism of some one greatly wanting in imagination and good taste, who has said by way of rldlou'e, "that on Busquehanna's banks, in fair Wyoming, Qertrnde often penned poems, bat oftener penned pigs " Perhaps sbe did, and if she did, she is not the first bright, pretty girl that has done the sams thing, and we think none the lees of her for it. Those who earn their bread by milking cows aud making batter and hoeing' corn and digging potatoes and going to mill and washing and ironing and swsaplng, as oar grandmothers did, and as the wives and daughters of the first settlers in new oonntries have to do, are not apt to barn mnsh " mlda'g'it" oil writing poetry nor to have white soft hands. We admit that there was leas demand for poetry than for oorn in Wyoming a hundred years a40. If Coleridge and Soathy had been able to carry oat their ideas of immigration to Amerioa and had established their grand " pantisooraoy," and nothing bat lmpecanloeity and marriage prevented them, and were obliged to earn their living by cultivating the soil as they expected to do, we #onld have heard very muoh less of the "Like Foete" of England than we have done. I wouldn't go into his house until 1 had posed him on the steps, planted my camera on a bee gum and taken advantage of the sun which was shining clearly through a break in the clouds. THREE MEN SUFFOCATED. The driver came back to say that he had "done found the wood pile, but couldn't find nary ax. " So we groped ont together, and finding some logs already cut we soon had a roaring fire. The girl from college was helping Mrs. Brown in tbe kitchen, and supper was soon smoking on the table, including tbe flopping chicken crisply fried. Overpowered Ity n Volume of Escaping G»« in Wllkeabarre. Headen had been separated from his wife for 16 years, and here ho was, living alone, making his own butter and keeping his own house on one end of his domain. Several years before, I learned, be had taken up with a morganatic wife, but the court at Webster interfered and after trial sentenced him to a term of imprisonment A man in Georgia bid off the convict and poor Headen worked ont his sentence. (Wilkesliarre Record.) There was one, and bnt one, ooal mine in Pittston. It was operated by men reeiding in Wilkesbarre, John and Lord Bntler. It was back from the town some dlstanoe, at what is now known as the "burning mine." The ooal waa brought by rail to the top of Bntler Hill, near where Mr. Anderson and Mr. Craig reside, and let down to the canal by a plane. This colliery never paid its owners any dividends, but swamped them financially. George and Samuel Maxtield, brothers, and John 7. -rby, employed at the works of the Coneumei'i Gas C) , on Dana street, In a sadden and awful manner oa Tuesday, Feb. 19. prrrero* firry. On a Philadelphia paper that I subscribed for soon after coming here, the addrees is, nnlem it bas been ohanged very lately, "Bev N G Parke, Pltteton Ferry." That was the name of onr olty fifty yean ago. An attempt was made to change it to Port Mallory at one time, but it failed. Taere were no brl ee connecting the East and Weet sides of inr river, exoept occasional ice bridges hat served a good pur pose. There was a Pltteton Ferry by wbi'ih tbe traveler could "get over" If he oould call loud enongh to make the ferryman hear; and this ferry was one of the oldeet, if not the oldeet, In this part of the St tte. With this name, Pittston Ferry, Pittston is not second to Wilkeebarre in point of age. Frtm the time the Susqaehanna Land Con cany came here from Connecticut and 1 d out the valleys Into seven township*, of whioh Pittston was one, people from Connecticut and the East, going to Exeter and Kingston and Plymouth, came down the valley through Providence and crossed the Susquehanna at Pittston Ferry, and returnlog they crossed the eame ferry. The route from the Delaware River to the valley was through Pittston, rather than Wilkeebarre.The supper was good, but tbe tables in the expressive language of the mountains, "Hit was the powerfulest curiosity thet ever was." It was a round dotlble decker covered with oilclotfc rudely nailed on. The outer rim was » space a foot wide, on which the plates, knives, forks and napkins were placed The center of the table was six incboe higher, and on this tbe body of the repast was spread. A big and little oil lamp faintly lighted the gloom, and when one of the drivers buw anything be wanted on the opposite side of tbe table round came the center with a creak and a groan. Sometimes my plate was in total eclipse, and sometimes Jumbo's bead was lost behind the big yellow bowl of apple sance. I laid mj bunk of hot corn bread on the movable rim, and away it went to the opposite side of tbe table. About 4 o'clock the three men who were in charge of the works, went to the purifying room on the second fl oor of the large brick build ng ji*t north of the engine honse to clean ont one of the purifying boxes. Theie are several of theee boxes, filled with oxide, through wh ch the gas passes in the mains. Tale is the last stage In the proceee of making gas, and is designed to remove whatever Impuritlee It may contain. Tae box in question was fed by a twelve Inch pipe, thn ugh which an Itnmenee volume of gas passed constantly. Underneath the box Is a trap door, which, when opened, allows the impure oxide to paee out, bo that the box can be refill'd. "Last night the rear guard of the cutthroats camped by yonder Sugar Loaf mountain," pointing to a hill on the opposite side of the river, "and I fear some of them are hanging around there yet." He went up the hill to the old place, with us, to see the old woman and Jnlin Ann, who lived together on the scene of onr capture, in a house which he hue! been building in 1804, and which was now, in turn, old and weather stained. Then wh no hooae of worship la the township of Pltteton. Neither was there • resident minister of the Gospel here. Elder Miller, of Ablngton, and Dr. Dorrsnoe, of Wlikes barie, buried the dead and married the yonng people. There was preaching onoe in two weeks by Elder tfott, who resided in Hyde Park, in a small sohool house near the Junction. There were not to exoeed a dozen professing Christians in the town. These represented different denominations, bat they all worshiped together happily. There had been ohnreh organisations at an sarller day, but they had all disappeared. There were none at this time. There was a Sabbath Sohool in the sohool house where Elder Mott preached, conducted by Mr. Strong, with which some of the giey-haired men and women of today were eonnected. He told us that it was 30 miles to our lines at Loudon and advised us to make all baste to that point. At high Boon I was set off the train to find myself 80 miles from my destination. The local liveryman, instead of replying to my question as to the price for which ho wonld send me to Cashiers valley, stated that he wonld provide me a horse, wagon and driver at $2.50 per day, I to bear all expenses of feed and lodging. At the hotel where I repaired for dinner before starting I found a fat and rosy Episcopal clergyman on the "gallery," who, having just washed his face and hands, was standing in a bent and dripping attitude awaiting a dry towel. As they say in that country, he "suspicioned" my identity and politely asked me where I was bound. I told him.. The door was open, on the porch and entering I stood in the presence of the woman who, 25 yoars ago, wanted to "stomp the men through the turnpike" and who turned out of bed at all hours of the night to spin. She was totally blind, sitting at the corner of the empty fireplaoe chewing tobacco and spitting in the ashes. Her yellow face, mottled with whit e spots, was shaded by a pasteboard suubonnet standing erect on her head, and her thin fingers were pulling the strings off bean pods, several bushels of which were spread on the floor. After the greeting, in which she said my voice didn't sound "nat'ral," she wanted to know if I was married. Leaving Mr. Johnson leaning on his gate, which commanded a view directly np the road leading in the direction of London, we acted on his advice without a moment's delay. As he looked after ns moving away in single file like a band of Indians it was possible for him to keep U8 in view for a third of a mile along a straight road parallel with the narrow river, which flowed on the left hand. At that distance he saw a small hill thickly covered with undergrowth and trees, around which the road disappeared to the right. A line drawn to the left at a right angle to this road from the wooded hill aforesaid would pass through a ford in the river and terminate a half mile distant in the Sugar Loaf mountain where the Texan rangers had last been seen. . — While we were still waiting for the Valley river to subside, Mack Hooper and I sat in Mrs. Kitchen's living room on a memorable Friday afternoon deploring the continuance of the rain, which was falling in torrents outside. Mack was sitting by the door opening into the connecting porch and I before the fire, with my back turned to him and reading in a small Sunday school book which I had found in a basket Startled by a rustling sound in Mack's direction, I looked aronnd just in time to see bis heels disappearing under the nearest bed. I got on to my feet, intending to do likewise, when I found myself confronted by a stalwart Confederate officer armed and uniformed and occupying the doorway, backed by his quartermastei sergeant. This proved to be a government party collecting the tax in kind, which at that time was a tenth part of all crops and other farm products. The men turned off the gas, opened the trap and proceeded to clean the box Saving finished work, they turned on the gas forgetting, however, to close thi trap underneath. This allowed the 4*8 to fl Dw through the box and ont Into the room from the big twelve Inch pipe. Tne overpowering odor told the men that something was wrong, but they did not know what It was. It is thought that they went back to the box aud endeavore t to locate the leak, bu' were overpowered by the gas, which had rapidly filled the room When too late they made a desperate effoit to escape. Bnt they were too dsz*l ay the vapor to open the big doors or any Df the numerous windows in the balldlng 9ad they done this th-ir lives might hate 0 *en saved. But they staggered blindly toward the small ttairway leading to the lower fl Dor, hoping to escape in that way. Death overtook them almost within reach of safety, for by the time they had reaohed thr stairs the great volume of gas had Ailed every nook and cranny in the ro m, and the poor fellows fell In their tracks and choked to deati. I dismissed my conveyance in thC morning and arranged to go the rest ol the way with the "hack" bound lot Cashiers valley. The girl from Collowhee college shared with me the one mat in the wagon, and the driver sat on tlx end board over the traces. The woodet top was so low that I whs forced to hold my hat in my hand and so came to the end of my journey in no great state behind a horse and a mnle. '"May I ask whom yon are going to see over there?" "I am going to Riley Hooper's," I said. "No," I said, "Mrs. Headen, I am a miserable old bachelor." There were not to ex seed over two hundred people living in Pit ston at this time, between Sebastopol and the Junction. They resided for the most part along the Main street. Tae homes were "few and far between"—magnlfloent distanoev, but not magnlfloent houses, and as orderly arranged as stumps in a olearing. There oertalnly was not much that was tempting to one who was looking for a place to make a nice, cosy home for himself. On Main street, whioh was oiooksd as a ram's horn, the houses were so scattered that some one who was travelling to Pltlston from Wilkeebarre did not know he was In town until he was through It. At the head of the oanal he enquired for Pittston. There were no sidewslks hsre, and In muddy weather the pedestrians "wadsd." Cows and swine and geeae had perfect freedom to wander where they pleased, with none to make them afrali}. On one occasion jne of our prominent oltiz Dns had a free Dlde on the back of a huge porker that attempted to ran between his legs, possibly "to escape a mnd hole." "Ah," said she, with a sigh, "that's what all of nm says when they come down here from furrin parts." "Ah," said he, "I thought so. I know all about von. Thev lire looking for you, and will be delighted to see On my arrival here I found two public hous*, one kept by John Sax, at the foot of Parsonage street, and the one at whloh I stopped, and at whloh the stage connecting Carbondale and Wilkeebarre stopped This was a two-hone »tage. It carried the mall and passengers when there were any to oarry. It was the only publlj conveyance in the valley, and Its arrival at Pitta ton was the sensational event of every day There were no saloons in the town. It was as free from them as West Pittaton is now, and a drunken man on the street, exoept on pnblic occasions, wh rarely seen. Taera were not to exoeed half a doz in foreigners, and these were from England, Scotland, Ireland and Franoe. Tha father of Thomas Ford, of West Plttston, was from England, James McFarlane wa* from Sootland, 'Sqnire Redding was from Ireland, and the father of B D. Laioe, who has made for himself a nation D1 reputation at the Smithsonian Institute, was from France. The people were for the most part "to the manor born." There was, so far as I remember, no poor honse in the county and no call for one. Very rioh men and paupers are usually found in the same locality. Neltner of these classes wai represented here. There were two stores. One was kept by the postmaster, a thrifty, intelligent Irishman, Mr Bedding, who opened his snuff box to all his customers. His store stood near where the Windsor Hotel now stands. The other store, which stood near the foot of the plane, was superintended by Theodore St'ong for the Butler Coal Company. These stores reoeived and paid out very little money. They were largely stores Of exohange. For butter and eggs and oh tokens, the farmers oould buy sugar an d tea and tobacco. The merohants did not pay cash for anything, for the best of reaeons —they did not have It. An old oountry letter, which oost twenty five oenta, to be paid for on delivery, was sometimes left In the postoffioe some daye, for want of money to take it out. The preacher's salary, whloh amounted to fifty dollars a year, was paid in trade. In fact, everything was paid in trade, exoept marriage fees, and they were sometimes paid in promises. There was but one bank kD the oounty, the Wyoming Bank, of Wllkesbarre, and that discounted sparingly Nothing but "gilt edged" paper would Cashier Lynoh look at. Tills bank had the monopoly of the banking business la this part of Penn- It had been raining in the early morning. The air was cool and bracing, and every man had his blanket or bedquilt thrown over his Bhoulders, and each walked with a stout staff. Quince Edmonston was file leader, and I close on his heels, as with a swinging gait we cauie to the turn in the road. We were very much on the alert for rangers, and with the first view around the turn we who were in the advance spied a burly countryman mounted on a powerful gray horse ooming lefsurely toward ns. He wore a Yankee blue overcoat, a red fur cap and had a rifle slung across his back. you." We had retained most of the altitude gained in the climb np the Cullowhee mountain so that the passage over thr Bine Ridge was little more than the as cent and descent of an ordinary country hill Cashiers valley is swnng like a hammock between the tops of the mountains, 8,600 feet- above the sea. Rock mountain and Chimney Top present hnge granite facesto the valley. Whitesides.-with its vast expanse of sheer rock on the hither side, is mostly wooded on the Cashiers face. Yellow mountain, the highest peak of the Blue Ridge at this point, the huge mass of Hogsback, the two Sheep cliffs and Big and Little Terrapin complete the blue walls surrounding Cashiers valley. A clean, sanrly road winds through the settlement, along which onr horse and mnle wagon trotted quietly to the mnsic of cowbells and gnrgling trout streams, and in the.sweet morning sunshine drew np before a low honse of hewn logs and wooden additions, with beds of asters and all the old fashioned odorless fall flowers bordering the walks. The wood pile was opposite the gate, the barn on a neighboring slope and gardens of corn and cabbage swept round tho rear of the house. Host and hostess were waiting in the porch and had remained np the night before until the unprecedented hour of 10 o'clock, awaiting me. I had written from Indianapolis that I should probably be one day behind my letter and Mrs. Hooper had assured her husband that I would come on time unless something broke down, as I was the most restless man she ever saw. We renewed our acquaintance before the log fire in the stone.chimney and I was soon ready to start ont in search of the. other members of the Hooper family. We persuaded her to be led ont into the sunlight by the gateposts, the same cedar sticks I well remembered with the slender bar mortised in the top, and there I photographed the family group. After dinner, a light top buggy crusted with the mnd of a hundred journeys drove up to the door. As we were not to reach our destination that day I took the clergyman's advice as to a halting place for the night. We believe that whioh, under the circumstances, could reasonably be expected of the people of Wyoming fifty yea re ago we found here. The day for poets, and artists, and gentlemen and ladles of assthetio tastes will come i if due time, and in the work of the Wake Bobln Club we reoogniz) the dawn of that day quickly but surely lifting and rolling back tne curtain of night. Then Headen conducted us a mile around the side of Yellow mountain to see the "rock house," whore we had been directed to stay the night of the capture, aud which we recklessly left because the wind blew the smoke of the fire into onr eyes. As we drove into Webster, the conrt town of Jackson county, three miles from the station, a mass of white thunder oaps rolled over the mountains anfl the big drops were beginning to patter down. I found shelter in the village storo and the driver sought cover for his trap. Webster is a sorry oounty town, where tho razor backed hogs root wallowing places about the door of the store undisturbed by the village loungers, who chew tobaoco, jocked back in splint bottomed chairs on the porch. I felt very jolly, however, when I recalled a certain faraway morning when I tramped out of the town shivering, with the mud and snow oozing through my broken shoes at every step. The old brick jail stood in the next yard, and despite the tain I jumped over the gate and ran into the hall and inspected the corner •room where wo three ragged boy lieutenants had once passed a night. Keeping their eyes riveted on my hostile uniform, the two advanced to the opposite corner of the chimney. I was still standing, and seeing no wdy of escape, in order to make my captors more at home, I ventured a remark on tho weather. They stared and asked for Mrs. Kitchen. A plan of esca])e flashed through my mind like an inspiration— one which required a show of delibera tion—so I seated myself quietly for an instant and affected to continue my reading. I was so much interested in that book that when I was seized with a severe fit of ooughing, with one hand upon my chest, I walked slowly past the men and laid it carefully, opened face down, on a chest With another step or two I was in the porch, and bounding into the kitchen I sprang out into the garden through a window opened by the women for my exit Away I sped, bareheaded, through the rain, crashing through the underbrush and plunging through the streams like a frightened deer and making for the gap leading into the next valley. I brought up finally behind a group of haystacks overlooking the road, and presently I saw Mack ooming with my oap and our haversacks, which-were already provisioned for the journey. He had remained concealed under the bed and had heard the women .state that I was a Confederate scout. Convinced to the oontrarj by my flight, he bad gone away swearing that he would have that Yankee if he had to search the whole settlement Returning down the lii 11 toward Head en's cabin, wo stopped to shake hands and say "howdy" to a son, whose wife and children filled tho cabin door. This son in the old davs was No. 6 in the family bed when we three lieutenants slept on the floor before tho fire. BOUGHT BY THE LEHIGH VALLEY. "Here they are," wo thought. The Elmlra, Cortland mod Northern Ball- "There they are!" he cried, and bringing his gnn to bear and putting spurs to the gray he came thundering down upon Edmonston and me, bawling tones of surrender and indulging in epithets more picturesque than polite. Close behind him suddenly appeared two Confederates in gray and gold lace and behind them a motley squad of irregular oavalry brought up the rear of the charge, shooting and brandishing their weapons. Shortly before six o'olock last evening KUpeilntendeot John attempted to light the gas in hie offiie, but found that there was none in the pipe. Suspect ing that something was wrong, he boarded a car aud went at once to the works He searched in vain for the three men he had left at work there, nntil he came to the purifying room. Throwing open the door he was horrified to find the dead bodies of Zerby and Grorge Maxfield at the foot of the steps Rnshing into the roam he soon discovered Samuel Maxfield lying on the fl ior at the head of the stairway. Bastlly summoning a physician he had the bodies removed and carefully examined for some tlgn of life. But it was too late. Tie men were dead and beyond the reach ot the doctor's skill. They had died alone, with n a few feet of the pure air, wUhont a eonl to succor them. road Adds to Its System. Offioials of the Valley Railroad oompany state that the Elmlra, Cortland and Northern railroad has bnen bought by the Lehigh Valley company from Austin Corbln, Henry W. Maxwell and J Rogers Maxwell, who for years have been the owners. The statement in a New York dispatch that Austin Corbln and Henry W. Maxwell purchased for the Lthlgh Valley Is dec'ared to be an error. The pucchaee price could not be le Drned, nor could any of the terms of the sale. On the rafters of Headen's cabin were great bunches of pennyroyal aud summer savory, which he said was "right good for table tea." High up in the corner the clean chnrn dasher was thrust through the siding. After lunching on cold corn pone and sweet milk we sat on the beanbags and hoard the story of his escape, fording tho iey Tnekasegoe and reaching home half starved in the deep snow, and of his subsequent trip to Tennessoe with Kiiapp and old Tom Hancock. I had brought the old man a wonderful jackknife with endless tools and blades unfolding from the handle, which pleased him greatly. There was real ly nothing here to make the tjwn grow, nothing to stimulate the spirit of improvement. The time had not come for " shedding lta old ooat." The Edmonston and I were too far in advance of our party to escape, whilo all the others, hearing the oaths and clatter of the horses, while they were still masked by the hill took to the underbrush like sheep. We were speedily (unrounded bv our cantors, who certainly had a very dangerous and Confederate look. The main body following tho then leaders - was mounted on horses and mules. Some had blind bridles, and soaroely two saddles were alike and the only uniformity about them lay in the rubber pouches which depended wet and glistening from each man's shoulders and concealed his uniform, which we had no doubt was as various as the beggarly born equipments. •sleeping oral measures In the valley of Wyoming that have male It one of the rloheet valleys In the State of Pennsylvania, It not In the world, had not been aroused. A eanal had been ooastruoted connecting Pittston with the Oheepeake Bay at Havre-de Grace, bnt the cost of transportation was so great and the prioe. of coal so low that there was absolutely no money in the coal business There certainly was no money here. I had reason ti know this as I had something to do In a flnanolal way with building the first ohurch erected in the towoahlp. The per pie generally felt kindly toward the enterprise. They were pleased with the Idea of having a sanotuary, but the funds neoecsary for •retting the ohuroh oame very largely from' abroad. For six miles farther onr road wound along tho picturesque bank of the Tockasegee river, the same road along which we had come to Webster under guard Crossing to the opposite brunch by a pole bridge, we past-ed into the Cullow bee valley, with its frequent cabins and cornfields and orchards, dotting the fertile bottom lands along the winding creek. Here was abundance for consumption, but evidently no market for the surplus. We passed little groups of haystacks which had been rotting for yearf in the meadows, some of the stacks al most hidden under the vines which were rapidly growing over them. Fifth Anthracite District. From advance sheets Huz'.eton Sentinel Is enabled to give the statistics of mine Inspector James E. RxUrlck's report of the Flfth'or Hazlston anthracite district for 1895. The total production of coal, Including that sold for home conenmptlon and that need In generating steam in and abont the mines, was 6,590,998 tons, an Increase over the prodaotlon of 1894 of 458,- 371 tone. The total namber of accidents for the year were 53 fatal and 96 non-fatal, leaving 87 widows and 53 orphans. Ia 1894 there were 58 fatal, 95 noa fatal, 30 widows and 66 orphans. There are 18,465 employee in the distrist, an increase of 104 over 1894. There Is decrease in the number of kegs of powder used for 1895. In 1894 there were 118 80 J kegs med, agalnet 109.307 for the past year. There «re 1,477 steam boilers, 1,991 borses and mnles and 99 mine locomotives In use In the district. Tone of coal produced par fatal accident for 1895, 124,358; for 1894, 105,735. Tone of coal prod need per non-fatal accldont for 1895, 68,655; for 1894. 64 554 Fatal accidents per employe, 348, against 316 6 In 1894. Non fatal accidents per employe 198, against 120 for 1894 Average number of days worked in 1895,19\9; for 1894 196.2. ' It was a constant disappointment to find so few of tho houses remaining whoro we had been voluntary aud involuntary guests. Old Roderick Norton's, whore we spent the first night of onr captivity, had been burned soon after the war. Squire Hooper's house in tho valley was a hay barn, the apple trees interlacing a thicket of boughs close against the kitchen windows. Rankweeds grew before the open door over which tho sqnire had been wont to keep his rifle and powder flask, bnt the stanch walls and stone chimneys were as sound as ever they were in the squire's day. UEATII OF FRANK KASI'KR. This Mrs. Hooper was the seoond of the four daughters of Squire Hooper and retained the family name, as did the elder sinter, through having married within the clan. The squire, whom the connty judges were wont to consult on knotty law points, died soon after the close of the war, but his widow, who was an invalid bolstered up in her easy chair a quarter of a century before, was still living, although confined to her bed. She seemed to live altogether in the past and to retain all the animosity of the wartime against her Confederate neighbors and was rather surprised at my more amiable views of the dead and gone past. She never tired of telling me "what store" her husband thought of me and Lieutenant Sill, and yet up to the very day of my leaving there was something on her mind. When taking final leave of Aunt Lucy, the old woman said to me in a trembling voice choked with emotion, "There's one thing I want to ask ye—it won't hurt ye to tell me—be ye a friend of the south?" lie \V»* a l'lttston Hoy, But Resided In IltiD'tlOi Frank Kaeper, of Buffalo, son of Mr. and Mrs. John Rasptr, of West Pitts'on, died at six o'click on Feb 19, at a hospital In the former city. He had been ill for •light weeks First he was seized with an attack of pleuro-pneumonia AfterwarJ an abecess formed on the lungs, for the rtmoval i f which an operation wis performed. Fron the effects of the operation, he recovered several times but snffered Mack and I crossed a range of mountains into a third valley and spent that night in the loft of a horse barn. Prom Shooting Creek to Tennessee by the route we intended to take was a distance of 75 miles. After crossing the Valley river we continued by an Indian trail winding over and along the divides. We were a party of 18 as we assembled on the slope above the settlement Captain Holt and Lieutenant Wallace had appeared from some mysterious hiding place, and a number of refugees had flocked to the standard of Edmoneton and Hooper. We timed our start so as to arrive by evening at the settlement of Peach Tree, where we were to cross the Valley river and get the latest news of the movements of the rangers. At the same time they hoard the rest of onr party crashing through the brush on the hillside and were shouting to them to come out or take the consequences. This episode gave me a moment to think, so that when the leader came forward and demanded to know who we were, I threw off my blanket, disclosing my ragged uniform and my riding jacket with one shoulder strap which had once been scarlet, with the remark: At the farther end of the valley wc commenced the ascent of Cullow hoe mountain. Glad to walk for awhile, I tramped up the winding road for a couplo of miles in advance of the carriage. Believing we were now nearly on the crest, I exchanged with the driver and took the reins. Soon the good road changed to shelving rock and quagmire, and for two miles more we toiled up, giving frequent rests to the jaded horses. We were two hours in making the ascent, and to describe the granite rocks we drove over and the springy places we toiled through to readers who bowl over park roads and level country lanes would be as hopeless as to make finite creatures understand the infinite. We began to trundle down grade at last and to meet barefooted children of the mountain tops with bags of nuts, whose sodden faces indicated that they lived far up above the schools. A few miles farther in the gathering twilight we came to the mountain farm where we had been advised to stop. Two log cabins with twin stone chimneys nearly covering the ends of each house were joined by a middle roof. Fruit trees grow in front, and in a broad garden at the side was a mass at sreat blue oab- Two y«ars after I came here, in 1816 •boat the time the firat oharoh building was dedicated, bueineee b-gsn to brighten, and It has grown brighter ever elnoe. Enterprising business men oame here with their families, and they have transformed Pltteton Ferry into a olty and bnllt np a town in Weat Pltteton of six or seven thousand inhabitants that is m inviting as a place of resldenoe as any town in Pennsylvania, where in 1814 were only farms. While East and West Flttaton are entirely separate municipalities they are nnlted by bridges that gracefully span onr beantlfnl river. To all Intents and purposes they Tom Hancock's house, tho first we had entered in the mountains, bereft of its twin structure, was no longer fcheltered by tall forest trees, but surrounded by bristling cornstalks and hemmed In by rail fences. An old woman who lived here, without a pano of glass in the windows, allowed us to look in the familiar rooms and at the blackened stone chimney where old Tom had heuped Uie green wood when wo came fit. 8 nV»lAf»1- in f'lO \ [to be c ntinvbd J relapses. Frank Kasper waC near'y thirty-five years of ago. He was one of tbe moat expert teleuraph operators in the country. In 1870 -7 he learned the buelness in the office ot the Wtstern Union Company in this city, when it was located in Dr. Knapp's drug store, a('j lining the Gazkttb otli;e. For eighteen years he had teen absent from Plttston, though coming here frequently/to visit his parents He worked in various places for the Weetern Union Company, but for the putt nine years had been em ployed by tbe United tress Association. Of ihe latter jeara, seven have been spei.t in Bnflftlo, and at tie tlm* ot his death be was night manager of t'le Uulted Press offloe in that city. . " You can see who I am." If they were the cutthroats we believed them to be, my uniform would give me a better standing with them than if I were a refugee. After a few rapidly put questions as to my battery, where we came from and who wetfe my companions it transpired that our captors were a detachment of the Second Ohio heavy artillery from tho garrison at London, hastily mounted and in pursuit of the rangers. The countryman on the gray horse was their loyal guide, and the two men in Confederate uniforms were their scouts. They advised oa to push on for the Union lines along the Knoxville and Chattanooga railway and hardly waited to see our comrades oat of the bushes before they dashed Apross ihe ford ip tli® direction of the sylvania Senator Kline Decllnea, aker In the U; one tat? Edmonston found the man he was seeking and we learned that a company of rangers had just gone into Tennessee on a marauding expedition. It was decided to remain here, in hiding, 24 hours, giving the enemy, who were mounted, time to complete their expedition and be on the return by the time we arrived on the ground. We lay down In a semicircle on the floor in front of the fire in oar wet, steaming clothes and the old oauuaigsere were poou sound 8fate Senator C. W. Kline has mhde publio , the following card: "After carefully conslderlrg the matter from the standpoints of health and business, I have oonoluded that I will not b% a candidate for re-nomination. I thank the kind friend* who have been so loyal to me in the past and who are now Importuning me to again be a candidate. I feel th*t In justice to myself I must decline to be considered aa a candidate. 0. W. Kline " There was one shoen. nortl end of town, Jamee He. or, Mr. McCjaeghj; one undertaker, Kllsha Black-" roiio, and one blacksmith, Thomas Benedict These were the Pittaton mannfac Cnrers fifty years a«o. Harris Jenkins, a jat-tice of the peace, was a representative man In Plttston, and his daughters, Anneita and Mary, were among the prominent and attractive yonng ladles of the town There were two dootors, whose homes were In Plttston, and who practiced In the snr-' Prominent Man Falls Dead. as Plttebnrg and Allegheny, and New York and Brooklyn are one. Here we now him elegant chnrohes and grow log and intelligent congregations and Sabbath schools, and Christian EnJeavor societies, and T. M C. Association, representing all denominations, and palatial homes and first olass public sohools, and manufactories, and barks, and liuslo Halls, and, last t at not least, a Wake Robin Captain Erastus T. R bblns, a prominent farmer residing three miles west of Gillets, Bradford county, dropped dead in the Erie passenger station at Elmtra on Tueeday, 1». Duiing the Civil War he was a captain in the Sixteenth Pennsylvania Cavalry. "I hope so," I said, "Aunt Lucy." "If the war was to be fit over, would ye on the same side?" she continued, pursuing her point. "Certainly," I said, "if I took any part, but I think I should leave fighting to the boys next time." A few years ago be was united in marriage to a Buff ilo young lady, who survives him To the yC uog wife and theagfd j arents Mr. Kasper's death la a baid blow. Burdock Blcod Bitters never falls to cum all lmpuritlee of tbe baod, from a common pimple to the worst scrofla sore. - After some further conversation she molndftd with the statement that she |
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