Thursday, January 11, 1900
Five miles of track has been laid on the Greenbrier Railway. The work will progress steadily, it is thought, until the road is done. As the lower end is completed, the labor will fall back and find employment on the sections remaining unfinished, so that the work will progress more rapidly as it nears the end. A man connected with the railroad and who is in a position to judge, said last week that trains would be running into Marlinton by June 1st. If this be the case, the whole line will be completed next year.
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By common consent the grippe is spoken of as one of the most serious maladies that has ever befallen afflicted humanity. Among the remedies that have been used, the following is recommended as one of the simplest and very efficacious when tried in time. The recipe is as follows: Take 30 grams or a half teaspoonful of bicarbonate of potash or which is the same thing, pure baking soda mixed in a cupful of milk. This dose repeated every two or three hours until relief is secured, which will seldom require more than 24 hours.
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There seems to be a mania for college education at the expense of executive ability. Louis Phillipe was in the habit of saying that he was the only sovereign in Europe qualified to govern for he could black his own boots. He had noticed that the world was full of men and women apparently splendidly endowed and highly educated who could scarce get a living.
It has not been so many years since three college graduates were employed on a sheep ranch in Australia: one from Oxford, the second from Cambridge, the third from a German university. Here were college men feeding and tending ewes and lambs. Trained to lead men, they drove sheep. Their employer was an ignorant, coarse sheep raiser, knowing nothing of books or theories, but he knew sheep. His three hired graduates were versed in foreign languages and could discuss political economy and philosophy, but he could make money. He could talk, but little except sheep and farm. But he made a fortune while his college helpers could scarcely get a living. Even Oxford, Cambridge or Heidelberg could not supply common sense. Here was culture against ignorance, the college against the ranch – and the ranch beat every time.
W. A. Bratton Fights Fire
W. A. Bratton, attorney-at-law, saved his house from burning last Sunday, but was himself badly burned in the effort. His parlor had been profusely decorated for Christmas with paper festooning, bunting and evergreens. He was sitting in the room Sunday afternoon about 3 o’clock, reading a Pearson’s, when the decorations caught fire. In a few moments the whole room was blazing.
He pulled the light inflammable stuff down, throwing some of it out the window and putting the rest in the stove. The alarm of fire was given and several neighbors rushed in and succeeded in putting out the flames. The entire interior of the room was damaged, the piano, carpet, pictures, couch, etc., being badly burned. Mrs. Bratton lost the greater part of a valuable lot of sheet music.
When the excitement was over to some extent, Mr. Bratton noticed that his hands were terribly burned. At one time it was thought that he might lose some of his fingers, but it is thought that with care he will recover the use of both hands. He will be confined to his room however for some time to come.
OLD FAVORITE MODERNIZED
BEN BOLT
O! do you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt,
Sweet Alice whose hair was so red,
Who at your caresses would kick like a colt
And shy bric-a-brac at your head?
She captured a ranchman from out in the West
Who came on a chase for a bride,
And in skirting divided and cowboy hat dressed
She rides on a bronco astride.
And do you remember the schoolhouse, Ben Bolt,
With the playground so smooth and so wide,
And the master whose head was beginning to moult,
And whose gad often worried you hide?
The schoolhouse is used as a smokehouse for pork,
The playground looks dirty and bum,
And the master now plays on the streets of New York
On a Salvation Army bass drum.
And do you remember the mill dam, Ben Bolt
That ran its old mill with its power,
And the corpulent miller we thought such a dolt,
With his clothes dusted over with flour?
The mill is not there by a dam site, I hear,
Though the dam by a mill site remains,
And the miller grows rich raising corn by the ear,
Way out on the broad Kansas plains.
The changes are many and painful, Ben Bolt,
I cannot recount them all here,
It gave my old heart the worst sort of jolt,
To revisit the scenes once so dear.
The men whom I meet are all strangers to me,
Who stare in surprise as I pass,
And the one only face that’s familiar I see
When I look in the old looking glass.
ADVERTISEMENT
WANTED – A good girl to do general housework in small family. Wages $1.25 per week. D. W. Bratton, Bolar, Bath County, Va.