Thursday, June 24, 1898
At last, Marlinton is to have a telephone. The connection is to be made with Mingo by the Beverly and Marlinton Telephone Company. Its President, Dr. John Bosworth, and secretary, Dr. C. A. Barlow, were here several days last week…
Thursday morning, they started to survey the route, setting a stake wherever a pole was to be placed. This work was done by Drs. Bosworth and Barlow, who traveled in a buggy carrying stakes and directing two hands who, with a surveyor chain, set stakes every 250 feet…
At present two phones are to be put in, one at Uriah Bird’s store and one at The Times office. If the company can rent ten or more phones at $1.25 a month, they will put in an exchange for the convenience of the town.
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Wheat, corn and grass look fine in Lobelia. Plenty of wild berries. W. B. Hill says he has more apples than he has had for twenty years, but everybody else is scarce. He can not account for it. He owns the old Richard Hill orchard which was set out over 50 years ago when they had to use the old flint lock rifle to keep the bears and wolves from eating the boys. The old meadows never were plowed, but they cut from 1 1/2 and 2 tons to the acre yet.
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There seems to have been a total eclipse of the sun last week in Dunmore. They say the sun refused to shine for four days.
THE PHILIPPINES
Cuba was the island we went to war to set free; but the accounts of the Philippine Islands by Spain suggest strongly that some power nearer geographically to those islands than the United States ought long since to have wrested them from the Spanish grasp in the interest of humanity. Here is what seems to be an authentic statement of the tax burdens laid upon the islanders:
“All males over twenty-one years of age must pay a poll tax that equals eighteen dollars of our money, and the women must pay fourteen dollars. A man must pay a license to sell coconuts from his own trees or indigo of his own raising. Every article of furniture that costs two dollars is taxed. The curtain never goes up at the theater unless ten dollars is paid to the government, and for every act of slaughtering his own animals, clipping his own sheep or felling his own trees, the Philippine farmer must pay a fee to the government. There is exacted government tribute for getting married and for being buried, and for every step and turn of his life, the taxcollector holds out his hand to him, and it is not a demand that can be refused.”
No wonder Spain wishes to keep a possession that yields such a return; no wonder also that the last sixty years have developed seventeen rebellions in the Philippines.
BUCKEYE
T. M. Auldridge is selling pruning knives.
Miss Lucy Dorman is looking for the white mule.
Some of our young people attended the Singing Association at Lobelia.
Plenty of rain and mud. Corn doing fine, and some wheat will do to cut next week.
Some of our bad boys gave Willis McKeever a serenade Thursday night.
Misses Etta Beverage and Lilah Kellison attended the Singing Association and report a good time.
Alvin Rodgers says he likes cherries pretty well and he likes to go to Mr. Hefner’s.
John Adkison has shaved off his whiskers and is ready to go to war.
Married June 15 at the residence of the bride’s father, Washington Beverage, by Rev. W. T. Price, Willis G. McKeever and Miss Millie Beverage. This was a very nice and quiet society event. The company was mainly composed of near relatives and the nearest neighbors. A bountiful collation was spread and much enjoyed by the guests. A nice reception was given on Thursday at the home of the groom, at which a large company was present.
Mr. John Akdison, one of the aged and respected citizens of the Swago vicinity, is peacefully passing his old age in a home he opened up in primitive forest during the last thirty years, assisted by his lamented wife and dutiful children. The prospect is very wide and picturesque and may be justly regarded as one of the most interesting among the hundreds of mountain views that abound in our land of the sky. Fruit trees, vines, a garden, meadows, sugar groves, and productive fields make up a bountiful and attractive home…
MRS. NEWTON DUFFIELD
The death of Mrs. Newton Duffield occurred Sunday afternoon. She has been lying ill of an abscess for about two months. Sixteen years ago she had a fall from a cherry tree and broke a rib. It has been painful ever since. Last spring she suffered from an abscess and about a month ago an operation was performed, taking out over a hundred pieces of bone and the remnant of a rib. Her case has been considered hopeless for some time. The deceased was 38 years old. She was a devoted wife and mother and leaves a husband and six children to mourn their loss.
