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BE ON THE LOOKOUT. SERMON ON OPPORTUNITY BY REV. DR. TALMAGE IN NEW YORK. Things That Do Not Last--The Lesson In the Farm Wagon--Opportunities That Made Men Famous--The Great Chance of All--Its Fruits. NEW YORK, Feb. 3.--Rev. Dr. Talmage again found himself facing a vast audience at the Academy of Music this afternoon, while thousands surged around the entrances unable to gain admission. The Academy was crowded shortly after 8 o'clock, and the preliminary service of song was participated in by the throngs that filled the corridors and by many of those at the doors on both Irving place and Fourteenth street as well. The distinguished divine took for his subject "Opportunity," the text selected being Galatians vi, 10, "As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good."

At Denver years ago an audience had assembled for divine worship. The pastor of the church for whom I was to preach that night, interested in the seating of the people, stood in the pulpit looking from side to side, and when no more people could be crowded within the walls he turned to me and said, with startling emphasis, "What an opportunity!" Immediately that word began to enlarge, and while a hymn was being sung at every stanza the word "opportunity" swiftly and mightily unfolded, and while the opening prayer was being made the word piled up into Alps and Himalayas of meeting and spread out into other latitudes and longitudes of significance until it became hemispheric, and it still grew in altitude and circumference until it encircled other words and swept out and on and around until it was as big as eternity. Never since have I read or heard that word without being thrilled with its magnitude and momentum.

Opportunity! Although in the text to some it may seem a mild and quiet

note, in the great gospel harmony it is a staccato passage. It is one of the loveliest and awfulest words in our language of more than 100,000 words of

English vocabulary. "As we have op-

portunity, let us do good."

Opportunity Defined.

What is an opportunity? The lexiconographer would coolly tell you it is a conjunction of favorable circumstances

for accomplishing a purpose, but words cannot tell what it is. Take 1,000 years to manufacture a definition, and you could not successfully describe it. Opportunity! The measuring rod with which the angel of the Apocalypse mea-

sured heaven could not measure this pivotal word of my text. Stand on the edge of the precipice of all time and let down the fathoming line hand under hand and lower down and lower down and for a quintillion of years let it sink, and the lead will not strike bottom. Opportunity! But while I do not attempt to measure or define the word I will, God helping me, take the respon-

sibility of telling you something about opportunity.

First, it is very swift in its motions. Sometimes within one minute it starts from the throne of God, sweeps around the earth and reascends the throne from which it started. Within less than 60 seconds it fulfilled its mission. In the second place, opportunity never comes back. Perhaps an opportunity very much like it may arrive, but that one never. Naturalists tell us

of insects which are born, fulfill their

mission and expire in an hour, but many opportunities die so soon after they are born that their brevity of life is incalculable. What most amazes me is that opportunities do such overshadow-

ing, far reaching and tremendous work in such short earthly allowance. You are a business man of large experience. The past 18 months have been hard on business men. A young merchant at his wits' end came into your office or your house, and you said: "Times are hard now, but better days will come. I have seen things as bad or worse, but we got out, and we will get out of this. The brightest days that this country ever saw are yet to come." The young man to whom you said that was ready for suicide or something worse--namely a fraudulent turn to get out of his despairful position. Your hopefulness inspired him for all time, and 30 years after you are dead he will be reaping the advantage of your optimism. Your opportunity to do that one thing for that young man was not half as long as the time I have taken to rehearse it. Little Things That Decide Destiny. In yonder third gallery you sit, a man of the world, but you wish everybody well. While the clerks are standing round in your store, or the men in your factory are taking their noon spell, some one says, "Have you heard that one of our men has been converted at the revival meeting in the Methodist church?" While it is being talked over you say: "Well, I do not believe in revivals. Those things do not last. People get excited and join the church and are no better than they were before. I wish our men would keep away from those meetings." Do you know, O man, what you did in that minute of depreciation? There were two young men in that group who that night would have gone to those meetings and been saved for this world and the next, but you decided them not to go. They are social natures. They already drink more than is good for them and are disposed to be wild. From the time they heard you say that they accelerated their steps on the downward road. In ten years they will be through with their dissipations and pass into the great beyond. That little talk of yours decided their destiny for this world and the next. You had an opportunity that you misimproved, and how will you feel when you confront those two immortals in the last judgment and they tell you of that unfortunate talk of yours that flung them over the precipice? O man of the world, why did you not say in that soon spells of conversation: "Good! I am glad that man has got religion. I wish I had it myself. Let us all go tonight. Come on, I will meet you at the church door at 8 o'clock?" You see, you would have taken them all to heaven, and you would have got there yourself. Opportunity lost!

The day I left our country home to look after myself we rode across the country, and my father was driving. Of course I said nothing that implied how I felt. But there are hundreds of men here who from their own experience know how I felt. At such a time a young man may be hopeful and even impatient to get into the battle of life for himself, but to leave the homestead where everything has been done for you, your father or older brothers taking your part when you were imposed on by larger boys, and your mother always around when you got the cold with mustard applications for the chest or herb tea to make you sweat off the fever and sweet mixtures in the up by the bed to stop the cough, taking sometimes too much of it because it was pleasant to take, and then to go out, with no one to stand between you and the world, gives one a choking sensation at the throne and a home sickness before you have got three miles away from the old folks. There was on the day I spoke of a silence for a long while, and then my father began to tell how good the Lord had been to him in sickness and in health, and when times of hardship came how Providence had always provided the means of livelihood for the large household, and he wound up by saying, "De Witt, I have always found it safe to trust the Lord." My father has been dead 30 years, but in all the crises of my life--and there have been many of them--I have felt the mighty boost of that lesson in the farm wagon. "De Witt, I have always found it safe to trust the Lord." The fact was my father saw that was his opportunity, and he improved it.

This is one reason why I am an enthusiastic friend of all Young Men's Christian associations. They get hold of so many young men just arriving in the city and while they are very impressionable, and it is the best opportunity. Why, how big the houses looked to us as we first entered the great city, and so many people! It seemed some meeting must have just closed to fill the streets in that way, and then the big placards announcing all styles of amusements and so many of them on the same night and every night, after our boyhood had been spent in regions where only once or twice in a whole year there had been an entertainment in school house or church. That is the opportunity. Start that innocent young man in the right direction. Six weeks after will be too late. Tell me what such a young man does with his first six weeks in the

great city, and I will tell you what he will be throughout his life on earth and where he will spend the ages of eterni-

ty. Opportunity!

Great Opportunities.

We all recognize that commercial and literary and political successes depend upon taking advantage of opportunity. The great surgeons of England feared to touch the tumor of King George IV. Sir Astley Cooper looked at it and said to the king, "I will cut your majesty as though you were a plowman." That was Sir Astley's opportunity. Lord Clive was his father's dismay, climbing church steeples and doing reckless

things. His father sent him to Madras, India, as a clerk in the service of an

English officer. Clive watched his time, and when war broke out came to be the chief of the host that saved India for England. That was Lord Clive's opportunity. Pauline Lucca, the almost matchless singer, was but little recognized until in the absence of the soloist in the German choir she took her place and began the enchantment of the world. That day was Lucca's opportunity. John Scott, who afterward became Lord Eldon, had stumbled his way along in the practice of law until the case of Ackroyd versus Smithson was to be tried, and his speech that day opened all avenues of success. That was

Lord Eldon's opportunity.

William H. Seward was given by his

father $1,000 to get a collegiate educa-

tion. That money soon gone, his father

said, "Now you must fight your own way," and he did, until gubernatorial chair and United States senatorial chair

were his, with a right to the presidential chair if the meanness of American

politics had not swindled him out of it.

The day when his father told him to

fight his own way was William H.

Seward's opportunity. John Henry Newman, becalmed a whole week in an orange boat in the strait of Bonifacio, wrote his immortal hymn, "Lead, Kindly Light." That was John Henry Newman's opportunity. You know Kirk White's immortal hymn, "When Marshaled on the Nightly Plain." He wrote it in a boat by a lantern on a stormy night as he was sailing along a rocky coast. That was Kirk White's opportunity. The importance of making the most of opportunities as they present themselves is acknowledged in all other directions. Why not in the matter of usefulness? The difference of usefulness of good men and women is not so much the difference in brain or social position of wealth, but in equipment of Christian common sense--to know just the time when to say the right word or do the right thing. There are good people who can always be depended on to say the right thing at the wrong time. A merchant selling goods over the counter to a wily customer who would like to get them at less than cost, the railroad conductor while taking up the tickets from passengers who want to work off last year's free pass or get through at half rate a child fully grown, a housekeeper trying to get the table ready in time for guests, although the oven has failed to do its work and the grocer has neglected to fulfill the order given him--those are not opportunities for religious address. Do not rush up to a man in the busiest part of the day and when a half dozen people are waiting for him and ask, "How is your soul?"

Be on the Watch. But there are plenty of fit occasions. It is interesting to see the sportsman, gun in hand and pouch at side and accompanied by the hounds yelping down the road, off on hunting expedition, but the best hunters in this world are those who hunt for opportunities to do good, and the game is something to gladden earth and heaven. I will point out some of the opportunities. When a soul is in bereavement is the best time to talk of gospel consolation and heavenly reunion. When a man has lost his property is the best time to talk to him of heavenly inheritance that can never be levied on. When one is sick is the best time to talk to him about the supernatural latitude in which unhealth is an impossibility. When the Holy Spirit is moving on a community is the best time to tell a man he ought to be saved. By a word, by a smile, by a look, by a prayer, the work may be so thoroughly done that all eternity cannot undo it. As the harp was invented from hearing the twang of a bowstring, as the law of gravitation was suggested by the fall of an apple, as the order in India for the use of a greased cartridge started the mutiny of 1857, which appalled the nations, so something insignificant may open the door for great results. Be on the watch. It may be a gladness, it may be a horror, but it will be an opportunity. A city missionary in the lower parts of the city found a young woman in wretchedness and sin. He said, "Why do you not go home?" She said, "They would not receive me at home." He said, "What is your father's name, and where does he live?" Having obtained the address and written to the father, the city missionary got a reply, on the outside of the letter the word "immediate" underscored. It was the heartiest possible invitation for the wanderer to come home. That was the city missionary's opportunity. And there are opportunities all about you, and on them, written by the hand of the God who will bless you and bless those whom you help, in capitals of light the word "Immediate." Behind Time. A military officer very profane in his habits was going down into a mine at Cornwall, England, with a Christian miner, for many of those miners are Christians. The officer used profane language while in the cage going down. As they were coming up out of the mine the profane officer said, "If it be so far down to your work, how much farther would it be to the bottomless pit?" The Christian miner responded, "I do not know how far it is down to that place, but if this rope should break you would be there in a minute." It was the Christian miner's opportunity. Many years ago a clergyman was on a sloop on our Hudson river, and hearing a man utter a blasphemy the clergyman said, "You have spoken against my best friend, Jesus Christ." Seven years after this same clergyman was on his way to the general assembly of the Presbyterian church at Philadelphia, when a young minister addressed him and asked him if he was not on a sloop on the Hudson river seven years before? The reply was in the affirmative. "Well," said the young minister, "I was the man whom you corrected for uttering that oath. It led me to think and repent, and I am trying to atone somewhat for my early behavior. I am a preacher of the gospel and a delegate to the general assembly."

Seven years before on that Hudson river

sloop was the clergyman's opportunity.

I stand this minute in the presence of

many heads of families. I wonder if

they all realize that the opportunity for

influencing the household for Christ and heaven is very brief and will soon be gone? For awhile the house is full of the voices and footsteps of children. You

sometimes feel that you can hardly stand

the racket. You say: "Do be quiet! It seems as if my head would split with all this noise." And things get broken and ruined, and it is, "Where's my hat!" "Who took my books?" "Who has been busy with my playthings?" And it is

a rushing this way, and a rushing that, until father and mother are well nigh

beside themselves.

It is astonishing how much noise five or six children can make and not half try. But the years glide swiftly away. After awhile the voices are not so many, and those which stay are more sedate. First this room gets quiet, and then that room. Death takes some, and marriage takes others, until after awhile the house is awfully still. That man yonder would give all he is worth to have that boy who is gone away forever rush into the room once more with the shout that was once thought too boisterous.

That mother who was once tried because her little girl, now gone forever, with careless scissors cut up something

really valuable would like to have the child come back, willing to put in her

hands the most valuable wardrobe to cut

as she pleases. Yes, yes. The house noisy now will soon be still enough, I warrant you, and as when you began house-

keeping there were just two of you, there will be just two again. Oh, the alarming brevity of infancy and childhood! The opportunity is glorious, but it soon passes, Parents may say at the close of life, "What a pity we did not

do more for the religious welfare of our

children while we had them with us!" But the lamentation will be of no avail.

The opportunity had wings, and it van-

ished. When your child gets out of the cradle, let it climb into the outstretched arms of the beautiful Christ. "Come thou and all thy house into the ark."

The Great Chance.

But there is one opportunity so much brighter than any other, so much more inviting, and so superior to all others that there are innumerable fingers pointing to it, and it is haloed with a glory

all its own. It is yours! It is mine! It

is the present hour. It is the now. We shall never have it again. While I speak and you listen the opportunity is restless as if to be gone. You cannot chain it down. You cannot imprison it. You cannot make it stay. All its pulses are throbbing with a haste that cannot be hindered or controlled. It is the opportunity of invitation on my part and acceptance on your part. The door of the palace of God's mercy is wide open. Go in. Sit down and be kings and queens unto God forever. "Well," you say, "I am not ready." You are ready. "Are you a sinner?" "Yes." "Do you want to be saved now and forever?" "Yes." "Do you believe that Christ is able and willing to do the work?" "Yes." Then you are saved. You are inside the palace of God's mercy already. You look changed. You are changed. "Halleluiah, 'tis done!" Did you ever see anything done so quickly? Invitation offered and accepted in less than a minute by my watch or that cock. Sir Edward Creasy wrote a book called, "The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World, From Marathon to Waterloo." But the most decisive battle that you will ever fight, and the greatest victory you will ever gain, is this moment when you conquer first yourself and then all the hindering myrmidons of perdition by saying, "Lord Jesus, here I am, undone and helpless, to be saved by thee and thee alone." That makes a panic in hell. That makes a celebration in heaven. Opportunity! On the 11th of January, 1866, a collier brig ran into the rocks near Walmer beach, England. Simon Pritchard, standing on the beach, threw off his coat and said, "Who will help me save that crew?" Twenty men shouted, "I will," though only seven were needed. Through the awful surf the boat dashed, and in 15 minutes from the time Pritchard threw off his coat all the shipwrecked crew were safe on the land. Quicker work today. Half that time more than necessary to get all this assemblage into the lifeboat of the gospel and ashore, standing both feed on the Rock of Ages. By the two strong oars of faith and prayer first pull for the wreck and then pull for the shore. Opportunity! Over the city went the cry, Jesus of Nazareth passeth by! What It Brings. Let the world go. It has abused you enough, and cheated you enough, and slandered you enough, and damaged you enough. Even those from whom you expected better things turned out your assailants, as when Napoleon in his last will and testament left 5,000 francs to the man who shot at Wellington in the streets of Paris. Oh, it is a mean world! Take the glorious Lord for your companionship. I like what the good man said to the one who had everything but religion. The affluent man boasted of what he owned and of his splendors of surroundings, putting into insignificance, as he thought, the Christian's possessions. "Ah," said the Christian, "man, I have something you have not." "What is that?" said the worldling. The answer was, "Peace!" And you may all have it--peace with God, peace with the past, peace with the future, a peace that all the assaults of the world and all the bombardments satanic cannot interfere with. A Scotch shepherd was dying and had the pastor called in. The dying shepherd said to his wife, "Mary, please to go into the next room, for I want to see the minister alone." When the two were alone, the dying shepherd said, "I have known the Bible all my life, but I am going, and I am 'afeered to dee.'" Then the pastor quoted the psalm: "The Lord is my Shepherd. I shall not want." "Yes, mon," said the shepherd, "I was familiar with that before you were born, but I am a-goin, and I am afeered to dee." Then said the pastor, "You know that the psalm says, 'Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.'" "Yes," said the dying shepherd, "I knew that before you were born, but it does not help me." Then said the pastor, "Don't you know that sometimes when you were driving the sheep down through the valleys and ravines there would be shadows all about you, while there was plenty of sunshine on the hills above? You are in the shadows now, but it is sunshine higher up." Then said the dying shepherd: "Ah!--that is good. I never saw it that way before. All is well. 'Though I pass through the valley of the shadow of death, thou art with me.' Shadows here, but sunshine above." So the dying shepherd got peace. Living and dying, may we have the same peace!

The Gospel Call. Opportunity! Under the arch of that splendid word let this multitude of my hearers pass into the pardon and hope and triumph of the gospel. Go by companies of a hundred each. Go by regiments of a thousand each, the aged leaning on the stuff, the middle aged throwing off their burdens as they pass and the young to have their present joys augmented by more glorious satisfactions. Forward into the kingdom! As soon as you pass the dividing line there will be shouting all up and down the heavens. The crowned immortals will look down and cheer. Jesus of the many scars will rejoice at the result of his earthly sacrifices. Departed saints will be gladdened that their prayers are answered. An order will be given for the spreading of a banquet at which you will be the honored guest. From the imperial gardens the wreaths will be twisted for your brow, and from the halls of eternal music the harpers will bring their harps and the trumpeters their trumpets, and all up and down the amethystine stairways of the castles and in all the rooms of the house of many mansions it will be talked over with holy glee that this day, while one plain man stood on the platform of this vast building, giving the gospel call, an assemblage made up from all parts of the earth and piled up in these galleries chose Christ as their portion and started for heaven as their everlasting home. Ring all the bells of heaven at the tidings! Strike all the cymbals at the joy! Wave all the palm branches at the triumph! Victory! Victory!

THE ILLINOIS RIVER. Scenes That Never Varied, Yet Were Always Replete With Excitement.

Beautiful and varied is the country through which the Illinois river creeps in its winding channel to join the Father of Waters. From its junction with the Illinois and Michigan canal to the Mississippi 18 counties contribute to its boundaries. All of these counties are rich in fertile lands, heavy timbers or mineral deposits. Time was, and not so long ago, when each of these counties boasted a flourishing village on the banks of the Illinois river. Steamers, "packets," as they were called in those flourishing days, moved up stream and down, one, sometimes two, each way daily. From Peoria to St. Louis, including stops for freight and passengers at intermediate stations, was a journey of two or three days. Each boat made a round trip in a week. Everybody traveled by boat. Mails and freight for inland points in central and southern Illinois were dumped at "landings" nearest to their point of destination at all hours of day or night. River men were princes of fortune, who drew enormous salaries and were looked up to and revered as superior creatures who lived in the big world outside the river villages. Every town along the river boomed, saloons were numerous, and house and stores were built on piles if the village happened to be located in a spot subject to overflow. There was no limit to the enterprise of the land owner nor the height of the piles. Everybody scrambled to locate nearest the steamboat landing. The woodman, with a score of wagons laden with fuel; the farmer and huckster with a cartful of vegetables, eggs and dairy products, the merchant and idler, the maid and youth and school children were always at the landing when the big steamer with a final chaw-chaw of the exhaust pipes and last revolution of the paddle blades swung easily against the piling at the big warehouse dock. The noisy and profane mates, the scores of colored dockhands, the murmurs of admiration for the captain, who always stood on the decks clad in gold braided uniform, with his hand on the rope attached to the clapper of the big bell--all these were a part of the scene at the arrival of every steamer. Then the captain would become impatient and pull the clapper of the big bell viciously against its brazen sides. The mate indulged in more profanity pitched in louder tone, while the shuffling negroes would forget their droning for a brief time and hasten their laggard steps. The pilot, autocrat of the steamer, peered foxily from the windows of his little cabin, shifted his wheel, touched a little cord above his head, and from the engine room came the sound two shrill whistles, warning to the engineer, who perhaps had clambered into his hammock for a short nap, that in a few minutes time would be cast off and the boat would be ready to proceed to the next landing.

Day and night this scene never varied, save that at night there were fewer females and children at the landing, but the picturesqueness of the scene was heightened by the braziers, big as a barrel, filled with pitch, pine and other inflammables, blazing fiercely and furnishing light for the work of lading. Those were the days when the Di Vernon, George B. McClellan, Ruby City of Pekin and other magnificent sidewheel steamers were in the river trade; when the Ebaughs and the Ryders and the Farwells owned and piloted these floating palaces, made fortunes and were the big men of the valley. In those days, too, the river was a navigable stream for nine months of the year. Mighty floods charged the channel every spring, while the early June rise made the stream incognito to the shrewdest pilot. The rushing waters ate into solid banks of enormous trees and tons of earth. These would finally strand with the subsidence of the waters, forming dangerous obstructions and innumerable sand bars. The channel of today would next week present an impenetrable barrier to the river steamer.--Beardstown (Ills.) Letter in Chicago Herald.

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The Platform Cigar.

George Capel, well known as manager, actor and writer, was telling of his early experiences, and his tale of the platform cigar is too good to escape publication. "When I used to travel round the provinces in the old days," he said, "there used to be some funny sights. You know that nearly all the traveling companies pass through the big junction at Derby. In fact, one Sunday there were more than 12,000 actors and ac-

tresses to be seen.

"Now, on the train you might have seen the 'pros,' with clay pipes in their mouths and shabby caps on their heads, playing with greasy packs of cards, but

as soon as they were near the junction

there would be a transformation.

"Off would go the smoking cap, and the pipe would be carefully hidden,

while from the rack would come a topcoat, with a wisp of astrakhan, and a

rakish looking hat. Then the crowning glory of the getup--the platform cigar --would be lighted, and the 'pros' would step out at Derby as though the railway

company belonged to him.

"His acquaintances were all 'Deah boy,' business was always magnificent, even though in point of fact the ghost had not walked on the previous day. Nature smiled upon the mummer, and his swagger would nearly raise the station roof. "But when the change was over and the mummer continued his journey the coat and hat were taken off and put upon the rack, the old cap and greasy cards were once more taken out, the platform cigar was put down and the plebeian clay pipe taken up in its stead. "And when another big junction was reached the whole business was repeated."--London Sketch.

HELD UP BY SNAKES. AN ARMY ENGINEER'S EXCITING NIGHT IN THE NORTHWEST. A Walking Stick That Had Nineteen Battles--Roosting on a Bowlder and Surrounded by Wolves--A Buzzing Noise That Is Far From Musical.

"We reached the Wolf mountain, in the Big Horn country, one day in September," said H. P. Tuttle, formerly an army engineer, "while to the south were dimly visible the outlines of the Rattlesnake mountains. These names were given to these mountains by both the Crow and Sioux Indians, who regarded them with horror. Late on the afternoon of our first day in these mountains I sent all of my party to camp, about two miles to the southwest. Going forward with my transit to where I had sent my head flagman, I placed it in position and told him he could return to camp, as I had to remain in order to make an astronomical observation early in the evening. "Taking off his belt, which held a huge revolver and a sheath knife about a foot in length, he handed it to me, saying that I might need it after dark, as he had just seen a small pack of wolves ahead. After he had gone I looked over the ground about me and saw that I was on a flat topped hill covered with large bowlders and small stones, but entirely destitute of vegetation. Seating myself beside a big bowlder, I took out my notebook and began writing up my notes for the day, when darkness suddenly reminded me that it was about time to make my astronomical observations. This was soon over, and I started off at a brisk walk toward our camp. "I had not gone over a hundred yards when I saw, a few feet ahead of me, a long, black object lying directly in my path. I wanted a walking stick badly, and was stooping down to pick it up when I noticed the end of it farthest from me was white. Taking a match from my pocket and tearing a leaf from the back of my notebook, I soon had the desired light, and what was my horror to see that the supposed stick was nothing but one of the deadly green rattlesnakes, completely paralyzed by the chilly night air. "Another light showed that the white object was the snake's rattles. So old was he that his rattles had turned white. Holing my revolver within a foot of his head, I fired and blew it entirely off. But now came another surprise, which for a moment made me tremble. The report of my revolver had awakened dozens of rattlers who sought shelter under the loose rocks before sunset. The sounds came from all directions, and some seemed close to my feet. "To one who has been in the forest and heard the noise made by hundreds of locusts he can readily realize my situation, for the buzz of a rattlesnake is exactly like the buzz of a locust. The only thing now for me to do was to stand in my tracks all night or make my way back to the bowlder from which I started, but there was a difficulty, for in the excitement I had forgotten the direction. But 'where there is a will there is a way,' and by stooping low down and scanning the horizon I soon detected the outline of my transit against the sky, and cutting off the rattles I was soon beside the the bowlder and filled with excitement enough for one night.

"Sitting down by the bowlder, I made up my mind to pass the night at that spot and was soon sleeping as soundly as one can in the open air, with only a canvas coat and the mercury below freezing. About midnight I was suddenly aroused by something trying to pull off the shoe from my left foot. In an instant I caught the glaring eyes and outline of a wolf. He had given up his grip as he saw me move, and mechanically I seized my revolver, which I had left lying in my lap, and fired as best I could with my half frozen hand.

"A loud yell showed that he had been struck, and immediately a dozen or

more wolves who had been close by set up a howling, which in the still night air could have been heard for miles around. For an hour or two all was

quiet, when a solitary howl a few yards

from me was answered by a dozen oth-

ers not 100 yards away. It was too dark to see an animal of the size of a wolf

more than 20 feet away; but, trusting to

luck, I took the direction of the pack as near as possible and sent three shots at

them as rapidly as I could fire. "A couple of yells showed two had been hit, most probably by glancing bullets. Soon after this the howling of the

wolves ceased, and for awhile all was

quiet again.

"As soon as it was light enough I

picked up the string of rattles which I had secured the night before and found there were 19, and as the 'button' was missing he may have had several more.

A few rods from my transit lay the

cleanly picked bones of a wolf which one

of my random shots had killed during the night, and on which the coyotes had made a substantial meal, but, not satisfied with this, they had devoured the big rattler I had killed, head and all. "Returning to camp, I ordered one of my men to cut ten small poles, not less than eight feet in length, and to wake me up at 10 o'clock. At that hour we all started to the place where I had passed the night. Here we found, as I had expected, the warm rays of the sun had brought out the snakes from their hiding places to bask in the sunshine. "We were greeted with a defiance not

unlike that of a thousand July locusts,

and the work of destruction began in

real earnest. In one hour and ten min-

utes our bag contained 218 rattlers, varying from one foot to over three feet in length, and of a dark green color.

Only two were found whose rattles had

turned gray. We could have destroyed

hundreds more had our time not been too valuable to waste in such sport. We saw

but few rattlers after leaving this point but the wolves made night hideous until we reached the Little Missouri river, a month later."--Kansas City Journal.

SUN AND MOON.

A Couple of Interesting Folklore Stories Concerning Those Luminaries.

The most touching of all folklore stories may be found in Charles F. Lummis' "Pueblo Folklore." It is one of the many myths of the moon and beautifully conceived. The sun is the Allfather, the moon the Allmother, and both shine with equal light in the heavens. But the Trues, the superior divinities, find that man, the animals, the flowers, weary of a constant day. They agree to put out the Allfather's, or sun's, eyes. The Allmother--the moon--offers herself as a sacrifice. "Blind me," she

says, "and leave my husband's eyes."

The Trues say, "It is good, woman." They accept the sacrifice and take away one of the Allmother's eyes. Hence the moon is less brilliant than the sun.

The man finds rest at night, and the flowers sleep.

In Mrs. Leiber Cohen's translation of

Sacher Masooh's "Jewish Tales" there

is a variant of the sun and moon story derived from the Talmud. Briefly told, the sun and moon are equally luminous.

It is the moon who wants to be more brilliant than the sun. Deity is angered at her demands. Her light is lessened. "The moon grew pale. Then God pitied her and gave her the stars for companions."

Feminine Curiosity. She--Women haven't a bit more curiosity than men, so they haven't!

He--No, but it is manifested in different lines. For instance, a woman might own a sewing machine for years without finding out how it was made, but she wouldn't have a seamstress in the house a week without knowing all about

her.--Indianapolis Journal.

Spelt is not an ancient grain. There is no Sanskrit name for it. Neither the Indians, Chinese nor Persians knew anything of it.

A Likeness. A man had his portrait taken with his children in a donkey carriage, he standing at the animal's head. Showing it to a friend, he asked his opinion of the likeness. "It's the very image of you," was the verdict, "but who is that holding your head?"

Dahlonoga, Ga., was so called from an Indian word meaning yellow wampum or gold. Gold was found in the neighborhood.

It is said that freckles are frequently due to bad digestion.

W. L. DOUGLAS $3 SHOE IS THE BEST. NO SQUEAKING. $5 CORDOVAN, FRENCH & ENAMELLED CALF. $4. $3.50 FINE CALF & KANGAROO. $3.50 POLICE, 3 SOLES. $2.50 $2. WORKINGMENS EXTRA FINE.

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OCEAN CITY A Moral Seaside Resort. Not Excelled as a Health Restorer

Finest facilities for FISHING, Sailing, gunning, etc.

The Liquor Traffic and its kindred evils are forever prohibited by deed.

Every lover of Temperance and Morals should combine to

help us.

Water Supply,

Railroad, Steamboats

And all other Modern Conveniences. Thousands of lots for sale at various prices, located in all parts of the city. For information apply to

E. B. LAKE, Secretary, Ocean City Asso'n, SIXTH ST. & ASBURY AVE.