Ashtabula telegraph. (Ashtabula, Ohio) 1874-1880, 1879-05-16

week, and deposited at five per cent. The
house containg about 200 boys, and costs
about 1000 month to run, of which
the lads pay about one half, the balance
being made up blythe Children's Aid So
siety, which owns the building, and is
sustaining five similar but smaller insti-
tutions, four for boys and one for girls, in
other parts of the city. This society has
agents throughout the West who find stu
ations for the boys, and every week a col
ony is sent of, ranging in number from
20 to 100.. In some cases as high as $50
have gone at time. Needy families are
also gathered in from the tenement house
districts and sent to the West as fast as
situations can be found for them. Not
wiInstandmg this wholesale shipment, the
lodging houses can scarcely keep room
enough open for the homeless lads and
girls who crowd in upon them. 0uly the
better class of children are really reached
by this noble society, the worst classes be-
ing too bad and vicious to submit to the
few wholesome regulations inseparable
from a judicious system of caring for
them. While blessed work is thus be-
ing done whose fruits no man can eSti-
mate, yet the awful fact remains that
thousands more are not reached and can
not be by any private means. Only the
strong arm of legal compulsion can draw
them from the slums.
A RIVAL TO EDISON.
An irrepressible genius down in Eliza
beth, n. j., has been inventing q new cleo
trio light which, experts say, is superior to
Edison's and likely to supersede it. His
name is Philip Diehl, a mechanical expert
employed by the Singer Sewing Machine
people. Your correspondent was waited
on by Mr.. Diehl last week with specifca-
tions and drawings of the patent inst is
sued for the invention, and without deign-
ing to ask any oral explanations the task
was boldly undertaken of unraveling the
mysteries thereof and displaying them to
the delighted vision of the newspaper world.
Quixotic old man! My soul is as innO-
cent OF electricity as though Ben Franklin
never flew kite, or to make more feel
ing comparISon-as a country editors pOck-
et-bOok is of thousand dollar greenbacks,
or his subscription list Of bad debts. For
people here never think of cheating print
er-or hardly ever. But this was not the
first windmill against which my lance had
been shIvered Once, after dark, in the
depths of New Hampshire woods l labor
ed long and faithfully to convince myself
that wasn't lost, but that was easy to the
jOb of finding myself amid the mazes of
those specifications after Dielh had gone.
got into babbling brook on that memo
rable occasion, but the chill of noun
tain stream was enerVsLioa itself to the
cold shock from those electric currents;
1 bruised myself mournfully among the
granite bOulderS, but il wasn't a eircum-
stance to the way bruised my good opin-
ion of myself foundering about among
DiehPs carbon pencils. Once I got stuck
in a little lighter on the awful bar at the
mouth of the Rio Grande, and the ugly
breakers gnashed their white teeth at us
till we began to feel sorry for the life in
surance companies we had left behind US
but all that was good joke beside the way
l got stuck on Diehl's little ''lghter"
went into the war resolved never to come
home till the rebellion was crushed, but
could have crushed it all alone Just as easi-
ly as I could have evolved any animated
literary creature out of Diehls cold and
rigid clamps and armatures. electric arch
es and currents, magnets and cores.
I am perfectly satisfied that electric
light is brilliant and dazzling success.
| am morally certain that DiehPs Electric
Lamp can give more light in a minute than
a newspaper man can describe in century
but if ever try again to tell how, at the
cost of converting ten thousand compound
technical terms into flesh-colored English,
it will be after every honorable avenue of
industry has been closed against me, the
landlord distrained for his rent, and the
poormaster's ambulance backed up in front
of my door. MORLEY.
New York. Nav 9. 1879.