Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1883-01-13

ing to Professor Cnif, of the Metropoli-
tan Academy, that at least seven
million knives are lost each year
in the United States; or, to
use method of illustration
not unknown to the mental arith-
metics, if an active boy on a bicycle
should take one knife at a time, and,
starting from the Park street gate of
the common, deposit the knife on the
centre of the parade ground and re-
turn for another, allowing fifteen min
utes for each trip the transportation
of these lost knives would take one
hundred and five million minutes, or
one million seven hundred and fifty
thousand hours. These hours would
make nearly seventy-three thousand
days, or about two hundred years-at
the end of which time both boy and
bicycle would be worn out, and the
knives would have been lost again
several times.
Everybody loses knife at proper or
| improper intervals of time, but what
right-minded boy ever finds one :?
The urchins who find knives are the
outcasts who in the country stay away
from school possibly booking Jack.
and catch good string of fish who
crawl under the circus tent and are
not caught; or who in various WAYS
transgress the school and home laws,
and escape much injury. Or they are
| city Arabs whose eyes are keen as
these of bird OF prey. and
whose hands are swift to clutch a
bit of plumber out of the miro. The
respectable, proper boy by no accident
ever finds his own or any other boys
knife. The chances are altogether
that boy deserving card of merit or
"A medal for good conduct would 90
across n state, certainly across Rhode
Island, in search of wandered knives.
and report ut home without a single
trophy. There must be measure of
improperly and irregularity in a lad
who finds iacknives. A new teacher
in "A boy school in Idaho began his
duties by the simple inquiry, How
many boys present ever found a knife?
-Four OF the pupils held up their hands,
and were nj once put on the black
list. Before n week was
past, these boys had shown
their true colors. The knife
test for wickedness is as sure as the
peppermint test for sewer pipes. There
are undoubtedly deposits OF lost
KNIVES several layers deep all over the
New England and other of the older
states. Year after year the strata are
pressed lower by the superintendent
mass. Rust and other sources of decay
affect the blade and wear away the
handle. Doubtless if the lowest strs-
tum of knives Were now upturned
the changed appearance of the
tossilized implements, lost fifty
years, or one hundred or more
years ago would be taken by some in
Nestigators 10 point 10 race of prehis
toric men. The size of the men who
handled them, the scope of the own
ers' toreheads, and the peculiar con
| tiguration of their hands would he
inferred, and new argument i'm
archaeology would be constructed. In
due time the specimens wonld he
placed IN a private museum, and
labels tell of the place of discovery
while visitors, diilldent of their
ability 20 disprove the theory Of the
experts, who might say, under their
breath, that the discoveries resembled
modern pocket cutlery, would be told
that they lacked the scientific snirit
which Is willing to accept the indis-
puiahie result of Investigation. If lost
KNIVES are not some day AT the bot
tom OF new theory of geological for
nation, the signs fail which usually
nave been trustworthy.