News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1886-04-08
THE MYSTERIES OF A DAY.
STRANGE. CURIOUS AND STARTLING
THINGS OCCURRING ABOUT US.
In Hard Luck-The Gulf Stream-A Wo-
man SOIdier-A Clear Head-A Goose
Farm-A Savage Hawk. ETC., Etc.

In play now running in Boston an
actor leaps l,eadlong from the walls OF
a prison into apparent water. He
actually falls twenty-three feet clear IN
the sight of the audience. The device
by which he escapes injury is ingenious.
A canvas cone is fixed under the stage,
with its large end even with the stage,
which is arranged to represent water.
This end is covered with rubber cloth,
also painted to represent water. The
rubber cloth is cut across in its centre,
the cuts reaching half way from the
centre to the edge. The ring or edge
of this circle is hung on thick rubber
springs. As the cone narrows to its
apex three other rings are disposed at
proper intervals, covered with netting
that easily breaks, affording only slight
resistance. Now, when the headfore-
most leap is made, the leaper covers
first twenty-three feet of clear space un-
resisted. He then strikes the centre of
the diaphragm, and the rubber cloth,
partially giving way, still offers some
resistance, and, clinging around his
shoulders, retards his progress without
harming him at ALL The next, and the
next, and still the next, or last, ring in
turn offer enough resistance to check
the fall until the apex of the cone, by
its narrowing, holds the diver in close
embrace about the shoulders, with his
head protruding from the opening.
Thus far the diver has not hurt himself.
On the Bangor road, at Bucksport,
Me-, is a pond inhabited by those
lovely. lively creatures that sing the
April mornings in and the May evenings
out. On one of the mildest days this
winter, after the great thaw, these frogs
came up to the surface in the pond for
their usual "pizen" and to sing. The
weather suddenly cooled, and as DR..
Page, who tells the story, neared the
pond he noticed the echo of the old bass
frogs voice returning a se1nitone from
Mount Waldo, and the squealing of the
soprano frog and then all was over.
As he approached higher to the pond he
was surprised to find it frozen over,
with the frogs heads all sticking up
through the ice, with mouths wide
open. The cold had come so quickly
that the poor fellows hadn't time to
shut their mouths and draw their heads
under water before the ice closed
around them, and there they remain to-
day, as samples of Names winter pond
illies, set in pictures of ice.
THE Gulf Stream is broad current of
warm water which flows from the Gulf
of Mexico in a northerly direction at
varying distance from the shores of
North America to Nantucket Shoals,
where it is detected in a northeasterly
direction. The stream has high tenn
perature, and this temperature is not
wholly reduced until the stream is lost
in its passage around and among the
islands of Great Britain and Northern
Europe. The current varies in width,
averaging from forty miles at its begin
ming to 800 or more above the island of
Bermuda, at times changing its course
somewhat approaching or leaving the
coasts. 1t has, beyond doubt, a great
influence upon the climate of the At
Lntic coasts, and produces the dense
fogs which exist around the Newfound-
land as the warm, moist air reaches this
colder region. The cause of the Gulf
Stream is profound mystery.
"AIMosT the first duty of new regi-
ment stationed in Edinburgh Castle is
its only unpleasant one," says the est.
James Gazette" Immediately it gets
into its quarters in the Castle, it has to
dispatch representative body through
the oldest streets to cry out at the top
of their voices that the citizens must be
wary of the soldiers beguiling ways.
This is called crying down the credit
of the regiment, and the ceremony has
just been performed by the Seaforth
Highlanders. One Mon2sZ> sorssosr,.a.