The Worthington advance. [volume] (Worthington, Minn.) 1874-1908, 1890-01-23
BY THE OLD OPENING.
The Risk Tony Took In Returning
the Lost Diamond.

The Risk Tony Took In Returning
the Lost Diamond.
Not very long ago there lived in tho
beautiful Wyoming Valley in Pennsyl-
vania boy named Tony Tamlyn, or,
rather, he lived at the head of a great
ravine, which cut its way down into the
valley through steep mountains.
The house in which Tony lived was a
little one-story cabin of two rooms, one
of them with little in it besides cook
stove and table, the other with nothing
In it except two beds. Perhaps ought
to say that this was the house that the
boy ate and slept in, for he lired out of
doors, and so did his sister Apollonia,
except when she was needed to help her
mother.
In the gray, rocky bottom Of the ra-
vine ran fierce little white brook that
never had time to make itself deep, but
loaned and frothed and sputtered all the
way down to the valley.
On the right rose one wall of the ra-
vine, sloping little, and richly green
with hemlock, and on the left a very
strange sight indeed, ''straight-up"
wall of yellowish rock about fifty feet
high, chequered with row of ten great
black squares. These squares are great
openings high enough to serve as door
ways for the tallcstgiants, and if you step
inside your feet will fall upon solid,
fiat almost smooth black floor extending
back many hundreds of feet, and disap-
pearing into the blacklist darkness. If
yon look up there is a smooth, shiny
black ceiling, and supporting this won
1erful ceiling at wide intervals, are
enormous black pillars twenty-five feet
in circumference, spreading out little
as they touch the roof full fifteen feet
above your head.
If you will look closely, you will see
that not only are floors, ceilings and
pillars all of one material, but they are
also actually in one piece. The material
Is coal, and the openings are the en-
trance to long worked-out coal mine
IT you were to go to-day to visit
modern working coal mine, the only
part you could see above ground would
be the breaker, a huge, wooden struc-
ture containing machinery for hauling
up and breaking the coal, and you would
have to go into the earth some hundreds
# feet, by means of an elevator, to find
ne place where the coal comes from.
But many years ago, when people first
began to look for coal, they often found
it ''cropping OUT at the surface, and at
this particular spot where Tony and
ZAP" lived, there cropped out one of the
largest veins Of coal ever found-twenty-
tour feet thick. So it came about that
this rocky hill was all dug out and
turned into an anthracite palace.
Over on the other side of the hill was
a new, vertical opening or ''shaft," and
every morning Tony's father, who was
miner, went down the ravine and
around the base of the hill-a distance
of mile and half-to his work; but
there was a much shorter way if one
chose to take it, and that was through
the "old opening"
Following the long-deserted "gang-
ways for quarter of mile or so, you
would come out upon the great smutty
breaker, with it's roar, and its dust, and
its culm-pile. However, this was re-
the children were told repeatedly never
to attempt it, but this caution was hardly
necessary, for if ever they ventured back
among. the dark pillars, the blackness
was so dense, and the feeling of damp
ness so unpleasant, that they were glad
enough to run into the sunlight again.
All in and about the great doorways
of the old opening, and among the stone
chips of the slippery ledge outside, were
found pieces containing impressions"
of ferns and other leaves that had -four
ished green and fresh many years be-
fore, and dying, had left their sculptured
portraits upon the rocks.
There were also other pieces covered
with what might be thought the molds
in which dainty fluted sea-shells had
been cast. Again there would come to
light small sections of tree-stems, pith,
wood and bark all turned to stone.
Inside were other strange and beauti-
full things: chunks of coal coated with
sulphur, that looked almost as if they
were crusted with gold-other chunks
covered with what seemed like bur-
nlshed points of steel-and most beauti-
full Of all, slabs of ''rainbow" coal, with
their colors playing into each other as
perfectly as Oh any pcacock's tail, and
almost making one believe that the first
bow which God set in the heavens must
been somehow preserved in the bowels
of the earth, like the shells and ferns
and flowers, for future ages to see and
enjoy.
Tony and his sister spent hours look
ing for these fossils, and one corner of
their bedroom was piled up with col
lection that would have delighted the
hearts of geologists or curiosity-hunters.
Many such curiosity-hunters came to
tho old opening every summer-car-
riage-loads of them-gaily dressed, and
the two children were always on hand
when they heard the roll of wheels
coming up the narrow road of the ravine,
for the tourists always wanted fossils,
and if they could not find enough to suit
them, Tony or Ap would bring the best
treasures from their stores, and Offer
the..a for sale. *
One day there came up carriage-load
of unusually fine people. The gentle
e men wore their stockings outside their
trousers-so APP told her mother-and
their coats were short and belted like
TonJ's Sunday one. The ladies were
beautifully dressed, and some Of them
wore little jackets like the mems coats.
Ono Of these ladies. was so pretty that
Tony and Ap lost their hearts to her,
and ell the young men in the party
seemed to be already in the same oopdi-
tjop Of mind s~..