The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1890-01-18
BY THE OLD OPENING.
The Risk Tony Took in Returning
the Lost Diamond.

Not very long ago there lived in the
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 y
little onc-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 tho house that the
boy ate and slept in, for he Iced 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
foamed 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 very
strange sight indeed, "straight-up"
wall Of yellowish rock about fifty feet
high, chequered with row of ten great
openings high enough to serve as door
ways for the tallestgiants, and if you step
inside your feet will fall upon solid,
fat almost smooth black floor extending
back many hundreds of feet, and disap-
pearing into the blacklist darkness. If
you look up there is a smooth, shiny
black ceiling, and supporting this won
derful ceiling at wido intervals, are
enormous black pillars twenty-five feet
in circumference, spreading out a 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 worlied-out coal mine.
If you were to 60 to-day to visit
modern working coal mine, the only
part you could see above ground would
be the breaker, huge, wooden struc-
ture containing machinery for hauling
up and breaking the coal. and you would
have to go into the earth some hundreds
of feet, by means of an elevator, to find
the 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-
four feet thick. So it came about that
this rocky hill was all dug out and
10
Over on the other side of the hill was
new, vertical opening or shaft" and
every morning Tony's father, who was
a miner, went down the ravine and
around the base of the hill-a DISTANCE
of mile and half-to his work; but
there was much shorter way if one
chose to take it, and that was through
the "old opening"
Following the long-deserted gang
ways" for a quarter of a mile or so, you
would come out upon the great smutty
breaker, with its roar, and it's dust, and
its culm-pile. However, this was re-
garded as dangerous thing to do, and
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.
81 There were also other pieces covered
with what might be thought the molds
in whion 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 we're other strange and beauti-
full things; chunks of coal coated with
sulphur, that looked almost as if they
were cruated with gold-other chunks
covered with what seemed like bur-
nished points of steel-and most beauti-
full of all, slabs of rainbow" coal, with
their colors playing into each other as
perfectly as on any peacock's tail, and
almost making one believe that the first
bow which God set in the heavens must