davidaulloa/AmericanStories huggingface dataset:
The St. Johns herald., 1893-08-31
THE DARKIES OF OLD POINT
As Natural Servitor the Negro Is Work
 ing Out Perfect Salvation.

As Natural Servitor the Negro Is Work
 ing Out a Perfect Salvation.
 "The ever-looming smile of the cour- teous head-waiter, whose long service has made him an authority on matters germane to Old Point, mitigates the situation and robs grumbling of it's sharpest edge. The way the soft an swers of that kindly son of Ham turn away wrath is the greatest triumph of Christianity have witnessed for many long day..
 ''The patience of these negroes, who work from daylight to late into the night, appeals to me, says Q writer ill Kate Fields Washington, as nothing else has in old Virginia. It is one more proof of the splendid qualities of a race belonging to the soil and only needing industrial and moral training to be a blessing to themselves and to the re- public. They are the right people ill the right place, and when hear pale faces declaiming against lazy niggers, I wonder where their eyes are situated. There are lazy niggers,' lots of them, just as there are white tramps, but all negroes are not lazy.
 live never rung my bell but it has been answered promptly by black boys as courteous and painstalzing as their elders in the dining-room. The cham bermaids are equally civil and good natured, and shall return north, moro and more convinced that the negro is Q natural servitor whose defects are due to slavery and neglect. With cnlight- enment and opportunity the black race will fulfill a great mission. Assertion and insolence are the growth of igno- rance and wrong. Abolish both, and these people will redeem themselves. "
The St. Johns herald., 1893-08-31
GOT EVEN WITH HIS WIFE.
A Husband Who Called In Phrenologist
 to Stop Practical Joking.

to Stop Practical Joking.
 He had been frequently the victim of his wife's practical jokes, says the De- troit Free Press. He was troubled most by neighbor who was called in to tell fortunes with the cards and at the wife's previous suggestion always got the laugh on him by recalling some alleged incident of his past life that never occurred, seeing some blonde woman near him that was going to cause future trouble, or having him tangled up in a scrape which he would be the last man to encounter. The other day he found a peregrinating phrenologist on the street. He asked the old fraud to the house and told him on the way up that he had good look ing servant girl at his house who was jewel in her proper capacity, but a good many things had been missed from the house since she came there, and while he could prove nothing he suspected the woman. When they reached the house the wife was called in and the bump interpreter was set to work without the preliminary of an in- troduction. He thought he knew the lay of the land and proceeded accord ingly.
 ''This woman," he said, ''has keen perceptions. She is shrewd, but some what after the manner of a fox. She has a grasping disposition and covets everything pretty that she sees. If owned this property I would keep my spoons and other silver locked up. I would leave no money lying around, and as for jeweEy-"
 But there was sudden breaking up of the seance. "John, who is this horrid man? Laughing at him, are you? Get out of here, you miserable old cheat, you-you puppy, leave this house before have you kicked out. Pll-" But he was gone on dead run, and when the husband could regain his breath it was definitely arranged that the days of his persecution were over.
The St. Johns herald., 1893-08-31
A DIABoLIcAL CRY INDEED.

The Strange Warning That Was Given on
 a Mountain Road.
 We were riding slowly and carefully down steep hill in the Sierras, says a writer in Home and Country. The road was barely wide enough for two horse men abreast.
 Suddenly cry rent the air.
 Ia second it was repeated and sounded nearer.
 The judge, my companion, uttered an emphatic sentence which did not catch and galloped back in desperate haste, leaving me perplexed and amazed.
 At that instant the sharp, weird cry was repeated and immediately I was confronted by the head of long, heavily laden mule train. The mules, with their panniers, monopolized the entire width of the road. The animals, painfully laboring, were on the run, impelled by the muleteer's cries and whips. Before I realized my danger or could turn to avoid it the caravan was upon me with irresistible impetuosity. 1t doubled up my mule and whirled him around as if he had been a child'S toy or wisp of hay.
 Fortunately the saddle girth broke, and was spilled on the opposite side of the collision. How I rose and clam bered up that perpendicular wall in time to avoid being trampled to pulp beneath the remorseless heels of those panting beasts could not comprehend at that time, nor have ever been able to do so; but there was and there I adhered, as if glued to the rock, until both mules and danger had disappeared. The muleteers never cast even one '1ong, lingering look behind"
 To my astonishment my poor mule was unhurt and by and by the judge returned, looking unfeignedly anxious.
 "Why in the name of common sense did you not ride back with me?" he de- manded.
 'I heard the diabolical cry" I re- piled, 'but I did not understand it and did not understand you, and there it is," said I.
The St. Johns herald., 1893-08-31
Origin of the nrustache.

The mustache is becoming very fash ionable in France. Parisians have been hunting for the origin of the custom of wearing this adornment and the legend of most popular acceptance just now ascribes it to Spain. At period after the Moorish invasion, when the Chris tian and Moslem population became so mixed that it was hard to say which were Moors and which Spaniards, the pious Spaniards hit upon the mustache as a means of identification. They per- mitted the hair on the upper lip to grow and also tuft on the under lip, an out line of the cross being thus formed. Thus, say the Parisians, the mustache became symbol of liberty, equality and fraternity.
The St. Johns herald., 1893-08-31
ONE BANE OF THE EAST.

Hashecsh, the Drug Which, When Long
 Used, Results in Idiocy.
 The word hasheesh has fascination all its own, and this fascination is nat rally intensified by the general ig- norance which prevails as to the subtle workings of this strange and mysteri- ous vegetable composition, says the Pall Mall Budget. At the latter end of last year Lord Roseberry requested the representatives of Great Britain in Egypt, Greece and Turkey to report on the regulations affecting the importa- tion and sale of hasheesh, and these reports have now been presented to the houses of parliament. This noX- ious drug, which is so baneful in it's re- suits, is chiefly composed of the husl1s of the innocent hempseed, but which, after it's preparation, loses it's inno- cence and becomes one of the greatest curses of the east. One report states that hasheesh disturbs the functions of the systems of digestion and circula- tion; that it injures the senses and motive powers; that it disturbs the cerebral functions. The report con- tinues: The phantoms seen by, and the tendencies manifested in, those who are intoxicated with hasheesh generally indicate the usual habits of thought and moral character of the in- toxicated person, or the thoughts and passions by which the man was pos sessed on the day that he became in- toxicated, or at the moment in which the symptoms of poisoning began to make themselves manifest. Persons given to the use of hasheesh, who be- come maniacs, are apt to commit all sorts of acts of violence and murders. Sometimes the intoxication impels the person under it's influence to suicide, or the commission of acts forbidden by morality. All authors are unanimous, basing their opinion on numerous ob- servations among eastern peoples, that the long use of the drug weakens the body and causes atrophy, dulls the mind and creates hypochondria, idiocy and mania. Those who indulge in it have a fixed look, without expression, and an idiotic appearance. According to statistical information obtained from the lunatic asylums of Cairo and Bengal the majority of the maniacs and idiots became such from abuse of hasheesh. In all the countries from which the reports were received the importation, cultivation or sale of the drug is forbidden.
The St. Johns herald., 1893-08-31
Rismarck,s Great Friend.

The late Baron Bleichroeder, who was the acknowledged chief of the Prussian banking world, was one of the most remarkable of German mil honaires. He began life as the owner of a small brokerage establishment. One secret of his success was his genius for using political events to promote his ends. He was the banker of Ger man unity. A London paper remarks that Prince Bismarck used him not only as political adviser and fnancier, but in much the same miscellaneous and semi-confdential and semi-con- temptuous way that the princess and nobles of Germany had been in the habit of employing toward their court Jews for centuries. Bleichroeaer was his ame damned, his devoted and tactful instrument in many q diplomatic en- terprise, his trustful and sober adviser in scores of difficult crises. That his role was far from being limited to questions of finance has long been un- derstood, and more than once a glimpse has been afforded the outside public of the wide raE.ifcations of his political oaiiviru
The St. Johns herald., 1893-08-31
The Hawaiian Islands.

!. The Hawaiian group of islands are the most isolated bits of land upon the globe. They are two thousand miles from the mainland and eighteen hun dred and sixty miles from any other land worth calling such. They are not bits which once formed portions of some larger piece of land, and were subsequently, isolated by oceanic changes. They are of volcanic origin, having at some period been thrown up from the bottom of the sea. One con sequence is that they have a flora al- most peculiar to themselves. A large proportion of the native plants are found nowhere else.
The St. Johns herald., 1893-08-31
THE GOAL SUPPLY.
There Is No Immediate Danger of 1t
 Running Out.

 Running Out.
 The enormous consumption of coal and it's ultimate result, the exhaustion of the supply, have frequently been re- ferred to by way of warning and admo- nition. There is, of course, limit to the amount of coal that man can obtain from the crust of the earth. The con- ditions under which the carboniferous deposits were made, and the localities where they can be found and worked, are known, and it is not unlikely that within few centuries mankind will have to look elsewhere for the mechan- ical energy which is now derived from the burning of coal.
 But the situation is not quite so des- perate, says Youths Companion, as it has sometimes been represented. Petro- leum, for instance, is beginning to be used in the place of coal. Many per sons connect petroleum with coal in their minds, supposing that the two are always found in the same localities, and are necessarily related to one another in their origin. But this is not so. Pc troleum is far more widely distributed than coal.
 Coal is found principally in one kind of strata, namely, the so-called carbon iferous formation, but petroleum or rock oil exists in many different strata, and the famous Russian chemist, Dr. Mendelieff, believes that it is constant ly being formed in the interior of the earth by the action of the Water which slowly leaks downward upon metals contained in the heated core of the globe.
 In this respect, then, petroleum diff fers greatly from coal, because the lat ter is not now being formed-at least not in any considerable quantity-while petroleum, if the theory just stated is correct, is a constant product of the in- her activity of the planet.
 But it is not likely that we shall be compelled to resort solely to petroleum when our coal supplies have been ex- hausted, for science is continually open ing up for us new sources of energy in nature. Electricity holds forth some as yet indefinite promises, which scientific men think may revolutionize the me chanical world.
 It is not likely, then, that future gen. erations will either freeze to death or abandon the machinery of civilized life when the last ton of coal has been lifted out of the rocks.
The St. Johns herald., 1893-08-31
SPOKE TwENTY-sIx HOURS.
The Determined Effort of an English States
 man to Defeat Vicious Legislation.


 man to Defeat Vicious Legislation.
 The longest speech on record is be- heved by the Pall Mall Budget to have been that made by NIT. De Cosmos in the legislature of British Columbia when measure was pending the pas sage of which would take from a great many settlers their lands. De Cosmos was in a hopeless minority. The job had been held back till the eve of the close of the session. Unless legislation was taken before noon of given day the act of confscation would fail. The day before the expiration of the limita- tion De Cosmos got the floor about ten a. m. and began a speech against the bill. Its friends cared little, for they supposed that by one or two o'clock he would be through, and the bill could be put on its passage. One o'clock came and De Cosmos was speaking still-had not more than entered upon his subject. Two o'clock came-he was saying: ''In the second place." Three o'clock-he produced a fearful bundle of evidence and insisted on reading it. The majority began to have a suspi cion of the truth; he was going to speak till next noon and kill the bill. For awhile they made merry over it, but as it came on to dusk they began to get alarmed. They tried interrup- tions but soon abandoned them, be- cause each one afforded him chance to digress and gain time. They tried to shout him down, but that gave him a breathing space, and finally they set tied down to watch the combat be- tween strength of will and weakness of body. They gave him no mercy no adjournment for dinner, chance to do more than wet his lips with water, no wandering from his subject, no sit ting down. Twilight darkened; the gas was lit; members slipped out to dinner in relays and returned to sleep in squads, but De Cosmos went on. The speaker, to whom he was addressing himself ,was alternately dozing, snoring and trying to look wide awake. Day dawned and the majority slipped out in squads to wash and breakfast, and the speaker still held on. It cannot be said that it was very logical, elo- quent or sustained speech. There were digressions in it, repetitions also. But still the speaker kept on; and at last noon came to bafflcd majority, livid with rage and impotence, and single man who was triumphant, though his voice had sunk to a husky whisper, his eyes were almost shut and were bleared and bloodshot, his legs tot tered under him, his blackened lips were cracked and smeared with blood. De Cosmos had spoken twenty-six hours and saved the settlers their lands.
The St. Johns herald., 1893-08-31
SANDWICH ISLAND WOMEN.
Something About Their Costumes an
 Customs.


 Customs.
 The ladies attire themselves in the holoku. The warm tropical climate makes loose, flowing gowns necessity. 1 The young girls wear wreaths of wild flowers around their brows and deco rate their bodies with chaplets of green leaves. They do not use gold jewelry, but ornament their toilet with the floral beauty of the tropics. They are fond of outdoor life and live most of the time in the groves. They sleep in hammocks under the trees, and have their dances and feasts in the grottoes of the forests. They have little huts in which they dwell during storms, but are rarely found in their cottages eX- cept in rainy weather. They build rass-thatched houses and cover their roofs with rushes, and have wide porches in front of their doors to keep off the heat of the sun. They like to be near the sea, so they can bathe in the waters of the ocean. They become ex- pert surf riders, and can scale the breakers in the widest storms. Like seagulls they ride the tossing rollers and smile at the oceans maddest winds. In their little boats they sail over the blue bosom of the Pacific and cruise many miles away from their island shores. Their little crafts cross the channels from island to island and visit all the ports in the archipelago. They are not afraid of the ocean solitudes, but are at home on it's watery wastes and find delight in it's eXpanse of blue.
The St. Johns herald., 1893-08-31
COLD STORAGE FOR SILKS.
Curious Facts Revealed by Varying Tenn
 peratures.

peratures.
 Raw silk is sold by weight, and when stored in ordinary warehouses it dries and naturally decreases in value. By storing it in cold vault the moisture is preserved and the silk keeps it's weight. There is another curious fact about the cold storage of silk. It was discovered some years ago that silk in winter usu- ally had finer luster than in summer. The cold air was supposed to be ac- countable for the change, and an eX- pertinent was tried in keeping bales of silk in cold rooms for comparison with others on the store counters. The cold silk then appeared to be of much finer quality, when in reality it was from the same loom. As soon as this fact became generally recognized the large silk dealers went to the cold storage warehouses and had their silks placed in freezing vaults. In some cases the thermometer is kept as low as ten degrees, and when the bales are taken out they feel like blocks of ice. Some firms keep most of their stock in storage, and only take silk out in quan- titles equal to the anticipated sales of the day, for the luster acquired by freezing soon disappears after exposure on the bargain counter. It is asserted that an inferior grade of silk while ex- tremely cold has the feeling and ap- pearance of much higher grade which has not been frozen, while, on the other hand, it has been found that the best grades are not improved by the arctic treatment.
The St. Johns herald., 1893-08-31
TURNED GRAY IN A NIGHT.
How a Germans Hair Was Blanched by
 the Horror of Delirium%


 the Horror of Delirium.<
 Though it has long been a popular belief that the hair may be suddenly turned white under the influence of some very powerful emotion, such as grief or terror and though numerous stories about it are related in popular literature and folk tales, yet some physiologists are doubtful of such a sudden change ever taking place, and we'll authenticated instances of its actual occurrence are very rare. The case of Ovide Muslin, the v:olinist, whose hair and beard were completely blanched as the result of a railroad wreck, is much better vouched for than most stories of the kind, though there are few that seem to answer the re- quirements of the most exacting scien- lists. One of these quoted by the New York Advertiser is mentioned in Dr. Virchow's Archives for April, 1s66," by Dr. Landois, as occurring under the observation of himself and Dr.. Lohmer. In this case the blanching of the hair occurred in hospital in single night while the patient was under the daily observation of the vis- iting physicians, and it would seem to prove beyond doubt not only that actual grief or terror may produce this peculiar result, but that the sim ulated horrors of delirium may have the same effect. The patient, com positor thirty-four years of age, with light hair and blue eyes, was admitted into the hospital July 9, 1865, suffering from an acute attack of delirium tre- mems. A marked peculiarity in the disease was excessive terror whenever anyone approached the patient. He slept for twelve hours on the night of the 11th of July after having taken thirty drops of Iaudanum. Up to this time nothing unusual had been observed regarding the hair. On the morning of July 12 it was evident to the medical attendants and to all who saw the patient that the hair of the head and beard had become gray. The patient himself remarked the change with intense astonishment. The hair remained gray as long as the patient was under observation, to Septem- Der r.
The St. Johns herald., 1893-08-31
FIRE.DoCToRs OF FEz.
How Moorish QCacks Treat Rheumatic
 Patients.

 How Moorish QCacks Treat Rheumatic
 Patients.
 In Fez there are fre-doctors who sit in the more frequented streets, waiting for rheumatic patients. Each doctor, says an exchange, has little furnace, pair of bellows and number of cu- riously-shaped iron rods before him. When not operating he solemnly and necessarily reads book of one sen tence.
 ''There is no God, but God, and Mo- hammed is his prophet"
 When patient appears the doctor lays down his book, blows up his fire with his bellows and sticks into the coals several of the rods, which are about two feet long and have queer knobs and hooks on their heated ends. While waiting for these to get hot he constantly repeats his one sentence. When all is ready the patient pays his fee, lies down on his face, and draws his clothing up on his back. ''In the name of God" says the fre-doctor, and passes a red-hot rod with great delib- eration over various parts of the back. It makes sizzling" noise, and smell of burnt flesh fills the air. Meantime a crowd of men have collected to wit ness the operation. They necessarily pass their fingers through their boards and praise God and Mohammed. Ere quently the patient after one opera tion lies still for awhile, perhaps wait ing for another twinge of the disease. If it comes he perceives that he is not quite cured and demands another in- stallment of the treatment, for which he pays another fee.
The St. Johns herald., 1893-08-31
Sandals for Horses.

Mud shoes for horses are common in certain parts of Washington state, be- ing used on horses in blowing the low and wet lands of the valley north of Sumner nearly every spring. The mud shoe consists of heavy board about eight inches wide and from eight to ten inches long, rounding in front. On this board Q redhot shoe of the size worn on the horses foot for which it is intended is placed until it burns into it to depth almost sufficient to bury itself. It is necessary that the shoe have Q long toe and long corks. A piece of circular band iron to fit over the top part of the hoof is then at tached to the board and over the hoof to hold the mud shoe solidly to the foot. One end of the band is fastened to the board with screw, which when frightened holds the board as squarely to the bottom of the hoof aS if it had grown there. The horses become ac- customed to wearing them. and after day or two experience no difficulty in working in them. By this means farm CTS are enabled to blow land in the spring where without the use of the mud shoes horses would mire down.
The St. Johns herald., 1893-08-31
INGENIOUS sMUeoLERs.
The Post Ofice as an Instrument. for
 Their Illegal Traffic.

Their Illegal Traffic.
 The post office inspectors keep a sharp lookout for smuggling through the mails, says Washington letter to the Boston Transcript. About 75O sealed packages are seized annually in the New York post office. In an aver age year 25,000 unsealed parcels are confscated at the same office and re- leased on the payment of fines which are equivalent to the duties. Some very ingenious methods are employed for transmitting dutiable articles by post. Not long ago a package from Germany was found to contain small roll of butter. A wire passed through it met with an obstruction, which proved to be tin box filled with valu- able jewelry. Probably dozen silk handkerchiefs are found wrapped up in newspapers in every mail from China. The skill exhibited by the postal clerks in detecting such contra band incIosures is wonderful. It seems to partake of the nature of intuition. They say they do not know themselves how they do it, but that a newspaper with a silk handkerchief in it has a sort of guilty feeling when manipulat- ed. Silk stockings are mailed from France in the same manner. An odd kind of smuggling is the sending of mushrooms by mail from Italy. They are of a peculiar kind, dried, and are much relished by natives of that coun- try in the United States. They come in small bags and are easily dis tinguished by smell.