Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1895-01-09
IiISTY OLD LIES.
Some That Are Well Known and Yet Seem
 Tn,narSsbataIe.

Ampef1hnaUits
 There is that well fixed old legend about the injurious property of night air. What lot of people are dying of consumption because they will not let air into the house after dark. 1t IS night air, you know, and that is-Well, it is night air, and somebody told your grandfathers second cousins wife's sister-in-law that night air was un- wholesome. So they shut all the win dows and breathe all the breaths of an entire family, and the calculations of closets and the gas of furnaces and stoves all night and get up with a head ache, but with congratulations that none of that dreadful air from the hills and the woods and the fields has got into the house Ask them how the cat tie, that are out all night, breathing night air, keep so healthy. Ask them what makes soldiers and sailors and prospectors and hunters so big-ehest- ed and hearty, living as they do in the air all night. as well as in the daytime. But you can't break up an old lie with regiment of troops or herd of cattle. Why there used to be lie, and it was even in the maga- zines, to the effect that the moon made people crazy, and that if you slept out in the moonlight you would wake up in the morning a roaring lu- natic. The man who called crazy person q lunatic, borrowing the inne- cent moon to coin word from, was perhaps responsible for that. He nev- CT thought to look at the effect of moon1it slumber on an army or a watehman.
 Every now and then we read reports of a shower of frogs OF toads or snakes or lizards or young alligators. But these showers never occur near where anybody lives.
 The wheat grown from seeds pre- served for three thousand years or more in mummy eases covers square miles of Imagination the frogs that have been imprisoned in granite or coal, deep down in the hearts of mountains, for billions and billions of years-a couple of billion before frogs were ecreated-would be marshaled into respectable army. When he got into the granite the granite was presuma- bly white hot, but the frog got himself crystallized in, just the same, and when the chunk is blasted he hops and starts for the nearest pond as brisk as if he had only been locked ID over night.
 Once in while he gets into the stomach of citizen, this frog does, and sometimes his place in that strong hold is taken by snake which resist ,4,. T 1P lack of air, plays around for months, now and then coming mp into the throat of his host to suggest that it is dinner time. Ordinarily snake eats only live food, but perhaps he accus- toms himself to oysters if his keeper will occasionally eat them.
 The rustic occasionally looks at a cloudy sky pierced by rays of the sun that spread into visible fan of light, and says: 'It's goin' to rain The sun's drawin' water' And he really thinks 1t is water going up instead of light coming down. If it rains it is because the clouds are there and it is abont time to rain, not because the sun is working as hard as usual for the evaporation of water on the surface of the earth.
 One might fill some columns about the divining rod that can find gold and silver and hasn't brought any out of the countless millions of the late unla- mented Kidd to light and about honor among thieves, and about the evils that befall possessors of the opal, and about the MaRleton and some other ghosts, and about raising umbrellas on the stage, and about thirteen people at the table and whole lot of other things, but it wouldn't do any good. lyn Eagle.