Arizona republican., 1897-10-17

an experiment.
 There is altogether too great lat itude allowed by English rules of or biography. They are like this column, <TIit and Miss" One is allowed to spell a word as he pleases. Any fan tastical arrangement of letters goes. I have never been in favor of spelling reform only to this extent, that all similar. sounding syllables should be spelled alike. My idea is better il- lustrated in the following pathetic poem, whose chief character is a fe- male, whose name is commonly, but improperly, spelled Sue:
 A man from tdhe Sioux
 Met a girl from Perioux
 Her eyes were so blioux
 And her nature so trioux
 That he straightway did wioux
 And capture her, tioux
 His troubles were fioux
 Till his family griouX
 And then, I tell yioux,
 That then he did rioux
 The day he met Sioux;
 For his money ran thrioux.
 As he wasn't a Jioux,
 So all he could dioux
 Was to mend an old shioux.
 A few days ago The Republican pub llshed a dispatch descriptive of the terrible drouth with which the lower Mississippi valley is afflicted and in which the statement was made that water had become so scarce in Ar kansas that 1t was sold at cents a quart for dN1king purposes A gen Jleman over the signature of W. R. D.. writes to The Republican question ing the reliability of the dispatch. He is a native of Arkansas. To his certain knowledge water was never sold in that great state. In further support of his position he says he has frequently traveled from Little Rock to Memphis, along which route even whisky was free. He says the drouth could not have affected the whisky out put and he asks with fine scorn what true Arkansan would buy water to drink when he could get whisky. w. R. D. apologized for writing at all, but says that he and Jim Tarney are the only two Arkansans in Phoenix to stand up for that great state and MT. Tarney is temporarily out of town. In further disproof of the story of the scarcity of water in Arkansas, w. R. D. refers to Col. Jack Halbert of Tue son, whose youth and early manhood were passed in that state and whose love for it is undimmed through years of absence. On second thought. though, W. R. D. recalls Col. Halbert from the witness stand and on the ground that his testimony would be irrelevant incompe ent and imma- terial, if not actually damaging Water is one of the features of Arkansas with which W. R. D. thinks Col. Hal bert never familiarized himself.
 < < *
 Mention was made in the lccal col umns of this paper a few days a1o oi the finding by Mir. Lewis of certain egg-shaped stones along the Castle Creek road which when broken proved to be hollow, the inner surface beine lined with quartz. Along the upper Mississippi river stones of this char acter are found, or were found, for they have almost disappeared now and were supposed to exist nowhere else in the world. There they are called geotes, and were at one tims of no value-people in the river towns having them piled up in their yards or using them as borders fo1 flower beds. But later eastern visit ors discovered their rarityrand began to carry them home with them as specimens This finally tended tt give them some value, which ha steadily increased until today only rich people can afford to buy them Some of these geotes can be f-und along the river yet but they ara mostly of no value, for they are no all good, some Of them being solid and very hard to break, while other will have none of the crystal forma ttion inside. There are a few beauti ful and valuable collections whict their owners treasure not only fo their commercial value but as ths survivors of a species of diminishing mineral curiosities.
 During the last four years a genera Impression has prevailed that hart times existed in this country; thaI business conditions were depressed money scarce and values depreciated Doubtless such conditions really ex isted, but the history of Phoenix dur ing the time indicated has little in i ito prove such to have been the case Four years ago the Fleming b,ocI was building, and west of tblat on tn north side of Washington street ther was not another business buildiu with the exception of the cne occu pied by the postoffice-a little one story brick. Today that block has