Daily Kennebec journal., 1897-06-12

hreman's muster in connection with tnt
agricultural exhibit and the fakirs
paradise. -
The wild flowers have been at least
ten days behind the time. OF their ar
rival last year.
The South Thomaston correspondent
who remarks "our ducks are all drowned
SO let 1t keep right on raining, ex-
pressed a depth OF despair truly pa
thetic.
There recently was q howl because II
was proposed to put duty on certain
foreign articles that might find their
way into public libraries but for the
most part would go to adorn the homes
Of the rich. 1t was called a tax on
education. We cannot imagine wnat
awful cataclysm will result from the
discovery that the graduates OF the
Lewiston schools will be taxed live cents
each for the ribbon with which their
diplomas are tied.
On the whole Maine has Jared wei
compared with what other New Eng
land states have suffered from the ex-
cessive rainfall. A few days ago when
in Maine there were but mild showers
Nashua, N. H., was visited by such 4
downpour that the sewers became
clogged and much damage resulted
The rain OF thursday, which was
freshet in Massachusetts and Ne"
Hampshire only added considerable
water to the already overmuch In
Maine soil. The rivers and streams ~
not burst their bonds and the finishing
touches to the log drives were acceler-
ated. Farming interests have been
considerably retarded and with regard
to certain crops the result must be a
marked diminution in the harvest
Nevertheless, it behooves the Maine
farmer especially in view of the greater
injury done outside the State to make
the. best of what opportunity remains
to him.
Bangor News: The smaller towns OF
Maine are slow in realizing the neces-
sity of adequate facilities for fighting
fire. 1t takes a destructive conflagra-
tion to teach them the lesson as a rule,
and even that some times falls.
One day last week it is said two cir
cles-or rainbows-around the sun
brought out nearly the entire popula-
Al ~x,ySr 1A1 ut
the strange sight, and not few were
frightened. The sun itself was a
startling sight.
A South Thomaston correspondent Of
the Courier Gazette grows reminiscent
as he relates how the good people of
that community have decided to pay
their pastor in coin of the realm. He
says: The pastors these days like the
rest of us like to handle the cash. We
have always been taught to give and
when we did not have the money we
gave what God gave us. Some times 1t
would be a load of wood, other times
garden truck and often good hunk of
fresh meat or a brace of spring chick
ems. This was often my mothers Of
fering and we have done something in
that line ourselves. but just think how
funny it would look now days for one
of our preachers to try to purchase a
bicycle or pay a weeks board at Bar
Harbor with these old time offerings.
1t makes me feel old when we look
back and think the child like things we
did.
One of the preachers at North An
son, is a native of that wild and
wooley" West, where there are earth
uuakes, wildcats, grizzly bears. rattle
snakes, big Injuns." and many other
things. The preacher can
talk, volubly of such but when the
other day he remarked to a bystander.
on seeing a wagon load of dressed
lambs pass, thai he supposed those
were deer, the bystander nearly had
and Immediately set the
parson down for a "tenderfoot."
Newspaper publishers are not nee
essarily experts in log driving, but their
ventures have given them 4
wealth of experience in overcoming
This probably accounts for
the fact that Publisher Merriman of the
Madison Bulletin was one of two men
to fulfil the contract to bring out four
millions logs through Pierce Pond
stream, after noted log drivers had re-
fused to have anything to do with the
job. These logs, contrary to the ad-
vice of lumbermen, were left in whole
trees or only cut when the tree ex-
ceeded so feet in length. Lumbermen
and river drivers generally remark d
that those long logs could not be driven
out without first being cut up into
short lengths. This stream falls 721
feet in a distance of about four miles.
In many places it's bed is hundreds of
feet down between almost perpendicu-
lar walls of rock. Ragged points of
ledge project into it and narrow the
channel which winds sinuously among
the ragged lodges, here and there
plunging abruptly against perpendic-
80 90. tn