Bellows Falls times. [volume] (Bellows Falls, Vt.) 1856-1965, 1897-02-06
SPRINGFIELD.

This is the month when groups of mon may
be seen on the street corners devising ways
which will prove futile and plans which will
aft gang awry for the management of the
coming town meeting and consequently Of
the town the coming year.
Mrs. Mary Barry Webb gave a lecture be
fore the NJ thodist ladies in their vestry We'd
nesday afternoon and an open address in the
same place in the evening in the interest of
the wnman's home missionary society. In
the course of the talk it was brought out that
the ladies of the Methodist church in the
United States had raised about 5000, 900 tor
home work and nearly $500 600 for foreign
missions the past year. ''1f the cleaners have
got that humble outsider was led to AJAX,
"what have the harvesters done! p
1t is noticed that however much the average
citizen may have groaned over the cost of the
new schoolhouse while it was building and
however frequent and fluent he was in find
ing FAULT about its site, size, finish, its ETC.,
and its etc. now that it is a finished fact and
factor of our lives this same citizen takes an
| almost excessive pride in it and when a
stylish team loaded with educators comes
from another state to examine the building
and the workers therein. he is almost burst
ing with delight. He calls attention, if he
gets chance, to its warming apparatus, its
ventilation, its water supply, to the barn
where the horses of the outside students are
kept and to the only and original janitor. If
he does not get this chance he goes home and
tells the same to his wife which relieves him
though it may not enlighten her.
81 have seen a great deal of trouble said
an old man, "n'ost OF which never happened"
1t is u pity that some of, our people who
were worrying so much about the electric
road last fall had not taken lesson from this.
They, the cars, were to scare horses, kill
children and depopulate the town in many
ways, but the rails are buried under two feet
of snow and as harmless as Gabriel's trum-
matt mo h Ia ha Of att hoo hoo,
transferred to the columns of the Reporter.
First, j. r. Walker wrote letter offering
further investments OF the town 3 money. In
the course of his letter he said that the road,
| if built by means Of further taxation, would
| seriously decrease the value of farm property
| in town. Messrs. Wyman and Foggett re-
piled telling, like Horace Greeley, what they
knew about farming and its relation to rail-
roads, and last week 0. 3. Hadwin relates
the pitiful story of Mount Tabor and her rail-
road bonds, but whether he meant to imply
that the tale had any application to our situa
ton is uncertain.
The wall of hard times still goes up espec,
tally among the farmers whose sales are very
unsatisfactory and collection in many cases
slow. Three hundred men mostly farmers
| chosen, SO the constitution says, for their
eminence in wisdom and virtue, assembled
in the capitol last fall to make laws suitable
to the stringency of the present crisis and
their greatest effort seems to have been the
repeal OF the noXlOuS animal bounty, which Ii
practically a robbery of the farmers, their own
hen-roosts. The national tarih-tinkers legis-
lated sheep under ground some years since
and now, alas! the chickens and. turkeys
must follow, but the rural inhabitant can still
assemble in oranges and other meetings and
sing 1.-The farmer feeds them all, an exercise
which will soothe their sorrows, heal theiI
wounds and drive away their tears, or al
least it ought to. Much regret has been ex.
pressed in regard to one part of the repealed
law by citizens of our town not directly in
terested in farming, viz, the rattlesnake
bounty. Two years ago our people, in view
of the alarming increase of these venomou.
creatures, made an effort to have them in
cluded among the noxious animals for the de
struction of which the state paid. Scarcely
$50 has been paid for those killed in thi
, town, but the number was noticeably less las
, year than the year previous; a few more year
with the bounty and they would have practi
cally been extinct. Now unless the tow
offers something for the destruction of tn
serpents they will become again as it wa
represented two years ago, menace not onl
to our stock but to the school children pass
ing along our streets. OCCASIONAL.