Crawford avalanche. (Grayling, Mich.) 1879-19??, 1897-04-08

| 1850, 900 900, OF which sum the State q
Iowa pays perhaps 10000 Besides
| this, says Judge Thayer. there must
be reckoned the vast amounts each
year spent, or rather thrown away, In
making and repairing roads OF the old
fashioned kind. with no results excep'
the necessity of doing the work over
again the next spring. What ne ad.
vocates Is the bonding of every town
to an amount sufficient to build scien-
tifically perfect roads wherever they
are needed within its boundaries, and
connecting with the similar Highways
OF the adjoining municipalities. Judge
Thayer admits that when ne advocates
this plan among the farmers they al
ways express cautious dread of incur
ring debt SO large as he suggests.
There is strangely familiar sound
In the indignant protests that appear
In the Bombay papers against what
they call the grossly exaggerated state
ments about the plaques ravages there.
They say no such exodus from the city
has taken place as is reported; that the
asserted closing of half its shops Is
true only in certain streets frequented
by the lowest class OF the population,
and that the death rate Is not 200 per
1000 week, as has been stated by the
European press, but at what will be zoo
per 1000 IL the epidemic lasts year .
Even the Bombay editors, however,
with all their regard for the citys re-
putation and commerce, especially the
latter, admit that the situation Is sufflc-
iently grave to excite the apprehension
of other nations. The most conser-
vative estimates are that somewhere
between 100000 and 100000 persons
have fled from Bombay since the pla-
que appeared, and while the weekly
death rate has been nothing near like
10000, as it would be at 200 per 1000
week, yet even as an annual mortality
that is terrible enough to account for a
panic In the city and the adoption of
vigorous precautions outside of 1t. A
disease that kills 6,979 out of 1888
persons attacked, as this one has, &C.
cording to the official records. endan-
gers the world to such an extent that
1t may well excite terror everywhere.
On the Upper Lachine Road. few
miles from Montreal, is a handsome
brick house occupied by a family named
Decarrie. Another occupant of tho
house, according to the servants and
many Of the people living near, was
good practicable ghost. This creature
had never been seen by anybody, but
for months past his or her voice had
been plainly heard filling the hours of
darkness on every stormy night with
lugubrious means which believers in
the supernatural regarded as awful, and
even skeptics admitted that they were
mysterious. Finally the notoriety
which the house attracted became un-
endurable to it's owner, and after him.
self making for the twentieth time a
vain effort to discover the origin Of
the troublesome connection, he deter
mined TO call in expert aid. To the
surprise of his humble neighbors, Mr..
Decarrie did not resort for assistance
to priest, but to a plumber. The
choice was JUSTIFIED by the result, for
the knight of the soldering iron soon
found that the ghost, such as it was,
lived in a hole in the cellar wall
through which passed furnace pipe
and the wind. A newspaper stuffed in
the opening sufficed to silence the
means while they were doing their
very best to make the plumbers hair
stand on end, and later a few bricks
opd a I;ttia mortar drova tho parturhad
spirit away for good and all. The
Psychical Society might have made
longer and more interesting job of the
investigation, but it couldn't have solv-
ed the problem more effectively.
According to an Englishman," says
Bearings, the introduction of the BIZ
cycle into the postal service of England
has made it possible for letters to reach
the hands of people living some dis
lance from post Office towns with much
less delay than formerly, and there is
no sphere of work in which the bicy-
Gle has proved more valuable than that
of the postal service. Propositions
have been repeatedly made to use BIZ
cycles and tricycles in the postal SER
vices of American cities, and Chicago
and a number of the large cities are al
ready employing crop of mounted
letter carriers for service in outlying
districts where the residences are scat
tered. This is all well and good, but
there is need of an indefinite extension
of this service. The farmers of the
country and residents of the rural dis
tricts have long looked with jealousy
upon the admirable delivery system Of
our cities, and prayed for mail delivery
in the country, asserting that they are
as much entitled 70 at least one de-
livery daily as the business man hav-
ing an Office in town Is entitled to
half a dozen. One of the most serious
drawbacks to rural life is the lack of
postal service, and undoubtedly this,
in conjunction with our miserable
country roads, has much to do with
the growing desertion of American
farms in some sections. The demand
for mail delivery in the country has
become so strong that last year the
made an appropriation for
the purpose of establishing a test SER
vice in two of our northern States.
WHAT the result can be only time can
tell, but Ii is greaIiy to be hoped that
the experiment will prove successful.
In rural mail delivery will be found an
excenent opportunity for the bicycle to
demonstrate it's commercial utility. BY
the letter carriers with BIZ