davidaulloa/AmericanStories huggingface dataset:
The Black Hills union. [volume] (Rapid City, Pennington County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1889-1904, 1897-07-16
Gladstone as q Lingulst.

Gladstone. Justin Mccarthy writes,
a a profound sympathy with Italy
a strong passion for Italy-very much
like the passion which Byron had for
Greece. He loved the language the
literature, the country, and the people,
He spoke Italian with marvellous
fuency and accuracy. An eminent
Italian told me once that Gladstone
when speaking Italian, fell quite nat
urally into the very movement and
gestures OF an Italian. If Gladstone, he
said, were to address the representa-
tive chamber in Rome, every n pres
ent would take him for an Italian
only 1t was possible that the Tuscan
might think he was a Roman. and that
q roman would set him down as =
tuscan. Whenever he needed rest he
almost always sought it under the skies
OF Italy. Gladstone spoke French with
perfect fuency, but with a very marked
accent. Indeed, his speeches in the
U OF commons were always deliy-
cred with an accent which told. unmis.
takably of the North Countree." From
his forbear3 he got the tones Of Scot
land; and then Lancashire has a dis
tinct accent all to herself. | have >,
strong impression that some at least Of
the influence Of Gladstone's finest
speeches in the house of commons
would have been a little marred if thev
had been delivered in the common
place accent Of West End LONDON So
city.
The Black Hills union. [volume] (Rapid City, Pennington County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1889-1904, 1897-07-16
HOW TO SAVE THE SEALS.
suggestion That Females Be Branded

Suggestion That Females Be Branded
So as to Spoil Their Hides.
Prof. David Starr Jordan, of Stanford
university, has returned from Wash.
lngton, D. c., where he has been for
the last three weeks attending to mat
tiers connected with the fur seal in
Vestlgation. Prof. Jordan went to
Washington to see that the Boring sea
fur seal investigation was properly car
rled over from n administration to
the other, says the San Francisco
Chronicle. He was the United States
commissioner in the investigation made
last summer at the seal islands, and he
is interested in seeing carried out his
recommendation for the protection of
the seal herd, He was accompanied on
his trip by the secretary of the COM
mission, George A. Clark, who is also
secretary of Stanford university. When
asked about it DR.. Jordan said that
steps would be taken by the new ad-
ministration looking to a final settle
ment OF the fur seal question on the
basis of the investigation made last
summer. He said: Great Britain sent
to the fur seal islands a commission of
her own, which, in connection with the
American commission, has thoroughly
investigated the condition Of the seal
herd. This commission agreed in all
matters OF fact with the findings of the
American commission. Their report,
however, has not yet been published.
The only possible settlement of the fur
seal question lies in the total prohibi-
ton of pelagic sealing. Great Britain
will, therefore, doubtless be asked to
unite with the United States in some
equitable arrangement whereby killing
OF females at sea can be done away
with. It is believed that Great Britain
Will not refuse to unite with us in TAX
ing steps to preserve the fur seals.
However, in case she should refuse to
make any fair arrangement, the United
States will be prepared to take the mat
ter in it's own hands and protect it's
own interests by aggressive measures.
Steps will Immediately be taken to
brand the female seals in such a wav
as to destroy the value Of their skins
n also to protect the males by herd
ing them in the salt lagoon on St. Pau1
Island during the sealing season. Prac-
tlcal experiments made last summer
have demonstrated the feasibility of
these W measures, and their effect
will be to put an end to the business
of pelagic sealing"
The Black Hills union. [volume] (Rapid City, Pennington County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1889-1904, 1897-07-16
Bamboo Grows in Florida.

Experiments in Florida and Louisi-
ana have shown that bamboo will
grow in those states almost as well al
in the hotter countries. Around Fort
Myers there are bamboos that have at
tanned to a height of fifty or sixty feet.
They are Of a variety which usually
grows to about seventy feet in India.
In Orange county there is one clumn
of bamboos, said to be only ten years
old, in which the stalks have attained
to the height of sixty-ive feet, the
stalks averaging thirteen inches in cir
cumference. There are eighty stalks
in the clump. This particular clumn
is of a variety from Bengal, where the
wood is used for building purposes
and for light spar vessels.
The Black Hills union. [volume] (Rapid City, Pennington County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1889-1904, 1897-07-16

ture twenty-five feet into the air, when,
to my establishment, instead of drop
ping like a stone. it darted away at an
angle. One of the men chased and
caught it just as it was about to strike
a tree, and for months it was one Of my
most treasured pets. Its popularity
lay in the possession Of singular webs
to its feet, which, when spread out dur
ing a leap, enabled it to soa like a
flying squirrel to a limited extent. Sew
eral others were caught, and soon be-
came quite tame, taking extraordinary
leaps about the room, alighting with
ease whenever they wished. When
leaping they presented the appearance
of some singular insect darting through
the air. They were clever mimics, re-
sembling the objects upon which they
habitually rested, and changing in tint
to a remarkable degree, but they re-
sented handling. and only submitted
when they could not escape. They fed
upon insects of various kinds, taking
them from my hand, often leaping
about the room in search of game. AS
pets their interest was centered princi-
pally in their habits and life, and to
watch them was a never-ceasing
amusement. But I failed to discover
any traits of affection or special intel
llgence, which some loads display to q
certain degree"
The Black Hills union. [volume] (Rapid City, Pennington County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1889-1904, 1897-07-16
after the fashion of the kangaroo.

after the fashion of the kangaroo.
The voices alone of frogs were an
interesting study. Some of the larger
forms utter sounds which can be heard
a mile, and often the smallest make the
loudest noises. Once, when in India.
my guide Informed me that a large
frog, known as the leopard from it's
wonderful jumping powers, preyed up-
on birds. I had a collection of them
and was entertained by their marvel
GUS leaps of ten or fifteen feet. and in
a deserted bungalow soon had a very
unhappy family, I fear, of frogs. toads
and birds. l watched faithfully for
days, and was finally repaid by seeing
one of my frogs seize a small bird. Tho
~batrachian sprang upon it like a tiger
and the tragedy was over in a mo.
ment.
1T occurred to me that the frog
might have thought it an insect-one
of the big creatures, quite as large as
some birds that were found in the for
ests, but l was assured that the huge
frogs preyed upon birds whenever thew
could find them.
by far the most remarkable and in
teresting pet was one 1 obtained in
the Malay country. I had two natives
to accompany M on my dl.ily collect
ing trips, and n day one of them
came to me holding something in his
hand which proved to be a most at
tractive little frog. AS 1 looked he
stepped back and tossed the little crea-
The Black Hills union. [volume] (Rapid City, Pennington County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1889-1904, 1897-07-16

OF all the pets | have had" said a
naturalist and traveller, 81 believe my
families of Joads and frogs have been
the most singular. In every country in
"hlch | have travelled have made
friends with these little creatures that
are generally despked. | was first at
tracted to them by the cl~everness of
one that lived in my garden in New
Nork. Its home was in a hole, and,
IKE many toads. it did not like heavy
rains or floods. How it escaped drown
ing during storms was a mystery as
the hole would Q o nil up: yet when
the sun came out my friend would an
pear as dry as the proverbial chin. An
examination or the burrow showed a
niue room that extended upward.
forming a narrow shelf on which the
toad sat during the rain. The water
Moved by. filled the tunnel. then flowed
out OF the door again before i. could
reach the toad-an arraDgement N
once ingenious and simple.
This toad. l am confident. had a
decided Of humor. I often sat
near 1t, pretending not 10 notice it,
and would see the little creature goins
through various curious pranks. One
was to play with sticks, holding a long
tWlg in its mouth. Once l rhousht
1t tried to turn a s~omersault-a very
common thing for frogs TO ACCOMPLISH.
South America is a wonderful land
Tor strange forms of animal life" con-
tlnued the naturalist, and my toads
there. in their ways and habits. often
almost taxed belief. One. we'll known
as the ~paradoxical frog, was perhaps
the o interesting. I was collecting
IN a little village on a branch of the
Amazon, and it soon becoming known
that wanted frogs, they began to
pour in upon me in all shapes and sizes
The Black Hills union. [volume] (Rapid City, Pennington County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1889-1904, 1897-07-16

tached to the rocker, while the mother
tolled on the slope, carrying soil to the
naked rocks. Johanna mended her ia
theirs nets in winter, oiled his great
boots so that he could stand in the icy
water to fish, dug the potatoes, cut the
scanty wheat, gathered pine needles to
NIL the beds, sheared the sheep, and
spun unit her hands were bleeding. At
sixteen she went out to service in 9TH
Tiers fields, and at twenty married a
poor peasant lad who had loved her
from childhood. Until very recently she
regularly swung the fail on the thresh
ing floor, moved the hay with a scythe
and bound the sheaves in time of har
vests. For twelve years after her mar
riage, so stern was her poverty, she
eve saw a newspaper or a book, the
things which above all else she craved.
OVERWHELMINGLY, however she en-
dured her hard lot, and from the dark
ness rose-a poet. A special messenger
was lately sent by the Empress of Gar
many to find this unknown writer of
newspaper verses which had so moved
her. He travelled in the dead of winter
toward the Russian border, where at
The Black Hills union. [volume] (Rapid City, Pennington County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1889-1904, 1897-07-16
millions Of Railway Tickets.

Last year there were issued in the.
United Kingdom a little over 911.0oO-
900 railway tickets, exclusive Of sea-
8 tickets and workmen's weekly
tickets. It Is not easy to realize such
q number. II they had to be carried
from London to Edinburgh In a mass
it would require n hundred railway
trucks, each carry ten tons. II they
were stacked ore upon another in ,
single column they would attain :
height5of i've hundred miles, and il laid
end to end In q line the line would be
one-third longer than the equator.
The Black Hills union. [volume] (Rapid City, Pennington County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1889-1904, 1897-07-16

last In a house OF a forlorn village,
ne found the genius all Germany today
seeks to honor. A woman of forty, but
bent and worn to sixty, the narrator
tells us, lay outside the cover of a poor
bed, the fever of pneumonia a pencil
n some margins of nespaper, a paper
bought through incredible sacrifices
b Christmas candle, the last fish TAX
en- from the river, the last drop of milk
from the COW. She was at once sur
rounded by comforts and brought back
from death, though not removed from
the home of her sufferings and triumph.
The Black Hills union. [volume] (Rapid City, Pennington County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1889-1904, 1897-07-16
TO FOUND A NEGRO CITY.
Colored Mans Scheme to Rehabilitate &
Georgia Boom Town.

SoAoA>A NA~i ~ 10 Nen0DlllC1C0 &
Georgia Boom Town.
One of the most novel negro COL
oaization schemes yet sprung has orig
mated right here in Atlanta. The
person at the head Of it is no other
IMAM the Well-known barber. politician
and military captain, Moses Bentley,
says the Atlanta Constitution. Bent
ley has his plans we'll under way and
he Will lot take his emigrants to any
taraWay place in Africa or Liberia. but
will settle them in Georgia and will do
so at a small cost TO those who fol-
low. Bentley's scheme is unique in the
fact that he will found a city exclu-
sively for the negro. He is to have the
entire government conducted by the
people of his W race-a negro mayor
and negro councilmen, negro police
men and, in fact, as there are to be no
white people living within the city
limits, every o%tficeholder will be q
negro. Then the laws are TO be the
work of negro mental labor. The
scheme Of Bentley's is doubly interest,"
Ing. as he contemplates resurrecting an
old Deserted Village" re-establishing
the city which once f1ourished nearly
loO years ago and which has literally
beer wiped off the face of the map.
This was Sunbury, the city which was
located on the SunDury river, at it's
mouth, IN Liberty county, and on the
s~eacoast. In the year 1900 Sunbury was
a south Georgia boom town" and 1t
quickly sprung into popularity, all the
wealthy planters of that section going
there and building beautiful homes. In
1870 S%unbury had some 10, 0 or IS
oOO inhabitants and was considered q
model city. Ships came into it's har-
Cor and it was regarded as a
clal center of no mean proportions. But
suddenly Sunbury began to decline. It
was sickly on account of malaria and
the people fled from the city as if a
plague had stricken the place. In a
lew years the spot was almost desert
ca. And now only three or four huts
mark the spot where once it flourish
ed. Bentley is to build his model ne
gro city on the site of old Sunbury. He
has a~scertained that while the white
people cannot stand the malaria Of that
district the miasma has no i'll effecs
upon negroes. The land is rich and
can be bought cheap. 1t can be made
a shipping point for the products OF
the country for many miles around.
Bentley has recorded all these points.
Yes" he said, II have my plans well
under way. l have written to the par
ties owning the land where old Sun
bury was once located and 1 expect to
hear from them in a few days. This
is no wildcat scheme. 1 neal bust
ness and already see the honey in
sight for the preliminary work. l have
had this in my mind for several years.
| wish to show the world what the ne
gro of the south can do toward self
government. I want to say right here
that we will have no worthless negroes
in u new city. They have got to be
industrious and Of good character. 1
expect to have a city of 5000 people in
a few years from now"
The Black Hills union. [volume] (Rapid City, Pennington County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1889-1904, 1897-07-16
A MONSTER BELL.
It's the Biggest In the World That IL
In Ringing Order,

It's the Biggest In the World That IL
in Ringing Order.
On the principle that a living dog is
better than a dead lion, a bell that is
whole should be better than one that
is cracked, ever though the latter be
the bigger of the two. For some time
past there has been a sort of dead-heat
between the two biggest bells in the
world, the n at the cathedral in Mos
COW, and the other at the unfinished
pagoda of Mengoon, a little north of
Mandalay. If the former was the big
ger of the two, it was cracked, and
therefore useless as a bell, while the
latter, though whole, had dragged it's
supports down till it rested on the
ground, and would not emit any sound.
Now, however, it has been
and can claim attention as the biggest
bell. in working order, in the world.
In 1896 the Burmese community de-
cided to have the bell raised, and en-
ployed the Irrawaddy Flotilla company.
limited, to do the work. The work has
been successfully accomplished. The
bell hangs on a large steel girder, with
a distributing girder on the top of it.
and the main girder rests on two large
iron columns, Is feet high, which
rest on concrete foundations. The bell
swings, with it's lower rim about three
feet from the ground. The weight is
about 68 tons, the circumference at the
base being 51A and at the top &c feet.
1t averages over a foot in thickness.
The bell itself is over II feet high, and
the shackle, which was intended for
logs of timber, about IL feet. The pin
in the shackle has a diameter of l6
inches. The bell was cast about the be-
ginning of the century by King Bodaw-
paya as an accompaniment to the huge
brick pagoda which he never finished.
The Black Hills union. [volume] (Rapid City, Pennington County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1889-1904, 1897-07-16

and forms of developments from the
tadpoles to big bullfrogs, whose shrill
notes kept me awake at night. Among
them was a small frog that the native
boy who brought it explained to me in
pantomime was very big, stretching his
arms wide apart, then became very
small. At the time I did not under
stand this, but kept watch upon the
four or five specimens. Two were
frogs about two inches in length when
I stretched them out, and they were
very lively; three others were tad
poles at least four times as bulky, with
enormous tails, legs twice the size of
those of the little frog, and in length
four and even more inches. Yet the
native who brought them told me that
they were old and young frogs. I ac-
cepted this as a frog story, but put
my frog with the others, and kept the
big tadpoles in a moist place. They
were vOracious little creatures. fed
them with raw meat from my hands
every day, and DON was on the best of
terms with them. Tadpoles usually
grow rapidly, and I watched M pets
carefully, but gradually it occurred to
me that they were growing smaller. I
believed such a thing was impossible.
but one day I took one of the tadpoles
and measured it, and found that it
had lost an inch. You may be sure I
watched the pets closely after this, and
was repaid by seeing them daily grow
snaller and smaller. In growing old
The Black Hills union. [volume] (Rapid City, Pennington County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1889-1904, 1897-07-16
Some Belated Snow Stories.

So heavy were the snow drifts in
Sargent county, S. D., that it is said
a farmer of Harlem township added
t~hirty-fve feet of tubing to his we'll
pipe in order to raise water above the
snow. A hotel proprietor, z. O. Pat
ter, a to build a barbed wire fence
around the roof of his barn to keep.
way stray stock, a horse having n
day crashed through the roof while
walking over what appeared to be a
s~noW-covered hill. Sidney Mullen
claims to have dug thirteen feet into
a drift to get at the top of his wind.
mill.
The Black Hills union. [volume] (Rapid City, Pennington County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1889-1904, 1897-07-16
SavaGery.

Civilization is doing all it can to get
the savag out of men, to refine and
beautify human nature. and to make
the body of a man a worthier tenement
for the divine spirit that created III
Rev. Waiter Galley.
The Black Hills union. [volume] (Rapid City, Pennington County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1889-1904, 1897-07-16
Japan,s Bad Coal.

Japan has a practically inexhaustible
supply Of coal, but It is not liked be-
cause It's combusticn produces dense
volumes Of smoke that makes It dis
agreeable in factories and on steamers.
The Black Hills union. [volume] (Rapid City, Pennington County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1889-1904, 1897-07-16

The proposed state monopoly Of the
tobacco trade in Switzerland would be
worth at least s2,0 0 900 a year to the
government.
The Black Hills union. [volume] (Rapid City, Pennington County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1889-1904, 1897-07-16
MYSTERY OF GENIUS.
SURELY JOHANNA AMBROSlNS
OF PRUSSIA is ONE,
For Years She Never Saw a News
A Slave to the Most Objectionable
Farm Drudgery-She Becomes a Poet
at 40-Emperor Pleased.

DIRTY years ago, in
a tiny village OF
Northern Prussia,
lived a liGie girl
named 10 h a n u a
Ambrosins. So poor
were her parents
that the child's era
die was rocked by
the waterfall, by a
curious native de-
-:1@ re l~o1 ~
The Somerset reporter., 1897-11-25
ClintOn-Canaan Case.

In the Kennebec Superior Court, last
week, the case of Deputy Sheriff George
r. McNally of Clinton, VS.. Joseph A
Call of Canaan, came up. Officer Nc
Nalley, it will be remembered, was the
man who arrested the notorious Foster
Nelson of Clinton, Oct. 16, 1896, on the
charge of stealing bushel of onions.
In the trial Wednesday, Plaintiff Nc
Nally said Call came to him and repre-
scented that harness had been stolen
from him and that there was good deal
of thieving in the vicinity of Pittsfield,
where defendent lived, and also in Ca
naan and Skowhegan and if the plaintiff
would ferret out the thieves and bring
them to justice, defendent would give
him S25. The plaintiff says that through
his fundamentally the harness and a
large amount of other property was re-
covered, and the thief, Foster Nelson of
Clinton, was apprehended, convicted
and sent to State prison for six years.
The defendent said that the contract
he entered into with the plaintiff was
that he, the plaintiff, would catch the
thieves in the act of thieying, and that
he, the defendent, should not be known
in the case, because he feared that his
buildings might be burned by the thieves
if he were known as taking any part in
the matter; and that if plaintiff carried
out this contract he would give him
$25. He says plaintiff disclosed de
fendent as being in the case, contrary to
contract. He also says that the thief
was apprehended and brought to justice
through the efforts of Somerset county
officers, and not plaintiff.
The defendent also claimed that as
the plaintiff was deputy sheriff, it was
his duty to do whatever he did in appre-
bending ard bringing to justice the
criminals, and that such contract as
claimed by the plaintiff would be against
public policy and without consideration,
aud an action for its enforcement could
not be maintained A verdict was soon
returned for the plaintiff for So 81.
The case will go to the law court on
exceptions.