The age-herald., 1900-08-14
IN HOTEL LOBBTES
 AND ELSEWHERE

tunate in business, and had better stay in employ"
 Astrologer RaphaeIs prophecies for Wednesday, August 15, 1900:
 Buy, ask favors. seek work"
 Success will attend thy endeavors and thy money and business will increase; those in employ will get promoted
 "A child born on this day will be for tunate whether in employ or in business for itself, and will rise in life.
 
 The glory of the summer is now in it's most splendid state, and it's luxurianee is above the power of pencil or brush to paint. In wood, field, garden, hill and valley it is the high noontime of natures labor of re- creation and replenishment, and the earth riots in flower and fruit and green garnish- ment. Grass and weeds, vines and wild flowers were never so abundant and luxuri- ant; even crowding busy streets of the city. Some sections of the busiest lines of railway are crowded so closely by tall, brilliantly green and towering weeds that they act almost as brooms to sweep the sides of cars, and the ballasted beds of the roadway have taken on the semblance of orderly lawns looking along which one sees naught in the rivers of ripping green save the furnished bands of steel that sl..ne like polished silver in the August sunshine. Happily the trackmen have been wholly unable to cope with nature in the unexampled profusion of tropical abund- ance grass and weeds, vines and flowers, seem to have successfully defied the de- spelling hand of practical utility, and the result is that the hideous ugiiness of rail- way lines has been for the moment hidden under summers incomparably beautiful robes of green
 But the "secton hands" are laborng through the livelong day to clear the tracks of attractiveness, and long before frostfall the Hallway lines will be bare of everything save hideous ugIness. One of the great railway systems" used to be governed by a rule which seemed to call for the killing of everything green in veg citation within fifty feet of the line, and probably efforts are still being made to enforce that rule; but fortunately this sum- mer vegetation has been too abundant even for railway systems" to destroy Here in the South there seems to be a rooted ob- jection to anything green taking root on the railway rights of way Perhaps that is ''business;' possibly it is Philistinism.
 These fruitfng summer days prove this year to be a bad fruit year." The trees are breaking down-with fruit. Especially is this true of apples and peaches, the prin- cipal products of the orchards heredbouts In the course of a hundred mile railway journey through the best fruit section of Alabama, not one of the hundreds of farms passed was unmarked by apple and peach trees broken and breaking under the burden of the enormous growth of fruit thereby proving that there is a more prodigal abun- dance of fruit this summer than in any other year since the large and older trees began to bear. There is probably enough fruit in DeKalb and St. Clair counties to supply the whole State of Alabama until well into September
 And in that wide and fertile section be- tween Birmingham and Chattanooga, dis tance of 140 miles and width of twenty or thirty miles for much of the way, the corn crops are extraordinary in their richness and abundance, perhaps never before bet ter, and the cotton could not conceivably be better for that splendidly rich territory It is really worth ones while and money to go to Chattanooga and back just to see the orchards and fields.
 Recently there was published in this newspaper extremely interesting story concerning the Confederate dead who are buried at Madison, Wisconsin, special refer ence being had to the First Alabama Regi- ment. The publication attracted the atten- ton of Colonel l. c. w. Steedman the for mer distinguished colonel of the First Ala bama, and he has written some interesting facts regarding the regiment to his kins- man. Captain w. c. Ward of Birmingham. Colonel Steedman is at the moment at Wequetonsng. Michigan.
 "The morality amongst the prisoners at l Madison seems to have been abnormally | high" Colonel Steedman writes; but I l have never heard any cruelty or neglect at | tributed to the authorities in charge of 1 them. An outline history of the regiment l up to the date of the surrender at Island | Ten, will throw some light upon the causes of the great mortality.
 "rhe First Alabama was organized at Barrancas Barracks, Pensacola Bay, in l February 1S61 It served there nearly one year. It was enlisted for one year. Before
 
 the end of the year I was ordered to re- enlist the regiment for the durati of the 1 war. l did so. The new regiment num- | bered full one thousand men, and with 1 Sbout three hundred men whose terms of l service (of one year) had not yet expired l the First Alabama numbered thirteen hum l dred men when ordered to Island Ten, about March l, 1862. Warm weather had I begun in Pensacola, and we were ordered l to send our heavy clothing home and march lightly clad as we could Arrived at our destination, we had no tents. few | camp utensils or conveniences even for the | toughest soldier life. The great mass of the I regiment were very young men who had l never had measles, humps or whooping | cough and kindred diseases. During the l six weeks of the siege of Island Ten all 1 these diseases broke out among us. The weather was cold, wet and rainy, and our