Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1900-03-26
EARTH IS GETTING SMALLER,
At Least It's Peoples Are Coming Closer
 Together Every Day.

Together Every Day.
 From the St. Louis Globe-Democrat One of the wonders of this marvellous age is the rapidity with which the re- mote quarters of the earth are being brought close together. According to the Russian minister of railroad, when Russia's new trans-Siberian railroad is finished the trip around the world can be made in thirty-three days. When Jules VefEe, just twenty-five years ago, sent the fictitious Phineas Fogg around the world in eighty days this exploit was deemed to be as near the absolutely impossible as at one time Puck's feat was of putting 8 girGle round about the earth in forty min- utes. :" Two American women travel ing in opposite directions, beat Fogg's mythical exploit few years ago. When the Russian railroad is built, however, the record of their journeys will, in the comparison, seem like the Old stage coach and sailing vessel trav- els do today. With what incredulity would the navigators of a century ago have looked at the forthcoming Rus sian time table. The remnant of the fleet with which Magellan left San Lu- car, in Spain, in 1519, returned to that port in 1922. Three years, lacking two weeks, were required for the circum- navigation of the earth. The first of the British world eircIers, Drake, who sailed hali century later, was as long 9zsj L sft.-er 1. J:~+o T the journey century later than Drake, was two years ten months on the yoy- age. n the century and half be- tween Magellan and Cook the time of the world circuit has been shortened in only an imperceptibe degree. There had been but little improvement in the speed of the ocean vessels since the days when 0dysseus in his shallop, af ter the Trojan war, started on his re- turn to Ithiea. No improvement of consequence, indeed, was made until the days when steam began to be ap- piled to ocean navigation and that was at such comparatively recent date that on May 24, 18f9, the day on which Victoria was born, the first steamboat which ever crossed the Atlantic start ed, leaving Savannah for Liverpool, and taking twenty-six days to make the voyage, which would now bs made In less than six
 sSs
 Singing in the opera and cultivatinx farm are about as widely different from each other as two occupations can well be. Perhaps this is the very req son why Mademoiselle CalYe, the great prtma donna, retires eyeery summer to spend her vacation on a farm among the CeVennes, a chain Of mountains in southern France. The famous singer, says the Philadelphia Post, was very i'll and nervous when she went to the Cevennes, but tbls free, open air life and vigorous exercise soon restored her to the most robust health, and when friends asked her the secret of her cure, she answers, Spades and pota- toes. Last summer she went into her kitchen garden and cared for her own vegetables. No one was allowed to touch them, and the results were far better than when her gardener cared for the things. Mademoiselle CaIve wore short skirt of blue jeans, sabots, and linen shirtwaist. She spaded and hood and watered her vegetables day after day, and proudly sent gifts of the finest fruits of her 1abors to friends iD PariR.