The age-herald., 1900-07-06

o'clock in the afternoon"
 Do not be extravagant and waste thy 1 money on useless ornaments for thou wilt
 require it in thy business, which will need
 pushing"
 "A child born on this day will be steady
 and persevering, and by these means will 1 make living.
 "If female, she will get a husband 1 fond of drink"
 This is Old Midsummer Day; creation l of poetic fancy in the time when England
 was merrie and 'every rood maintained 1 it's man." It was national harvest time De- l fore free trade made England a manufac- l turing country, and the richest of all lands l July is the most delightful month in that l beautiful land. For brightness, animation
 gaiety, and beauty the winding reaches of | the upper Thames on July Sunday are unequalled in the world!
 Taxed to tell thoughtfully and tersely his truthful tale of threshing the wheat he had harvested in South Carolina Con- | gressman Bankhead declared in the hot test hour of yesternoon that from meas ured acre he harvested, threshed and had
 measured by disinterested experts sixty full bushels of wheat! When I arrived at Sans Souci, the home of my daughter, Mrs. Perry, the grain was ripe for the
 reaper, and I fell to work with more zest than 1 used to experience when as boy ploughman 1 drove my one-mule team
 afield."
 The nut brown Congressman sighed rest
 fully, as he looked out upon the hot white
 glare in the dirtiest streets in the world.
 And 'homeward the ploughman plods
 his weary way, leaving the world to dark ness and to me- " misquoted the dreaming
 slave of the graphite pencil, as he thought
 of the far hills, blue and cool, and the
 far fields bright and perfumed of flowers.
 T gathered six hundred bushels of wheat from the fields of Sans Souc,'' said the
 distinguished Congressman from the Sixth
 district, as he ate piece of pie and drunk glass of sweetmilk "It was hard work,
 but I kept at the harvesting steadily, and
 I am free to say that it afforded me very
 great pleasure My work in the Sans Souci fields began on the day after my arrival
 from Washington, June 1S and it was fin ished July 3. So I had quite spell of it.
 Colonel Bankheads temporary engage ment at Sans Souci evidently agreed with
 him, for he is Drowned to swarthiness and is in perfect health and the best of good spirits.
 It would now appear that we are entering upon a harvest time for doctors and drug
 gists, and, while the general public has almost an affectionate regard for the ma
 terial welfare of those two worthy classes
 of citizens, it behooves every one to be ex-
 tremely careful of health. The apparent passing of the long period-thirty-siX days of rain, followed by cloudless days and nights of extreme heat, is certain to result in extraordinary sickness. The growth of vegetation is excessively rank, and the soil
 is completely saturated with water. Wet
 weather ponds and pools stand even on the hilltops, and down every hillside course wet-weather streams. The whitening and decay of vegetation and the drying of ponds pools and streams, influenced by hot sunshine, must inevitably result in the
 throwing off of a great amount of mias- matic poison. Fevers of all sorts will rage, and in the low and more fertile districts
 the atmosphere will be so charged with chills that you can almost cut 'em with a knife" as the old phrase runs. Most like ly, and by strange working of natural laws the greatest danger will be in fruits. All fruit crops are abundant this season, but the good quality has been destroyed by the rains. Peaches and melons, for ex- amples, are almost tasteless.
 To planters farmers, and gardeners the most trying time is come. This is especi- ally true of cotton-growers. The cotton bac al the rainy season; but faster have grown the common weeds and grasses, resulting in the cotton running up" without branch ! ing. The task now is to clean the crop. , There isn't probably clean field of cotton in Alabama. In much of the cotton dis trict the. land cannot be worked until after a week or two of sunshine Many fields have been under ten feet of water. One man in Montgomery County has five hun dred acres in cotton, and every acre bad, as he stated in Birmingham day or two ago. The state of Alabama has one farm of four hundred acres, all of which has | been under the flood. The work of cleaning away the grass and weeds must of necessi- ty be very slow, in order to save the cotton from destruction by the man with the hoe. In West Alabama, as a man from that district stated yesterday, the cotton-grow- CTS do not expect more than forty per cent ' of average crop. Still there is time to
 make a fair average crop throughout the | cotton belt
 |
 The watermelon traffic westward bound l is at its heaviest just now The Louisville | and Nashville Railroad is moving some | thing like d hundred cars of melons a day | Each car carries from 800 to 1000 melons
 So one line of Birmingham railroad is con- | veying to the thirsty west about one
 hundred thousand succulent melons every | twenty-four hours. This class of freight is | more burdensome to railroads than any l other commodity. It must be fast and
 is certainly heavy" An expert engineer
 like Harry Glenn of the Louisville and I Nashville will assure you and give ample |. proof, that ton of watermelons is heavier | than ton of anything else; and proud 1 and sensitive engine resents the task of ]. pulling a train of what ignorant persons