The age-herald., 1900-12-05
IN HOTEL LORBIES
 AND ELSEWHERE

| of any sort; thou wilt quarrel and be in danger of law; females are in a great dan- l ger of being imposed upon, and must be | very careful of the opposite sex, and not 1 put any faith in promises
 "A child born on this day will have a diversity of fortune, sometimes very sue cessful, and then suddenly it will lose all and be in poverty; if a female, she will | conduct herself very carelessly, and be led | into trouble in early life''
 Astrologer Raphaers prophecies for Thursday, December 6, 1900:
 Avoid superiors, and postpone thy busi- ness"
 Thou hast a very unfortunate birthday | and thy money and business will go to waste; thou wilt also travel and change, and misfortune will overtake thee; keep myself very quiet.'
 "A child born on this day will be very unfortunate, careless and useless, and nearly always in trouble: if a female, liable to sorrow in early life"
 |
 Had Thomas Carlyle lived until this | Tuesday, December 1, 1900 he would have been hundred and five years old" said | traveller in a hotel lobby last night "Dys- ] peptic, hard-worker and unhappy man as he was, he lived some four score and six years; and this is the anniversary of that extraordinary mans birth. It was said of | him that he wrote many volumes in a sort | of pleading for silence--nillions of words | for Silence forsoothl On this point, there | is a story I heard university professor in | Edinburgh relate a few years ago, and which is possibly more or less familiar to | some literary folk nowadays. Tennyson | called on Carlyle one night after supper; l they were faithful admirers of one an other, and personally very closely attached. | The two illustrious men sat in front of 1 the fire and burned innumerable pipes of l tobacco. So they sat for hours, smoking | and speaking never a word, each great soul dreaming dream of good and minglng all the world with the other one there by the ] Carlyle ftreside. Along towards midnight l Tehnyson. thin and lank, knocked the ashes out of his last pipe, blew a puff of breath | through the stem, and slowly rising to his feet he stretched himself. carlyse, thin and l little understood the movement and knock | ing out the ashes of his own pipe, he too arose and stretched himself Tennyson l walked into the entrance hall, closely fol- ] lowed by Carlyle. and took down his great | coat, which he held out to Carlyle opened | wide, with the warm lining towards him self. Carlyle took>the coat, and helped Ten nyson into it, and then for the first time 1 was the silence broken between those two | simple great ones, now gone for ever by. | Tennyson spoke in the Scotch brogue, of l which he was master:
 IA, Tammas, we've had gron nicht.'
 "Aye, Alfred, aye m lahddie-gron- gron! Com agen richt sn, lahddie!
 And thus parted the two most famous masters of the pen living in the world; and those were their only words Those men didn't need to gabble"
 "One perfect afternoon I left Carlisle for | Carlyle's birthplace" continued the trav- eler meditativey. Carlisle you know is in England, is perhaps the most famous of the border towns, and Carlyle's bfrth- place is about twelve miles from Carlisle, | at Ecclefechan in Scotland, hard by Lock- erbie. The house in which the Sage of Chelsea was born Is small two-story l stone structure the crossing of the two roads which are called the streets of Ecclefechan Partly cutting the house in two is a yp passageway or open court for wagons and beasts. The house is like hundreds of others of the seventeenth and I CA Scotland, and is quite unpretentions. At | the time of my visit the room, upstairs in the north end of the house, in which Car lyle was born, was open to visitors. To me 1t was holy place, and I entered it as reverently as I would have approached l a sanctuary.
 | Two young women, very bonnie and buxom, were in charge and they did chatter too much-didnt have the impertinence to | try to inform to Carlyle's identity. His favorite freside easy chair, brought | down from Chelsea, was drawn up before the neat fire that burned brightly, and I 1 was asked to sit where he sat and write | a line two. Three of his cherished old tobacco pipes, brown through long years of smoking, rested the high mantel-piece, and 1 was suffered to draw list yin wee whiff' for my dreams. Then I was led to the corner of the low-ceiled room and there l stood uncovered upon the identical spot of earth whereon Thomas Carlyle was born December 4, 1795
 
 '"rhe lassies followed me out of Carlyle's birthroom into their own little parlor, and there I received some personal informa tion whilst I drank mine ale. The lassies, ye ken, were farmers daughters, appointed | to be caretakerS, and they were very hap py. One of them was to be married within a fortnight, and even as he old me so with bushes, her guid mon entered with grin and grunt. This had the effect of throw | ing me with the other lassie, and the fun | we had there in the parlor of the birth house of Thomas Carlyle was abundant and happy. More ale was ordered for the guid and me and tea and cakes for | tho lo n loc self Ir,4 ...l ] up, what I gave the pair of lovers for 0 wedding present would keep a reputa ble man for month.
 Backward from the Carlyle birthhouse a short distance is the little churchyard in which sleeps Thomas Carlyle forever. Whther went alone finding my own way | over the grass and by the stones At the