Woodruff County news., 1901-11-30


 all the cotsAtry. Farmers, through such culture, have learned the at- tributes of soils and found out that almost every field has it's peculiar preferences. Lands have their choice as to which product they will bear. Marshy lowlands touched by the blow rise and wiring out their wet locks i'll the trenches. Islands born down on the coast of Peru and Bo- Ivia are transported to our fields and make our vegetables leap. Highways, by this blow, are changed from boggy sloughs into roads like the Roman Appian way. Fields go through bloodless revolutions until there the farmhouse stands. In summer honey suckles chamber over the trellises. On one side there stands a garden, which is only farm condensed. On the other side there is a stretch of mead ow land with thick grass, and, as the wind breathes over it, it looks like the deep green ocean waves. There goes a brook, tarrying long in its windings, as if loath to leave the spot where the reeds sing and the cattle stand at monday under the shadow of the weeping willows. In winter the sled comes through the cracking snow, with huge logs from the woods, and the barn floor quakes under the thumpings of the fail or the deafening buzz of the thrashing machine. Horses stand beneath mow poles bending under loads of hay and whinny to the well-flled oat bins. Comfort laughs at the wind rattling the sashes and clicking the icicles from the caves.
 Praise God for the great harvests that have been reaped this last year! Some of them, injured by drought or insects or freshets, were not as bountiful as usual, others far in ex- cess of what have ever before been gathered, while higher prices will help make up for any decreased sup ply. Sure signs of agricultural pros perity we have in the fact that cat tie and horses and sheep and swine and all farm animals have during the last two years increased in value. Twenty million swine slaughtered this last year, and yet so many hogs left. Enormous paying off of farm mortgages have spoiled the old speeches of the calamity howlers. If the ancients in their festivals pre- sented their rejoicings before Ceres, the goddess of corn and tillage, shall we neglect to rejoice in the pres ence of the great God now? From Atlantic to Pacific let the American nation celebrate the victories of the blow.
 I come next to speak of the con quests of the American hammer. It's iron arm has fought it's way down from the beginning to the present. Under it's swing the city of Enoch rose and the foundry of Tubal Cain resounded and the ark foated on the deluge. At it's clang ancient tenn ples spread their magnifcence and chariots rushed out fit for the bat tie. Its iron fist smote the marble of Paros, and it rose in sculptured Minervas and struck the Pentelican mines until from them a Parthenon was reared winter than a palace of ice and pure as an angels dream. Damascus and Jerusalem and Rome and Venice and Paris and London and Philadelphia and New York and Washington are but the long pro- tracted echoes of the hammer. Un- der the hammer everywhere dwell ings have gone up, ornate and lux urious. Schoolhouses, lyceums, hos pitals and asylums have added addi- tional glory to the enterprise as well as the beneficence of the American people, Vast public works have been constructed, bridges have been built over rivers and tunnels dug under our mountains, and churches of matchless beauty have gone up for Him who had not where to lay His head, and the old theory is exploded that because Christ was born in a manager we must always worship Him in barn.
 Railroads of fabulous length have been completed, over which western trains rush past the swift-footed deer, making the frightened birds to dart into the heavens at the cough of the smoke pipes and the savage yell of the steam whistle In hot haste our national industry advances, her breath the air of 10000 furnaces, her song the voice of uncounted fac tories, her footstep the flash of wheel buckets and the tread of the cha if and the StamD of fOundrieS Talk about antideluvian longevity. I think the average of human life is more now than it ever was. Through mechanical facilities men work so much faster and accomplish so much more in lifetime that man can a affnrd tn die at 40 as well as one of