The age-herald., 1902-03-08
Democratic Leaders of Today Talk the Talk of a Hundred Years Apo.

CTS of coal and iron, they may sit down in glee and pat JuJba-"Juba dis and tuba da, and Hanna killed the yaller catn-the cat of n-progressveness!
 
 In view of the honor which the War Department has conferred upon the late famous Selmian, Capt Marion B. Saffold of the United States army who was kill ed in the Philippines, the honor being the naming one of the batteries of defense at San Francisco Battery Saffold, 1t is of interest to note that a bill granting a pension to his mother will probably be passed by Congress this session. The bill was introduced by Congressman Bank head, and it provides that the Secretary of the Interior be. and is hereby, author ized and directed to place on the pension roll subject to the provisions and llmi- tations of the pension laws. the name of Mary D. Saffold. mother of the late Capt. Marion B. Saffoid, late of the Thirteenth Regiment of United States Infantry. and pay her a pension at the rate of thirty dollars per month.
 Professor Saffod of the Alabama Uni- versity and MT. P. B. Saffold, a lawyer of San Francisco, are brothers of the sol- dier who died on the firing line.
 Full of humanity himself, a recipro- eating people delighted to honor him." said Congressman Wiley of Alabama in paying a noble tribute in the House to the late Congressman Burke of Texas. Thrice elected to Congress. he served his constituency faithfully and we'll His life filled the measure of lofty aspiration, of a high and honorable ambition. His influence will work on silently for good long after we have passed away. The virtues of such a good man are the com mon heritage of us all His bones are inferred in the soil of his adopted state, but Alabama, loving him as a son and still claiming him as her own, craves per- mission to drop a tear upon his grave and to bring here as tender tribute, the white flowers of her abiding love.'
 ',The water in me bath was so biarsted muddy this morning had to flag me toes to find out where my feet were, don't you know" said an Englishman in a Washington hotel today.
 That was an odd way of saying that the water now served to the public by the Washington water works is densely dark and to the human eye impenetrable, and the Englishman stated an outrageous condition far too mildly. Nobody who is not in Washington at the present moment can have any conception of the loathe- some filthiness of the water used in the houses through the pipes of the water works.
 So filthy is the water that woman with the whitest hands cannot see them a quarter of an inch below the surface of the dark liquid in her bedroom handbasin. Except for slight oi1iness, the water is precisely of the appearance of chocolate it is drunk without cream. It looks in bathtub like liquid mud, and mud it really is.
 The water in Washington is never clear at any time. When this correspondent ar rived here from Birmingham the first of December, he was shown to his private room in the hotel, and there discovered his handbasin half filled with filthy wa ter. There was a vigorous. maybe wicked, protest, to which the servant in attend ance responded by saying, That's the way the water always is, 'cept it's blacl1er!'
 The water is obtained from the Potomac river, twenty and odd miles above the city, and the cause of 1t being a little filthier at present than 1t Is ordinarily is the immense flood in the river. When the flood subsidies the water will be somewhat less filthy, but foul 1t will continue to be. And there is no immediate hope of im- proved conditions
 Congress dallies in perverse indiffer- ence; it will not provide water fit for anything but hog-wallows, and there is no quadruped swine to wallow. If Con- gress worked out the shortest possible method of cleansing 1t would require three years from this date to make the public water supply less Ioathsome. For good water Congress offers not even the remotest possibility; and so the capital of the country Is In a much worse condi- tion as to water supply, particularly for drinking and other household purposes, than is the most unclean mining camp in the Birmingham district! And yet proper Altering plants for Washington would cost less than third of a million dollars, while a sum less than Birmingham's city debt would provide the nations city with good water in great abundance.
 The assessed taxable values of Wash ington are $175 900, 900, which Is about equal to the government realty here, and the city debt is about 5000, 900. How pitt fully weak and incompetent Congress is in some things
 LUCIEN JULIEN WALKER.