The Newtown bee., 1904-06-03
on visited friends here, Decoration
 O
THE SCHOOLMASTER ABROAD.
MAKES OBSERVATIONS ON SOME ITEMS
 IN THE BEE OF MAY 20.

It isn't nice to be critical, but two | or three little items in THE BEE of
 May 20 seem to warrant a word or
 two. The Oxford correspondent speaks
 of Rockers Hill." Tradition hath it
 that, years and years ago, there was a stone house on that hill and the h.
 dlans called it ''rock house," hence the name Rock House hill. In ordi- nary conversation the words are ShOrt- ened, but there is no known reason for calling the old hill Rockers" No one named Rockers ever owned it or any part of it and the people living on it don't rock around more than oth- CT people.
 T. 5. Gold, formerly secretary of the board of agriculture, tells of hill up in his section that was given the peculiar name of Towerdale. The local inhabitants call it Tarfadiddle. He tells of a family living in the neigh borhood named O'Caine. Plural they were O'Caines. The neighbors made the name .O'Kins, (accent on the O), and more ~than one were O'Ktnses. The orthography of the name was not changed to suit the local vernacular. I note also that your Monroe correspond ent speaks of a locality as Zoar Bridge. There is bridge long known as Huntington bridge" between the towns of Derby and Huntington, but the same correspondent would hardly speak of visitor from either Derby or Shelton as coming from Huntington bridge. Zoar Bridge was originally built to accommodate the people of Zoar, a locality in Newtown. When there was a combined postoffice and grog shop at one end of it, the former called Zoar Bridge, there was reason for giving the locality that name, but 1t is obsolete now,. quite as side of the river and Punkup for the east side, as they were known 50 years ago.
 One more suggestion as it refers to a state of Connecticut report that we are all interested in. We are told that there is schoolhouse somewhere with a stove pipe running up through the hole in the ceiling so big that the soot and smoke comes back into the school room. We are told that "We are all known to sin as the sparks are to fly upwards" and big hole around a stove pipe might, and undoubtedly would, let wasteful amount of heat up through it. In the meantime, if the soot and smoke got out of the stove pipe above the ceiling, the sooner it got down in sight the better.
 That schOOlhOuSe would be destroyed by fire as soon as that SOOt and smoke was constantly pouring into the attic, and unless the f1ue can be repaired and got to have little draft to it, the hole around the pipe ought t5 be en- larged at once.
 It is bad enough just now to learn that we have public statute that al- lows men of the Atwood stamp to get rich making trouble for innocent peo- pie, without having ''pub. doco." tell us of stove pipes that the Sbot and smoke come down on the outside of, instead of staying inside, the smoke going up and the soOt falling down, in legitimate way.
 l read story few days ago of an old Scotch divine that, in order to im- press his hearers, sometimes made things little strong. Hissexton men, tioned that the people didn't believe all his statements, and the parSon told him to say ''ahem" when he thought statement was not likely to be accept ed. One day the old man was telling the Samson and foxes story and said the foxes in those days had tails 20 feet long. "Ahem" coughed the sexton. "I may be wrong there" said the parson, "they were but 15 feet long," ''Hem," came again. The par son hesitated, "Well, we'll say 10 feet long," "Ahem," louder than ever