The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-08-19
EXTENSIVE WHIMS.
Some That Cost Fortunes-Bills of
 Luck That Brought Millions.

Luck That Brought Millions.
 "The Sultan presents his complements to the engineer in charge and wishes him to open the bridge in course of erection in Constantinople in order to let a ship from the backyard pass through at once."
 When this message was delivered into the hands of the contractor respon- siole for the construction of the bridge he was thunder-struck, says London Answers. He had been working on the bridge day and night, and when the or ders for it's opening came from the Sul- tan it was not half finished.
 He approached the Ministers of Ma rine and Finance and said it was im- possible to obey his Majestys com mand, as he would have to pull every thing down, and it would take months to replace the seaffolding and pile driving machines.
 Tt cannot be helped" replied the ministers. If the Sultan says the bridge must be operied it must be done, or we shall loseRout places, if not our heads.''
 So the bridge was opened, and the ship came out of the backyard at a cost of over five hundred thousand dol lars. It afterward transpired that the Sultan had found his infant son cry ing bitterly in the harein because he could not see the flag hoisted on his particular ship from the nursery win dows.
 To humor the child's caprice the Sul- tan ordered the bridge to be opened at once and large ironclad to be brought out of the backyard and moored in front of Dolmabagtoheh. This no doubt pleased the boy, but it caused enormous inconvenience to the people of Constantinople, to say nothing of the waste of money which had indirect ly come out of their pockets.
 The state of Massachusetts lost three million dollars because a man living in Boston left his window open over night. He was silk grower, and in the hope of producing a new brand of silk he ex- perimented with some gipsy moths that had been sent to him from France.
 He left the moths under a glass shade by an open window one night, and next morning they had all disap- peared. The shade had been over turned and the draft blew the moths into the street
 Eighteen months later Massachusetts was swarming with gipsy moths and they ate the leaves off every tree and bush for miles around. The damage done in two years by the insects totaled three million dollars, and the state au- thorities spent another seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars trying to ex- terminate the pests.
 One of the worst famines ever known in lower Egypt was caused by couple of John Bulls gunboats. The vessels went up into the marshes beyond Khartum to capture slave traders,
 The slavors, who had made up their minds not to be caught easily, made bold bid for freedom by cutting chan nels through the mass of vegetation which lined the main stream of the Nile.
 The majority of them escaped in this way, but the channels they cut in their anxiety to get away brought ruin and famine to lower Egypt. The current carried the masses of loose vegetation down the river, and so completely blocked it that the Nile flood failed.
 United States Senator George L. Fur her of Washington lost his fortune and poverty stared him in the face. Turner was lawyer, and one day a party of miners, we'll known to him, who had struck a lode up in British America, came into his office and asked him to make out some papers for them.
 We can't pay you cash for your ser vices, MT. Turner" said one of the par ty, after their business had been tram sacted, but we will give you some stock and call it square,"
 At first Turner refused to take the stock, as his clients were old friends of his and he preferred to do the work for nothing, but on being pressed he took the certificates and tucked them away in his safe.
 Two years later Senator Turner was a millionaire through these mining shares, and the mine that brought him the money and made the fortune of his friends is the famous Le Roi, one of the i richest in the west.
 Two tourists camped on the ridge of | a mountain lake near Como. a mining