The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-05-05

| Sleepers lie. Over the solitary tumulus
 the purple basque flower creeps in volup | tuous tenderness, strangely recalling the
 old English tradition that this anemont 1 pulsatilla grows only where Danish blood l has been split.
 The calling of these coriscos thunder | stones is but a Brazilian variant of siml- | lar beliefs which are current in all lands The Bretons think that they vibrate al l every clap of thunder; Russian peasants | believe them to be arrows of thunder and transmit them to their children as i precious heirlooms; the Romans called them ceraunia from the Greek word for | thunder. the Germans speak of them as donnerkeile, and in Denmark they are known as tordensteen; ancient Andalusia has the same significance in its piedras de rayo and quaint Japan still cherishes it's
 rai-fuseki-no-rui. Even the negroes of
 Soudan look upon these stones as bolts
 lauched from heaven by "Sango,'' the God of thunder, and fashion them into an1u-
 lets supposedly endowed with protective powers, charmed messengers from the supernatural
 | Few persons possess an imagination that cannot be satiateds by a perusal of Beck | ford's ''Vathek7 or 8autiers "A Night l With Cleopatra These are to be sure
 but creations of fancy yet I oI ne that one can closely approximate the realiza-
  During the height of the fevt season 1t
 Is almost fatal for a foreign r to spend a night in the city, but l was rash enough. to make the attempt in order to see Sarah Bernhardt in Cleopatra, which performance she gave in the month of February.
 As I quilted the Metropolitan train to take the barea for Rio de Janeiro the day was brilliant with sunshine and the
 blue waters of the bay smiled beneath
 bluer sky. Lazy dophins foundered in aquatic dalliance amid the dimpled waves, but few craft were moving and the still
 ness of a New England Sabbath seemed to rest upon the traffic of the bay.
 reveled in the delicious Influence of the hour and vista for behind me, as the shifting prospect ot some retreatng
 dream, rose the purple mountains, their plnnacles of saffron hue and gilded glory softened by the dioramic haze which per petually compasses them about beneath me laughed the shimmering crest of the saphhire- tinted pillow; and far beyond gleamed the multipaned windows and rich ly mullioned oriels of Nictheroy' s churches and palaces, flashing and far ing in proud scintillation and finging back with glinting glee the molten flood of the setting sun as they grew superbly diaphanous, every mullion and cross-bar limnng it's outline in distinct and de- tailed coniguration athwart each fulgent arc and flaming disc, while, underlying the cincture of lambent fire, stretched the city's white beaches as low sweeps of shining and unsullied snow. l gazed, l marveled I dreamed and spontaneously my entranced brain fashioned this trib- ute to the jewel that enthralled my eye: Oh, Nictheroy, divinely fair.
 What mem ries round me chamber As I recall thy slumb'ring bays Of lazuli and amber
 Oh, Hidden Waters" rhythmic name, Thou child of Indian christning; With manarets and gilded spires In sun-kissed vistas glistning Thy palm-environed esplanades And fiower-enrobed sobrados, 9s Fit only for dreamand queen;
 Doces sonhos dourados.
 Iris not for these, O city fair,
 That lies beyond the waters,
 The rapt soul pants unspeakably;
 For thou hast dove-eyed daughters. + was dusk when I landed at Rio de lsJaneiro but all day long the Capital Fed eraI. as the city Is often called, had lang gulshed beneath the fierce rays of a DltfileSS sun Wn1cH 1efl dS dff tdfHtSl ol it's cruel incineration a mass of baking bricks and glowing masonry exhaling d radiat ton the temperature of which was little less than that of the ember. The marrow compass of the Ouvidor, the prin- cipal shopping street, abaze with it's display of jewery, silks and costly fab rics. swarmed with a throng of swelter- ling huiflanity and into it's plethoric crush the Oufanda, Ourives and other intersect- ing thoroughfares disgorged their contri- buttons of human discorfiture. The juno breasted denizens of the Black Horse Square and absolute frequenters of the
 parting breath and exhausted vitality in
 the bisected doorways of their filth rocking habitations, while flea% scourged
 canines, with protruding tongue and de-
 spairing glances, sought feeble relief from the appalling heat in the reeking siuces
 of the squallid gutters, where naked chill
 dren of every hue and shade widowed in
 slime, sludge and corruption. over the
 huge stone blocks of the execrably paved
 Uruguayana rumhled the ponderous carne
 verde vans with their cargoes of semi putrid meat, and the stench of the "Mer- cado do Peize' (fsh market was insuf-
 ferable to all save native olefactories. Along the caes bevies of half nude car within the shadow of the tall trapiches and armazens of decaying fruit, greasing their brawny, sun biistered arms and lay ins their feet in the tepid water of the