“Through an opening the men swarm through to the left! The bravest hurry on in advance. Five or six hang back till their leader roughly grabs them and kicks them through the hedge opening. There must have been 800 rifles or more! A withering fire tells us that the enemy has discovered our movements. But we return his fire as we run. Many of our men fall. But, lo! presently the enemy’s fire begins to dwindle and soon dies down almost completely. There, what is that? In the midst of the enemy’s line of fire a tremendous pillar of smoke.
We saw how the French were blown yards high. A terrible thunderclap reaches our ears. Hurrah! Our artillery!
“Shell after shell buries itself, as if measured with extraordinary exactitude in the very midst of the French infantry lines. We follow this up with our own fast rifle fire.
“Now we charge forward to where we can plainly see their faces. The panic of the enemy was indescribable. Our fellows mow them down. And now a new hail of shrapnel beats down upon them. Again the red breeches surge back in wild flight. We fire on the retreating enemy in a cornfield beyond. Many Frenchmen can be seen falling in the gold cornfield beyond, never to rise again.”
Works Sixty Years on Propeller.
At the age of seventy-four years, James Henry Miller, of Albany, Ore., believes that the ambition of a lifetime is about to be realized. Sixty years ago, when he first saw a river boat with a stern propeller, Miller made up his mind to construct a propeller which would not strike the water with such resistance. He says that his invention, now virtually completed, will revolutionize river and ocean navigation throughout the world.
The propeller has eight blades, each six feet long and twelve inches wide, and each working on ratchets, so that the edge of the blade strikes the water as it enters, falls into propelling position while in deepest water, and continues to adjust itself as the wheel turns, so that it emerges from the water edge first. The flat side of the blade never strikes the water. As the wheel turns, the blades enter and leave the water with as little resistance as a feathered oar.
New Farming in South.
One Southern landowner has a plan for diversification of crops that might be followed by many others. He has divided his land into tracts that rent for $100 a year each. This is about equivalent to two bales of cotton under the old tenant system. But hereafter no cotton will be accepted as rent for these tracts. Instead, it will be required in food crops, according to this schedule:
50 bushels of corn $50
15 bushels of wheat 15
3 bushels of peas 5
100 pounds of meat 15
15 bushels of potatoes 15
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Total rent $100