East Saginaw, Mich.
Dear Jack-in-the-Pulpit: Please will you or any of your "chicks" tell me how to make a wind-harp, or Eolian harp?
Your friend, Minnie Warner.
Time and again have I heard tell of wind-harps and the sweet music the wind coaxes out of them. The sighing and singing of the breezes through the tree-tops must be something like it, no doubt. But I never heard a wind-harp's song, and of course don't know how to make one. Perhaps, some of you know, however, and if so I shall be obliged if you will send me word, so that I can pass it on to Minnie and the rest of my chicks.
"THE JOY OF THE DESERT."
In Africa is a vast, dreary waste, called the Desert of Sahara. In widely scattered spots of this desert there grows a tree that sends its roots down to springs far beneath the parched ground. Sometimes these springs are so far down that the trees are planted in deep holes, something like wells, so that the roots may reach water. Hardly anything except this tree can grow in that desert.
The fruit of the tree is delicious food; the long trunk makes poles for tents; the leaf-stalks make many kinds of basket and wicker work, walking-sticks and fans; the leaves themselves are made into bags and mats; and the fibers at the base of the leaf-stalks are twisted into cordage for tents and harness. The sap of the tree, drawn from a deep cut in the trunk near the top, after standing a few days, becomes a sweet and pleasant liquor. Cakes of the fruit pounded and kneaded together "so solid as to be cut with a hatchet," are carried by travelers going across the terrible desert.
Besides all this, trees of this kind, planted in groups, cast a shade which keeps the ground moist, so that other fruit-trees can live beneath them.
When the tree is about one hundred years old, it ceases to bear fruit, and is cut down for timber; but in its long life it has made its owner rich and a great many people comfortable.
The paragram which told me all this said, further, that this tree is the date-palm, and is called "The Joy of the Desert." Well may it be so called, I should think; though once I heard some of the children of the red school-house say they hated "dates." Perhaps they meant "dates" of some other kind.