Stowing Away

In spite of the fact that the punishment usually mete'd out to thoss who try to steal a free passage on a ship is 6everal weeks' hard labor, with the option of a fine stowaways are even more common today than they were fifty or sixty years .go, says the Cincinnati Enquir Big passeng . ..eamers, with their hundreds of passengers and their scores of stewards, sailors and stokers, afford inaumeral.. opportunities for stowing away. Three years aj-j a etawaway was discovered aboard one of the Alian liners running between Liverpool and Montreal. He was shabbily dressed, but being a big, sturdy-looking fellow, he was put to work about the ship. When he veesl anchored below Montreal, waiting for daylight before entering he harbor, he, it was presumed. lipped quietly overboard and swam shore. In any case, when the boat ouched at Montreal and was overrur. y detectives looking for a notorious ewel robber, it was immediately suspecte'd that the stowaway was the robber and that he had escaped, taking the jewels -with him. He was captured some months afterward and confessed that when he swam ashore he had more than $10,000 worth of jewels on his person. The favorite hiding-places of stowaways are the coal bunkers and the narrow passage left when vessels are loaded with bricks, tiles, drain DiDes or other similar cargo. These places are extremely dangerous and many cases are recorded where the shifting of the cargo has resulted in the death 6t some unfortunate wretch in hiding. During the passage of a cargo boat to this country from England the sailors were startled the third day by a curious scratching, which was immediately attributed to supernatural causes. The scratching continued for three days and then grew quiet and ceased. When the hatches were lifted it the end of the voyage the emaciated body of a man was found lying on some bags of cement. The poor, starvng fellow had struggled frantically to get out of the hold. As for our American liners, it is folly to try stowing away in any of them. The United States will not receive pauper immigrants and captains are forbidden to land stowaways in this country under penalty of $2,500. A "free passenger" on one of these ships is promptly clapped in irons and kept there until the ship returns to Liverpool, when he is brought before the autharities. Two weakhy Hebrews of Bagdad now own all that remains of the ancient town of Babyion. Three hundred thousand tons of vegetables, valued at $25,000,000, were eold in the city of Paris in 1895. Six couples living within a circuit of one mile at Milford, N. H., have brated their golden wedding anniversaries. A floral bicycle was the funeral tribute recently made by a Lewiston (Me.) hot-house for bereaved cyclomaniac friends of a young man who had lived there. A stranger in Manistiqne, Mich., recently engaged eighty men to work on the railroad. They were grateful, and bought him drinks for a week before they found out it was a trick. Prairie sohooners bound East are the spectacles to which Nebraskans arounj Arapahoe are treated now. The people are being forced away from the I Southwestern country by drought. Seaweed, though not the dlet for an epicure, is, when dry, richer than oatmeal or Indian corn in nitrogenous constituents, and takes rank among the most nutrltlous of vegetable foods. The Japanese are now getting used to glass. At first, glass in a railway carriage window had to be smeared with streaks of white paint to keep passengers froru poking their heads through it. Hessian graves at Bennington, Vt., were decorated reeently by a 10-yearold girl whose family is summering there. It is said to be the flrst time that any flowers have been strewn over them. The per capita cost of living In New South Wales is the highest in the world, being nearly $200 per head per annum. In the United Kingrïom it is j about $160, in the United States $170, and in Canada $120.