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1 circumstantial evidence and english lawyer once said that circum stantial evidence would hang the king ot england while that was patting it pretty strong it is admitted that a chain of cir cumstantial evidence has often sent men to the gallows if a circumstance can be ex plained away it is bat a shadow if it cannot be explained away it becomes a menace to the prisoners life a witness may be bribed abducted or impeached a circ instance is a lion in the path demand ing blood it has been otm asserted that innocent men have been hung on circumstantial evidence there may have been such in stances but they have been rare indeed in tay own experience in law and detective work i have seen some curious things about circumstantitl evidence it is in one sense the strangest chain which can be forged in another the very weakest about twenty years ago i was detailed en a murder case in a kentucky town it was not to work np the oase but to save if possible the young man arrested for the crime when i got the facta and details i felt helpless to accomplish anything he was a young man of 23 named graham and was of respect able family he had been engaged to a young lady of the highest respeotability nut they had quarrelled about something common friends had brought about a reconciliation but a new suitor had appear ed upon the sceano and grahams jealousy had provoked another quarrel he had not visited her for two weeks when on the evening of smurday oct 39 one of gra hams friends met him and said your rival is up at lossiogs and seems bound to cut you out adele seems very sweet on him graham truly loved the girl and this speech made him wild he turned pale trembled and finally said he is an adventurer and an interloper let him look out for himself 1 an hour later he started for lossingo he passed several people who saw that ho was excited the house stood back from the toad in a grove of trees and was approached by two paths or drives from the front gra ham fully intended to enter the house but whan he came upon the grounds his courage failed him he was afraid ho might say or do something rash in his present mood and very sensibly decided to return to town and defer his call till the next day next morning his rivals dead body was found on one of the drives about half way between the house and the fence he had been struck down with a bludgeon conclusions are always jumped at in murder cases two of the negro servants wero at once arrested bnt before noon they were set at liberty and graham was taken into custody the ohain already contained several links others were added the moment he was arrested he was dreadfully agitated hesitated to ac knowledge that hehad been near the place and a blood stain was found on the right silo of his vest before he had been in jail one day even his own father believed hied a murderer he was examined and bound over and it was only after that event that he began to protest his innocence the girl who had been the cause of it came nobly to his rescue while she truly loved him she had been willing to make him jealous and when murder bad come of it as she believed she felt terrible conscience stricken and anxions to believe in his protestations of innocence when i came upon the ground the stare had its case all worked up and when i went over it to look for a flaw i could find none i had to acknowledge that i was without hope indeed i believed graham guilty his own explanations rather strengthened that belief lossings house faced the east the highway in front run north and south the lawn was twenty rods wide and one drive led in from the north and the other irbmt the south end graham approached from tho north he would naturally turn in at the fifbt drive but he claimed to have gone on to the second ho followed it to tho house passed around it played for two ofthree minutes with the dogs and then circled about the fish pond and took a short cat acrobb tho grove and struck the road not hittirg the north path at all the dead man had come from the village as well and on foot ho had come and attempted to return by the north drive jh graham wabinnooent who was guilty notthe sllghteatsuspicion had beep direct ed elsewhere it seemed hopeless to look i questioned and cross questioned him but he could not give me the slightest foundation for a oluo or a theory i what i got came by aocldent tasked to ecu tfce bloodstained clothing and i found it to be a single daub of blood on a whits vest it was a curious mark snob as i had never seen before- and when i quietly investigated farther i dis- covered that the murdered man had been atrnok on the back of his head and fallen forward on his face ho had very thick hair and while the blow had crushed the skull he had bled but little the blood would not spurt from snob a blow tho body had not been lifted and so how did graham get that blood stain i accident gave me the- know ledge i was looking tho ground over at lossings for the fourth or fifth time when one of the dogs came and leaped upon me in a caressing way lossing observed it and remarked oldfanwab always very fond of gra ham and i believe she misses bim hero fanylefrme look tat your paw ah i its about as well as ever iint it v i what ailed her paw i asked she got a terrible cut on a piece of glass a few weeks aso about the time graham was arrested j yes thon it was her bloody paw that made the mark on his vest that night 1 good heavens but it must have been 1 i had a clue and a hope everything changed in an hour and i now believed gra ham innocent and went to work to secure proofs i posted op to louisville and exam- hied the police records for arrests lowed a soore or more of cases to their finish bat got nothing it was my belief that a white man committed tho crime and that he meant robbery bnt was frightened off i returned to the villago and looked everybody over bnt got no satisfaction tho day of tho trial was coming and i was in despair bat accident came to my aid again i hap pened into the hotel barn as the landord polled a lot of rubbish out of a stall hid den away with it was a fine saddle and as it was brought to light the man exolaimtd bless me here is the dead mans sad dler was it ousting t i asked it mi stolen on the night of his murder thats the reason be went down to loulogs en foot who stole it what for an outsider who stole the saddle for its worth would have carried it off an insider only would have stored it in th 3 stall who was inside a white man and two negro asaisianta within an hoar i had ascertained chat the white man whose name was foster was absent for an hoar on the evening of the mar 3cr and that since he bad acted very queer- ly i arrested him charged him iththe crime and he did not hold out fifteen min utes his motive was robbery he did not intend to kill his victim but only to stun him he had just struck him when the dogs barked greeting to graham and overcome by sadden fright foster dashed away and dared not return he thought he had only to keep still to render himself safe and but for my being present when the saddle was found he might never have been suspected graham was cleared and foster was hanged the change had been brought about by the fondling of a dog the second case occurred in ohio in a town not far from cincinnati a young man frank meyers had became infatuated with a doubtful woman the affair created a scan dal and his father and friends made every effort to break it up the young man was finally brought to see the error of his ways but when he attempted to sever the tie the woman sought to hold him by threats this angered him and he indulged in some hard talk of what he would do in case she further annoyed him thus matters stood when ho set out one evening to see her and make a last attempt to settle it was a summer night and they were seen walking in tho suburbs of the town they wero overheard in angry talk she defied him he return ed home pale and excited his clothing dis arranged and his face bleeding from scratches an hour later she was found dead choked to death young meyers was arrested at midnight he did not even assert his innocence it was only on bis examination that he protest ed and even his own father believed him guilty i happened to be in the town and the way i came into the case was by relating the incidents of the one i have already nar rated the prisoner himself sent for me and told me this story i met the woman mrs albright by appointment we walked out on clark avenue to be alone i told her that my mind was firmly made up to see hor no more and she was very angry i should have returned with her but at the little bridge she ordered me to leave her threatening to do desperate things if i did not relent by the morrow i did not return by the high way as onr meeting was a secret one and i did not want it known i crossed a corn er of the graveyard fell off the fence as i did so and there my face was scratched by the briers but you hardly denied your guilt said v because i was confusad and stunned by my arrest and because i saw no use of it he replied i have told yon the truth i want you to help me prove myself clear i left him with the feeling that he was ly ing to me and that nothing could be done in his case ten or twelve days hid elaps ed but there had been no rain i went to the bridge crossed the creek at the point ho told me to and soon came upon his trail at the graveyard fence i found a broken rail and the spot where he had fallen i found the briers broken and crushed and from the thorns i gathered several small fragments belonging to the suit he wore further on he had stepped into a ditch where mud was soft at the time it had the fellow whoee name was dan camm ing was a craven as well as a bully he confessed all and cleared meyres bat while awaiting his trial committed suicide now dried hard and preserved the print i measured it and when i returned to town i had begun to believe that meyers was either a good talker or an innocent man his story was all right in one sense bnt alj wrong in the other did ho make the trail while leaving the woman alive or dead an old saying always goes with an arrest if be didnt do it vho did j somebody must be held responsible after two or three interviews with young meyers and his parents i doubted if he could have choked the woman to deatn he was frail and in poor health and she was robust and strong she had scarcely struggled at all proving that she bad been attacked euddenly and that the grip was a terrible one her neck was discolored as well as her throat proving that two large hands had been employed however no suspicious characters had been seen in the neighborhood and the murder er if other than meyers had made his esoapo i was completely blocked and could only hope that accident would help me out it had been said that the body had not been robbed the only theory seemed to be revenge if it waa not meyers then it was some former lover and i went to cincinnati to make inquiries on the way up my watch stopped and my first call was at a jewellers i had not been in his place sixty seconds when in walked a stout strong fellow who laid a ladys i watoh on tho showcase and said i am going away- and i want to sell this i it belonged to my wife who is dead i we dont buy secondhand watches re plied the jowellor but he carelessly picked the watch up examined it and thon said this is one of our watches i remember selling it two or three months agoi yes replied the man reaching it lets see the name continued the jew eller as ho went for a book never mind replied the man if you dont want to buy very well im in a hurry sold to mrs albright of said the jeweller as he handed it over the woman who was murdered i i said to the stranger were you her husband n yes 1 he stammered and you have not been near ihat is strange i you will go with mo to the pol ice he tried to draw his pistol but i was too quick for him the police recognized him as a bully and a degraded character and inside of half a day i had established the fact that ho was formerly a lover of the murdered wo man then i traced him to the depot and on tho train to the village and later on found two villagers who remombercd seeing him thore that night when i had got him reasonably sure 1 confronted him with my foots and he broke down and and made a f nil confesson he and the woman were bleeding young meyers he had come out to seo her that night and he had found her on tho bridge and quarreled with her she was desperate and defiant and in a fit of passion he had ohoked her to death he had seized the watch bnt left all else and so the cor oners jury had been misled ont for filling a horses teeth an interesting and unusual dental opera tion waa performed yesterday afternoon says the st louis republic at 1306 wash ington avenue by dr w e murray j d s which for about an hoar attracted the close attention of a group of studious specta tors this was the somewhat unusual spectacle of the filling of a horses teeth an operation which had previously been per formed but twice dr murrays dental work yesterday afternoon was very simiar to that of the regular tooth doctor for the human race except that the patieat was not seated in that awful plush chair wherein we all have suffered and groaned billy the patient a very dark roan horse about 151 hands high belonging to dr morrill of washington avenue has been suffering from toothache for several weeks he has been unable to drink except by pressing bis tongue against his upper teeth so as to keep the water from them and as soon as dr murray was called in he saw the necessity for the filling of the decayed teeth exam ination showed that three of tho incisors were badly decayed and preparations were madeto fill them and relieve poor billy of his bufferings the scene was a peculiar and interesting one dr murray had a table placed at the side of billys stall upon which he laid ont his array of glittering steel instruments similar to but somewhat larger than those used in human dentistry forceps excavators probes scrapers drillers all were there and billy glanced at them with a wondering eye bnt did not evince that shaky nervousness with which a human being undergoes the dentists work strange to bay in his dental work on horses di mnrray who practiced regu lar dentistry for four years before beginning on horses uses no gag twitch speculum or other contrivance to seenre the horses head and states that he can do better work with the head entirely free an attendant held billy in his stall simply with an arm thrown loosely over his shoulder while dr murray examined his mouth there were three teeth to be filled two of them badly decayed and the doctor began on them at once billys behavior was a model for human visitors to dental establishments and he showed a degree of fortitude and nerve not often met with dr murray dug and cut and excavated large hunkb of decayed matter from his teeth and billy stood without a movement his intelligent eye following the doctors work as though he fully appre ciated it only once when the nerve of the worst tooth was touchedj billy quivered and drew back but stood firm again and let the doctor finish the filling the teeth were all deoayed from the bottom upward and the cavities were something fearful to contem plate the amalgam which was driven up and hammered into them would have filled the teeth of a dozen men and billy with a napkin tied about his mouth and bronght over his nose seemed to appreciate the ex tent of the work as he occasionally glanced at dr murray with a look of calm approb- i ation which was very encouraging the work was finished in abont an hour and billy was led away considerably improved as to teeth and having behaved in the most cour ageous manner i have very little trouble with horses said dr murray i leave my patients entirely free and rely altogether upon firmness mingled with kindness to man age them horses are very intelligent and they seem to understand when yon are en deavoring to relieve them even in palling teeth i never secure a horse and have bat little trouble with them i have performed dental work on over 1000 horses since last january 7 brute ethics a recent writer says i have been ex ceedingly interested as a hoiticultnrist and studentof naturein observing the recognition of the rights of property in domestic animals a hen will not concede a grain of corn as be longing to another but the one robbed will manifest indignation but a hen will recog nize tho right of another to occupauoy of a nest if not thereby seriously discomforted a cat makes no olaim to possession until her foot is on the piece of meat after pos session however the asserts her positive rights and hi avier oats will allow the claim old cats will often allow young ones to rob them but they will not allow older ones to do tho same a dog not only claims a bone while in possession bnt establishes his right to the same bone when buried and woo be to the dog that opens the cache this recognition of property rights is seen every where in lower life although theft is com- i mon comments mary e spancer in the st i louis globe again if you find your horse in his neighbors stall eating oats and scold him for it his retreat ismado with marks of shame i have seen tlio samo manestation in a fowl the idea of right comoa of course before theidea of abstract righi natural rights are recognized by every- creature that exists the birds recognize not only then- own rights and family rights but thetjights of their neighbors a thieving outlaw is hold to be a common enemy to be chased and destroyed by the cooperation of all honest birds we seem as human beings to inherit from our animal progenitors some thing very like a moral code so that it seems to mo we are not to despise the idea j of animal descent tinco by it we get some thing more than structure this study is exceedingly interesting and if 900 will keep open eyts he will bo sure to see some curi ous moral legislation all- about him i bo- hovo it is well established that some of the social and associated creatures have a code of punishment j i have seen sparrows de- liberaly join in the punishment of a rogue at least bo it seemed to me although i could not discover tho special fault of the delinquent it is especially interesting to see the indigantion excited among all the birds when a prowling hawk has despoiled a nest come on i shout the king birds and at him i criea every robin and often tho crows for once join the smaller birds tho chase excites the whole neighborhood an hoar in the packing house we have bien a lorg time getting to the packing house perhaps some ol yon think after that first visit to the orange grove bat yon know it always takes a long time to get anywhere when there is a crowd of children along wanting to see everything new and asking questions about everything they see thats right children always ask to have everything yon dont understand explained to yon and in that way you will gather a valuable amount of information if you will only try to remember what yon are told now this is what the children learn ed as they walked through the orange grove to the picking house they saw some tall orange trees with their lower limbs away above a mans head and seme others with low drooping limbs that touched the ground and reminded one of a shy little girl try ing to cover her bare feet with her skirt j so of course they asked what is the difference in those trees 1 meaning is there any difference in the variety of those trees and they were told that the tall trees were the native sweet oranges and the low drooping trees were ster and mediterranean sweets then they noticed two oiher kinds of trees one with narrow slender leaves and the other with broad coarse looking foliage the latter they found were lemon trees and the others were tan gerines or the kid glovn oranges by this time they were in the packing house which was a large broad building with doors and windows alternating closely upon each aide why was that they asked that was for two purposes a great many doors were needed in the busy season so that a number of oranges could be loaded at the same time while others conld unload on the other bide tnen a great many windows are needed for entilation for if there was not a great deal of fresh air when these houses are filled with ripe fruit or green vegetables they would be injured by their own heat and moisture before the were packed the model pack ing house has a kind of stage built acioss one end and in this are cut several pits for the packets to stand in whish brings them just on a level with the crates the are pack ing so that they can pack them very fast and slide them along to the doors without any lifting near the packers is arranged the sizers which ore sometimes made this way t1v0 planks about six feet long are nailed so as to form the sloping bides of a trough with a crack about five inohes wide at the bottom fitting into this are very thin pieces of boards carefully smoothed and arranged to slide np and down on the sloping plank these boards are eight inches long and when the sizor is ready to work each of these are set by a measure and sorewed fast then the openings in the bottom of the trough represent the size of orangeb that can pass through it and the packer knows how many of each size it will take to fill a box under each opening a rough box is set to catoh the fruit and a man stands at the upper end of thesizer and rolls down the oranges until they find a place they can drop through as these boxes are filled they go to the packer who wraps them in beautiful red and green and blue striped tissue papers and packs them for their journey north the next man nails up the crates and slides them into the waiting wagons while the ohildren have been watching this we have peeled some small brownish looking oranges f r them that had been cast among tho culls and they reach out eagerly for the everwelcome fruit but as they pull them open intending to suck the bars they look up in disgust and exolaim why this orange is all bloody just see how red it is yes in answer that is why we peeled it that way so you could see how pretty the maltese blood orange is now eat it and see how sweet and winey it is also then here is a star orange see the stir like ridges which radiate from stem to blossom end of tho fruit it is next to the blood orange in delicate flavor and this is the famous naval orange with its ugly enrious distortion at the blossom end it is not half as fine flavored or sweet as the others ont because its pecu liarity is outside instead of inside it has won fame and become popular you see ohildren that is always the way the very bast things and the best people are always quiet and self-oon- tained and their virtues must be dili gently sought for before they are discov ered and now fill your handbags with kidglove oranges and lets go home and i hope you have all learned from this visit to appreciate the fact that oranges are not all alike by any means but that the differences in them are great enough for oven the cnildren to discover mrscharles moiing a meteorolite for more than century the travellers along a river in the province of bahia bnzil saw iz the edge of tho stream a great mats of iron ore at a low stage of water a pair of chariot wheels have been visible be neath the edge of the mass this mass of iron is known to be of mete oric origin and to have fallen from the sky though no one knows at precisely what date it was first discovered in 1784 and an attempt was soon made to transport it to the coast as the meteorolite had been ascertained to weigh about six tons the feat of transport ing it wva not an easy one an immense chariot or truck was constructed and by- dint of the exertions of one hundred and forty oxen the meteorolite was laden upon this shariot but at the very first start the vehicle sank np to the hubs in the mad and nothing could dislodge it the attempt was then and there abandoned and the chariot wheels testified for more than a oec- tury to the failure of this effort to remove the great meteorolite a recent attempt however aided by modern science has been more successful a brazilian engineer has succeeded in rait ing the meteor and transporting it to bio de janeiro to accomplish this result j the brazilian government appropriated twenty thousand dollars and an ejual sum was contributed for the purpose by a rich pi ivats citizm f when the meteorolite reached kio de jan eiro it was cut into two pieces in order that its btructnre might be studied it is com posed of iron of crystalline formation and mixed with other substances a oondition whioh is characteristic of all the iron which has fallen from the sky in meteors and which is knewn as meteorio iron it is a most interesting fact that none of the meteorolites eo far as is known contain any ehemical element that is not known on the earth they always contain iron bai it is compounded differently from any known iron native to the earth a lawyers precaution a celebrated oriminal lawyer having just defended a not id assassin so brilliantly that the wretoh was acquitted in tho faoe of overwhelming evidence steps up to the judge a word in yonr oar yonr honour f well what is it i would ask that tho prisoner bo detained in goal until to morrow morning i have to cross a lonely field on my way home and the rascal hap pens to know that i have money abont me oh certainly cartoon a beptile wreath on a frosty morning a few days ago as mr jere fenton of south orange n j was walking with his nineyearold daughter in a smallplantation near bis house he saw what looked like a wreath of variega ted cords lying at the foot of a tree it was about ten inohes in diameter and perfectly circular supposing that some ohildren at play in the wood had woven it and carelessly flung it away he pioked it np and playfully crowned his little girl with it but there was a cold clammy feeling about the thing that the child did not ilk j at all and as it touched her forehead she hastily shook it off then mr fenton made a more careful examination an mas considerably startled to find that what he had mistaken for a cordage wreath was very muoh like a doubleheaded snake the two heads wero exactly opposite each other on the circular brand but mr fonton soon perceived that each head was attached to a separate body tlto variegated ring waa in fact two snakes that had mixed themselves np as a sorb of mutnal benefit society for the winter their tails were not visible because each had swallowed the caudal extremity of the other and as mnch of the upper anatomy as it could etuff down its throat a meteor analysed a blazing meteor fell on chicago avenue chicago on the morning of february 2nd scaring some of those who saw it and who thought it a monster anarchist bomb it exploded on etrikini the ground and a num ber if pieces wore found tho largest being about five inohes long and half as broad analysis of a fragment of the metallic por tion showed it to be an alloy as follows percent iron 735 niekel 214 aluminum 17 cobalt s manganese ii 21 traces of tin magnesium copper arsenic oaloium potassium and sodium wore dis covered philadelphia ledger both in hard luofc this story opens on the third floor of a magnifioent harle m compartment house he had been twisting about en his chair trying to find words to express his undying devotion and had already begun to hem and haw when a voice came from the floor below miss candlewiok it said i loyeyou passionately madly bid me but hope and all the dark colors of my life will ohange this waa a bonaozv for the young man above mias clara darling he said tremulous ly thems my sentiments then another voice came from below vno mr goatee icannotjbid you- hope i love another and thems mino mr morris remark ed miss clara harpers bazar v what had happened anxious mother why j my dear in tears i what has happened married daughter i ijot angry at arthur this morning and said a lot of- of mean things and then he said a lot of meaner ones and and i couldnt think of anything mean enough to say back i couldnt j paternal soeptioisni milly pa mr skeggs has asked i the privilege of paying his addresses to me the old man i dont believe h6u do it qe has been promising to pay our firm for his last suit of clothes for over a year and hasnt done it yet 1 mil hadnt thonpht of that 7 vy mobes vere are yoii going ex claimed isaac as the two met on the train oh i vob yoost going oudt i to oconomo- woc to abend sunday mit j aoob ri stein veil py gracious dot vos luc i i am going there meinselluf say moses dot vos a shnap ven you buy a return dioket aint it itvos so much cheaper dots all right uf you dink so isaac bnt i tought yon had a bigger head as dot vy man vot uf you got killed vonce mit a smash up den vot goot vos dot redurn dioket 1 ach ffimmelineier tought of dot i- tht strong teutonic good sense of the gorman housewives rises against the anar chist movement which is again raising its head in illinois and so strong is their influ ence with their husbands that only 70 men dared to appear at a meeting in support of anarohiat principles which was held on san- day at maplewood a sunday sohool how ever is to be established to instruct tho young in anarchy to some people who have mado occasional efforts to train the headstrong young idea this may road like a joke and schools will recur to their memory in which a considerable amonnc of anarchy existed without any teaching at all a verbatim report of the proceedings f at ithe now sunday sohool would be interesting reading somewhat ambiguous visiting friend yitfliave a pretty house lady who had just moved in yes but we arc all in confusion iosi t does take such a long time to get thind set tled visiting friend yesjalong time lidy ses bat i hops we shall be all settled before yon call again pretty far joke a yonng man who was visiting a young lady to whom ho is engaged hears the clock strike ten eleven twelve and remarks ecstatically- how the honra fly dearest clara when i am in thy company 1 clara thou art a little off george the hall olook has not been striking right of late and pa is regulating it then goorge heard tho clock strike one two three f onr five six seven eight nlne and perceived that he was mistaken wouldnt be gone long i want to see yon pretty soon said the head of the firm on pay day to a young traveling salesman who was receiving a small compensation yes sir will i have time to go down tho street a couplo of blocks will it take you long j no scarcely any time whatever all i want to do is to spend my weeks salary the head of the firm saw that be got a a raise f