| Summary: | Newsletter of the North Dakota School for the Deaf. The North Dakota Banner. VOL. VIII. Devils Lake, N. D., February 18, 1899. No. 11. THE ROSE OF STARS. When love,our great immortal, Put on mortality And down from Eden’s portal Brought this world tc be, At the sublime archangel Me laughed with veiled eyes, For he bore within his bosom The seed of paradise. He hid it in his bosom, And there such warmth it found It brake in bud and blossom, And the rose fell on the ground. As the green light on the prairie, As the red light on the sea, ’Through fragrant belts of summer Came this sweet world to be. And the grave archangel, seeing, Spread his mighty vans for flight. But a glow hung round him fleeing Like the rose of an arctic night, And sadly moving heavenward By Venus and by Mars, He heard the joyful planets Hail earth, the rose of stars. —G. E. Woodbury. Little Hampered by Blindness. John Walther, who lives within two miles of Clinton, Ind., has been blind from birth. Until he reached manhood John lived on the farm with his father, and it was not uncommon to see him driving to the city with a load of corn, wheat or other farm produce. A piece of ground was given to him, and each year he would plant and cultivate a big garden, which he would market in Clinton and place the proceeds to his credit in the bank. Me would buy horses, cattle and hogs. Even when a boy, he was regarded as a good trader. It is now a common occurrence for John to stop in the middle of the road and trade horses with some jockey, and it is said that he is never worsted. He will go to any part of his father’s large farm, unattended, in search of a truant horse or cow, and his searches are usually successful. How he manages to distinguish the stock for which he is searching is a question which puzzles everybody, and a mystery which the blind man himself cannot or does not explain. When he decides to come to town, he goes to the woods and, with apparently as little difficulty as a man blessed with two good eyes, selected his favorite horse from perhaps a dozen grazing in the pasture. He has each season tor years made a hand in the harvest field, and the farmers regard him as one of the fastest and most reliable wheat " shockers ” in the neighborhood. It was three years ago during harvest, that the blind man’s brother became entangled in the machinery of a harvester and suffered a broken arm. As soon as the accident occurred, John started on a run from the field to the barn and began hitching a team to a spring wagon. He worked rapidly, and when the men bore the injured man to the house, the blind boy had the team hitched up, driven out in the road and ready to start with his brother to a doctor in this city. He drove almost at a breakneck speed, made the turns of the streets after reaching the city, and brought his horses to a standstill in front of a doctor’s office. After assisting the wounded brother up the stairway into the office, he drew out his watch, slid his index finger quickly aroun d the dial, and, with a slight sigh, remarked: “ Just half-past io—I was only twelve minutes driving to town.” There is no work on the farm that the blind man cannot do, and during idle time he builds and repairs fences. He can lay the “ worm " for a rail fence as well as any man, and prides himself on the rapid manner in which he gets along with the work. He built a plank fence along the gravel road in front of ihc Walther house. The line is perfectly straight while the workmanship on the fence and gates is not excelled by that of many men who can see and who profess to be carpenters.— Indianapolis News. Longest of Tunnels. Two gangs of workmen have just begun digging in Colorado the longest tunnel that man ever attempted to construct. The main bore will be twenty miles long, and connecting with this are subsidiary tunnels with a total length of thirty miles. So, in reality, says the San Francisco Examiner, the task that has been put under way is that of digging fifty miles of tunnel, and every foot of this vast system will be under Pike’s Peak and the mountains that tower on each side. The starting point of the main tunnel is at the foot of the mountain leading up to Pike's Peak, near the old town of Colorado City. This point is but a short distance lrom the railroad which spans the county between Colorado Springs and Manitou. From here it runs almost due southwest. The further end of the tunnel is at the edge of the mountains at Four Mile Creek, over in Fremont county. Col., six miles south of Cripple Creek and near the little town of Sunol. Two gangs of men, as stated, are working on the tunnel, one at each end. Just at present they are making progress at the rate of thirty feet a day. It is believed that the mammoth task they have undertaken will be completed in seven years from the first of the present month. The main tunnel will pass directly under the cone of Pike’s Peak at a depth of nearly 7,000 leet, and 2,700 feet beneath the town of Victor. Its average depth from the surface will be 2,800 feet and it is designed to test t>’e mineral deposits of the territory at these great depths. Thirty miles of laterals are contemplated, and these will pass underneath all the Cripple Creek district at an average depth of 2,800 feet. Cripple Creek, Victor, Gillette, the various small towns and a thousand mines are to be made tributary to this system. Under present circumstances the distance—the shortest way—from Colorado Springs to Cripple Creek is fifty-four miles. By way of the tunnel the two cities will only be sixteen miles apart. It is estimated by the contractors that the average cost per foot of excavation will be S30. This makes the total probable cost ot digging the tunnel and its subsidiary branches S20,520,000. Allot this sum the tunnel people expect to crush out of the ore their workmen will break while excavating, or glean from the nuggets which may fall out of secret pockets so far below the earth’s surface. The largest wrought iron pillar is at Delhi in India. It is bo feet high, and weighs seventeen tons. The third folio Shakespeare, dated 1664, sold recently in London for $2,- 275, the highest price ever paid for a copy of this particular edition. Henry Avery, of Springfield, Mass., has a complete set of the old New England Almanacs, including one ot 1780, containing a sketch of Gen. Washington.
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