| Summary: | Newsletter of the North Dakota School for the Deaf. THE NORTH DAKOTA BANNER means un instantaneous process. Nevertheless, to give patient, thoughtful, purposeful help so that the child grows into pleasing ways is to give hiiu power in the world; it is to clear his path of many pitfalls; it is to provide for him pleasures and joys and successes that money can not buy. J» J» J«- Abraham Lincoln “Humble child of the backwoods, boatman, axman, hired laborer, clerk, surveyor, captain, legislator, lawyer, debater, orator, politician statesman, President, savior of the Republic, emancipator of a race, true Christian, true man,—we receive thy life and its immeasurably great results as the choicest gifts that a mortal has ever bestowed upon us; grateful to thee for thy truth to thyself, to us and to God: and grateful to that ministry of Providence and grace which endowed thee so richly and bestowed thee upon the nation and mankind.” Lincoln’s Sympathy An engrossed copv of the accompanying fac-simile letter of President Lincoln to Mrs. Bixby, bangs on the walls of Brasenose College, Oxford University, England, as a specimen of (he purest English and most excellent diction extant. It is said that as a model of expressive English, it has rarely, if ever, been surpassed. “Executive Mansion, Washington, Nov. 21st, 18(54. “Dear Madam:—I have been shown, in the files of the War Department, a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts, that you are the mother of the five sons, who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming, but I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may he found in the thanks of the republic they died to save. 1 pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must he yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom. “Yours verv sincerely and respectfully, Abraham Lincoln. “To Mrs. Bixby, Boston, Massachusetts.” J» J» J* Characteristic Sayings of Lincoln “Don't swap horses when crossing a stream.” “With malice toward none, with charity for all.” “When you can’t remove au obstacle, plow around it.” "God bless my mother. All I am, or hope to be, I owe to her.” “When you have written a wrathful letter—put it in the slo\e.” “Don’t shoot too high—aim low, and the common people will understand.” “Gold is good in its place; but loving, brave, patriotic men are better than gold.” “That government of the people, by the people and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” “1 want it said of me, that I plucked a thisi.le, and planted a flower where 1 thought a flower would grow.” "You may fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time.”—Selected. ->» Jo Their National Color Has it ever struck you which color is most often seen in the flags of the world ? Probably it hasn’t, because there are not many people who cau recognize more than a dozen flags at the outside. Well, the most popular color is red, which is found in the standards of no fewer than 19 countries out of 25. Practically every one of the European states, together with Mexico, Venezuela, Chile and Cuba, boast the color red in their national flags. Blue is found in the emblems of the Uuited States, Russia, France, Great Britain, Holland, Ecuador, Sweden, Chile, Portugal, Venezuela and Cuba. Black is not at all popular, being found only in the cases of Germany, Belgium and China, while Germany is noticeable for having black and white together. Nine countries boast of a flag partly yellow, viz: Austria, Spain, Belgium, Brazil, Persia, Sweden. Egypt, China and Venezuela. To Ecuador belongs the distinction of having a standard nearer white than an}' other country.— Answers. Jo The Oldest Living Thing in the World The recent dispatches from Mexico City that tell of severe fighting in the vicinity of Oaxaca where a strong faction of the inhabitants refused to recognize the Huerta government have roused more than ordinary interest in this country. The reason is that in the churchyard of the village of Santa Maria del Tule a few miles from Oaxaca in constant danger from cannon-lire and musketry, stands a famous cypress-tree that men of science say is tlie oldest living thing in the world. Judging by the gigantic hole of this tree and tlm slow growth of the species they have calculated that its age is between live ihonsand anil six thousand years. The seed from which the tree sprang may have fallen upon the ground when Menes the first Egyptain king of whom we have historic knowledge, was seated on his throne—three thousand years or more before the. birth of Christ. Prof. Asa Gray at one time calculated that the tree was 5,124 years old and named it the “Nestor of the whole vegetable kingdom.” Humboldt discovered the tree on his famous tour of equatorial America one hundred years ago. He nailed to it a wooden tablet which is now half covered by the subsequent growth of the tree. The name of the famous German naturalist is still legible however. At four feet from the ground the tree has a girth of 29 feet. — The Palmetto Leaf. J** Indebted to the Indians The North American Indian gave to civilized man maize and tobacco. If the latter gift was an evil one the former more than balanced accounts, and now the sailing of the Diaua recalls the fact that the Indian invented pomiean. It is not popular as an article of diet and in “the States” cannot compete success-full}' with any of the breakfast foods but it has been found well-nigh indispensable to the Arctic explorer from Dr. Kane to the present time. The Indian needed a food that he could carry oil long marches without overburdening himself. He was forced to be his own commissary department, and he invented a pressed cake of powdered meat fat and dried fruits or corn meal which is said to contain more nourishment than any other condensed food in so small a package. The Indian taught the scout and trapper and from the scout and trapper Dr. Kane got his idea. The sealer Diana, in which Dr. MacMillan will make his search for Crocker land, took fourteen thousand pounds of pemican on board at Boston. The news dispatches call it New England pemican, as they would speak of Boston baked beans. It is a New England product, all right, hut it was the Indians who invented it before the coming of the white man, and long before the white man himself discovered that there are millions in especially prepared foods if judiciously advertised.—Manchester {N. II.) Union.
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