| Summary: | Newsletter of the North Dakota School for the Deaf. THE NORTH DAKOTA BANNER “Do you mean that, Roddy ?” asked Mrs, Dale. Roderick nodded. '‘I don’^want it so very much,” he said. So they lifted the horse into the back of the big sleigh, while old Mr. and Mrs. Baxter looked on smiling, and the Dales and all the little guests stood .by to watch. , Timothy would not stir until the horse was firmly tied in with its head toward the real horses’ heads. Then, when Mr. Dale started to lift him. into place between the old people, lie squirmed out of his hands and scrambled over the side. “I will ride Racer,” he said in postivo tones. No one could stop him. He climbed to the hobbyhorse's back and sat there, clutching the reins. As the sleigh drove slowly out of. the gate, the hobbyhorse bounced up and down. Timothy sat erect, drum, horn and all. It was a strange sight* all the way down the road people turned round and looked. Roderick stood on the porch laughing. The last thing he saw, as the team turned a bend, was a spot of bright red bobbing gayly in the Christmas sunshine.— The Youth’s Companion. THE WOODEN SHOES. By Rosemary Allen When Mary Lou’s big brother, Lawrence, came back from France he brought her a pair of clumsy wooden shoes. He told her that many of the little French children wore shoes like those. ‘‘To school?” asked Mary* Lou. “Oh, yes, and sometimes to church.” Mary Lou tried on the shoes and thought that they fitted her:'very well. Of course her feet felt queer and heavy at first, but she liked the clump-clumping sound that the shoes made as she walked through the house. But she found that the shoes were too big for her, for they were always slipping off. “I know how you can keep them on, Mary Lou,” her mother said. “Wear them over a pair of Jimmy’s socks.” Jimmy was Mary Lou’s fifteen-year-old brother. When Mary Lou tried the new plan she found that it worked very well. That night she dreamed about the French shoes all night long. She thought she wore them to school, and that the teacher wanted her to come up the platform and tell the children all about them. When she came down to breakfast the next morning she was wearing the wooden shoes drawn over Jimmy’s rough socks. “Shall I wear my French shoes to school to-day?” she asked. Now, Mary Lou had had no idea, really, of doing such a thing. She was only making fun, and the family knew it so well that no one answered her question. But Mary Lou had expected them to say, “No, indeed!” and when they did not she thought to herself, “Well! It wouldn’t matter if I did wear them to school. And so I will,” After breakfast was over she hurried away. She knew she must hurry if she did not want to *be late, for with the wooden shoes on her feet she could not walk so fast as usual. But after all she was a little late. The first class was about to recite when suddenly the teacher and the chlidren heard a queer sound at one end of the room: Miss Gardiner looked up, and thirty heads turned at once. Clump-clump-clumpety-clump! “It’s Mary Lou Ladd;” one little girl said in a loud whisper. “Why does she walk so hard?” a little boy said in a: still louder whisper. Clump-clump-clumpety-clump! T h e strange noise came on. Then thirty voices cried together, “Look at her feet!” Thirty-one pairs of eyes, counting the teacher’s, stared at Mary Lou. The teacher looked stern, and Mary Lou stopped smiling. She stood perfectly still, and her head drooped. “What kind of shoes are those, Mary Lou ?” Miss Gardiner asked. Her voice was soft, and Mary Lou took courage again. “French shoes,” she said. “I—I thought the school might like to see them—and hear them.” She looked at Miss Gardiner from under her lashes. The teacher’s face was solemn. “But her eyes are dancy,” thought Mary Lou. “You may take your seat, Mary Lou,” the teacher said. Mary Lou took her seat; but at recess the children begged her to stand on the platform and let them have a good look at the curious shoes. She'told them all that Lawrence had told her about the little French children. It was very pleasant to talk to such an interested audience. “Well, I do declare, this is just what I dreamed I was doing!” she cried. That afternoon the teacher said, “Wear vour everyday shoes to-morrow, Mary Lou,” “I will, Miss Gardiner,” promised Mary Lou earnestly. Then she added, “I think I know quite well now how it feels to be a-little French child.” And away she went, clump-clump-clumpety- clump! up one street and down another. Everyone turned, to . look at the queer little figure in the fur coat and the funny shoes. All the way home Mary Lou thought about her own soft leather shoes with shiny black buttons. “I’m glad I’m an American child,” she said to herself.—The Youth’s Companion. HYDRODOME IS HERE. Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, famous as the inventor of the. telephone, has been devoting some of the leisure of his mature years to the development of a new sort of surface boat. Photographs recently taken shows that he has succeeded in building probably the fastest water borne craft now in existence. It is called the hydrodome. The boat is a cigar shaped affair equipped with water planes on each side called pontoons. Hydrofoils looking somewhat like an open shutter, reach from the keel several feet into the water. Propellers of the ordinary airplane variety operate in the air and do not touch the water at all. As the craft gains momentum the hydrofoils tend to lift it out of the water just as*the planes of the airplane raise that craft off the ground. When the hydrodome is moving at the rate of 70 miles an hour the greater part of the hull is out of the water. The pontoons touch but lightly and the hydrofoils support the structure. As the speed increases these comparatively small water planes have a tremendous lifting power and carry the craft almost entirely in the air. The speed and ease of maneuver of the new craft will make it a formidable foe to the submarine in future wars.—The Lincoln Journal. DROP THY BURDEN AND THY CARE By Henry Van Dyke. Ere thou sleepest. gently lay Every troubled thought away: Put off worry and distress As thou puttest off thy dress: Drop thy burden and thy care In the quiet arms of prayer. Lord, thou knowest how I live, All I’ve done amiss forgive: All of good I’ve tried to do, Strengthen, bless, and carry throug’h: All I love in safety keep, While in Thee I fall asleep. —The Ladies’ Home Journal. HOW LEAVES PURIFY AIR. It has been calculated that a single tree is able thrbugh its leaves to purify the air from the carbonic acid arising from the respiration of a considerable number of men, perhaps a dozen or even more. The volume of carbonic acid exhaled by a human being in the course of twenty-four hours is put at about 100 gallons, but by Boussingault’s estimate a single yard of leaf surface, counting both the upper and the under side of the leaves, can, in favorable circumstances, decompose at least a gallon of carbonic acid a day. One hundx*ed square yards of leaf surface then would suffice to keep the air pure for one man, but the leaves of a tree of moderate size present a surface of many hundred square yards. All other forms of vegetable life act similarly in abstracting the noxious carbonic acid from the atmosphere.— Selected. KING ALBERT RUNS LOCOMOTIVE OF WAUSEN; SHOVELS COAL. Aboard King Albeit’s Train, Wansen, Ohio, October 7.—The first monarch to drive an American locomotive is King Albert of Belgium. The Belgian ruler enjoyed this distinction this afternoon. His special train was halted here to allow him to alight from his private car and walk the length of the 10 coaches to the engine cab, where he took over the throttle from the engineer and ran the train several miles out of Wausen. He was accompanied by “Bill” Nye, chief special agent of the State Department, a railroad official and four movie men, who snapped the king in action. The king also “spelled” the fireman for a few minutes, throwing several shovelfuls of coal into the fire. DEAF SCHOOL PRINTS EMERADO TEXT BOOK The Emerado school pupils have compiled a commencement booklet and have given it the title of “The Emerite.” It contains 36 pages, and in it are the cuts of the school building, graduating class, class officers and a picture of Ex-Governor L. B. Hanna who gave the commencement address last Saturday night. The book v/as published by the boys of the printing department of the North Dakota School for the Deaf at Devils Lake. —The Grand Forks American.
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