| Summary: | Newsletter of the North Dakota School for the Deaf. THE NORTH DAKOTA BANNER names and addressed and .teWfr their parents’ names. He also advised all to subscribe for the Banner if they would like to know what was going: on in their old school. . There was some discussion as to what was the best time to have the reunion pictures taken. Then Miss Olga Anderson moved that Vice President Knutson be given the right to decide and the motion was seconded by Emil Anderson. Vice President Knutson decided to have it taken right after the meeting adjourned. Mr. Long moved that the meeting adjourn. Seconded by Mr. Osburn. The meeting adjourned at 10 to 11 o’clock. (To be continued) DOGS THAT WORK FOR A LIVING. Only the males are used for draft. The surplus pups are reared for sale and at two years of age are worth about eighteen dol-ars apiece. Training for work in harness is accomplished in a very brief time by the simple method of putting the untaught beast in the traces with one that is already well trained. The harness is much like that of a horse in miniature and when made of leather costs only about two dollars; usually, however, it is of nothing more elaborate or expensive than pieces of old rope. Every dog must wear a muzzle, but, thanks to the humanitarian efforts of the Belgian Society for the Prevention of Cruelty, the law forbids the whip. In Brussels and other cities of Belgium dogs generally drag the delivery wagons of milk dealers, bakers, butchers and grocers. Sometimes the animals are hitched beneath the vehicle, and sometimes in front. Four or even five of them are in some cases harnessed abreast. Nearly always the driver walks beside the cart. Before the war it was estimated that in Brussels alone there were no fewer than ten thousand draft dogs. One curious requirement of the law is that, when the weather is foggy, each dog shall carry a warning bell. In proportion to his size, the draft dog can pull a much greater load than a horse, and his endurance is superior. A good dog team in three hours and without fatigue covers the thirty-four miles from Ghent to 'Brussels. Riding to town in their little carts, filled with vegetables, fruit or flowers, the peasants go about from door to door at a much more rapid rate than would be possible with horses. So valuable are dogs for purposes of traction that attempts have been made to develop by breeding a type of animal that is specially adapted to such use. With this idea in view the mastiff has been crossed with the Danish hound, and the latter— commonly known as the Great Dane—with the St. Bernard and the Newfoundland. But the dogs bred in that way cost too much; mongrels, on the other hand, are cheap, and they satisfy all reasonable requirements. The use of dogs for traction is by no means peculiar to the European Continent. In eastern Siberia they haul canal boats and are said to do it much more cheaply and satisfactorily than horses. The Kamchatkans are recognized masters of the art of breaking dogs to harness and driving them. They use only the males, for they consider the females inferior in strength and endurance. The average family in Kamchatka owns nine dogs and uses them chiefly for pulling sledges. A peculiar kind of rattle serves to urge on the dog team, which, if it is a good one, can cover a distance of one hundred miles in twenty-four hours, with an average load of thirty-six pounds for each dog. The dogs owned by the Eskimos of Greenland are described by explorers as the most serviceable traction animals in the world. They haul one hundred pounds for each animal, and cover from twenty to forty miles a day. It is puzzling to imagine how human existence could be maintained in Arctic regions without the help of dogs. In Alaska the white man, no less than the Eskimo, depends on them for transportation. The Alaskan dogs, known as Malemutes, somewhat resemble collies in appearance, but are bigger, stronger and more sturdily built. The chief difficulty in handling them is their pugnacity; they are constantly fighting among themselves, and the leader of a team is always an animal that has whipped every one of his mates and has thus proved his superiority. In the Alps the working dog is used as a saver of human lives. The humane activities of the monks of St. Bernard, who train their animals to find and rescue travelers lost in the mountain snows, require no description here. The most admired of all dogs, for beauty as well as for nobility of character, is undoubtedly the St. Bernard. But the stock the monks are breeding at present is not the same as that of half a century or more ago. An epidemic of disease attacked their dogs and so nearly wiped them out that they were ob iged, in order to maintain their numbers, to cross them with the Newfoundland. The dogs now kept at the famous hospice, are as efficient life-savers as ever, but are equal neither in size nor beauty to the St. Bernards that take prizes in dog shows here and a bread. The training for military service is now, of course, highly systematized. Necessarily, the object in view is to develop the dog’s intelligence, and this is accomplished step by step as the lessons pass gradually from the simple to the difficult. Punishment is never inflicted unless the animal deliberately disobeys. To punish a dog for failure to understand not only would be unjust but would be likely to defeat the ends sought, Indeed, the whole course ,of instruction is based on patient kindness rather than on severity.—The Youth’s Companion. THINK IT OVER BOYS. The average boy of 14 to 16 years of age who starts out in life with an offer of $5 a week to work in a carpsnter shop, $6 a week to work in a machine shop and $7 a week to work in a grocery store, will choose the job that pays the most money. And as a rule the boys who select their jobs according to the salary will be found holding down those same jobs in after life at salaries not much larger than they started with. The boy who makes a success of his life is the one who selects the work that he likes best to do and to which he is the best adapted and then buckles down to learn all the ins and outs of his trade and to make of himself a master workman. The boy who does this is a success wherever you find him, whether on the farm, in the shop or behind the counter. Take the farmer who loves his work, who studies the latest methods of farming and is up in all the departments of agriculture. He will be making money when his neighbors fail. Take the merchant who is not content simply to sell goods over the counter, but to keep informed on every matter pertaining to his business. There you will find the successful merchant. Take the boy in the shop who is not satisfied to do a certain amount of work and draw his pay, but who aspires to know as much and be as good a workman as his boss. That means success. But there is little hope for the boy who permits a mere question of salary to decide his future career for him.—Selected. THE VALUE OF A TRADE. I remember, some years ago when I was a young man, meeting John Roach, the great shipbuilder, in his shipyard at Chester, Pa. I remember, too, what he said about the value of a trade to the boy. “Young man,” he said, laying his great broad hand on my shou’der and looking at me with his keen steel blue Irish eyes, “next to a clear conscience a trade is as good a thing as a man can have in this country. You carry it with you all your life long, you have to pay neither rent nor taxes upon it and it helps you around a sharp corner when most other things will fail.” I have never forgotten that utterance from a man who started in life—after landing in New York from Ireland—a he’per to a machinist, who became the leading shipbuilder of his time and who up to the hour when he was stricken with a fatal illness could take the place of any of his workmen, whether it was a man driving rivets or an expert putting together the most delicate part of a steamship’s machinery. Something very like what John Roach said I heard another great man say. This was Peter Cooper, a man whom American boys can not too much admire. “If I had my way,” said the venerable philanthropist- cn the occasion to which 1 refer, “I would give everybody a trade. Then I • would have him stick to it, 'ove it and be good to it. If he does it will do him good.”—Weekly Bouquet. THREE YEARS LATE. A train of a railway system in the southwest cnce arrived at its destination nearly three years late. The circumstances were these: The train left Bolivar, just across Galveston bay from Galveston, on Sept. 8, If. 00, and was caught in the great storm that so neariy destroyed the Texan city. Bolivar is seventy-five miles from Beaumont, which was the point of the train’s destination. Before the traip had traveled far on its journey it was caught in the storm. Thirty miles of the track were washed away, and the train was left stranded on a sandy waste. Many persons who lived on Bolivar peninsula were saved from death by taking refuge in the train. After the storm subsided they walked to Bolivar with the passengers, but the abandoned train was left on the prairie. The storm bankrupted the railway, and no effort to rescue the engine and cars was made until 1903. Had not the road suffered so seriously in that storm the property would have proved of great value at Beaumont. In 1903, however, the road underwent repairs, when the train was drawn into Beaumont, where it was greeted by a cheering crowd.—New York Press.
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