Part 10

The discovery of the alphabet is at once the triumph, the instrument and the register of the progress of our race. The oldest abecedarium in existence is a child's alphabet on a little ink-bottle of black ware found on the site of Cere, one of the oldest of the Greek settlements in Central Italy, certainly older than the end of the sixth century B. C. The Phoenician alphabet has been reconstructed from several hundred inscriptions. The "Moabite Stone" has yielded the honor of being the most ancient of alphabetic records to the bronze plates found in Lebanon in 1872, fixed as of the tenth or eleventh century, and therefore the earliest extant monuments of the Semitic alphabet. The lions of Nineveh and an inscribed scarab found at Khorsabad have furnished other early alphabets; while scarabs and cylinders, seals and gems, from Babylon and Nineveh, with some inscriptions, are the scanty records of the first epoch of the Phoenician alphabet. For the second period, a sarcophagus found in 1855, with an inscription of twenty-two lines, has tasked the skill of more than forty of the most eminent Semitic scholars of the day, and the literature connected with it is overwhelming. An unbroken series of coins extending over seven centuries from 522 B. C. to 153 A. D., Hebrew engraved gems, the Siloam inscription discovered in Jerusalem in 1880, early Jewish coins, have each and all found special students whose successive progress is fully detailed by Taylor. The Aramæan alphabet lived only for seven or eight centuries; but from it sprang the scripts of five great faiths of Asia and the three great literary alphabets of the East. Nineveh and its public records supply most curious revelations of the social life and commercial transactions of those primitive times. Loans, leases, notes, sales of houses, slaves, etc., all dated, show the development of the alphabet. The early Egyptian inscriptions show which alphabet was there in the reign of Xerxes. Fragments on stone preserved in old Roman walls in Great Britain, Spain, France, and Jerusalem, all supply early alphabets.

Alphabets have been affected by religious controversies, spread by missionaries, and preserved in distant regions by holy faith, in spite of persecution and perversion. The Arabic alphabet, next in importance after the great Latin alphabet, followed in eighty years the widespread religion of Mohammed; and now the few Englishmen who can read and speak it are astonished to learn that it is collaterally related to our own alphabet, and that both can be traced back to the primitive Phoenician source.

Greece alone had forty local alphabets, reduced by careful study to about half a dozen generic groups, characterized by certain common local features, and also by political connection.

Of the oldest "a, b, c's" found in Italy, several were scribbled by school-boys on Pompeian walls, six in Greek, four in Oscan, four in Latin; others were scratched on children's cups, buried with them in their graves, or cut or painted for practice on unused portions of mortuary slabs. The earliest was found as late as 1882, a plain vase of black ware with an Etruscan inscription and a syllabary or spelling exercise, and the Greek alphabet twice repeated.

What a Child Can Do.

"Pa, I have signed the pledge," said a little boy to his father, on coming home one evening; "will you help me keep it?"

"Certainly," said the father.

"Well, I have brought a copy of the pledge; will you sign it, papa?"

"Nonsense, nonsense, my child! What could I do when my brother-officers called--the father had been in the army--if I was a teetotaler?"

"But do try, papa."

"Tut, tut! why you are quite a little radical."

"Well, you won't ask me to pass the bottle, papa?"

"You are quite a fanatic, my child; but I promise not to ask you to touch it."

Some weeks after that two officers called in to spend the evening.

"What have you to drink?" said they.

"Have you any more of that prime Scotch ale?"

"No," said he; "I have not, but I shall get some. Here, Willie, run to the store, and tell them to send some bottles up."

The boy stood before his father respectfully, but did not go.

"Come, Willie; why, what's the matter? Come, run along." He went, but came back presently without any bottles.

"Where's the ale, Willie?"

"I asked them for it at the store, and they put it upon the counter, but I could not touch it. O pa, pa! don't be angry; I told them to send it up, but I could not touch it myself!"

The father was deeply moved, and turning to his brother-officers, he said:

"Gentlemen, do you hear that? You can do as you please. When the ale comes you may drink it, but not another drop shall be drank in my house, and not another drop shall pass my lips. Willie, have you your temperance pledge?"

"O pa! I have."

"Bring it, then."

And the boy was back with it in a moment. The father signed it and the little fellow clung round his father's neck with delight. The ale came, but not one drank, and the bottles stood on the table untouched.

Children, sign the pledge, and ask your parents to help you keep it. Don't touch the bottle, and try to keep others from touching it.

MISCELLANEOUS.

Stock Farms FOR SALE; one of the very best in Central Illinois, the finest agricultural region in the world; 1,100 acres, highly improved; unusual facilities for handling stock; also a smaller farm; also one of the finest

Stock Ranches In Central Texas, 9,136 acres. Each has never-failing water, and near railroads; must be sold; terms easy; price low. For further particulars address

J. B. or F. C. TURNER, Jacksonville, Ill.

Cut This Out & Return to us with TEN CTS. & you'll get by mail A GOLDEN BOX OF GOODS that will bring you in MORE MONEY, in One Month than anything else in America. Absolute Certainty Need no capital.

M. Young, 173 Greenwich St. N. York

Self Cure Free

Nervous Debility

Lost Manhood

Weakness and Decay

A favorite prescription of a noted specialist (now retired). Druggists can fill it. Address

DR. WARD & CO., LOUISIANA, MO.

MAP Of the United States and Canada, Printed in Colors, size 4 x 2-1/2 feet, also a copy of THE PRAIRIE FARMER for one year. Sent to any address for $2.00.

BREEDERS DIRECTORY.

The following list embraces the names of responsible and reliable Breeders in their line, and parties wishing to purchase or obtain information can feel assured that they will be honorably dealt with:

SWINE.

Chester Whites.

W. A. Gilbert, Wauwatosa, Wis.

LIVE STOCK, Etc.

PUBLIC SALE OF POLLED ABERDEEN-ANGUS AND Short-Horn Cattle.

We will, on March 27 and 28, at Dexter Park, Stock Yards, Chicago, offer at public sale 64 head of Polled Aberdeen-Angus, and 21 head of Short-horns, mostly Imported and all highly bred cattle, representing the best strains of their respective breeds. Sale each day will begin at 1 P. M., sharp. Catalogues now ready. Address as below.

NOTE--ENGLISH SHIRE HORSES,--Three stallions and four mares of this breed (all imported) will be offered at the close of the second day's sale of cattle.

Geo. Whitfield, Model Farm, Model Farm,

Geary Bros., Bli Bro. Stock Farm, London, Canada.

At Kansas City, Mo., on April 15, 16, and 17, the same parties will offer at public sale a choice lot of Aberdeen-Angus and Short-horn cattle.

When you write mention The Prairie Farmer.

HOLSTEINS AT LIVING RATES.

DR. W. A. PRATT, ELGIN, ILL.,

Now has a herd of more than one hundred head of full-blooded

HOLSTEINS

mostly imported direct from Holland. These choice dairy animals are for sale at moderate prices. Correspondence solicited or, better, call and examine the cattle, and select your own stock.

SCOTCH COLLIE SHEPHERD PUPS, --FROM-- IMPORTED AND TRAINED STOCK

--ALSO-- Newfoundland Pups and Rat Terrier Pups.

Concise and practical printed instruction in Training young Shepherd Dogs is given to buyers of Shepherd Puppies; or will be sent on receipt of 25 cents in postage stamps.

For Printed Circular, giving full particulars about Shepherd Dogs, enclose a 3-cent stamp, and address

N. H. PAAREN, P. O. Box 326.--CHICAGO, ILL.

VICTORIA SWINE.

Winner of First Prize Chicago Fat Stock Show 1878. Originators of this famous breed. Also breeders of Pekin Ducks and Light Brahma Fowls. Stock for sale. Send for circular A.

SCHIEDT & DAVIS, Dyer, Lake Co. Ind

STEWART'S HEALING POWDER.

SOLD BY HARNESS AND DRUG STORES. Warranted to cure all open Sores on ANIMALS from any cause.

Chester White Pigs.

Good as the best at prices to suit the times. Also, Short-horn cattle. Send for price list. S. H. OLMSTEAD, Freedom, La Salle Co., Ill. Reduced rates by express.

2086 Lbs. W'ght Of Two Ohio IMPROVED CHESTER HOGS. Send for description of this famous breed, Also Fowls,

L. B. SILVER, CLEVELAND, O.

SILVER SPRINGS HERD, JERSEY CATTLE, combining the best butter families. Correspondence solicited.

T. L. HACKER, Madison, Wis.

PIG EXTRICATOR

To aid animals in giving birth. Send for free circular to WM. DULIN, Avoca, Pottawattamie Co., Ia.

CARDS

40 Satin Finish Cards, New Imported designs, name on and Present Free for 10c.

Cut this out. CLINTON BROS. & Co., Clintonville, Ct.

40 (1884) Chromo Cards, no 2 alike, with name, 10c., 13 pks. $1. GEORGE I. REED & CO., Nassau, N. Y.

THE PRAIRIE FARMER is the Cheapest and Best Agricultural Paper published. Only $2.00 per year.

THE GENTLEMAN FARMER.

He owned the farm--at least 'twas thought He owned, since he lived upon it,-- And when he came there, with him brought The men whom he had hired to run it.

He had been bred to city life And had acquired a little money; But, strange conceit, himself and wife Thought farming must be something funny.

He did not work himself at all, But spent his time in recreation-- In pitching quoits and playing ball, And such mild forms of dissipation.

He kept his "rods" and trolling spoons, His guns and dogs of various habits,-- While in the fall he hunted coons, And in the winter skunks and rabbits.

His hired help were quick to learn The liberties that might be taken, And through the season scarce would earn The salt it took to save their bacon.

He knew no more than child unborn, One-half the time, what they were doing,-- Whether they stuck to hoeing corn, Or had on hand some mischief brewing.

His crops, although they were but few, With proper food were seldom nourished, While cockle instead of barley grew, And noxious weeds and thistles flourished.

His cows in spring looked more like rails Set up on legs, than living cattle; And when they switched their dried-up tails The very bones in them would rattle.

At length the sheriff came along, Who soon relieved him of his labors. While he became the jest and song Of his more enterprising neighbors.

Back to the place where life began, Back to the home from whence he wandered, A sadder, if not a wiser man, He went with all his money squandered.

MORAL.

On any soil, be it loam or clay, Mellow and light, or rough and stony, Those men who best make farming pay Find use for brains as well as money. _--Tribune and Farmer._

FRANK DOBB'S WIVES.

"The great trouble with my son," old Dobb observed to me once, "is that he is a genius."

And the old gentleman sighed and looked with melancholy eyes at the picture on the genius's easel. It was a clever picture, but everything Frank Dobb did was clever, from his painting to his banjo playing. Clever was the true name for it, for of substantial merit it possessed none. He had begun to paint without learning to draw, and he could pick a tune out of any musical instrument extant without ever having mastered the mysteries of notes. He talked the most graceful of airy nothings, and could not cover a page of note paper without his orthography going lame, and all the rest of his small acquirements and accomplishments were proportionately shallow and incomplete. Paternal partiality laid it to his being too gifted to study, but the cold logic, which no ties of consanguinity influenced, ascribed it to laziness.

Frank was, indeed, the idlest and best-natured fellow in the world. You never saw him busy, angry, or out of spirits. He painted a little, thrummed his guitar a little longer or rattled a tune off on his piano, smoked and read a great deal, and flirted still more, all in the same deliberate and easy-going way. Any excuse was sufficient to absolve him from serious work. So he lead a pleasant, useless life, with Dobb senior to pay the bills.

He had the handsomest studio in New York, a studio for one of Ouida's heroes to luxuriate in. If the encouragement of picturesque surroundings could have made a painter of him he would have been a master. The fame of his studio, and the fact that he did not need the money, made his pictures sell. He was quite a lion in society, and it was regarded as a favor to be asked to call on him. He was the beau ideal of the artist of romance, and was accorded a romantic eminence accordingly. So, with his pictures to provide him with pocket money, and his father to see to the rest, he lived the life of a young prince, feted and flattered and spoiled, artistically despised by all the serious workers who knew him, and hated by some who envied him the commercial success he had no necessity for, but esteemed by most of us as a good fellow and his own worst enemy.

Frank married his first wife while Dobb senior was still at the helm of his own affairs. She was a charming little woman whose acquaintance he had made when she visited his studio with a party of friends. She had not a penny, but he made a draft upon "the governor," as he called him, and the happy pair digested their honeymoon in Europe. They were absent six months, during which time he did not set brush to canvas. Then they returned, as he fancifully termed it, to go to work.

He commenced the old life as if he had never been married. The familiar sound of pipes and beer, and supper after the play, often with young ladies who had been assisting in the representation on the stage, was traveled as if there had been no Mrs. Dobb at home in the flat old Dobb provided. Frank's expenditures on himself were as lavish as they had been in his bachelor days. As little Brown said, it was lucky that Mrs. Dobb had a father-in-law to buy her dinner for her. She rarely came to her husband's studio, because he claimed that it interfered with the course of business. He had invented a fiction that she was too weak to endure the strain of society, and so he took her into it as little as possible. In brief, married by the caprice of a selfish man, the poor little woman lived through a couple of neglected years, and then died of a malady as nearly akin to a broken heart as I can think of, while Frank was making a trip to the Bahamas on the yacht of his friend Munnybagge, of the Stock Exchange.

He had set out on the voyage ostensibly to make studies, for he was a marine painter, on the principle, probably, that marines are easiest to paint. When he came back and found his wife dead, he announced that he would move his studio to Havana for the purpose of improving his art. He did so, putting off his mourning suit the day after he left New York and not putting it on again, as the evidence of creditable witnesses on the steamer and in Havana has long since proved.

His son's callousness was a savage stab in old Dobb's heart. A little, mild-looking old gentleman, without a taint of selfishness or suspicion in his own nature, he had not seen the effect of his indulgence of him on his son till his brutal disregard for his first duty as a man had told him of it. The old man had appreciated and loved his daughter-in-law. In proportion as he had discovered her unhappiness and its just cause, he had lost his affection for his son. I hear that there was a terrible scene when Frank came home, a week after his wife had been buried. He claimed to have missed the telegram announcing her death to him at Nassau, but Munnybagge had already told some friends that he had got the dispatch in time for the steamer, but had remained over till the next one, because he had a flirtation on hand with little Gonzales, the Cuban heiress, and old Dobb had heard of it. Munnybagge never took him yachting again; and, speaking to me once about him, he designated him, not by name, but as "that infernal bloodless cad."

However, as I have said, there was a desperate row between father and son, and Frank is said to have slunk out of the house like a whipped cur, and been quite dull company at the supper which he took after the opera that night in Gillian Trussell's jolly Bohemian flat. When he emigrated, with his studio traps filling half a dozen packing cases, none of the boys bothered to see him off. They had learned to see through his good fellowship, and recalled a poor little phantom, to whose life and happiness he had been a wicked and bitter enemy.

About a year after his departure I read the announcement in the Herald of the marriage of Franklin D. Dobb, Sr., to a widow well-known and popular in society. I took the trouble to ascertain that it was Frank's father, and being among some of the boys that night, mentioned it to them.

"Well," remarked Smith, "that's really queer. You remember Frank left some things in my care when he went away? Yesterday I got a letter asking about them, and informing me that he had got married and was coming home."

He did come home, and he settled in his old studio. What sort of a meeting he had with his father this time I never heard. The old gentleman had been paying him his allowance regularly while he was away, and I believe he kept up the payment still. But otherwise he gave him no help, and if he ever needed help he did now.

His wife was a Cuban, as pretty and as helpless as a doll. She had been an heiress till her brother had turned rebel and had his property confiscated. Unfortunately for Frank, he had married her before the culmination of this catastrophe. In fact, he had been paying court to her with the dispatch announcing his wife's death in his pocket, and had married her long before the poor little clay was well settled in the grave he had sent it to. In marrying her he had evidently believed he was establishing his future. So he was, but it was a future of expiation for the sins and omissions of his past.

The new Mrs. Dobb was a tigress in her love and her jealousy. She was childish and ignorant, and adored her husband as a man and an artist. She measured his value by her estimation of him, and was on the watch perpetually for trespassers on her domain. The domestic outbreaks between the two were positively blood curdling. One afternoon, I remember, Gillian Trussell, who had heard of his return, called on him. Mrs. D. met her at the studio door, told her, "Frank," as she called him, was out; slammed the door in her face, and then flew at him with a palette scraper. We had to break the door in, and found him holding her off by both wrists, and she frothing in a mad fit of hysterics. From that day he was a changed man. She owned him body and soul.

The life the pair lived after that was simply ridiculously miserable. He had lost his old social popularity, and was forced to sell his pictures to the cheap dealers, when he was lucky enough to sell them at all. The paternal allowance would not support the flat they first occupied, and they went into a boarding house. Inside of a month they were in the papers, on account of outbreaks on Mrs. Dobb's part against one of the ladies of the house. A couple of days after he leased a little room opening into his studio, converted it into a bed-room, and they settled there for good.

Such a housekeeping as it was--like a scene in a farce. The studio had long since run to seed, and a perpetual odor of something to eat hung over it along with the sickening reek of the Florida water Mrs. D., like all other creoles, made more liberal use of than of the pure element it was half-named from. Crumbs and crusts and chop-bones, which the dog had left, littered the rugs; and I can not recall the occasion on which the caterer's tin box was not standing at the door, unless it was when the dirty plates were piled up, there waiting for him to come for them. I dined there once. Frank had had a savage quarrel with her that day, and wanted me for a bender. But the scheme availed him nothing, for she broke out over the soup and I left them to fight it out, and finished my feast at a chop house.

All of his old flirtations came back to curse him now. His light loves of the playhouse and his innocent devotions of the ball room were alike the instruments fate had forged into those of punishment for him. The very names of his old fancies, which, with that subtle instinct all women possess, she had found out, were sufficient to send his wife into a frenzy. She was a chronic theatre-goer, and they never went to the theatre without bringing a quarrel home with them. If he was silent at the play she charged him with neglecting her; if he brisked up and tried to chat, her jealousy would soon pick out some casus belli in the small talk he strove to interest her with. A word to a passing friend, a glance at one of her own sex, was sufficient to set her going. I shall never question that jealousy is a form of actual madness, after what I saw of it in the lives of that miserable man and woman.

A year after his return he was the ghost of his old self. He was haggard and often unshaven; his attire was shabby and carelessly put on; he had lost his old, jaunty air, and went by you with a hurried pace, and his head and shoulders bent with an indescribable suggestion of humility. The fear of having her break out, regardless of any one who might be by, which hung over him at home, haunted him out of doors, too. The avenger of Mrs. Dobb the first had broken his spirit as effectually as he had broken Mrs. Dobb's heart. Smith occupied the next studio to him, and one evening I was smoking there, when an atrocious uproar commenced in the next room. We could distinguish Frank's voice and his wife's, and another strange one. Smith looked at me, grinned, and shrugged his shoulders. The disturbance ceased in a couple of minutes, and a door banged.

Then came a crash, a shrill and furious scream, and the sound of feet. We ran to the door, in time to see Mrs. Dobb, her hair in a tangle down her back, in a dirty wrapper and slipshod slippers, stumbling down stairs. We posted after her, Smith nearly breaking his neck by tripping over one of the slippers which she had shed as she ran. The theatres were just out and the streets full of people, among whom she jostled her way like the mad woman that she was. We came up with her as she overtook her husband, who was walking with McGilp, the dealer who handled his pictures. She seized him by the arm and screamed out:

"I told you I would come with you."

His face for a moment was the face of a devil, full of fury and despair. I saw his fist clench itself and the big vein in his forehead swell. But he slipped his hands into his pockets, looked appealingly at McGilp, and said, shrugging his shoulders, "You see how it is, Mac?"

McGilp nodded and walked abruptly away, with a look full of contempt and scorn. We mingled with the crowd and saw the poor wretches go off together, he grim and silent, she hysterically excited--with all the world staring at them. Smith slept on a lounge in my room that night. "I couldn't get a wink up there," he said, "and I don't want to be even the ear witness of a murder."