Prof. Mason, of the Smithsonian institution, says that the most needed achievement of 1903 is the discovery of a satisfactory method of economizing electricity. Some day, he says, in the not distant future, the rivers will make all the electricity we want. We shall harness the streams and they will heat every house, run every wheel and light every lamp.

For those seeking a climate where there is not so much reason for repining as the one we suffer under, Forty-Mile, Alaska, might be recommended, says the St. Louis globe-Democrat. We see a statement made by an enthusiast just returned from there that, no matter what the stories and false reports sent out may have been, the mercury never, under any circumstances, falls lower than 70 degrees below zero. In common with all new countries, this district of Alaska has to undergo a campaign of misrepresentation before its true character is known, but now that the facts are made public, there is no occasion for believing these stories. The returned gold hunter has taken a little run down into the continent seeking a winter resort at which he may wear out some of his summer clothes. Medicine Hat suit him pretty well. There balmy day after day succeed each other, with the thermometer marking as high as 12 to 14 degrees below zero. At Medicine Hat it is so warm that sleeping bags are not used at all and there is never a night from August to June that you can’t sleep comfortably under four bed quilts, five blankets and a wool mattress; and no matter what the temperature, there is always a cooling breeze that makes life in a steam-heated room agreeable and pleasant. At Forty-Mile, of course, they have their winters, as might be expected, but with a record of three years in which the mercury has never gone beneath 70 below zero, it is pretty safe to say that is the limit. In fact, everybody that goes there says that place is the limit.

Samuel Seager, of Bolivar, N. J., has a tame crow named Jim, that can talk as plainly as some parrots. Jim is only 16 months old, but few children of that age can excel him in making remarks. Jim was caught in a hollow tree on top of a hill near Bolivar.

With him was his sister, and both of them were sold into bondage, Mr. Seager buying Jim. Now he is so tame that he sits on the piano and criticizes when Mr. Seager’s daughter plays coon songs. Every one who knows him wishes he could meet Ernest Thompson Seton.

The crow first began to talk last winter. He stared in by calling “dad” and “boo-booh.” Later “papa” and “mamma” were distinctly made out. Now he has advanced so far that when Mr. Seager asks him if he wants his breakfast, Jim replies: “well, I should smile.”

He will fly straight to a person who asks him if he wants his head scratched, if the person has been formally introduced to him.

He is an impersonator, and can make any schoolboy answer his whistle.—N. Y. Tribune

Almost the latest, and to all womankind the most powerful and interesting, of modern forces in surgery is the use of paraffin wax, and with this substance deformities that at one time would have seemed irremediable are removed in a manner that is declared to be simply marvelous.

This use of paraffin wax is no fantastic invention purporting to come from across the Atlantic; it is a sober usage that is coming into vogue with the greatest surgeons of our realm. Suppose that a nose is so badly broken that the joining together of the splinters is an utter impossibility, there is no reason whatever that the nose should be a deformity. All our great surgeons now take a quantity of the melted wax, and this they very carefully inject below the skin tissue of the nose, and as the substance is absorbed and begins to set, they can most carefully model the nose to its original shape, or even to an improved one.

So easy of manipulation is the special paraffin wax in qualified hands—and by the duly qualified alone it should be handled—that it is wholly impossible to tell that it has been used. In some cases unsightly hollows in the cheeks, and especially near the eye, have been so filled up that it was impossible to say that they had ever existed, and in one specially-recorded case the whole contour of a woman’s face had been altered by the very careful and artful use of the wax. Many of the medical papers lately have been reporting marvelous instances of deformities modeled out of existence by means of this singular new agent.

Mr. Stephen Paget, of the West London hospital, declares that in the case of men and women with badly broken noses the defect can be removed in a few minutes without a scar being left upon the patient and without even the faintest inconvenience being caused to the latter. So new is the remedy that but few, comparatively, have yet received the benefit of it, but those who have would seem to have been vastly pleased at the alteration in their appearance.

Many stories are told to illustrate the folly of a tongue that wags too freely, and the point is one which needs to be emphasized to the attention of humanity. Not long ago a neat and well-dressed girl was arrested in New York on a charge of shoplifting, and her appearance was so greatly in her favor that the police were about to release her, believing that mistake had been made. Then she opened her mouth and spoke, saying: “I s’pose my mug will have to go into de picture book for dis.” Whereupon her captors held her tightly in the iron grasp of the law, and shortly thereafter secured her commitment to jail, and put her “mug” in the “picture book” as that of a thief. And all because she talked too much.

No professor has as yet discovered that a microbe is responsible for the fact that most women want to hurry right out to the store next day, says the Chicago Record-Herald, and “price” their gifts.

Infantile curiosity and appetite came near spoiling the matrimonial plans of a West side couple at Cleveland, O., recently, for the baby brother of the bride at the marriage license. Miss Emma J. Harrison secured a license to marry John M. Wilkinson the other evening. As he was working she go the license herself. Later she returned, very excited, and told the clerk the baby had eaten the precious paper. A second license was granted.