"When Reuben comes to town" has been made the occasion for as much merriment as the shanty Irishman or the old clothes man, but the farmer has come up smiling and of late years there has been less disposition to poke fun at the visitor from the country. People who live in cities are beginning to suspect that the man from the farm has the edge on the town dweller. And there's a reason.

The wage earner in the city has stood and delivered before the man who grows the bread and butter, and the farmer who once came to town to wander aimlessly about the streets and gaze at the tall building may now speed into town in his own automobile, put up at he the best hotel and spend his time in enjoyment of the same amusement that call out the throngs of urbans.

Not every farmer, of course, can do that. But there can be no doubt that there is more of the cosmopolitan in the makeup of the granger to-day. Even if he cannot afford the luxuries, he has come too make himself less conspicuous. He wears clothes that bear no provincial stamp. The country stores, in fact, in this age of ready made clothing that conservatively follows the styles, gives him a better opportunity in this direction than they did years ago.

The visitor has learned that his first need in the city is to become located, so that he will not be obliged to wander about the streets, possibly carrying his luggage. He finds a hotel where the fare fits his purse and decides before he strikes the sidewalk where he is to go and what he is to see.

Country people unused to city ways are wont to wander into the lunchrooms where clerks and bookkeepers are perched up on impossible stools snatching their hasty lunches from counters. It is worthy of note, however, that the city workers refrain from making remarks when the rural resident ambles in leading his wife and two children and the waitresses respect the provincialism and make way for this quartet of patrons, whom it would be more convenient to direct to ar restaurant where tables are provided.

But city restaurant men say that the man from the country, as a general thing, now learned to spot an appropriate dinging place.

We need here in the Untied States a little more of that good old English bluntness no the part of modest men and women who know their own worth, when men and women of the arrogant sort get in the way or try to be patronizing, says New York Independent. Our observation is that nowhere in the world are men and women of exceptional intellectual attainments so lacking in self-assertion as they are in the United States. This phenomenon is a comparatively new one in American life. Wherever one opens the documents of American history before the civil war he is sure to discover interesting incidents proving the snese of dignity and real self-respect of the American farmer, mechanic, merchant, teacher, physician or clergyman. It was something in man himself that in those days was regarded as worth while and worthy of respect. It takes a certain amount of courage ffor an individual, face to face with a person politically or financially prominent, to tell him to stay on his own reservation and mind his own business. Americans have been inclined to regard the Englishman's habitual manifestation of this particular kind of courage as a disagreeable quality. Perhaps it is. But we are convinced that it is a necessary quality, and that its cultivation is an essential part of that external vigilance which is the price of liberty.

There has long prevailed the idea that milk sours when electrical storms prevail. This has been pretty well exploded by careful investigation. It is now held that milk sours quicker when a n electrical storm is approaching. According McKay and Larson, the reason is that the air temperature warms the milk and creates more favorable conditions for the rapid multiplication for the germs present in the milk. It is for this reason that milk sours quicker during or previous to a thunder storm than at any other time.

It has been pointed out that the theory put forward by de Vries of Amsterdam, according to which new species of plants come into existence not by a long process of natural selection, as Darwin supposed, but through sudden mutations, the cause of which remains unknown, applies equally well to new species of animals.

The giant dinosaurs, for instance whose remains, as found in our western "bad lands," excite so much amazement, appear by paleontological evidence to have sprang suddenly into being and as suddenly to have disappeared.

All the other animal types also seem to have been well characterized when they first made their appearance.

The theory of the origin of species by mutation, when applied either to the plant or the animal kingdom, does away with the demand made by the natural selection theory for inordinately long periods of time, during which existing races were brought gradually to their present condition.

There are ghosts in the material as well as in the spirit world. In fact some people earn their living by acting as “ghosts.” Some “ghosts” often become prominent in their “profession” despite the fact that their work is little known.

Busy painters sometimes hand their canvasses over to lesser known artists to “touch up” or finish off. The struggler is glad of the work, the artist is able to do more and the result seems to please the public.

Minor authors often practice the same thing. A man may be writing a book on the history of Mexico—let us say. He needs certain information which he knows can be obtained from reference books. Gathering that information does not require the brains of a genius, his secretary can do that quite well, while he works up the “local color” form the bare facts obtained. It is an open secret that many writers work in this way and that ghosts are often employed to “write up” books of reminisces of celebrities. Sometimes , the work of these “authors” behind the scenes do is important. They revise novels, draw “ends” together, work up “climaxes” and give dramatic effect ot “situations.”—Cleveland Plain Dealer

An effective remedy that will usually break up a cold in twenty-four hours, is easily made by mixing together in a large bottle two ounces of Glycerine, a half-ounce of Virgin Oil of Pine compound pure and eight ounces of pure Whisky. This mixture will cure any cough that is curable, and is not expensive as it makes enough to last the average family an entire year. Virgin Oil of Pine compound pure is prepared only in the laboratories of the Leach Chemical Co., Cincinnati, O.

Half of the petty annoyances of life are caused by people who either ignorantly or carelessly take no thought of the feelings of their fellows. In a crowded reading or writing room some ill bred fellow will persist in talking in loud tones, to the intense disgust of a score or more of people who should be protected from unnecessary noise.

This is an American nuisance of which no counterpart can be found in Europe.

The other day when the weather was very warm I saw a couple of well dressed women stand up by the front door of a street car that ran the suburbs of Washington, D. C.

They could easily have found seats, but there they stood for over a mile, keeping the air from the other passengers, who were almost suffocated, the conductor apparently not having the nerve to ask them to move.

Another ignoramus who ought to get a jail sentence is the one who takes the left of the sidewalk instead of the right and will crowd in between people and the walls of buildings, when the law of the road requires them to go to the curb.