Click image to open full size in new tab
Article Text
NEIGHBORHOOD BREVITIES AND NEARBY NOTES
Prairie du Chien has a historic spot in Villa Louis, the home of the Dousman family in fur trading days. The place is maintained with many of its old furnishings, but the Dousman heirs now announce that many more pieces of furniture which belonged to the old home and which are in storage, together with a number of paintings which adorned the walls, are to be returned to the old home. Extensive repairs are also to be made to the roof exterior of the old mansion before these valuable pieces are returned. Crop prospects are the best in years in Richland county. Clover and alfalfa hay are being cut and the crop is the best in years. All small grain is looking good, barley being in head in some places. Corn is coming on fine, and will be the proverbial knee high or higher by July 4th, much of it having reached the knee high stage now. A fine rain fell Monday morning which will do much good, but more would have been appreciated. R. A. Goodsell, who has been Acting Postmaster at Platteville has now been confirmed by the senate. Platteville has been fortunate in having several very obliging and capable postmasters and Mr. Goodsell is making every effort not to spoil that reputation. The barn, silo and chicken house on the John Weier farm at South Ridgeway was totally destroyed by fire after it was struck by lightning during a storm. Calves were in the barn at the time the fire started, but the family succeeded in getting them out. All buildings were burned to the ground. Some was carried on the buildings. Will Webb and family went to Madison to arrange for an apartment during the summer school session. On their way home they experienced what might have resulted in a bad accident. A rear axle broke in two near the wheel causing the car to run into a bank. Luckily they were driving slowly so no one was hurt other than receiving hard jolt. Little Phyllis had her knees bruised. The Goodland bill, increasing indemnities for tuberculine cattle slaughtered as a result of T. B. tests, has been passed in both houses of the legislature. Grade cattle bounties are raised from $40 to $75 and registered bounties from $90 to $140. The defunct City and Farmer's Bank of Dodgeville is soon to pay a further dividend of 10 per cent. Two former dividends of 25 per cent each have been payed. The Viroqua Censor reports that tobacco planting is general in that section, and that fully half the crop is in the fields under the most favorable circumstances. Harry J. Vruwink has received the appointment of Postmaster at Muscoda. Mr. and Mrs. Fred Arnold, Jr., and their hired man, who live on a farm south of Mt. Horeb, escaped injury when lightning struck the barn which they were in. Mrs. Arnold and the hired man were knocked unconscious. The entire herd of 15 cows were knocked down. No damage was done to the barn. Harking back a hundred years to the precarious days when white settlers fought the devil with faith and the Indians with powder, the first Methodist Episcopal church of Galena Sunday began a week's celebration of its centennial. Gen. Grant worshipped here regularly and not least in the lore of the church is a silver plate fixed to one of its pews, bearing the inscription: "U. S. Grant, 18591863.'
Three members of one family were killed at Elkhorn, Wis., Tuesday evening when their auto was struck by the Southwest Limited, Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific passenger train. Those killed were: John Schmidt, 58, Walworth county, Wis., farmer; Mrs. John Schmidt, 54, his wife; Esther Schmidt, 18, daughter. The three motorists were killed outright, their bodies horribly mutilated when they were hurled from the wreckage of their machine and rolled along the tracks by the speeding train. There are now 232 fox farms in Wisconsin. The fur farm may mean the end of trapping cruelty. Horse meat is the chief ingredient of the food fed to foxes, old and crippled horses being used for this purpose. Four popular and prominent young people of Montfort and vicinity were participants in a pretty double wedding ceremony solemnized in the Little Brown Church, Nashua, Iowa, at 1:00 o'clock p. m., on Tuesday, June 25th, 1929. The contracting parties were Miss Bertha Bickford of Rewey and Frank L. Goold, of Montfort and Miss Ellen M. Mueller of Montfort and Lavern F. Bickford of Rewey. Immediately after the ceremony the couples left on two weeks' honeymoon camping trip to include Iowa and northern Wisconsin. Mr. and Mrs. Goold will make their home in Montfort where the groom has a cozy home. Mr. and Mrs. Bickford will be at home to their friends in Rewey after August 1st.-Montfort Mail. A bold robbery occurred at Elizabeth Friday night, just across the street from the offices of Constable A. R. Ehrler of that place when robbers broke into the plant of the Elizabeth Butter and Cheese company and stole 10 tubs of butter, each tub containing 60 pounds of butter ready for shipment today. The robbery was discovered about 6 o'clock this morning when Charles Lewis, manager of the plant, opened for the day's business. Bock's Drug Store and Hebenstreit's Big Store at Shullsburg were entered week ago Thursday night and thoroughly ransacked. The burglars were evidently looking for cash as no merchandise was taken. Miss Helen Geller of Muscoda, who completed her studies at the University of Paris, France, has returned to this country and will attend summer school at the University in Ann Harbor. Michigan. Rev. Merritt, of Platteville, while returning Tuesday from Phantom Lake, where he had takensa load of boys to camp, was run into by large truck. The truck was on the wrong side of the road with all appearance that the driver was asleep. As he came near, Rev. Merritt, he started to cross the road to the right side, when he struck the Merritt car, which was completely wrecked. Mr. Merritt escaped serious injury. Henry Gruber, aged 78 years, died at the home of his daughter, Mrs. John Reger, at Mineral Point. Deceased was a prominent farmer at Mifflin. Miss Myrna Heberlein of Fennimore and Dr. B. J. Brindley of Boscobel were married at Duluth, Minn. They will reside at Bluefield, W. Va. Jack Kroll and Joe Frye, two Highland men caught a 32-pound cat fish at Mazomanie. Rowdy Elliott of Muscoda has signed as outfielder, with the Decatur Commies in the Three-Bye League. The Richland county board, in special session, has voted $25,000 to replace the county home for the aged, which burned recently. A home to accommodate persons will be built on the county asylum grounds. Robbing creameries is now becoming a common practice. The Louisburg, Wis. creamery was entered Wednesday night and 100 pounds of print butter was stolen from the ice box. Fortunately 70 tubs of butter had been shipped out a short time before the robbery.
Another jog of seven miles takes one past the Jade Fountain pagoda, past leisurely camel trains, beyond the high road and the dust of tourist autos, under the shadow of somber, aquare, beacon towers, marching in single file, at half-mile intervals, out over the hill crests. Pushing on deeper into the hills one comes at Pi Yun Ssu, to the temple of the Green Jade Clouds, the loveliest temple in the north.
Trip to the Great Wall. One of the most fascinating trips to be made from Peking is to the Great Wall. It is wonder enough for one journey to walk atop the wall and look out over the dusty brown plains of the north where Tatar horsemen once swarmed toward the passes, and to see trains of pack-mules straggling through the great stone gateways oblivious of the traffic on the nearby rails, their backs laden with merchandise as were the backs of pack-mules two thousand years ago. Like SO much in or near Peking, the Great Wall is at first disappointing. It is disappointingly small. It is, in places, only twenty feet high and as many broad, while the city wall of Peking is twice as high and, at the base, thrice as broad. When one stands close under the Peking city wall it looms above with the massive "grandeur of an abrupt high cliff; but when the traveler gets off the train at the Nankow pass and sees the bit of wall scrambling up the hillside before him, he wonders why it is called "great." That, however, is only at first. He has only to climb up out of the pass and follow the wall for half an hour and he begins to understand. Away It goes before him, and behind, up, up the topmost ridges of the hills-bending, swinging, climbing, leaping like the supple, agile dragons of the palace-garden screen. It undulates, it sways, it marches before, it takes the curve of the hills like a swift auto on a mountain road, on and on and on, across the farthest gully, beyond the farthest peak. Where the mountains blend into the clouds, there it is: where the last horizon vanishes, It is there.
