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The Green County, Wisconsin, "poor farm" is operated by the inmates of the insane asylum of that county. There are no strait-jackets here. A "maniac" is unknown. Sometimes they are brought here, but they never remain, as maniacs. There are no dungeons and no cells for raving men and Women, who have lost out in the struggle. But there is something in the atmosphere of the place—a feeling of calm and peace—that has done more for the restoration of reason to the distracted ones than strait-jackets and their advocates ever thought of. The maniac speedily becomes the patient. As such he is taught to bear some part in the duties of the place, and thus is made once more a useful member of society. It is generally usefulness that awakens the forgotten sense of dignity, memory and other things that go to make men and women out of incurables. Sometimes it is merely the picking up of chips that calls back the unfortunate one's interest in life. Sometimes it is the reluctant turning of a grindstone. Sometimes it is a little yellow, helpless canary, whose very littleness and helplessness appeal to the dormant spark in some wreck of a woman whose reason has lost its bearings. Sometimes it is one thing and sometimes another, but nearly always it is this single principle that is used to call back the memories and powers that have gone. The patients are made to feel that something depends on them. They are not outcasts and crazy people. The restraints to which they have been used in most cases are taken away. Men have been brought there raving, taking four strong assistants to hold them, and yet in a few hours the evil spirit that rent them somehow felt the power that lies in the methods of the place. Confinement, straps and their like are absolutely unknown. The institution is self-supporting. In connection with the asylum—which does not carry any suggestion at all of that grim thing—is the county poor farm. The men and women in this department are generally past the working time, and are the burden on the place. The insane are taught to work. They sow, they reap, they do all the farm labor, including the care of the cattle and horse, and the teaming itself. They do much of the carpenter work and in other ways are made to help themselves and to help others. One of the superintendent's reports to the state authorities is almost unique, and is remarkable chiefly for its blanks: "Transferred to other institutions, none; number escaped and not returned, none; under restraint, or seclusion one month or more at a time, none; temporarily in restraint or seclusion, none; total number days restraint, none." On the contrary, out of a total number of 134 patients, seven were discharged as sane, and three were paroled and not returned. Thirty-two out of the men and twenty-three of the women work all day regularly. Thirty-three in all work half a day or more, regularly; sixteen work less, Only thirty do no work at all, and just thirty are classified as "physically disabled otherwise, aside from their mental disability," so that every patient physically able works to a greater or less extent every day. Green County folks have learned to speak of the institution as the "farm" rather than as the as asylum. The farm consists of 320 acres, and 200 of these are under cultivation. All the work, even the teaming, is done by "crazy people.". No less than forty of them go about their work like any other "hands," absolutely without watching, and among the very few attendants the same rule of calmness and kindness is in force. COINS OF THE BIBLE The first mention of the use of silver in the Bible is in Genesis xx: 16. In Genesis xxiii: 16, its use as money is distinctly mentioned, in the denomination of shekel, which was the unit of Jewish calculations. "And Abraham weighed to Ephron the silver which he had named in the audience of the sons of Heth, four hundred shekels of silver, current money with the merchant." Thus, money has formed the basis of commercial intercourse from the earliest stages. The metals most commonly mentioned as used for this purpose are gold, silver and copper. Throughout the Old Testament the money of Egypt and Canaan is mentioned without distinction, leading to the conclusion that the money of the two countries, if not the same, was interchangeable. Old Egyptian inscriptions give representations of money in the form of rings, which did not represent any fixed amount, but had to be weighed. Silver was probably the earliest and therefore, the standard, representative of value, and the shekel was the common denomination. It was often called a "piece of silver." The first allusion to Jewish coinage is found in the Apochrypha, where it is related in 1 Maccabees xv: 6, that Simon was granted permission to coin money with his own stamp, and he probably issued the first distinctive Jewish coins, the silver shekel, and the half shekel, called the beka. The standard or sacred shekel was kept in the sanctuary, and by this the coinage was regulated. The coins in use in the Biblical period were as follows: The coins of Crotona, Boetia, Berea, two Sy racusan pieces, Acanthus, Phocis, Thessalonica, Egina, Herod's shekel, another Berean coin, the Patera, Athens, two Pisistratus coins, the Magnesia, Antiochus Dionysius, Corinth, Antiochus Epiphanes, coin of Macrinus, Byblos, Syria, and of Tigranes, Ring of Syria. ABOUT PEANUTS The peanut is grown mostly in Southampton, Surrey, Prince George, Nansemond, Sussex, Isle of Wight, Princess Anne and Norfolk counties, in Virginia, and in Currituck county, North Canolina. The nuts differ greatly in quality and flavor and the finest come from Nansemond and Isle of Wight counties in Old Virginia. Although they grow on vines, the nut is developed under the ground. The peanut factories of Norfolk, Virginia which handle more than a million bushels per year, furnish an interesting study of the methods of preparing this humble but popular little edible for the market. The nuts are separated, cleansed and classed as follows, each machine having a duty to perform: First, there is a large cylinder in which all the nuts are placed in order that the dust may be shaken off from them. They pass thence to the brushes, where every nut receives fifteen feet of a brushing before it becomes free. Then they pass through a sluiceway to the floor below, where they are dropped on an endless belt which is about two and a half feet in width, and passes along at the rate of four miles an hour. On each side of the belt stand eight colored girls, and as the nuts fall from the sluice onto the belt, the girls, with a quick motion of the hand, pick out all the poor looking nuts. Two-thirds are thus picked off before the belt reaches the end, and only the finest pass the crucible. These, drop through another sluice into bags on the floor below. They are taken away by hand, sewed up, branded as "cocks," and stamped with a rooster. The nuts caught up by the girls are thrown to one side, placed in bags and taken to another room, where they are picked over, and the best are singled out and branded as "ships." The third grade, called "eagles," is picked from the cullings of the "cocks" and "ships," bagged and sent to another floor. There the nuts are shaken out of the shell by a patent sheller, placed in 200-pound sacks and shipped to the North for use of the confectioners. A peculiar kind of oil is extracted from the meat of the nut, in which the wholesale druggists deal largely. The shells are packed in sacks and sold to stablekeepers for horse bedding. A peanut factory of average size cleans, picks and packs about 3,000 bushels per day. LARGEST APARTMENT HOUSE IN THE WORLD |