n
the Pacific and the Gulf of California is 4,575 miles." And I am at
least interested in the fact that "An Englishman has invented a cover
for hatchways on vessels that operates on the principle of a roll-top
desk." If this hatchway operates on the principle of the only roll-top
desk I ever possessed, God help the poor sailors when the storm
breaks!

Such items as these disclose to me the extent of my previous
ignorance:--

"Bolivia is producing about one-third of the world's output of tin."

"Records disclose that for several centuries an infusion of nutgalls
treated with sulphate of iron composed the only known ink."

"The first job held by William G. McAdoo, Secretary of the Treasury,
was that of a newsboy selling the Macon _Morning Telegraph_. His next
job was that of a farm laborer."

"There are 2,500,000 freight-cars in the country, and their average
life is somewhere about twenty years."

"Since gold was discovered in the Auckland province, in 1852, there
has been exported from that district gold to the value of
$116,796,000."

I should, to be sure, be more completely educated if I could find
somewhere, under the sporting news, or at the base of the obituaries,
a statement of where Auckland is. But perhaps that information will
come to-morrow.

Well, I have presented here only a tithe of the knowledge I have
to-day gleaned from the daily press, that hitherto (by me, at least)
underestimated institution. I haven't stated that I now know who first
used anthracite coal as a fuel, and when. You don't know that, I am
sure. Neither do you know how many acres of corn were planted in
England and Wales in 1915 and 1916, nor how many government employees
there were in France before the war, nor that "A bundle of fine glass
threads forms a new ink-eraser."

However, I must share with you my choicest acquisition. It seems
little less than a crime to keep such knowledge from the world at
large, to bury it at the bottom of a column on the ninth page of the
first edition of the Springfield _Republican_. So I rewrite it here.
For oral delivery, I shall save it till some caller comes whom I
particularly desire to impress. Then, with all the Old-World courtesy
of Mr. Ezra Barkley, I shall offer this guest a chair, and as I do so
I shall remark, with the careless casualness of the truly erudite:
"Guatemala has only one furniture factory. It employs a hundred and
fifty men."

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