Let us, therefore, while reasonably fixed in our purpose, avoid the display of a degree of firmness which will scatter us around over two school districts, and confuse the coroner in his inquest. PUT IN A SUMP. |THE president of the North Park and Vandaliar Mining Company not long ago got a letter from the superintendent which closed by saying that everything was working splendidly. The ore body was increasing, and the quality and richness of the rock improving with every foot. He also added that he had constructed a sump in the mine. The president having spent most of his life in military and political affairs, had never found it necessary to use a sump, and so he didn't know to a dead moral certainty what it was that the superintendent had put in. He hoped, however, that the expense would not cripple the company, and that by handling it carefully, they might escape damage from an explosion of the sump at an unlooked-for time. He proceeded, however, to examine the unabridged, and found that it meant a cistern, which is constructed at the bottom of a mine for the purpose of collecting the water, and from which it is pumped. The president, having posted himself, concluded to go and have a little conversation with one of the directors, who is a druggist in the city, and see if he knew the nature of a sump. The president, in answer to the questions of the director relative to the latest news from the mine, said that it was looking better all the time, and that the superintendent had constructed a sump. The director never blinked his eye. He acted like a man who has lived on sumps all his life. "Do you know what a sump is?" asked the president. "Why, of course, anybody knows what a sump is. It's the place where they collect water from a mine, and pump it from, to free the mine from water. A man who don't know what a sump is, don't know his business, that's all I've got to say." The president looked hurt about something. He hadn't looked for the conversation to assume just exactly the shape that it had. Finally he said, "Well you needn't point your withering sarcasm at me. I know what a sump is. I just wanted to see whether a man who had been in the pill business all his life, knew what a sump was. I knew you claimed to know almost everything, but I didn't believe you was up on that word. Now, if it's a proper question, I'd like to know just how long you have been so all-fired fluent about mining terms." Then the director said that there was no use in putting on airs, and swelling up with pride over a little thing like that. He, for one, didn't propose to crow over other men who had not had the advantages that he had, and he would be frank with the president, and admit that an hour ago he didn't know the difference between a sump and a certiorari.