J. P. Edwards was in Piggott, Ark., recently, showing a curious egg one of his hens laid the day before, and the exhibit surely aroused the most profound wonderment. The egg is an ordinary one in shape and size, but on the surface of the snow-white shell there appear to be faint maps of the eastern and western hemispheres. North and South America are intact, except a part of the extreme southern point, the Gulf of Mexico and Panama Canal being plainly shown. On the eastern hemisphere everything looks as though having been torn by cyclonic winds and in danger of being scattered to the “four corners of the earth,” wherever they are. Some say this freak egg is simply one result of the European war, earthquakes, land monopoly, et cetera. Those who are of prophetic vision see “signs” in this egg which prognosticate the future face of the world. Girl Plumber-Butcher Quits Her Laundry. “Cattle are more interesting than clothes,” says Miss Allie Pitts, of Eureka Springs, Ark., who has forsaken the butcher business to run a laundry. Miss Pitts is twenty-seven years old. She was accustomed to killing her own cattle and hogs when she was in the meat business. This summer she plans to quit the laundry, buy a cattle ranch, and ship her own stock to market. Before she became a butcher Miss Pitts was a plumber. At an age when most girls are giggling over beaus and party dresses, this mountain girl was repairing broken water pipes and defective drains. “I guess it’s because I’m just naturally odd,” she says bashfully when asked how she came to choose such odd professions. “I went to keeping books in a meat shop, and one day when the butcher was taken sick I offered to take his place. Then I bought a shop of my own in Granby, Mo. With the help of a man I employed I did all my own butchering, cutting up the beef, and rendering the lard. I knocked the animals in the head as they came down the runway. Oh, yes, I hated it at first, but I soon got used to it. Some way I hated worst to kill the hogs. “Cattle are interesting,” she continued musingly; “much more interesting than clothes. I’m going back into the cattle business.” The restrictions of corsets, high heels, and frills are unknown to this wholesome mountain girl. She dresses very plainly in a short, dark skirt, mannish waist and tie, and knockabout hat. She has mild blue eyes, curling dark hair, and talks with a little lisp. Edison Will Make Benzol. Another step for the manufacture of benzol in this country has been taken. Thomas A. Edison has opened a factory in Johnstown, Pa., for the manufacture of benzol from coal gas, a process never before developed in this country.