QJlir^mithfirlfi Ijrralfc Published Every Friday Morning. BEATY & LASSITER, Editors and Proprietors. Entered at the Postofflce at Smith Held, Johnston Couuty, N. C., as ?econd class Matter. Rates of Subscription: One Year, Cash In Advance,.. $1.00 ?Is Months. Cash In Advance . * THE NORTH POLE FOUND. At last man has stood on the north ernmost point of the globe?at the North Pole. Such was the news flash ed around the world from Copenha gen, Denmark, Wednesday. And the great explorer who has performed this wonderful and dangerous feat Is an American?Dr. Frederick A. Cook, of Brooklyn, New York. He has been absent for more than two years and his wife bad not heard a word from him since March, 1908. The fur therest point reached previous to Dr. Cook's trip was by Commander Robert K. Peary, in 1906, when he pushed forward to within two hun dred miles of the pole. For nearly four hundred years men have been searching for the pole, beginning with the trip of Sir Hugh Wllloughby In 1553, when 62 people found their graves among the icebergs of the farthest North. Expedition after ex pedition haB been taken since that time, nearly every one resulting In the loss of life, the greatest loss be ing the third Franklin voyage In 1845, when 135 went away to return no more. In all, more than seven hundred people have lost their lives in the vain attempts to find the North Pole. Commander Peary is now somewhere In the regions of the frozen North and may repch the Pole before he returns, Pistol-Toting. The Texan legislature at its latest session imposed a tax of 50 per cent on the gross receipts derived from sales of pistols in that State. This was done with a view to making pis tol-toting more expensive. In other communities it has been sought to make the act of carrying deadly) wea pons concealed a felony, punishable by confinement at hard labor In the I penitentiary. Another remedy con sidered is to make it felony to manu facture, offer for sale, or have . in ' possession a pistol barrel of which is less than eighteen inches in length. Given a fool, who is a coward and an egotist, and then make this crea ture drunk, and put a pistol In his pocket, and the chances are seven of a possible ten that there will be a murder in that fellow's haunts be fore midnight. There are more homi cides of that Bort perpetrated In this land of the free every calendar month of the year than all the cas ualties of battles on land and sea of the la'e war with Spain. The country is got to be too high-toned to legally hang its murderers, and hence there has grown up the de moralizing practice of lynching them. Trials in courts of criminal Judica ture are too frequently travesties 011 Justice. Bribery and perjury are all too common. Perverted sentimentali ty has too free swing. Criminal law yers practice too freely the infamies of the shyster. The right of appeal adds enormous weight to the leaden feet of justice. We have interpret ed the gospel. Better ten men be ?hot down in street fight than that one red-handed murderer pay the penalty of his crime on a gallows erected by the law. Next to drunkenness, the cowardly practico of plstol-totlng is responsible for more illegal violence in this coun try than any other cause, and the two go together. Few sober men care to tote a pistol, and perhaps 90 per cent of the pistol toters are moved to the habit by their indul gence in too much fighting whisky. The defect of the American char acter is the lax administration of the criminal statutes. It is the immuni ty from punishment that emboldens our criminal classes. Stop pistol-tot ing and a great advance will be made in civilization.?Washington Post. Putting It Gently. The sages ot the general store ?wero discussing the veracity of old 81 Perkins when Uncle Bill Abbott ambled in. "What do you think about It, Un cle Bill?" they asked him. "Would you call Si Perkins a liar?" "Wall," answered Uncle Bill slow ly, as he thoughtfully studied the cell ing, "I don't know as I'd go so far as to call him a liar exactly, but I do know this much: when feedin' time comes, In order to get any re sponse from his Jiogs, he has to get somebody else to call 'em for him." ?Everybody's Magazine. High Rolling. One of the evil results of the pros perous period which is In the past? and painfully so- its the habit of ex travagance which it bred, and which has reached all classes of people. A gentleman who lives in one of our cities told us not long ago that he knew of cases in which heads of households had mortgaged their homes for money to buy automobiles; and that he knew of clerks In dry goods stores making $&0 and $76 a month who rode about tc wn in hand some machines. It Is very nice for a man with sufficient Income to war rant It to invest a thousand or fif teen hundred dollars on a luxury like an automobile, but it Is not healthy for anyone to encumber their homes to provide these handsome and cost ly rigs. We are In the midst of a panic as severe as has been known for fifty years, but we are living at the same high rolling rate that was born of prosperous times. After a whlle something Is going to break, and the man who is traveling at too j high a speed will get a Jolt. We hope | a halt will be called before it Is too ! late. Gradually we may expect the J better times to which we are all j looking, will come, but the abnor- . mal, unnatural prosperity of the ; past decade will hardly return. The j Immediate task ahead of us Is to | adjust ourselves to the new condl | | t Ions, do less business on paper, and i more on the substantial basis of cash. We must learn to pay as we j go, or not go. We must walk If we cannot afford to ride. We must J stay at home rather than borrow | money to go abroad. We must ev en be content with modest churches that we ourselves are able to build, rather than erect splendid temples on money furnished by the banks. We would say to our young men: Live within your income. Ho not spend your salary In advance of Its pay- I ment. Have the courage to say no to the pressure so peculiar to our time, that would drive you in debt for things you can do without. We are rolling a little too high. We would better alight and start on old mother earth \vhere everything Is solid and safe.?Charity and Children. The Cigarette Evil. Learning that Hudson Maxlin, the leading gunpowder and high explosive expert in this country or in the world, has strong convictions anfi val uable information concerning the cigarette etil, the editor of Hoy Maga zine requested an article for publica tion and circulation. No more valu able contribution to the anti-cigarette cause has been made than the fol lowing letter: "As I promised I wil now give ex pression to my opinion concerning the cigarette evil. There has been so much said upon the subject already that It is difficult to present nny new facts or ideas; but no new ideas are j needed to warrant the most antago nistic nttltude toward the cigarette. Nevertheless, the cigarette has its defenders as does every other pois onous drug, although in my opinion, the cigarette is about the least de fensible. One of the most common errors of the defenders of the cigar ette is the confounding of cigarette smoking those that are the products of civilization. Carbonic acid gas is a poison but it is an ingredient of the common uir and we are used to it. We exhale carbonic acid gas with every breath as one of the pro ducts of- combustion of carbon with oxygen in the blood. But the sys tem has no acquaintance with car bonic oxide and has no defense a gainst the Insidious enemy. Taken into the lungs, it enters the blood with which it reacts and which it disintegrates. The blood of persons poisoned by inhalation of illumina tion gas, rich in carbonic oxide, is found to be coagulated. Nature has more or less fortified the human economy against the in trusion and the effects of poisons, however virulent, with which we habitually come in contact. Thus it is that poisons we encounter in a state of nature are not as Insidious or pernicious as with tobacco smok ing in general. While I am no friend of the cigar or the pipe, and believe that the use of tobacco in other forms Is but the lesser evil, I hold that the cigarette is in a class by itself and its evil effects are not those common to users of tobacco in other forms. The smoker of the pipe and cigar finds his injury in the nicotine, while the nicotine of the cigarette is far less virulent than the deadly carbonic oxide and other products of its polsonods combustion. The cigarette burns poisonously. Owing to the loose structure of the cigarette, its combustion is modi fied and destructive distillation pro ceeds with combustion, and owing to the incompleteness of oxidation, car bonic oxide Is largely ^odueed in stead of Carbonic acid. This carbonic oxide inhaled Into the lungs enters the blood undosisted and the damage It docs is in direct proportion to tho quantities inhaled. Carbonic oxide when inhaled in small quantities pro ducts falntness, dizziness, palpitation of the heart and a feeling of great heaviness it. the feet and legs. These are exactly the effects of the cigar ette and the depression and nervous ness which follow as a reaction make the* victim crave some balm or tonic for his malaise. He is then led to consume the drug in ever Increasing quantities. This progressive use of the cigar ette is especially true with boys in the period of rapid growth. The wreath of cigarette smoke which curls about the head .of the growing lad holds hi3 brain in an iron grip which prevents it from growing and his mind from developing just as the Iron shoe does the foot pf the Chi nese girl. In the terrible struggle for revival against the deadly cigarette smoke de velopment and growth are sacrificed by nature, which in the fight for life Itself must yield up every vital lux ury such as healthy body, growth of brain and mind. If all the boys could be made to know that with every breath of ciga rette smoke they Inhale imbecility and exhale manhood; that they are tapping their arteries as surely and letting their life's blood out as truly as though their veins and arteries were severed; and that the cigarette Is a maker of invalids, criminals and : fools?not men?it ought to deter them some. The yellow finger stain Is an emblem of deeper degradation and enslavement than the ball and chain." Plenty in India. Famine and plague are the usual terrible accompaniments of crop fail ures in India, where three hundred million people are dependent upon the yearly outturn of the harvests. This year the outlook for good crops is very promising. There have been plentiful rains and the chances are favorable for a season of health and plenty. Last year the short crops in Hindustan inflicted a money loss up on the people estimated at not less than $200,000,000. The people of the United States rejoicing in their own abundance, will gladly note the pros pective plenty for the swarming mil lions of the East during the next 12 months.?The Philadelphia Record. The Cost of Gambling. The Italian government does not hesitate to publish the statistics a bout its system of lotteries. Last year the people invested in them over $16,000,000. Of this, the government kept a little more than half Us reve nue and for expense of administration The winning buyers of tickets re ceived less than half. But that is only a part of the story. It appears that the gambling instinct is coincident with ignorance. Thus, in Como, where 17 per cent of the dwellers are illiterate, the av erage expenditure for lottery tickets is 20 cents per Inhabitant in a year. In Naples, where 54 per cent are il literate, this investment soars to $2.80 per capita. It is the boast of the government that these lotteries are honestly conducted. If that be true, and if investors get back less than half their ventures, what is the percentage won by "fortunate" gamblers in this country? There are no statistics upon which to base an accurate answer. But it has been calculated that in one game in Chi cago the odds were such that if ten men with $10 each should "sit in" during one hundred turns of the card, every one of them would be "broke," even if the game were "on the square." It is said also that the odds on horse-racing are so nicely cal culated that the chances of winning I are eveu less. Perhaps experience, as in other forms of folly, is the most thorough school-master in gambling, if the icarest. But the Italian statistics seem to prove that ignorance and stupidity are characteristic of those who persistently woo the false god dess of chance. The evil of lotter ies, however "honestly" conducted, is the same as the evil of all forms of gambling; that is, the stimulation of the desire to gain without rendering an honorable equivalent. The sin goes back to the inhibition of the Decalogue: "Thou shalt not covet." Not money, but the love of money, is the root of evil.?The Washington Herald. Scientific Jottings. In the last ten years 325,000 per sons have emigrated from Kngland to the farms of Canada. Taking the average for the world around, less than half of the babies born live to be fifty years of age. Recent experiments seem to indi cate that bees have the homing in stinct like the pigeon. Vultum In Parvo. Only 30 per cent of the Inhabitants of Sicily are able to read and write. | A Business Proposition | JJ Is what is offered to every advertiser who has an op- JJJ portunity to use the columns of Jq ^ The Smithfield Herald jS K( Judicious advertising never failed to pay and the man JJjj MT or firm who has used the columns of THE HERALD JJ regularly, changed his ad often, and given it the same attention he does other parts of his business, has m never failed to reap results. THE HERALD is the jf8 Oldest and Best Newspaper Published an jt gjj in Johnston County a and therefore the best advertising medium. There ft are several reasons for this: It treats all advertisers Sg a ike and none are given ads free as an inducement JJj i SSiiS8????s8??s8$88?K * \$) r A V< A [ft #%??#* We offer a fully war- (A wLfir liiiisiUvmnted ?pen bm 11) | |J I Lj II IJ Q I it stick seat, any trim- /|\ J ming desired at $45.00 ||j Weloffer a fully warranted Top Buggy, Beautiful Finish for jj| l|f only $55.00 Best values ever offered in Johnston County. /|\ III |jj Harness in Every Style And at Every Price ||| We have recently received a Car Load of Nissen Wagons. j|j None better made. We offer 4 Mowers and Rakes at COST ^ in order to make room for other goods. Horses and Mules for (|| Q) Sale Every Day in the Year, except Sundays. (M |lj Buy Our Flour, Try It, If not Satis- jfj W fled Return It, And Get Your Money jn m a) (!) We Are Headquarters a0erne?arMer?hJn