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# A BUDDING NEGRO POET. [Centerville Citizen.] Miss Carrie Treon, teacher of the Fourth grade at the Lincoln school, thinks she has discovered a second Paui Lawrence Dunbar, in a little 9-year-old pupil of hers, Clifford Terrell, who is one of her brightest boys. Clifford is certainly under the influence of the muse of poetry as is evidenced by the following effusion on spring which he recently handed in during a recitation on language. It is guaranteed to be original. SPRING. I love sweet spring. Because the birdies come and sing. The air is filled with perfume from the flowers That are sheltered in the garden by the bowers. The birdies build their homes in the trees, They hide them where a passer never sees. They sing and chirp and fly all day, While the children run about and play. I love the cool breeze, And I hear the bumble bees; This is the month and the second day of May, And every little bird is gay. # BURRELL WOULD SHOOT THEM. [Washington, Iowa, Press.] President Bigelow of the Milwaukee National defaulted with $1,500,000 of the funds. Wheat did it. He turned over $300,000 and the directors made up $1,635,000 to meet demands, but there was a furious run for a day or so. Chicago banks came to the rescue with funds to stop the hysteria. The defalcation kept getting worse, and worse. The cashier who helped him falsely and doctor the books has sloped. It seems that the criminal has done nearly $4,000,000 of devilment; he got in, and floundered, and settled deeper and deeper in the bottonless hole of speculation, with the bank's money, and it seems he also wrecked a million dollar estate he was to settle. It is a wonder that the robbed depositors did not lay for him and shoot him on sight. That is just what the public should do with these gilt-edged thieves — kill them in their tracks, and not let them go into court with influence behind them and escape with ridiculously short sentences, like the Wapello bank thief. A few dead shots in the streets would do more to cure this habit of speculating with a bank's funds than any other mode. Anarchy, chaos, do you say? It is no such thing; it is "wild justice" of a very sure and effective kind. A banken has no business or right to speculate, and it should be made one of the major crimes for him to do so. For if a banker takes the bit in his teeth and indulges a flyer on the board of trade, he will not once in a thousand times resist the strong temptation to "borrow" for a day or so the funds in his charge, to recoup himself, hoping to replace what he took. He will become a thief almost inevitably. Make the law declare it a felony for a banker to speculate, even to the extent of betting on the races, and the evil may be checked; but if he then breaks over and robs the depositors and fleeces the stockholders, shoot him down like a dog and cheat the courts and lawyers of a chance to condone his offense. Every defaulter of public funds ought to be killed before sun-up.
