This made everyone in favor of his
disposition of Silesia except the Silesians. And, as they could neither
read nor write, they thought that they still belonged to Holland and
cheered a dyke every time they saw one.

The question remained in abeyance therefore, for a century and a
quarter. Then, in 1805, three years after the accession of Ralph
Rittenhouse to the throne of England, the storm broke again. The
occasion was the partition of Parchesie by the Great Powers, by which
the towns of Zweiback, Ulmhausen and Ost Wilp were united to form what
is known as the "industrial triangle" on the Upper Silesian border.
These towns are situated in the heart of the pumice district and could
alone supply France and Germany with pumice for fifty years, provided it
didn't rain. Bismarck once called Ost Wilp "the pumice heart of the
world," and he was about right, too.

It will therefore be seen how important it was to France that this
"industrial triangle" on the Silesian border should belong to Germany.
At the conference which designated the border line, Gambetta,
representing France, insisted that the line should follow the course of
the Iser River ("iser on one side or the other," was the way he is
reported to have phrased it), which would divide the pumice deposits
into three areas, the fourth being the dummy. This would never do.

Experts were called in to see if it might not be possible to so divide
the district that France might get a quarter, Germany a quarter and
England fifty cents. It was suggested that the line be drawn down
through Globe-Wernicke to the mouth of the Iser. As Gambetta said, the
line had to be drawn somewhere and it might as well be there. But Lord
Hay-Paunceforte, representing England, refused to concede the point and
for a time it looked like an open breach. But matters were smoothed over
by the holding of a plebiscite in all the towns of Upper Silesia. The
result of this plebiscite was taken and exactly reversed by the council,
so that the entire Engadine Valley was given to Sweden, who didn't want
it anyway.

And there the matter now stands.

XXV

"HAPPY THE HOME WHERE BOOKS ARE FOUND"

By way of egging people on to buy Dr. Eliot's Five Foot Shelf of books,
the publishers are resorting to an advertisement in which are depicted
two married couples, one reading together by the library table, the
other playing some two-handed game of cards which is evidently boring
them considerably. T