Democratic Sentinel, Volume 1, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 August 1877 — FRESH PARAGRAPHS. [ARTICLE]

FRESH PARAGRAPHS.

Capt. Crapo’s wife writes that they would not undertake to cross the Atlantic again in a cockle-shell for considerable. She fainted twice during the voyage, slept in a wet bed for seven weeks, and had aches in every bone of her body. A St. Petersburg letter in the New York World says that since the first battle of Plevna Russia has been in a turmoil of enthusiasm, indignation, hatred and political passions. The people seem united in demanding more vigor in the conduct of the war, and with this intensewarfeeling goes indignation against England. The Eastern question is temporarily lost sight of in England in the general alarm over the American potato-bug. The Privy Council has taken up the bug, and is considering him solemnly and. seriously. Each American pilgrim will be searched for bugs at the customhouse hereafter, and if they are found on his person both the man and the bug will be confiscated.

Indiana and other Western States, heretofore noted for the facilities they furnished in obtaining divorces, may now yield the palm to the District of Columbia, wltich has acquired a peculiar fame for dissolving the marriage tie. One of the Judges is kept constantly busy in this branch of business, and the reports of his decrees fill no small space in the daily papers at the capital. In the absence of exciting news as to battles and important army movements, we are receiving elaborate accounts of horrible atrocities perpetrated by the hostile armies in Bulgaria and Rouniclia. Each party is endeavoring to prejudice the civilized world against the other, and the accounts arc undoubtedly exaggerated. If half that is said is true, all civilized nations should promptly cooperate and interfere in the name of humanity.

Several newspaper paragraphs have been published stating that all the public lands available for cultivation have passed out of the Government’s control by pre-emption, subsidies, etc. Another estimate alleges that not more than onefourth of the surveyed lands have been disposed of, and that there are still 1,132,665,214 acres of public lands in the States and Territories over which the surveyor has not run his chains or “blazed” the corner trees. Sitting Bull stands upon his dignity. A letter from Fort Ellis, Montana, reports that Gen. Miles’ attempted mission to him failed because the chief refused to see any one who did not come with full powers to negotiate a treaty. The old savage gives himself the airs of a sovereign. If the President has anything to communicate he must send a Minister Plenipotentiary. Sitting Bull is not to be coaxed out from under the tail of the British lion without preliminary diplomatic guarantees. The death of the late Lewis Brooks, of Rochester, N. Y., who had amassed a large fortune in the manufacture of woolen cloths, has revealed a public benefactor. He business forty years ago, and has since attended chiefly to his private concerns, and had so disappeared from public view that his name was comparatively unknown even in Rochester. Since his death, however, it has been discovered that he had given SIO,OOO to the Rochester City Hospital, SIO,OOO to the St. Mary’s Hospital, $5,000 each to the Industrial School and Female Charitable Society, and, most munificent of all, $120,000 to the Virginia University, and in neither case was the giver known. Numerous other gifts are now known to have come from the same generous hand. He seems to have sought his opportunities for doing good from the pure love of charity and with an aversion to public notoriety, and contributed them in such a manner that they could not be diverted from their proper purpose. In his case the Shakspearean maxim is reversed. The good that he has done lives after him and is his noblest monument. A countryman of plain appearance entered a Macon (Ga.) banking-house, the other day, and made a deposit of $3,000. One of the officers asked him “what he intended to do with so much money?” “Oh,” he replied, “I am doing this for my wife, and am determined to keep on working and adding to the amount until, when I die, she will be a real marriageable widow.” How rare is such public spirit!