Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 June 1879 — CURRENT CURIOSITIES. [ARTICLE]

CURRENT CURIOSITIES.

A party of curiosity hunters opened an Indian mound near Albany, the other day, and found a variety of human bones, skulls, etc., one mound disclosing a sort of sarcophagus, -with layers of charcoal, dam shells and other peculiar burial accompaniments. A Vermont paper says that a few Sundays ago, while Mrs. Mary Fulford, of Peacham, was playing the organ in church, she was taken with a partial paralytic shock, and was unable to take her hands from the key-board, keeping one chord going until the choir was compelled to stop. In an hour after the service she seemed to be as well as ever. A lady in Madrid, Me., was in a house which was struck by lightning. A valuable gold watch she wore stopped at the time, and, although jewelers have repeatedly examined it and pronounced it perfect in every particular, it cannot be made to move. It is so charged with electricity that watch-makers say no part of it can ever be made to do duty if taken out and put into another set of works. John G. McCabe was drowned in Philadelphia several months ago. Ee wore an oilskin coat and high-top boots. A man’s body similarly attired was subsequently found floating off Woodbury, and Mrs. McCabe, identifying it as that of her husband, had it brought to Philadelphia and buried. The other day another body in an oilskin coat and high-top boots was taken out of the water at Wilmington, and Mrs. McCabe, believing it to be her husband’s, has buried it beside the first one. Corbin Kendrick and some other freedmen found, near Buena Vista, Ga., a hawk lying on its back near the road. The ground for several feet around showed signs of a desperate struggle. A snake was coiled around the hawk, and was holding it perfectly still and apparently in the agonies of death. Kendrick tried to kill both snake and hawk by shooting them, but the shot broke only one wing of the hawk. The snake was then struck with a stick. As soon as its coil was broken the serpent sprung at the man who had struck it, and then went back to the hawk. The hawk arose and seized the snake by the head, and the negroes killed the serpent. For several weeks a great revival has been in progress at several of the colored churches in Petersburg, Va., resulting in the conversion of several hundred persons. On last Sunday afternoon fifty-four of the converts were baptized in the canal. Among the candidates for immersion were Burwell Lancaster, about 21 years of age, who from his birth had been deaf and dumb. Before taking him into the water the officiating minister wrote the baptismal vow on a slate, which the mute read. Then he was immersed. On reaching the shore the mute, to the astonishment of all present, cried out “ Thank God! ” and then became mute again. The incident is a most remarkable one, and has made a great impression on the negroes, who are very much excited and concerned over such a sudden and brief cure.

We clip the following curious dog story from the Bridgeport (Ct.) Farmer: “ Engineer Bronson, of the Housatonic railroad, says that his experience one day last week gave him the impression that the dog-days were coming on this year ahead of time. Between Brookfield-and New Milford, on the up trip, the engine struck a large dog, and, as Bronson at first supposed, left his fragments strewn along the track; but, on reaching the next station, it was found that the dog had, in some mysterious way, been landed on the locomotive trucks, and was then perched there alive. When the train stopped at Falls Village the animal was hauled out, and then there was dieclosed the astonishing fact that he had not received even a scratch. It was a large dog weighing about seventy-five pounds, and was at once adopted by the stationagent, who already prizes the beast* very highly. Recently, the head of Frank Tolles, the leader of a band of highwaymen, was borne into Cheyenne, Wy. T., and exhibited to a jubilant crowd. When the people had taken a good look at it, it was buried in a prairie in the outskirts of the town. In passing over the prairie a few evenings ago, G. P. Clark saw the skull dancing along and bobbing up and down among th a cactus bushes. Cold chills struck him. When he reached Cheyenne he was as white as a sheet. Everybody scoffed at his story; but a few men were induced to go out and take a look. They, too, saw the skull flitting hither and thither. The next morning a large crowd went out to investigate. There again was the moving skull. The boldest in the party approached. All at once a little prairie-dog bounded from the skull and shot away into his hole near by. It hadappropriated the highwayman’s head for a resting place. The most remarkable case which has come before the Chicago courts for years was disposed of in a few minutes in the Criminal Court. It was that of a man who had been for several years employed as book Keeper for a mercantile firm in the city, and who plundered his employers so ingeniously and persistently that they were compelled to retire from business, without a suspicion of the nature of their losses, the thieving clerk buying from them with their own money what he had not already stolen. The chance discovery of an error in the books completely broke the courage of the culprit, and he voluntarily confessed, was immediately indicted, arrested, and, on arraignment, entered a plea of guilty, and was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment. There were none of the customary incidents of riotous living in the case. The stolen money was systematically invested, and a portion of it used in buying out the thief’s plundered employers. Om May 5, says the Norwich Bulletin, we noticed the fact that a Brahma hen belonging to Mr. H. R. Gardner, of Bean Hill, had laid an egg measuring 7| inches round and 8± inches in oval circumference. Subsequent to that date the egg was pierced by Mr. George S Ford, at the end, and blown, that the shell might be preserved, when it was discovert d that there was inclosed within the outer shell a second egg, twothirds as large as the first, with a shell ipucb harder. That was also punctured

and the contents drawn, which showed it to be a perfect egg. The outside egg contained no yelk, holding only the albumen in which the inner egg was inclosed. Mr. Ford has now an egg within an egg, which is as puzzling to hen fanciers as the question “whether the egg preceded the hen, or the hen the egg, originally,” is to country debating clubs. Was there ever a like phenomenon before?