Democratic Sentinel, Volume 4, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 August 1880 — JOTTINGS AND CLIPPINGS. [ARTICLE]

JOTTINGS AND CLIPPINGS.

Brick tiles—hats worn by inebriated young men. The English call our elevated roads “overhead lines.” Every dog has his day, but the nights belong to the cats. The frog is an emblem of hope; he is eternally springing. When you ask some single ladies how old they are, their rage is manifest. “Constituency, thou art a jewel,” remarks the candidate when he is returned to office. The baker’s business should be profitable; a good part of his stock is rising while he sleeps. The conductor who divided his collections with the company claimed that it was a fare arrangement. Josh Billings says: “Give the devil his due, reads well enough in a proverb; but what will become of me if this arrangement is carried out?” A great many dramatic writers are coming out with plays these days—coming out of managers’ offices with the plays under their arms. Jane Ham, in a fight with another woman, Eugenie Bristow, at Darlington, S. C., choked her and threw her against a table, smashing her skull and causing instant death. It was about a man. Oliver Wendell Holmes complains that he cannot even say “good-morning” to an acquaintance without having it telegraphed all over the country as humor. T. A. Brecklebabk estimates that in a single decade 500,000 persons engaged in agricultural pursuits in Great Britain sustain personal injury or are killed; in mines, 300,000; in railroads, 70,000; and in factories 180,000. At a dinner given in Pont street, in London, the other day, the decorations of the table and dining-room consisted of real fruit trees in full bearing—peaches, nectarines aud cherries. The guests could eat their dessert from the trees. Snow is largely used for packing fresh fisli for transportation, instead of ice. One dealer at Carle ton, N. 8., had three houses filled with snow, which was packed hard, so that none of it has been lost since warm weather came. The cost of putting up fish by this means is greatly reduced, while the labor is less. Means were found by the clericals at Antwerp to elude the bribery law at the last election there. Wagers of from 300 francs to two francs were offered by clerical electioneering agents to doubtful electors on the success of the Liberals; and the election is said to have cost the clerical party more than 1,000 francs. The Scientific American says that it is a well-knoAvn fact that fish always return to the same ground each year to spawn, but that it lias recently been discovered that they always follow the lefthand side of the river on their trips to the spawning grounds, and returning take the right side of the river. The rate of mortality in Liverpool for a recent week was equal to 23.3 per 1,000 of the estimated population. There were, altogether, 244 deaths, which represents an increase of 30 on the corrected averages of the last 10 years, and of 11 on the corresponding return for 1879. Zymotic diseases occasioned 51 deaths and lung complaints 53. An Englishman hired a vessel to visit Tenedos. His pilot, an old Greek, remarked with an air of satisfaction as they sailed along: “It was there that our fleet lay.” “Wliat fleet?” asked the Briton. “Wliat fleet?” rejoined the pilot in astonished tones. “Why our Greek fleet, of course, at the siege of Troy.” Fishekmen engaged in the Greenland fishery say they never experienced anything like the terrific ice blockade which now extends down to the 52d parallel of latitude. The field ice lying to the eastward of Newfoundland, the southern extremity of which now bears 120 miles distant from St. Johns, is of the heaviest flow description. Thousands of icebergs are to be seen. Many persons are under the impression that England stands at the head of all the continental nations as regards the number of its periodical publications. Such is not the case. Germany heads the list with 3,778; England follows with 2,509; and France comes next with 2,000. There is then a great falling off. America boasts 9,129, being more than the three nations above named put together. Mr. Fambro, of Sandersville, Ky., has a large rattlesnake, about five feet long, which he captured on the 9th of last October, and which he has kept in a bob with a wire-net front ever since that time. Though he has had it nine months, the snake lias never eaten anything at all since it was captured. It “lives on air,” and if it could be converted into the (jams homo, retaining its natural habits, it would make a splendid newspaper man.