Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 January 1883 — OBITUARY. [ARTICLE]

OBITUARY.

Leon Gambetta. M. Leon Gambetta, the chief representative of modem French Democracy, died at Paris on the first day of the new year. Deceased was born at Cahors in 1838, and became a member of the bar of Paris in 1859. At the fall of the empire he was made Minister of the Interior, and in October, 1870,,he proceeded to Tours, and was for some months dictator of those provinces of France which remained free from the German invaders. By the death of Gambetta France loses her greatest, if not her wisest, statesman. Seldom has a man dying at the age Of 44 achieved a more prominent place in the world’s history. He had hardly been admitted to the Parisian bar before he acquired fame as a forensic speaker, and in the year 1869, when he was only 30 years of age, he was immensely popular in the city of Pai-is on account of his eloquent advocacy of advanced Republican principles. But it was during the dark days of the investment of the French capital, by the Germans in 1870, that Gambetta attracted to himself the attention of the world He was nominated Minister of the Interior in the Government of the National Defense, and exhibited the highest qualities of administrative ability. How he passed the German lines surrounding Paris in a balloon, so as to confer with the Delegate Government at Tours, is fresh in the mind of every reader. He then became almost dictator of that portion of France which was not overran with Germans. But the raw, undisciplined army with which he sought to drive the Germans from French soil melted away before their trained and veteran enemies From this time on the career of Gambetta has been intimately associated with almost every change m the many changes which have occurred to the French republic. He was a power among the people and in the Chamber of Deputies

Eli>lia Al!©s*. Elisha ARen, the Hawaiian Minister and Dean of the Diplomatic Corps, fell dead at the White House, in Washington, where he had attended the President’s New Year’s reception, the supposed cause of death being heart-diseapa Mr. Allen was a native of Salem, Mask, and was in his 79th year. He was Speaker of the Maine Assembly nearly fifty years ago, and was elected as a Whig to the Twenty-seventh Congress In 1849 he was appointed Consul at Honolulu, since which time he has been prominently Identified with Hawaiian affairs Mr. Allen possessed the full confidence of King Kalakaua, and was largelv bfiftFumental in obtaining the passage th* Hawaiian reciprocity treaty with country.

George Conklin, the lion-tamer, says that his only invariable rule of action is to keep his eyes upon the eyes of the animal. “There’s one kind of animal,” lie adds, “I will not perform with, and that’s a cross-eyed oue; for he’s like a cross-eyed woman; you can’t tell whether she’s flirting with you or with the man on other side of the street.” Celia Logan says that Charlotte Cushman was the only actress she ever saw who could do a perfect back-fall. She always jumped clear off the boards and came down on her back in a fainting or death scene flat and square as the tumble of a wooden image. She was equally gifted in the forward fall. Gas was first collected for burning purposes by Dr. John Clayton in 169 i for the amusement of his friends. In 1786 it was used to light a Wurzburg laboratory. Gas was fust public y exhibited in 1802. It was introduced in Boston in 1822, and in New York in 1823. * ■ In every tobacco factory in Key West there is a “reader.” Cubans can not talk without gesticulation, and in order to keep them from talking a person is hired to rend aloud to the hands during working hours. An English firm makes strawberry jam from mashel turnips. The next step in the march of progress will be a pugilist trying to extract-milk punches from a cow. There is no sleuth kound like conscience- it dogs one down to the portals of the grave.

jg ofthN tatori Oil. — Washington, D. C., Star.