Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 July 1884 — The Comfort of Being a Boy. [ARTICLE]

The Comfort of Being a Boy.

John Buskin declares that Prof. Tyndall’s overwhelming vanity makes him a sinner against science, and then "to demonstrate that he himself is .totally devoid of vanity, he announces "that he intends to start a school of arts ”whioh will render the Royal Academy waeless. At a royal marriage in England a few years ago the bridegroom was a •German Prince whose high serenity 'was only equaled by his impecuniosity, •and when the words of service “with *ll my goods I thee endow” were repeated, the absent-minded Duke of ■Cambridge was heard by all the company to blurt out indignantly: “Good heaven! the very shoes the fellow wears are not paid for!”

Alpheus Brown, of Dalton, N. H., dfl over 90 years of age, and when in "the Legislature of 1837 helped to elect JZenas Crane to the Governor’s Coun■oil. In 1862 Brown voted for a son of .Zen as, bearing the Bame name, who 'was also elected to the Council, and last November he voted for Zenas, the "third, who successfully contested a #eat in the body to which his grandfather and father had been elected in their respective times.

A Western woman writes a pleasant letter, telling how, years ago, she learned the budding and grafting of fruit trees. She hated teaching, and persuaded her father to let her help him in his fruit nursery. She had ex--cellent success from the beginning, and afterward learned “all the niceties of from an orange tree down to ■an apple root.” She found the business both pleasant and profitable, and ■one which women can work at as well as men.

The old, original “Grandfather’s ■Clock” stopped some time ago, never to go again, if report be true, but Col. A. Heaton Robertson, of New Haven, aeems to have the original grandfather's watch, still running. It is nearly 200 years old. It was given to him by his grandfather, who was born in 1776, and who received it from his father, who had carried it as long as he could remember. It has double •oases and stop attachment, and bears 4he name of a Liverpool maker. For years past the garret at the "White House has been filled with a lot •of old furniture, some of which saw use in Jefferson’s time. President Arthur has recognized the craze for the antique "by overhauling these long buried stores, and with the resurrected relics has filled up the long corridor that runs -along the upper story of the White House. It is unfortunate that the history of these articles is not known, but *ll that can be said of them is that they were made for the use of his predecessors when solid mahogany was the proper thing. One thing is being demonstrated thus ■early in the base ball season—the South has no show at all with the Northern elub3. Base ball might have done much, for the country had it been understood twenty-one years ago, and averted the horrors of a civil war simply by matching the two sections in the diamond, the defeated side to be bound so acquiesce in the decision of the willow'and hogskin. To be sure, the casualties would have been more dreadful By this method, but they would have extended to only a limited number. Nations contemplating war will do well to consider the base ball wager. Not only will it quickly settle questions of international dispute, but it will cause a vast saving in the pension list.

The widow of the famous Mexican G-eneral, Santa Anna, is now living quietly in her native state, and seldom intrudes into the outer world. Mrs. Santa Anna is but 48 years old, though it is a wonder she does not look a hundred. Santa Anna was President of Mexico three years before she was born. She was plighted to him in her oradle, and married to him when she was 13. He was then a military dictator, sleeping on his sword, beset by constant peril. In six months he had lost his leg and got into a Texas prison. For'twenty years her life was spent in a camp, surrounded by the whirl of warfare. Her husband was five times President of Mexico, four times military dictator in absolute power. He was banished, recalled, banished again, and finally died when with his wife in exile as a traitor. She has seen much ■“glory,” and has received unlimited adulation, but she hardly ever enjoyed one thoroughly peaceful month in her ife. The judicial statistics of France for the last five years show -that thero has been a yearly average of 300 men tried for murder in various degrees; but, thanks to juries finding extenuating eircumstancos, and to the leniency

which M. Grevy has shown, the average of executions has not amounted to five a year. Over a thousand murderers have found their way to New Caledonia slaoe M. Grevy became President.

Workers in ornamental wood now assert that yellow pine, hard finished in oil, is the rival in beauty of any wood that grows, not excepting the costliest of the hard species, it being susceptible of receiving and maintaining as high a degree of polish as any known wood, while, when impregnated with oil, it is almost indestructible. In such a condition it is impervious to even hot grease and other substances that leave an ineffaceable stain upon white pine, maple, and various other woods.

In Philadelphia a movement is on foot to compel makers of bogus butter to color their products pink instead oi yellow. There seem to be some difficulties in the way of making a State law effective to prevent the sale of false butter. One is, that while a Pennsylvania law, for example, might prevent the manufacture, it could not prevent the sale, in the State of bogus butter made elsewhere, unless it could maintain a thorough espionage over makers and dealers in other States, who might ship their stock to dealers in Pennsylvania. The fact is that, even with a national law, were such in existence to regulate or to prohibit the making or the selling of this imitation, it would be by no means easy to maintain complete control of the bogus butter business.

Regarding the statement that large quantities of oleomargarine have been consumed by the public, the New York Tribune says, very justly: This is a strange argument. The consumption of oleomargarine confessedly dfiends upon deceit. No evidence has ever been adduced to show that any one sold it for what it was. The few dealers who tried to do so could not dispose of it at all. It has been palmed off upon the consumer as a dairy product, and because this is so it would be as reasonable to cite the large consumption of adulterated mustard, pepper, or any other sophisticated article as justification for the adulteration, as to point to the sale of oleomargarine as a proof that it is popular. The plain facts of the case are in truth a complete vindication of the prohibitory law in regard to oleomargarine. The allegation that it can be made wholesome is not relevant either. The evidence shows that it can as easily, and more profitably, be made of unwholesome materials, and since it is impracticable to exercise a supervision over the manufacture so strict as to render the use of unwholesome materials impossible, prohibition is the only means of protection left to the public.

The nitro-glycerine bomb is a recent addition to destructive projeotiles, its serviceableness in reducing intrenchments being, it is claimed, unexcelled. In its construction a heavy conical shell is first cast, and so arranged that one end is much heavier than the other, one end being also closed with a tightly fitting cap, screwed on after charging. The interior of the shell is divided into three compartments, each separated by a heavy plate-glass cap; the division furthest from the open end is filled with sulphuric acid, and the next with glycerine, and the outer one with nitric acid, these three elements being the component parts of nitro-glycerine. A small opening through the open end of the projectile admits a steel-rod, to each end of which is firmly attached a small circular piece of metal, the inner end resting against the first glass cap; the outer cap is then screwed on and the projectile is ready for service. According to the principle of gravitation, the heavy end naturally strikes the ground first, the steel rod is driven through the plate-glass partitions, the chemicals are mingled, and a nitroglycerine discharge takes place.

There is a comfort to be a boy in the amount of work he can get rid of doing. It is something astonishing how slow he can go on an errand; perhaps, he couldn’t explain to himself why, when he is sent to the neighbor’s for yeast, he stops to stone frogs. He is not exactly cruel, but he wants to see if he can’t hit ’em. It is a curious fact about boys, that two will be a great deal slower about doing anything than one. Boys have a power of helping each other do nothing. But say what you will about the general usefulness of boys, a farm without a boy would soon come to grief. He is always in demand. In the first place he is to do all the errands, go to the store, postoffice, and cany all sorts of messages. He would like to have as many legs as a wheel has spokes, and rotate in the same way. This he sometimes tries to do, and people who have soen him “turning cart wheels” along the side of the road have supposed he was amusing himself and biding his time. He was only trying to invent a new mode of locomotion, so he could economize his legs, and do his errands with greater dispatch. Leapfrog is one of the methods of getting over the ground quickly. He has a natural genius for combining pleasure with business. —Charles Dudley Warner. Printing in Mexico antedated printing in New England by nearly 100 years.