Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 March 1886 — The Climax of Agony. [ARTICLE]

The Climax of Agony.

Americas stone jewelry, although a new industry, is already represented in a variety of designs. The minerals employed in its manufacture are agate, moss agate, jasper of all hues, pyrite, moonstone, rhodonite, etc. Susan B. Anthony claims to have twenty-six Senators on her list who are in favor of woman suffrage. This sounds encouraging, but it is possible, barely possible, that twenty or so of these Senators have been dealing out taffy to the guileless Susan. The valet seems to be occupying the position until recently so well filled by the coachman and the skating-rink man. The valet of Mr. George Pancoast, of New York, married Miss Pancoast, who has $50,000 in her own right, and great expectations besides. The Pancoasts claim that the marriage is illegal, and they will fight it out in the •courts, but the young lady insists that she is the lily of the valet. In Germany recently was held the “Cooper’s Festival,” which occurs in Munich every seven years. Those who took part in the Coopers’ Dance wore green skull-caps with blue and white feathers, silver-bordered crimson jackets, black velvet knee-breeches, white stockings and shoes with silver buckles. Each dancer held above his head a half hoop of evergreens, from which hung a small keg. “Brethren,” said Bev. Sam Jones in his closing sermon at Cincinnati, “you’d better do like Chicago—brag on yourself and standby yourself;” and then he told this story: “At an experience meeting an old colored brother got up and said; ‘Breddern, I are the meanest nigger in all this country. I’ll steal, and I’ll tell lies, and I’ll get drunk, and there ain’t a mean thing in God’s Jworld I won’t do.’ Well, he took his seat, and then a great big yellow brother jumped up and said: ‘Br’ern, I have heerd [Br’er Steve’s confession, and it’s true, ’fore God.’ ”

That brilliant woman, Mme. Edmond Adam, whose salcn was once the headquarters of bright people who did not bow the knee to Napoleon 111., and whose ambition has long been to make of Paris an ancient Athens and of France a Greek republic, is again agitating the question of visiting this country and investigating the sources and aspects of New York society. With her perfect detestation of Wagner, whose music, she says, always reminds her of the tramp of Bismarck’s soldiers across the fields of France, she will be interested in noticing the American triumphs of the great composer. The Princess of Wales had a narrow escape from the recent London mob. She was in an open carriage, and was driving past Apsley House, when the mob advanced upon the carriage, as they did upon every one that came in their way. Her Royal Highness was recognized by some of those in the crowd, and, amid cries against her, several hundred men ran yelling after the carriage until it was driven swiftly into Hyde Park. The worst that would have happened to the Princess would probably have been to be dispossessed of her carriage and compelled to walk through the jostling crowd amid insulting remarks. Henry M. Stanley; who now has an intercontinental railroad on hand for Africa, spends, says Correspondent King, “all his time nowadays in receiving and dismissing the dozens of delegations which come to him from all parts of Great Britain with offers of capital and advice, and of sympathy relative to the new free state. A noble duke drops in on him in the morning, and a Manchester millionaire in the afternoon—the one to say that a nar-row-gauge road will never do, the other to insist that it is just the thing.” Mr. Stanley remains the representative of the Belgian King, and though he will not return to the Congo for some time, he is practically the shaper and molder of the wonderful model of a state set up by the consensus of diplomacy and capital. That great sea mystery, the great sea serpent, has apparently just made its appearance in South African waters. According to late mails from the Cape the huge monster was recently observed in More wood’s Bay, Umhlali, by eight or nine •even or eight miles from the shore,

swimming in a very erect manner, and apparently proceeding at the rate of eight or nine miles an hour. Occasionally it plunged into the water, making a noise as if a sea were breaking heavily on an open shore, and lashing the water into foam for yards around. Fins like immense oars protruded from its sides. Its length was computed at from 90 to 160 feet Every schoolboy is supposed to know what a river is, yet Judge Brown, of the United States District Court of New York, has given a decision which confers on the time-worn geographical definition all the authority of legal recognition. He has decided that East River, so called, is not a river. He says a river is a considerable stream of water, that has a current flowing from the higher level that constitutes its source to its mouth. The East River, it seems, lacks this essential and can not lay claim hereafter to the title of river without committing contempt of court. Hitherto Japanese ladies have not countenanced tight lacing, as wellrounded figures were in Japan more admired than sylph-like waists. But it is said that a change is coming; that Japanese ladies will now follow their civilized sisters, and the craze for Parisian toilets and hour-glass figures, like those of European females, has set in. The husbands are said not to like it, but to be even more helpless than husbands generally are under the circumstances. For the rage for Japanese clothing in Paris is as great as the craze for Parisian costumes in Japan, and so the wily Jap ladies are bartering their native gowns for those of foreign lands.

A citizen of Tempe, Arizona Territory, has been excavating in some old Aztec ruins near that place, and has found quantities of flint arrowheads of splendid workmanship, superior to those now found among the Indians, nicely painted pottery, ornaments made of shell and of slate representing different birds, a number of toys made of clay, beads made of shell, a number of what seem to be precious stones, stone axes and hammers, stone and bone tools, “metates” or mills for grinding grain, large stone mortars and pestles, and numerous other curiosities. He also found during the excavation a number of furnaces, which had evidently been used for smelting ores, as there was among the debris slag and considerable rich copper and silver ores that had been taken there by Aztec miners.

A column or more of solid nonpareil type is devoted by each leading London paper to an account of Miss Gladstone’s wedding, the list of gifts occupying two-thirds of that space. Among the objects whose presentation was supposed to add to the joy of the occasion were six checks for an aggregate of $2,500, three watches, eight brooches, one pianoforte, a score of silver cream-jugs, a silver-mounted magnifying-glass, a “weighing machine,” a portrait of the ill-fated Lord Frederick Cavendish, and the following books: Cardinal Newman’s Sermons, Buskin’s works, Carlyle’s works, George Eliot’s works, Shakspeare, Miss Procter’s poems, Clough’s poems, Chopin’s works for the pianoforte, Tennyson’s works (from Hon. Hallam Tennyson), and “The Epic of Hades” (from the author). Tea-trays, inkstands, and candlesticks were too multitudinous for counting.

This is very remarkable, if true. A Springfield, Ohio, special says: “One of the most remarkable and perfectly authenticated cases of a presentiment of approaching evil occurred in this city in connection with the Driscoll murder case. Early Tuesday morning, at the time when the struggle must have been taking place in the factory on Columbia street, Avhere George W. Driscoll met his death, Mrs. Driscoll, the mother of the murdered man, was awakened by hearing herself .called by her son's voice sounding out of the darkness. Thrice came the cry, ‘Mother! Mother! Mother?’ So real was the voice that Mrs. Driscoll spoke to her husband and asked him if he had not heard it also, but he Avas sleeping soundly. Thinking that some member of the household had called, Mrs. Driscoll arose and awakened the members one by one and asked them if they had called. They all denied that they had spoken, and the source of the cries could not be discovered. The family were just composing themselves in sleep again when a messenger arrived to inform them that George was shot.”

A kice pudding was received among the third-class mail matter at the Brooklyn Postoffice,

Perhaps the utmost extreme of intense agony has been reached when a woman dislocates her jaw, and her obliging neighbor comes in and informs her that Mrs. Jones says she’s a mean, spiteful, gossiping old harridan.— St. Paul Herald.