Democratic Sentinel, Volume 11, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 December 1887 — Too Large a Contract. [ARTICLE]

Too Large a Contract.

Robert Bonneb has retired from the New York Ledger, which will hereafter be conducted by his three sons. Mr. Bonner began work at the printer’s case in the office of the Hartford Courant forty-eight years ago, and purchased the New York Ledger in 1851. He is 64 years old. A Millerstown (O.) young man not long since wrote two postal cards on entirely different subjects. He then turned them over and addressed them, but by mistake placed the addresses on the wrong cards. The result was that the shirt-maker in Harrisburg got a polite invitation to take a carriage-ride in Huff Ward’s barouche, while the young man’s girl was made frantic by receiving the following: “Please send me a. sample of the stuff your shirts are made of.” The London Live-Stock Journal -says that in England conflicts between horses and bulls are not uncommon and are usually disastrous to the horses. .A fiery colt often chases cattle in the pasture, biting them as they run; but when he tackles a bull the latter usually won’t run, but charges the colt broadside and often kills him. Having • come off best once, the bull thereafter is apt to charge horses that are grazing quietly. It is never safe to leave any bull in a pasture with horses. A Minnesota office-seeker, after being disappointed by Gov. McGill, went home and told his wife about it, and gave his opinion of the Governor in unrevised language. His 5-year-old boy heard him, and that night the mother cautioned him never to use such language as his father had. “Is it always wicked to swear, mamma?” he asked. ~“Y-e-s. But God will forgive sins,” she said. Then* the boy kneeled and prayed: “Forgive me for all my sins, keep me while I sleep—and—d—n 'Gov. McGill.”

Teddy Wick, an expert barber in London, recently undertook to shave fifty persons in sixty minutes for a ■wager of $75 a side. He is said to have actually shaved seventy-seven in three seconds less than an hour, thus easily winning the stakes. He shaved twenty-one in the first fifteen minutes, fourteen in the second quarter-hour, nineteen in the third, and twenty-three in the last fourteen minutes and fiftythree seconds. Since this performance J. Filbrick, of the same city, has offered to back himself to beat the performance of Wick for a gold or silver medal. The American, Analyist warns the public against the use of the ordinary toilet soaps and towels found at hotels. It says some soaps are made of the •cheapest and nastiest materials, very ■ often rank and disgusting but for the odor with which they are disguised. Some of them, it says, act as an irritant upon the skin, and their application upon the delicate cuticles of babies and young children sometimes results in painful eruptions and running sores. It says that the towels used at hotels are not entirely freed from diseased germs by having been washed, and it advises its readers who travel to take a -cake of soap and their own towels with them.

Three years ago Mrs. George Winter, of Cincinnati, while eating, let slip a piece of bone down her windpipe. She suffered great agony, as it had lodged in one of her lungs. Hemorrhages succeeded each other in rapid • succession. Her coughing spells were continuous and wasted her from a robust woman to a mere skeleton. On a recent morning, as usual, Mrs. Winter awoke with a terrible spell of coughing, followed by a hemorrhage. Suddenly she felt a gradual rising pain on her left side. The stinging pain rose higher and higher, until all at once she felt a hard substance emerge from her throat and fill her mouth. Spitting it “Out upon the floor, like a revelation it struck her that this was the bone she had swallowed three years ago. A •closer examination proved that she had -discharged the bone. There is a story that is going around in the French papers about the Czar. While he was stopping recently in the Castle of Fredensborg he was fond •of taking little walks in the neighborhood. One day he was accosted by a beggar woman with a child in her arms. In pure Danish and in the roughest manner possible he told her to go

away and to be pretty quick about it. The poor woman, terrified, started off, but was followed by an officer. “Here, my good woman, ” said the officer, as he put some pieces of gold into her hand, “it is the Czar who sends you this, and he hopes that you will forgive his apparent rudeness of a moment ago. The fact is, he has just returned from a visit to his children, who have the scarlatina, and he was afraid that he might bring the contagion to your child, if he allowed you to approach his person. ” The aurora on the Yukon River, in Alaska, during the winter months is said to be very brilliant and remarkably beautiful. It commences in the early fall and lasts with more or less brilliancy throughout the long arctic winter. It generally commences at the setting of the sun, though in midwinter it has at times been so bright that it was visible at noon while the sun was shining brightly. The rays of light first shoot forth with a quick, quivering motion, are then gathered and form a great arch of fire spanning the heavens. It glows for an instant like a girdle of burnished gold; then, unfolding, great curtains of light drop forth. These royal mantles of orange, green, pink, rose, yellow, and crimson are suspended and waved between heaven and earth as with an invisible hand, and form a spectacle of extraordinary power.

A 9-year-old Eagleville (Conn.) boy was belated at Coventry, several miles from his home, the other night, and, being afraid to go home in the dark, put his Yankee wits to work. Pretty soon a doctor of the place was informed by a small boy that a well-known citizen of Eagleville was very ill with typhoid fever, and wanted him to come to him immediately. The doctor said he’d go after supper, and asked the lad to join hir-« at the table. The boy did so, and soon after was snugly tucked by the side of the doctor in his carriage and rolling homeward. When they arrived at the house of the alleged sick man, the boy scrambled out and the doctor followed and knocked at the door. The citizen himself, in usual health, opened it. He hadn’t been sick and hadn’t sent for the doctor. Then they looked for the boy. They couldn’t find him. He had his supper and ride home and was well out of the way. Caspar Spies, a wealthy New York merchant, is an uncle of August Spies, the anarchist editor who perished by the rope in Chicago. Speaking to a New York reporter about his nephew, Mr. Spies said: “August was always bright, and early showed considerable talent. He was an enthusiastic advocate of socialistic schemes. On his last visit to this house in February we had a talk after supper. He was very enthusiastic. I advised him to exercise caution, and not to mingle with the agitators of the kind of Most and others. He replied: ‘Uncle, if you knew how the people slave in the mines of Pennsylvania you would think differently. Working for starvation wages, and at the mercy of the company, they are worse than slaves.’ I told him that he might jeopardize his safety by going too far, to which he replied with some excitement: ‘I would willingly die in the cause of the working people.’ He was misguided, but his words were almost a prophecy. He was very excitable, quick and nervous, generous to a fault, willing to share his last penny with his friends, the working people. He would have made his mark had his energies been directed differently. He was too much occupied with his ideas to think of love affairs, and then his close relation to us would naturally be a barrier which he, with his ideas of strict right, would not ignore. If Herr Most had not come to this country,” continued Mr. Spies, “August would have been alive to-day. Most’s inflammatory ideas completely toojc possession of him. I could see the change myself, and remarked it to him. He was a peaceful propagandist at first. His life was devoted to his one idea and the maintenance of his family. The story of the love affair is as silly as it is untrue. ”

Invalid (engaging a companion)— Your duties will be very light. I shall expect you to attend to my small correspondence, drive with me occasionally, play the piano twice a week, and read the papers aloud. Applicant—Do you include the Sunday papers ? Invalid —Why, yes. Applicant—That settles it! I’ve had an oiler of marriage from a Mormon with four other wives and eighteen children. 1 think I’ll accept it. Goodmorning I— Puck.