Democratic Sentinel, Volume 12, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 June 1888 — UNHAPPY GERMANS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

UNHAPPY GERMANS

The holy water disappeared from the font of a church in Paris, and the priest sent a detective to watch the doors. It was discovered that it was a milkman that was the thief.

Sir Francis H. Doyle, whose reminiscences were published a short time ago, and who was formerly Professor of Poetry at Oxford, has been attacked with a throat disease which renders him entirely speechless. Doyle was an early friend of Mr. Gladstone, and acted as best man at his wedding.

Here is what Miss Minnie Freeman, the Nebraska blizzard heroine, received for her her exhibition of pluck and presence of mind: Any. amount of advertising and innumerable proposals of marriage, $2,700 in cash, three diamond pins, two costly gold watches, and a peck or so of miscellaneous jewelry.

Mr. Edwards Pierrepont desires it to be stated publicly that there is no foundation for the current rumor that his wife is the giver of the $125,000 to be used in building a new recitation hall at Yale. Mr. Pierrepont does not know who did give the money; but he does know that Mrs. Pierrepont did not give it.

Seventeen hundred bales of buffalo robes arrived in New York recently from the West. These are said to be the last robes that will ever be sent East, such being the scarcity of the buffalo at present. At one time skins were sold at $4 apiece. Now they bring upward of $25, few being obtainable even at that price.

The Dead Letter Office received 4,808,000 letters ' last year, for about a third of which owners were discovered. Money to the value of $1,795,764 was found in 17,588 letters. These figures show the necessity of care in directing letters and seeing that they are stamped, as well as of indicating on the outside by some means who sends them.

A tornado that left bugs an inch deep all over the face of the earth is the latest wonder from the solid South. It came near Ninety-six, in South Carolina, and the “varmints” were of unknown species—black, pointed, rough•coated —yet evidently not prepared to be hurled through space at cyclone rates, as they were dead very soon afler touching the ground.

The State Capitol building of Texas vas constructed on a peculiar contract. In lieu of money, the builders received 3,000,000 of land in a strip nearly two lundred miles long and averaging twenty-seven miles in width. The cost to the builders has been $4,000,000, which is more than the land was worth when they made the contract, but the increase in its value has been such that they could now sell out at a profit.

An enterprising Dartmouth freshman, with a taste for electric experiments, tapped the wires of the Westera Union Telegraph Company recently, and connected them with an instrument in his room. It w'as quite a source of amusement to him to sit quietly at home and learn all that was going on ini the outride world, but the -company finally, discovered the scheme and now things look far from promising for the young scientist.

The surveyors for the Kansas City. El Paso & Mexican Railroad have come upon the ruins of Gran Guivera in New Mexico, known to early Spanish explorers, but rarely visited in recent times. They found the ruins to be of gigantic stone buildings, made in the most substantial manner and of grand proportions; One of them was four acres in extent. All indications around the ruins point to the existence here at •one time of a dense population. No legend of any kind exists as to how this great city was destroyed or when it was abandoned.

The Berlin Homeopathic Society recently learned that it was the custom of many druggists to put up on homeopathic prescriptions merely some simple compound and label it as whatever was wanted. To test this eighty different burlesque prescriptions were written out in Latin and sent to as many different druggists. Seventyseven out of the eighty swallowed the bait, and put up what purported to be the dose required by the bogus pre-

scriptions. The other three sent the prescriptions back, with the remark that they did not understand them.

A drummer went down to a prohibition town in Maryland, the other day, to help along the good cause of temperance. His method of doing so was both original and effective. Soon after his arrival he began drinking, and kept it up until he got away with all the liquor Obtainable in the town. When the whisky gave out he turned in on Jamaica rum, alcohol, etc., and so kept up the erusade until there was nothing left but water. Then he turned to that, but the effect was fatal, and he died in horrible agony. No monument has yet been erected to his memory.

Dominiziano Roberti, of Giocomico, Switzerland, who has recently arrived in San Francisco, tells a remarkable story of adventure in the Alps. On the 26th of February last he was caught by an avalanche and buried, and for four days he lajd under the snow. A party searched for him for three days, and on the fourth, as they were about to give up thS quest, one of their dogs began pawing at the snow and barking loudly. The men dug down, and ten feet under the surface found the young man almost dead. He had been without food except a bit of tobacco, which, he says, saved his lived.

Before her death Lady Marian Alford left a memoranda for her daughter’s guidance in arranging for her funeral. Among other things, she wrote: “I think that in this short life too much is given to signs of grief for the departed into happiness. I should prefer no mourning for myself, but I should not like to shock any one’s prejudices on this account, and would only set an example as restricting the matter to the smallest compass. I think that crape mourning is a cruel tax to the poor; it is expensive and tawdry, and, therefore, I would wish you to set the example by not wearing it for me. ” Consequently, no crape was worn at Ladv Alford’s funeral.

People living in the neighborhood of Lake Winona, Minnesota, are a good deal exercised over the appearance of an enormous fish, which spouts water fifteen or twenty feet in the air, and is declared by many to be a species of whale. The fish is said to be four or five feet long, very large and heavy, with smooth skin and without scales. His movements in the water were slow and sluggish, and he seemed to be frequently burrowing with his head in the high-way as if seeking an outlet from the lake. One man emptied a repeating rifle at the uncouth visitor, but the bullets seemed to glance from the fish’s skin and to make no impression whatever. Scores of people saw the fish.

Several days ago Lee Mackey was plowing on the farm of C. S. Maxwell, near Buffalo Village, Pa., when he stopped to dig away the sod about a stump. As he pulled back the first flap of grass he was surprised to find underneath it a flat stone, which evidently hadn’t got there by accident. Mackey proceeded to investigate, and was still more astonished to find that under the stone was a pot of shining gold coin to the value of nearly $3,000. Mackey resigned his job the next day and left for his home in Greene County to enjoy the fruits of his good fortune. The money is supposed to have been hidden by Robert Dryden, who many years ago occupied a cabin near by and was somewhat of a miser.

The senior Senator from Delaware, Mr. Saulsbury, is a gay bachelor of 70, for whose attentions half the widows in Washington pine. He ig very tall and very thin. He is also very charitable, He sent a box of his cast-off clothing to a committee formed for the relief of the sufferers by the Western floods. The story, as told by one of his wicked colleagues, is that he received the following communication in his mail: “The committy man giv me, amongst other things, wat he called a pare of pants, and ’twould make me pant sum to wear ’em. I found your name and where you live in one of the pockets. My wife laffed so when I showed ’em to her that I tho’t she would have a connipshun flt. She wants to know if there lives and breathes a man who has legs no bigger than that. She sed if there was, he orter be taken up for vagrinsy, for having no visible means of support. I couldn’t get ’em on my eldest boy, so I used ’em for gun-cases. If you hev another pare to spare, my wife would like to get ’em to hang up by the side of the fireplace to keep tho tongs in.”

The Nation Again Plunged Into Grief Over the Death of a Beloved Ruler. Frederick 111., After Many Months of Suffering, Dies Surrounded by His Family. Rumors that War Will Come with the Accession of Crown Prince William. Berlin, June 16. The Emperor Frederick is dead. He expired at 11 o’clock yesterday forenoon, surrounded by his family and physicians. The direct cause of his death was suffocation, the doctors being unable to keep the passage in his throat open. The news was immediately announced at Potsdam and wired to Berlin, where the public had been expecting the sad tidings since last evening. With the death of Emperor Frederick the crown passes to William, who, although not yet

crowned, is in fact the reigning sovereign of the the empire. His coronation will take place, at the palace in Berlin three days after the funeral of Emperor Frederick. The air is filled with rumors of the warlike policy that will characterize the reign of the young Crown Prince, now Emperor, with Bismarck in fuller power than he has yet known as Chancellor. Talk of prospective war is heard on every hand, as it is known that William and Bismarck are one in their foreign policy, which is aggressive to the last degree.

The hast Moments Preceding Frederick's Demise. [Berlin special.] The room in which the Emperor lies is not ten yards from the one in which he was bom. It is of medium size, and on the walls are portraits of Emperor William, and all of Emperor Frederick’s children, and half a dozen engravings of Frederick the Great. The Emperor lies in a plain, English brass bedstead, at the foot of which on an easel is a portrait of the Empress, by. Angeli. The Empress herself sits beside her husband, and has not left him for a moment in forty-eight hours. The Crown Prince, dressed in a Major General's undress uniform, but without a sword, stepped quietly into the sick chamber every quarter of an hour. He passed his time walking slowly up and down the stone veranda. As ho passed the half-open window he walked on tiptoe in order not to disturb his father. Even the weathei- seemed to be weeping for the Kaiser, as there was a steady, soaking rain. It is impossible to describe the great grief of the masses of the people, who simply adored Kaiser Frederick, According to all accounts the Emperor's demeanor in this dire extremity is perfect and heroic to the lust degree, but, indeed, his behavior finds a worthy counterpart in the conduct of his consort, who, amid all her anguish and despair, is the pattern of a self-sacrificing, resourceful, and devoted wife. At one time the Kaiser wished to see his daughter Sophia. She is 18 years old to-day, and seldom has a daughter received the congratulations of her parents under sadder circumstances. One of the birthday presents of the Princess which will possess an enduring interest is a fan, given by the hereditary Princess of S/ixe-Meinin-gen, which the Emperor took in his hand and for a time feebly fanned himself with. The royal theaters were closed last evening, and the capital generally has a subdued and silent air. The general preoccupation displayed was seen in a most marked manner on the Bourse. It is usually remarkable for the wellnigh unbearable uproar which prevails there during business hours, but yesterday and to-day one might have been in a church instead of on 'Change, to judge from the solemn silence that was strictly observed in the temple of Mammon. Anybody who raised his voice above a whisper was immediately hushed down. None sorrow deeper among the Berliners than the Hebrew population, for the noble sovereign whose life is now ebbing away constituted him-

self the defender of the Jewish element in Germany, where the anti-Semitic movement had been allowed to assume almost the proportions of.'a persecution. The Emperor lies in a kind of stupor, but is not yet unconscious. Sometimes he opens his eyes and recognizes those around him, while a pleasant smile passes over tfis face when the Empress or some other member of his family comes to his bedside. The doctors give him various stimulants and injections of camphor, but the effect is only temporary. While reclining in an arm-chair, the Emperor wrote a few farewell words to Prince Bismarck. Afterwards he took a sip of food through the tube, a little cocaine being administered.

THE DEAD EMPEROR.

THE NEW EMPEROR.