Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 September 1889 — Page 7

INDIANA HAPPENINGS.

EVENTS AND INCIDENTS THAT HAVE LATELY OCCURRED. An Intonating Summary of the Mon Important Doings of Our Neighbors—Weddings and Deaths—Crime. Casualties and General News Nates Colored Millionaires Discovered. The descendants of Benjamin Talbott, colored, lay claim to about six hundred and forty acres, covering the central portion of Logansport. Talbott, while a slave, settled at Logansport fifty-three years ago, with Mr. McBane and family, from Yellow Springs, Ivy. He bought from the Government 640 acres of land and lived on it until the passage of the fugitive slave law, when he abandoned his property and fied to Canada. He never returned to claim it, but often spoke of it to his children. Not long ago, one of them put the matter into the hands of attorneys, who, upon examination, found Talbott’s title indisputable. It is said the Wabash and Eel River railroads, with valuable buildings on the Talbott grounds, have already compromised. The entire property is estimated to be worth several millions. There are four -sons and two daughters who are the heirs. One of the sons, Henry Talbott, has not been heard of for several years. He was last heard from at Danville, Ky. Attacked by a Gorilla. Billy Stewart, of Fort Wayne, proprietor of the Dime Museum, is the owner of a gorilla 7 years old and about half grown. The animal is kept in an iron cage in Stewart’s barn when the show is not on the road. The other day a farmer, Isaiah Slade, of Akron, Ohio, intent upon a free look at the curiosity, entered the barn and poked up the gorilla with a stick. A loose bar in the front of the cage had been raised to admit of a panful of victuals, and the enraged animal sprang at the opening with such force that he squeezed his way through. The astonished farmer was ferociously attacked and knocked down. Half of his bushy beard was torn out, his face lacerated, and the beast had begun to crunch his arm when his outcries attracted Showman Stewart, who beat the gorilla with a billet of wood until he consented to re-enter his cage. Dr. A. C. Boswell, who dressed Slade’s wounds, pronounced them very serious.

Patents Issued to Indiana Inventors. Patents have been granted Hoosier nventors as follows: John S. Adams, assignor to Jenney Electric Company, Indianapolis, structure for supporting lamps above streets; Thomas M. Bates, Dublin, fanning-mill; Larkin V. Elliott, Mooresville, acoustic telephone; •James P. Ferrenburg, Stege, churn; Fremont J. Fry, Indianapolis, backing compound for stereotype matrices; William M. Gray and W. M. White, Crawfordsville, register for slat-fence looms; ChailesD. Jenney, Indianapolis, assignor to the Thompson-Houston Electric Company, of Connecticut, brush-holder for dynamo electric; machine; Rudolph McMakin, assignor to himself and E. T. Ogle, New Albany, baby carriage; Jerome A. Shock, •Goshen, hand garden cultivator. Saved by a Dog. James Tilson, a young man living east of Franklin, has a dog that no money could buy, for had it not been for the dog he would now have been in his grave. The other day, while young Tilson was plowing on his father’s farm, a large black snake, six feet long, jumped oh him from the tall grass lining the field, and wound itself around his neck. A terrible battle ensued between Tilson and the snake, and the outcome would probably have been death to the young man had not his large shepherd dog, which had been following him, come to his assistance, • and between them the snake was killed. It was an experience that will long be remembered by the young man, and the dog will ever have a kindly feeling from his master.

Minor Slate Items. —Gen. B. F. Butler has presented a new flag to the Soldier’s Home at Marion.l —A United Brethren church is to be •established in New Albany, the outcome of their last General Conference. —A. T. Swift recovered $275 from the town of Angola as damages for injuries received from a defective sidewalk. —Otto Ogden, of Jeffersonville,claims the smallest baby in the world. The little girl weighs but eighteen ounces. —Charles Brease, aged 23, was sentenced to the penitentiary for ten years, at Richmond, for attempting to assault a child of 10 years. —The people of Wayne County will •soon be asked to vote on the purchase of the toll-roads, and an affirmative decision is confidently expected. —Sweeney Bros., of Jefferponville, ’have just finished a steel survey boat for the United States Government, which 'will be stationed at Keokuk, lowa. —Thomas McGraw was run over and dnstantly killed by the Wabash limited express train at Fort Wayne. He was nearly eighty years old, and a laborer by occupation. —rln a playful tussel over a shotgun between Morris Cottingham and a boy, near Spencer, the gun was discharged into Cottingham’s abdomen. He lived but a Jew hours.

—A switch engine on the Louis villst New Albany and Chicago Railway raa over James Cunningham, of Ashgrov*. and killed him, catting his body in twc. —Mrs. Jennie Hillen dropped dead at New Albany while attending to her domestic dutieß at her home in the East End, her death being the result of a sudden heart seizure. —John Wolf, a farmer living near Colburn, was fatally injured by being speared with the tine of a pitchfork, which slipped from a load of hay near which he was standing. —James Elliott, of Goshen, known as the deaf poet, while walking along th railroad track was struck by an engine and thrown about twenty feet, receiving severe internal injuries. —James K. Philips, of Hunt City, IIL, is very desirous of learning the address of James Dean, of the Second Indiana Battery. Any one knowing it will confer a favor by addressing him. —The 2-year-old child of Mr. and Mrs. Harvey Stearns, of Fishersburg, Madison County, fell off the bed where its mother had laid it to sleep, and dislocated its neck. It died instantly. —Hiram Mertin died near Unionville from injuries received in an accident a few days previous. In loading a sawlog the boom-pole flew back, breaking both his legs and injuring his spine. —Howard Park, who resides - near Scottsbnrg, is claimed not to have spoken to any one in the last two years. All efforts to make him answer questions have been futile, afid he refuse sto answer any questions. —Alexander Coquillard, a well-known manufacturer of South Bend, has donated to that city seventy acres of ground for a public park, and the citizens have already raised $2,500 with which to improve the gift. —Mrs. J. C. Whittridge, of Richmond, has made the statement that young Platt Robinson, recently drowned on Lake Pepin, Minn., made a call upon her the night before he left for Minnesota. He told her he was loath to go, because he had three times dreamed of falling out of a boat and being drowned. —Louis Superior, a Russian tailor of Terre Haute, who had frequently extorted money from his wife by pretending to commit suicide, did take his life the other day. His wife refused to give him 10 cents, when he stepped into another room and hanged himself from the top of the door, not five feet from his wife.

—Twenty-five letters lie in the postoffice at Martinsville uncalled for by James Morgan, the man who is reported to have advertised for a wife, saying he would pay $5,000 for a bride. The man’s correct name, however, is Morgan Johnson, and he lives at Lake Valley, Morgan County, Indiana. He is 80 years old and very wealthy. —Mrs. J. M. Foreman, residing near Grantsburg, is the latest victim of the mania for shooting people under the mistaken ; impression Ithat they are squirrels or other game. Her body w r as filled with a load of shot from the gun of John Johnson, who simply “heard something rustling” through a cornfield, and fired in the direction of the noise. —At a meeting of a committee of the Seventh Indiana Cavalry boys, at Winchester, Saturday, Gen. Brown said the boys of the regiment attending the reunion, to be held there on the 2d of October, should be entertained free of charge, if he had to take care of fifty of them. The regiment having been enlisted from the State at large, the number attending a reunion cannot be very large.

—About a year ago Freddie, the 14-year-old son of Samuel Hodapp, disappeared from his home in Seymour, and all efforts to find a trace of him since then has been unavailing. The other day a letter was received from the boy, dated at Louisville, in which he said that he had been at that place all the time, but gave no reason for his strange conduct. His parents had given him up for dead. —Henry Weinderlich, a lad of 8-years, died at South Bend, under peculiar circumstances. He had been a sufferer from that rare disease commonly called thinness of the blood-vessels. The slightest blow upon the boy’s nose would cause the blood to flow, which with great difficulty could be stopped. If the blood was stopped at one place it would flow from the ears, mouth and other parts of the body. He slightly cut his cheek with the .tip of an umbrella the other day. The flow of blood from the wound was continuous, baffling the attempts of the doctors to stop it, and resulting in his bleeding to death. —Chesley Chambers is now a free man. The prosecuting attorney at Bloomington on his own motion, dismissed the cases of assault and robbery that have been hanging for two years. So ends a remarkable case. Four years ago last April an express train on' the Monon road was robbed at midnight, the messenger almost killed and the baggage master wounded. Webber identified Chambers as the man who entered the car alone and shot him. A long trial followed, in which the jury hung. Another trial was had, and Chambers was sentenced to prison for two years. He served his term out and was returned from the penitentiary to the jail, and has since been under a bond in the sum of $5,000 for assaulting Davis,

LEMON LOVES TANNER.

PAYING THE CORPORAL’S TRAVELING EXPENSES. ! The Commissioner Allowing the Boss Pension Shark to Eoot His Bills—How the Treasury Is Raided by a Shameless Triangle—Dudley and Harrison. [Washington special to Chicago Herald.] Nobody in this city was surprised at the statement that Capt. George E. Lemon was in Milwaukee paying Corporal Tanj ner’s expenses at the hotel and vigorously engaged in booming Tanner’s scheme for an indorsement by the Grand Army snoampment. Demon can well afford to pay Tanner’s bills, even to the extent of SIOO a day at the hotel. Lemon is the biggest man in the pension business in this country, Tanner alone excepted. The pension office which Lemon rnnß is second in extent and importance only to that managed, or mismanaged, by Tanner himself. And the beauty of it is, from Lemon’s standpoint, that whereas Tanner makes only his salary of $5,000 a year, Lemon’s profits are something like SIOO,OOO every twelvemonth. Lemon would indeed be a mean man if he refused to pay for parlors at the hotel and other expenses incidental to a proper and effective working of the Tanner vindication scheme. Lemon is not only as big a man as Tanner, but he is pretty nearly as big a man in Washington as Ben Harrison. Lemon is worth fully a million and a half dollars, he is President of a bank, he owns twenty-five or thirty houses, one of them rented to Secretary Windom for $5,000 a year, he has a newspaper, and there is no telling what Lemon is in and is not in. When the citizens want a pot of money raised to carry on an inaugural enterprise, an enterprise which is always so worked in Washington as to earn a profit, or when the National Republican Committee, or the National Republican Congressional Committee, or the Grand Army is in need of funds, Lemon is the man Invariably first called upon. Lemon has lots of money and he knows how to put it out where it will do the most good. Nobody knows better than this Mr. Lemon on which side his bread is buttered. Lemon can well aftord to be generous, for he has made his fortune about as easily as any man ever made a fortune. He has grown rich getting pensions for soldiers and pushing claims and bounty cases through the pension office and other Government departments. Lemon’s concern is one of the sights of the town. He occupies three whole floors of one of the large business buildings opposite the Tieasury. It is a convenient location for him, for nobody in this country, excepting only his good friend Tanner, gets more money from the big vaults across the street. It is with no little pride that Lemon’s factotum takes one through the establishment and points out where the 165 clerks are at their work hustling pension cases and other claims thiough the departments. Of these 165 clerks twentyfive are lawyers or doctors. The weekly pay roll is more than $3,000. At this very moment Mr. Lemon’s private pension bureau has 75,000 cases pending before the official pension bureau presided over by his friend Tanner. Very often the receipts of Lemon’s bureau exceed SI,OOO in a single day. One-third of all the pension business in the country is attended to in this bureau of Mr. Lemon’s. No wonder Lemon can afford to go out to Milwaukee and pay hotel bills at the rate of $ ICO a day.

Friendship and patriotism aside, and Lemon s interest in Tanner reduced to an equivalent in the almighty dollar, the case is easily understood. The business which Lemon has pending before Tanner amounts in prospective fees to a little more than a million of dollars. At the present time the profits of pension attorneys come largely from reratings. The crop of original applications is at last running low, and if Congress cannot be induced to come to the rescue of a flagging industry in the enactment of a service pension law, or some other device for dismembering the surplus, in a few years the enterprising pension attorneys will have to depend entirely upon reratings. The fee for a rerating is only $lO, but with a superserviceable board of medical examiners, organized by the genius of Lemon and Dudley, and a buster like Tanner to keep his eyes shut and his mouth open while the looting is going on, there is no danger of the pension attorneys starving to death. It isn’t generally known, but really Lemon is fairly entitled, to the honor of • being called the father of the Grand Army of the Republic. In 1881 he conceived the idea of establishing a soldiers’ paper as a sort of -auxiliary to his pension business. He set his mark at a hundred thousand circulation a week, counting that if he could get the soldiers to taking his paper he would be all the more likely to secure their pension business. Finally succeeding in having his paper declared the official organ of the Grand Army, he found the circulation rapidly rising, and the pension business increasing in like ratio. Then he concluded the Grand Army was not large enough, at least for his purposes, and immediately set about extending its membership. He sent out blank charters by the thousands, at his own expense, and showed the veterans how to organize, and at the same time how to become subscribers to Lemon’s paper, and how to get their pension applications put through in good shape, via the subsidiary pension office. As a resultof these efforts it is Lemon’s boast that the membership of the Grand Army was doubled, now reaching the enormous total of 417,000 men, with 67,000 posts, and a Woman’s Relief Corps comprising 70,000 members. At the same time the circulation of Cap-, tain Lemon’s soldier paper has grown to a week, and his pension business to 75,000 applications constantly pending. The paper alone “makes a fortune every year," and the pension business is a gold mine. If for any reason the membership of the Grand Army should show a tendency to fall away, the enterprising Captain* Lemon may be depended upon to inject some sort of elixir of life into it. He needs the Grand Army in his business. The second largest pension business in Washington is owned by a man named Stevens, but as things are going now Stevens may expect to be soon outstripped by one W. W. Dudley, who was also conspicuous at Milwaukee as a shouter and manipulator for Tanner. Dudley’s office is near Tanner’s, on F street* and, though hot as large as Lemon’s, it is already the

third largest in the city and growing rapidly. Dudley has peculiiA' advantages in that he was once pension commissioner himself, and in that he is a member of two potential triangles. Triangle No. 1 is composed of Messrs. Clarkson, Dudley, and Quay, and triangle No. 2 of Lemon, Dudley, and Tanner. At present Dudley’s business amounts to about fifteen thousand [lending cases, and ho employs fifteen clerks. When Tanner first came into office there was talk that Dudley and Lemon were rival bidders for the busler’B and that Tanner was Dudley’s man and Bussey was Lemon’s, but now it is pretty well understood that the three are cheek by jowl. Fighting didn’t pay, and now all three are for Tanner and against Noble and Bussey. Some of the gossips even go so far as to say that Lemon and Dudley are in seoret partnership, and that a sort of pension trust has been formed, with a view of monopolizing everything in that line. At any rate, they are in partnership in their efforts to have Tanner retained and to force Noble out of the Interior Department so that a more friendly man may be put in his place. In this feature of the pension business Dudley is by long odds the most important partner, for he has a long pull with the National Republican triangle, which is just now doing its best, with some signs of success, to throw Ben Harrison down in the sewer. It was Dudley who engineered the scheme pf reorganizing the medical boards so that there would not be so much difficulty in getting reratings through, a valuable piece of work, as every one will admit, for it is on the reratings, as already stated, that the pension attorneys are chiefly depending for an honest livelihood.

There is some doubt as to the part Ben Harrison is playing in this patriotic pension scheme. Last March, when Ben came down here to occupy the office to which he had been elevated by the political genius of John New aud Dudley early in the summer, and of Matt Quay in the autumn, theie were rumors of a snub administered by ungrateful Mr. Harrison to faithful Colonel Dudley. As the story ran, Harrison had met Dudley in the inaugural ball-room and cut him dead with a cold and fishy stare. This story has been generally believed, but a little investigation has shown that the truth is not in it. An Assistant Attorney-General of the United States and two or throe Indiana politicians of note are authority for the statement that Harrison did not cut Dudley at the inaugural ball, but that on the contrary Harrison nud his wife, Dudley and his wife, and a large number of lndianians mot in the rooms of the Pension Commissioner th it night and carried on a friendly conversation. One of these gentlemen avers that he saw Dudley and the President talking together and laughing together on that occasion. It is true thut Dudley has not been in the White House since Harrison took possession, but it is equally true that his influence in the National Committee, in the departments, and in the grand hustle for the spoils was never so great as it is at this minute. A theory entitled to some credence is to the effect that there has never been any ?uarrel between Dudley and Harrison, udeed, it is certain that there has been none. All the trouble that exists is of Dudley’s own making, and many people believe he has purposely spread the impress on that he and Ben are out to relieve himself of the importunities of officeseekers on the ope hand and on the other to better enable him to carry on his manipulations of the Pension Office without involving Harrison in a direct kitchen-cabinet scandal. It is not impossible Dudley knew there would be scandal in the Pension Office, and that in the end the President would thank him for remaining away from the White House. At any rate, a good deal of mystery exists as to the real nature of the relationship of Dudley to Harrison, though there is no doubt of the wide swath, financial and political, which the famous author of the “blocks of five’’ letter is cutting under Mr. Harrison’s administration.

Tanner's Blunder.

Commissioner Tanner’s remarks at Milwaukee concerning pensions to widows W6re grossly scandalous. He said, advocating the continuance .of the widow’s pension in the event of her remarriage, “that to fail to pass some such rule is to place a premium upon immorality. There is not a week that there are not a great many cases come to my knowledge where women have bartered away their virtue to retain their pensions. In my opinion you will do a just act to relieve the Commissioner and his subordinates from being forced into investigations for having granted pensions in cases where, according to law, they would not be granted, but were obtained by fraud. ” The whole attitude of the Commissioner is reprehensible. He intimates that pensions are fraudulently granted to widows who have remarried, and he doesn’t wish to be investigated for such lawlessness because of his sympathy with the woman. By parity he admits sympathy with a soldier who perjures himself to gain an undeserved place on the pension rolls. He would not have the Government defend itself from fraud in either case, and to prevent such immorality as there is in it he would have all the "bars let down. Tanner’s position is not fully declared, but practically it is summed up in the phrase, “Pension everybody and then morality will be promoted, for fraud need not be practiced. 1 ’ Tanner is not the man for Commissioner of Pensions if it is the design of the administration that the pension law shall be honestly enforced. —Chicago Times.

How Tanner Hakes the Honey Fly.

Some astonishing figures hare come to light in the matter of increased and rerated pensions, says a Washington special. It appears that during the month of August Commissioner Tanner has paid out $75,000 in seventeen rerated cases. Riclfard Whiting, of St. Louis, received the largest amount, $12,251.59. Hiram Smith, Deputy Commissioner of Pensions, has himself been rerated, and pockets $6,035.72. Cardenio Bruce, of Kansas, gets $6,341.72. John S. Fay receives $6,341.85. Henry Funking shares in the amount to the tune of $5,231.05. Tanner bases this distribution upon the recent decision of Assistant Secretary Chandler in the case of Henry Schmidt, in which it was ruled that a man might be pensioned ir.\ double disability.

AN AWFUL COAST STORM

TERRIBLE DESTRUCTION TO BEACH HOTELS AND SHIPPING. Atlantic Summer Resorts Flooded—Hotels aud Pavilions Washed Away—Fifty Lives Reported Lost from Vessels Off Lewes Del.—Work of Devastating Waves. A New York dispatch of the 11th inst. says: The great storm which has been raging along the coast continues, aud word comes from Coney island that the tide this morning was higher than last night. The guests of the Manhattan Beach and Oriental hotels were Imprisoned by water, and the West End hotel was submerged. The beach at Manhattan has been washed away. The mammouth bathing pavilion belonging to Manhattan Beach is going down before the thundering waves. The old marine railway structure was carried away early to-day and taken with an awful crash over the new marine railway fully 300 feet inland, carrying the latter away bodily and overturning and smashing cars like kindling-wood. The old Brighton Beach bathing pavilion followed it with a deafening crash and then drifted with lightning rapidity and herculeau force against the new bath house, tearing part of that away. The .Brighton Beach hotel is surrounded by over two feet of water. Fully 100 feet of the lawn in front of the hotel has been eaten away since last night and from indications early to-day it will all be gone before night. The Brighton Beach railroad is submerged. In this city spiers usually twelve feet above high-water mark have their decks washed, and East river front buildings from Fiftieth to Fourteenth street are flooded. The storm has caused great damage along the coast of Long island. At Rookaway Beach the tide reached an unparalleled height. Bathing houses were washed away and the waves broke in on the verandas of the hotels. The short stretch of railroad running between Rockaway Beach, Arverne, and Far Rockaway was submerged, a portion of it was undermined, and the trains had to lie discontinued. A bridge between Arverne and Rockaway Beach was carried away. All the small islands In Jamaica bay were coverod with water. Scarcely anything could be seen of Hog island to-day at high tide. All the buildings on the Island had been washed away. Fire Island and Oak island were cut off from all communication with the mainland by boat or telegraph. From the Babylon Bhore great waves could be seen breaking over both islands. The new Morgan line steamer Elmar has arrived from New Orleans. The storm struck her on Monday night about ona mile north of Cape Hatteras. From that time till she almost reached Sandy Hook she steamed in the teeth of a most terriflo storm. Heavy waves lashed the sides of the steamer and broke clear over her deck. At one time the waves arose clear to the top of her smokestacks, which stftgd 1 forty-five feet out of ihe water. The" smokestacks looked like gigantic frosted cakes as she came into the harbor. They were covered with salt. Capt. E. A. Hor-' tor and First Officer B. A. Benson said that the storm was the most terrible ona they have witnessed during the last fourteen years. At times they could not see the ship’s length. It was impossible to take any observations from the time Cape Hatteras was reached until the vessel arrived near the bar. The officers had to depend upon their knowledge of the course and the soundings made.

The Wisconsin and the California had similar experiences. Both secured pilot* with the greatest difficulty. The California’s lifeboat was upset and Chief Officer Knuth, two seamen, and the pilot were saved by life lines. Postmaster Chester of Sea Isle City made bis way to the mainland and reports things in very bad shape there. The sea wall which was built to protect the place from the sea has been destroyed. About fifteen houses have been washed awav, including the Hewland house, the ’ Star house, and the Shakespeare hotel. The Continental hotel, which is the largest and most important hotel there, is all right.! The Excursion house, which is directly on. the sea front, and the Surf house are said' by Mr. Chester to be in danger of destruction. He does not report any loss of life. The Townsend inlet bridge, which is a very important structure and one that it will be hard to replace, is reported to have been washed away. Many miles of railroad track have been carried away and weeks will be required to place the line* where they were before the storm. Lewes (DeL) dispatch: The loss of lifo In Delaware bay by the storm has been' almost as heavy as during the great blizzard of March, 1888. Three coal-laden schooners, the J. & L. Bryan, the Walter F. Parker, and Kate F. Morse, have sunk at Fourteen-Foot bank, and of thirty-three persons on board only two are known to bo saved. It is reported that two other schooners have gone down at the buoy, a short distance above Fourteen-Foot bunk, with all hands, on board, and if this rumor should prove true it would swell the loss of life to thirty-five. The two survivors of the wrecks are Mate Jacobson and Steward Hunter of the J. & L. Bryan, whoso experience in battling for life has probably been the most thrilling of any shipwreck that has ever occurred in Delaware bay. The men were tossed upon the angry waters all night long and drifted ashore on a hatch seventeen miles from the scene of the wreck. Advices from the Delaware breakwater say that at least two-score vessels are now beached. Both wooden piers were washed away. The beach from Rehoboth to Lewes is strewn with wrecks. It is thought at least fifty lives were lost. Men were seen clinging to the rigging of the fast sinking vessels frantically yelling for help. The life saving crew were po *erless to render assistance owning to the fury of the gale. It was a terrible sight to witness, but no human power could save them. Theirbodies were washed ashore this morning and were buried in the sand along the water. The loss to vessel property at the breakwater will reach, it is thought. $5,000,000. 8 *

She Preached the Wrong Doctrine.

Mother —Yes, Willie, if you are ft good lx>y you will go to heaven when you die and have a golden harp to play on.” Willie—“l don’t want a harp; I want a bicycle and a base-ball.”—Ar-eola Record.