Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 October 1890 — Discharging a Man. [ARTICLE]

Discharging a Man.

r Marion Haelvnd says women who Write shouldn’t marry. More than five thousand men in New Fork do business under the protection of their wives’ names. 1 The pastor of the Presbyterian church at Falls City, Kan., threw up fcis job because the women of his congregation played afternoon whist. ! Daniel Stone, a Fulton, "Wis., fartner, has a horse and buggy with a history. He (the horse) is thirty-seven of age and fought in the army, on the Confederate side. i In the combined register of the First Presbyterian Church of Morristown, N. J., now being published, is recorded the death of a negro servant of Dr. John Johnes, aged 81 years, •frightened to death by ghosts.” Some workingmen digging on a road In Jersey City Heights, N. J., found at it depth of fourteen feet a box containing pver $15,000 in old State Bank currency. It had probably been hidden there years ago by some unknown miser. The notes have no value now. Queen Victoria has a great fondtiess for policemen. That is to say, she prefers them to sentries, and in consequence Osborne and Balmoral are both guarded by the bobbies, much to the disgust of the military. It is the sum and total of a British policeman’s ambition to do duty for her Majesty. It is very rarely that rum accomplishes any good, but it is a fact that the cause of justice has been promoted by the use of rum. A man who murdered a policeman, in Scranton, Pa., eluded the vigilance of scores of detectives who were on the search. A few days since, at Sunbury, Pa., he got drunk, committed an assault, was arrested, and, while in court, was identified.

A hole ten feet in circumference appeared in Oconee County, Ga., during the great earthquake in 1886. It is full of water, and there has long been talk about its depth, but no soundings were taken until a few days ago. Then a rope 200 feet long was put down, but it failed to touch bottom, and now there are persons who declare that “the hole extends into the bowels of the earth.” It is proposed to take a second sounding in the near future. Dr. Brgkaw, of St. Louis, makes the observation that there is a class of criminals that may be termed moral imbeciles, as they have no idea of the difference between right and wrong. He cites the case of one of these, who had just been released from prison. He shot a man, and when asked what he did it for he said that he would just as soon be locked up as he out. Men of this class are not susceptible of punishment. Hanging merely rids the community of their presence. A writer in the Quarterly Review tells a story illustrating the possible disadvantage of culture in the kitchen: “An English woman, the wife of a wellknown physician, had occasion to remonstrate with her cook because the latter had repeatedly neglected to send up the dinner with that punctuality desirable in well-regulated households. To her astonishment she was informed that the young person in question was so much occupied with the novel she was writing that she had been unable to pay due attention to her kitchen duties.”

One of the wonders of California is a feat of engineering which has never yet been described in any book, and is but little known outside the neighborhood in which it is situated. In Sonora County, near the Pacific coast, may be seen an actual railroad bed in the treetops. Between the Clipper Mills and Stuart Point, where the road crosses a deep ravine, the trees are sawed off on a level with the surrounding hills, and the timbers and ties are laid on the stumps In the center of the ravine two huge red-wood trees, standing side by side, form the most substantial support. A Lewiston, Maine, gentleman is anxiously looking up an heirloom in the shape of an old Bible, printed with German text and brought over by his Dutch ancestors. It was in the possession of an uncle who had lately died, Among the gentleman’s earliest remembrances is that of a curiosity-seeker who once tried to buy the much-prized Bible from his mother. She refused to part with it at any price. Thereupon the stranger had the audacity coolly to cut off a fragment of the leather cover as a relic. Hastily snatching it from him she exclaimed, haughtily, “I am able to keep it, sir!” A Belgian chemist is said to have devised a method of rendering fabrics proof against the ravages of decay for an indefinite period. Noting the fact that resin played an important part in the wonderful preservation of Egyptian mummies, he made numerous experiments with substances extracted from birch bark, to which the peculiar aroma of Bosnia leather is due. He found that the green tar which is left over after the oil used in tanning has been extracted from the white bark of the birch tree yields neither acid nor alkaloid, and that in solution with alcohol it forms a liquid of remarkable fluidity, which has the power of resisting when §rj the action of even alcohol. It i s

claimed that this preservative possesses the property of uniting with the most delicate and brilliant colors and rendering them apparently imperishable.

Wolves, coyotes, cats and panthers in Texas are multiplying under the protection of the barbed wire fence and the apathy of the State Legislators. A few years since a thorough scalp law would have settled forever the wild animal question in Texas at a small expense. Now it will cost twice the money, and meantime stockmen and farmers have lost many times the money in calves, colts and sheep killed. In a few years things will be worse. A ranchman, G. A. Anderson, of Kinney County, has been compelled to buy a pack of hounds and turn huntsman to protect his flock from the increasing ravages of panthers. The same thing is happening all over Texas.

The Minneapolis Directory, of which there are several copies in New York, and curiosities they are esteemed, shows am6ng other “Beckers” supposed to be citizens of that lively town one “Carl Becker,” who is put down as a “watchman.” People who undoubtedly know what they are talknig about say that it can be demonstrated that “Carl Becker” is a big watch dog belonging too well-known Minneapolitan named Becker. If this year’s directory is made up as New York’s is said to have been, in parts from the tables of the census-takers, Mr. Becker’s dog may, or may not, be excluded. But his appearance in the directory is not the first time a dog bias done duty for a man in this country. In the days when graveyard insurance was rampant in the interior of Pennsylvania the life of one “John Barker” was insured for SI,OOO, and on proof of death the claim was paid, “John Barker” being a pup belonging to one of the certifying doctors. An English paper records a pathetic romance which ended happily at the Old Bailey in London a short time ago. William Stork, a respectable laborer, was indicted for trying to murder his sweetheart. He and she had loved each other for seven years. Poverty, however, kept them from marrying. Out of his earnings of $5 a week Stork had kept the girl, her aged and infirm father and brother, and his own mother from the workhouse. She, fearful of beiug a further burden, left to stay with a brother. The lovers, however, met one day, and the man pressed the woman to marry. She, still dreading their poverty, refused, whereupon Stork, wild with despair, tried to cut her throat and his own. The judge and the jury both agreed in sentencing him to a more formal punishment, and the devoted couple met the reward of their long self-denial by getting a gift of SSO from the sheriff’s fund to enable them to marry and set up house together.

In Ireland only one shamrock is known, says the American Notes and Queries. It is an indigenous species of clover, which trails along the ground among the grass in meadows. The trefoil leaves are not more than one-fourth the size of the smallest clover I have seen in America, and are pure green in color, without any of the brown shading of white and pink clovers. The creeping stem is hard and fibrous, and is difficult to dislodge from the earth. On St. Patrick’s Day the true shamrock has to be searched out among the grass, for, though comparatively plentiful at that season, it grows close to the ground. Later it bears a tiny “whity-brown” blossom. The information that shamrakh is the Arabic word for trefoil may be of service to those interested in the origin of the Irish race. The word could have been introduced by the Milesians, or it may furnish an argument in support of the contention that one of the lost ten tribes of Israel settled in Ireland, which has been revived by the publication of a recent book.

Discharging a man for any cause is a duty that most employers dislike, says the Pittsburg Dispatch. To get around the disagreeable part of this obligation some men resort to subterfuge more or less amiable. For instance, a certain firm in New York had a letter form which it always used when bouncing had to be done. Here it is: “Dear Sir— The conditions of our business will not permit us to avail ourselves of your valuable services after next Saturday. Blake & Co.” Another large employer of labor told me not long ago that he never discharged an employe. “What, never?” I inquired. “Never,” he repeated. “I always ask a man to resign, and if he doesn’t resiun I resign from the place of paymaster.” That reminded me of a foreman in a factory who was so soft-hearted that he never could bring himself to fire a man in so many words. When it became necessary to get rid of a hand he used to send for the victim and address him thus: “I’m sorry, Wilhelm, but I lays you off for awhile.” “How long for?” is the usual response. “Oh, I doan know—maybe six months—maybe a year—or two years or ten years—l doan know.”