Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 November 1890 — A LESSON IN MAGIC. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

A LESSON IN MAGIC.

The Supreme Court of Minnesota is reported to have lately rendered a deBision declaring that “bank checks are not cash, and do not possess legal value as money until cashed.” Dr. Talmage seems to have unearthed the private ledger of late lamented King Solomon. Anyhow he estimates the wealth of that muchmarried sovereign, to have been £6BO, 000,000 in gold and £1,028,000,377 in silver. The Penobscot River, the largest in Maine, drains 7,400 square miles, a region as large as the State of Massachusetts. From Old Town to Bangor, a distance of twelve miles, the river falls more than ninety feet, giving several of the finest water powers in the world. At this season the amateur photog rapher is at his best. The roads and fields afford firm footing for his pedestrian excursions, and the landscapes were never more beautiful than now. Views are taken that will afford pleasure in the album of prints and on the stereopticon screen during the coming season of indoor entertainments. Newspapers do not flourish in Persia. No daily journal is published throughout the empire, but there are four weekly papers of mediocre interest and merit. The best Persian organ is the Akhtar (Star), which appears in Constantinople, in order to express more free opinions restricting the Shah’s empire than would be permitted within the country itself. Ames, of long-handled shovel fame, did not invent the implement. A boy who was digging out a woodchuck, broke the handle of his shovel and fitted in a temporary one of double the length. Ames happened to pass by, and noticing how much easier the shovel was handled, he caught on and started a factory. The boy got a dollar hat and the woodchuck out of it. Slavery existed in New York until early in the nineteenth century. Near the close of the eighteenth century the Legislature passed a gradual emancipation law, and subsequently an act was passed declaring all slaves free on July 4, 1827. The census returns show that there were about 21,003 slaves in the State in 1793, 20,003 in 1800, 15,003 in 1810, 10,000 in 1820, 75 in 1830 and 4 in 1840. Tunisians have a rather unpleasant custom of “fattening up” their girls for marriage. A girl after she is betrothed is cooped up in a small room. Shackles of silver or gold are put upon her ankles and wrists as a piece of dress. If she is to be married to a man who has discharged or lost his former wife, the shackles which the former wife wore ar e put upon the new bride’s limbs, and she is fed until they are filled up to the proper thickness. The census returns sustain public expectation as to the increase of population in the natural gas counties of Indiana. Of those re ported, Madison County shows an increase of 8,445, of which 6,633 is in Anderson, and Delaware follows close with an increase of 7,198, of which 6,120 belongs to Muncie. It is gratifying to observe that the country has shared in the increase as well as the cities, showing the influx of an enterprising class of farmers. A citizen of Brooklyn has caused the arrest of a druggist in that eity for refusing him permission to look over the book in which sales of poisons are recorded. The complainant has a wife who is addicted to the morphine habit, and he desired to ascertain if she got her supplies at the druggist’s store. The law imposes a fine of SSO when such a request is denied, and the defense in this case is that the demand was not couched in civil language. Some very strange accidents are brought to light by the accident insurance business. For instance, a man at Zaliska, Ohio, a stationary engineer, was kicked very severely by a hog. It disabled him for quite a number of weeks, and he was paid SB7. Another case was that of a man at Chillicothe, Ohio. As he was stooping to pick up some kindling wood a game rooster gaffed him in the wrist, catting an artery, which disabled him for some time. California after celebrating her fortieth year of Statehood by the miracle of keeping “the old homstead” in peaches, pears and grapes while the vineyard and orchards of the “effete East” went on strike, has just had a narrow escape from losing a large part of what remains to be gathered of her own great fruit crop. The winegrowers in the southern counties have indeed suffered severely from the early rains, but th** other fruit culturists turn out to have been comparatively unhurt, and the whole country may rejoice with California in her season of unexpected prosperity. The new gold bids fair to outweigh the old, and, happily, the lode need never “play out.” This new “sweetener,” which the French Government has already prohibited, owing to what they call a dangerous element which enters in its formation, does away entirely with the use of sugar. It costs almost nothing. About a month ago a prominent member of a canning firm of an Eastern city, while experimenting with saccharine, discovered tjiat pineapples preserved in

it would almost entirely retain their natural taste. This is in itself a great discovery, as almost everybody knows the difference in taste between canned pineapples and those which are imported from the South. _ “Yes, indeed; send horse and carriage to’depot,” was the innocent message that went to a lady in Utica not long ago. She was married, and her husband, usually called Joe, had been away from home for several weeks. The wife had telegraphed a lady member of the family to come up and spend a few weeks with her. and the answer was sent as above. The Utica lady was prostrated with grief when she received a dispatch reading: “Joe is dead. Send hearse and carriage to depot.” Arrangements were made in a hurry, and the hearse and carriage were in waiting when Joe and the lady stepped out of the train. The accident by which the woman on a Burlington train near Galesburg was killed is perhaps the only one of the kind in the history of railroad casualties. She was sitting at the window of the coach when the door of a car belonging to a freight train going by on a parallel track broke from its hinges, and fell in her direction and crushed in her skull. It has never been safe for trains to attempt to pass each other on the same track, and as this accident proves, there is danger when trains pass each other on different tracks. It is not a comforting reflection that the possibilities in the way of railroad accidents are outrunning precautions tc prevent them. A Minnesota court has decided that the man who pays for the lower berth in a sleeping car is entitled to haye the upper berth closed, and hence to the use of the section unless the upper,berth is sold to some other traveler. This is probably good law, and is certainly good sense; but the strict application of the rule may work some inconvenience. As, for example, when the traveler who controls the lower berth and who has ridden, let us say, from Chicago, with the upper berth made up and ready for occupancy, is disturbed at the Minnesota line by the porter who, in compliance with the law, proposes to close it, or when the man traveling from St. Paul is rudely awak ened at 1 o’clock in the morning by this same sable nuisance, who desires tc open and make up the upper berth that it may be occupied by some newly booked traveler. Owing to the faulty construction of the tank the tank drama had an unfortunate ending a few days ago in a town in Indiana. The tank sprung a leak. Nc cultivated and intelligent patrons of the tank drama can patiently endure such an accident. This lamentable disaster occurred at ;• critical moment in which the villain hurls the unfortunate heroine into the flood and the brave young hero leaps in and saves her from a tnnky grave; and when the Hoosier audience saw the tank spring a large leak and the water disappear in which these thrilling incidents were to be enacted they made a great row and broke up the play. This impotent conclusion of a great realistic drama, however, was not the worst of the troubles of the manager. The water leaked down into a drug store underneath the theater and the proprietor seized the tanlfftnd the other stage properties for damages. Unless mechanical art, on which the theatrical manager must depend for a tank that won’t leak, can co-operate with a genius for stage realism better than it did in this unfortunate instance the tank drama is forever doomed.

How to Free Your Hands When They Have Been Tied with a Rope. Take a stoat rope about twenty feet long, and hand it to your audience for inspection. While they are examining it, let a committee of gentlemen, that being the approved style of doing the thing, bind your wrists together with a handkerchief. This being done, have one end of the rope passed over the handkerchief, and let the cords then be held up by one of the company.

Now request the person holding the ends to pull one way while you pull the other, to show that the handkerchief i s .tightlytied. There is now apparently

no way of getting the rope off except the ends are released or the handkerchief untied. You soon explode this idea, however, for, after making one or two rapid movements of your hands and arms, you throw the rope off and exhibit your wrists still tied. Wonderful as this all seems it is very simple and jequires but little practice. The accompanying illustration explains it clearly. The part of the rope marked “A” is rolled between the wrists until it works up -through the handke-chief and forms a loop, through which you pass one hand, and then by giving the rope a smart jerk, it will easily come off. An official report to the Belgian Government states that the “gaimbobo.” or “angu,” of the Mexican State of Vera Cruz, possesses a fiber finer and stronger than silk, and of a similar luster. Exeriments already made are said to indicate 1b at the guimbobo differs essentially from ramie, cotton and hemp in having the plant covering around the fiber instead of mixed up and interlaced with it. This makes it practicable to separate and remove the bark by means of machinery. The plant grows luxuriantly wilh little care, and produces a highly esteemed food in addition to the fiber. Never f'gh; smoke, but hunt for the fi.o.