Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 February 1891 — FOR THE LITTLE FOLKS. [ARTICLE]

FOR THE LITTLE FOLKS.

There is no sweeter repose than that which is purchased by labor. A. shock of earthquake was felt at Pepperell, N. H., and adjoining towns. It rattled crockery ware and rang sleigh bells. Advices by cable from Melbourne report the total shipment of wool from Australia to America this season as 28,000 bales. The city of Havana has over two hundred cigar manufactories. Every factory pays a tax of $5 a year for each person it employs. The best horsemen in Europe are found in Bussia. , In that country blinders are never put upon a horse, and a shying horse is rarely seen.

A telephone line about five miles long has been established in Iceland, and is regarded as a great curiosity, being the first ever established on the island. Discriminate carefully between the man who is willing to take an office when the people want him to take it, and the man who is after it whether the people want his services or not. He only is great who has the habits of greatness; who, after performing what none in ten thousand could accomplish, passes on like Samson and “tells neither father nor mother of it.” A Mrs. Fletcher, who died lately in England, was the collateral descendent of Shakspeare, being in a direct line from Joan Hart, the poet’s sister. She was the proud owner of his jug and stick. A new law in Missouri provide? that the fees of no executive or ministerial officer of any county, exclusive of the salaries actually paid to his necessary deputies, shall exceed the sum of $5,000 for anyone year.

The Presbyterian Church of New Bedford, Pa., has declared itself in favor of matrimony. It is demanding that a newly elected deacon resign because he does not come up to the rule requiring that a deacon shall be “the husband of one wife and ha ve his children in subjection.”

The English quarter, at which wheat is quoted in the English reports, is 560 pounds, or one-fourth of the ton gross weight of 2,240 pounds. The English legal bushel is seventy pounds, and eight of those bushels is a quarter—equal to nine and one-half of our bushels of sixty pounds.

The true French plum—large, jet black, soft and juicy—comes from the shores of the Garonne and its affluent the Lot, and is the fruit of the tree known as the prunier d’ente, or grafted plum. The center of the district is Clairiac, a quaint little old-fashioned town built on a steep hillside overlooking the Lot.

An Eastern phrenologist who made a study of noses offered to wager SIOO that he could go out on the street and pull certain makes of ncses and not even be blasted in return. The first one he tried, however, brought a blow which laid him ilnconscious and lost him four good teeth. His diagnosis was off. A farmer living near Jefferson City six years ago put a pump in a well that contained six feet of water. Lately the well went dry, and when he came to examine the cause, he found that two cottonwood trees, one twenty feet and the other thirty feet distant, had sent out their roots and drank up all the water in the well.

It has been twenty years since Europe had such a winter as this, and they don’t know how to take it. While four or five feet of snow is peeled off American railroad tracks at the rate of twenty-five miles an hour, a fall of twenty inches has blocked half the lines across the ocean, and caused hundreds of factories to shut down.

Railway companies in Australia, after experimenting with various kinds of “quick fencing for railways, especially with a view to keeping out snow drifts,” have settled upon hedges of the “Rose of Provence.” It is said that a fence 6| feet high and 3| feet thick will chbck snow drifts. The blossoms are salable and so the fence is profitable. A short time ago a band of twenty Arnauts entered Prisrend and coolly attacked the house of the Chief Justice in broad daylight. The Judge and federal of his servants were murdered, and the house, after being sacked, was burned to the ground. The Zaptiehs, or Turkish policeipen, did not attempt to interfere, and all the brigands escaped. Prince Nicholas, of Montenegro, has ordained in his official gazette that every one of his active warriors shall plant during 1891 200 grape vines, every brigadier must plant twenty, every commander and under commander of a batalion ten, every drummer or color-bearer five. Every guide, moreover, must plant two olive trees, and •very corporal one. The gazette calculates that in consequence of this order

Montenegro will have 4,000,000 grapevines and 20,000 olive trees on Jan. 1. If Dempsey’s nose is really broken he will never be handsome again. Surgical skill works wonders in many cases, but when the bridge of a man’s nose is broken the organ can never be restored to its erstwhile symmetry. A NewYorker spent over $20,000 trying to get his nose back after a break, but the best the surgeons could do was to leave a sag in the middle.

Miss Lilian Baird, aged nine years, is becoming famous as the youngest problem composer in the world. She has a fine instinct for chess, which has been cultivated by much practice and an hereditary talent for problem composing. Her first problem, comjmsed before she was eight, has been printed in about twenty chess columns in England, Germany, and America. .

Statistics given in St. Petersburg papers show that the Jews are increasing with great rapidity in Bussia. While the birth rate among Russians is 21 per cent, that among the Jews is 50 per cent. An Italian statistician says the Hebrew population of Europe doubles itself in thirty years, the Bussian in about ninety years, and that oi Europe generally in 150 years.

A stroke of good luck came to John Tobin, a poor man, residing in Long Island City, N. Y. Being short of firewood, he broke up an old oaken chest, which he had bought in London two years ago. Th? trunk had a false bottom, and in one of the secret compartments was a little tin box which contained twenty-two small diamonds. John sold them to a jeweler for SSOO.

The sight of a gang of convicts in prison suets of broad black and yellow stripes at work in the public parks of Bichmond strikes a Northern man as a peculiar feature of the Virginia reformatory system. They work even in the shadow of the State House, keeping the walks and lawn in order. They are short-termed men, and do not require much watching to prevent their escaping.

More cabin passengers arrived at New York in 1890 on the ocean steamers than ever before in the history of that port. The steamers made a total of 914 trips, bringing 99,189 cabin and 371,593 steerage passengers. British steamers made 304 of the trips and landed 54,971 cabin and 119,679 steerage passengers. During the total 914 trips there were 49 births, 63 deaths and 11 suicides.

It is not impossible to find ladies not more than fifty years old who let their ]>ianos stay unopened because, they say, they are too old and their fingers are too stiff to play any more. But the people who pass along Winthrop street, says the Lewiston (Me.) Journal, it is reported, often hear music from a piano fingered by Mrs. Matilda Sewall, who, though ninety-six years old, plays with the skill and energy of a girl.

At Straubing, in Bavaria, some Celtic tombs have been opened and found tocontain most interesting bronze ornaments and iron weapons belonging to the people of Rhaetia before the Roman conquest. The long sought-for Roman cemetery has also been discovered —through the unearthing of a Roman tomb containing cinerary urns—flanking the old military road from Serviodurum (Straubing) to Abusina, both situated on the Danube.

Mrs. John M. Weigle, of Augusta Ga., excitedly called the attention of her husband to a little animal which was sporting on her sitting-room hearth one night. Mr. Weigle soon saw that it was a pretty flying squirrel. He tried to capture it, but it escaped from the room and was overhauled by the dogs. There was no possible way for the little fellow to get into the room except down the chimney in the face of a hot burning coal fire.

The new railway to connect ths Argentine Republic with Chili, about which so much has been written by engineers, is being built. Passing through the Andes Mountains, there are to be eight tunnels o'l an aggregate length of ten miles. These tunnels are to be bored by electric drills. The cataract of the Juncalßlo River, a few miles away, that has a fall of 600 feet, is being already utilized as the power to drive the 1,000-horse power eigines that do the work. Tha water of the river is also being utilized to carry off the earth and rock dri.led out. Boring has begun at twenty points along the route already, and it is said the work is being done for less than half the cost of any other method.

A curious story of “spontaneous hypnotism,” as it is termed, comes from Hancock, Minn. The husband of Mrs. Edward Day left the house one day last October to go to the barn, andon his return his wife shrieked and badejhim leave -the room. He expostulated, but she denied ever having seen him, insisting that her name was Margaret Hill and that she lived in Philadelphia. All efforts of friends and physicians to convince her to the countrary were unavailing. Being asked her age she. answered, “Fifty-six,” though she is only twenty-four. She was sane on all othei subjects. Three weeks later she was again in her noxynnl mind. A week afterward she once more fancied herself Margaret Hill, spinster, of Philadelphia.

How Tony Sold Rosebudg. He was only a dog, but a very smart dog, indeed. He belonged to the class known as shepherd dogs, which are noted for their sagacity and fidelity. His master was a little Italian boy, called Beppo, who earned his living by selling flowers on the street. Tony was very fond of Beppo, who had been his master ever since he was a puppy, and Beppo had never failed to share his crust with his good dog. Now Tony had grown to be a large, strong dog, and took as much care of Beppo as Beppo took of him. Often, while standing on the corner with his basket on his arm, waiting for a customer, Beppo would feel inclined to cry from very loieliness; but Tony seemed to know when the “blues” came, and would lick his master’s hand, as much as to say, “You’ve got me for a friend. Cheer up! I’m better than nobody! I’ll stand by you!’ But one day it happened that when the other boys who shared the dark cellar home with Beppo went out early in the morning as usual, Beppo was so ill that he could hardly lift his head from the straw on which he slept. He felt that he would be unable to sell flowers on that day. What to do he did not know.

Tony did his best to comfort him; but the tears would gather in his eyes, and it was with the greatest difficulty that he at last forced himself to get up and go to the florist, who lived near by, for the usual supply of buds. Having filled his basket, the boy went home and tied it round Tony’s neck. Then he looked at the dog and said: “Now, Tony, you are the only fellow I’ve got to depend on. Go and sell my flowers for me, and bring the money home safe, and don’t let any one steal anything.” Then he kissed the dog and pointed to the door. Tony trotted out in the street to Beppo’s usual corner, where he took his stand. Tieppo’s customers soon saw how matters stood, and chose their flowers and put the money in the tin cup within the basket. Now and then when a rude boy would come along and try to snatch a flower from the basket, Tony would growl fiercely, and drive him away. So that day went safely by, and at nightfall Tony went home to his master, who wa» waiting anxiously to see him, and gave him a hearty welcome. Beppo untied the basket and looked in the cup, and I shouldn’t wonder if he found more money in it than he ever did before. That is how Tony sold the rosebuds; and he did it so well that Beppo never tires of telling about it. —Canadian Queen.

A Stray Bird. One summer morning Helen and Berta went out under the cherry tree, to watch Mrs. Redbreast up in her nest. They listened, and thought they could hear a little “Peep, peep.” Running into the house they called Uncle Burr. He climbed the tree, and found four little featherless birdies,’ with four little wide-open mouths, calling for their breakfast. He only stayed in the tree a moment, for Mr. and Mrs. Redbreast came llying back with food for their babies.' Helen and Berta watched the nest every day, and it was not long before they could see four little baldheads peering over the side of the nest. In a few more days they saw them sitting on the side of the nest, while Mr. and Mrs. Redbreast were trying to coax them to fly, but they w.ere too timid to start out. boon Helen came running into the house, calling: “Oh, mamma, mamma, something is the matter with one of our baby robins; he is all over flour!” Sure enough, when mamma went to look there were three brown birdies and one white one.

They could not account for it for some days. Uncle Burr fixed a sieve, and caught the little white fellow; and sure enough it was a real robin. He was soon at home in a nice brass cage, happy and contented. He grew very tame, and was allowed to flv around the room. He would eat dainties from the little .girls’ fingers, as they always fed him regularly and never frightened him. He grew very fast, and before winter had his full plumage, and a strange one it was for a robin redbreast. He was pure white all over, except his plump little breast, which had just the lightest shade of salmon on the tips of the feathers. His bright little eyes were pink, like those of white mice. He sang the same note i as his darker brothers and sisters, and seemed to enjov himself just as much. He was certainly surer of having plenty to eat a

and of not getting hurt than he would have been outdoors.— G. B. Green, in Our Little Ones.