Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 April 1891 — Page 4

RENSSELAER. INDIANA. j. W. McEWEN, - - - PtngjnPA

The battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday, June 18, 1815. Pleasure is like molasses —too much of it spoils the taste for everything.” An Oregon editor has been forced to desert his adopted town for attempting a defense of the Chinese. The largest barometer yet made has been put in working order in the St. Jacques tower in Paris. It is fortyone feet five inches high. The world consists principally of two classes —those who deceive and those who are deceived. It is more advantageous to belong to thefcrner, but much more decent to belong to the latter. The manufacturers of Chicago employ capital to the amount of $140,000,000, furnish employment to 170,000 people, pay annually $70,000,000 in wages and turn out products valued at $500,000,000. Domestic troubles and divorces seem to run in families like some hereditary disease. In one family in Atchison. Kan., the grandparents quarreled all their lives, the mother and father have separated, and four of the six married children have been in divorce cases. A new rolling-mill in the Krupp Works at Essen, Germany, is probably larger than any other in the world. It will roll plate about twenty-eight inches thick and nearly twelve feet wide. The rolls are of steel. Each pair, in their rough state, weighed 100,000 pounds. A man in Germany, according to the American Stationer, has constructed a clock which will run 8,000 years. The maker has warranted it to run without stopping and without winding 1 until midnight of the year 9999, but he doesn’t expect to live to wind it the ‘ second time himself.

A gigantic pendulum has been sus- i pended from the center of ■ the second . platform of the Eiffel tower at Paris. ' It consists'oj if bVonze wire 380 feet I long, with a steel globe weighing ! about 198 pounds at the end. Its ob- | ject is to exhibit the rotation of the earth by the Foucault method. A tramp begged a drink of whisky in a saloon in one of the towns in Michigan, but before drinking it asked if it was imported or domestic. On being told that it was made in Kentucky he flew mad and broke the barkeeper’s jaw and walked away. He wa« probably a count in disguise, and used to Al imported diluted goods. 4- -4 : !■ While George Fountain was struggling along'a San Francisco street with ! a sack of potatoes on his back, he al- 1 most dropped to the pavement on see- 1 ing flames burst suddenly from his right side. In his pocket he had a little vial of potash tablets, and they became crushed because 0/ of the bottle, causing the flames td burst forth.

From Helsingfors, Russia, it is reported that a line of fast steamers, expressly constructed for the dairy and meat trades, is to be opened between Hango and Hull. They will run at eighteen knots, and will do the return journey in fourteen days. The Finnish Government are granting a loan out of public funds to enable the piomoters to realize their plans. Despite their subjugation to the British rule the princes of India are still able to indulge in royal whims and extravagances. One of them recently had made at Paris a bed worth $25,000. Its canopy is supported by four automatic female figures that wave fans to cool the air. The mattress is a huge musical box, which, when one lies upon it, plays operatic airs. Spiders differ from insects in five minute particulars: their eyes are simple instead of compound; they have eight legs instead of six; they do not pass through the metamorphoses which are characteristic of insects; they have no antennae, and their breathing is accomplished by means of organs which combine the functions of lungs and gills, instead of by tubes pervading their bodies. In consequence of the new French law compelling seminarists to serve in the army the French bishops have taken measures for their protection during the trying period of service. There is to be a seminarist’s home iu every garrison town, where they will spend all their leisure moments. They will, so far as possible, observe the cpllege rules and continue their theological studies. The Queen of Roumania, during her aojourn in England, visited a needle factory. While watching the work one of the men asked her majesty for a single hair from her head. The Queen granted his request with a smile. The man placed the hair under the needle of his, machine, bored a hole through 'it, drew a fine silk thread through the hole, sod then presented it to the aston iahed Queen. Me. Bbown, of Virginia, spoke of Mr. Hough, of Tennessee, as if the name were pronounced “Hoe,' which he claimed was very proper for him to

do, but Mr. Hough resented it, and one received two bullets and the other three cuts, and the case is still unsettled. Mr. Brown insists that when a man wants to be known as Mr. Huff he needn’t go all around the alphabet to accomplish it. After the settlement of New England by Puritans, and Maryland by Catholics, there was a period of about thirty years in which no new colonies were planted. In this period occurred the great rebellion in England, in which Charles I. was beheaded, and his son Charles 11. was kept out of England by the Puritans under Oliver Cromwell. But, ' after Cromwell’s death, Charles 11. was brought back to the throne of England. This is known as the Restoration. It took place in 1660. It was at an East Side ball, says the New York Tinies. One of the young men present had a cheerful disposition and a gloomy girl. After awhile the young man became justly indignant at her lack of geniality. “Wot’s der matter wid yer, anyhow?” he asked, withan injured air; “youse was chipper enough last night at Terry Grogan’s party.” She eyed him for a moment, then said, with appealing emphasis : “Jimmy, yer can’t expect a lady to be full every night.” Victoria, Australia, gives a wife the right of divorce if the husband is a habitual drunkard, and to the husband the same right of divorce if the wife is proven to be an inebriate. Dr. Crothers says: “This is a clear inception of the higher sentiment which demands relief from the barbarous law which would hold marriage with an inebriate as fixed and permanent. The failure of the law to prevent and regulate such marriages and the delusion that inebriety is a vice under the control of the victim is one of the great obstacles toward social and legal reform.”

Whether the rain in a thundershower is a cause or a result of th# generation of electricity has never been satisfactorily determined, though electricity itself is but the transformed energy of some form of motion. It does not need an exhibition of electricity to make what might be called rain run down an ice-pitcher on a hot day. However, the Government has appropriated $2,000 to enable the forestry department to make experiments in producing artificial rain. If they can force a warm column of rain against a cold one, on a large scale, they will, no doubt, succeed. In 1741 an energetic young lady, Miss Eliza Lucas, began to try experiments in growing the indigo plant in South Carolina. A frost destroyed the first crop that she planted, and a worm cut down the next. The indigo-maker brought from the West Indies tried to deceive her afterward, but by 1745 this persevering young lady had proved that the indigo could be grown in South Carolina, nid in two years move 200,600 pounds* of it were exported. It was a T eading crop for abo”t fifty years, but when 'the glowing of cotton was made profitable by the invention of the cotton gin, that crop took the place o! indigo.

CHINESE cotton, which has been al-' most exclusively applied to local uses in small quantities, is beginning to attract attention outside of China. It is described as fine in texture, with a fair staple, and a very long fiber; it is of a bright golden color; the demand for it is said to be so great that customers are eager to take as much of it as can be produced. It has, besides, a peculiar value, as it can be used as a substitute for wool, or as an imitation of camel’s hair. It is an improvement on the brown variety known as Nankin; and it is valued at from twenty-five to thirty-three per cent, above ordinary descriptions of cotton. In 1868, when the Ministry of Agriculture was created iu Austria, there were twenty-three agricultural educational institutions, including dairying and forestry. The number was soon increased, however, as the government took a strong interest in agricultural education. At the present time there are a hundred schools in the Austrian Empire for giving instruction iu agriculture and allied industries. These comprise one Superior School of Agriculture, sixteen Secondary Schools, twenty Schools of Practical Agriculture, twenty-five schools in which a course of instruction is given in winter t only, five Dairy Schools, five Forestry 1 Schools, sixteen institutions in which I horticulture, viticulture and hbp cul- ' ture are taught, and four for instruction in brewing and distilling.

A knowledge of the use of fire and artificial lights ha< always been regarded as distinctly human, and as marking a definite separation line between man and the lower animals. It would appear from a paiagraph in Stanley’s new book. “In Darkest Africa,” that this distinction can no longer be claimed, for on page 423 of the first volume of that work the author says that among other natural history notes which he gleaned from Emin Pasha, was the following: "The forest of Msongwa is infested with a large tribe of chimpanzees. In summer time, at night, they frequently visit the plantation of Mswa Station to steal fruit. But what is remarkable about this, is the fact that they use torches to light the way! Had I not witnessed this extraordinary spectacle personally, I should never have credited that any of the simians understood the art of making fire.”

AN ELECTRIC AIR-LINE.

Dr. Hachenberc'a Telpherage Beats the Air Ship. Dr. G. P. Hachenberg has a new invention which, as a means of travel and transportation of the mails and other light packages, beats the air-ship and the pneumatic tubes all hollow. He asks the privilege of exhibiting it at the World’s Fair. “Telpherage” is the term applied to this sort of transportation. but a glance at the accompanying cut will show that it is nothing more than riding a bicycle through the clouds on an electric wire. Aside from the comfort of being up overhead out of the dust and dirt and

>ut of reach of barking dogs that :hase cyclers up country roads, there s another decided advantage in this overhead system of wheeling; there is no pumping motion of the feet required; the machine is moved along by an electric current. So far is the idea from being impracticable and imposthat it is already in use. Buenos in South America, is connected with three or four small towns by these lines over which mail boxes are run every two hours. In explaining the building of those lines Dr. Hachenberg says that a line of two heavy wires should be constructed, one line above the other and about ten feet apart. These wires are adjusted to poles and both held in exact high tension, The bicycles which run on these wires are made

CHARLES N. FELTON.

The Record of the New Senator from California. Charles N. Felton was born in New York fifty-eight years ago, and in 1849, at the age of 17, came to California. Following the fashion of the pioneers, he first turned his attention to mining. He worked placers in Placer, Yuba, and other counties until 1853, and then, realizing the possibilities of mercantile pursuits, threw down his pick and pan and opened a country store in Downieville. This Sierra town was then the scene of marked mining activity, and young Felton, shrewd, plucky and pushing, managed io get a fall stare. of. the general prospent". Two years* later he found a wider gjjhe r e of T yi 7r?S n tilQ in Marysville, and until 18 jf he WAS iiuni-' bered amongthat lively city’s leading merchants. By this time Mr. Felton realized that finance was his specialty. Naturally enough he next blossomed out as a Nevada City banker. He conducted a successful banking business for six years. In 1863 he had gained sufficient experience and accumulated enough money to venture into the metropolis of the Pacific. His first political office was that of Tax Collector of Yuba County. He was then a Democrat, and during the Know-Nothing fight he was the only

successful Democrat on his ticket. His ticket ran behind the Know-Nothings from 1,200 to 1,500, but Felton’s jopularity won him the office on a majority of five votes. His second political office was his appointment as United States Sub Treasurer and Treasurer of the San Francisco Mint, which office he held for years. In 1880 he was sent by San Mateo County to the Assembly of his State, and two years afterward was returned. The next election he refused to be again nominated. Six years ago he was sent to Congress from th 3 Fifth district, and during the last four years, although not officially connected with national legislation, has been a prominent figure at Washington. Having abundant leisure and an interest in the State, he has been of much help to the California delegation in Congress, and his advice and influence have been sought after in Congress nearly as much as though he were a senator. Mr. Felton is a widower. v His estimable wife died fourteen years ago, leaving him a son and a daughter. The son is now 21 years old and the daugb-

with grooved wheels, the couplet of wheels for the upper wire being grooved very deeply to securely hold the vehicle. For travel on the wires two kinds of motor power are used: the rider himself and electricity. The electro-bicycle to travel the "electric air line has a peculiar construction .of its own. The saddle is abandoned and a narrow double seat is placed in front of the drive wheel. The electromotor is placed under the seat, the power coming from the upper wire. The place to mount or to reverse action is at the poles. It is suggested that a third electric wire be used as a means of safety in case of breakage of the other two. These wires could be so

constructed as to be available . .• telephonic or telegraphic use. They are strung close to the ground and uniform grade is not necessary. The speed of bicycles on the electric air line could be raised to a point that would pass any railway locomotive. The best possible use to which the scheme could be put would be in transmitting mail and other light and condensed packages. It is practicable in such a line to convey the mails from Chicago to New York in ten hours or less and the matter that could be carried on a single line in a day would amount to hundreds of tons. Dr. Hachenberg will try to construct his electric air line at the exposition. If he succeeds he will provide one of the most interesting sights to be seen.

ter 25. She is the wife of William L. Elkins, Jr., of Philadelphia, a clever and successful young man of excellent family.

Power One Hundred Miles.

One of the features of the coming electrical exibition at Frankfort-on-the-Main will be the transmission of power on a scale hitherto never attempted. When it was announced some months ago that it was proposed to transmit IUO horse-power from Lauffen-on-the-Neckar to Frankfort, a distance of more than 100 miles, the statement was received with smiles of incredulity; bit nqw it seems quite probably that not only will the experitrigd but that it will succeed, n B h he of the engineering difficulties that have to be gur™on n ted | Government has been asked io supply hne for the and on the system used will not neoessarily be at all severe ( for the use of very potential alternating currents is the feature of the scheme as at present planned. The alternating generator will supply a step-up transformer that in turn will transmit its secondary current at an enormously high potential, along the line, to be retransformed by a step-down transformer at Frankfort to a potential practicable for an alternating motor. A series of experiments carried on recently at Oerlikon involve the use of pressures as high as 33,000 volts on the line. At such a potential the current transmitted becomes so small that the line is a relatively small factor in the losses incurred, even though it be of the extreme length proposed. Nothing can better illustrate the characteristic advantages of the alternating system than this beautiful process of generating and utilizing currents at a moderate potential and transmitting them from station to station at a pressure so enormous that the losses in transitu become insignificant. — Electrical World.

To Give Away.

A,boy of five or six years, according to a story in the Chicago Herald, was made happy bv the arrival of a baby sister. He had been the only child in the family, and being a good and obedient bov, had been humored till he was perhaps in some danger of being spoiled. Before the little new sister was many weeks old. however, Master Fred began to feel that his own position was sadly altered. The stranger had supplanted him. Father, mother and servants were all the time talking about the baby. There was no mistake; Fred was no longer king. The boy began to be unhappy, and just then he remembered a placard which his father had put up at a conspicuous point on the premises some months before—“ Ashes to give away. Inquire within” Fred had taken great interest in this notice, and had inquired minutely into its meaning. He remembered now that very soon afterward a man called and carted away the ashes. He had been to the kindergarten, and could spell and print after *. fashion. So, w’ith such helps and hints as he was able to get slyly from the servants, he managed to concoct the following sign, which his astonished father one day found-posted in a sightly position, as he came home to dinner: “A Baßy tO give awaY. INquire oF FrED.” Potatoes were not planted iu New England fields'until 1718.

CIGANTIC CONTRACTS.

Nearly 912,000,000 te Be Paid for Four New War Ship*. The shipyards of the Cramps in Philadelphia have entered upon the sxecution of the largest contracts that have ever been let to any one establishment by this Government at any nne time. Their contract covers sll,955,090, and their bonds are 15 per cent, of that amount. The contract calls for one armed crusier of 8,100 tons displacement and 14.000 horse-power, to cost $2,990,000; two battle-ships, each of which will carry 14,000 tons, have 14,000 horsepower. and cost $3,120,000; one protected crusier, capable of carrying 7,500 tons, of 21,000 horse-power, to cost $2,725,000. The two battle-ships will weigh 20,000 tons. Of the total weight of these two vessels it is safe to say that 75 per cent, will be made up of hulls, machinery, and armor, amounting to 15,000 tons of manufactured steel. In the crusiers the relative weight of steel will be less, but of the 15,000 tons in tbo.-e vessels, at least 10,000 tons will be manufactured steel. In other words, there will be used during the next three or four years in the Cramps’ shipyard 25,000 tons of manufactured steel, the cost of which will be in the neighborhood of $4,000,000. Nearly the whole of this sum of $4,000,000 will be expended in the steel plants of Pennsylvania. What this expenditure will mean to the employes of this great industry in Pennsylvania can only be left to the imagination to depict. This great fraction of the enormous total of these contracts will be widely distributed. The major portion of the vast reward fpr the labor thus employed upon the new navy will, however, be distributed in Philadelphia. The shipyards of the Cramps, when running at their fullest capacity on these contracts, will employ every working day in the week from 3,000 to 4,000 men. The number employed will vary between these figures according to the readiness with which material for their work is supplied. Assuming that only 3,600 men are emploved on the average during every day for the next four years, their payroll, calculated upon the average wages paid at the yard of the Cramps, will amount to about $40,000 a week, including piece work. This means $2,100,000 a year, or somewhere between $6,250,000 and $6,500,000 in the next three years.

LATEST IN FROCK COATS.

Longer in the Skirt and Shorter in the Waist than the Departing Style. The sartorial intellect of London, which makes the masculine fashions of the year whereon in the wide world men wear good clothes, has just considered the frock coat problem, and issued its fiat. From the present on the mashers of Pall Mall and Piccadilly will wear a slightly modified form of the existing

garment by which the name of Prince Albert is perpetuated in the grateful memory of civilized nations. The new coat is shorter in the waist than the departing style, and is longer in the skirt. It may be either black or gray, and the edges may be corded or stitched, as the wearer’s fanev dictates, but it must be of rough cloth if he desires to retain the respect of polite society. Hereafter, whether it be on Broadway, Unterden Linden, the boulevards r anywhere else that man has risen hove the level of the savage, the dude mst wear a coat like the gentlemen the picture or admit himself to be t of it.

sixty Stories at Once.

Here is a good story of Justin McCarthy. It refers to the dav when the Galaxy was alive., Sheldon & Col were the publishers of the magazine. McCarthy had submitted a story. One day he said to Mr. Sheldon: “I have come to see if you will take that story I offered the Galaxy ?” “Yes,” cordially responded Mr. Sheldon; “and sixty more like it.” Time passed, and one dav McCarthy walked into the Galaxy office with an imposing pile of manuscript under his arm. “What is that?” asked Mr. Sheldon. McCarthy laid the bundle of manuscript upon the publisher’s desk and replied: “Here are the sixty stories you ordered on the occasion of my last visit.” He got a check covering the whole sixty.— N. Y. Times.

The “Fly” Drummer.

A commercial traveler coming from the Michigan Central depot on a Cass and Third avenue car, recently, gave away the secrets of the profession in conversation with a friend. “Most traveling men,” he said, “have little schemes of their own that they work to defray incidental expenses. My strong point is dealing in Canadian coins. My territory is in Ohio, and in all Ohio cities and towns Canadian coins are discounted twenty cents on the dollar. Twenty-five cent pieces pass for twenty cents, and half-dollars for forty cents. I have ‘ S2O worth of quarters and halves in my satchel now that I bought in Toledo to-day for sl6. In Detroit I use them to pay hotel and cigar bills, and realize their full value. Free Press.

DUDES AND POETS WERE ILLEGAL.

Our Forefather* Would Have Whipped' Modern Specimen*. If the laws of 150 years ago were inexistence at the present time, the nineteenth century would never have produced what has proven to be two of its most characteristic and interesting institutions. Having said this, no one will deny that reference is made to the American dude and modern poet. For instance, men who wore long hair in Puritan New England were heavily fined and whipped in public f>r the offense. This would take away the only distinguishing trait of the modern poet, and without it, it is extremely doubtful whether he would 5 write at all. It is on record, too, that in the latter part of the seventeenth century a young Bostonian was brought into court and fined for possessing an excess of wearing apparel “in boo!s r w’aistcoats and gold and silver laces.” If that law were to go suddenly into effect to-dav it would be the ruin of

IN THE STOCKS.

thousands of young men whose incomes, while large enough to purchase the “excess,” would never be sufficient tc pay the fines that justice would demand. On the other hand, the law would be of inestimable value to thousands of other young men, whose income has never been large enough tc permit them to break this old commandment. Our forefathers made the times in which they lived more than ordinarily picturesque by the novelties of their laws and the curious character of the punishments inflicted upon those who disobeyed official mandates. They believed in punishment. They punished heavily for what would now be considered mild offenses. Once in a while the. people of the present generation are entertained by the publication of an attempt to enforce some old blue law which has never been stricken from the statute books. But the most absurd of these are nothing in comparison with some others that originated about the same time, but' which, fortunately for a vast number,, have long been extinct. Dudes and poets were not the only objectionable people, whom the blue law's prohibited. Cranks, and this more numerous class popularly known at “odd geniuses,” could not have existed in those days. Among the

GAG FOR A SCOLD.

ancient court papers of an old colonial town it is recorded that Thomas Makepeace, because of his odd ways and novel disposition, was taken before a magistrate, and, after a hearing; informed that- “we are weary of him. unless he reforms.” New York was greatly amused by the story of a Hoboken woman who, less than three years ago. was convicted and severely punished under ar old New Jersey law for the heinous crime of being a common scold. A common scold, however, is a very objectionable sort of person, even to the liberal-minded American of the pres ent generation, so that the fate of the unfortunate woman did hot arouse the indignation at the interference with personal liberty that some cases less, just would arouse. There is a law still on the statute books of Massachusetts which prohibit®, driving for pleasure on Sunday. Four or five years ago the erratic mfayor of e small city not far from Boston attempted to put this law into force. Several prominent citizens were arrested for the crime of being found in a carriage in the public street without beiog able to give the arresting oflficei satisfactory proof of the necessitv ofc being there. But this crusade did not. last long. Popular opinion rose up in, rebellion against the puritanical mayor, and be was relegated from office at the expiration of his term. Curiously, erough, however, no attempt has beer made to have the law repealed. A stranger once walked into a. Massachusetts court and spent same, time watching the proceedings. By-and-by, a man was brought up for contempt of court and fined, where upon the stranger rose, and said “How mr-ch was the fine?” “Five dollars.” replied the clerk. “Well,” said the stranger, . laying down, the money, “if that’s all, I’d like to.jinein. I’ve hal a few hours’ experience oi this court, and no one can feel a gjeater contempt for it than.Ldo* and; I am willing to pay for it.”