Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 April 1891 — AN ELECTRIC AIR-LINE. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

AN ELECTRIC AIR-LINE.

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.”

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

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.