Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 May 1891 — Page 4 Advertisements Column 2 [ADVERTISEMENT]

an exceUent and abundant substitute for gutta-percha in the solidified fluid which issues from the nivol-cantem, a tree that grows wild in the Concaq district of the Bombay Presidency, India, where it is generally planted for hedges. The late Mr. Richard Quincy Pepper, of Horbling, a Lincolnshire grazier, has bequeathed by his will $lO to every child in the parish over 6 and under 12 years of age, “as a nucleus and incentive to industry, carefulness and thrift,” and requests his executors to open a Government Savings Bank account for each recipient. The rat plague in the fen districts oi Lincolnshire, England, is still unabated. Ratcatchers are at work almost daily, and are paid four to six cents a rat killed. On one farm it is said that one man alone killed over 5,000 rats last year. The rats do great damage to the grain stacks and also to the potatoes and roots in pits. The Superintendent of the Brooklyn police got hold of a case the other day where a broker had paid a man S6OO per year for thirteen years because he one day complimented his wife and chucked her under the chin in a fatherly way. The chucker had submitted to be blackmailed rather than be exposed, but his persecutor stands a good s’iow of going to prison, Tom Sherman— Father Tom, the Jesuit—is tall, lank, thin, and almost furrowed in face. To see him standing near Senator Johu or his father when alive, the strong likeness between the three would strike one at a glance. The other son, P. T., or “Cump,” as he is caUed, is an entirely different make of a man, and in face and figure inclines toward the Ewing branch of the family. In Honduras bananas are planted eighteen by eighteen feet apart, which is a great waste of land. The Chinese, however, plant them only six to eight feet apart each way, and get from each hill two large bunches annually for three or four years. They allow but two stalks to the hill. At the end of the fourth year, having taken off from 500 to 600 bunches per acre for three years, the land is manured and then plowed and replanted. Says a Boston dentist: “Out of sheer curiosity I dropped in last Saturday night to an auction sale of unclaimed express packages. Buyers can only guess what they are bidding on, for packages are not broken, so the whole thing is a regular lottery. Each buyer generally opens up his package as soon as he gets it. The man next me opened a bundle he had paid fifty cents for. It was full of loose false teeth. He was disgusted, and I bought the lot for sl. Within forty-eight hours I had sold the lot and got just SBO for them.” Floral dinners are sti'l popular with the fashionable world in Paris. The Countess of Pourtales was one of the first to introduce the floral repasts. Whenever she invites her friends to her hospitable board she has some new surprise for them. New festoons of violets tied with knots of blue mauve ribbon are upon the table and upon the silver candelabra. Against wreaths of roses, encircling the plates and glasses, are a forest of little white lilacs, allowing the lights to appear only like so many glow worms in a perfumed bower. A correspondent of a London paper thinks that many medical men would be benefited by the adoption of a medical hat. He has bee a saved many journeys in the country by the fact that his hat differs from that of other people and he is recognized even on a dark night and often saved the trouble of retracing his steps for several miles. The hat he has adopted is a hard felt, just the shape of an ordinary straw hat, with low crown and flat brim. Of coarse, the hat is easily changed when on pleasure bent, and the cost is half that of a silk one. In actual distance covered, the greatesl>traveler in the world is said to be Chifef-'Engineer Sewell, of the White Star fleet. While in charge of the engine department of the vessels of that line, notably the Britannic, Mr. Sewell completed one hundred and thirty-two round trips between Liverpool and New York, traveling the enormous distance of 818,400 nautical, or 941,000 standard miles, nearly four times the distance between the earth and the moon. This is said to be only about two-thirds of the total distance traversed by Mr. Sewell since he became a sea-going engineer. There can be no doubt that within a measurable distance of time Russia will prove a formidable competitor of every cotton producing country, and there is also no doubt that the facilities she possesses for the production of cotton goods will ultimately enable her to enter into competition on something like equal terms with her rivals in foreign markets. It is only a few years ago that Russia was almost entirely dependent upon the United States for her supply of cotton, and in 1887 as much as $50,000,000 worth of American cotton was imported into the Czar’s empire. Since then, however, the foreign importation has fallen off, and the supply has been drawn from Central Asia, where the growing of cotton from American seed was inaugurated a few years ago. Last year nearly 40,000 tons of Turkestan cotton entered Russia over the Transcaspian Raiiwav. m