Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 July 1891 — Page 4 Advertisements Column 2 [ADVERTISEMENT]

son sumachs: First. —The three-leaved ivy is dangerous. Second—The fiveleaved is harmless. Third—The poison sumachs have white berries.— Fourth—No red-berried sumach is poisonous. Walt Whitman is now 72 years of age, hale and happy. May he live to grow still youDger and siDg many more jubilant chants? Whitman is the most American American living and he is intimate with the national sentiments and aspirations. The top of the morning of his birthday to him. R. M. Duffield, aged seventy, a mail carrier in Jackson County, West Virginia, claims to have walked 110,000 miles in the last ten years. He thinks no other man has done such an amount of walking. He is also a sort of expressman. A few weeks ago he carried a plow ten miles and on the next trip carried a small cookstove twenty-five miles. Wilder, the Western humorist, says that in appreciating good jokes a crowd of newsboys is the quickest and most intelligent he ever met. No point, ges ture or shade of inflection escapes these alert little nomads, while on the other hand many fashionable assemblages are chilly and unresponsive until you break the crust of reserve or indifference as if with a sledge-hammer. The “angry tree,” a woody plant, whioh grows from ten to twenty-five feet high, and w'as formerly supposed to exist only in Nevada, has recently been found both in Eastern California and in Arizona, says the Omaha Bee. If disturbed this peculiar tree tree shows every sign of vexation, even to ruffling up its leaves like the hair on an angry cat, and giying forth an unpleasant, sickening odor. Some ingenious prisoners in the jail at Marion, Ind., by means of a hose connected with the natural gas pipe, projected a flame against the inner side of the outer wall. When the stone was made red-hot, cold water was applied, and huge slices were peeled off until the wall was breached. None of them wanted to escape, and they explained that the mischief was done to show the authorities how easily one could be planned.

Several Chinamen were engaged in San Francisco to go to the fish canneries in Alaska, and were supplied with advance money and articles of clothing suited to the new climate. When the contractors “went for the heathen Chinese,” to get them to go on board the waiting vessel, they learned that some of them had decamped, while most of them were enjoying themselves in a prolonged opium debauch, and refused to leave San Francisco. The uses of bells in places devoted to religious purposes is very ancient, dating many centuries before the Christian era. In China, long before the time of Christ, bells were hung at the temple gate and the worshipper on entering rung them to attract the attention of the deity he was about to honor. Bells were common in India at the time of Pliny, and it is believed that they came into Europe in the first or second century. They were first used on Christian churches A. D. 4CO, in Nola, Italy, not so much to give notice of the time of worship as from an idea that their music drove away evil spirits and protected the people of the parish from thunder and lightning. An army physician who sees a good deal of the diseases among the Indians of Northern California, fiuds them very susceptible to the pet disease of civilization—consumption. When the disease attacks a healthy, robust Indian he is seen actually to melt away under its influence, which is due in part at least to the fact that while the Indian has taken to the clothing, food, and shelter of the whites and lost something of his natural hardiness to exposure, he adheres obstinately to certain habits, crowding in close apartments, going about in wet clothing, etc., which make him an easy victim. The mortality among infants is very large, and families are not seen with more than four children, some having but one or two. Rheumatism is crippling a great many. The one thing which they do seem to enjoy is immunity against trouble from poison oak, the stems of which they use in making baskets. While the remains of the old commander lie in a rude and neglected tomb in the city of New York, whose people manifest no purpose speedily to completed their long promised monument, another majestic Western memorial of General Grant has been fittingly, dedicated. H. H. Kohlsaat’s generosity, patriotism and public spirit have given to Galena a superb statue of the great captain who went forth from that town in 1861 to inscribe his name on the scroll of fame, and representatives of the people of half a dozen Western States assembled to participate in the exercises attending the formal transfer of the monument to the muncipality. The day, the crowd, the speakers were all that could be desired. The presence of Chauncey M. Depew, ex-Governor Hoard and others gave the affair more than a local significance and the honors shown to Mr. Kohlsaat no less than those paid to the memory of a national hero cannot fail to have an influence for good upon many thousands of Americans. With one such man as Mr. Kohlsaat in New York that imperial city would soon be relieved of the odium that must rest upon it so long as its oft repeated promise to provide a suitable tomb for Grant’s ashes is unfulfilled.