Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 November 1891 — Then and Now. [ARTICLE]

Then and Now.

A magazine published in Philadelphia in 1818 gave the following as an item of news: “I« the course of the twelve months of 1817, 12,000 wagons passed the Allegheny Mountains from Philadelphia and Baltimore, each with from four to six horses, carrying from thirty-five to forty hundred weight. The cost of carriage was about $7 per hundred-weight, in some cases as high as $lO, to Philadelphia. The aggregate sum paid for the conveyance of goods exceeded $1,500,000.” To move a ton of freight between Pittsburg and Philadelphia, therefore, cost not less than $l4O, and tank probably two weeks’ time. In 1886, the average amount received by the Pennsylvania road for the carriage of freight was three-quarters of one bent per ton per mile. The distanoe from Philadelphia to Pittsburg is 385 miles, so that the ton which cost $l4O in 1817 was carried in 1886 for $2.87. At the former time the workingman in Philadelphia had to pay sl4 for moving a barrel of flour from Pittsbugh, against twenty-eight cents now. The Pittsburg consumer paid $7 freight upon every. 100 pounds of dry goods brought from Philadelphia, while 100 pounds is now hauled in two days at a cost of fourteen cents. —Scientific American. A brown rat with a blue tail made itself visible in the Cincinnati Court House, and an enterprising individual tried to capture it alive, with a view to its exhibition in a museum. Unfortunately, he unintentionally killed it. Then he discovered that it was an ordinary Norway rat, which had been investigating the contents of a pot es blue paint. Irene —Do you mean to say Maud is going to marry that ugly, fat old man who took her out to supper * just now ? Laura-'-That’s what everybody says. “ What a bitter pill he must be I s “No, he’a sugar-coated. Be is a wealthy confectioner.” :,>■