Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 July 1892 — NOTES AND COMMENTS. [ARTICLE]

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

As an example of the extent to which tipping prevails on the Continent.it is interesting to learn that porters in Swiss hotels are not only paid no wages but themselves pay a rental to the innkeepers. They make their living, and a good one, exclusively from the tips given them by guests. The “water kings” of Montana are not the creations of fairy fancy. They are real men who have got possession of the springs and make fortunes out of irrigation. General Dyrenforth, with hi 3 patent rainstorms on the cloud-rob-bing plan, wouldn’t be a drop in a, bucket compared to the bosses of high springs on the hillside. Sooth Africa has been scourged by a locust pest, and considerable damage is still being wrought. A swarm of locusts crossed over one place in a column over six miles wide; clearing pretty much everything before them. The mealie crop in the Orange Free State has been destroyed by the locusts, causing a loss of over $1,000,000. “The State of Massachusetts,” says “Our Dumb Animals,” “has spent over SIOO,OOO in trying to exterminate the gypsy moth near Boston. All of which might have been saved by a proper protection of our birds. The moth is not exterminated and we may yet be compelled to ask the English sparrows to aid us as they did years ago.” A man living at Burke, Yt., has saved all the maple sugar he has made in the past fifty years, having now on hand a considerable quantity of the boiling of ,1842 and his entire crop of every year since, the whole aggregating 10,000 pounds. It is all stirred sugar, and has kept perfectly. Nobody knows why he hoards the sugar, and he offers no explanation. The amenities of French political life were recently illustrated in the Chamber of Deputies on a proposition that the funeral of the late. Deputy Madier de Montjau should be at the public expense, when Deputy Cassagnac expressed a desire to have all of his Republican colleagues disposed of the same way and Deputy Doumer declared that they wereanxious to vote a public funeral for Deputy Cassagnac.

Some very eminent physicians hold that cancer is caused by grief, anxiety or disappointment. The disease is frequently linked with insanity. All thisgoes to show that the mind very largely controls the body. When the mind suffers tho body is affected. Napoleon’s, cancer of the stomach is supposed todate from his disappointment at Moscow, when he realized that his campaign wasan utter failure—an irreparable disaster. The Duke of Portland, who is one of the richest noblemen in England, has. just added 20,000 acres to his shootingpreserves. The Duke has, now 80,000’ acres, or 125 square miles, reserved solely for the use of his gun. He believes in doing things on a large scale. His town-house extends along nearly the entire side of Cavendish Square, and “Welbeek,” his seat in Nottinghamshire, is said to be the finest woodland domain in England. Australians have had bitter experience of the mischief which rabbits arecapable of doing, and now they seem likely to have trouble of a similar kind from the introduction of foxes. An Australian journal, says that foxes have already spread over a wide area, and aremost destructive both to lambs and poultry. They attain greater size and strength in Australia than in England, and the mild climate is highly favorableto the increase gs their numbers. “It must be very disheartening,” says the writer, “to all who have stock of any kind to lose, to find themselves confronted by some new enemy introduced by thoughtless or selfish persons. If some energetic steps are not soon taken, nothing can prevent the spread of foxes over the whole continent.” A railroad manager who hopes someday to see a secretary of railways in the National says “I believe that there is as mueh public need for a department of that kind in the executiveadministration as there is need of a post-master-general or a secretary of agriculture.” This idea carried out would put such a secretary above the railway commission, and the railway manager’s idea is that the president would appoint a mau of national reputation and great ability in railway affairs as his secretary of this department. All complaints of shippers, railway passengers, and matters winch could not be adjusted _in traffic associations could be finally appealed tothe department of railways before being taken to the courts. With the 175,000 miles of railway penetrating every section of the country, citizens are about as closely related to their railroads as they are to their post offices, and this, asserts the Boston Transcript, would give them the same kind of administration for both. A remarkable illustration of what can be done at a pinch in the way of rapid shipbuilding has just been fumnished by the well-known firm of Y T arrow & Co. of Poplar, London. The French Government was in urgent need of a light-draught gunboat where with topunish the rebellious Dahomeyans, but none of the home ship-yards would contract to build one in less than threemonths. The Poplar firm undertook the job, and in twenty-three days designed, built, launched, and fitted out th* Opale, a steel craft which is described as a model of simplicity and completeness. A hundred feet long and eighteen feet beam, she carries on a lower deck, forward, a wood-consuming locomotiveboiler, her engines aft driving two powerful paddle-wheels fixed astern. Quarters for the crew, and half-a-dozen holds for stores and munitions, complete this part of the vessel, which is strongly braced amidships and along the whole length with iron stays. On the upper deck are the Captain’s and officers’ quarters, and on both decks are stands for seven quickfiring guns of the mitrailleuse class. At her official trial the vessel made over ten miles an hour without any perceptiblevibration. She is flat-bottomed, draws only eighteen inches of water, and is capable of carrying 400 troops.