Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 February 1893 — SOMEWHAT STRANGE. [ARTICLE]

SOMEWHAT STRANGE.

ACCIDENTS AND INCIDENTS OF EVERY DAY J.IKE. Queer Facts and Thrilling Adventures Which Show That Truth It Stranger Than Fiction. A large party of men, headed by Harry Gager of Seattle, enjoyed a big coyote drive on the sagebrush plains twenty miles southeast of Boise, Idaho. After an exciting chase thirty splendid specimens of the peculiar animal lay dead upon the frozen ground. At this season of the year the skin of the coyote is heavy and glossy, and of considerable commercial value. Gager and his party sought the animals for their warm coats, which they will have made into garments. The hunters were provided with a pack of fierce hounds and the party spread out over the plains to encircle a rocky butte much frequented by coyotes. The dogs made the frosty air re-echo with their deep nptes. Within an hour after the commencement of the hunt twenty-one fine coyotes had been killed and skinned. The hounds were then sent into a growth of sagebrush in a little hollow in one of the abrupt slopes of the butte. The dogs cornered four big coyotes, and a battle royal followed. The coyotes fought like four-footed fiends, and they badly injured five splendid hounds before they succumbed. Their skins were nearly torn from their bodies during the struggle, and were worthless. A few minutes later eight big coyotes were started out of another bunch of sagebrush. The cowardly animals darted across the plain and tried to conceal themselves in a large flock of sheep. They had no fight in them and did not offer to molest the sheep, upon which they usually prey. After much difficulty the covotes were driven into the sagebrush again, and then the hounds quickly dispatched live of them.

“For years,”.said a steady New York churchgoer, “I had been sitting in the same pew and in the same seat, the end seat by the aisle. Usually the other places are occupied by members of my family, for we all attend church pretty regularly, but one Sunday recently when, for one reason and another, they had all stayed at home, I sat in my pew alone. Seeing plenty of room there the usher brought to sit with me a stranger. I was, of course, glad to welcome him. I did not get up and step out into the aisle so that he might pass in by me, but I moved along to the other end of the pew and let him sit in my place. When I had seen him comfortably seated and handed him a hymn book, and had turned toward the pulpit again, I was surprised to find that everything in the church seemed new and strange to me. For a long time I had been accustomed to seeing the backs of the heads of those of my friends and neighbors who sit in front of me, and the sides of their faces, from a certain point of view. I saw them now from another point of view, and they all seemed to look very differently. I saw children who appeared from their demeanor to be regular attendants at church, but whom I had never noticed there before; they had been there of course, but my view of them had been cut off by the heads and shoulders of other persons. The preacher appeared to me in another light, and it seemed as though his sermon, coming as it dfd along a new angle, came with new power. Indeed, it was almost like visiting a new church. The fact is that we are all such creatures of habit that we are apt to be surprised if we depart even a little way from the road we are accustomed to travel.”

In a little village in Sussex, England, there is a veritable milky way of lilies, where thousands of white blossoms shed their perfume, and where women gardeners tend and pack and ship the fragrant product. Twenty-five years ago a single lily bulb was given to Mrs. Bates, a farmer’s daughter, who tended the gift with the devotion women bestow on flowers, and when sixteen bulbs had resulted from the original one, and Mrs. Bates, finding that her children, as she called them, had outgrown the sunny window where they grew, she planted them in the corner of the garden. Ten years ago a daughter of Mrs. Bates, inspired by the enterprise of the time, sent some blossoms to the London market, and now, in association with her sisters, has made the Bates lilies famous for their beauty and perfection. The daughters are keen business women, interviewing their buyers at the 0 o’clock market, selling without the interference of agents to private customers, florists, and commission merchants. The average product is (100 dozens a week, which are packed by women in the gardens. Women are taking up floriculture to a considerable extent in England, and at the Horticultural College landscape and kitchen gardening are taught by lectures, demonstrations, and'praotical work. It ,is an interesting fact that applications are received at the college faster than women can be trained.

“ ‘True to death,’’’ says a St. Petersburg contemporary, “is a mild phrase in comparison with the expression. ‘True to hard labor in the Ural mines.’ ” And yet such heroism as the latter phrase describes can be found among Polish girls. A wedding was recently performed in Minsk which illustrated this fact. The groom, Cesar Pozniak, was brought to church in heavy chains; the bride, Maria Kanovitcheva, a maid in one of the wealthiest houses of the oity, came to church accompanied by her friends in carriages. Cesar Pozniak was an artisan of good behavior and appearance; but he was accused 6f murder and condemned to hard labor in the Ural mines for ten years. Maria was in love with him before the accusation took place, and would not leave him in his trials. Now that judgment was pronounced on him she consented to become his wife and to follow him'to his place of destination. The prison authorities granted the convict permission to marry, and the wedding took place in the prison chapel. Maria believes in the innocence of her husband and hopes ‘that he will be pardoned before he reaches the Ural mines.

A few days ago James R. Holt went for a quail hunt along the banks of the Sacramento river in California. Under a cover of brush he discovered a nice flock of birds, but when he raised his gun to have a shot they disappeared. He felt satisfied that there were quite a number under a particular bush and he blazed away. The noisy fluttering which followed told him the result and he ran for his prize, and just as he was reaching out his hand to catch a wounded quail he was suddenly shocked to discover an enormous rattlesnake in the line of the bird. He approached the birds again with his gun cocked and ready for a sudden shot, and learned that the snake was dead. When he tired at the birds he killed the snake and six quail,"although none of the birds or the serpent were in view. The snake had eight rattles and a button and was 3i feet in length. For several months the Austrian nantary authorities .have guarded the

frontier from the importation of Russia*) caviar, and presumably that from the Elbe has also been shut out. Caviar, which consists of prepared eggs of the sturgeon, was placed under the ban on the ground that it was a medium for the transportation of ihe cholera germ. To test the matter the Austrian Minister ot the Interior ordered a thorough investigation to be made at the hygienic laboratory in Vienna. There noted bacteriologists infected a quantity of caviar with bacilli from Touquiu and from Hamburg, as many as 153,393 being placed in the caviar. At the end of twenty-four hours there were but a hundred left, and at the end of forty-eight there were none at all. This experiment was repeated several times, with about the same result. Lovers of this delicacy—the caviar, not the bacilli—may therefore continue to eat it withoqt fear. It is a cholera killer instead of a propagator. 1 A Kentucky Baptist minister says that some years ago a Baptist Church in that State tried a man for kissing his wife. The formulated charge was entered “Unbecoming levity.” The gentleman accused had been from home several weeks on business, and on his return he met his wife at the meeting house, and in the presence of the congregation embraced her with a sounding smack on the lips. Some of the staid old deacons were so shocked at such levity in the house of God that the gentleman was airaigned on the above charge, and escaped dismissal from the church by agreeing to do his kissing at home in tht future.

A curious story is told of the recent funeral of an old farmer of Maine, who, after spending his life in tilling a rocky farm and raising a numerous family, died and left his hard-earned property to two sons. The sons placed their father’s remains in a rough coffin and started for the burying-ground, bearing it upon their shoulders. They took a short cut through the woods, and had not gone far when a deer crossed the path. The sight stirred their sportsman instincts, and depositing the coffin in the bushes, they ran back for their dogs and guns, and were soon on a glorious hunt.' Other game turned up, the hunt was prolonged, and it was not till four days afterward, that they remembered their father’s corpse in the bushes and returned to bury it.

Two girls have lately had a strange experience in a country house, situated in Devonshire, England, at which they were visiting. They were given a room reported to be haunted by a woman with a bloody face. Just as they got into bed on the first night of their stay, a woman whose face was all gory rushed into the room. The girls were frightened into hysterics and the alarmed household found them shivering and screaming under the coverlets while a dead woman lay beside the bed. The supposed ghost was a lady's maid who had broken a blood vessel while crossing the hall and ran into the girl’s room for assistance, which their insensate fright prevented them giving. The peasants of the Russian village of Jagodziasts, in Lithuania, wreaked their vengeance on a suspected horse thief recently by setting fire to his dwelling during the night, while he, his wife, mother, and family of five children were within, and burning the whole family to death. The peasants stood around the hut, and when the inmates rushed out they were thrust back into the burning house with pitchforks and scythes. One of the women was murdered outright in the attempt to force her back into the flames. The peasants gave themselves up to the Russian police, and will most probably be imprisoned for a year and then exiled to another part of the country.

A cask was reported recently of an engineer being killed by his head striking against a sagged telegraph pole as he leaned from his cab wiridow, and several instances are lately noted of brakemen being swept from the roof of cars by bridges. But perhaps the most singular accident of this kind occurred in Missouri. An engineer of an Iron Mountain train was leaning out of his cab window passing Williamsville when he was caught by the mail catcher, the iron pole and hook arrangement for catching the mails from moving trains,, and pulled cleaD from his engine, through the window, falling beside the track as his train passed on. He was seriously injured. 110 -ne-a-00, one of the chiefs of the Osages, the richest Indians in the country, recently exhibited himself to the wondering gaze of the people of Kansas City. He wore his first hat for the occasion, and. a brand-new pair of blankets. The chief enjoyed himself hugely in the metropolis of the Kaw and showed his acquaintance with civilization by remarking that he saw more pretty women there in one day than in all his life elsewhere.

Recently it was discovered that the wooden roof of a fine old church in Arundel, England, dating from 1380, was entirely honeycombed by some unknown insect. The beams were so friable as -to be easily rubbed to pieces between the fingers, and the wonder was that the whole roof had not fallen to ruin in the attempt to remove it. In St, Petersburg a coachman was killed by lightning while driving, and the footmo.n sitting by hjs side was not injured. The lightning struck the coachman’s head, destroyed his cap and tore his clothes, passed through his body and tore a hole through the cushions on which he was sitting. No damage was done to the carriage except breaking the glass, and the occupants were Dot injured.