Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 May 1893 — OLLA PODRIDA. [ARTICLE]

OLLA PODRIDA.

Drill Manual for Amazon*. —‘'Do you know that in our Amazonian drill we have to very considerably vary the movement prescribed in the manual of arms?” remarked the stage manager of a theatrical company while supervising a rehearsal. ‘‘Take the plays, aud they are many, in which women appear armed with rifles. Should the rifles be brought to a carry by being rested against the hip and shoulder, as is done by soldiers, the result would be anything but satisfactory, for as women have broader hips and narrower shoulders than men, the guns would be all aslant. We have to teach them to hold the stock forward of the hips, and it is difficult to prevent a backward slant of the piece, but this is not readily perceptible. When a line of women assume the ‘position of the soldier' we have to make another innovation in the tactics. The regulations prescribe that the soldiers should touch knees, but the Amazons have to touch hips. Drilling Amazons requires not a little ingenuity.”—[St. Louis Post-Dis-patcli.

Commemorating Historic Spots and Sites. —“ Massachusetts takes the lead,” says the Buffalo Commercial, “in the good work of locating and commemorating historical spots and sites.” Oh, no. New York State took the lead several years ago. In 188 J Albany celebrated her two hundredth birthday with much pomp and ceremony. On that high occasion she located and commemorated a number, upward of fifty, of the more interesting historical spots and sites in which she is so rich. One of the memorial'tablets wdiich she set up marks the spot where her second City Hall stood, in which the famous Congress of 1754 met and prepared a union of the several colonies for mutual defence. Another of these tablets records that “Upon this corner stood the house occupied by and wherein died Aneke lanse Bogardus, the former owner of the Trinity Church property, New York.” Such a tablet scheme is worthy of all commendatii n. Every city in the country which has any uistory of general interest ought to adopt it. —[N. Y. Tribune. The Skulls at Malvern Hill.—l think the ghastliest sight I ever saw,” said Sheriff "Barnes yesterday, “was during the late war on the field of Malvern Hill. I was in the battle and a more terrific engagement I never witnessed. But that is not the exact time to which I refer. About a year after the battle was fought my regiment was ordered out into the neighborhood of the same old field. We went over the very same ground, and there in the open field, exposed to the torrid sun, were bleaching the bones of our comrades who fell in that aw’ful engagement. It was a sight I shall never forget. On every side lay a waste of skulls—skulls of almost every shape and size—a modern Golgotha. We could not identify them, however, and could only gaze with a feeling of sorrow on the aggregate pile of human head? that had once been full of human life and feeling. After the deeper emotions excited by the spectacle had worn away, I thought of the infinite variety of shapes, that were presented by the heap. There were no two of the same shape or size, and it was rather a matter of curious though melancholy interest to inspect the different skulls as they lay crumbling in t.hc sultry atmosphere of that August day. It was, after all, a mournful sight, aod one that was full of abiding pathos, to think that all that was left of the gallant men that figured in the fight of that eventful day was a lot of skulls that were now beyond recognition and that would soon be a part of the dust on which wc were standing. Such is a picture of that awful sight, and only one of the many horrid scenes in the portraiture of war.”