Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 June 1893 — SOMEWHAT STRANGE. [ARTICLE]

SOMEWHAT STRANGE.

ACCIDENTS AND INCIDENTS OF EVERYDAY LIFE. Qunz Facts and Thrilling Adventures Which Show That Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction. Not long ago, on the Chinese coast, says a correspondent of the London Graphic, a foreign vessel, the Namoa, was boarded by a band of pirates. Having got on board in the darkness they murdered the captain and threw him overboard, then secured the other officers and passengers, completely looted the ship and managed to get safely away with their booty. The matter becoming known, the Chinese authorities at once took steps to discover and arrest the marauders, and in due course the whole band of nineteen were captured and summarily condemned to be beheaded. The ghastly scene of the carrying out of the sentence took place at Kowloon, near Hong Kong. The doomed men were drawn up in a line, on their knees, with their hands tied behind them, and at a distance of about five yards from each other. So they awaited the executioner’s sword. It was suggestive of the executioner’s skill, born, no doubt, of constant practice, that the whole nineteen were beheaded within six minutes. A bold-looking villain was the chief of the gang. He died, as nearly all the Chinese do under such circumstances, apparently without the least fear. In fact, just before his head rolled to the ground he declared aloud, defiantly, that if it were possible for him to commit another murder he should not hesitate to do it. It happens often when a Chinese criminal is sentenced to be decapitated that his friends supply him with a little opium, which, possibly, meicifully produces a stupor and renders the doomed wretch partially insensible to his horrible position. The final scene is enacted thus: When everything is ready the executioner’s assistant seizes the long pigtail of the condemned man, and at one blow with his long, sharp sword his chief sweeps the head off. A strange case is puzzling local medical practitioners, at Trimble, Tenn., and the meat prominent of the fraternity from Memphis and Nashville. John Henry Leake, a stalwart negro living on the plantation of R. L. Strong, a week or two since ate a lemon and swallowed one of the seeds, which, it seems, lodged in his stomach, and, attracting to it a certain proportion of the food subsequently eaten by him, was soon surrounded by a clot or mass of matter which gradually grew larger. After a short time Leake began to suffer with acute pains in the region of his stomach, and applied to a physician, who diagnosed his case as indigestion and proceeded to treat him for it. But the pains increased and it soon became a matter of impossibility for the sufferer to retain any food except such as was administered in liquid form, and the doctor began to suspect that the cause of the trouble lay beyond the ordinary phases of indigestion, and declared an operation necessary. It was with difficulty that Leake was prevailed on to submit to this, but he finally consented. The surgeons thoroughly explored the abdomen and intestines, but without finding any disturbing object, though it was observed that the stomach was distended to nearly twice its normal size. Leake finally died in great agony, with repeated efforts to vomit which continued until death ensued. A post-mor-t,em examination revealed the fact that the seed had sprouted from the mass surrounding it, and, putting out shoots, had actually attacked the walls of the stomach as a creeping plant does a wall. “A good turn will always turn up so that you will never get the worst of it,” said Frank Painter, of Como, Col., at the Leclere Hotel, Pittsburg, to a reporter. “How do you suppose one of the best fellows that ever lived became a rich man ? It isn’t a long story, but it shows to a finish that a square act never goes astray, even if it does take some time in finding its way around. Jere Jackson came out to Colorado in the early days without a cent to save his life. I He knocked around for a year and a half and lived from hand to mouth. We all liked him, and we knew it wasn’t his fault that things didn’t turn his way, and none of the boys, would refuse him shelter when things came particularly hard. Well one day Jere struck out; he i was disgusted with the world in general I and with Mr. Jackson in particular. While plodding along a lonely part of the country a couple of days after that he came upon the dead body of a miner lying in theVoad. ‘Poor devil,’ thought Jere, ‘I suppose that's how I’ll fetch up.’

He started in to give the dead stranger the attention that he’d like himself, and was soon digging a grave for a man he had never seen before. He didn’t dig far, though—hardly two feet. He had run across gold—gold, solid gold. He buried his unknown friend in another hole and quit the first one a rich man. A good turn, even to a stranger, will never give you the worst of it.” There is a strange freak of nature in the shape of a sheep on the range of Rogers & Bilva, near Table Mountain, in California. Among this season’s lambs is one which would be a dfawing card in a dime museum. The lamb is a well-formed one and does not at first' glance look any different from thousands of other lambs on the range. The peculiarity consists of a woolly flap, or more properly speaking, a cap, which is situated between the ears. It is circular in shape and fastened to the head at the center of a ligament, which will allow the cap to be lifted up enough so that the fingers can be inserted between the cap and the skull. ’

The cap resembles a white whoolen Tam O'Shanter, and when on straight does not appear to affect its owner in the least. But when the cap slides to one side, as often happens, the lamb acts as if it was crazy. It tilts its head sideways and keeps running around in a circle, and appears to be in the greatest distress. While in that condition it will not eat, but as soon as the cap becomes straight the lamb walks off and grazes contentedly. The rest of the sheep have taken a great dislike to the bonneted lamb and fight it whenever it goes near the flock. The sheepherders give the lamb every attention, as they think they have a bonanza in it if it lives. » A curious superstition came to light at Pittsburgh through the killing of Emanuel Matlis, a German blacksmith of that city, by engine No. 1536, at Hawaken’s station. A -written charm, in German, several pages in length, was found in his inside coat-pocket. It says that he claimed to be a descendant of one Count Phiiippe of Flanders, who condemned an outlaw to death whose neck turned the edge of the would-be executioner’s axe. This so amazed the Count that he pardoned the robber, who very gratefully furnished him the secret of the witches’ charm which had saved his neck. Copies

of this against various forms of death by sword and dagger, guns and enemies, thunderbolts, &c., were given to the different members of the Count’s family and by them transmitted to their descendants, of whom Matlis was one. This magic document, however, proved ineffectual against the dangerous locomotive, a risk not set forth in the cabalistic paper, and of course unknown at the time of its original issue. A relative of the deceased stated that charms of this character are to-day carried by many Germans, among whom this form of superstition or witchcraft is still surprisingly prevalent. A daring and remarkable escape from prison occurred the other night at Parkersburg, W. Va. George Rice, aged seventeen years, in jail for burglary, made a skeleton key out of a spoon that had been overlooked at supper time, picked the corridor lock and let himself and all the other persons out of their cells. He then slipped into a hole in the air-flue in one corner of the jail and dropped down two floors through the flue into the engine room. Rice then crawled through a hole much smaller than the upper one and entered the basement of the prison. It was an easy matter for him to break a window and reach the outside. The other persons were too large to get through the flue, as the boy made his escape and they are still in jail. In the Philadelphia Ledger, a Co'orado lady tells how the Picket Wire River in that State derived its name. Years ago, when first the gold fever drove men wild, a party of' Mexicans made their way up the stream in question in search of the precious metal. Months passed, and when the little band did not return their friends mourned them as dead, and called the river “El Rio de los Animos Perdidos" (the River of the Lost Souls). Soon a French colony made its home on the banks of the stream, whose name was freely translated into “La Purgatoire.” Then came the American cowboy. He saw the river, heard its name, and translating (?) it into his own tongue, dubbed it “Picket Wire River.”

A farmer living east of Grand Island, Neb., had a narrow escape one night recently. While going home his horses became unmanageable and threw him and his son out. The boy fell at the side of the road. The man’s leg was caught in one of the hind wheels of the wagon. He he held on to the spokes with his hands, and with his head downwards slid the wheel for over a mile,when the horses were stopped by running through a barb wire fence. Floyd Sprague, a neighbor, saw the accident, ana when the team stopped helped the plucky farmer out. He is reported as getting along nicely. All the hardware used in the great Mormon Temple, in Salt Lake City, bears either the device of the beehive—the Mormon name of their country being “Deseret,” or “the land of the honeybee” -or the clasped hands, which is also one of the symbols of their Church. In the basement all the door-knobs and hinges nre of solid brass, polished. Those upou the first floor are plated with gold, on the second floor with bright silver, on the third floor with oxidized silver, and those on the top floor are of antique bronze.

No more practical use for a cat has been hit upon than that lately devised by a Portland (Me.) merchant. He owns a very docile little kitten, white as snow. One day, finding that he was out of blotting paper when he had finished a letter, the kitten was used in place of it and found to be an excellent substitute, the fur taking up the superfluous ink like a sponge, and he has continued to employ kitty in this way, giving her a curious piebald appearance. A peasant was buried alive recently in the village of Maruten, government Kalooga. The discovery of the fact was through peasants, who, hearing sounds coming from the grave, notified the authorities. When the body was exhumed a horrible sight was revealed. The shroud was found torn to pieces. The face of the corpse was badly lacerated. One of the eyes was torn out and some of the fingers were bitten off. A pet mocking bird saved the lives of Mr. and Mrs. A. Crusteed, of Tallapoosa, Fla. After midnight, when the inmates were asleep, the house took fire, and soon was all ablaze. The loud singing of the bird awoke husband and wife, and they had just time to save themselves by leaping from the window. Charles Manson, a Swede living in Chicago, has constructed a checker board out of 28,070 pieces of wood, using every kind of wood that he could obtain, fr»n? cedar of Lebanon to Georgia pine.