Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 December 1893 — SOMEWHAT STRANGE. [ARTICLE]

SOMEWHAT STRANGE.

ACCIDENTS AND INCIDBNT3 OF EVERYDAY LIFE. Queer Facts and Thrilling Adventures which Show That Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction. Everett Chauncey Bumpus, of the freshman class at Harvard, has been totally blind since he was six years of age. He is a son of Judge E. C. Bumpus of Guincy, and is twenty years of age. He has been a student at the Per kins Institute for the Blind in Boston’ and at the Thayer Academy in Braintree, Mass., and took high rank in his class at the latter, where he prepared for college. An English pickle dealer, described as a hearty, strong man, recently became the victim of a comic tale. He was at a tavern one evening, aud laughed uproariously over a story told by one of the company. The laughter brought on a fit of convulsive coughing, in the course of which he fell to the floor, striking against a wooden bench. It was found that all bis ribs on the right side were broken, and that one lung had been injured. He died, and the jury returned a verdict of “Death from suffocation.” A large and curious white owl held captive on board the Red Star line steamship Pennsylvania, which recently arrived from Antwerp, creates a great deal of interest among all having any business on board the ship, and has become quite a pet among the sailors. The strange visitor came on board the Pennsylvania when about 1,400 miles off from the English coast. It flew into the rigging of tne Pennsylvania early ia the morning in an exhausted state, and had, no doubt, been carried off from the coast in a gale of wind. The Bank of France is not entirely free from apprehension regarding the ability of the burglar, and guards itself in a very careful manner. Every day, when the money is put into the vaults in the cellar, masons are waiting, and at onoe wall up the doors with hydraulic mortar. Water is then turned on and kept running until the cellar is flooded. A burglar would thus have to work iu a diving suit and break down a cement wall before he could even start to loot the vaults. When the officers arrive next morning the water is drawn off, the masonry is torn down and the vaults opened.

The people of Manitou, Col., were entertained by the spectacle of a man carrying a stone around a triangular track, letting it drop, and shouldering it again at every turn. The performer was a man who has a reputation for a disinclination to labor, and the incident was the outcome of a wail he was making about the hard,times and his Inability to get work. A citizen told him he would not work if he got a chance, and offered him fifty cents an hour ns long as he would carry the atone. To the surprise of all he accepted the offer, and held out for five hours. A large crowd gathered to watch the performance.

Mrs. Mary Gilman, wife of a well todo farmer, residing near Bird Mountain, in Ira, Vt., has had a fierce encounter with an eagle. She saw the bird about to swoop down upon her fowls and endeavored to frighten it away. The eagle attacked her, and it was only after a vigorous fight that she s ucceeded iu killing it with a hatchet. She had some fearful marks of the struggle, and went to Rutland to have a physician dress her bruises, taking her trophy of victory with her. The eagle measured five and one-half feet, and is one of the largest and handsomest in the vicinity.—Boston Herald.

Edward Lane, a painter employed in painting the smokestack of a flouring mill in San Diego, Cal., recently passed through a thrilling experience. He had painted half of the stack, 120 feet high, and bad just boen drawn to tho top when the hook holding his platform gave way. He fell twelve feet, striking a guy, rope with his legs, which he wound around the rope in a twinkling, but without effect. He fell again, dropping forty feet further, where he struck another guy rope, luckily catching it with both hands aud feet. He held on pluckily, although considerably bruised ou the breast and shoulder, until help reached him, and he was lowered to the f round. It was a narrow escape, but he id not appear to be specially disturbed over his accident, and was at work next day as usual.

The dress of the Northern Eskimos Is made of the skins of reindeer and seals. The latter are worn during rainy weather and in the kyak. The women wear mittens of hare or fox skin, but the skins bt these timid oreatures are reserved for the females alone. No man would disgraoe himself by appearing clad with a particle of the fur of the hare or the white fox. Either sex may wear the skins of all other mammals, except at certain times, under restrictions imposed by superstition. An important duty of the women is taking care of the family boots. At intervals they must be turned inside out and dried, then chewed and scraped by some old hag, who is only too glad to have the work to do for the few scraps of food she may receive as pay.

Among the many quaint customs whioh are gradually disappearing in England is the so-called “Lion Sermon, ” whioh. after having been annually preached in the Churoh of Bt. Catharine, in the city of London, for nearly three centuries, has just been abolished. It owes its origin to an adventure which befell a medieval lord mayor of London, Sir Richard Guyer. According to the legend, being attacked by a lion while he was traveling with a caravan in Arabia, he fell upon his knees and vowed to devote his life to charity if spared from the lion’s jaws. The animal Is stated to have thereupon turned tail; and in pursuance of the vow thus made the “Lion Sermon” has been regularly preached ever since. The fund bequeathed bySir Riohard for the purpose will in future be devoted to other charitable uses.

The earth has not been put in a scale and balance against a known weight, but mathematicians have calculated ita weight. Professor Maskelyne first attacked this subject in 1772, when by repeated experiments, he determined the attraction exerted at Mount Schihallion, in Pertshire, Scotland, on a plumb line, which it caused to deviate from the per pendicular nearly six seconds. Playfair, Cavendish, Hutton and other scientists then determined that the structure of this mountain made it have a density, as compared to the mean density of the earth, of five to nine. Then the Comparative density of Schihallion to water was ascertained, and that of earth to water being known as about five and a half to one. It was not hard to calculate the rest, knowing the cubical contents of the earth- It has been stated as

5,842 trillions of tons of 2,240 pounds each, or a value iu pounds avoirdupois represented by thirteen and twenty-four ciphers. A Biddeford (Me.) attorney had in his possession a lease the like of which local lawyers do not believe can be found in existence. The names of the parties to the lease, according to the Kennebec Journal, are given, but its provisions are none the less strange. The lease is of a lot of land at an annual rental of |440 for twenty-five years, with the provision that the lessee should within one year build and maintain a substantial hree-story building of brick, iron and stone. When the lease expired the lessee was to have his choice between buying the building be had himself erected or of taking a perpetual lease of the lot at S3BO a year, just double the original rent. The lease expired a year or so ago, and the lessee, to whom it was a case of “ Hobson’s choice,” elected to take the perpetual lease of the lot. What puzzles the attorneys who have seen the lease is why a man of the property which the lessee must have been possessed should bind himself to such a one-sided condition. The gentleman who has the lease intends to present it to the Bar Library Association.

It is a common mistake of Americans to think that the predicate “van” before a Dutch name signifies nobility. In the low countries—that is, in the kingdoms of the Netherlands and of Belgium—“van” has no particular meaning. Names with “van” are to be read on shops, as well as on the doors of the most aristocratic mansions. The humblest persons have it as well as the most refined. Ou the other hand, a great mumber of the very oldest families are without it. In Germany “von” means noble, and all persons belonging to the nobility have “von” before their family names without any exception. Persons who do not belong to the nobility cannot put “von” before their names, as they have no right to do so, and it would be found out directly if they assumed it, and make themselves ridiculous But in case of a man being knighted for some reason or other he has the right to put “von” before his family name. For Instance, when Alexander Humboldt was.knighted he became Alexander von Humboldt, and all bis descendants, male and female, take the prefix. The Churchman is responsible for this marvellously strange story: In the western part of Massachusetts a man had a fine stock farm. But a few weeks ago a fire broke out in the barn, and burned not only the building and the hay, but most of the animals also. After the fire the owner walked over the ruins. It was a sad sight to see the charred bodies of bis fine Jersey cows and his high-spirited horses, to say nothing of the money lost with them. But at the end of the barn he saw a sight which touched him more than all the rest. There sat an old black hen. He wondered that she did not move her head to look at him as he came near her, but he thought she must be asleep. He poked her with his cane, and to his susprise the wing which he touched fell into ashes. Then ho knew that she had been burned to death. But out from under her wing came a faint little peep, and pushing her aside with his cane, the man found what do you think?—ten little live yellow chickens 1 The poor hen had sacrificed her own life to save them, and had held her place in the fire as Casabianca held his on the burning deck. That sight touched the man more than everything else.

Seven miles northeast of Nachogdoches, Texas, there is a most wonderful yellow jacket’s nest—wonderful in size, and locality. These little stinging flies, or whatever they should be called, I usually nest in the ground, and have one door for entrance and exit. Their ! nest is built of material like wasps’ nests, about the size of half a bushel, with several rooms or apartments, and many cells in which the young one are raised. They usually occupy a nest but one year. The nest is question is located upon a pine tree, or rather around the trunk of a pine tree, that is about a foot in diameter, and is about eighteen feet above the ground. The tree -appears to pass through the very center of the nest, which is conical in shape, or, as a farmer expressed it, “shaped like an old-fash-ioned hoop skirt,” but much larger, being about five feet high and same in diameter at the base, which is as flat as if it had been sawed off. It appears to be as many years old, and is built of the usual wasp nest material. The yellow jackets may be seen standing at the many holes in theLsse of the nest, or on the under side. They are not fighty, because they are out of reach of disturbance. The ordinary ground neater is always ready to raise cain, and woe be to the animal that stands and stamps upon it. The record for the rapid travel of a needle through human flesh was broken in a case which recently came under the notice of the surgeons at Hahnemann Hospital, Philadelphia. A large needle which became imbedded in the back of the left limb of Mary A Walsh, a domestic in the employ of Mrs. Mary K. Bardsley, had worked itself through five inches of fleehy tissue in a few days. The woman was sewing one morning, and it was on that day that the needle in some strange way must have penetrated the back of the limb. She felt some slight pain, but was not seriously inconvenienoed by it. Day after day the pain seamed to shift a trifle, but she did not pay particular attention to it until it became so severe that she went to the Hahnemann Hospital, where she complained of a sharp pain in the fore part of the thigh. Dr. Waaser made an examination and found the point of the aeedle above the surfaoe. He made a email incision, and laid bare enough of the needle to permit of its being seized with a pair of tweezers and pulled it out. The needle was black as ink, having been oxidized by the action of the blood. The patient recognized it, by the peculiar way in which it was bent, as the needle with which she had been sewing. It had travelled five inches in a little over three days, which, according to the Hahnemann surgeons, beats all previous sprinting records among needles.