Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 January 1894 — SOMEWHAT STRANGE. [ARTICLE]

SOMEWHAT STRANGE.

ACCIDENTS AND INCIDENTS OF EVERYDAY LIFE. Queer Facts and Thrilling Adventures which Show That Truth to Stranger Than Fiction. Ljkutk.kant Boyi.e T. Somerville, of the English Navy, recently returned from the Hebrides Islands, tells the following interesting tale regarding the work of a professional native rainmaker: Towards the end of the year, just after yam planting, there came an unusual period of drought, so that an inland tribe in the island of Ambrym went to its rainmaker and demanded his immediate attention thereto. He at once set to work to weave a sort of hurdle of the branches and leaves of a tree famed for itsrain-producingqualities, which, being finished, was placed, with proper ino&ntations, at the bottom of what should ■have been a water-hole in the now parched bed of the mountain torrent. There it was then held in place with stones. Down came the rain, nor did it cease for forty-eight hours, by which time it had become too much of a good thing. Soon the rain-producing hurdle was quite ten feet under water in the seething torrent, and the people, much to their dismay, saw that their yams and the surrounding earth were beginning to wash away down the hillsides. The lieutenant continues: “Now mark what comes of fooling with the elements 1 No man of the hill country was able to dive to the bottom of the water-hole to pull up the hurdle with its weight of stones, so the merciless rain still held on. At last the shore natives, accustomed to swimming and diving, heard what the matter was, and some of them coming to the assistance, the compeller of the elements was recovered from its watery bed and—the rain stopped.” It is such a coincidence as this, happening perhaps once in a decade, which causes this people, now thoroughly Christianized, to refuse to give up their rain doctors, although all other outward forms of rank superstition appear to be freely abandoned.

There lately oalled upon Prof. Cocsar Lombroso, of the University of Turin, a well-dressed, pleasant-mannered young man, who represented that his wife was the victim of an extreme case of kleptomania, public shops, private houses—her own house even—being open fields to her in which to lay hands on the belongings of pthers. Previous medical treatment had failed; the aid of the great doctor was solicited. By appointment the patient, a beautiful and engagingly frank young woman, was brought to Lombroso’s office the next day But while consultation was in progress between the distressed husband and the Doctor they detected the fair patient appropriating a gold statuette and a photograph framed in brilliants; and finally, in the act of bidding the Doctor good day, she adroitly relieved him of a valuable scarf pin. In an aside the distressed husband said: “You see for yourself how possessed she is with the thieving instinct, I will bring you back all the missing articles to-morrow at any hour you may appoint, when you will kindly give me your opinion of the case and advise me what to do.” The failure of the heartbroken man to appear with the valuables on the morrow, ana the fact that a fair proportion of the physicians of the South of France and most of Italy are also patiently waiting to advise him how to treat his afflicted wife, who “borrowed” valuables of them also, leads Dr. Lombroso to the conviction that this was rather the most uniaue case of kleptomania yet brought to nis notice.

Laborers were excavating in the cellar of the Forty-seventh Regiment Armory, in Brooklyn, N. Y., when they came upon an extraordinary sight. A workman removed some debris with his piok, and saw before him a cat with its tail in the air, its ears bent back, and its spine arched.. He said “Shew, there!” But the cat remained motionless. The laborers ran up to see the cat. They found that it had turned to stone. It looked as natural as life. The head and legs, the arched spine and the tail were perfect. It was a petrified eat. How it came there and how it got petrified is a mystery. Inquiry was made. It was learned that Wiiliam Godfrey, who wa3 the armorer of the regiment ten years ago, had a pet cat. In the year 1883 the cat disappeared. The armorer thought so much of the oat that he offered a reward for its return. No trace of the lost cat was found. It is supposed that the cat ran under the cellar floor of the armory in pursuit of a rat. In its eagerness it entered some small aperture, from which it found retreat impossible, and perished inside. There were small springs in the ground and the earth was impregnated with lime. As the cat withered away, particle by particle, the lime in solution was deposited in place of the tissue, and in a few years the cat was stone. The petrified cat is now on exhibition in the armory.

F. C. Gunning, an engineer who has just come back from Mexico, says that the Chinese problem is rapidly forging to the front in that country. He says: “The Mexican is ordinarily an easy-going, lnxury-loving, cigarette-smoking individual, who, when he comes into contact with the abstemious, industrious, and frugal Chinaman, is simply lost. The Chinese are fast becoming controllers of the small shop trade of Mexico. A Chinaman will set up bis little store next door to a Mexican and will run him out of business in a year. I’ve seen it done a hundred times. But what is setting the Mexican to thinking is the fact that the Chinaman is marrying the pick of the Mexican girls. Truth! I had a talk with a beautiful girl, whose husband was a big laundryman at Guaymas. She Etit the thing in a nutshell when I asked er how she came to marry a celestial. ‘lf I had married a Mexican of my own class’, said she, ‘I would have had to work like a slave, and, like as not, been beaten every other day. Now I have my carriage and horses, am made a very queen in' my household, am forbidden to work. My husband is most considerate and really worships me. There are a number of girls here who are married to* Chinamen and we have a delightful little society of lour own. Was I not right, signor?’ ” A London laundryman says that the use of shirt cuffs for jotting down memoranda ismore common than is, perhaps, commonly supposed. He related how, one day, a young fellow drove up in a cab and rushed into the office in great excitement, asking whether some shirts deposited in the name of L. had been washed. We found they had not, and as the owner turned them over in feverish haste, be fairly yelled with joy, pointing to a little column of figures on the left cuff of one, Which he explained were the numbers of eight £lO bank notes, which had been lost or stolen, and had the shirts been washed, all hopes of ever getting them back must have been abandoned; they were, however, bucujbsfully traded and recovered a few days

later. The cuffs of Stock Exchange men are often covered with mysterious characters—presumably indications of the stock market, and the “Ups” found on the wrist linen of racing men were actually taken advantage of by the irongirls on one or two occasions with success. It is is not yet recorded, however, that the mannish young woman has taken to “cuff jotting,” as die has to cuff and shirt wearing. la a Philadelphia shop window a unique old relic of a piano is displayed, bearing the following inscripUon: “John Jacob Astor sold this piano to one of the first families of New York more than a century ago. Mr. Astor is believed to have been tne first piano dealer in the United States.” Then follows a copy of an advertisement in a New York paper, dated January 10, 1780. It reads: “J. Jacob Astor, at No. 81 Queen street, next door but one to the Friends’ Meeting House, has for sale an assortment of pianofortes of the newest construction, made by the best makers of London, which he will sell on reasonable terms. He gives cash for all kinds of furs, and hat for sale a quantity of Canadian beaver and Canada coatings, raccoon skins, muskrat skins, etc.” Peter Neary, of Newark, N. J., had a billy goat and & ten-dollar greenback. Billy and the bill had a meeting, and, following tho fashion of the period, effected a con solidation; that is to say, the goat chewed and swallowed the bank note. This arrangement was made without Mr. Neary’s consent, and he moved instantly for a dissolution of partnership by killing the goat and recovering the fragments of the bill. These were sent to the Treasury, and it seems that there was enough left to identify the note, and so a few days ago Mr. Neary received a brand new $lO note in return, and is only out to the extent of a goat. James Farren, an 84-year-old hunter of Jackson County, Wash., came back from a trip in the mountains a few days ago bearing a good-sized cougar skin. He was hunting for bear, so ho says, when the cougar, whose hidp measures just seven feet in length, appeared in bis path. He hadn’t much ammunition, and wanted it all for the bears, whose tracks he was following, so he snatched up a piece of rook and hurled it at the cougar. It struck the animal on the head, stunning it, and before it could recover Farren jumped upon it and slit its throat with his knife.

The Sudese are an interesting body of African women who arrive at Bombay as sailors and stokers on steamships. They perform the duties of these positions admirably enough, and they yield implicit obedience to their queen, whose name is Sophia. Whea there is a fight she decides which side her subjects shall take. In the recent riots she took the Eart of a loyal subject of England, aud ade her underlings battle for the Government. Lord Harris, in his report, honors her especially. Empress Elizabeth of Austria recently was out riding and noticed a pile of stones placed aoross the track over which the Buda-Pesth express was to pass in a few minutes. Springing from her horse, she ordered the groom attending her to remove tho obstruction, she herself assisting him. The work was hardly completed when the train, crowded with passengers, passed over the spot

A big deer happened casually upon the town of Nehalem,Ore., last week, trotted the length of the main business street, meandered into the back yard of a citizen’s house, ambled through the house and out of the front door, and then trotted out of the city limits. The incident excited no particular interest. A dentist at Birmingham, Eng., has just been mulcted in $250 damages for the extraction of the whole of the teeth of a married woman. She only asked him to extract one tooth. Previous to the operation she testified she could eat a crust or pick a bone with anyone. A London merchant is utilizing the phonograph in his business. While he is driving to his place of business in his carriage ne, talks his instructions into one of the machines, and when he arrives he gives it to his head clerk, who makes it repeat them. Much surprise was caused at Lincoln, Neb., recently by the Rev. Simon Roundtree, a colored Baptist preacher, aged 99 years, getting married for the eighth time. His latest wife is 55 years old. In 1880 a lime'treein Berwickshire four feet diameter, six feet from the ground, was blown clean down and raised and replaced again. It to-day shows no trace of injury. The case of Samuel Merry of Providence is rather odd. His neck was broken last October, but he is living nicely on beefstew aud expects to get out soon.