Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 March 1894 — NOTES AND COMMENTS. [ARTICLE]

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Ouida, the novelist, describes the nineteenth century clothing of an Englishman as “the most frightful, grotesque and disgraceful male coa. tume which the world has ever seen.’’ In one convenience San Francisco is ahead of every city in the world; this is in its system of rapid transit. This is effected by means of cable cars, running not only on the principal avenues, but in the cross streets, up and down the steep hills, in short everywhere. • The fleet of ships once owned at Newburyport, Mass., has disappeared from the registry of that port, and only four barks are left to keep up the marine glory of the old town. The last ship registered there was the Mary L. Cushing, which was recently purchased by a New Yorker and will go into the China trade, sailing from New York. The head nurse in a ward of a training school for nurses,, says: “I am sure that any one who could provide the Americans with a substitute for animal food would be conferring a national benefit. They eat twice as much meat as we English do, and to that, I believe, is largely due the nervous derangements, and too often shortened life of the average American.” A Minnesota jury has refused to recognize the validity of a contract specifying a matrimonial match as a consideration for the payment of money. A man in that State agreed to give another man $25 if he would secure him a wife. When the wife had been obtained the benedict repudiated his contract and the matchmaker brought action against him. The matchmaker was defeated.

A resolution in favor of birching bad boys instead of sending them to prison has been sent to the British Home Secretary, signed by a number of magistrates. The proposition is to birch boys under sixteen for all offences, at the discretion of the magistrate. The judicious use of the birch, it is believed, would not only have a more salutary effect, but would save the boys from acquiring the prison taint, losing their dread of the prison, and sinking deeper into crime.

Speaking of football, the London Lancet says: “There can be no denying that a pastime which has accounted in four months, even by our confessedly imperfect records, for five sudden deaths, two concussions of the spine (in one of which it was stated that ‘three ribs were torn from the spinal column’), one concussion of the brain, one fracture of the thigh, sixteen fractures of the leg (some of these were simple and some compound, some of each and some of both bones, but further classification is unnecessary), nine fractures of-the clavicle and two of the ‘arm,’ is a dangerous one.” The schooner Frank M. Holmes, of Philadelphia, was abandoned as a derelict last October, and was picked up by the British tramp steadier Indianapolis and towed to Bluefields, Nicaragua. Now an odd point of marine law has been raised by the libeling of the steamer, which arrived at Boston recently, by the owners of the schooner’s cargo of flour, and the libel is for $15,000, and the claim is set up that as she was picked up near the Florida coast she should have been taken to a near-by port, and that the unnecessary low tong spoiled her cargo and forfeited all claim for salvage by the Indianapolis.

A study of the number of suicides in France reveals a deplorable state of affairs. According to the Journal Officiel, during the year 1890 this number reached the formidable figure of 8,410 (6,576 males and 1,834 females). These figures indicate a progressive increase in the number of suicides. In the quinquennial period from 1861 to 1865 the average annual number of suicides was 4,661 (12 per 100,000 of the population), while during the period from 1886 to 1890 the average annual number was 8,226 (or 21 per 100,000). The proportion of suicides among children under the age of sixteen years has also increasd, While in the period from 1871 to 1875 the number w-as 31, it was in 1886, 62; in 1887, 68; in 1888, 65; in 1889, 77, and in 1890, 80. It is reported that Japan has fallen into line, and proposes to hold a grand exposition in 1895. The exposition will be held at Kioto, and will be the celebration of the 11th anniversary of the establishment of that city as the capital of Japan. It is not projected that the exposition will assume international proportions, though foreign exhibits will be welcome, but it is intended to illustrate the industry, art, science and religion of Japan. Religion, especially, will be made very prominent, and the faith of Buddha will be elaborately illustrated, as the leaders of that religion think that the time has come for some active propaganda. The ground set apart for the exposition at Kioto occupies thirty-two acres, and the erection of the buildings will be begun at once.

Mrs. Martha Miller, of Chicago, is said to be the pioneer prison reform worker of this country, having begun her efforts in that line at St. Louis in 1854. Since then she has devoted her entire life to it. She visits a jail and talks with the prisoners, picking out those who have been deserted by their friends. For these she does errands and work outside the jail. She investigates their stories, and if they are found worthy of belief she goes into court and pleads for them. She collects witnesses, and it is her one purpose above others that no innocent man shall suffer. It was the knowledge of the suffering of a man for a deed which he did not commit that first brought Mrs. Miller to her labor among criminals. She also does much work toward the reformation of released convicts and others. Mrs. Miller is sixty years old.

There are few sailing ships that can carry 5,000 tons of cargo, and nearly all of them are in the California wheat trade. In eleven years sixteen 5,000-ton cargoes have been cleared from San Francisco in twelve vessels. One of these was a steamer and the other eleven the ships RapDahannock and Shenahdoah, built by

Arthur Sewall, at Bath, Me., and ths British ships Liverpool, Alice A. Leigh. Palgrave. California, Lord Templemare, Milton Stuart, Drumrock, Horensfeld and Manchester. The Rappahannock was lost in 1892, and the Shenandoah is now making her third voyage, the Palgrave and California having each sailed twice. Two other American ships that carry 5,000 tons are the Sewall ships Roanoke and Susquehanna. They with the Rappahannock and Shenandoah forming the famous “big four” which marked the end of wooden shipbuilding at the Sewall yards. • The Russian government has decided to impose a-tex on all occupied houses. This tax is to be in lieu of an income tax which was abandoned as nonfeasible some little time ago. The impost is to be levied for the present in 220 of the chief towns of European Russia and Poland, which are to be divided into four classes. The first class comprises the two capitals—Moscow and St. Petersburg. There are 10 towns in the second class, 67 in the third and 141 in the fourth. The aggregate population of these 220 towns is estimated at 8,500,000. The basis of the tax is to be the rental and the minimum assessment in the fout classes is fixed at 800,225,150 and 120 roubles respectively. It will be seen that these assessments will not press unduly on the poorer classes, but it is also in contemplation to create a fifth class with a minimum assessment of sixty roubles. The tax will in time be extended to the other parts of the empire. The present arrangement is expected to bring in about $2,380,000 per annum.