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

SOMEWHAT STRANGE.

ACCIDENTS AND INCIDENTS OF EVERYDAY LIFE. Queer Facta and Thrillinq Adventures Which Show that Truth is Stranger Than Fiction. The Frankfort Gazette publishes a story of abominable cruelty practiced on a soldier in Padua, Italy. According to the Gazette a recruit named Evangelista reported himself to be ill. His superior officer thought, or at least pretended to think, that he was shamming illness as an excuse to escape a riding exercise. Evangelista was ordered to report at the riding school, and he staggered there in obedience to the order. He declared when there that he was so weak he could not mount his horse, but his officers whipped him until he tried three times to mount. Each time he fell to the ground exhausted. As he was lying on the ground a horse was brought up and teased into kicking the prostrate recruit. Then in a playful mood the officers threw buckets of water over him. Evangelista implored his torturers to leave him alone, declaring that he was dying. His appeals, however, fell on deaf ears. The officers procured a rope and this was tied to the arms of Evangelista. Then he was bumped up and down and otherwise maltreated until he appeared to be dead. Not satisfied with the torture they had inflicted upon the helpless recruit the officers caused him to be dragged by the heels to the barracks, where he died the same night. There is a settlement near Mobile, Ala., called “Little Africa,” which has a strange history. Its people are pure-blooded Dahomeyans, who settled there after the war, and have never married or given in marriage outside themselves. They are said to be exceedingly fine specimens of the African race. They are the representatives of the last cargo of negroes brought into the United States from Africa. They were brought here in 1859 as the result of a bet made in 1857 by the Captain of a river steamboat in Alabama with four Northern men, passengers of his, that he could bring over a corgo of slaves in two years in spite of the strictness of the law against such traffic. The Federal officers learned of the arrival of the vessel, and the Captain was compelled to get under cover. The planters who had promised to purchase the slaves were afraid to do so, and they were, in consequence, never separated. Mrs. Carolina Dall, of the Woman’s Anthropological Society, read a paper recently in which the facts were brought out, and a more thorough investigation is promised.

While digging a cellar on his. farm near Earl’s, Yates County, N. Y., the other day, Martin Larson unearthfed the skeleton of a man who must have been nearly seven feet high. With the remains were found a stone knife, a curious red clay pipe, and a quantity of shell beads. After removing his interesting find, the farmer went on with his digging, but had not worked long before he came upon another skeleton and more Indian relics. These were added to the other collection, and the cellar digging proceeded. Soon Farmer Larson uncovered a third skeleton and a third collection of relics. Then he went to mining regularly in search of these buried reminders of a former people, and in a short time unearthed nine more skeletons, and a miscellaneous collection of pipes, arrow heads, and other Indian relics. The locality was a favorite Indian camping ground before the whites came into this part of the State. None of the skeletons was under six feet in length, and all are in a good state of preservation.

There is a nurse at the Cincinnati City Hospital whose strange power over patients is attracting much attention among those who know of it. She is Mrs. Mutchler, a petite, goodlooking widow. She calls her power hypnotic, and the manner in which she handles obstreperous or insane patients is wonderful. No matter how violent they are, at a word and touch from her they instantly become mild and tractable. A few days ago an insane girl who required several stalwart policemen to handle her was brought to the hospital. Mrs. Mutchler was called, and in five minutes the patient had ceased her struggles, disrobed and was taking a bath. Recently a colored giantess, who long had been a terror to the police, was taken to the hospital. She could whip any three men and was very vicious. Mrs. Mutchler first saw her in one of her violent fits, and quieted her at once. Mrs. Mutchler says she cannot account for her power, but never saw a woman she could not control.

Mendicancy would appear to be almost as profitable in the outlying suburbs of Paris as in the city itself, where beggars sometimes die leaving substantial legacies behind them for their next of kin. Victor Hayet, aged 49, was supposed to be one of the most destitute and almsworthy inhabitants of Joinville-le-Pont, where he dwelt in a hovel by night and begged on the roads by day. For a week he disappeared from sight, and the police, having been communicated with, went to the hut, burst open the door, as there was no answer to their knocks, and found Hayet dead on the floor inside. His body showed no marks of foul play, and it was clear that the man had died suddenly from heart disease. In a dirty cupboard of his miserable room was found a parcel of bank notes amounting in value to $8,600. The mendicant's dog was heard howling in the cellar. The animal was half mad with hunger, and it choked itself eating a lump of bread thrown to it by a policeman. The old theory that lighted fires in the streets had power to drive, away a pestilence has long been exploded, but the Mayor of Bordeaux, France, evidently believes there are occasions when public fires of this kind may be used with advantage. It appears that there is much poverty just now in Bordeaux, as alas, elsewhere, and the Mayor, being seized with pity for the condition of the unemployed, has had huge coal fires placed in certain parts of the city during the recent severe weather. The fires, which

were placed, of course, only in the poorer quarters, gave much satisfaction, and thousands availed themselves of them to warm themselves, while some people even did their cooking by them.

A French missionary is responsible for this cannibal story from Africa. Certain tribes living on the banks of the Übange eke out a monotonous vegetable diet by joints of human flesh, and slaves are specially fattened up for sale in the local market. The usual system followed by dealers is to exhibit the slrye alive, marking off with a piece of chalk the various filets and cutlets ordered by their customers. The slave is not killed until the last pound of him is sold, and then he is cut up and distributed according to orders. An ingenious device has been contrived by Dr. A. Cancani, of Italy, for registering the precise time when an earthquake shock occurs. The seismograph is so arranged as to take an instantaneous photograph of the face of a chronometer at the instant of the shock. An adjustment of levers and batteries and magnet is thrown into gear by the shock, so that an incandescent electric lamp is lighted automatically for about a quarter of a second, while the image of the clock is established upon the photographic plate. G. W. Malcolm, a farmer living on J. W. Bolley’s farm, north of Portland, Ind., a short time ago killed a very fat hen. Upon dressing the fowl an egg of extraordinary size was found, on which the shell was just forming, and within was another the size of a common hen egg. Surprised at the find the investigation was continued, and inside of egg number two was a third one about as large as ; that of a quail and within it another resembling a small bird egg.—[Chicago Times. When Ambrose Hemingway, of Mayville, Mich., recovered from pleurisy about seven years ago his shoulder muscles were found to be atrophied. This was followed by ossification of the joints. The ossifying process has progressed, until now he is as stiff as a board and unable to move any joint except the left wrist. The doctors say there is no cure for him, and that before he dies he will become blind. No one has as yet been able to tell why railroad rails “creep.” That they do is a fact well established by expert testimony. Recently it has been discovered that on lines running north and south the west rail “creeps” faster than the east rail. Without conclusive evidence on the subject, it is believed that there must be some central magnetic attraction toward the east that causes the movement.

Mrs. Mary Brown, of Norwood, Ohio, became afflicted with a feverish condition of the larynx about three years ago, and found great relief in eating cracked ice. Eventually the abnormal condition disappeared, but Mrs. Brown maintained her liking for ice. She now consumes from two to two and one-half quarts every day, and would rather go without her meals than be deprived of it. . Peter Gordon, of Mariana, Wis., has two sons, now about sixteen years of age. In infancy and early boyhood they were known as Peter, Jr., and Henry, but their father has renamed them Maximum and Minimum, because of the manner in which they divide what is given them for joint benefit. George Bedle, of Tacoma, Wash., tried to put a billiard ball in his mouth on a wager of sl. He dislocated his jaw, cut his tongue, dropped the billiard ball in the fire and ruined it, and the doctor charged him $5 to spring his jaw into place again. Total expense $9, and lost the bet.

There is a cow in Seattle, Wash, living and in good health, with a steel wire through her heart. She received it while attempting to break through a barbed wire fence, and it is so deeply imbedded that veterinary surgeons say to pull it out would result in a hemorrhage and probable death.

Just before Adam Barnstable, of Aroostockie, Me., died the other day, aged eighty, he confessed that he had used a bushel measure with a false bottom for sixty years and cheated his friends and neighbors out of thousands of bushels of potatoes. A panic was created near Stewart, Ky., by the sudden death of William Russell, He was attending the funeral of P. H. Best, who committed suicide, and just as the corpse was being lowered into the grave Russell fell back dead. On cutting through a teak log in the saw mill of a dockyard at Sheerness, England, recently a bird’s nest containing four eggs was found in a hollow spot. The log had been shipped some months previous from India. John Hineman, of Memphis, Tenn., lost his power of speech several years ago as a result of fever. He dreamed one night recently that he could talk, and when he woke in the morning he found that his dream was true.