Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 September 1894 — SOMEWHAT STRANGE. [ARTICLE]

SOMEWHAT STRANGE.

INTERESTING NOTES* ND MAT. TEAS OF MOMENT. Queer Facts and Thrilling Adventures Which Show that Truth is Stranger Than Fiction. * . , . .... A school district in Grant county, Kansas, contains pnly one family. The father, mother and eldest son have elected themselves trustees and appointed the eldest daughter, at SBS a month, to teach the younger children. A Kentucky calf, one day old, performed the wonderful feat of jumping from a cliff to the river below, a distance of 500 feet, without rumpling a hair. The calf was taken down the river aad hauled home in a wagon safe and sound. The Indians of Guiana have a curious numeration. They count by the hand and its four fingers. Thus, when they reach five, instead of saying so, they call it a “ hand.” Six is, therefore, a ‘‘hand and first finger,” and so on to twenty, which is called a “man.” A four-legged chicken came intd the family of Dave Myler,of Johnson City, Mo. As two of the legs were for forward locomotion and the other two always insisted on walking backward, that unfortunate chicken found it difficult to advance in the world and gave up the effort in despair. A crow with one foot four inches longer than the other was captured and tamed by Abe Cartwright, a trapper ip Sullivan County, Penn. Cartwright made a crutch stilt for the bird, which was at first strapped to its foot. This became unnecessary as soon as the crow learned what an assistance the crutch was as a means of defense as well as locomotion.

One of the residents of Cherry street, Geneva, N. Y., is the owner of a dog that imitates the sound of the Cereal company’s steam whistle. The whistle gives the musical scale, and when sounded in the morning and at noon the dog catches the notes and repeats them with wonderful accuracy. He has mastered the rising scale, but is now practicing on the falling scale which his owner expects him to acquire. Surgery’s discovery of a way to obliterate facial blemishes has given the detective forces a great deal of difficulty in locating well-known criminals. By these operations the whole character of the facial expression is changed by a few deft jabs of a lancet. The woundS heal in a very short time, and in most cases can never be noticed. The criminal fraternity are not slow to take hold of this knowledge, and in consequence the descriptions in the possession of the detectives cannot always be depended upon.

A very curious temperance society exists in the Siberian village of AshIyka. Every year, in September, the members meet in the church, and make a solemn promise to abstain from wine and spirits for a whole year. They also sign an agreement that any person breaking the pledge shall pay a fine of twenty-five rubles to the church, and submit to be spat upon by his more continent fellows. The most peculiar feature of the whole business, however, is that the members on the day of the year when the pledge expires allow themselves wine and brandy during the few hours which intervene before the pledge for the ensuing year is made.

One of Uncle Sain’s most faithful servants, in Maine, but one that draws no salary, lives at the Portland Head Lighthouse. This is a large, gray parrot, brought from Africa some time ago and presented to the keeper of the light. The bird soon noticed that when the fog began to blow in from the ocean, somebody would cry out, “Fog coming in; blow the horn!” One day the fog suddenly began to come in thick, and no one noticed it, as they were all busy. Poll noticed this and croaked out, “Fog coming in; blow the horn!” and now, whenever fog is perceptible, Poll never fails to give warning. (

Edward Bell and John Merkert went gunning for a hornets’ nest located in the swamp near Abbett avenue, Morristown, N. J. Merkert was the marksman, and, after partly destroying the nest with a load of shot, dropped into a clump of bushes to escape the angry onslaught of the disturbed hornets. A nest of bees was concealed in the clump of bushes, and, between the attack made upon him by the combined forces of hornets and bees, Merkert found himself in very warm quarters. Bell succeeded in driving away the stinging insects, but not before his companion had been stung so thafr'his face puffed up to twice its normal size and both eyes were closed.

The French papers have been noting the curious way in which the career of President Carnot was connected with the figure “7.” He was born in 1837, was admitted to the Ecole Polytechnique in 1857, was elected by virtue of Article 7 of the Constitution to the office of President of the Republic, in 1887, was assassinated at the age of fifty-seven years, in the seventh year of his presidency, in a carriage containing seven persons (four inside and three outside, a coachman and two footmen), on the seventh day of the week, by an Italian (a word of seven letters). Finally, he was borne in triumph to the Pantheon on the first day of the seventh month of the year-, seven days after his death. An exciting incident occurred the other day while General Count Mus-sin-Puschkin, Commander-in-Chief of the Southern Province of Russia, was reviewing the troops at Nicolaieff. There Was a park of forty guns on the field, and their simultaneous discharge startled the General’s charger, which bolted at a terrific speed toward the railway just as a train was approaching. An aide-de-camp vainly endeavored to overtake the animal, when Lieutenant Daniloff, a mounted military officer, placed himself directly across the path of the runaway. The impact was terrific. Both men and horses were bowled over in a scrambling heap, and for a minute

or two were hidden ta a cloud or dust. Fortunately, both the Com- ' mander-in-Chief and the lieutenant escaped with some severe contusions, j the former having one of his ankles sprained. i The Savannah (Ga.) News tells this remarkable story: Near Idlewild Park, Thursday, while John J. Burrus, a farmer, was engaged in preparing ground for sweet potatoes, he discovered a chicken snake about five feet long, which he killed. Noticing that it was of unusual size in proportion to its length, he cut it in two to make a post-mortem examination, and found that the stomach con-, tained two large-sized opal glass eggs. Mr. Burrus says that when a boy he was visiting a cooper who lived near Tallahasse by the name of Wells Hamlin, and while there, a setting hen had been driven from her nest by a large chicken snake. The snake was soon after killed, opened in his presence, and eighteen eggs taken from its body. He furthermore said that the eggs were put back under the faithful old hen, and that every egg hatched out a lively young chicken. It is dangerous to gratify curiosity or violate precedent at the Chinese Imperial Court. The Empress Dowager is a great stickler for etiquette. Recently she required the services of Dr. Li Te-chang, Vice-President of the Imperial Academy of Physicians at Peking, for one of the members of her suite at Eho Park Palace. The learned doctor had never been inside these famous palace grounds, and his curiosity was fired to see the many curious objects of which he had heard wonderful tales. So he bribed a eunuch to show him around the grounds. While the two were leisurely walking about and enjoying themselves, the Empress spied them. She at once despatched servants to punish their effrontery. The eunuch was seized, thrown on his face, and accommodated with fifty blows of the bamboo on the calves of his fat legs. The doctor was docked three months’ pay and received a severe reprimand, while his assistant was ordered never to venture again into the Empress’s presence. The affair created a sensation, because of the high position of the physician and of the humiliating punishment dealt out to him. The most striking cases of lapsed memory are to be found in persons who have had a severe illness,- or are temporarily diseased mentally. The mbre common form of the malady, too, is the forgetting of every incident of the past save one, on which the morbid mind never ceases to harp. A very pathetic.case of the kind is recorded in Beck’s “Medical Jurisprudence.”, It is that of a young clergyman who was accidentally shot in the forehead just two days before his marriage was to have taken place. For a long time his life was despaired of. He recovered, but his mental faculties had become impaired. He remembered nothing but the idea of the approaching marriage. Everything was absorbed in that one recollection; his whole conversation related to the preparation for the event. He would never speak on any other subject; it was always within two days of his wedding. Years went on, youth passed away, and still in a couple of days more his marriage would take place. In this condition the unfortunate man reached his eightieth year, and no doubt sank into the grave with the one lifelong idea as the last thought of his mind.

A real infant phenomenon keeps all the medical men and pedagogues of the good old town of Brunswick, Germany, in a state of wonder and delight. The little son of a local butcher, a baby just two years old, can read with perfect ease anything written or printed in German or Latin characters. A few weeks ago three Brunswick doctors had the baby introduced to them at the house of one of the learned gentlemen. The first thing the little one did when brought into the consulting rpom was to stand on his toes at the table, reading out from the books that were lying about. All that could be ascertained as to the why and wherefore of this uncanny accomplishment is that, when the baby was eighteen months old, and his grandmother took him out, he always immediately caught sight of the inscriptions over shops, and asked about them as only a small child can ask, till he had fathomed the meaning of the letters. It was the same at home; books and newspapers had greater fascinations than lollipops and toys, and whatever the parents playfuPy told him he remembered, with the result that at the age of two years, he reads with perfect ease. Apart from his accomplishment in reading, the boy’s developtnent is quite normal.

An inhabitant of Voro, in Finland, named Sellquist, who for a long time past has been living on bad terms with his wife, had lately a narrow escape from' being poisoned by her. She called at a chemist’s, and asked for some rat poison. As these creatures are very rarely seen in that neighborhood, the chemist had his suspicions aroused, and gave the woman a perfectly harmless drug. On second thoughts he decided to mention the matter to the husband, and requested him to say nothing about it to his wife. In the evening; as she was preparing the porridge, the man kept a watchful eye on her movements, and noticed that she scattered something out of a paper into the saucepan. When the porridge was ready he sat down to the table and began to eat. After a while he got up in great excitement, paced up and down the room and at last fell fainting on the floor. This was what the woman expected. She now pulled down a rope through a hole in the ceiling with a noose, which she placed round her husband’s neck, whereupon she ran up stairs into the garret in order to pull up the rope and hang her husband in that fashion. Meadtime the husband got up and tied a few chairs to the rope, lhe wife did not return to the room, as she dreaded the sight, but went out into the village to raise an alarm, saying that her husband had hanged himself in her absence. When she came back with a host of neighbors and crocodile tears in her eyes, there was her husband sitting at the table laughing till his sides ached. The chain were still dangling onjthe rope.