Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 October 1894 — SOMEWHAT STRANGE. [ARTICLE]

SOMEWHAT STRANGE.

INTERESTING NOTESAND MATTERS OF MOMENT. Queer Facts and Thrilling Adventures Which Show that Truth is Stranger Than Fiction. The smallest woman living to-day is said to be Mlle. Pauline, of HoK land, of a respectable family, who is 18 years old, weighs ten pounds and is 1 foot 9 inches tall. Maine is jusly proud of the fact that only a native can pi6nounce the names of her lakes trippingly on the tongue, but the names of Maine are easy besides these and others from the Canadian Province of Ontario; Lake Misquabenish, Lake Kashagawigamog, and Lake Kahwcambejewagamog. , ' ; The conservatory of Washington Park, Chicago, boasts of what is affectioually called “goose plant.” It is composed of growths that look like three or four big geese and over a dozen goslings. The plant is a rare native of South America, known properly as the Aristoloehia Gigas Sturtevanili, and is said to be the only one of its kind in the United States. It was on exhibition at the World’s Fair, but was so small at the time as to attract little attention. During a continued dry spell in south Florida, reptiles often are obliged to resort to unique methods for obtaining fresh water. One need not be surprised while pumping water, to see little frogs issue from the pump, and one man was rather startled while pumping to see a snake two feet long issue from the spout, and upon striking the ground quickly crawled under a house. The reptiles crawl into the pump to enjoy the water held up by the vales.

In 1867 Dr. W. H. Richardson, who had been in the Confederate army and afterward in Mexico, and hadn’t seen his wife for five or six years, heard that she was dead. He remained in Mexico until the present year, when he came to Kentucky to look up relatives. In tracing a claim to land he wrote to his wife’s relatives in Texas, and learned that she was living and had for twelve years been remarried. Husband No. 2 gracefully retired, and the pair were reunited after thirty-two years. A gastograph, for recording the movements of food in the stomach of a patient, was recently exhibited in action before the Medical Society of the County of New York by Dr. Max Einhorn. The apparatus records the motions on a traveling band of paper by means of electricity from a dry battery. The patient swallows a little ball of brass connected to the instrument by electric wires, but no details of the mechanism are given. The apparatus is expected to be useful in diagnosing catarrh and other ailments of the stomach. The death of “The Blind Woman of Manzanares” has attracted wide attention in Spain, where she was known from one end of the country to the other. She was a poet and had a remarkable talent for writing beggin g verses, describing her misery. Many of the poems are beautiful, and the author enjoyed a large income. She was said to be one of the best reciters in Spain, and many of the most famous men in that country made pilgrimages to her house to hear her. Queen Isabella gave her a pension years ago. She left about $60,000. Prof. Peal, the ethnologist, recently described to the Asiatic Society the condition of the headhunting Nagas on the borders of Assam. The women are to blame for the continuance of the practice; they taunt the young men who are not tatooed, and the latter go out and cut off heads to exhibit to them, fully half of which are those of women and children. The area occupied by the tribe is not more than twenty miles square, but in it during the past 40 years more than 12,000 murders have been committed for the sake of these ghastly trophies. A strange incident in connection with the work of clearing away the debris of the recentlj r wrecked bridge at Louisville is related of the submarine diver whose duty it is to descend to the bottom of the river and fasten chains about the heavy iron work, besides placing dynamite charges in spots where the most desirable results may be had. One day he remained beneath the surface for more than an hour. There was no response when signals were made, and there was uneasiness felt. At length the diver who goes on as a relief reported for duty, and he was at once sent down to ascertain what was wrong. In a few minutes both men came up. The diver was found seated on a pile of iron fast asleep. Two queer cases of telepathy : A lady in Maine, whose daughter was a missionary’s wife in India, dreamed of her on the 18th of May last. She thought the girl called “mother” as if in agony. Long after the slow mail came, saying that on that night the daughter was supposed to be dying, flat had recovered. A lady in New Orleans fell to the floor during a social gathering, crying, with hand at side: “ Oh, I’m stabbed!” She wasn’t; but she felt that way. Shortly after she bore a child marked upon the side as if by two stab wounds. Next day came a cablegram saying that her twin brother had been stabbed to death in New Zealand. Later it was learned that the hour was the same as that of the woman’s hallucination, and the place of the wounds the same. These stories may betaken with salt, if preferred. An Unusual summons was received over the telephone not long ago by Dr. David Birney, of the University of Pennsylvania, from a wealthy man in New York, who wished him to go to Long Island. Dr. Birney endeavored to find out something about the nature of the t case he was expected to treat, but the man, after securing his promise to go, refused to talk further over the ’phone. The doctor packed a case of instruments at random and met the man in New York. After dinner at the Waldorf they took the train for Long Island, but not a word was said abbut the operation. When they arrived the man

thanked the doctor and paid him SSO; then in response to the look of wonder from the astonished surgeon, he said: “I saw my sister bleed to death in a railroad accident for want of a physician, and since that day I have never traveled without one.” Because Captain Bray was moonstruck and made totally blind, the logwood laden schooner Nettie Langdon, from Falmouth, Jamaica, for Philadelphia, was compelled to put into Key West in distress. The Langdon drifted about in helpless condition for days after Capt. Bray’s sad plight, and finally drifted toward the Florida coast, where a pilot boat was sighted, and Pilot James Sinclair was taken on board, and he navigated the vessel to Key West. The unfortunate skipper’s eyesight is believed to have been caused by the reckless manner in which he spent his nights. Instead of sleeping in the cabin, he invariably slept on deck in the moonlight. The rays of the moon totally destroyed the sight. In the tropics this occurrence is not rare, but it is seldom heard of so far north as the latitude of Jamaica. In Demerara many cases occur, especially when the moon is in its strongest phase.

The Louisville Courier - Journal says that a few years ago a Kentucky Grand Jury brought in the following indictment: “Lawrence Criminal Court, Commonwealth of Kentucky, against , defendant. Indictment. The Grand Jury of Lawrence County, in the name and by the authority of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, accuse of the offence of malicious mischief, committed as follows : The said ; —, on the day of .A. D. 18—, in the county and circuit aforesaid, did unlawfully, wilfully and maliciously kill and destroy one pig, the personal property of George Pigg, the said pig being of value to the aforesaid George Pigg. The pig thus killed weighed about twenty-five pounds, and was a mate to some other pigs owned by said George Pigg, which left George Pigg a pig less than he (said George Pigg) had of pigs, and thus ruthlessly tore said pig from the society of George Pigg’s other pigs, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth of Kentucky.”

“In the neighborhood of Cuba,” says a recent visitor to that island, *‘a most peculiar method of securing turtle is pursued. They train, or at least take advantage of the instinct of a certain species of fish. The fish is called by the Spaniards reve (meaning reversed), because its back is usually taken for its belly. It has an oval plate attached to its head, whose surface is traversed by parallel ridges. By this plate it can firmly adhere to atty solid body it may choose. The boats which go in quest of turtles each carry a tub containing some of these reves. When the sleeping turtles are seen they are cautiously approached, and as soon as they are judged near enough a reve is thrown into the sea. Upon perceiving the turtle, its instinct teaches it to swim right toward it and fix itself firmly upon the creature by its sucking disk. Sooner would the reve allow itself to be pulled to pieces than to give up its grip. A ring which was attached to the tail of the fish, in which a string was fastened, allows the fisherman to pull in his prize. By a peculiar manipulation the reve is pulled off and returned to the tub to be ready for use again when the next turtle is sighted.”

The present area is remarkable for the development of among the civilized races of the world of kindlier feelings toward the brute creation, and it is certain that animals have never before enjoyed so much consideration as during the closing decade of the nineteenth' century. It was only the other’day that attention was drawn in these columns to the court-martialling of a German soldier for applying an insulting epithet to a government horse; to a suit against a Viennese editor for having libelled a racer; to the decision of the Belgian Government that a dog when once provided with his ticket had just the same right to a seat in a railroad compartment as a human being. And now there is the Austrian town of Baden, which has just voted a credit of SIO,OOO for the rheumatic horses. The equine patients are to have sulphur baths erected for their treatment, in which it is hoped that wonderful cures will be effected, Elsewhere in Europe valuable racehorses are got into training by means of a course of turkish baths in piece of the old-fashioned cloth treatment, and if matters advance at the present rate the day cannot be far distant when every well-bred horse will insist like so many other devotees of fashion,upon an annual stay at Homburg, Carlsbald or Vichy for the sake of recuperating his strength.

Tobe Wesley, of Twiggs county, Ga., came to Macon, recently to buy a coffin for his seven-year-old son, who was crushed to death by a huge snake. The boy had gone to the field with his father, and while his father was at work wandered off a short distance and climbed a muscadine vine as was his habit. On being unable to find the boy when he had finished his work about sundown, the father went to the house expecting to find him there, but was informed by his wife that the boy had not been home since he left the house with his father. Feeling no uneasiness Wesley, knowing the habit of his boy, went back into the field, which was on the edge of a dense swamp bordered with muscadine vines, and began searching the vines where he had last seen the boy, By looking up in the vines he was not long in finding him, but when ha called the boy failed to answer. After calling two or three times and receiving no answer the father shook the vine, and to his horror saw what he had supposed to be’one of the branches of the vine that was supporting his son, begin to uncoil. Realizing that his son was in the coil of a huge snake Wesley stood rooted to the spot, and before he could recover his senses the snake completely uncoiled and the boy fell to the ground, a distance ’of some nine or ten feet. Wesley picked the child up and ran from under the vines to the clearing. There his worst fears were realized. The child was dead. On being carried to the

house and further examination made, it was found that the child’s breast had been crushed and that its tongue and eyes were protruding as though it had been choked to death. Wesley is of the; opinion that the boy was asleep when the snake coiled about him and gradually crushed his life out. Wesley does not know what kind of a snake it was, as he did not see it after his son fell.