Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 July 1895 — NOTES AND COMMENTS. [ARTICLE]

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

One of our exchanges remarks: “If you have frequent headachesdizziness, and fainting spells,acceompanied by chills, chilblains, epilepsy, and jaundice, it is a sign that you are not well, but are liable to die any minute. Pay your subscription a year in advance, and thus make yourself solid for a good obituary notice.” The French are experimenting with a single track temporary railroad that can be laid on a country road or across the fields. They expect to use it in military operations and in harvesting crops. The barrows and cars used are on the bicycle principle and they can be operated either by hand or horse power. The gain in the use of the rail is the great diminution of friction. A professional beggar who succumbed to the heat in New York was found to have on an overcoat, three coats, three shirts, three vests, two pairs of trousers and heavy underclothing, In his pockets were found $lO6 in bills, a quanity of silver coin and pennies, several diamond rings, more than one thousand loose matches, five candles, seven pipes, some tobacco and several newspapers. Yet he was hungry. There will soon be a great reduction in the number of lawyers in France. By a recent law each one must take out a yearly license,, for which he pays an amount equal to about 12 per cent, of his house rent. Many persons admitted to the bar. who are not in active practice, hav asked to have their names taken off the roll, among them M. Fallieres, formerly prime minister and minister of justice, and Senator Berenger, author of the law remitting the penalty for first offenses, and also noted for his efforts to improve French morality. Vessels passing through the new Baltic-North Sea canal will pay 12 cents a ton for the first 600 net register tons if laden, and 8 cents for each additional ton; vessels in ballast will pay 8 cents a ton, and the minimum charge will be $2.50 by the tariff just issued by the German Government. From October to March the charges will be 25 per cent, higher. Sailing vessels will be towed at the rate of 10 or 6| cents a ton up to 200 tons, and 7| or 4 cents a ton for all above that, according as they are laden or in ballast. Recent returns show that 1,550,000 acres of land are planted with cork trees in Spain. It is just one hundred ago since a cork factory was started in Gerona, and the manufacture of cork is now one of the chief industries of the country. Over 1,400,000,000 corks for bottles, representing a value of $2,700,000, are produced annually, and about 12,600 men are engaged in cork work. It is difficult to calculate the income derived from cork, as statistics in Spain are very faulty, and no account is kept of the cork used in the country itself. It is estimated, however, that during the present year $5,369,was paid for tbe cork exported. The carriagemakers, blacksmiths, hackmen and others of Quebec have joined in a protest to the Mayor against the new eledtric street railway, which it is proposed to operate there. They declared that it would be extremely dangerous to life, and that it would ruin their trades. The Mayor heard the committee to the end, and then told them that he was sorry that he could not agree with them, but that he felt bound to do all in his power to secure the proposed railroad for the city, as it would have to keep up with the procession or fall into the background altogether. He said that the old city had already suffered no little through its reputation for backwardness, and that it was time to take a new departure.

The demand for space in the Woman’s Building at the Cotton States and International exposition has been so great that the Woman’s Board has been compelled to ask for an appropriation for an annex. The matter has received the favorable consideration of the Finance Committee, and will probably be approved by the Executive Board. The activity and the amount of labor performed by tho women of this department are phenomen&l, considering the means at their disposal, and the results attained so far are more than astonishing. They have stirred so much interest in most of the States that an overwhelming demand L>r space has been made upon the management. A strange attempt to enforce medieval penance ended in a row recently at Biisland, in Cornwall, near the Land’s End. Two young men who had assaulted a girl in the churchyard were told by the rector that he would absolve them if they would openly confess their crime and distribute $lO worth of bread at the church gate as penance. The scene within the church was impressive; the rector admonished the culprits and forgave them in behalf of the girl; the guilty men, on their knees, then confessed in a loud voice and asked the congregation to pray for them. When they went out with the bread, however, the crowd jeered at them and made a rush for the loaves, which it irreverently ate with molasses in the churchyard, hooting and singing.

Elks broken to harness may soon cease to be a novelty in the Northwest and perhaps even in the East. Several years ago a wealthy rancher in Montana had a team of the creatures which he used to drive to his buggy, and when the fact became known other folk experimented in taming elks for a like purpose. Such a team was brought East last year and caused much interest. A rancher on the Humptulips River, Wash., is the last to experiment with elks for work purposes.’ He has a fine team, recently broken to harness, which, he says, willhaul as heavy a.load as any pair of horses, are as docile, and much handsomer. It may be that the elk will hold back for awhile the electrical and mechanical tide that is sweeping the horse from the highways, and preserve the pleasures of the road that come from riding behind a thing of life, while adding a picturesque element.

A novel eo-operative system has lately been started among the carpenters and painters of San Fran rise© through which the individual workmen are becoming owners of homes of their own without any cost for construction. As soon as any member of the local organization has saved enough money to buy a lot and the necessary lumber all his fellowworkmen turn to the next Sunday and build the house for him. In one of the suburban additions of the city a little colony of these ‘Sunday homes” has already grown up. The houses are not pretentious, but are solidly built and comfortable. There are ten houses in this colony that have been thus built by the carpenters and painters for their fellowworkmen, and it is expected that during this summer as many more will be put up at similar Sunday “building bees.” But for this helpful system the workmen would probably never be able to own homes, while through it almost every indus trious man may have a bouse of his own. Dr. Lombroso, the Italian specialist in criminology, has written a book on “The Female Offender.” in which he says: “The female born criminal is far more terrible than the male. She combines the worst qualities of both sexes—the woman’s excessive desire for revenge, cunning, cruelty, love of dress and untruthfulness ; the man’s vices, fickleness, fearlessness, audacity and often muscular strength. Celto wrote in tbe fifteenth century: ‘No possible punishments can deter women from heaping up crime upon crime". Their perversity of mind is more fertile in new crimes than the imagination of a judge in new punishments.’ Rykise said : ‘Feminine criminality is more cynical, more depraved and more terrible than the criminality of the male.’ ‘Rarely,’ says the Italian proverb, ‘is a woman wicked, but when she is she surpasses the man.' Then comes Euripides with this crusher: ‘The violence of the ocean waves or of devouring flames is terrible. Terrible is poverty, but woman is more terrible than all else.’ ” It is noticed that even a short residence in the United States makes a marked change in the conditions and standards of the immigrant. Scandinavian immigrants sometimes revisit their old homes after a sojourn in this country. They usually take the steerage passage on the eastward voyage, but the second cabin on • the return westward voyage. The eastward steerage passage they find clean and comfortable, but the recollection of the ill smelling steerage of their first trip to America drives them to the second cabin. These people ascribe the difference between the eastward and the westward steerage passage to the difference in the cleanliness of the immigrants that have lived in the United States. It is to be added, however, that in days not long ago the number of westward bound passengers greatly exceeded the number of eastward bound, and doubtless it is the cleanliest and the most intelligent of original immigrants that are able to revisit their old homes. The condition of human beings shipped like cattle is not the same as those who travel for pleasure.