Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 July 1895 — NOTES AND COMMENTS. [ARTICLE]

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

The Kansas City Journal supposes that when the new order ot things Is fully established the circus will contain a den of mice, into which a daring woman will go without fear. A. curious law exists in Michigan. If one be afraid that a bank is going to fail, he may not draw out his deposits in it, and if he does, the bank may recover them. Many members of the Diplomatic Corps in Washington, including four attaches of the Chinese Legation, ride bicycles. The fashion was started by the Russian Minister, Prince Oanfcacuzene, who astonished the capital when he began to take out his daughter on a wheel. The miles of asphalt pavement in Washington make that city an attractive place for wheeling. Professor Hunicke, of Washington University, St. Louis, is about applying for a process by which he claims, SIO,OOO worth of gold can be obtained from sea-water at a cost of •1. every ton of water yielding from two to four cents' worth of gold. He insists that no nation will hereafter suffer from a scarcity of gold; that gold will come from “the vasty deep" whenever called for, though spirits refuse to come. Who, not fresh from his books, can tell, off-hand, when the battle of Waterloo occurred? It seems about as remote as Marathon or Hastings, and yet, day before yesterday, an actual spectator of the battle told the students of Mount Union College, Ohio, what he had actually seen on that eventful day. Air. Green, the narrator, is 97 years old, and the 18th of June was the eightieth anniversary of the battle of Waterloo. Statistics have boen accumulated which reveal that in respect to color blindness there is a remarkable difference between the two sexes. About three and one-half per cent of men are color-blind to a marked extent, while not more than four-tenths of one per cent, of women are thus afflicted. This difference in color perception will strike most husbands who have been sent by their wives upon shopping embassies to match ribbons as understated, if anything. Miss Alice J. Hands and Miss Mary N. Gannon, two young women of New York, are said to have solved the problem of sanitary tenement houses. To study the subject thoroughly they assumed the duties of health inspectors, took up their residence for a while in a very poor tenement district, Investigated the effects and learned the remedies. They are about to build a "woman’s hotel,” with model plumbing and ventilation, and also a studio building. They have boen elected members of the Woman’s Health Protective Association of New York. One of the amazing literary successes of the century is Spurgeon's sermons. The Westminster Gazette says that 2,896 of these sermons have been printed and sold, and that the sum total of the sales reaches nearly 100,000,000. an average of about 85,000 copies per sermon. Of each of certain discourses more than 250,000 have been sold. They are kept in sheet form In a large cellar in Paternoster square, in long lines of cupboards, so that a supply of any particular discourse can be got at once. Four-fifths of the supply have been sold in the United Kingdom; the remainder have gone to this country and to Australia.

Notwithstanding heavy expenditure incurred in the destruction of rabbits in New South Wales, they are this year in such numbers as to make everybody despair of fighting them. “On one small section which I visited,” says a correspondent, “and which is inclosed by wire netting, and which is managed very energetically. and upon which the rabbits have been more than once reduced to such low limits that only two or three would be seen in a day’s ride, they are now so numerous that 19,800 were caught last month in pit traps alone. Babbits, too, are now appearing in the suburbs of Sydney, and are being killed in such numbers that their dead bodies are proving a danger to the public health.” The establishment of a new chair in Columbia College, to be known as the “Seth Low Professorship of American History,” Frank Leslie's thinks an incident worthy of special mention. The study of American history and of the development of the principles of constitutional liberty which have here had their fullest exemplification has not had the commanding place to which it is entitled in the curriculum of many of our higher institutions of learning. In our public schools, too, until recent years, the subject has been made secondary to others of less importance. It ought to be a primary purpose in all our educational institutions to equip the student with a thorough knowledge of the history of his own country, the sources of its life, the meaning and responsibilities of citizenship, and Che relation of the national authority to the individual. Aside from English the Bible has had the largest circulation in the German language. Through the agency of the British and Foreign Bible Society, the Bible in the German language has had a circulation of upward of 17,000,000 copies. The same society secured a circulation of 12,000,000 copies of the Bible in French: over 5,000,000 copies in Chinese; over 5,000,000 in- Russian; over 8,500,000 in Italian; nearly 8,500,000 in Swedish; nearly 8,000,000 in Danish; and over 2,000,000 in the Dutch language. Nearly 400,000 copies have been issued in Arabic over 1,500,000 have come forth in Bengali, over 750,000 in Czech, about 1,250,000 in Hebrew, over 1,000,000 in Magyar, over 800,000 in Lettish, over 560,000 in Malgasi, over 616,000 in Malayalam, 600,000 in Marathi, and over 1,000,000 in Telugu. At the beginning of this century the Bible was only accessible to onefifth of the world's population, while now it may be read by nine-tenths of the people of the globe. There are now more than 200,000,000 copies of the Bible in circulation, in 880 different languages.

Dr. Jules Prevost, who has ha 4 large experience in Alaska, thinks that the Alaska Indians are the most susceptible of civilized influences of all the aborigines of America. Says he: "The Chinese are commonly spoken of as the most skillful imitators on earth, but, as a matter of fact, they are not to be compared with the Indians of Alaska. An Indian of average intelligence will give the best Chinaman on earth cards and spades and beat him on anything from a dog-yoke to a clock. Just give them the tools and they will duplicate anything they see. For native ingenuity I have never seen their equals among any other people. They are not alone imitators in the mechanic arts, but show marvelous adaptability in the acquisition of knowledge pertaining to customs and morals. For generations they have lived in underground huts. Not a few of them, but thousands, at once recognized the advantages of a house of wood aboveground. They acquire Kngllsh with great facility and learn to read and write In about half the time required for these accomplishments among the Sioux or Apaches. We often have visitors from settlements six or seven hundred miles away. They look with awe and wonder upon those of their kind who enjoy improved conditions of living at or near the mission. They see cabins in course ot construction where bunks and blankets were used instead of a skin and the floor. The lesson is not lost upon them. They return to their settlements and at once practical results of their newly acquired ideas are to be seen.