Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 August 1895 — NOTES AND COMMENTS. [ARTICLE]

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

The total crop of cotton in the United States in 1791 was only 8,889 bales, and in 1795 35,556 bales. Last year's crop reached the enormous total of 9,476,435 bales! The fiscal year just passed has been a bloody one for San Francisco. More than thirty men and women were murdered in this city between the last of July, 1894, and the last of June of 1895. English is taught after a fashion in the public schools throughout France. A young American girl in a small Picardy village, interesting herself in a schoolboy’s English exercise, read as follows: “The bird has a nest." “The horse has a nest" Substituting the word “mare" for “horse” the young woman passed on the exercise as correct. Thebe seems to be an extraordinary craze for cycling in South Africa. The Johannesburg Star states that cycles are more generally used in that town than probably in any other town of similar size in the world. There are, it adds, some 4,000 machines in use by all classes, from the head of the mining industry down to clerks and shop assistants. One firm have sold 600 in the last two years. Ladies are taking to cycling freely, and so are educated Kaffirs. Gabdnee M . Sherman, of Springfield, Mass., has 555 specimens of Indian relics that he himself picked up and one of the most remarkable collections of these relics in New England, if not outside of the Smithsonian Institution. Not only is Mr. Sherman (an enthusiastic collector, but also an explorer of indefatigable patience, and he has been an omnivorous reader of all that pertains to this, his pet study, for over a quarter of a century. He is a mechanic and has had to take the odds and ends of his time for this work.

A new fact bearing on the disuse of the horse is the alleged effect on the oats market. According to the dealers the demand for oats is considerably less than it was a year ago. This is easy to believe when we learn that according to conservative estimates electricity has supplanted at least 80,000 horses on the various street railway systems of the country. A fair estimate of the grain consumed by these animals is only 14,000,000 bushels. Moreover, we hardly think it is fair to presume that every one of the eighty thousand horses displaced by the trolleys has given up his diet of oats owing to his loss of a job, Wo should be more inclined to suspect that shrewd board of trade operators were using this specious plea to depress the price of oats before buying. The St. Louis Republic thinks that the most remarkable piece of panoramic painting ever attempted was a 2,000 mile view of scenery along the Mississippi River, which was executed by John Banvard, the artist, who died ac Watertown, S. D., in the summer of 1891. This panorama, which gave faithful and clear cut pictures of bluffs, river mouths, farms, prairie dells and wooded promontories along the Father of Waters for a distance almost as great as that which separates St. Louis from New York, was painted on a strip of canvas twenty-two feet wide and nearly two miles long. Nothing similar has ever been attempted on such a gigantic scale, and, while Artist Banvard was not known as the “Michael Angelo of America,” he will long be remembered by the lovers of the curious, in either art or nature, as the man who painted the largest painting ever known. Beauty is a matter of geography, as well as the result of a transformation insthe brain of the susceptible being of a centripetal nervous current in a centrifugal and equally nervous current. These facts may comfort brunettes who covet the supreme beauty of the fair complexion. Dr. Beddoe made some careful and elaborate inquiries, and his conclusions were published in The British Medical Journal. He examined 720 women—taking them haphazard from various classes. Of these, 359 had red, fair or light brown hair; 361, black or dark brown. It proved that 60 per cent of the former were married, against 70.5 of the latter, and 32 per cent unmarried, against 21.5 per cent. The sum does not work out correctly, but it must be supposed that the deficit represents those who, for one reason or another, could not properly be reckoned. It appears, therefore, that brunettes have a very decided advantage in the lottery of marriage.

The accounts of an eye-witness of the hideous cruelty of Chinese to men of their own race in Formosa form one of the darkest pages in the history of the oriental war. A big powder magazine near Kelung exploded and scores of men were fatally or dangerously injured. They were thrown into the paddy fields, where the growing rice is covered with Water. There they lay in the broiling sun, and though their female relatives wailed over them, not one 'of the able-bodied Chinese men who stood around lifted a hand to help the suffering. In fact, they jeered at the unfortunates and laughed when the poor wretches tried to call for water and failed to make a sound. The incident is typical of Chinese barbarity to their fellow men, and it helps to explain the utter lack of concert shown by the nation in the war u with Japan. When neighbors will not help one another, even when such help calls for no outlay, what can be expected of provinces, each jealous of the other and bound by none of the principles of patriotism or honor? I>* Plymouth Township, Penn., is a new type of the new woman such as are turning up almost every day in different parts of the country. The heroine of Plymouth Township is Mrs. Frank Freas, who, divesting herself of her gown, leaped into water fifty feet deep and saved a little girl from drowning. While passing Ramsey’s quarries, on a recent evening, she heard screams:. These, she found, came from the abandoned quarry, where, in water fifty feet deep, she found a young Polish girl struggling for her life. There was »a fence rail, rope or anything of the

sort which she could throw to the struggling child and thus rescue her. Mrs. Freas hesitated but a moment, and then, divesting herself of her tea gown, she threw it toward the drowning girl, but it was not of sufficient length to reach her. She was not long in considering what next to do. for she sprang into the water and swam close to the dhild. She kept far enough away to prevont the latter from grasping her, but just near enough to throw the gown to the girl to reach it. The almost exhausted one seized the dress, and then Mrs. Freas swam ashore with the girl trailing behind. Europe has the advantage of us in age and experience, but her civilization, in the estimation of the Atlanta Constitution, is by no means an example for us to follow. During the English elections Mr. Rider Haggard was stoned by a mob for no other offense than his candidacy for an unpopular side. For the same reason the wife of a peer was assaulted in her carriage by a ruffian, who struck her in the face with his fist. But the crowning exhibition of brutality comes from Bulgaria. It seems that the funeral of the late minister, Stambuloff, was signalized by the most disgraceful violence. The widow of the murdered man just before the funeral received the following telegram from the mother of Milaroff, who was sentenced to death during Stambuloff’s administration for conspiracy to assassinate Prince Ferdinand: “Mourn over the bloodthirsty murderer, who, while making merry watching gypsies dancing and singing in the monastery of Bourgas, signed the death warrant for my son. God gave me strength, when I saw the murderer swimming in my own blood, to console myself. I send my curses to his rotting body.” While the funeral was in progress many educated people of good social position went about the streets of Sofia urging the rabble to go to the grave and curse Stambuloff’s body for the last time. The solemn rites over the dead man were interrupted by disorder and violence, and it was with difficulty that the remains of the premier were rescued from the mob. We have in this country our share of tough and lawless people in our large cities, but the scenes reported from England and Bulgaria could not have occurred here.