Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 December 1898 — Topics of The Times [ARTICLE]

Topics of The Times

Ducky, the royal parrot of England, presented to the King in 1800 by Pitt, Is dead at tiie age of 124. The deceased bird was an accomplished talker, and was banished from the court for a time ip 1850 becpuge of its powers of mimicry and the frightful statements it did pot hesltpte to make pvep iq the presence of royalty. A Sicilian tribunal has sentenced a noted forger to Imprisonment for 189 years. The culprit had passed himself off as an advocate, and in the guise committed sixty-three different acts of serious fraud, having even stolen for a short time the seal of the chancellor of the court. This seal he used to give effect to his fraudulent documenta. For fourteen years a woman |p (Charleston, W. Ym, carried ft potato ip her pockets as a preventive of rheumatism. At her death a few days ago the potato had become shriveled with age. After the fyperaj hey clothes were hung out to air, and in the pocket pf one of the garments was the potato. A rainstorm drenched the clothing, and it was found that the potato had put forth several green sprouts. It is said that the waiters in some of Gotham’s swell cases add to their Incomes by the sale of champagne corks, a number of enterprising foreigners having worked up quite a business in the second-hand branded stoppers, which bring 5 to 6 cents apiece. The corks eventually find their way to the makers of certain Inferior brands of wine, which are palpied off upon the unsophisticated as imported, With the first day of the new century the ancient Austrian cpip, the krefitzer, drops officially out of circulation, after a currency of something like 400 years. It is retired in accordance with the convention establishing a copper currency of equal value for all parts of the empire. It used to be circulated freely in north as well as south Germany, but for the last quarter of a century has not gone beyond the Austrian frontier. It is said that the following expedient will cure a horse of kicking: Put the animal into a narrow stall that has both sides thickly padded. Suspend a sack filled with hay or straw so that it will strike his heels and let the horse and sack fight it out. Be sure to have things arranged so that the horse cannot hurt himself. The sack will be victorious every time, and in the end the horst will absolutely refuse to kick the sack or anything else. The scheme of electric canal haulage proposed by A. H. Allen to the British Association consists of a pair of overhead electric railways—one above the other—supported on standards on the towpath. These lines would carry small electric motors, managed from the barges. No change in existing barges would be needed, no motor attendant would be required on shore, and the cost of haulage per ton would be reduced to about three-sevenths of that with horse*.