Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 71, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 March 1910 — SOMETHING FOR EVERYBODY [ARTICLE]

SOMETHING FOR EVERYBODY

The wind gauge on shipboard registers up to 105 miles an hour, which is as much speed as anyone 'expects. According to the United States census tables, based on the present growth, the population of New York City will be 9,000,000 in 1930. Manhattan island will then have 4,000;000. Slam has adopted the gold stand-, ard, which really was promulgated in 1908, and henceforth the unit of the Siamese monetary system will have a value equal to 55.8 centigrams of pure gold. Baltimore’s school board has under consideration the question of allowing cdrporal punishment in the public schools. The subject has been referred to a committee, to confer with the teachers. Portuguese gardeners at Punta Delgada, on St. Michaels, Azores; are getting rich raising fine pineapples under glass for the New York market. They are the biggest and best that reach that town. The cup of 'St. Jacques, which, in New York, is a dessert of delight, with its peaches, cherries, pineapple, orange and citron en compote in delicate ices, becomes in Paris a wretched compound of sliced sour apple in mushy snow. French lights are the best along the shores, say the navigators. They are posted low, close to the water line, and so do not mislead like the Italian pharos perched high above the sea. They have the best lenses and are always visible.

The project for building a new iron railway bridge across the Neva in St. Petersburg has now been worked out, and the bridge is to be begun without delay. The bridge will be of an extremely simple pattern, and its length is to be 1,750 feet. The last statement of the interestbearing debt, of the United States makes the total $897,253,990, whilp the gross bonded indebtedness of New York city at its last statement was $905,260,115. The metropolis is carrying $8,006,125 more fhan the nation. There has recently been launched at Bath, Me., the largest wooden vessel ever built in the United States. The Wyoming, as she has been named, is a six-masted schooner of 3,730 gross tons, with a total length over all of 350 feet. Next to her in size among wooden vessels is the William L. Douglas, with a gross tonnage of 3,708. As to the name Smith, a correspondent of the London Chronicle points out that while there are now about 350,000 members of' the great family in England alone, in Old Testament times, according to the first, book of Samuel, “there was no Smith throughout the land of Israel.” This verse the late Bishop Wilberforce said was the hardest one in the Bible to quote without smiling. "Love your wife like your soul, and beat her like your carpet.” This is a Russian proverb. Another of the same spirit: “Not long hurt the bumps from a loved one’s thumps.” Wives have undoubtedly been subjected to much illtreatment in Russia, where most husbands have always held to the opinion that “Liberty spoils a good wife.” Some Russian proverbs are cynical as to the delights of matrimony, and most married men know how to say: “Wed once, wail always.” Not being in sympathy with certain actions of the hereditary branch of the British Parliament, the London Chronicle has been speculating on the possible future of the word “lords” “So far It has resisted the democratization that has befallen ’lady;’ no one talks of ‘chorus lords,’ or begins a' speech with ‘Ladles and lords!’ In modern Greek, however, ‘lordos’ means simply ‘Mr.,’ and it would be rash to predict that our descendants will not all be 'lords’ in the twenty-first century.” The fiction of a constant bee—that is, of a bee which keeps to one species of flower on a single journey—dies hard. Thus the a note in the Field on "Bees, Flowers and Fruit” says: “The same bee passes from one to the other colored varieties of the same species, though rarely, If ever, visiting other species of similar color. ♦ * * It is probable that bees discriminate between flowers in this fashion, as the keeping qualities of the nectar might be interfered with If the loads from different species were mixed.” Some of the Chicago papers seem to think that a few of the features of reform in that city come pretty high. For instance, the News reports that the cost of condemning and selling a superannuated fire horse is $77.50, while such animals never bring more than SIOO, and frequently much less. By way of contrast, the News says: “Under the old system, which was in vogue before the city ofiicials became sticks lers In observance of all legal formalities, the preliminaries to the sale of % horse did not total more than $2.” How “canvassing” got its election significance is one of the unsolved JuzzleS of etymology. The word appears originally to have meant tossing In a canvas or blanket, and thence generally mishandling or assaulting. “I’ll canvass thee in thy broad cardinal’s hat,” is the Duke of Gloucester’s threat to the bishop of Winchester in "King Henry VI.” The next stage of meaning was,that of destructive criticism, from which to thorough discussion—“canvassing” a subject was simple enough. But how exactly did it, arrive at the election sense? Dr. Johnson explained that the term meant "trying votes previously to the decision,” and derived it from “canvas as it signifies a sieve.” The Oxford dictionary, however, is unable to find this use of th* word.