Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 98, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 April 1910 — SOMETHING FOE EVERYBODY [ARTICLE]

SOMETHING FOE EVERYBODY

A ten-story building was built In New York City recently In forty-seven working days. The United States army, including the military academy, cost $103,727,000, gnd the navy $136,000,(100. Vclapuk, one of the most pretentious attempts at a universal language, Has Introduced early in the ’Bos. The sale of dairy cheese in the New York wholesale market last year amounted to more thata $3,000,000. The newly organized army of England has in every battalion two, in every cavalry brigade six machine guns. Tea imports in 1909 amounted to $16,500,000, again* $11,000,000 4n 1889; coffee imports, $86,500,000, again* $56,000,000 in 1889; and cocoa imports, $14,000,000, against $6,000,000 in 1899! Insurance authorities tell us that it requires about 300,000 new houses every year to supply our increase of population and 80,000 more to take the places of those that are destroyed by Are. The number of accidents in street and steam railroads within the city of New York was 56.451 In 1908, while in 1909 the number was reduced to 52,618. There has been a big increase in the production of salt in the United States in the last ten years'. Close to 25,000,000 barrels were produced In this country last year, which was in excess of any such period previous. Mme. de la Roche has won an air pilot’s license from the French Aero Club by flying four times around the aviation course at Heliopolis, a total distance of twelve miles. She is the first woman to gain this distinction. It ‘has been discovered by skillful observers that the average load of nectar carried to the hive by the bee is almost 3-10 of a grain, so that the collection of one pound of nectar requires nearly 23,000 foraging excursions. As regards the number of telegrams uandled for the year, Great Britain heads the list with nearly 94,000,000 messages, the United States coming next with 65,500,000. France stands third, with nearly $58,000,000, and Germany fourth, with 52,000,000 messages. Mrs. Marilla M. Ricker, a lawyer and a leading suffragist in New Hampshire, has telegraphed from California, where she is spending the winter, that she will be a candidate for Governor of New Hampshire on the suffrage platform. Mrs. Ricker is a native of New Hampshire, where her husband died in 1868. She went to Germany and France,' where she studied the condition of women for more than two years. She returned to this country and put herself on record as the first woman who ever attempted to vote. For taxes out of the common one must turn back to the days of George HI. For In the reign of that monarch one was almost forced to “die beyond one s means.’’ The army and the navy were in urgent need of money and the chancellor was at his wits’ end. He thought of the dead and gravely suggested a tax on coffins. Which proposal recalls the day when one could not be born without Involving a proud parent in a tax. A graduated tax. The birth of an eldest son, foe instance, cqpt ajjluke as much as £3O, whereas a cottager was forced to pay only 2 shillings. To be born with a silver spoon In the mouth cost money in these days.—London Chronicle. “In connection with ‘humbug,’ ’bugbear’ and ‘gold bug,’ it may be observed,” says the London Chronicle, “that the last has probably no direct suggestion of ‘terror’ to the American mind. ‘Bug’ is freely used in America for any kind of insect. Our English word, however, is directly affiliated. to the Celtic word, which meant a demon or bogey. It is conjectured that when the objectionable insect became acclimated here, which was not many centuries ago, the terror of its attacks earned It Its name. We get the ’bug* in its old sense in Shakespeare—‘This Warwick was a bug that feared us all”—and ‘the terror by night’ is ‘bugge by nyght’ in old Bibles.”

In France a method of seasoning wood through the agency of electricity is credited with much success. It Is called the Nodon-Brottonnean process. The timber is nehrly immersed in a tank of water containing 10 per cent of borax, 5 of resin and a little carbonate of soda, and rests on a lead plate connected with the positive pole of a dynamo. Another similar plate, lying on the exposed surface of the timber, is connected with the negative pole. Thus a current of electricity can be passed through the wood, from which all the sap appears to be removed, while the borax and resin take its place in the pores. In a few hours the timber is taken out and dried and the seasoning is said to be complete. Modern "orchestras” never revert to the etymological and historical significance of their name. An. “orchestra” was properly a dancing space—the space between the stage and the auditorium, where the ancient Greek cho rus went through its evolutions. Then, lu Roman times, when the chorus had retired to the stage and finally disappeared, the name meant that part of the house where the Senators sat, the front seat, so that Juvenal even speaks of the Senate as “the orchestra.” And then, when the band took up its place before the stage, "orchestra” came to mean what it does to-day. It is not the only word from which the dancing associations have vanished. “Chorus” itself originally meant a dance, and a "ballad” was a dance song, “ballare," meaning in late Latin to dance.