Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 124, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 May 1910 — SOMETHING FOR EVERYBODY [ARTICLE]

SOMETHING FOR EVERYBODY

The cultivated hyacinth la a native Df Persia and Asia Minor. ‘ - ; The most valuable leather belt ever made sold for $5,800. It is 243 feet long, 72 inches wideband three-ply. Any child over 7 can be prosecuted as a criminal in England, but in Germany 12 is the limit of responsibility. Asparagus has been cultivated for more than 2.000 years from- wild varieties found in Natal, Siberia and Persia. * For the second year in succession the Rhodes scholarship for Manitoba has been won by a youth of Icelandic parentage. Joseph T. Thorson is the name of the latest winner. Announcement that airship communication will be started in May ljfi; tween Munich and Oberammergau in Germany recalls the Tact that proposals for an aerial service from Paris to Lyons were made in, 1784, within a year of the first balloon ascent. ♦

Victor Hugo was a good business man. One of his biographers describes him as “the keenest hand imaginable at a bargain, a past master in the art of drawing up contracts and the only author on record who made a fortune out ‘of his books while his publishers lost on them.”

M. Edmond Blanc is looked upon as the real ruler of Monaco. He pays $350,000 a year for the gambling concession he holds and thus provides the greater part of the revenue of the principality, In one respect M. Blanc is disappointed man. He can not gain admission to the French Jockey Club. As a result, It Is said, of the increased spirit duties under the British budget the police have noticed in remote districts of Ireland indications of a revival of illicit distillation of liquor. There has also been a~ consid erable increase, it is reported. In the consumption of spirits of ether as a beverage since the price of whiskey was raised.

In Italy the supply of machine guns is still In }ts infancy. By the end ol the year, however, every infantry regiment and every Alpine battalion is to have one gun for training the men. In the fall/of 1910 a beginning i 3 to he made to give every infantry and cavalry regiment one battery of four and every Alpine battalion one bat tery of two such guns. Men of former ages, unless they lived near the sea or river, had great difficulties gratifying their taste for fish. The great houses had their fish ponds or stews, but sea fish, such as cod, bream, sturgeon herring and sprats were salted, and the excessivs consumption of highly salted fish in the middle ages is said to have produced leprosy. Fish Was also baked in pies to enable it to be carried foi great distances. A piece of railroad construction was recently completed by which the Isof Japan now has a system run ning throughout the full length of the empire. The total length of the line is 1,750 miles and the distance from north to south of the island can now be covered in five days and nights. Ai the close of the fiscal year 1907-8, 4,452 miles of state railroad had been opened for traffic and 455 miles of rail way were controlled by private inter ests.

An orange vender, intent on forcing trade, has been doing a novel business in the residential part of the city foi the last few days. He rings the b«l! and tells the servant who answers that he has a box of oranges to deliver. The box is properly addressed and is said to have come from California. The express charges are usually about 83.50 or $4, and an amount far in excess of the value of the fruit which the box contains. A number of credulous people have been victimized.— New York Tribune.

The Pekin Gazette of recent date gives two rescripts in connection with criminals who “on account of madness” have killed their father and grandfather, respectively. The words are always added in such cases, for the crime of parricide is so heincus that strictly speaking the whole population of the city is responsible; the city walls have to be razed and a new site found elsewhere. In Szechuan province there is a deserted city, vis ible to travelers from the river, where this law was once strictly carried out

One or two developments or the police traffic rules in this city 1b a change in the manner of loading (arts of vegetable and fruit hucksters. The rules compel vehicles coming to a Btop to do so with their right hand or '‘off" wheels next Jhe curb. The peddlers obey the rule, but the leftside* of thelt wagons are built high above the body, so that a tempting array of wares is spread out, sloping toward ihe windows of the houses on that side of the street. ’ The men who run the cars say the new plan increases sales.—New York Tribune.

“More than half of the young men who enter college In the United Stales are physically defective” said Dr. R. Tati MacKenzle, physical director of the University of Pennsylvania gymnasium, in a recent address. “Students are not deformed except in rare instances,” Dr. MacKenzle Continued, “but more than half of them are de-’ fective. Two-thirds of them at least are round-shouldered, 30 per cent incline to flatfootedness, and lateral curvature of the spine, more or less pronounced, is distressingly frequent Cigarette smoking has impaired their wind and to some extent their heart and nerves. The freshman’s carriage is usually far from erect and digestion and eyesight are also apt to De below normal, due to lack of care.”