Indianapolis Journal, Indianapolis, Marion County, 31 December 1884 — Page 4

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rilE JOURNAL-1885 THE INDIANAPOLIS JOURNAL is recognized everywhere as the leading newspaper o£ Indiana. No proper expense will be spared in the future to maintain this undisputed excellence and to increase the value and interest of the paper. THE JOURNAL was never so weli equipped to serve the public. Our arrangements for the collection of the news of the day are more complete than ever, and we are adding some special features - for 1885 which must enhance the popularity of the paper. THE JOURNAL is the only paper in Indiana that prints regularly the full reports of the Western Associated Press, which are now more comprehensive than ever, covering the whole world. These dispatches are supplemented by the work of special correspondents at all the principal cities and towns of the State and of the country at large. We have a special resident representative at Washington City, who looks af.er the news of the national capital with vigilance, paying particular attention to that which most nearly concerns THE JOURNAL'S constituency. The national administration will soon pass into the control of the Democratic party, and the fullest and most reliable intelligence from Washington will be presented in our news columns, free from party bias, impartially, and without restraint. The new State administration takes charge of affairs with the beginning of the new year. The Democratic Legislature will be in session. The Journal will pay unusual attention to the daily presentation of such a report of its doings that any citizen of the State may know all that is going on affecting the public interests, accompanied with such comment as may he needed to explain tho possible political, social and economic effects of the proposed legislation. Editorially THE JOURNAL is a Republican paper, believing in the principles and general policy of the Republican party; but it recognizes that the day of blind party organshiplias passed, and it proposes to be perfectly free to criticise and condemn, but in a spirit and with a purpose for good, having a proper regard for personal rights and reputations. The citizen, whatever his political faith, can be assured of seeing in the columns of THE JOURNAL the fullest and fairest presentation of the news, and in its editorial columns such eomment and strictures as will command his respect if they do not meet his approval. It may also be said that THE JOURNAL is published as a FAMILY NEWSPAPER. It recognizes that tho women and the children are to be instructed and entertained. They will always And in its columns matter specially prepared for them, while the paper will be so conducted as to prove a welcome visitor, in the household. The news will be presented in such shape as to minimize tho evil, and its editorial and local columns will be kept free from moral taint. Tho Railroad News of THE JOURNAL is admittedly the freshest, fullest and most accurate printed by any newspaper in the country. SPECIAL FEATURES. By a special arrangement with the authors, the INDIANAPOLIS JOURNAL will begin with the new year the publication of a series of original stories from the pens of the most noted writers in the country, such as W. D. Howells, J. T. Trowbridge, E. P. Roe, T. B. Aldrich, Frank R. Stockton. Mrs. Helen Jackson, Sarah Orne Jewett, and others of equal celebrity. The first story will be entitled “A Symphony in Minor," and is by Hjalmer H. Boyesen, the distinguished Norwegian novelist. It is contemplated to print these stories in the SUNDAY JOURNAL, the first appearance being on the 4th of January proximo. THE SUNDAY JOURNAL is a pronounced success. Its circulation is the largest and best of any Sunday paper printed in Indiana, and at its price of. three cents has made itself the People’s Paper. With the beginning of the year arrangements have been made whereby the SUNDAY JOURNAL will reach many towns and cities to which it has heretofore been impossible to send it. The SUNDAY JOURNALis without a eompetitor in the State in the character and variety of matter its presents its readers. The best writers in the State and the country freely contribute to its columns. The JOURNAL OF MONDAY of each week prints a special report of the sermon of Rev. Dr. Talmage, of the Brooklyn Tabernacle, preached Ihe previous day—which sermon is not published in other papers of the State until the following Bunday. This is only one feature showing the excellence of the Journal's arrangements for th . prompt publication of news. THE INDIANA STATE JOURNAL. (weekly edition) Is the best secular paper published in the State. It is a complete compendium of the news of the week, with special foatures of late and trustworthy market reports, and a department of industrial and agricultural intelligence carefully prepared by an editor of long experience. In these respects THE WEEKLY JOURNAL is superior to any mere agricultural paper, for the field it covers is infinitely more extensive than that which can be occupied by any special class publication. SPECIAL TERMS ire made to agents and canvassers, and for slubhir.g with other papers. For all details address the publishers. RATES OF SUBSCRIPTION. TKKMS INVARIABLY IN ADVANCE —POSTAOK PREPAID BY THK PUBLISHERS. THE DAILY JOURNAL. One year, by mail t $12.00 Ore year. by wail, including Sunday 13.00 Fix months* by mail ...... 0.00 Six months, by mail, including Sunday 6.50 Throe months, by mail 3.00 Three months, by mail, including Sunday 3.25 One month, by mail 1.00 £>ne month, by mail, including Sunday 1.10 Per week, bv carrier .25 THE SUNDAY JOURNAL. Per copy 3 cent*. Dee year, by mail $1.50 THE INDIANA STATE JOURNAL (WEEKLY EDITION.) One year Less than one year and over three months, 10c per month. No subscription taken for less than three fionths. In clubs of five or over, agents will take yearly subscriptions at sl, and retain 10 per caul, for their work Address JNO. C. NRW & SON. Publishers The Journal, Indianapolis, ind. ■in i ■ in ii i nun ■ New Year’s Calls. Ladies who in-tend to entertain friends on New Years day will oblige the Journal by sending notice to that affect to the counting room, not later than noon to day. The Journal of to morrow morning will publish in alphabetical order the names of thoso who will “receive.” Ladies will please give the names of thoso who frill assist in entertaining callers.

THE DAILY JOURNAL. BY JNO. C. NEW Sc SON. DECEMBER 31, 1884. TTTE INDIANAPOT.TS JOURNAL Can be found at the following places; LONDON—American Exchange iu Europe, 440 Strand. PARlS—American Exchange in Pi. /is, 35 Boulevard des Capucinea. NEW YORK—St. Nicholas and Windsor Hotels. CHICAGO—PaImer House. CINCINNATI—J. R Hawley Sc Cos., 154 Vine Street LOrTSVTLLH—G. T. Hearing, northwest corner Third and Jefferson streets. ST. LOUTS—Union News Company, Union Depot and Southern Hotel Mu. Watterson has an idea —an idea that it cannot stand up before another idea for one round. What kind of country would we have should iho Kentucky idea prevail? All in favor of the adoption of the Kentucky idea say “aye.’’ The “noes” have it, unanimously. If Mr. Vanderbilt suffers from sleeplessness and a poor appetite, as is said, he might try generosity as a remedy. A diminished eagerness to exact the pound of flesh from General Grant might, for instance, be productive of at least one night’s sound sleep. Tiie Democratic papers are reprinting the history of the Democratic efforts at Chicago to defeat Mr. Cleveland’s nomination, in which Bayard, Lamar and other prominent leaders of the party took part. Strangely enough, they omit the name of Mr. Hendricks, who was not only in the conspiracy, but was the man selected by the conspirators to rally around as the anybody-to-beat-Cleveland. That the scheme was a sickly failure was not Mr. Hendricks’s fault. The Rev. Heber Newton says his sermon of last week was entirely misunderstood. Instead of expressing doubts as to the sanity of Christ, he had endeavored to prove conclusively that the Master was of sound mind and judgment. If the Rev. Newton explains much further, his last state will be worse than his first. An attempt to vindicate the conduct of Christ is sufficiently conclusive proof to many minds that one clergyman has mistaken his calling. When Mr. John McLean says, "if Mr. Cleveland is as shrewd a man as I give him credit for being, he will avoid Ohio in making up bis Cabinet, because there is such an entanglement in the party there,” he takes a curious way to make himself solid with his party. If all the Democratic factions in the State are ignored, as suggested, the result may be to unite the party, it is true; but the common purpose which animates them will be to destroy the Enquirer’s editor. When Mr. Hendricks remarks to the colored brother that, being free and equal with the white man iu respect to civil and political rights, he “must now make his own contest for position and power,” does he mean that he must meet shotgun with shotgun? It hardly seems possible the Indiana man of peace would advocate a course so opposed to Southern usages, but it is not impossible that the colored brother will so construe the advice. Perhaps Mr. Hendricks had better rise and explain while there is yet time. Mu. Hendricks’s letter, in which he declares himself the great original friend and emancipator of the colored race, has evoked the contemptuous criticism of the press of the country, which knows his record, as presented in the Journal yesterday. The New York Tribune closes an editorial by saying: "Mr. Hendricks himself is on record as having used the most violent and unreasonable language in regard to these same amendments, and if it is possible for a man like him to blush for anything, it must make him blush at present to be compelled to refer to these same amendments, which be denounced beyond all reason and decency, as the only reliable guarantee for the rights of six millions of American citizens.” mmmm The New York Times is moved to object to the way negroes are discriminated against iu the South. At Raleigh, N. C., three negroes were lynched recently because they burglarized a store about the same time that two young white men were caught in the act of committing exactly the same kind of crime. They were discharged without examination and no reconi was made of their arrest. The favoritism shown was iufamous. But it is absurdly inconsistent for the Times to pretend such consuming interest in the black man of the South. It has but finished a campaign in which it did its utmost to put him into tho hands of that party that has whipped and strangled, beaten and shot black men for a hundred years. The Times, in common with other goody-goody mugwump papers, has helped put back the hands on the clock of Southern civilization. The Courier-Journal think* Randall has already met his Dr. Bureliard in the person of John E. Green, president of the Louisville Board of Trade. The former tripped Blaine on three R's, and Mr. Green’s faux pas was in declaring that the country bad survived “the dreadful malady of State’s rights,” the words quoted being the hote noire that haunts the dreams of Mr. Watterson. It is remarkable that at this late day and date an intelligent, sober-minded editor can be so foolish as to imagine that the question of State's rights, in the sense used by Mr. Green, is not as dead as the traditional mackerel. If not, it ought to be. Mr. Watterson will hardly go the length of declaring that States have the right

THE INDIANAPOLIS JOURNAL, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1884.

to withdraw from the Union. This is doubtless what Mr. Green referred to. No wonder Mr. Randall's progress is impeded. If Mr. Watterson is of opinion that the right to secede is still alive, he doubtless fears that Randall may preach a little wholesome loyalty. The Louisville -editor Las chosen a bad time in which to reproclaim the dogma of “State’s rights,” for Cleveland is now elected and the Southern States have signified their willingness “to come back to our place in the Nation.” LIGHT IN DARK PLACES. Mr. Randall’s tour through the South was begun under very favorable auspices. His reception at Louisville was more cordial than could have been expected, considering Mr. Watterson’s intemperate tirade against him and the doctrine he seeks to proclaim to the people of that region. The South is now in its period of transition, from the old to the new. Indications are that the South is on the point of dissolving its ancient solidity, that the ice of sectional prejudice is beginning to thaw under the warming influence of community of interests. The Atlanta of to-day, the Chattanooga and Birmingham, and a dozen or more such cities of thrift and enterprise, have been quickened and built np under the incentive given by the Republican policy of protection, and are no more like the Southern towns of before the war than an Asbantee village is like a livo American city, A change has come over the spirit of the South's dream; or, its long dream of dolce far niente is at an end. The slothfulness that always attends human slavery is giving way to the energy characteristic of the North, Prejudice barred out from the South the South's best friends. If now the life-giving principles of Republicanism—which have done so much for the North, and would have done even more, proportionately, for the South had it been permitted—are to be at last carried into and throughout the South by a Democrat. It is well enough, perhaps, and it is not to bo wondered at that Mr. Watterson should writhe under the torture thus inflicted. Mr. Randall is going into the South, and is going to be heard by the new South. If his doctrines are those of Republicanism, so much the worse for Democracy. The solid South cannot always hold out against the logic of the inevitable. The success of the Democratic party in the last election must compel the South to talk of something else than keeping the South solid. With the Democratic party responsible for the conduct of public affairs, the South will naturally endeavor to improve on Democratic methods. This will be specially true if the Democratic idea of progressive free trade be made the policy of the country. Tho inevitable paralysis of business and still further reduction of wages would set the new South to thinking seriously, and the result would be to free it from its cast-iron prejudice. Mr. Randall's visit through the South is an omen of good results. That a leading and influential Democrat, has the courage to defy the few self-appointed whippers-in of his party, and to not only believe in sound business principles, but to go forth to proolaim them, betokens the delivory of the Democratic solid South from the thraldom of partisan prejudice. The business interests of Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama are exactly the same as those of Pennsylvania and Ohio, and what is healthful for those great States is excellent for all. If Mr. Randall can arouse the men of his party in that region to the fact that it is incomparably bettor and wiser to build up manufactures than to whip, threaten and murder in order to the promotion of any party to political ascendency, bis mission will not have been in vain. It was a great triumph for him at Louisville. Despite the inhospitable attempt to keep him away, he not only went there, but was received with evident favor. If so much success in Kentucky—a State petrified in political ignorance and iilibendity —what, may not be expected in Tennessee, and in those portions of Georgia and Alabama where shotguns are not more popular- than looms? The men who own the iron mills at Chattanooga and Birmingham, the cotton mills at Atlanta and elsewhere, and the hundreds and thousands of men and women who have found employment in them, will welcome the man of ideas, coming as he does from a State rich because of its manufactures, and despite its mountainous character. Mr. Watterson, impressed with the idea of the inevitable outcome of Mr. Randall's missionary tour, would fain keep him out of the sacred confines of the South, but be cannot The Louisville exposition, supplemented and surpassed now by the groat industrial exposition at New Orleans, has only helped pave the way for the deliverance of the South. The Democratic party can no longer count on it? solidity unless it serves its interests. The margin in Tennessee is already uncomfortably narrow. Four years from now it will be wiped out if the Democratic party is ruled by men like Watterson, Hurd, Carlisle and Morrison. Mr. Randall is on his way to put the handwriting on the wall. _______________ Mr. Randall’s safe and triumphant tour through the solid South will be a complete refutation of the foolish notion that Republican doctrines cannot be expressed in that section of the country with safety.—Chicago Times. The prejudice has been not so much against Republican doctrines as against the party that iB not Democratic. On an issue between Republican and Democratic ideas, and with a fair election, Tennessee, North Carolina, West Virginia, Louisiana, and probably Alabama, would have returned Republican majorities in November last. Mr, Randall’s ideas of pro-

tection are undoubtedly Republican, and if he succeed in promulgating them in places not open to Republicans, the result can be but good. The term of Police Commissioner Frenzel is about to expire, and the State officers will meet to-morrow to name his successor. It seems to be the general impression that there will be no opposition to him, but that Mr. Frenzel will be re-elected for the ensuing three years. Mr. Frenzel is one of the worst specimens of misdirected energy we knew of. He has fine executive ability and great force of character. By means of these he has practically made himself the autocrat of the Board. The other .members are respectable and conservative nobodies, either unable or unwilling to precipitate a conflict with their impetuous and imperious colleague; and, so it comes that the police force is thoroughly dominated by Mr. Frenzel, and its entire power turned from the duty of executing the law in the interest of good order and public morals, into the work of a partisan machine, and the ser vant of a law-defying and law-breaking body of men. Every citizen and tax payer of Indianapolis, who cares a sou for the good name of the city, for the supremacy of law, the repression of disorder, and the reduction of the burdens of taxation, knows that the police administration is a farce and a disgrace. It is a travesty on justice, a shame to the honorable men who have taken oaths to adminster the trust, and a positive injury and curse to the prosperity of the city. Instead of Mr. Frenzel being re-elected, he should be instantaneously removed from office; and he would be, were it not for the fact that the Democratic, party is in active and open leaerue with the saloon orliquor men, and that there are not a few Republicans whose knees quake like Belshazzar's whenever an order is sent out from a saloon, reeking with the fumes of whisky. Mr. Malott, at least, could have well afforded, for his own reputation and for the good of the Republican party he is on the board to represent, to have protested long ago against such prostitution of the police power that it has been mado the protector of law-breakers instead of a terror to evildoers. There is nothing but weakness and disaster in studied and persistent winking at the violation of law. The political party that thinks in that direction lies success will waken some time to find it has bartered away the permanent respect of the people for a bauble of temporary triumph. There is nothing truer in politics, as iu morals, than this. He who most deserves success finally achieves it, and when it is achieved it is worth something. We presume, of course, that Mr. Frenzel will be re-elected, to continue a3 the servant of law-breakers; but it is to be hoped that Governor Porter, as the representative of the lawabiding elements of the community, will have the courage and the conscience—and he has both in a large degree—to cast his ballot against the further degradation of the law and of the police authority of the State. We give a few choice samples of the fraternal greeting extended to Mr. Randall by bis Democratic friend and brother, Mr. Henri Watterson, of the Courier-Journal: “Mr. Randall's tour is a job. It is the laying of a train to confuse or divide the masses of the people by various false lights in order that the solid squadrons of Protection, mounted and mailed, booted and spurred, may pass through the breach and ride down the unequipped, undisciplined and ill-officered raw militia, rough shod. The Democrat who can not see this as plain as daylight would not be able to get out of the way of a funeral procession.” “When the time comes for a separation of the sheep and the goats, the noodles and the poodles who are now licking the feet of Mr. Randall will be found seeking shelter of the wolf of monopoly, known as the Republican party.” “This Randall crusade is a menace to your progress and prosperity. He comes cloaked as a Democrat, but he speaks as a Republican, and his fallacious reasoning, his uncertain ‘facts/ his lame and impotent conclusions, show that he is a Pennsylvanian before he is an American; that ho is laboring to perpetuate a system which, if maintained, will put the people of the West and South under the iron heel of a Pennsylvania despotism.” “There was not the least obligation on the part of Mr. Watterson to slobber over Mr. Randall if he was not so minded. In treating him as an enemy, and not as a friend, the Courier-Journal exercised the same right exercised by those who entertain him. Time will show whether we have or have not overstepped the mark of our duty in refusing to be seduced into a weak acceptance of a false issue of hospitality and courtesy, behind which lurked a deadly intent and an insolent spirit.” The Republican court-house ring built the temple of justice. If any vaults had been put in it the rings could not steal the ballots from time to time and manipulate them in the interests of the Republican candidates. They ave stored away in an upper room, with an open transom over the door, so as not to give the ballot burglar any trouble. If there were vaults to secure the tickets the poor burglar might fail to get them, or he might get caught, which would be a very sad affair.—Sentinel. The judge of the Criminal Court is a Democrat. The grand jury is under Ills control. If Judge Norton has moved a finger toward the discovery and indictment of the scoundrels who stole the ballots, we have not heard of it. If be will do so he shall have tho fullest ami heartiest support of the Journal, which has time and again asked for some effort to be made to find out tho perpetrators of this crime. The only parties to be benefited by its commission were Democrats. Is that the reason a Democratic Criminal Court allows such a crime to be committed under its very nose, and pass it unnoticed? “Quincy” Parker# Colonel Francis W. Parker, who lectured before the State teachers, yesterday, has had a somewhat checkered caroer. His birth fell iu New Hampshire in 1837, of a line of scholars and teachers. His father dying, he was hound to a farmer from his eighth to his thirteenth year, when he struggled on unaided, working and going to school alternately until his seventeenth year, when he obtained hi* first school at sls

per month. Asa teacher his success was assured, and he was sought as the village schoelmaster in various New England towns until 1859, when he received a call as principal of the schools of Carrollton, 111., teaching there until the spring of 1861. Mr. Parker then enlisted as a private in tho Fourth New Hampshire, and fought throughout the war, becoming brevet-colonel. He was wounded in the throat and chin at the battle of Deep Bottom, August, 1864, and was taken prisoner at Magnolia, but released just as peace was declared, when, with the remnant of his regiment, he was mustered out of service in New Hampshire, August, 1865. He at once became principal of tho Manchester, N. H., schools, and in 1869 was made principal of one of the district schools of Dayton, 0., then principal of its normal school, and later assistant superintendent. Colonel Parker was always antagonizing the time-honored traditions of his brother pedagogues, and finally sought confirmation for his educational crotchets by visiting Germany in 1872, entering King William’s University, at Berlin, for a two years’ course in philosophy, history and pedagogics. He returned eager to pnt his now fully incubated and fledged views into practice, and was at once selected by the Quincy, Mass., school committee as superintendent, they having made the startling discovery that “after eight years’ attendance in the public schools, the children could neither write with facility, nor read fluently, nor speak nor spell their own innguage perfectly.” Their reported conclusion was, that the whole existing system was wrong—a system from which the life had gone out. The school year had "become one long period of diffusion and cram, and 6inatter had become the order of the day. ” After five years’ work, Colonel Parker’s com mittee reported that “in these years Colonel Parker has transformed our public schools. He found them machines and left them living organisms; drill gave way to growth, and the weary prison became a pleasure house.” Charles Francis Adams, jr., in liis paper on the “New Departure in the Common Schools of Quincy,” said: “Tho revolution was all pervad ing. Nothing escaped his influence; it began with the alphabet and extended into the latest effort of the grammar-school course.” Heralded and advocated by Mr. Adams, as well as by the good work he had no doubt done, Colonel Parker was called in 1880 as one of the supervisors of the Boston schools, where he was employed for two years and until called to the principalship of the Cook County Normal School at Englewood, Chicago, which he accepted, Jan. 1, 1883, for three years, .at a salary of $5,060 a year. This school was thoroughly well organized, and under Principal Wentworth had for twelve years done some of the best academic and pedagogic work accomplished by any normal school in the Northwest. Here ho has been visited by hundreds of teachers, curious to see what was the nature of the new pedagogic light. Many teachers from Indianapolis have visited him, including Professor Bell, Miss Cropsey and others, all of whom have proved rather conservative than enthusiastic in their opinions. Indeed, it may be said that Colonel Parker is looked upon with a considerable degree of suspicion by our city supervisory force, as he is reported to have stolen his lightning from tho altar erected by Professor Shortridge when city superintendent, and at the time Colonel Parker was at Dayton. But whatever there was worth stealing in our city system under Professor Shortridge, the visitor to Colonel Parker's schools would see little in common between the two “systems” now; for the fact is that Colonel Parker has no discoverable or recognized “system," and rather prides himself upon the lack of it. To the cnsual visitor he simply carries the impression of a “manteaching,” and terribly in earnest in all that he does. Tall, portly, kind, genial and magnetic, he is a perfect magazine of physical and psychical energy, He is a good livor, good joker, good sleeper, and good teacher. He is “boss or nothing” where he is, and is solid in Chicago with the clubs and the newspaper men, particularly with Mr. Ham, of the Tribune, which paper, queerly enough, never discovered the Normal School of Cook County until Colonel Parker came on deck, but now never lacks editorial space to do honor to Colonel Parker and the “new system.” Old Chicago schoolmen look askance, and reserve their opinion. They are disposed to give Colonel Parker what he asks, and what he has got—a fair oliance. Colonel Parker has no written word save a small book of rambling, hut suggestive, “talks” ou teaching, published by a New York house, and widely read by tho curious and those who think if you read a man’s book you have caught his spirit. Colonel Parker's strength is shown in the subject of his address before our teachers. He teaches to do by doing. His school is a model of disorder; he despises per cents, and examinations, and takes 1 ‘mental grasp” as the test of power; lie promotes a child the very day he thinks it can do the work of the next grade. He assigns no set of lessons in pedagogics, but makes his senior class do and thinn; each of the senior teachers teacli the three R's every day for a year before they graduate and under his eye. He is omnipresent, always cheerful and witty, despises clap-trap, textbooks and all cram work—does every day the work that an ordinary thin-waisted and dyspeptic pedagoguo requires a week to do, and by night is tired out, and so are his pupils, and everything is diemissed until the next day. There is nothing in Col. Parker's system which can he transported into other schools, except his boundless energy and spirit Whoever copies after him servilely is hound to fail, but those who catch his spirit, energy, kindness of heart, and carnostness of conviction will do well. That ho has found any easy road to lead children into good habits of study, and a fair knowledge of nature and of men, without haid work on the part of both teacher and pupils, Col. Parker takes every pains to deny. His only effort is to make the school conform to nature, and with little children make culture and pleasure go hand in hand. Local politicians in Massachusetts have encountered a difficulty of anew sort in the history of politics. One provision of anew election law recites that at municipal elections the names of all the candidates in one party shall be designated upon a single ticket. A recent law also provides that women may vote at town elections for school committeemon, but for no other officials. The confiding statesmen who framed the first named regulation depended, of course, upon the honesty of the female voter, and trusted implicitly that sho would, bofore depositing the fateful slip of paper in the box, carefully strike out the names of those candidates for whom she had no right to cast a ballot. The question now asked by base and suspicious “workers” who are familiar with the numerous frauds practiced by their own sex, is “Will she really do it? Will she erase the names of the men who want to be town clork, treasurer, tax collector and assessor, when, perhaps, she also wishes them to succeed,

and confine herself strictly toiler legalpri vilegesl Or, under the stress of temptation, will she boldly deposit the straight ticket! These debased me* do not reflect that the mission of the enfranchised woman is “to purify politics," or, at all events, do not put much faith in the claim, an & hence, are agitated over the uncertainty whieb hangs about the result of coming elections. To make a guess at what a lot of determined women, armed with even a limited right of suffrage, will do, is harder than the solving of a fifteen puzzle. The Russian Prince Mestchersky can give th* Mormons points in the way of defending thoif polygamous conduct An officer in the Russia* army, who had married three women in less thaa three years, was tried on a charge of polygamy. Prince Mestchersky defended the prisoner, and, in an eloquent speech, invoked the example of Ivan, the terrible, and other celebrated historic characters, to prove that a man may rightly have several wives at the same time. The great stroke, however, lay in a citation of the Russia* law, which, though it declares bigamy to be C crime, is silent as to polygamy. On this teci* nicality the offender escaped, a verdict of not guilty being rendered, and he quitted tho court amid the plaudits of the audience, with the on* wife who had refused to testify against him clinging to his arm. The prudent man is he who makes sure that all is solid before venturing. There have been so many recalcitrations on the part of marriageable women, old and young, kicking out of th* harness, as it were, at the very moment of hitching, that he only is wise who waits until after the ceremony has made all air-tigut. Such man is \Y. H. Durand, of Toronto. He stopped with a lady at a Boston hotel, and started K register, when lie wrote, “W. H. Durand an® —” and then stopped. Pressed to finish th* entry, he said he would in an hour. The couple then went out into the city. In about an hour he returned, and added the word “wife” to th* register. We recommend his careful deliberation to others contemplating matrimony. The ex-liev. Mr. Miln is proving conclusively that a preacher can do some things as well a* ofliers. He is playing to crowded houses in Denver, where his Hamlet gives entire satisfaction, being, according to tho papers, more lik* the creation which Shakspeare has labeled Hamlet than is the interpretation of Booth. As th* town which sends Tabors to the United State# Senate is known to have been intimately acquainted with the original Hamlet, this seem* to settle a matter over which there has been * difference of opinion elsewhere. A Pennsylvania man claims to have discovered an explosive much more powerful than nitre-glycerine, and has named it nitro-petrolena. He is now out in the mountains somwhere practicing with it and putting it through its various paces. He evidently is a man in love with his fellow-men, for he says that he does "not wan* his exact location known, so that he may not be interrupted during the week or two that he may remain.” Bless his innocent heart, nobody will care to hunt him up as long as he is loaded tc the guards with his pet discovery. What has become of the man who declared that the Egyptian obelisk was disintegrating s® fast that the ground about it was literally thick with dust composed of minute particles of itl Prof. Doremus says the monolith will gradually wear away, but that it will take 500 years to efface the inscriptions in that way. Mrs. Edward Patterson, of Baltimore —pretty, of course—has just eloped with ft Salvatlo* Army loafer, old and ugly as the sin he pretended to hate. Still, a woman is oxcusable foe any reasonable folly in attempting to get away from Baltimore. Hot water has taken the place of cold tea M the popular congressional drink. This Is no% surprising. Hot water properly seasoned is f) very cheering cup. To the Editor of the Indiananolis Journal: Where may I obtain anythiug on “The Washington monument,” what number of the Journal had anything on that subject? A Reader. Bedford, Ind., Dec. 2& Iu the .Journal of Sunday, Dec. 7, inrtant ABOUT PEOPLE AND THINGS. Mark Twain and his wife are said to have, jointly, more than $1,000,000, Miss Maud Howe writes from New Orleans that men, women and children all about her, at tho exhibition, “cried real tears” when tho band struck up will the “Star Spangled Banner-” Mrs. Fiklde, of SwatoD, China, cross-examined tea Chinese women belonging to a Bible class. They had been heathens, and recently converted, and they admitted that among them they had ixuvdo away witti seventy children. Victor Hugo went to see the completed statue of Liberty Enlightening the World, by M. Bartholdi, and smiled with gratification when a bystander, seeiag the poet and the statue facing each other, exclaimed: “Behold! Two giants are regarding each other!” There are 80,000 widows in India from three to five years of age who will never again be married. la that country as soon as a child is born a match Isl mado by the parents. If the boy dies the girl becomes a widow, and must wear mourning for her inp tended as long as she lives. A gentleman was one day relating to-a Quaker % tale of deep distress, and concluded by saying: “C could not but feel for him.” “Verily, friend,"replied the Quaker, “thou did’st right in that, thou did'st feel for thy neighbor; but did'st thou feel in the right place—did'st thou feel in thy pocket?” The Queen of Holland walks daily on the publio streets. She dresses in sombre garments, and is accompanied by only one attendant, a lady. It is to hoped that her Majesty and the lady do not ocouifi both the crossings in getting from one side to the other, as is done by royal American females when they go out. Mary Anderson is to make a tour of America a year from this winter. Contracts with tho theater* are now being made. A curious feature of the project is that her agent demands a loan of SSOO to $5,000 from each local manager, to be paid out of the receipts, but partially secured against the breaking of the engagement by an insurance policy on the actress'* life. JUST now ?t seems to boa fancy among fashionable people to use owls—stuffed owls—as ornaments to set on the top of bookcases or other suitable places. Common owls stuffed sell from $3 to $8 each, white owi* at sls to S2O. A dealer iu Hudson street says< “I have been cleaued out of owls entirely, the demand has been so large of lato, and I have several unfilled orders from Chicago still on hand.” Weller is dead; the intimate friend whose name Dickens immortalized in “The Pickwick Papers/* Fully styled he was Captain Charles Weller, and he reached the age of eighty-five. “His daughter, Mr*. Thompson,” says the World (London), “is au artlak of some repute; but the celebrity of his granddaughter, Mrs. Butler (Miss Elizabeth Thompsou), was a souro* of great and legitimate pride to the old gentleman.” Travelers out on the red hills, says a California paper, have often shuddered at the sight of horned toads, which arc as numerous as blackbirds. The ugly creatures are as much dreaded as rattlesnake*, but a Chinaman spent all summor and fall gatheriug them. Recently he made a shipment of 2,000 of th* toads to San FraueUco, from which place they will b* sent to China. The toads are there converted into v*--