Jasper County Democrat, Volume 1, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 July 1898 — Queer Custom of the Ancients. [ARTICLE]

Queer Custom of the Ancients.

The ancients, in order to enjoy the scent of roses at meals, had an abundance of the fragrant petals rained down upon the guests. Heliogabalus, In his folly, carried the matter so far that the cloud of blossoms he ordered shaken down over one of his banquets actually suffocated some of. his friends. The Romans, during their meals, reclined on cushions stuffed with rose leaves, or made a couch of the leaves themselves. The floor, too, was strewn with the lovely blossoms. Cleopatra, at an enormous expense, procured roses for a feast which she prepared for Antony. They were laid t#o cubits thick on the floor of the banquet-room and nets were then spread over the fragrant bed to give an elastic footing.— Glasgow Mail. The receivers of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad have purchased forty miles of 85-lb. sixty-foot steel rails and will experiment with them on the Pittsburg division and in the Baltimore tunnel. These rails were originally bought for the Columbia and Maryland Electric Railroad, which was designed to parallel the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad between Baltimore and Washington and to become an important factor in business between those points. The project failed and the material which was purchased has been sold. These are the first sixty-foot rails to be used on the B. & O.