Jasper Republican, Volume 1, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 January 1875 — ITEMS OF INTEREST. [ARTICLE]

ITEMS OF INTEREST.

Ten million five hundred and sixty thousand is the number of eggs shipped from Pierrepont Manor, N. Y., during the past season to New York city and the Eastern States. There is a happy couple in the First Ward of Syracuse, N. Y. They have thirteen children, the eldest of whom is ten years old. Six pairs of twins are among the number, and the thirteen are girls. “ I can’t say as he went to heaven,’ remarked a Fort Scott citizen of a deceased townsman, “but he paid a bill of eleven years’ standing only the day before he died, and you can judge for yourself.” The New Zealand Government has sent special agents over to England for the purpose of collecting a quantity of small birds of various kinds, and a colony of humble-bees, for introduction into that country. The San Francisco Chronicle dropped into poetry and welcomed King Kalakaua thus:

Hoky, poky, winky, wank, We’ll honor the King if we bnst a bank To give him a welcome due the rank Of the King of the Cannibal Islands. The editor of a journal in Ne"w York thus appeals to the better nature of his delinquent subscribers: “To all those who are in arrears one year or more, who will come forward and pay up, we will give them a first-class obituary notice gratis in case it kills them.” Mrs. ex-Judge Pratt, of San Francisco, sues for divorce and alimony of $1,000,000. If some of the wives of us fellows would only sue us for divorce and that amount, now, get both and marry us again, what a big thing it would be for the family!— St. Louis Republican. The New York Evening Post thinks that horseback riding is very well for those hardened to its use, but for people who have to eat their dinner off the mantelpiece after the exercise, they will find it “an unnatural motion” and exhausting to stamina and vitality. Cheering. —The New York Times says: “It seems to be the general opinion of our tradespeople that a better business has seldom been done at this time of year than that which is now going on. The influences of the holiday season are opening the hearts and pockets of all classes, and for the present stagnation^'n trade has disappeared, we hope not to return.”

Angora, generally celebrated for cats, is a town of Asiatic Turkey, 215 miles from Constantinople. It contains the ruins of ancient Byzantian architecture and Greek and Roman relics. Just at present Angora is in great distress, being upon the point of starvation. The Sultan of Turkey, a monarch not generally credited with charity to his subjects, has contributed SIOO,OOO for the relief of its inhabitants—an act which greatly redounds to his credit.

“ A gentleman, occupied all day, but having some hours of leisure in the evening,” instead of advertising for books to write up, has set up a semi-suburban private patrol, charging his neighbors four dollars a month for watching their premises. When asked whether he did not find it exhausting to work all day and walk round all night he admitted frankly that he only visited his customers once a month and that was to collect. “ But don’t they find you out?” said the querist. “Oh, no,” he replied; “they hear the burglars going round and trying the doors and they think it’s me.” —Chicago Tribune.

There are various ways of obtaining money in this wicked world, and perhaps as agreeable a mode as any is that of abducting heiresses. So thought, at least, Mr. William Timms, of Idebury, Oxon, England, aged fifty-six, as he ran off with Miss Annie Sophia Power Turner, aged fifteen years, daughter of William Power Turner, Esq., of Field Terrace, Bath Road, Worcester, gentleman. A few days elapsed when the anguish of the parents was still further heightened by the receipt of a note asking forgiveness and mentioning casually that the young woman had been married at Dover to William Timms aforesaid. The young lady is the presumptive heiress to a large fortune and the old reprobate now lies in a dungeon awaiting the sentence of the law upon his mercenary and heartless crime.

J. M. Stearns, Jr., in the New York Sun, draws a comparison as to the speed of railroad trains between the present time and that of twenty years ago. He suggests that the difficulty is to be found in the ponderous cars now used in the transportation of passengers. If we wish to travel fast, says the writer, we have got to have small, light, low cars, with basket-work easy chairs, sides of glass, steel frames and low trucks, to bring the center of gravity down as low as possible. These, provided with airbrakes, can be made to roll over the line with a proper locomotive fifty miles to the hour, without any more damage to the permanent way than is occasioned by the pounding of tons on tons of dead weight now dragged after the engine. Such cars should not hold over twenty persons each.

A Paris journal describes a new rifle of novel construction recently invented in that city. According to this account the gun presents nothing remarkable exteriority, but the lock is so arranged that the breech is opened by cocking the piece, and, the charge being introduced, the breech is closed and the gun fired by touching the trigger. The cartridge consists of a hollow leaden cone filled with powder and closed at the base by a piece of cork. At the moment the cartridge is

introduced into the breech the powder escapes by a small hole in the cork, and an imperceptible ball of fulminating powder, which forms the priming, takes its proper position. The triple action of , cocking, loading and firing is thus effected simultaneously, so that a man with but slight experience can fire twenty rounds a minute. The cartridges are stored in an iron tube, which is placed parallel with the barrel, and contains thirty balls, so that the piece may be fired as many times almost without any interval, and without removing the stock from the shoulder, there being nothing to be done but to cock and pull the trigger.