People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 July 1893 — TO CORRESPOND ENTS. [ARTICLE]

TO CORRESPOND ENTS.

A’! communications for this papershonld be <eeomp». ied by the name of the author; uot necessarily for u Hcation, but at an evidence of good faith on the pSrtof the writer. Write only on one tide of the pape ■. Be particularly careful in riving names and dates to nave the letters and figures plain and distinct. Proper names are often difficult to decipher, because of the careless manner in which they are written.

The Negro Press association devoted a considerable part of its session in Richmond to a discussion of the question whether the word Negro should be spelled with a capital or a small initial letter. Human hair is absolutely the most profitable crop that grows. Five tons of it are annually imported by the merchants of London. The Parisians harvest upward of 200,000 pounds, equal in value to SBO,OOO per annum. An informant of the Brooklyn Standard Union has a kindly word for the mosquito. He declares that its bite ■would be harmless if left alone; it merely sucks the poison from our systems, a real benefit in hot weather. Afteb all the talk about the wonderful speed of electric motors the first electric locomotive, weighing 60,000 pounds, has at last been constructed and is found by actual trial to have a maximum speed of thirty miles an hour. One of the most productive sections of the world is the Russian province of Bessarabia, taken from Turkey in 1878. Its vineyards often yield 300 gallons of wine per acre; the average yield of wheat is 35 bushels and of maize 60 bushels. Thebe are four unique mountains in Lower California, two of alum, one alum and sulphur mixed and one of pure sulphur. It is estimated that in the four peaks named there are 100,000,000 tons of pure alum and 1,000,000 tons of sulphur. An observant drummer says he can readily tell who is the boss on th# farms he passes, the farmer or his wife. If a farm has a large barn and a small house the man is boss, but when there is a fine house and a dilapidated barn you maj’ know that the woman has her own way.

Pbof. C. K. Jenness, of the Leland Stanford university, the sociologist, in order to more thoroughly familiarize himself with tramp life, dressed himself as a tramp and lived among the profession. He w.as, however, quickly detected and forced out of the ranks of the fraternity.

Some time ago an lowa cyclone followed the route of a railroad for several miles, and now there is a theorist on deck who proposes to steer these storms, by means of rails laid and wires strung for the purpose, into open sections of country where they can spend their force without damage. >

With the aid of the great Link telescope astronomers have made the start- ' ling discovery that one of the satellites of Jupiter is double—in other words, that what has heretofore been taken for a single moon is, indeed, two moons, a large and a small one, the lesser slowly revolving around the greater. M. H. De Young has returned to San Francisco to nurse an “idea.” It is proposed to hold a great winter fair in that city which shall draw on the Columbian exposition for its material. It is declared that 12,000 American exhibitors at the World’s fair and 1,000 foreigners have expressed a willingness to ; remove their goods to the Pacific coast, ' provided sufficient money is guaranteed j to insure success. In the horticultural building there is a solid silver filigree model of that structure which cost $35,000, or about one-seventh of the cost of the larger building itself. It weighs 110 pounds, is 11 feet long, 3 feet 3 inches wide and 8 feet 0 inches in height. To build it required the service of 12 men, working 18 hours a day, 13 months. The work was done by the Mexicans, who are the most adept in the filigree art ■ t Seldom is a person so afflicted as the wife of a clerk in the treasury department in Washington. Her husband died a few days ago. The day after he was buried one of her boys broke his leg. On the following day another child broke his arm, and on the third day another child was taken ill with typhoid fever. Her household is turned into a hospital, and she has less than a dozen dollars in her possession. Pbof. Bell thinks the time occupied by inventors in working out the problem of aerial navigation by the usual inflated gas-bags and methods of steering them is wasted. He thinks a feasible means of propelling and directing an air-ship would be by a kind of trolley system where the rod would hang down from the car to the stretched wire, instead of extending upward. He reccommends this idea to Inventors. A COLLECTOB of odds and ends in New York has a remarkable representation of fruit in stone. It is a bunch of grapes carved from amethyst of rich purple, with stem, leaves and tendrils cunningly wrought from malachite, serpentine and jade. A basket is also heaped with apples, peaches, oranges, plums, apricots and raspberries that prove on inspection to be made of malachite, rhodonite, jasper and oddly colored marbles. A YOUNG woman of Portland, Ore., recently went into a trance and did not come out of it for twelve hours. She then related her experience. She said she had journeyed through the unknown world, and saw many acquaintances in the place of punishment, and a few in the haven of reward. Then •he named names,and it caused trouble, for many whom the young woman located in the region of perpetual punishment are at present residents of Portland. Those who were fortunate enough to be seen in the other place are satisfied, and believe in the journey. ' ,