Rensselaer Journal, Volume 11, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 August 1901 — Page 6

FACTS AND OPINIONS

Sullying the Laurels. In approving Mr. Maclay’s history of the Santiago naval battle and indirectly confirming all the bitter things ■which that history says about Admiral Schley, Admiral Sampsofi seems to have imperiled whatever halo of heroism he may have had. For a large number of American citizens, who know little or nothing about navaJ maneuvers, but who have fixed ideas as to ordinary civility and fair play, this is Sampson’s finish. The gravity of the charges made by implication against Admiral Schley by his former superior officer is shown in the following extracts from the third volume of Maclay’s history: “In his report about the coal supply of the vessels under his command, Schley exhibited either a timidity amounting to absolute cowardice or a prevarication of facts that was intrinsically falsehood.” (Vol. in., p. 296.) “Schley on May 28, 1898, * * * turned in caitiff flight from the danger spot towards which duty, honor, and the whole American people were most earnestly urging him. Viewed in whatever light it inay be, the foregoing dispatch cannot be characterized otherwise than as being without exception, the most humiliating, cowardly and lamentable report ever penned by an American naval officer.” (Vol. III.; p. 298.) " "Let the Texas take care of herself,’ was the heartless reply, and the Shameful spectacle of an American warship, supported by a force superior to the enemy's—a warship whose commander had expended such vast quantities of ammunition in target practice in the presence of a fashionable hotel at Hampton Roads in order to meet a worthy so turning tall and running away was presented.’.’ (Vol. TIL, p. 364.) “Schley was perfectly willing to avoid blanketing the fire of the American warships, even at the risk of a disastrous collision with the Texas, so long as he could escape getting too close to danger. * • • Schley’s contribution to naval strategy, as too plainly shown by his conduct throughout this campaign, was ‘Avoid your enemy as long as possible, and, if he makes for you, run.’ ” (Vol. 11l n 365.) The public is thoroughly sick of this controversy, but the latest incident more than anything else which has gone before will tend to fix upon Ad..miral Sampson the less creditable part in the squabble. Schley, at least, has not openly countenanced vituperation. —Chicago Daily News.

Health and Intellect.

It is somewhat surprising that the gentlemen who make a study of pedagogics should attach so /much Importance to the discovery that certain normal school students having a high physical development did not pass the test for mental qualifications by a better average than that of 72 marks out of 100. It would appear that there has 'been an effort to deduce from the fact the conclusion that a condition of fine .physical health is detrimental to the 'best mental development. Taking the converse of this proposition, the student who was in the poorest physical trim ought to be the brightest. In reality the fact that 320 applicants for cadetships in the public schools were exceptionally healthy in body and yet did not meet the examination tests very brilliantly means nothing. The conditions for a fair test, were it possble to establish them, would be to take a body of students of inferior physique, train them into fine bodily condition and submit them to mental tests both before and after their physical regeneration.

Perjury in the Courts.

Considerable attention has been attracted by the rather sensational statement recently made by the president of the lowa Bar Association, Mr. J. J. McCarthy, in relation to the amount of perjured testimony in our courts Was his indictmentment too sweeping, his conclusion too pessimistic? ExJudge John Barton Payne of Chicago is disposed to subscribe to Mr. McCarthy’s arraignment. Perjury, in the technical sense in which the term is used in legal text-books is not perhaps as common as the lowa lawyer asserts it is, but ex-Judge Payne admits that “false swearing does prevail to an alarming extent.” He blames both the attorneys and the judges for this grave state of affairs—the latter for "indifference, apathy, sheer unwillingness to probe to the bottom of a case on their own responsibility.”

Nobody Seew Escape.

The latest invention in Are escapes for residences is being put into one of the houses building in Fifth avenue, New York. The casual observer knows nothing About it, for it is in the middle of the house. A contractor thus describes it: "We are building a sheet iron shaft in the center of the house from the top floor to the basement The walls are half an inch thick and so are the doors which open on each floor. There is a spiral stairway of Iron, which can be reached from- any floor. From the basement a tunnel of iron runs out to the street The whole thing is absolutely fireproof and the invention is going to take where the builders have plenty of money and do not want to spoil the outward appearance of the bouse.”

THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER.

It Furnishes Many Kxamples of tlio Mlglit of Small Things. "I have been very much impressed with the importance of small things in late years,” said an old steamboat man, “and the Mississippi River has furnished me some rather good exam.ples. I can understand now why Caesar looked out upon the Nile in such curious amazement and offered all that he stood for to the Egyptian priest if he would show him the source of that wonderful river. But the antics of the Nile look like insignificant nothings to me when compared with the strange conduct of the stream that pozes out of the earth at Itasca and hurries on its murky and devious way toward the Gulf of Mexico. Towns along the Mississippi that stood right on the bank of the river have been isolated even in toy day, and there are, too, all along the course of the stream little empires in view where the river has encroached upon small centres of population, finally eating the earth away and forcing the inhabitants to seek other quarters. There are hundreds of these places that are almost forgotten now even by the men who are constantly on the river. “What brings about these violent changes along the banks of the river? Not floods. It Is Just the ordinary doings of the stream. In the first place the current of the Mississippi is wonderfully swift, and the sediment deposited at any point where resistance to the flow is offered is very great. Tie a string to the neck of a bottle and sink it with the mouth of the bottle up and open. “If held in one place where the flow Is normal in an extremely short period of time the bottle will fill with sediment. Stretch a net across the river, a net so finely woven tha,t nothing but the pure water of the river can pass through, and on account of the rapidity of the flow and the greatness of the deposit of sediment, almost in a twinkling the river would be dammed at that point Experts have admitted this. This brings me to the point of my narrative. “The flow of currents Is frequently Interfered with by sunken boats, perhaps by a Jackstaff sticking up above the surface. The current is diverted by degrees, generally touching the far side of the stream a mile from the point where It again meets resistance, and immediately begins the building of a sandbar. I have seen a thousand examples of this sort during my career on the river, and I have known of Instances where the root of a tree or the mere twig of a willow have brought about similar conditions. These things have tended to make a riddle out of the river; yet the stream after a while will be handled so as to undo all that it has accomplished in this way.”— New Orleans Times-Democrat

What Are the Bounds of Creation

It may occur to some persons that we cannot conceive of an end of space, and it is hardly likely that infinite space would exist without matter; and hence that the universe necessarily is infinite, says T. J. J. See in the Atlantic. This argument proceeds upon the supposition that we can conceive all things which exist—an admission hardly warranted by experience. For as we can conceive of many things which do not exist, so also there may exist many things of which we can have no clear conception; as, for example, a fourth dimension to space, or a boundary to the universe. Thus while our senses conceive space to be endless, it does not follow that the universe is in reality of infinite extent; much less can the absence of an empyrean prove that the cosmos is finite, even to our experience; for this effect may be due to dust in space, or the uniform absorption of light by the ether. In the exploration of the sidereal heavens it is found that the more powerful the telescope the more stars are disclosed, and hence the practical indications are that in most directions the sidereal system extends on indefinitely. But the possible uniform extinction of light due to the imperfect elasticity of the luminiferous ether, and-the undoubted absorption of light by dark bodies widely diffused in space, seem to forever preclude a definite answer to tho question of the bounds of creation.

The Act of Dying.

The popular idea that the act of dying is a painful'process often causes a feai .1 death. But death from even the most painful mortal diseases is usually preceded by a period of cessation fropa suffering and partial or complete insensibility, resembling falling asleep, or the pleasant gradual unconsciousness caused by an anaesthetic. The common phrase ‘'death agony” is not warranted by what occurs in natural death, which is a complete relief from all pain. When death is owing to heart failure or syncope it is sudden and painless—perhaps pleasant. Death by hanging, there is reason to believe, is attended by a voluptuous spagm. Death by decapitation or electricity is only a momentary shock, hardly felt. Death by poisoning varies in painfulness according to the poison employed. Opium and other narcotics probably give a painless, perhaps a pleasant, dreamful death. Hemlock, as we know from the acoount of the death of Socrates, causes gradual insensibility, from below upward. On the other hand, arsenic, strychnine, carbolic and miners al acids, corrosive sublimate, tartar emetic, and other metallic poisons inflict slow and torturing death. Prussic acid, and cyanide of potassium cause quick and painful death.—The Humanitarian. Thirty years since newspapers were not known in Japan. Now there are over 700 periodicals.

TRIVMPHS OVER AIR.

The problem of aerial navigation has at last been solved. It is unquestionably epoch-making news that has been cabled from Paris, France, describing M. Santos-Dumont’s aerial voyage around the Eiffel tower and over the suburbs of Paris. Man’s triumph over the paths of the air has come with this accomplishment. The gifted Brazilian’s performances were as much in advance of Count Zeppelin’s and other previous accomplishments as the latter surpassed ordinary ballooning. Salt* Agaln.t Wind. M. Santos-Dumont left St. Cloud in his new airship, circulated around the

COURSE TAKEN BY THE AIRSHIP IN ITS FLIGHT.

Eiffel tower, and wept back nearly to the starting point, a distance of ten miles, in forty minutes. But unfortunately when near home his motor failed him and he was obliged to rip his silken balloon to hasten descent and avoid injury. Notwithstanding this accident M. Santos-Dumont’s experiment was a success in that the balloon navigated against tae wind for the first time in the history of airship construction. One or two minor defects which can be easily remedied in a few hours prevented the complete carrying out of the tests, but It is safe to prophesy that within a month M. Santos-Dumont’s invention will hold as complete dominion over the air as a ship does over the sea;

Paul Kruger’s Wife.

To his wife, who died in Pretoria a few days ago. President Kruger of the Transvaal attributed much of his success in the political life of the South African republic. Mrs. Kruger was compared in this respect to the wife of the late Prince Bismarck. Like Mrs. Bismarck, she remained modestly in the background, and comparatively little is known about her. That the influence of “Tante Sante”'aver the obstinate, unyielding Oom Paul was great is, however, known, and while Mrs. Kruger seemed to take little interest in politics, it is said her hus-

was not without distinguished ancestry. Little is known, however, about the family tree. When Mr. and Mrs. Kruger, in 1892, entered the two-story cottage in Pretoria which was the executive mansion of the Transvaal, they did not change their mode of life, and the simple, unpretentious housekeeping which they had followed theretofore was continued. It was only within the last few years, and then only because of her great age, that Mrs. Kruger took servants into the house. Up to four years ago she did all the housework herself, although her hus-

M. Santos-Dumont’B immediate object has been to win the prize of 100,000 francs offered a year ago by M. Deutsch, the Rouen petroleum refiner. The conditions required that a start be made in the neighborhood of St. Cloud, that the Eiffel tower be circled three times, and that the airship then return to its starting place at an average sped of not less than thirteen miles an hour. More than one Inventor has been struggling under this incentive. Hence M. Santos-Dumont has been working at the greatest speed lest he be forestalled, and he undertook the test at the earlist moment. He has already discovered several possible Improvements which will increase the mobility and safety of the airship. The Deutsch prize amounts to $20,000 in United States money. Around th« Tower* * M. Santos-Dumont reached the Eiffel tower at 7 o’clock in the morning. His balloon was being propelled through the atmosphere apparently with ease and greater grace than a

steam yacht plows the seas. M. San-tos-Dumont sat in the forward part of the car handling the lines which controlled the "engine and the rudder. The balloon glided along, toward the Eiffel tower, its coat reflecting the beams of the early sun, apparently obeying the will of the steerer willingly. Nearing the tower on the south side the baloon maintained its course until it was less than fifty yards away, when it gracefully turned northward! M. Santos-Dumont continued to turn his machine until it pointed directly westward. It seemed to be absolutely unhampered by the wind. It passed the Eiffel tower at an altitude of about 10 meters between the first and second stages. The entrance to the

band often consulted her in matters of state. Mrs. Kruger was a daughter of the Duplessis family, one of the ' best known names in South Africa, and was a niece of President Kruger’s first wife. She bore Oom Paul sixteen children, seven of whom were living up to the outbreak of the war with Great Britain, in which two of the four sons have been killed, leaving two sons and three daughters still alive. The Duplessis family comes from the blood that gave Cardinal Richelieu to the world, and Mrs. Kruger therefore

band’s income of ,136,500 from the government, not to speak of his winnings from his private enterprises, was sufficient to have gii »n her the service of a princely castle. But Mrs. Kruger preferred to do her own cooking and housecleaning, and seldom had any assistance save that of her daughters while they were still unmarried.

Free People. Great Country.

Once more the men of France have celebrated on the 14th of July the tearing down of the Bastille, the tearing up of stupid superstition about the divine rights of kings, and the estab-

Pafc was obstructed by two very high sheds in which M. Deutsch, donator of the prize, is building a large balloon for the purpose of winning it himself. M. Santos-Dumont made repeated attempts against the wind to enter the Parc between the sheds. The struggle lasted five minutes. The supply of petroleum then became exhausted and the machine was left to the mercy of the wind. Finding that the motor worked irregularly and then stopped suddenly, M. Santos-Dumont, in order to prevent the ballon from being carried away, tore the silk covering In order to allow the gas to escape and make a quick descent. The machine, however, was blown across-the Seine and became entangled in a chestnut tree in Edmund Rothschild’s garden. The aeronaut descended without injury. Almost his first word was that he would yet succeed In winning th* $20,000 prize. Cost i Fortune. The ship Is the outgrowth of several years of work and experiment on the part of the inventor. This machine

was only recently completed. The gearing apparatus is suspended from a huge cigar-shaped balloon. The motor Is a gasoline engine which drives the shaft of the screw. The aeronaut sits in the saddle and starts the motor by means of a pedal and chain gear, as in the case of a motor cycle. The gasoline is contained in the upper cylinder and in the lower and larger cylinder Is a reservoir of water which is used as a ballast. The machine cost its inventor a fortune.

lishment of liberty, equality, fraternity as accepted principles of human society. Every American should feel not only the greatest gratitude to France, but the greatest admiration of the French people. It is indeed a great nation and a great race. It has educated the world in the principles of liberty, literature and individual independence. A Frenchman eats wisely, lives temperately, he is sane, patriotic, energetic. And all Frenchmen, from the highest to the lowest, actually think. Every Frenchman has an intelligent opinion on the questions of the day. There is no country in the world where the absolute feeling of equality Is more firmly established than among the French. The French nation knows very few great fortunes and very few paupers. It is practically free from dyspepsia, from gout, from baldness,' from drunkenness, and from' special privilege. The French did us a great deal of good 125 years ago, when Lafayette and his men and the money and power of France enabled us to beat the English. We derived much benefit from France. We would derive even more today if our people would study and appreciate the great French nation free from class prejudice, free from plutocracy, free from superstition, and forging always ahead.

Advertising as Educator.

Advertising is a mode of education by which the knowledge of consumable goods is increased. It sets forth the peculiar excellence of novelties, keeps in mind the merits of staple articles, and thus increases the general demand for commodities. This method of making the public acquainted with goods has been resorted to because the modern system of distribution requires that goods be sold in large quantities. Production increases.competition becomes more fierce, and puchasers must be found. Business men recognize that advertising can increase sales by increasing the, people’s familiarity with goods. This better knowledge not only helps to educate the individual, but trains him in other ways. His powers of discrimination are exercised and developed by the necessity of making a choice between the articles. Even the abuses of advertising aid him for he learns by his mistakes. Advertisement sometimes creates a demand, sometimes directs it What greater stimulus can there be for an inventor than the fact that a method is in vogue by which a useful article tan be immediately placed before the public, with the probability of large and immediate returns? Advertsing fixes new staples. Tea was one of the earliest articles advertised in England. Recently the “blending” of teas has become customary, and the value of the different blends made known.— Journal of Political Economy. Beauty and folly are old companions.

TWO BOY HEROES.

Arisons luraptm Winning Dhtlnetlon »» Outlaw Hunters. Two young heroes have been developed in Arizona. They are Dick and Alfred Bocha, 14 and 15 years old respectively, and already they have laid a foundation for fame as Indian trailers and sleuths. These lads have accompanied their father, Pete Boscha, deputy sheriff at Congress, Ariz., on the most perilous expeditions and criminal hunts, never flinching, even under the hottest fire. They are expert marksmen, having been trained to firearms from their infancy. Alfred firs" distinguished himself two.years ago l the capture of Sinovia Garcia, a notori ous Mexican desperado, who had shot the husband of a woman of whom he was enamored. Sheriff John Munds, Deputy Sheriff Pete Boscha, and hi 3 two sons started in.pursuit of the bandit, and, after following the trail for some distance, separated. Several days after Alfred encountered the desperado in a lonely canyon, and succeeded in getting the "drop” on him. Garcia surveyed the dwarfed and youthful figure before him with considerable amusement, and laughed at the boy’s assertion that he was under arrest. He reached for his gun, when young Boscha opened Are, clipping off one of Garcia’s ears and “ sending two bullets through his hat. This was convincing proof of Alfred’s aim, and the bandit surrendered himself unconditionally. A few months later Dick Boscha was the hero of a capture that was equally as remarkable. Vincente Ortego and two others cut the throat of an Italian and robbed him of considerable gold dust. The lad trailed the murderer over precipitous mountains, and after several days returned with him triumphantly. Ortego is now serving a life sentence in prison at Yuma for his misdeeds. The Weaver district, where the Boschas live, is the heart of what once constituted the bad lands of Arizona. Famous old Geronimo, at the head of the most sanguinary band of Indians then in existence, infested the Rich Hill mountains and the Weaver and Blue Tank districts, firing settlers’ cabins, murdering, plundering, robbing stages and bullion trains, and creating a reign of terror that will live in history.

THE "WISDOM RELIGION.”

Soma Ballefa of Member* of the Theosophtcal Societies. Theosophy, the Wisdom-Religion, has existed from immemorial time, writes Alexander Fullerton in the Arena. It offers a theory of nature and of life which is founded upon knowledge acquired by the sages of the past, more especially those of the east; and its higher students claim that this knowledge is not something imagined or inferred, but that it is seen and known by those who are willing to comply with the conditions. Upon the subject of man it teaches: That each spirit is a manifestation of the One Spirit, and thus a part of all. It passes through a series of experiences in incarnation, and is destined to ultimate re-union with the Divine. This incarnation is not single but repeated, each Individuality becoming re-embodied during numerous existences in successive races and on successive planets, and accumulating the experiences of each incarnation towards its perfection. That “Karma”—a term signifying two things, the law of ethical causation ("Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap”), and the balance or excess of merit or demerit in any individual—determines also the main experiences of joy and sorrow in each . incarnation,, so that what men call “luck” is in reality "desert,” desert acquired in past experience. That the spirit in man is the only real and permanent part of his being, the rest of his nature being variously compounded; and decay being incident to all composite things, everything in man but his spirit is impermanent. Further, that the Universe being one and not diverse, and everything within it being connected with the whole and with every other, of which upon the upper plane above referred to there is a perfect knowledge, no act or thought occurs without each portion of the great whole perceiving and noting it. Hence all are inseparably bound together by the tie of Brotherhood.

Professor Riggs of the Field Columbian Museum, of Chicago, who has been delving in the earth ten miles below this city on the other side of the Grand River, has discovered the remains of another immense specific;; of the dinosaur, the prehistoric monster that used to drink out of the vast lake that once covered the territory now known as Grand valley. The fossilized remains of the dinosaur are nearly perfect and as complete as any yet discovered in any part of the continent. The one under discussion must have been over seventy feet in length and nine feet in height.—Grand Junction (Col.) Sun.

Capt. A. F. Lucas, the discoverer oil in Beaumont, Tex., who is said to be worth $40,000,000, was practically penniless a year ago. Though a mining engineer and geologist by profession, he was a railroad conductor foi a number of years. After losing his place about two years ago, he drifted about and finally went to Beaumont. He succeeded in interesting some capitalists in the region, and the celebrated Lucas gusher was soon struck. God does not expect roses to bloom on bare rocks.

News and Views

Production of Cold. Commenting upon the decrease in the world’s output of gold last year as compared with 1899, the Bankers’ Magazine is undoubtedly right in saying that but for the Boer war the gold product probably would have more than maintained itself. It is almost as certainly wrong in saying that "the virtual demonetisation of silver as a standard of value has within the last five years given a great impetus to the discovery of new gold deposits and the development of gold mines.” Gold production may have been stimulated in Colorado and some other parts of the United States by the fall in the value of silver which has been going on for much more than five years, and which cannot have been largely due to demonetization of silver The greatest of recent discoveries of gold—that in South Africa—cannot be regarded as due in any degree to silver legislation, and the output of the Transvaal mines undoubtedly would have been quite as great if no country on earth had legislated in gard to silver since 1870. It is probable enough that the continued great output of gold will again arouse apprehensions of a decided fall in the purchasing power of that metal, such as were expressed by the distinguished Freneh economist Michel Chevalier after the great gold discoveries in California and Australia. We may at least reasonably anticipate a cessation lof the insensate clamor or free coinage of silver and that contradiction of terms known as a "double standard.” So long as the gold stock is increasing at the rate of ?200,000,000 to $260,000,000 a year it wi)l hardly be possible to make political capital by raising an uproar about the impoverishment of debtors by increasing the value of gold. With gold demonstrably falling in value that kind of uproar will not promise good dividends to any adventurer in the world of politics.

Olive Schreiner a Prisoner.

Mrs Olive Schreiner-Cronwright, who has been confined in a wire netting

OLIVE SCHREINER.

reservation by the British in South Africa and there kept an isolated prisoner, was one of the warmest sympathizers with the Boers during the early troubles in 1899. She was more bitter than her brother, William Philip Schreiner, who, as premier of Cape Colony, openly advocated the cause of the Dutch Afrikanders. Mrs. Cronwright is descended from Boer ancestors and she showed her blood in the book she wrote and published in the defense of her people just before President Kruger declared war on Great Britain. This book was entitled “An English South African View of. the Situation,” and contained some very free expressions of opinion on the justice of British rule or attempted rule in South Africa.

A Rebuke from Canada.

The Hon. David Mills, Canadian minister of justice, has recently been saying some exceedingly harsh things with regard to the alleged indisposition of descendants of the Pilgrims to raise large families. Among other things, he said: "The-New England people are upon the soil, but are not of it. They obviously dislike farming as much as their women do having children, and were it not for the incapable among them, and the foreigners who have taken up their residence among them, there would be neither children born nor fields cultivated."

Royal Gomfooleries .

Hereafter no woman will be a genuine snob unless she wears a garter on her arm. toward VII. has conferred upon his royal consort, .Queen Alexandria, the most noble Order of the Garter, and on the flrßt formal appearance she will be expected to wear it upon her arm Instead of elsewhere.—Williajw Jffi. Crrtta’ London Letter.