Rensselaer Republican, Volume 12, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 April 1880 — PERSONAL AND LITERARY. [ARTICLE]

PERSONAL AND LITERARY.

Rhoda Broughton has a two-volume novel in pres* Mm Twain has given up tin leetare field on account of & health. Mb. Edison, it is reported, is going to California to try anew prooess of extracting gold. Charles G. Leland (Han* Breitman) is lecturing in Philadelphia on the deoorative arts. G. W. Cable, the author of “The Grandissimes,” in Scribner's is n cot-ton-broker at New Orleans. General. Lew Wallace, Governor ot New Mexico, is writing a novel, the scene of which is laid in Damascus. Senator-elect Mahone, of Virginia, weighs only ninety pounds, beating Hon. Alexander Stephens by a few ounoes. Judge Jerk. Black is noted for his wonderful memory. He wears a sandvcolored wig, and has a fashion, in talking, of twisting a silver tobacco box in bis hand. Prof. John Fibre, the critic and lecturer, is from Connecticut, a large, tall man, with dark curling hair and a thick red beard, with a pale face and goldrimmed spectacles. • Rev. Dr. Peabody, of Harvard University, now at the full age of threescore yeans and ten, was such a Samson in his youth that a farmer once offered him extra wages if he would enter the harvest-field. George Punchard. author of “ History of Congregationalism,'’ in his earlier years a 1 minister, and for ten years one of the editors and publishers of the Traveller , died recently in the seventy-fourth year of his age. Mibb Ella Sherman, the pretty young third daughter ot the General, is to be married early in May to Lieutenant Thackara, ot the navy. The wedding is to be celebrated at General Sherman's house in Washington.

The Scandinavians in Paris gave a grand banquet in honor of Nordenskjold, Arctic explorer, and his Lieutenant, Pollander. Two hundred and twenty persons were present, including Prince Oscar and Christine Nilsson. Joaquin Miller's real name is Ciacinnatus Heine Miller. His father was a “Westward ho-er,’’ always moving west, and he kept following Greeley’s famous advioe until he got to Oregon and could go no further unless he swam. David Davis is a great reader, and as a Circuit Judge in his . early days used to carry his saddle-bags full of historical and biographical works. * His favorite novel is “ David Copperfield,” though he has a fondness for Thackeray and Walter Scott. A book-store salesman hears some laughable mistakes. One day a lady comes in and asks for Copperhead,” another for the “Schon--berg Cotton Factory,” a third asks for some history of the French Revolution which will tell her about “ Robert Speer guillotining the grid-irons,” while a fourth wants “Madam Ramcat’s Memoirs” of Napoleon. Mr. James Pauton, who has written some of the best and most successful of American biographies, says that an industrious and capable writer can, during his best years, earn $7,000 or SB,000 a jean but that no man should adopt literature as a profession unless he has a fortune, or can live comfortably on 92,000. a year. Mr. Parton’s first book was the "Life of Horace Greeley” of Which 40,000 copies were sold. Since then he has published a dozen other works, all of which have been very popular. Several of his shorter biographical sketches first appeared ia Hamper's Magazine , commencing about fifteen years ago.