Rensselaer Republican, Volume 12, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 September 1880 — Type Setting in Japan. [ARTICLE]

Type Setting in Japan.

It must be no joke to be employed in a Japanese printing office. In our own and most other countries of the world, except China and Japan, the language is written by means of an alphabet of separate letters. Among the Celestials and their next door neigubors f on the other band, each word has a distinct character. The compositor’s difficulties in either instance are obvious almost at a glance. In setting up this note, he has the letters conveniently arranged before him in what is known as the “case." But in Japan, according to an American contemporary a full font of type comprises 50,000 characters, of which 3,000 are in constant use, and for 2,000 more there are frequent calls. Instead of being compactly arrayed before him, the type is disposed about the composing room on racks, and the unfortunate compositor has to wander up and down the room,-setting his “copy” and stretching his legs, though he would probably be quite willing to dispense with the greater part of his enforced exercise. It is for the reason that it is impossible to apply the system of single character words to telegraphy, that that inestimable boon to civilization is apparently unavailable to the inhabitants of Japan and China.

One of the discoveries made by the latest Arctic explorers is that the length of the polar night is one hundred and forty-two days. “What a glorious place that would be,” says Brown, <; in. which to tell a man with a bill to call around the day after to-morrow and get his money!” A Sunday-school boy only six years old was asked by his ts®cher “why they took Stephen outside the city to stone him to death.” The little fellow was silent for a moment as though absorbed with the problem, when brightening up suddenly lie replied, “so that they could get a better crack at him.” . A lover who had gone west to make a heme for his “Birdie,” wrote to her — “I’ve got the finest quarter-section of land (160 acres) I ever put my foot down on.” Birdie wrote back —“Suppose you buy another quarter-section, John, so we can have a lawn around your foot.” John “made a home,” but Birdie never was the mistress of it. A paper of Middleton, Conn., tells the following stawr: farmer in tne neighborhood, having placed a pan of milk in a spring of water to cool over night, went there the next moring and found, it is solemnly asserted, instead of the pan of milk, a large bull-frog sitting in contemplat-ve mood upon a roll of fresh butter. The sole explanation is that the frog had jumped from the water into the pan, and in trying to extricate himself had, by diligent and continuous strokes of his long legs, churned the ffiilk into butter.’.’

A real mule was one of the attractions in the play of “The Forty Thieves,” as produced in Virginia city, Nev. The result is described by the Chronicle as follows: “No sooner had Ali come out of the cave with his bngs of wealth, and attempted to put them on the back of the beast, than he began his part of the Erformance. He let fly with his heels, eked the shavings (the supposed riches) out of the bags, kicked down the cavern ; kicked down the whole forest; kickec down the wings; kicked the end of the bass-viol, leaning against the stage, to pieces; Hmashed the footlights and finally doubled up Ali by planting both feet in the pit of his stomach. A rope was fastened around him and he was dragged off by the united strength of the company.

Home Made Vtneoab. —Steep a pint if good firm corn in two and a half gallons of water for two or three hours, and then put it on the fire and boil it antil the corn shows signs of bursting. Take it off before the grains do burst and strain off the liquor, adding half a pound of sugar to each gallon. Place the cask, or the jug containing it, in the sun, and in three weeks or a month the liquor will be converted into good vinegar. The writer tried this receipt, using molasses instead of sugar in ono case, but the sugar makes far the best vinegar. It is both good and cheap. Large quantities can be made by using proportionate quantities of com, water ana sugar. Young man, before beginning to read medicine or law, ask yourself if it would not be better to read agriculture and practice it Are not the so-called learned pnJeeion* crowed to their utmost capacity f is there iiot a more inviting field open before you as a learned farmer, than as a learned lawyer, divine or doctor ? Ta attain, distinction in any of. these professions you will,, most likely, have to go through the starving process for several years, and to labor harder than any farmer labors. Think of these things. If you don’t think of them now, you will think of them often before you make a living by your profession. —" ‘

The Rev. Dr. Prime, editor of the New York Observer, has been spending some months on the Continent of Ei> rope, and making; special inquiry into the drinking habits of the people. In ten months, during whidi he visited the chief cities of France, Germany, and Italy, where the universal tipple is light wine or beer, he saw just one person drunk. In one city of 55,000 inhabitants there was but a single arrest for drunkenness during forty days. The reverend doctor reaches the conclusion, which is not a discovery by any means, that drunkenness is the exception in the wine drinking countries of Southern Europe. “Fifty years hence„” said an old infidel, ‘people will wonder that there should ever have been a discussion about, a place of fature punishment.* “Yea,” respohded a clergy mart, “people who are now fifty years old will then no douot wonder that there should have been any need of discussing iL*