Rensselaer Republican, Volume 13, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 August 1881 — TABLE TALK. [ARTICLE]

TABLE TALK.

The Pul login 'Company- had at the works near Chicago, a fortnight ago, 3,176 men on tbe pay roll. All the chief French lighthouses will soon be lit by electricity, and provided with powerful steam trumpets for fqg signals. _ On a recent race day in one of the English meetings, Archer, the jockey of Iroquois when lie won the Derby rode five winners oat of seven; The Rev. Mr. Vetterling, a Detroit pastor, got ditonk. en an excursion steamer,- was caught kissing a girl, got a violent blbw from another whom he tried to kiss, and was finally arrested. Plagiarism has met with punishment in the case of William A. Mestayer, an actor, who produced in Boston, after an injunction had been obtained, a play which he bad stolen. He has been fined $1,481. A Philadelphia man, being slapped in the face by his wife, turned white with rage, stood still for a moment as though.lrresolute, and then . procuring a gun.from an adjoining room, committed suicide. Italian laborers are nearly as unpop ular in France as the Chmeee are in California, because they work for wages at which a Frenchman turns up his noee, and because they are steadier and more intelligent.

A lady who occupied a cottage at Mount Desert last eummer had a box made for her jewelry iu imitation of a Bible. While absent one day some one entered her house and carried off her silverware, but her box of jewelry was undisturbed. The hanging of nineteen Molly Maguires in the anthracite coal region of Pennsylvania* completely destroyed, the order of asses3ius there; but the recent murder of a mine .manager at Dunbar brings out the fact that au organization of the same'kind exists in the western part of the Btate. An attempt is to be made in Philadelphia to enforce the law against carrying concealed weapons. Policemen are to arrest every man whom they have any reason to suspect, and arrest those on whom pistols are found. The Mayor, who Is responsible for the movement, believes that it will do much to prevent murders. Do clergymen commonly fish on Sunday while on their summer vacations? A minister’s wife says so in a letter to tbe Congrcgatipnalist, but the editor replies; “We believe this to be a gross libel upon evangelical ministers generally. We have seen a large number of such ministers on their vacation year after year in various places, and have never known one to go a fishing on Sunday. Mr. James Harley, the inventor of the modern bicycle, is dead at the age of fifty. He was the son of a poolfarmer in Albourne, England, and showing great skill as a machinist, became foreman of the Coventry Machine Company, in which capacity liis inven t.ve mind conceived and carried out the bicycle. But the first machine was very rude, and has since been much improved on. It has been the practice of the Interior Department to hand each Indian reservation over to the religious teachings of one particular denomination, to tluft the converts became Methodists, Baptists,or something else, purely according to chance, and never from choice. This is not to be changed. Under the new arrangement the Roman Catholic church will go into the field with a large force of priests.

A compound is described for the preparation of what are termed safety envelopes. That part of the envelope covered by the flap is treated with a solution of chromic acid, amonia, sulphuric acid, sulphate of copper, and fine white paper. The flap itself is »coated with a solution of isinglass in acetic acid, aud, when this is moistened and pressed down on the under part of tbe envelope, a solid cement is formed, entirely insoluable in acids, alkalies, hot or cold water, steam, etc. Mrs. Proudfutjs one of the loveliest girls in Southern Kansas, and a year ago was the recipient of much admiring attention from the opposite sex; but now there is a disposition on the part of the youqg men to stay away from her. Thedhange is caused by the lact that three bf her sui ors have received gun shot wounds while in her company. It is not known who the assassin is, but he is supposed (o be somebody who, being unable to secure the prize himself, is derei mined that nobody shall do so.

Fourteen heavy-laden freight cars broke away from a train c n the Chicago and St. Paul Railroad and started down a grade of eighty feet to*the mile. A locomotive went iu pursuit, and made a brisk ebase, but gravity proved too much for steam, and tin? runaway cars were soon thundering along at the rate of( sixty miles an hour. A telegram was sent to clear the track, but it could not be obeyed quick enough by one train of cars, .; mm which the occupants escaped just in time to avoid death in one of the most violent collisions that ever happened. The hero of “The Romance of a Poor Young Man,” at a Milwaukee theatre, resolved as usual to burn the paper which proved his ownership of the proud Marguerit’s home. “This sacrifice do I make to my love,” he cried, and held the document over a lamp. It did not ignite, and he nervously thrust It down the lamp chimney, burned his fingers, aud extiuguisliea the flame in his mad efforts to make the sacrifice to his love; but all in vain and the paper only got a crumpling. The sign language of the North ’American Indians has been newly considered by CoL Mallery, who argues against the theory that the tribes speaking mutually unintelligible dialects, or languages, have a common system of signs. He believes that the signs were used to enforce, rather than to convey, meaning. The Indians in general know comparatively few of the more abstruse signs, though faoility of expression by simple signs Is common among them, and is due to wandering individuals frequentlycoming in contact with tribes whose speech they can not understand.