Rensselaer Republican, Volume 14, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 December 1881 — HERE AND THERE. [ARTICLE]

HERE AND THERE.

Secretary Frelinghuysen is 64 years of age. It is reported that General Grant’s eyesight is falling. War is threatened between Sierra Leone and Siberia. Small pox has about disappeared from Madison, this State. The revivalist, Harrison, is holding successful meetings at Union City. It is probable that the Gulteau trial will not be ended before Christmas. The recent dengue of Japan shows a total population of nearly 36,000,000. • The Senate has passed a bill giving Mrs. Garfield the franking privilege. Messrs. Moody and Sankey are preparing to tabernacle in wicked Paris. Speaker Keifer owns many thousands of acres of valuable lands in Nebraska. There were 99 deaths from smallpox iu Chicago during the month of November. * It is estimated that the losses by fire in this country duriugl*'* aggregated $100,000,000. The Steward at the White House has been sued for SIO,OOO damages by a discharged cook. It is said that the lobbyists are gathering in large numbers at Washington, w ith big jobs on hand. Commissioner Dudley has been elected President of the Indiana Association at Washington. There are 300 Presidential Postmaster appointments pending for which there are 1,500 applicants. The portrait of Gen. Garfield on the new five cent postage stamps is a very coirect and striking likeness. A splendid new hotel and opera house combined is to be built in Richmond, this State, next season.

The official list of persons supposed to have perished in the Ring Theater at Vienna, numbers 917. Rev. Dr. Thomas, the “heretic,’’has entered the lecture field with a discourse on “The Successful Life.” Scoville, Gulteau’s lawyer, proposes to lecture on the trial to raise money for his expenses. What next? First Assistant Post Master General Hatton is reported to be opposed to the appointment of women as postmasters. Five hundred lives were destroyed and great damage to property was done by a recent typhoon in Tonquin, China. The amount that will be required to pay arrearages of pensions is variously estimated from $250,000,000 to $600,000,000. The largest elementary free school in England is that of the Hebrews in London, which is attended by 2,293 children. v Senator Voorhees has introduced a bill in Congress providing for the erection of a postoffice building in Terre Hapte. The authorities at Washington are sending out over the country 200 ; 000 young carp, bred in the fish ponds at that place.

PorE Leo has canonized four new aints, nanely: the Monk Laurent, the Pilgrim Babro, the Priest Rossie and Bister Clara. The United States grand jury at Covington, Ky., recently returned indictments against forty-four crooked whisky makers in that State. In Keokuk, the other day. a son married his father’s divorced wife, whom the father had divorced fur the purpose of marrying her sister. A joint stock brewing company is ‘ Projected by the saloon keepers of Cinj.nnati with a view of manufacturing their own supplies of beer. The estimates for the expenses of the Government in 1883 are considerable increased oyer 1882, on account of pensions and pension arrearages.

Senator Edmunds has introduced an iron clad bill in Congress to prohibit polygamy in this country. The xemaining “twin relic” must go. It is- believed that in most of the contests for seats in the House of Congress the contestants will be sent back to the people for a settlement of their claims. The trying alterr atives of the sit nation in Ireland are tersely summed np inthe saying: “If you pay rent you are shot, if you don’t pay rent you are ailed.” ly seems to be proved that the Ninth Regiment*bf Massachusetts disgraced itself at the Yorktown Centennial by conduct unbecoming in soldiers and gentlemen. - The greatest tobacco smoke on record was that of the storm bound

steamer Herman, which on a recent ocean trip, burned twenty ton* of tobacco for fuel. ______ The fellow who recently stole $117,JOO in securities from the President of a Cleveland bank, has been arrested at nffalo. His name is Burke, mid be s a professional.* A Deputy Internal Revenue Collector at New Orleans, guilty of embezzlement, has been sentenced to pay a fine of $10,305 and serve two years in prison at hard labor. It is officially announced that Spain has abolished slavery in Cuba and all her colonies. The abolition is to be gradual, a system of apprenticeship preceding absolute frreedom. 4 - A company of which Governor Cornell of New York is President has purchased the Natural Bridge, Virginia, and propose to put it and the locality in order fora summer resort. The committee on the new Washington hospital, to be called the Garfield Memorial, report that they have agents soliciting subscriptions in many of the principal cities of Europe. A specially malignant and very nfectious disease. having a resemblance to diptheria, but almost uniformly fatal in its results, has broken out in Southeastern Canada. Senator Edmunds has introduced a bill in Congress providing for the payment of the expenses of the late President Garfield’s funeral and limiting the amount to SIOO,OOO.

During the brief sittings of the Senate of Congress last week, 350 bills and five joint resolutions were introduced —business enough for an entire session, if the measures were meritorious. It is said that the Finance Committee of the Senate approves Senator Sherman’s $300,000,000 three per cent, bond bill. Secretary Fogler, it is thought, prefers to “let well enough alone.” * All the Crown jewels, except one, belonging to the Government of France are to be sold, except the Regent diamond which was purchased in 1702, at a cost of $650,000. It is now valued at twice that sum. On last Thursday Isaac Basset completed his fifteenth year of service las an officer of the United States Senate, and was publicly congratulated upon that fact by the President of the Senate pro tem.

The Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad Company has discovered that it has been robbed of from one hundred to two hundred thousand dollars by section bosses carrying fictitious names on their pay rolls. George M. Hathway, engineer of the steam fire engine at Coldwater, Mich., accused of firing various places in that city, confesses the incendarism and implicates three other persons, all members of the fire department.

The question of a large increase of saloon license is agitated in Chicago. The fee is now $52. The city needs several hundred more policemen, an.l it is proposed to make the saloons pay the expense of their employment. Governor St. John, of Kansas.has issued a proclamation offering rewards for the enforcement of the prohibition liquor law, and especially tor the conviction of Prosecuting Attorneys and Sheriffs who fail to enforce the law. I|The Chicago city government is “hard up,” and among tne methods of raising money proposed is a scheme to tax railroad cars passing through the city at the rate of sls per annum for freight cars and $25 for passenger cars.

A Connecticut man h resisting the payment of taxes on his house in Salisbury on the ground that it is a place of wo) ship, because he reads the bible, prays and sings psalms for his own spiritual advantage and that of his own family. . * The American Bar Association, now in session a£"faashington s is considering means to expedite business in the Supreme Court of the United States. The docket of the court is more than three years in arrears, and new cases are constantly accumulating. The barrooms of Texas are now required by law to be closed from 9 to 3 o’clock on Suqdays. “This arrargement,” said an advocate of the measure in the Legislature,“will give liquor and religion just about an even chance, and may the best of the two win.”

Gen. Tom Brow ne has introduced a bill in the House of Congress authorizing the States of Indiana, Illinois and Ohio to sue the United States for about SBOO,OOO alleged to be due each of these States for school fund per centage on the sale of public lands. Lessep’s ship dual scheme on the Isthmus of Panama has encountered a stronger enemy than either a lack of capital or the “Monroe doctrine.” Fever has already carried off at least a qbarter of the laboring force set to work in connection with the enterprise. J The House of Congress has passed a resolution providing a committee to audit all bills propeily connected with the expenses of the illness ana burial of late Presi lent Garfle’.d, and to con-

aider the amount of pension and allowance that should be made to Mrs. Garfield. ■ The President has signed a postal money order convention with Victoria and New South Wales, in Australia. The United States ships large quantities of agricultural implements and other exports to those colonies, and receives therefrom no small quantity of wool and other products. Prof. Swing slated in fhis sermon last Sunday, that a district in the business center of Chicago, composed of thirty squares, contained 500 saloons, 600 rooms for gambling and other vices, four variety theatres, of the lowest grade, 100 concert saloons and 15 regular gambling dens. A few days ago an exhibition of patent cai couplers was given at Hartford, Conn. The Legislature is about attempting to force all railroad companies to provide couplers that will work without a man being between the cars, and the Commissioners, to whom the matter was referred,invited this unique competition. According to Colonel Mapleson, the well-known operatic manager, about five-tenths of the European theaters are fire-traps. Borne of the London theaters seem to have been built for the purpose of roasting people. The Princess’, Globe, Opera Comique, Criterion. Adelphi, VandeSville, and Royalty are of such a chaiacter. t . The rumor some weeks ago that Commissioner Dudley was on the track of a band of conspirators among the pension clerks, who had been swindling the government through fraudulent pension claims, is brought to the front again by the arrest of a pension clerk who has made a partial confession revealing the existence of the fraud conspiracy. European newspapers are talking of the possibility of American wheat ing driven out ofthe markets of Europe by grain from Tunis. Land can be bought in Tunis, it is said, for half the price it costs in the Western States of the American Union, and it is so fertile that it will yieltfUwo crops ‘.in the year- The quality of the grain, moreever, is equal to the much prized Hungarian wheat.

A prominent railway official estimates that a million mouths are fed de illy by food furnished from employment under Jay Gould. If the official will think a step further he will discover that the profit on the labor of this million furnishes a large portion of the enormous wealth and power of Jay Gould. Isn’t it he, after all, who has the “best of the bargain?” Germany is declared to be the first nation of the world in the number of her special asylums for the relief and cure of the afflicted. For de if mutes 1 she has thirty-one asylums; for the blind, thirty-one; for lunacies, thirtynine; and for epileptics, eleven; her total is 176. France ranks next after her with seventy, and England next v ith sixty five. Russia has only eighteen. The lady who will do the honor of the White House this winter is Mrs. John Davis, daughter of ex-Senator Frelinghuysen. Mrs. Davis assumes this honor by reason of her position as wife of the new Private Secretary to the President. John Davis, it is said, will soon be appointed to this office. He is a nephew of Bancroft Davis, whom rumor states is to be the First Assistant Secretary of State.

Ex-Governor Robinson of Kansas, a promiuent temperance man, in reply to inquiries respecting the prohibitory law in that Btate, says that the prohibitory amendment of the Btate Constitution was a mistake, and that drinking is more common now in Kansas than ever before. He quotes leading newspapers and letters to sustain his position; but the present Governor, St. John, gives his testimony to just the reverse of this. How a sacred trust can be betrayed and plundered by a reckless or dishonest trustee is illustrated in the case of the estate left bv the late Thomas Richardson, of Philadelphia. The total value of the property when Mr. Richardson died was $793,000, and it has just been ascertained by the heirs that only $122,000 of it remains to their credit, all the rest having been appropriated by Stephen 8. Price, the executor, who is in jail in default of $425,000 bail.

An incident related by the Rev. William Herbert Smyth, of Port Austin, Mich., a home missionary whose circuit embraces a pajt of the burnt district, forcibly illustrates the destitution which still exists there. Writing of the case of a woman to whom he gave $6, be adds: “In a moment she fell on her knees, held up the bill in her hand, saying, *O God, this is to good of you; then begged me to take half the amount and give it to a poor neighbor a mile away, but fortunately I had $5 for her too.” , Cincinnati meat eaters are deeply disgusted and troubled. During the first twelve day? of November 397 live animals and 1,500 pounds of meat were condemned by Board of Health Inspectors as being diseased and unfit for

'use. This fact suggests most nausea-' ting and distressing possibilities, and slaughtering for the public use under municipal authority is suggested as the only sure remedy. It is an alarming fact that nearly every article of food and medicine is subject to adulteration in these days to such an extent that the pure article is becoming a rare exception and the cheats the rule. A thoroughly applied system of inspection of all such articles will remedy a portion of this vast evil, but the fraud in coal oils that escapes the tests of our law, shows that even close inspection may be evaded by the ingenuity of fraud, inspired by the lust of gain.

There is a man in a Colorado mining camp who was shot just two days after President Garfield, and very nearly in the same region, but the ball went clear through him, cutting one of his intestines. He was a man who drank constantly and got drunk occasionally, and the two cases, aside from this, are so nearly alike that thtre has been a good deal of curiosity as to the result. The two patients kept step pretty closely at first, except that this patient had abscesses first, and came within an ace of dying/ But the doctors made an incision /in such a manner that they could IpSt a flap and examine the cavity of th/foody. They found a double handful of pus in it, and sloughing had commenced at wide distances from the wound. The operation was so severe that they had to take two days to it, but the resuk of this thorough cleaning out is that the patient’s recovery is certain.

Dr. Jurie, a prominent'physician of Vienna, tells of two complete cures of dipsomania effected by him in an extraordinary manner. One of the cases was that of a habitual drunkard who was picked out of the gutter by the police, and was handed over to the doctor’s treatment, in the “Correction Hospital,” .for a period of fourteen days. The doctor at once ordered that ’every article of food or drink given him should receive a liberal addition of whisky of a not over refined quality. Water, milk, soup, meet and vegetables were all treated in this way, and whisky was even infused into the air that be breathed through saturation of the walls, floors and bedding. At first the man / proclaimed himself highly satisfied with/nis treatment, and said he woula-klways like to have suih a sensible physician. The second day, however, he began to feel nausea, the third he vomited immediately after eating, and thereafter not a meal -was taken that was not followed by vomiting. From day to day he experienced increasing torment, and finally begged piteously for relief. The result wan that at the end of two weeks, (hough much reduced in flesh, he was filhd with such repugnance for strong drink that he was never afterward able to indulge in it again. The other i pase mentioned by Dp. Jurie was of a s : mil ir character, and was treated by him in the same way and with equal success.

• In a chai gt- to the Grand Jury of Y«z »n conn y Mississippi, recently, Judge Calhoun suggestively said that for six years he charged the Grad Juries in this district ten times each year, and had said, and was still of the same opinion, that no man, not even the Judge or foreman of the jury, ha any assurance, so far as the protection afforded by the law is concerued, that upon • leaving the Court House his brains would not be blown out and the perpetrator of the deed go unpunished. If the culprit was a man of wealth and influence, the chances were seven out of ten that the law would not be enforced: if a poor, insignifleent man, the law would be as grossly violated the other way, and a mob would hang him. In either case the effect was the same—a total disregard of the law. This state of affairs, he said, was most ruinous in its influences upon society, and indicated a diseased public sentiment,utterly‘opposed to true civilization.

The magnitude of the Vienna horror is presented in a strong light by the Chicago Jnter-Oceau which says: “Out of 2.000 persons who went into the Ring Theater at Vienna on the night of theßth of December, over 1,000 were killed outright in a space of time measured by minutes. General Grant, in the four days’ bloody fighting in the Wilderness, had 2,261 killed out of 150,000 under marching orders. In the terrible battles at Spottsylvania he had 2,792 men killed. At Shiloh Grant lost in two days’ fighting 1,735 men killed. At Stone River Roseerans had 1,533 of the 43,000 men engaged killed outright. All these were furious conflicts, in which great irmies, trained and equipped to do Kheir worst, were hurled against each other. The slaughter in each case was terrible, but at Stone River only/>ne man in thirty was killed, and in the Wilderness only one man out of every sixty-nine. At Vienna the irowd gathered for ' pleasure. Men, women, and children were crowded into a building and of every two people who went in, £ne died a terrible death. This Is carage worse than that of battle, and calamity more tenible than that of earthquake or shipwreck or hurricane. Little wonder then that Austria is in a ferment over a condition of things

that makes such appalling calamities possible.”