Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 November 1882 — The Effects of YeIlow Fever. [ARTICLE]

The Effects of YeIlow Fever.

A London paper reports a case o almost unparalleled meanness. A sewing machine company that had sold a machine on the installment plan to a poor woman sued to recover the property under the clause in the agreement hat if all the payments were not made it should be returned, and whatever had been paid should be forfeited. The balance due was half a crown, or say 60 cents. It is a comfort to know that the Judge denounced 'the document as “most infamous,” and non-suited the plaintiffs, refusing to allow an appeal. The old story about the man who, having only money enough to pay bridge toll as a pedestrian and not as a donkey rider, got off, picked up his donkey and carried him across, was enacted in a new fashion at New Haven the other day, where two young men arrived at a bridge with just money enough to pay for the passage of one. The bridgekeeper would not listen to their plea of poverty, but admitted that one person with a bundle could go over for one fare. At these words one leaped upon the back of the other, who ran off with him before the keeper could stop him. Orrin A. Hickok drove Mr. Frank Work’s fast team. Edward and Dick Swiveller, a mile over the track of the Gentlemen’s Driving Association, New York, in 2:18. Mr. Hickok weighed 15 li pounds -one and a half pounds overweight and the horses drew a road wagon weighing 120 pounds without the pole. The quarter was made in 32, the half in 1:05|, the three-quarters in 1:40, and the full mile in 2:18. The horses trotted well together, and virtually without a break. The time made under the circumstances is considered remarkable. The old question of getting schoolbooks at cost is coming up again in various parts of the country. The jobbery involved in the frequent changes of textbooks of schools is acknowledged by all fair-minded people; but it is not so easy to discover a way to stop it. The San Francisco Bulletin is in favor of putting the publication and sale of all schoolbooks in the hands of the State, which would allow publishers in general to get up editions of their own, but uniform as to size and type. “The State,” it savs, “might have a depository of text-books in every county. When these books are furnished at cost, there will be no more school-book wars, and there will be fewer reports of scandalous proceedings in the plain and mat-ter-of-fact business of supplying textbooks as a part of the machinery of public education.” Salt Lake Herald: The granite pyramid erected by the Union Pacific Company to the memory of Oliver and Oakes Ames is nearly completed. It is sixty feet square at the base and sixty feet high, laid up in undressed red granite, in a style calculated to last for centuries. On the west side is a medallion bust of Oakes Ames, nine feet high, with the date of his birth and death. On the north is the inscription: “In memGry of Oakes Ames and Oliver Ames.” On the east side the bust of Oliver Ames has yet to be placed. The top is rounded off, and does not make an acute angle. The cost is said to be nearly $90,000. It is placed on the highest point near the track, and will last as long as granite will hold together. No citizen of the United States ever had a more enduring monument erected to his memory than the one nearly completed.

ElwoOd Cooper of Santa Barbara, the leading olive-grower of California, says that he has trees 8 years old that have prodnoed 2,000 gallons of olives to the acre. This would be equivalent to 250 gallons of oil to the acre, and the oil finds a market at $5 a gallon. The yield of one acre would thus be $1,250, which for a 100-acre ranch would be a pretty fair income. But these figures are not represented to apply to any except the very choicest trees, and an un. commonly good year. But, even computing profits of olive-culture at as low a figure as one-tenth, a twenty-acre ranch would support a family very comfortably after six or seven years of waiting One of the great advantages of oliveculture is the fact that irrigation is not needed. In a climate where there is often such a scarcity of rain as in California, this is a matter of much importance. The olive tree also grows very

old. There are trees in Asia Minor that are known to be over 1,200 years old, and are still in full bearing. In considering the profits of fruit-culture, however, the dangers of insect pests, disease and overproduction must be kept in mind; and these are usually passed by without mention in the glowing descriptions of Southern California. Philadelphia Record: The United States mint in this city. has just received over two tons of 3-cent silver pieces, which, by act of Congress, have been abolished from the national coinage. This is, however, only about onefifth of the quantity of these small coins which are to be brought here from the various sub-treasuries in the country, there already having been redeemed more than ten tons. These 3-cent pieces now in the mint would fill three large wagons. They are tp be recoined into 10-cent pieces, as the 3-cent nickel pieces are to take the place of the old 3-cent coins. The Treasury Department is redeeming the small coins as fast as possible, and in a few' years they will entirely disappear, and only the nickels will be in circulatiPn. The coins have lost a very considerable per cent, of their intrinsic value by usage, in some cases amounting to as much ns 25 per cent. In fact, they are rapidly wearing out. This is one reason why they were abolished and the harder and more convenient nickel substituted.

John Burns, of Scott county, Va., while slightly under the influence of liquor, went to visit a lady of whom lie was enamored. He had in his upper vest pocket a revolver. The lady let her handkerchief drop upon the floor, when Burns, wishing to do the gallant thing, hastily arose and stooped to pick it up. As he did so the pistol fell from his pocket, and, striking the floor, exploded, the ball hitting him just above the right nipple, and, passing in the region of the heart, inflicted a wound from which he died in a few minutes. The scene was heartrending. The lady, Miss Rebecca Turner, hastily raised the bleeding body of her lover to a sofa and started to run for a physician, but he called her back, saying he was conscious he could live but a few minutes. He asked her to put her arm around his neck. The w’eeping woman did it, and the poor fellow then breathed his last in his sweetheart’s arms, and told her that was the way he wanted to die. When members of her family came in the room afterward they found Burns dead on the sofa and Miss Turner lying in a swoon over his body, her hair and face bathed in the blood which flowed from his wounds.

The professional rat-oatclier keeps the bodies of his victims, skins them and sells the skins for mink and ermine fur. One of the craft tells a reporter of the New York Mail the following about the business : “I knew a man in New Jersey who had a very peculiar way in which he captured his living. He was in the habit of carrying a flute with him when he went on his business. He would go into the room where the rats were, and set his weasel to work. Then he would play on his flute. The rats that escaped from the teeth of the weasel would run toward the man, and, apparently charmed by the sound of the music, would nestle beside him. Then the cold-hearted fellow, taking advantage of their innocence, would set upon them and kill them one by one. I know another man who sang to the rats in the same manner, and with the same result. Of all the animals easily influenced by music, or, rather, by rhythmic sound, rats are the most susceptible. I have known rat-catch-ers to earn S3OO in a single season, by using their weasel alone, and the man I mentioned to you who used to flute is now retired from business and owns a house in Chicago. ”

It’s an ill wind. It must have been in Memphis. Moses, the younger, sat in the store reading the evening paper, and all of a sudden he called out: “Fadder! Fadder!” “Vat isli it, my son?” “A case of yellow fever only six miles away!” “Moses?” “Yes, sadder.” “Pegin to pack up dem coats und wests! By to-morrow dot yellow fever vliill be in town, und vhill be telegraphed to New York, und by der nex’ day we mus’ fail und offer to pay twenty cents on der toller. I vhas looking for it all last week.” —Wall Street News. A guest at the table of a boardinghouse on the Catskill Mountains, who was about to tackle a piece of dried apple pie, addressing the landlady, said: “Do you think you could furnish me with a bit of cheese?” “I don’t know whetlier there is any,” she answered in a cast-iron tone of voice, “but if you’ll have a little* patience, HI send a waiter to look through the.mousp;trapa. and . Bee “—Brooklyn ■,, . w * * * ■» *