Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 December 1882 — TWENTY-FOUR HOURS TO LIVE. [ARTICLE]

TWENTY-FOUR HOURS TO LIVE.

From John Kahn, Lafayette, Ind„ who announeet that he is now In 'perfect health," wa hare the following : "One year ago I was, to all appearance, in the last stages of Consumption. Our best physicians gave my case up. I finally got so lew that our doctor said I could not live twenty-four hours. My friends then purchased a bottle of DR. WM. HALL’S BALSAM FOR THE LUNGS, which considerably benefited me. I continued until I took nine bottles. lam now in perfect health, having used no other medicine." DR. DkWITT C. KELLINGER’B LINIMENT is an Infallible cure for Rheumatism, Sprains, Lame-less and Diseases of the Scalp, and for promoting tha growth of the Hair.

“This air bites shrewdly; it is very cold.” A very full and complete synopsis of the president’s message will be found*on one. of our inside pages. The message is a sound, sensible, statesmanlike, businesslike document. Says what it is meant to say; and in clear, strong, and, at times, even eloquent language; and without verbiage. Saving some of the like papers from the wordless warrior, Grant, it is the shortest president’s annual message history has any record of. The decent people in the city of Chicago are forever making strenuous efforts to suppress the demoralizing practice of gambling in that city; yet, if reports be true, Rensselaer is worse afflicted, in proportion to its population, with gambling establishments than is Chicago itself. How long will the respectable people of Rensselaer permit their sons to be corrupted, and the good name of our fair town to be disgraced, for the benefit of a pack of selfish, shiftless shaiks, too lazy to earn an honest living? The friends of 0. I\ Overacker, the former co-editor of the Republican, now the editor of the Carson (Iowa) Criterion, will be pleased to learn that he has been appointed postmaster at Carson. There are many people in Jasper county who know him well; and those who know him best known him to be a man of strict integrity, of unimpeachable moral character and of good busines ability. They will rejoice that his good qualities have received such a signal mark of appreciation in the community among which he has chosen his field of labor.

The proprietors of the Opera House, if they can receive a reasonable amount of encouragement from our citizens, will immediately cone ude arrangements, with the Redpath Lyceum Bereau for a course of four first class lectures in Rensselaer this winter. They are wiling to take considerable risk of oss, but, very naturally, do wot desire to engage in the enterprise if the chances against them are too great. It will speak badly for the public spirit of our people if an enterprise so much to their advantage should be permitted to fail for lack of a reasonable support. ■ ■ ■ ..jii. l ..'Jr ; Thanksgiving Day was not observed with any great degree of unanimity in Rensselaer. The un ion services at the Methodist Ep iscopal church were of a very interesting character but the audience was much fever in numbers than might reasonably have been expected. All the resident protestunt ministers were in attemlenee, and nearly all took a part in the services. The Thanksgiving discourse by Elder R. B. Dwig ins was an earnest, interesting, and appropriated eii’ort. It should have been heard by as many people as could have been crowded into the "church building. In the evening til ladies of the M. E. Church gave a Thanksgiving Bupper in Leopold's stone building* which the proprietor generously fonl them for tiio occasion. The afibi?passed off pleasantly iiuVl left • belnm-e of some in the! church treasury*

Those confounded big democratic majorities seem to have bo rattled the cranium of our neighbor of the Sentinel that he cant comprehend anything in the figure line unless it rolls up into the thousands. Two weeks ago, for instance, lie undertook to publish a little notice for a magizine company, down in Pennsylvania* wherein they offered to divide the modest sum of twenty dollars among the different persons who would* before a certain date, inform them how many verses there are in the New Testament. Said information to be accompanied by sufficient cash to pay for a number of the magazine. Twenty dollars, among so many, is of course no very big thing, but our neighbor, by an ingenious, but simple, use of three ciphers raised the sum to twenty thousand dollars, and that did look a little large. The result wss that large numbers of the readers of the Sentinel set to work counting up tlie verses in the Testament, spelling more time, many of them, over tlie scripture in one day than in ten years before. They hadonly just had time to figure the number of verses up correctly, and to remit the nec. essarv eashto the magizine publishers, when the notice appeared in I’he Republican with the amount of the offer correctly stated From the large amount of profanity indulged in by tlie disappointed victims, it is safe to presume that tneir brief, but earnest, zeal for scripture study has*, resulted in no permanent improvement of their morals. A great many newspapers of little sense and less honesty have lost no opportunity to sneer at and malign the tariff commission; but the report of that body, presented to congress this week, is a most able, and statesmanlike document, and presents unmistakable evidence that the commission has preformed a vast amount of hard and conscientious work. If the reccoinmendations of the commission are carried out all the aburdities, inconvenciences, excesses and anomalies of the present tariff laws will be abolished.

Tiie Transit oe Venus:— Following a day of stoims, Wednesday. Dec. 6th, dawned in a morn of perfect beauty; bright, brilliant, cloudless; and pure and cold as the loves of the Seraphim. Smoked glasses by the hundreds were in readiness, and many were the eager eyes that watched to catch the first beginning of a phenomenon of such vast and vital interest to human knowledge, and which no person now alive can hope to see repeated. Promptly at the instant predicted by the perfectness of astronomical science, the planet Venn* appeared upon the lower edge or the sun’s disk. Its progress across the gleaming surface of the sun could be plainly followed with the naked eye, but field glasses and the county surveyor's transit in stnmiHit, at the court house, furuisiVii a much better view. T lie teaeheis and scholars at the pul die school were among the most interested and iht< iligent obseivers of the phenomenon in the whole town. The Board of Commissioners, as now constituted, consists of Messrs Geo. W. Burk, the president, A. C. Prevo, and {John Y\ ay mire. They are taking libld of the public business ihe county with an energy and an understanding which shows tha. it is yet m good, hands