Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 April 1883 — Page 2

Che ftrnnWran. BY GFSO. E. MARSHALL. RENSSELAER, : : INDIANA

A soldieb at New York has just been 1 sentenced to imprisonment for two years i for stealing sl. No wonder Howgate < skipped. At this rate he would not have got out of thejpenitentiary until A, D. 201,884, and all his old friends would i have forgotten him by that time. Some learned scientist says that the effect the sun has on the earth is to gradn- I ally absorb it, and that in about one million years there will be nothing left of the earth. There iA then, some prospect of a conclusion of the star route trial* even if a long .suffering people are obliged to wait a million years for it.—Peck s Sun. There are only four nations in, the world to-day that are paying tbf _,ir way. England generally manages to make ends meet and show a trifling surplus of two or three millions to be applied to the reduction of its enormo’ds national debt; the United States, in spite of congressional extravance, put by every year nearly fifty times as much; and Holland and Belgium both keep about even. With these exceptions every nation in the civilized world shows an annual deficit of more or less millions.

One test after another shows that electricity as an illuminating agent is far from, satisfactory when the question of cost is considered. The last report on this subject is from a large railway station in California. A careful experiment was made, extending over a period of six months, with the employes trained to the best efficiency and expenses cut down to a minimum, and the conclusion reached was that while electricity gave a better light, than gas, yet sufficient light could have been obtained from gas for half the money. An establishment in Chicago for raising vegetables in winter, has over four miles of hot water pipes, and 300 tons of coal are required to heat the twenty-two houses used in the business. The capital invested in the houses is $35,000, the ground on which they stand is valued at as much more. The great winter crop is lettuce; parsley is sown for Thanksgiving and spinach for the holidays. An acre of rhubarb roots is taken up each year, and forced for the early market Cucumbers are raised in May, and the value of this crop when in season is 8100 a day. The crops are uncertain —one year $2,000 net was made on cauliflowers, the next year the crop did not pay expenses.

Cold and rainy summers, such as have afflicted England of late years, occurred in the last century, and probably in every century. History repeats itself in weather as in alLelse. About 1750 Lord Chesterfield writes to his son from Blackheath, near London, in June, that he is seated beside a blazing fire, and in 1784 Cowper writes to his friend Newton on June 21: “Thia unpleasant summer makes me wish for winter. The gloominess of that season is the less felt because expected, and because the days are short. We have now frosty mornings.” On July 3 he writes: “Last Saturday the cold was so severe that it pinched off the shoots of our peach trees.

The fashionable people are running to buttons. A New York correspondent describes a dress recently finished for a Fifth avenue lady which carries 1,800 buttons, and required the constant labor of a seamstress for ten days to sew them on. On each sleeve there are 100 buttons on the body, basque, and collar 350, and on the skirt 1,350. Those on the skirt are arranged in triangles, squares, crosses, stars, and other curious shapes, on a foundation of black satin. The dress has a satiny appearance, and is very weighty —so much so that it will require a lady of considerable strength to wear it This may all seem rediculous, but as long as people will spend their money there is no reason why it shouldn’t pay for the employment of the poor.

In 1884 the electoral votes in the different States will consist as follows: Alabama. ; 10 Nevada, 3 Arkan— 7 North Cafolina It California 8 New Y0rk..... 86 Colorado ...... 8 New Hampshire... 4 Connecticut 6 New Jersey 9 Delaware. 8 0hi0. ...a 23 F10rida.......... 4 Oregon 8 Georgia 12 Pennsylvania.. t....... 3J Illinois 12 Rhode Island 4 Indiana.—.—. 15 South Carolina 9 loura.. ••••••••••••••••••••••••* 18 Tennessee.... 12 Kansas 9 Texas 13 Kentucxy... 18 Vermont 4 Louisiana. 8 Virginia )2 Maine.. ........ 6 West Virginia 6 Maryland...... Wisconsin. 11 Meemehueetts .14 Michigan 18 Senators.. .76 Minneanta- - 7 Representatives ..325 Mi550uri....••••••»••....•. 16 Mississippi « Total 401 Jhbmfrs...... 5 I ..'4l. ?■—■■*" 1 Tn meresae in the population of the United States “pursuing useful ocoupa-

tions” from 1870 to 1880 was 30 per cent 1 btrt the increase in the-nwMber sos thw 1 engaged in agriculture has been only f while the number of those in othe . cupations increased 47.7 per Cf calling attention to this, the Gazette says that it is evident , ftre becoming more and more a ing people, and that each year a larger pro r /Jt^ofda H arni products for home ur ~ carriage will steadily becorr to the railroads. view is perfectly sound, fair to note the progress of machinery m farming, by which the per capita of per sons em s teadily increasing each year * There is no question that the v °l r Jne of agricultural products in the sited States has increased very much tester than the number of persons employed. '

They are having a real lively time in. Newport, Rhode Island, and a couple of he high-toned residents of the city are making a regular circus for the folks to laugh at. It seems the two men live neighbors to each other, and as a matter of course, became involved in a dispute about the line fence which separated them. The man who claimed that the fence encroached three inches on his property went out the other morning to tear : t down, when his neighbor came out and cooly sitting down on the front steps turned the water hose on him and drove him away. The neighbor returned the cold water move with a shower of bricks, but was arrested and conveyed to the station. Before he could get out his neigh? bor had repaired the fence, and when he went to tearing the fence down again he found his neighbor on deck with the hose The man with the hose still wears the banner.

A man who had been in the Michigan penitentiary for twenty-eight years was pardoned the other day by the Governor. He was convicted of murder in the first degree in 1853 and sentenced for life, out it recently transpired that he was innocent of the crime. A similar case in Illinois was reported some weeks ago. Innocent—and the hot iron of injustice has burned to the very bone. The victim of such a fate suffers agonies tenfold greater than the felons with whom he is forced into companionship. The most vivid imagination can hardly picture the reality of the horrid nightmare experienced by one who is thrust from the world to pass his days and months and years in a. convict’s cell Hope consumed, reputation blasted,a life wrecked —there is no Samarcand apple for ills like these. Yet the State might do more for such a man than merely to pardon him. It, would seem that in the absence of legal responsibility for the gnat wrong, something should be done in all cases of this kind by way of compensation.

Much has been said and written of the great extent and large possibilities of Mexican haciendas. But probably few people in the United States even yet realize the extent of some of these tracts of land, where a million or a million and a half of acres often constitute a single estate in the hands of one owner. There are many such estates in Mexico large enough to hide away many a European principality, large enough to awaken the envy of many a land proprietor in the Pacific Coast States of the Union. These are to be found in many of the Central and Northern States of Mexico. The famous Salado ranch, for example, contains over 600 square miles of land. It lies partly in the State of Nuevo Leon, Ooahuilla, Zacatecas and San Luis Porosi, on the highway to Mexico, and on the line of the new railroads. It occupies the central table lands of Mexico at an average elevation of 4,000 feet. Chains of mountains traverse the estate, rich in mineral wealth. The boundaries of the estate extend more than 100 miles from north to south; flourishing farms and large mining towns are met at frequent intervals.

Effect of Sunlight on Flour.

Boston Journal of Chemistry. It frequently happens that wheat or rye flour, in spite of the great care in baking, yields an inferior loaf and the failure is commonly attributed to adulteration; but when submitted to investiga tion neither microscopic nor chemical tests reveal any adulteration. Such flour is returned to the miller or dealer as unfit for use. The miller says the flour was injured by the heating of the stones, •and the dealer attributes the defect to the cirmcumstance that the sun must have shone upon the sacks during transportation. It has been proved by numerous experiments that flour can not bear the action of the sun, even when not exposed directly to its rays. When flour is exposed to the heat of the sun an alteration takes place in the gluten similar to that produced by the heating of the stones. For this reason it is abvisable that the transportation of flour should take place if possible, on cool days or by night, as well as that flour should be stored in a cool place.

WASHINGTON NOTES.

Infernal revenue reasipte the first nine months of the cutrent year, notwithstanding all the agitation in Congress, were $2,102,881 more than those of the corresponding period of the previous year. The Treasury Department has made a ruling that the provisions of the new tariff act, amending section 2,510. of the Revised Statutes, took effect from the date of the passage of the act This section of the Revised Statutes, as amended by the new tariff act, provides for the free importation of shipbuilding material to be used in the construction of vessels built in the United States for foreign account Senator Van Wyck has been urging the Interior Department to order the immediate sale of the Otoe Indian lands, in Kansas and Nebraska, notwithstanding the House of Representatives neglected to pass the Senate bill, which was deemed necessarv for a complete sale. The appraisers have -finished their task, and value the lands at $4 to $lO per acre. Secretary Teller is satisfied that he can protect all the interests, and the sale will be made about May 1. To judge from the declarations made by the Star Route jury, they not only expect a hung jury, but some of tbe principal defendants intend to spend the rest of their days in suing newspapers for libel It is rumored, that Dorsey and Brady are planning to sue the New York Times. The damage is laid at half a million dollars. Dorsey says he will spend a good deal of money for what he calls punishing the Times, while Brady expects the government will in some way foot his bills. Attorney General Brewster is said to be preparing an elaborate peech to close the Star Route case. The rumor has been again revived that Mr. Merrick proposed to withdarw from the star-route prosecution, but the report is not credited, as his contract with the Department of Justice is too fat a take to be relinquished. It is now thought the star-route trial will be finished in about four weeks. Commenting on the enormous cost of the prosecution of the starroute cases, Senator Conkling said: “The prosecution of these Cases as they have been prosecuted, at the expense of the Republican party, is like burning a house to boil an egg.” The Commissioner of Internal Revenue says the allowance of export drawbacks under the provisions of section 3,386 of the Revised (Statutes, on all tobacco, snuff cigars and cigarettes, entered for export on and after the Ist of May 1883, will be limited to the tax on articles of this class in force on that day as follows: On manufactured tobacco, including snuff, 8 cents per pound;on cigars andcigarettes,weighing over three pounds per thousand, $3 per 1,000, on cigarettes weighing not over thrie pounds per thousand, 50 cents per 1,000. Secretary Folger had a conference with the Director of the Mint and the Hawaiian minister with regard to the request of the Hawaiian government to have its sivler money coined at the United States mints. It was decided to grant the request, and preliminary arrangements for the coinage will be made at once. The mint at San Francisco was selected as the place for coinage. The dies will probably be made at the Philadelphia mint. The Hawaiian silver ooms will be of the following denominations: One dollar, halfdollar, quarter-dollar and eighth-dollar. The new law. for the adjustment of the salaries of post '• asters, taken in connection with t'ie forthcoming reduction of letter postage fron 3 to 2 cents, will effect a material change in the pay of postmasters in all small offices, as well as in the amount of revenue derived from such offices by the government. It is estimated that under the new law, and upon the present volume of business, the aggregate revenue of the Postoffloe Department from the sale of postage stamps of all kinds will be reduced 20 per cent Upon the basis of this estimate, the proportional receipts of the government and postmasters respectively, in the smaller offices, will be changed as follows. In the postoffice, where the annual revenue from stamps amounts to SSO, the postmaster now receives S3O and the government S2O; under the new law, for a like amount of business, the postmaster will receive S4O and the government nothing. Similar proportionate changes will be made in the receipts of the government and postmasters, according to the amount of business don* until offices are reached which have gross revenue from stamps of $250 per annum. In this class of office the postmaster now receives $l5O per annum and the government $100; under the new law the former will receive S2OO and the latter nothing. In offices where the revenue exceeds that of the class last mentioned the government begins to derive revenue. For instance, in postofficee where the income from stamps amounts to S4OO a year, the postmaster now receives $240 and the gjvernment $160; under the new law the postmaster will receive 8272 and the government S4B! In

offices where the pay of the postmasters from the sale of stamps reaches SBOO, the increase from the rent of boxes is usually enough to make the compensation of the postmasters SI,OOO per year, and when it reaches that amount the office is placed in the third class and the postmaster is then commissioned by the President, with a specified salary, and his pay is no longer determined by the amount of stamps he cancels.

Fires in Coal Mines.

Drowning out amine, says a Pottsville, Pa., correspondent of the Philadelphia Press, means something more to the operator than simply filling a mine with water'and pumping it out again. It results in months of. enforced idleness to himself and his men, and thousands of dollars expense in reopening gangways and other underground passages. At Wadesville shaft, previously mentioned, Mill Creek was turned in on the 28th of April of last year, and, though for several months past pumping has been going on industriously, and about 2,000,u00 gallons of water a day have been hoisted, it will be ten weeks yet before the mine is emptied, and two months beyond that before the gangways can be reopened and the miners begin cutting coak Not far from this mine are the old Hickory workings, which ha\e been afiie tor the past twenty-five years. Twenty years ago it was necessary to dig a deep and wide ditch into the hillside to cut off the fire and pievent it from reaching the works of Beechwood Colliery, the breaker of which stands nearly two miles away. This fire had its origin at the boilers of an inside engine. The hot ashes were thrown into worked out places, which ignited and spread with such rapidity that the place had to be abandoned. Colket Colliery, nr the western part of this (Schuylkill) county, presents some curious phasps of mine fires. The dirt, or culm, bank approaches very near to Donaldson. In tact the village is built under the shadow of the great mountains of culm. The latter have been afire for some time, and forces of men are battling with the flames daily. Below the surface, however? the flames are raging with even greater severity. For ten years the east side workings of the bio vein at this colliery have, been afire. The shaft is over 800 feet long and acts as a chimney or flue to draw off the carbonic oxide and nitrogen gases thrown off by the burning ooal. These gases vitiate the atmosphere with deadly effect. “I have stood on the edge of a breach in the neighborhood,” said Mine Inspector Samuel Gay this week, “and have seen birds fall dead out of the trees overhead. The sides of the breach were covered with skeletons and fresh corpses of birds that had perched in the trees for a few minutes, and small animals that happened in the vicinity.” One volume of carbonic acid gas, it will be remembered, diffused through one hundred volumes of air, totally unfits it to sustain life. It is this gas whieh is thrown off by heaters and stoves, and that produces such fatal results in close, ill-ventilated rooms. The death of the late Sheriff Scanlon, of this county, is attributed to the constant breathing of gas .rom the rock bank fire of Colorado Colliery.

A Bad Witness.

Utica Observer, “Do you know ths prisoner well?” asked tiie attorney. “Never knew him sick,’'replied the witness. “No levity,” said the lawyer, sternly. “Now, sir, did you ever see the prisoner at the bar?” “Took many a drink with him at the bar.”| “Answer my question, sir,” yelled the lawyer. “How long have you known the prisoner?” “O-h, from two feet up to five feet ten inches.” u “Will the Court make the •” $“I have, Jedge,” said the witness, anticipating the lawyer; “I have answered the question. 1 knowed the prisoner when he was a boy two feet long and a man five feet ten.” “Your honor ■” “It’s a fact, Jedge; I’m under oath,” persisted the witness. The lawyer arose, placed both hands on the table in front of him, spread his legs apart, leaned his body over the table, and said: “Will you tell the Court what you know about this case?” “That ain’t his name,” replied the witness. “What ain’t his name?” “Case.” , “Who said it was?” “You did. You wanted to know what l lmew about this case. His name’s Joe Smithy “Your Honor,” howled the attorney, plucking his beard out by the roots, “will you make this man answer?” “Witness,” said the Judge, “you must answer the questions put to you.” “Land o’ Goshen, Jedge, hain’t I been

doin' it? Let the blamed cuss fire away Fm all ready.”. . „ said the lawyer, “don’t beat Mxrat the bush any s||re. and the prisoner have been friends?” “Never,” promptly responded the wit--11600. “What! wasn’t you summoned here as a friend?” “No, sir! I wa-i summoned here as a Presbyterian. Nary one of us was ever Friends. He’s an old-line Baptist, without a drop of Quaker in him.” “Stand down!’’ yelled the lawyer, in disgust. “Hey?” “Stand down.” . “Can’t do it. I’ll sit down or stand up-” “Sheriff,remove the man from the box.” Witness retires, muttering: “Well, if .he ain't the thick headest cuss I ever laid my eyes on*

The Colorado Canniba!.

A Denver, Colorado, dispatch says:: The trial of Alfred G. Parker, the San Juan ghoul, charged with murdering five companions in the San Juan country in 1872, in progress in Lake City the last few days, concluded to-night, and the case was given to the jury. The evidence shows that a party of six organized in Utah in 1872 to prospect Southern Colorado. While in the vicinity of the present site of Lake City, blinding storms coming on, they lost their way,their food gave out,and for days together they lived on rosebuds. The men became desperate and some crazed. While in this condition, Packer deliberately fell upon and butchered the whole party, and for several weeks lived on the flesh cut from their bodies. Yesterday, in the course of the trial, Packer made a statement calmly,, and for two hours he related the experiences of the party from their setting out in Utah, closing with the most sickening details of the murder and subsequent feasting on the human flesh, claiming that the killing was done in self-defense The evidence shows that each member of the party except Packer possessed quite a large sum of money upon which the ghoul has since been living. After nine years wandering he was captured a few weeks sin<*e near Fort Fetterman, Wyoming. While the evidence is entirely circumstantial, yet it is deemed conclusive, and a verdict of guilty is confidently expected.

A Large and Long-Lived Family.

Poughkeepsie Telegraph, The following item was published in one of our county papers ten years ago: “There are now living in the family of the late Isaac Hicks,of the town of Milan, nine daughters and two sons, whose ages are respectively as follows: Seventy-three, seventy-one, sixty-nine, sixty-seven, sixtyfive, sixty-three, sixty-one, fifty.-nine,fifty-seven, fifty-five, fifty-three—making the united ages of one family of brothers and sisters 693 years. We doubt if there is a parallel case to be found.” After a decade we can yet chronicle the further fact that all the members are yet living—Mrs. Traver, Hughsonville, now being the oldest and Mrs. Henry Barger, of the youngest. Mrs. Diantha Sleight, of this city, is one of the number. The brothers live in lowa. Their aggregate ages now make 803 years, averaging seventy-three years. The father died in 1849, at the age ®f sixty-eight; the mother in 1860, aged eighty-three years.

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