Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 June 1883 — Probably Made It Do. [ARTICLE]

Probably Made It Do.

Am extremely-unusual occurrence happened at M. Rothschild’s bank, in Paris, the other day. A band of some fifty Polish Jews entered the bureaux and claimed pecuniary assistance. As they refused to retire unless their demand was complied with, M. de Rothschild was obliged to send for the police to expel them from his premises. The Soldier’s Home estate at Washington covers 502 acres. There are .500 inmates, with 150 out pensioners, who get $8 a month. The revenue is about $160,000 a year, derived in part from SIOO,OOO levied by Gen. Scott on the city of Mexico for having permitted guerrillas to fire on American troops, and from a fee of 12 j cents a month deducted from the the pay of all soldiers in the army.

The latest “American” story going the rounds of the European press is that of a traveler of that nationality who found it necessary to excuse his inability to join in the hilarity of other travelers because of his poverty. "Gentlemen.” said he, “I know I’m more or less of a saturated blanket on this party; but the fact is, I’m a very poor man—steeped to the lips, I may say, in impecuniosity. When I tell you, in strict confidence, that this is my wedding tour, and I have been compelled to leave my wife at home, you can form an idea of the narrowness of my resources. ”

The artesian well which was bored at Akron, Col., 112 miles from Denver, has met with an unfortunate mishap. Work was going on finely when, at a depth of 1,250 feet, the ponderous drill, with its weight of 2,000 pounds above it, stuck in the tube, and could not be forced down to the bottom. Since then all efforts to prosecute the work have proved unavailing. The work was under the management of Prof. Horace Beach, the United States Artesian Well Commissioner, who believes that abundance of excellent water can be made to spout to the surface in Colorado in artesian wells which are sunk to the depth of 2,000 feet.

The Bell Telephone Company had a gang of men recently in Camden, N. J., putting up a line, and they proceeded to dig a hole in which to place a pole in front of a property owned by a Mr. Beckett. Mrs. Beckett, in the absence of her husband, protested against the digging of' the hole, but without effect upon the minions of the corporation. Finally she sent for husband. When he saw how things stood he went for a lawyer. As soon as he went away Mrs. Beckett put on her shawl, and, going out, jumped into the hole and dared •the workmen to dig it any deeper. The workmen stopped until the husband returned, when he made a compromise, pulled his wife out of the hole wherein she had planted herself, and allowed the work to proceed.

Abound the Chicago Board of Trade have grown up shops where, by furnishing the machinery for cheap gambling on the price of grain, the proprietors have made fortunes. In a small way, and for the benefit of small gamblers, they imitate an incident of the business daily done on ’Change. That incident is the buying and selling of speculative trades of cereals, not with the intention of delivering or accepting the commodity itself, but, at an agreed time, of settling upon the difference in price. There would seem to be no occasion for the Board of Trade to fear the rivalry of these common shops, but it has essayed to crush them out by inducing the telegraph company of withhold from them the quotations of the markets made on ’Change. These quotations are essential, since they are the arbiters by which the small transactions of the customers of the shops are determined. The matter is now in the courts.

The confusion caused by a number of different places in the same country bearing the same name is nowhere more felt than in Brazil. In that empire there are thirty-five towns and villages called Santa Cruz, and as many as 172 named Santa Anna, seventeen Santa Isabel, forty-six Santa Rita, and twenty-four Santa Maria. Udless the province and postal town are exactly given in each of these cases, a letter or paper may wander about in the hands of the postoffice for months before it reaches its destination. And these particulars are the more necessary, as,

while there are 9,660 towns, villages and hamlets in Brazil, the number of postoffices is only 1,400. The same evil is frequently felt in the United States, where repetitions of the same name for different places are very common. One of the most favorite names in recent times is Bismarck, which has been given to a dozen difierent settlements in the Western States.

Im a party in St. Joseph, Mo., were a young man “noted for his conversational powers,” and a beautiful girl “from one of the upper counties.” In the course of a struggle for a trinket “the girl sank her ivory teeth into the fleshy part of the young man’s arm.”. He politely concealed his pain until he returned home, when, on removing his garments, blood was found trickling from the wound. Next morning the lacerated arm was swollen to twice its natural size, and he was laid up for several days. The St. Joseph paper, in relating the incident, refers to another and worse one of a similar nature that occurred at Cape Girardeau a few years ago, in which a young gentleman actually died from a playful bite on his thumb by a young lady. The paper remarks: “It frequently happens that the bite of a woman is poisonous.”

The channel tunnel to connect the shores of England and France is still a vexed question. The Law Journal, referring to the appointment of the committee of both houses of Parliament in connection with this matter, says sight must not be lost of the fact that such Parliamentary sanction is not necessarily required at all. If the tunnel should be worked from the French side alone, the soil of the tunnel as it progressed would be French, and the question would not be whether the tunnel should have Parliamentary sanction, but whether it should have Parliamentary prohibition, by confiscating the property of the company in English soil when the foreshore was reached. If Parliament refuses sanction to the tunnel, it is far from following that the tunnel will not be made; and the real question before the committee will be whether Parliament should refuse sanction now that it is asked for, at the risk of the tunnel being made in the future without any sanction being asked.

When Harrison made Webstei Secretary of State the rage for office in Massachusetts got to fever heat. Among those that went to Washington was a neighbor of Mr. Webster, of habits too convivial for his own good. The Secretary did his best to get him to leave Washington, promising the very first office his old friend could fill. But the office-seeker, day after day, went to the State Department to ascertain if the office had yet been found. Mr. Webster gave orders not to admit him. One morning be went, determined to know his fate, and his looks showed it. Drawing a large knife, he forced his way to where Mr. Webster sat alone writing. Seeing the maniac, for maniac he was, Webster reached for the bell. Seeing this, the fellow shouted: “Don’t touch that bell, Dan Webster, or I’ll cut your heart out of you 1 You promised to give me an office and you haven’t done it. I have lived here until I have spent every cent I had and all I could borrow; I have been kicked out of my boarding-house, the mortgage on my farm is foreclosed, the homestead, with all its furniture, sold, and my wife and little ones turned out, houseless, homeless, on the world. And now,” he said, as he advanced, “all I have to say to you, sir, after such treatment, is to tell you, in the language of the lamented Shakspeare, to go to you!”' Then he left. In what part of the works of the “lamented Shakspeare” the words are found has never been ascertained.

In times gone by a wholesale merchant in this city had the reputation of being terribly hard on a debtor who met with ill-luck, and it was therefore with a sad heart that a Poughkeepsie grocer, who had been obliged to close his doors, sent him word and waited his coming. “I shall take your house and lot, of course,” said the creditor. “Of course.” “And your horses.” “Yes.” “And your wife’s jewelry?” “Certainly.” “And your boy’s pony?” “Yes.” . “And—and, look here, sir; are.you hiding anything from me?” “My dear sir,” replied the debtor, “I want to reserve my grandmother’s tombstone. It has not been put up yet, and stands in the barn.” “Want to reserve it, do you?” mused the creditor. “Well, I’ll see about it— I’ll see if it will pay me to have it cut down for the baby my daughter lost last week!”— Exchange,