Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 October 1883 — Story of a Tramp. [ARTICLE]

Story of a Tramp.

It is stated by the London Times that Avenger O’Donnell is 45 years of age, served in the < American rebellion, lived for some time : in Philadelphia, and kept a public house on the Canadian border. He lost his money by investing in silver mines and Fenian bonds. “Hb will probably be tried by a citizens’ jury,” is the closing sentence of a story about the capture of a desperado in “Citizens 1 jury ’’ sounds well, but the term is employed to designate the most informal of tribunals known in the West.— Harper’s Weekly. 1 Slade’s salary for traveling around with Slugger Sullivan’s show is to be SI,OOO per month. He is expected to stand up six evenings a week and let the Boston man bruise him. The length of the engagement is not stated, but it will probably last as long as ■Slade does. Aw exploringexpedition, equipped with four canoes and a score or more of men, is to be sent into the Florida everglades by the New Orleans TimesBemocrat. The everglades have never ■been thoroughly explored. Hundreds of Seminoles are supposed to be living in their recesses, and to hold negro -slaves. The Alps.appear to answer the same purpose in Europe that the Niagara ' -whirlpool does in America. A German professor in the university at Boon was killed while climbing them, the other day, and scarce a season goes by that half a dozen or more foolhardy idiots are not dashed to pieces. Both institutions are valuable assistants of the foolkiller. . Thebe i firemen of the steamship City of Berlin were recently folio-wed by - customs i inspectors in New York to a shop on-Spring street, where -six packages of lace were found on-each mau. Afterward thirty-six other packages were i discovered in tthe building. As none of it was marked at thef time by the officers, the charge of smuggling could not be proved against the accused, and they were discharged. There are about thirty blind newsdealers in New York city. Most of them own their own stands and are doing a good business. Some of them are so active and dexterous that many of their customers do not suspect that they are blind. It is said that nearly all of them are experts in detecting false coin, and, what is more wonderful, can determine almost instantly the valu<« of most foreign silver coins presented to them by customers in payment for newspapers. Prince Bismarck was guarded during his stay at Kissin ggen by six Bavarian gendarmes, six Prussian policerhen, one Bavarian commissioner of police, one Prussian police councillor from Berlin, four detectives from Munich and two from Wurzburg. Their duty was to watch the Chancellor during his three hours’ walk on the promenade, and to prevent unknown persons from approaching his villa by day ‘or night. Sir Thomas Wade, after a residence of upwards of twenty years in Pekin, believes its population to be less than lialf a million; and a French physician, who has made systematic observations, estimates it at 400,000. Yet the geography books give it at 3,000,000. At the junction of the Han river with the Yangtsze are two cities, Han-yan-fu and Wn-chang-fu, and an enormous perpetual fair, H&nkow. Thv. population of these has been set down at 3,000,000, but from a visit to the spot Sir T. Ward estimates it at about half a million. A firm of lawyers in London advertises the proposed sale in England for an “old ancestral estate” which Illas been owned by the famly of the present holders for more than four centuries. It is set forth that the ■estate includes an entire village, of which the buyer will be the absolute -owner, and that he “must necessarily take a high social position in the county,” because he will find himself surrounded by the family properties of neighboring noblemen and gentlemen. If the person should happen to be shrewdin driving a bargain, perhaps he could get some ancestors thrown in, so that, like the Major General in the. “Pirates of Penzance,” he could enjoy the melancholy pleasure of weeping in the event of his happening to casually disgrace them. Gen. Putnam (of wolf killing fame) is buried in the pretty viHage cemetery, half a mile southwest of Pomfret, Conn., an inclosure of several acres, With quiet air, green turf, somber firs, and dry sandy soil. lifi a secluded corner of the yard, among many broken, mossy tombstones, a heavy table of

marble lies on a wall of brick that lifts it but five or six inches from *the ground. The stone is about six feet' long by two and a half wide) and marks the ■ grave of Putnam; Fully a third of it has been chipped off by relic hunters. Just north of El Paso, Texas, there is a bold and picturesque mourttain—the last and most southern spur of the Orange range. On the day of the Java disaster a gentleman on this mountain heard rumblings in its recesses, and felt a number of severe and distinct shocks. There could be no mistake, and the shocks came at intervals for some time. There is scarcely a doubt that the Javanese earthquake was as distinctly felt in portions of Texas, Arkansas and the Indian Territory as was the Lisbon disturbance in •New England. v At one of the Big Four Cattle Company’s ranches near Socorro, Texas, Joel Fowler, a large cattle dealer, met Ponly Forrest and Bill Childes, with whom be had previous trouble. Forrest and Childes began firing at Fowler, who returned the fire, killing Childes. Forrest then ran into a house occupied by a Mr. McGee. He went to the door and asked Forrest to come out. Instead of doing so he fired, killing McGee. Fowler then set fire to the house rather than take the chances of shooting with Forrest. The imprisoned man pot a ball through his own heart. All three were buried in the same grave. Among the curious things exhibited at the Louisville Southern Exhibition are thirteen medallions or castings of iron representing Christ and the twelve apostles. These were cast from native ores nearly one hundred years ago, at the old Bellewood furnace, upon the Cumberland river, in Eastern 1 Tennessee, in molds made of green sandstone. Considering the rudeness of methods and the infancy of art in that section and time, they have a finish, smoothness and polish that is remarkable. The delineation of features, the eyes, brow, chin, etc., are nearly, if not quite, equal to the very best grades of chisel work. Barbara Miller, the colored woman who was hanged at Richmond, Va., recently, for the murder of her husband, had a vision the night before telling het that three angels would appear in time to save her from the scaffold, Either the angels did not travel on Richmond time or they hod made a mistake in dates, for they failed to arrive, much to the disappointment not only of Barbara, but of many negroes, who waited, open-mouthed, for the expected rescue. Barbara, however, was not without consolation. After singing “Nearer, my God, to Thee,” she said she was going direct to heaven and the sngels, and was wafted ini® the unknown with a song of jubilee on her lips. Since sneaking back from Moscow with his crown, the Czar has net made himself very conspicuous with tthe glittering bauble. The possession of the crown has pleased the devoted subjects who were chagrined becaused this monarch went so long without one, but if has had no effect upon the discontented and turbulent elements. Nihilists arc as numerous and as active as ever. The Czarina lately detected one of the imperial chamberlains in the act of plac ing Nihilistic documents in her apart ments. Fearing banishment to the Siberian mines, or possibly death, hr committed suicide. Arrests of army and navy officers suspected of revolutionary syinpathies take place daily,;and the Czar is as nervous and apprehensive as before his coronation. Half .flu merit of a crown is in wearing it, and it can hardly be regarded as a priceless boon so long aa it can be enjoyed onlj in secret. *

He was a tramp of the first watermuddy w ater —and he looked hungrier than a pancake-turner in summer. Hi wanted work, and when he applied for it the lord of the manor asked him how much he’d charge to saw it, split it and pile it in the cellar. “One dollar a day and my feed,” he answered. < He was engaged and he went to work. He wrought and ate, and at the end of the week neither the tramp nor the' wood-pile had grown a pound thinner., He could eat more than a buzz-saw with sixty teeth. He stayed three weeks and then went up to the captain’s office to settle. The proprietor gave him fifty cents and a receipted board bill. Then the proprietor chuckled. So did the tramp. Then the proprietor set the dog on him and went down cellar to see if the wood had been split into right lengths. There was no wood there. The proprietor found it in the bushes, where no saw had corrupted it and no steel had broken through. The proprietor heard the dog bark. The tramp was up a tree. “If I ever come down I’ll swear not to work so hard again if I never wear a white vest and patent leather boots!" he ejaculated. The proprietor went to .bed and left him there. The next day the dog waj found under the stoop, dead. The tramp’s conscience had smittem him and he had begun to saw the wood The sight had killed the dog.— Neu York World. • _