Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 January 1884 — A Strict Constructionist [ARTICLE]

A Strict Constructionist

Colonel Hill, of Wilkes oounty, Georgia, has left a fortune or $700,000 made at farming. General Bob Toombs and his brother Gabriel, each worth half a million dollars, made in the some way, live in the same county. The Marquis of Lome has an article in the Contemporary Review on Canada, showing that an internecine war would probably result if one of the provinces should become strong enough to dictate a policy for the rest of the Dominion. 2 The fastest train ever run on the C., B. & Q. was for a party that were in Quincy, HI., and desired to catch the New York limited express in Chicago on Sunday evening. They hired a looomotive, a baggage-ear, and a parlor car, and were whirled over the road in five and a half hours, which, deducting tigie for stops, was a mile a minute. When a lawyer of any note dies down in South Carolina, the reporter remarks that “as the cortege that bore his remains to his home took its slow way along the streets the western sky was lit up with the grandest and most gorgeous-sunset I ever saw. It seemed as if the heavens were lighted ( to honor his coming. It seemed that the skies were illuminated to guide his pure soul to its eternal resting-place in the man-' sions of the blest. The very firmament did him honor.

John W. Mackey said to a reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer-Press: “Mining is the most precarious business in the world.” “You can well afford to say it,” the reporter retorted, “with $30,000,000 to your credit. But did you think so in 1809, /when you were pushing an ore car in the Ophir mine?” “I knew it then only in theory; for my salary of $4 a day was always sure, and my wants were simple. You always hear of the successful miners. The men who disappear and are lost in pauper alley are not so often quoted.” The remains of Dr. William Harvey, who is credited with having discovered the circulation of tho blood, have just been romoved from tho vault in which they have reposed for 20il years, in the church at Hempstead, Essex. They have been placed in a marble sacrophagua in an adjoining chapel, built by the Harvey family. The sacropliagus was provided by the College of Physicians. Dr. Harvey, appears to have been a careless man in his business affairs. A resident of New York of the Doctor’s prominence would liave built his own mausoleum.

Two sisters, 60 years old, are living the life of hermits in the mountains near Lebanon, Pa. , For forty years they have lived in a log hut in an almost inaccessible place, and hold aloof from all human beings. They speak to each other, but never to others; are hardworking, and can fell trees as handily as the best backwoodsman. They are afraid of nothing, and as they are known to keep axes by their bedside, no one goes fooling around the.premises. As a matter of course, the reason assigned by the neighbors for this eccentric conduct is that the two women were crossed in love in their early days. A Philadelphia woman dragged her meek little husband before the officers of the Society to Protect Children from Cruelty, the other day, and wanted something done to him because he only earned $lO a week for the support of himself and sixteen children. He turned over every cent of the money t Q her, the wife admitted, but it wasn’t enough, and she wanted him punished. The Society couldn’t do anything to relieve the complainant, and sent the couple away. It seemed to be one- of those cases where tome one ought to be punished, but the officers did not know who, and left the matter till another Society could be formed to ameliorate the condition of the human race. _

Neably twenty years ago the criminal sensation of the day was the assassination by Mary Harris of Adomram J. Burroughs, a clerk in the Treasury Department. A great trial followed, in which Daniel W. Yoorhees and Joseph H. Bradley appeared as counsel. The acquittal of the defendant was among the first successes of the plea of emotional insanity, and created more ado than would essue nowadays. The other day the fair Mary wedded Mr, - Bradley. She is 50 and he is 80. The old stagers who remembered that an aged dame put her hand on McClellan’s head and said he would be Presdent, now recall the ominous fact that when Mary -was acquitted in 1865 she flew into Mr. Bradley'! arms andkissed him in gratitude. —.7 . ~,i . • Thb missionary ship Morning Star, which was ‘built twenty years ago by

th^icontributions of the Sunday-school scholars of the United States, has become unfit for service. At the time she was built there werer eleven other ves. sols engaged in missionary work among the remote islands of the Pacific. Of this number not one remains. All have been wrecked. Honolulu was the headquarters of the Morning Stkr during her eventful career. From that point she sailed thousands of miles, carrying food, lumber, general merchandise and letters to the friends of religion in the antipodes. Probably no vessel in the world has been the object of so much solicitude as this missionary ship. She is now too old and small for the work, and it is proposed to again call on the Sunday-school scholars for funds to build a steamer. It is estimated that the cost of the new Morning Star will be $50,000.

“It would not be healthy for a burglar to attempt any of his tricks about the Mint,” said Colonel Snowden to a Philanelplua reporter. “About a year ago I caused all the muskets to be changed for repeating rifles and sevenshot carbines that are darlings. Our outside watchmen who patrol the streets are well supplied with fire-arms. In fact, they are walking arsenals. We can readily arm every person in the building who can handle a pistol or gun. There is no trouble apprehended that I know of, and I cannot divine why the Secretary of the Treasury has ordered Gatling guns and carbines for the mints. I have nolt requested any, because we are sufficiently armed. At this time there are being turned out over a million of standard dollars each month, and we frequently have $15,000,000 in silver in the vaults. But it would take a little army with cannons to get it away.

For many years a peculiar person, known as the “Leather Man,” says a Waterbary, Cpnti., dispatch, has traveled through Connecticut and Massachusetts. Whence he comes and whither "he goes nobody knows, yet, for at least a generation, he has kept up his periodical peregrinations, appearing regularly every spring and fall.' He is held in awe by some of the older people, many of whom remember him appearing exactly the same when they were young, and children are afraid of him. His apparel is of leatlirt* throughout, new patches being added from time to time. About all the figures known in trigonometry appear upon the coat and trousers, while the moccasins are decorated with triangles stitched with red string, trapezoids fringed with green yarn, and semi-circles done in cardinal. A slouched hat covers his lieadj Out from under this escapes a few long gray hairs, which are never any grayer, but are materially longer than when he first made his appearance. Upon his furrowed face is always a coarse stubble beard, never any smoother, never any rougher, and his finger-nails always preserve the same uncanny length.

Charles Reade never invented a story more strange than the courtship, marriage, detection, flight, and final confession of the two women who have been living together as man and wife in a little town in Wisconsin. A wife, the mother of two children, grows weary of her marital relations and, donning men’s garments, sallies forth as a male beau of the first order. That such a thing should be done as a freak,and for temporary amusement is not so strange, but that it should be followed by a serious marriage* and then by what seems to have been contentment and even happiness on the part of both parties to the strange contract, affords ground for much wonder. It does not appeal- that a mere shrinking from the scandal of an exposure was at the bottom of the girl’s fidelity to her female companion. If this had been the case she would have readily abandoned the connection when publicity came; but this has not been her course. When the person known as Frank Dubois was found to be Mrs. Hudson, the mother of two children, the girl who had married the person connived at his or her escape, and, after doing all that was possible to conceal the whereabouts of her lover, joined her strange companion and sought seclusion in a region where it was thought neither would be fopnd or recognized. The final exposure and confession seemed more painful and sorrowful to the deluded wife than thh masquerading husband, and her grief at the uncertainty of the futnre and the possibility of separation was intense.

Old man Pettigrew, of Austin, is very precise in the majority of his statements, and is a strict constructionist. One dav a neighbor rushed in on Pettigrew while the latter was eating his breakfast, and exclaimed excitedly: Mr. Pettigrew, your bouse is on fire!” “I beg your psrdon," responded Pettigrew, “but what did you say ?” * . “Your house is on fire" “Ah, that is where you are wrong,” replied Pettigrew. 9 “Wrong!” said the neighbor. “Yes, this is not my house—P only rent it”— Texas Siftings.