Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 February 1885 — The Coen. [ARTICLE]

The Coen.

Thk Current-. Do not grow suspicions of the business man whose honor is unsullied. Now is the time he most needs your confidence. Now is the time you most need the cheering influence of his energy. Austria employes 14,450 officials in her postal service, England 91,000, Germany 79,384, France 53,299, Italy 18,790, and Russia 15,557. During 1883 Germany showed the largest amount of business, and England the largest surplus over expenses. The postal receipts last year were as follows: Germany, $44,488,000; England, $39,850.000* France, $32,145,000; Russia, $12,133,000; Austria-Hungary, $8,141,000; Italy, $7,092,000. One of the curiosities of the New Orleans Exposition is an air flower from the City of Mexico. It is two inches long, and resembles a beetle wish wings and horns. The wings are of light sea-green color, dotted with specks. The now whi£e, and at the points very short The body of the flower is pale yellow and deep orange, and gives a slight hyacinth perfume. Including the broad, bananashaped leaves, the entire plant looks as though molded in wax. » A curious explosion happened in a Charleston, South Carolina, household the other day. A pot containing coffee ■tfas boiling on the stove, when one of three children in the room observed that the steam was escaping from the top of the pot He was about to raise the lid to prevent the coffee from boiling over when the lid was blown off and the steam and boiling coffee hurled .about the room. All of the children were more or less scalded, but not seriously. It is supposed that the spout was choked up by the grounds, and that the lid got fastened in some.way. New York World: Colombier and Bernhardt told some ratheiOtall stories .about their experiences while traveling in America, but neither of them could boast of Aimee’s experience. This little French woman had to walk a mile in tho mud, owing to the burning of a railroad bridge in Kentucky, and losing her slippers had to perform the feat in her stockings (pale blue). Then the party had to wait for hours in an open field with a blizzard raging, and so they built a house, of trunks, lit a fire in the center, and put the French woman in it, where she defied fate by singing “Un Mari Sage” from “La Belle Helene.” ~ . When Gen. “Bob’* Toombs, of Georgia, goes up to Atlanta on one of his periodical sprees he throws off all his Southern dignity and becomes for the time being “hail fellow, well met” with every one. Recently he sprinkled a little red over the town in the company of a.n aspiring young legislator, separating from him in a wee hour of the night. The next day the General met his whilom acquaintance in the lobby of the Markham House, the latter approaching him with a gracious bow and saying, “Good morning, General; how doyou do to-day ?” The General took no notice of the remark but turned and looked out of the window. “Why, General,” resumed the other, “don’t you remember me? I was with you last night” “Well, sir, what of it?” roared the old warhorse, turning upon him wrathfuly. “Am I to be obliged to recognize every d—n fool who gets ona spree with me ?”

Miss Mibanda Davis, of Stafford,. Connecticut, is known far and wide as the “starsingwoman.” She is 32 years old, and has been starving ever since the age of 17. Occasionally sle £akes a sip of water and eats a few cracker crumbs, but that is all Sometimes she goes forty-seven days without food or drink. Although emaciated, her general health is moderately good. All efforts to account for her inability .to eat have proven unsatisfactory. To a newspaper correspondent Miss Davis avowed the belief that she was possessed by a devil When she said this a spasm stiffened Jier limbs, the joints extendin £ with ? fg^f^harp«plo eyes blazed, to use the newspapfL man's words, “like the diamonds of hell” Miss Davis declares that all her life she has felt the sway Of the evil spirit tempting her to every species of deviltry. She is constantly watched, but has never shown a disposition to be violent or to commit any crime

An industrious, simple, and courteous monarch is “Count Vasili’s” estimate of iSranz Josef of Austria. "Having urgent business to- dispatch one day,” he' relates, the Emperor had his dinner placed on his writing-table. His aide-de-campdined at the sama time m anwdjoining room. After the meal the Emperor opened the door and said: ‘You can go; I shall work alone. What do you think of this food?* It seems to me, your Majesty, that the dinner was not first rate,’ replied the aide-de-camp. The Emperor then exclaimed: "What difference does that make to yon ? You can make up for it at a hotel, while I pm obliged to content myself With thw trash. lam not allowed to go where others go.’ His work at an and, the

Emperor remains along and reflects. Sometimes he feels scruples about what he has done, and if on the morrow some one echoes his doubts he modifies his past resolution. It is this temper of mind—4»ver striving to achieve the best—which in a chivalrous nature has sometimes made the Emperor Francis Joseph appear vacillating. Tourgueneff bore his last illness with great fortitude. “It qeems I may linger twenty years with my incurable illness. But is such life worth living? I cannot walk: I cannot stand; lean .only sleep, thanks to morphia, and lie only on the left side. But enough; if I ever get better, you are sure to hear ik,at once." “Remember Goethe,” he said at another time. “Was he not saturated with every human blessing? —great fame, loved by women, hated by idiots; his works translated even in Chinese; the whole of .Europe rushing to kneel before him. And Napoleon even said to him, ‘C’estun homme.' Well, and with all that, when he was 82 he declared that during all his life he had been actually happy only a quarter of an hour! So, you see, we must not grumble.” In December, 1882, he wrote: “I repeat, lam not losing heart ; till I did not give up all hope it was much worse. I am 64. 1 have enjoyed my life, and now I must shut up. But how I wish I could go tc Russia.” In the published volume.oi his correspondence, the last letter — written in pencil with almost a dying hand —is addressed to Count Leo Tolstoy, and is dated June 28, 1883. He died on the 22d of the following August. __ The question of plants in bed-rooms is still being discussed by medical authorities. At a medical conference recently held in France it was demonstrated to the satisfaction of all the savans there present that plants, as long as they are plants only, may safely, and even with advantage, be admitted tc the elysium from which they have sc often been exiled. These pretty ornaments, as a learned writer now declares, “far from being hurtful, are beneficial inasmuch as they exale a certain amount of ozone and vapor, which maintain a healthy dampness in the air, and besides that are destructive of the microbes which promote consumptive tendencies in human beings. It is only flowers, and not the plants which bear them, that do the damage. Ferns are innocuous, roses and sunflowers are pernicious, at least during the interesting period while they are in bloom.” This is all right so far as the medical questions involved are concerned; but the discussion does net touch the real objection to plants in bed-rooms, which is, that whenever the man of the house has to get up after the catnip tea, or any other sort of “nip,” he invariably falls over them, greatly to the damage of his shins and to the disturbance of his usual serenity. Plants should never be in a bed-room. James Marshall thirty years ago gave to his brother, John Marshall, a farm of 400 acres on Thorn Creek, Pennsylvania,’ upon condition that he would go and live there. The offer was accepted, but no deed of the farm was ever issued to John Marshall. He continued living there until a few years ago, when, with his family, he moved back to Pittsburgh, but paid taxes on the Thorn Creek farm as usual. When James Marshall died he disposed of all his property by will, but did not enumerate the farm as part of his possessions. No one considered the farm to be worth bothering about until the oil excitement in Thorn Creek began. Then the heirs of James Marshall claimed the farm as part of their father's estate, and leased it for drilling' purposes. The great Armstrong well, which flowed 9,000 barrels a day, was struck on this farm, as were several other wells nearly as prolific, and the Marshall farm became the richest oil territory that had ever been developed. The heirs of John Marshall claim that they had a legal title to the farm, owing to their twenty-one years of continuous possession. This title was recognized as good by Thompson H. Lines, and he bought the farm a few days ago. Nearly $300,000 worth of oil has been taken from the farm, and it is valued at $500,000. ' -

"It is rare that you hear a hunter nowadays speak a good word for the ' oon,” said one of Sullivan County’s Te ?7in sportsment, “and yet, if you M , 'Ejection to this much-berated animal he tell you. More abundant widely distributed oyer the American than any other game animal, eivipt, perhaps, the rabbit, it is less frequently ehcoun tered when not hunted for than even the rarer animals. And yet the coon prefers to live in the neighborhood of men. In a -country totally uninhabited and wild you may turn your best dogs loose and you’ll never run a coon up a tree. A coon is always on the alert, even when treed, and many a cunning old fellow I have known to leap from his perch high up in a tree and alight in the midst of hunters and dogs, and make his escape by the very boldness of his maneuver. The coon is a monomaniac en .the subject of water. The first thing when one starts' out of an evening, it makes for the nearest running water and drinks and bathes preparatory for its foraging expedition.— Chicago Herald. Db. Kubui has so little faith in the Kuhe recently s w^w^d l^ of the bacilli without any ill, effect.