Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 April 1885 — Women Who Take Lessons in Talking. [ARTICLE]

Women Who Take Lessons in Talking.

The English university constituencies include the whole mass' of graduates who choose to keep their names upon the books, the lawyers and the physicians, the squires and the parsons, the bankers, merchants, and writers—men of every trade and every rank in England. Oxford has 5,400 such electors, and Cambridge about 1,000 more. Dr. Edson, of New York, has found that common Rio coffee is put through a process of poisoning which transforms it into any desired variety, and this is only one of the many frauds that he has detected in the grocery trade. Lead and its compounds are found in almost every article of prepared food, while copper and arsenic are in common use. f The ways of the world are peculiar. One of tire latest anecdotes of Fred Burnaby is that, when in Africa with Gordon, one of the native tribes, captivated with his feats of strength, wished to make him their king. To convince him of their sincerity in the matter they threw the old King into the river, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that Burnaby succeeded in inducing them to allow the old monarch to swim out. Sarah Story, of Ludlow, Massachusetts, who, according to her own statement, was 108 years, 8 months, and 21 days o'd, died recently. She was part Indian and part negro. She was in the habit of saying that her mother told her that she was "born in old Connecticut the day before independence was declared,that her folks were going to move independence day, but she came along so they could not.” The New York Medical Record, which does not seem particularly moved by the cholera alarm, says: The cholera is now in the third year of its travels from India, and its virulence is w'aning. This was shown by the small extent of its ravages in Paris last fall. Cholera is not a contagious disease, like ' scarlet fever and measles. Its presence in cities of India, where it is epidemic, creates no more alarm or comment than dees the diphtheria with us. It is said that the transposition of one word was the foundation of Daniel Clark’s great fortune. He had bought 1,920 square toisies of land in that part of New Orleans that afterward became its commercial center. In the engrossing of the deed the “1,920 square toises” was carelessly made to read “1,920 toises square,” and increased the value of SIO,OOO to $20,000,000. Mr, Clark took advantage of the error, and the law of New Orleans was powerless to prevent him. An item is going the rounds of the medical press that fort” years ago Dr. Wilkinson King studied 1,000 autopsies at Guy’s hospital, London, to ascertain the proportion of persons who have latent cancer or cancerous growth, but who die from other causes without a suspicion that they have the hidden germs of that disease. He found that of “all females who dies at about 40, nearly one-half have cancers; of males, one-eighth. Of males above 65, onefifth of all are cancerous."

Thomas Stevens, the wheelman, who recently completed a bicycle trip from San Francisco to Boston, will soon start on a tour around the world, using the wheel exclusively on the land part of his journey. His proposed line of travel lies through England, France, Germany, Austria, European and Asiatic Turkey, Russia, and the Chinese empire, ending in Japan, whence he will take the steamer for San Francisco. The trip, which it is expected will take eighteen months, is under the auspices of the Outing Magazine.

Recent medical science seems to be of value in correcting certain popular delusions. Contemporary historians believe that the pious and unfortunate Queen Catharine of Aragon, died by foul means from slow poisoning. Dr. Norman Moore, however, who has investigated the true cause of death in several historical characters, has discovered, after a careful examination of the notes made by the person wire embalmed the body of the Princess that she really died of melanotic sarcoma of the heart

American heiresses seem to have a penchant for Italian noblemen. In addition to Miss Mackay, the leading names on the list comprise Miss Field, Princess Brancaccio; Miss Lorillard Spencer, Princess Vicar ar a Cenci; Miss Broadwood, Princess Ruspolli; Miss Conrad, Marchess Teodoli; Miss Kinney, Countess Gran of ti; Miss Fisher, Countess Gherardesca; Miss Roberts, Countess Galli; Miss Fry, Marchesa Torrogiani; Miss Lewis, Countess, Barbolins Amadei; Miss Gilliader, Marchesa di San Marzarno, and Miss Hungerford, Countess Telfener.

Besidbs a toy telephone, consisting of a bamboo cylinder and a string, Chinese ingenuity produced about 150 years ago “a thousand-mile speaker.* It is described as a roll of copper, likened to a fife, containing an artful,, device; whispered into and immedi-

ately closed, the confined message, however long, may be conveyed to any distance, and thus, in a battle, secret instructions may be conveniently communicated. It was the invention of Chiang Shun-shin, of Huichon, a writer on occult science, astronomy, etc. His device seems to have died with him, as it no longer exists, save in the chronicles of the historian.,, , i' ■

Cyrus W. Field has proved himself not only a thoughtful man but a philanthropist. > The law’ requires telegraph wires to be run underground in New York, but Mr. Field hesitates to sanction the law. He thinks that it would be highly dangerous to. dig up the streets at the present time, with cholera threatening us, and so doesn’t want the wires in which he is interested sp largely put underground,jjust yet. He can leave town himself whenever he wants to, but he is troubled about the moneyless poor who couldn’t get away and avoid the pestilence were he to dig up the streets. It is such solicitude as this, manifested occasionally by a heavy stockholder in a big corporation, which compels us to believe that human nature is not bad after all. The Atlanta Constitution fishes up a good many queer things in Georgia. Here is the latest: “Dr. L. C. Mattox, of Clinch county, has an owl that roams around loose at his house and is a terror to cats and mice. Not only is lie useful for this, but he is a rare bird, the doctor having learned his owlship some rare tricks. For instance he will take the owl and whirl him around and about in his hands, and- will then put him upon the flopr or table upon his back, side, or any other posit on he may see proper, telling the owl to sleep, and he remains perfectly quiet. The doctor can. then tell the owl to dream a bad dream and awake frightened, when, after about thirty minutes, the bird will jump up from the table apparently in a great fright, popping his bill and showing other signs of alarm.”

Prince Bismarck’s official labors appear to be as varied and minute as those of the Great Frederick himself, who, as Carlyle has told U 3, turned from planning a great campaign to settling what dowry one of his subjects should give his daughter. The chancellor has lately had to forget his quarrel with Lord Granville to decide how the German name of the city of Cologne should be written. One railway company whose line enters the town always wrote it “Koln,” while another adhered as steadfastly to “Coin.” Some scandal was created by this divergence in the orthography of one of the principal towns in Germany, and the point was referred to the minister of public works, who passed it on to the department of public instruction. The latter having refused to decide this very important question, it had to gd before the chancellor, who as might have been anticipated, pronounced it K. So that in future the city which, according to the English humorist, has seven (or was it seventy) distinct smells at eVery street corner, is to be written by all good Germans,railway directors included, Koln.

Rasmus B. Anderson, recently appointed Consul to v Denmark, is well know as a scholar and writer on his favorite themes—the literature and mythology of Iceland and Scandinavia. He was for many years connected with the University of Wisconsin as professor of modern languages, and there made his literary reputation. He is an enthusiast in the study of all that relates to the home of his parents, and has done more than any man on this side of the Atlantic to make Scandinavian literature known and popular. He has some thirteen books now in print, which have had a wide influence, the best known being those entitled “America Not Discovered by Columbus,” “A Norse Mythology,” and translations of several of Bjornson’s Norwegian tales. For Bjornson himself he has the highest admiration as a man, scholar, orator, poet, politician, and novelist. Professor Anderson was for years intimately connected with Ole Bull, whose triumphant tour through this country he managed, and whose biography he assisted to* write. He has spent a year or two in Norway and Sweden, and is well acquainted with all the prominent scholars of those countries, among whom his name is highly honored. Professor Anderson is equally at home in English, Swedish, Norwegian, German. French, and perhaps Italian. He is a man of wide, practical knowledge of men and institutions, and in every way worthy for the office presented to hijn. .

Why, I have a large class of young society ladies, who coihe in the middle of the day to avoid being observed. They enter into the study with zeal, “Teach me how to speal well,” said one; “I do not care to express passion, hatred, scorn or anything of that kind, but I wish to converse fluently, to nar l rate an incident with proper chic, to have the correct inflection at the close of each sentence,, and above all, to be possessed of sufficient verveto keep from growing insipid.” Can I give a lady verve or chic? I simply teach them natural manners, and in a few weeks the most awkward have attained a polish of manner and a fluency of speech that are truly surprising.—lnterview with an Elocutionist, New York Mail