Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 July 1885 — Not Up to the Style. [ARTICLE]

Not Up to the Style.

Blanche K. Bruce, ex-Register of the Treasury, intends to reside in the fntnra at his old home in Mississippi. A Wilksbarre, Pennsylvania,-woman fell off a chair and broke three ribs and a collar-bone while trying to hang a neighbor’s cat for eating her chickens. The “John Brown Scaffold Company” has been organized in Charlestown, West Virginia, where John Brown was executed. The company has a capital of £1,200, and will manufacture relics fromJ;he lumber used in making the scaffold on rvhich Brown was hung. The wood is now contained in the poarch of a dwelling at Charlestown, which has been purchased by the projector of the company. When Mr. Fawcett, the late Postmaster General, of England, returned to health after lying for a time at death’s door, he stated that his illness had at least freed him from the fear of death. In the most serious part of his trouble he felt no anxiety, and did not fear, as he had in health, that the end would be preceded by great pain, or a severe'struggle. He felt that his heart would slowly, and without his knowledge, cease to beat. The United States is the greatest coffee-consuming country on the globe, our imports last year amounting to 520,957,000 pounds, worth £40,906,000. Of this supply Brazil sent us nearly two-thirds, a large share of the remaining third coming from the Central American States. Recently Mexico has been bidding with increased results for the A merican coffee trade, and the subjects of Dom Pedro are beginning to look upon it with jealousy. Dr. J. L. Blair, of New Haven, has constructed an astronomical clock which shows the earth, moon and minor planets in motion about the sun; the minutes, hours, days, weeks,- and months of the year; Mercury revolving about the sun, and its superior and inferior conjunction with Venus and the earth; also, when it is the evening and the morning star. Venus is shown in its orbits in the same way. The clock gives the whole system of tides, all the phases of the moon, solar, and sidereal time, periodical and synodical time, and the earth’s pasago through the constellations of the zodiac. Of the late Robert Treat Paine, the Boston Advertiser says: “When nearly 80 years old, and not in strong health, he made a solitary journey to California on the occasion of the eclipse of 1880. He loft the train on a lonely prairie, where the station was ' the only building, and where no man or beast was to be seen. The total eclipse was to last only thirty-seven seconds, and, in his anxiety to secure a correct observation of the moment when the sun reappeared, he deprived, himself of the satisfaction, after his long journey, of viewing the eclipse as a spectacle, that he might attend more closely to the beats of his chronometer.” In Yonkers, N. Y., the other day a man was arrested for “refusing to disperse.’* That was the charge on the court docket, and ho was the only map complained of. He was standing tin the sidewalk with paper and pencil recording the names of persons who went into a factory to work. He was not a riotous mob, and when ordered to disperse didn’t know how. Besides he claimed the right to stand on the sidewalk by himself, in nobody’s way, and., follow his literary pursuit. Nobody had any right to know what he was writing, either. But a policeman took him in for “refusing to disperse,” and the lawyers had fun over the case and the Yonkers Judge decided that as it tvas impossible for one man to disperse without racking his physical system the case of this one-man mob would be dismissed. * Philatelists may Well be discouraged when it comes to making a complete collection of revenue stamps. First, because of the difficulty of coming upon stamps of the largest size, which are valued at $5,000 each. The only way that these stamps can be had is to get them from packages upon which they have been used, and even obtained in that way the possessor cannot rest in peace, for it is unlawful to have such stamps in one’s possession. In fact, it is said by the authorities that nearly all the smokers in thh land might be arrested and iniprisoned for having failed to destroy from their cigar boxes the stamps that paid duty on their contents. It is not enough that the stamps are canceled; they must be destroyed beyond the possibility of being used again. Stamp maniacs would better leave this branch of the art • severely alone. !- ... - —• ’1- ' • /• Meriweatheb, Georgia, furnishes a good mule story. Four brothers named Byrd,, all fine judges of animals, and one of them the cutest man at a horse trade in that region, were attending a picnic, when they encountered a young man whom they judged to be a greeny, who had a good looking mule for sale. The animal was

looked over by the party, and pronounced O. K., (and Jim Byrd proposed to swap with the verdant stranger. This was soon effected, and Jim was so pleased with his trade that he insisted that there should be no rueing or demand to swap back. This was readily agreed to. Next morning Jim’s little boy came running in from the lot, shouting, “Pa, pa, that old mule you got yesterday is blind in both eyes, and can’t hear a bit.” A close examination proved the truth of the hoy’s statement Jim paid $lO to get his horse back again. ' v Senator Evarts has given a law of etiquet to autograph-hunters. He says: If stamped and addressed envelops and a card are inclosed it is a rule that the request shall be heeded—from patriotic motives—because it gives the Govcent in postage. If one is obliged to go to the trouble of writing both autograph and address, to furnish envelope, card, and stamp, it is not customary for such requests to be accompanied merely by an inclosure of loose stamps. A poet of my acquaintance once told me that his autograph requests supplied him with stamps for all correspondence. Autograph - seekers probably found that loose stamps were appropriated without compunction, for they have changed the custom. Ido not receive a great many such requests now. They come in great numbers after making an important speech. The mother of Mark Twain, who is 82 years of age, and living at Keokuk, lowa, has recently been interviewed: “Sam was always a kind-hearted boy,” said Mrs. Clemens, “but he was a very wild and mischievous one, and do what we would, we could never make him go to school. This used to trouble his father dreadfully, and we were convinced that he would never amount to as much in the world as his brothers, because he was not near so steady and sober minded as they were.” “I suppose, Mrs. Clemens, that your son in his boyhood days somewhat resembled his own Tom Sawyer, and that a fel-low-feeling is what made him so kind to the many hair-breadth escapes of that celebrated youth?” “Ah, no,” replied the old lady with a merry twinkle in her eye, “he was more like Huckleberry Finn than Tom Sawyer. Often his father would start him off to school, and in a little while would follow him to ascertain his whereabouts. There was a large stump on the way to the school-house, and Sam would take his position behind that, and as his ( father went {last would gradually circle around it in such a wav a 3 to keep out of sight. Finally his father and tho teacher said it was of no use to try to teach Sam anything, because' he was determined not to" learn. But I never gave up. He was always a great bay for history, and could never get tired of that kind of reading, but he hadn’t any use for school-houses and text-books.” Of a population of 8,000 in Plymouth, Pennsylvania, about one-third have suffered from typhoid fever and many more with malerial poison. 'The origin of the epidemic is clears—ignorance, filth, and water pollution. The town is situated on the alluvial soil of hills sloping toward the Susquehanna. The water supply is from reservoirs made by damming a brook running through the town. There are a number of these reservoirs, one above the other, from which water is distributed by pipes to most of the town. There is no sewerage system, ancl the water used for domestic purposes finds its way through the soil to the river. The water of the reservoirs has been analyzed by Prof. R. C. Kedzie, of the Michigan State Agricultural College, who reports it to be the worst city drinking water he ever examined. Post-mortem examinations by Dr. E. O. Shakspeare, of Philadelphia, establish the fact that the disease is typical typhoid. Tho first case was in the person of a citizen just returned from Philadelphia with the disease, and lying sick in a house some forty feet above the banks of the brook, between the third and fourth reservoirs. The excreta from this patient were carried in March, by the rains and melting snows, into the brook, thence to the reservoirs, and widely distributed through the drinking water. Such an epidemic would have beeh impossible had the town been clean. The water was foul, the town ripe for the disease. The seed was planted, and the harvest of death followed. This was not a dispensation, of Providence, but of ignorance. Doubtless as foul conditions exist in many localities that have heretofore miraculously escaped. The miracle will cease upon the establishment of the first case.

Mistress—What in the world are yon doing, Bridget? ' Don’t you know that yon are spoiling the very best silver pitcher I have in the world. Why are you hammering it out of shape-in that manner? , * i " Bridget (new servant who is very desirous of pleasing)—Faith, mum, I was only tryin’ to do my best, mum. You told me for to bring down the hammered-silver pitcher, an’ as I couldn’t foind the loikes of it, I fetched this plain one, an’ thought that I would be after pleasing ye, mum, by hammerin’ it wid this ’ere big hammer.— Phila - Hlelphia Call It is injurious to be in a hurry, and delay is often equally ho ; he is wise who does everything in proper time. Tardiness and precipitation are extremes equally to be avoided. * * n .* ■*' ,*■ •; V ' ' i ,