Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 December 1885 — Utah Wonders. [ARTICLE]

Utah Wonders.

It is said that Hon. W. W. Astor, late United States Minister to Home, has-written a novel of Italian life in the middle ages, which is shortly to be printed by Scribner’s Sons. The story was accepted by the firm before the name of the writer was known to them. A Columaus, (Ohio) carpenter, while at work on a school-house, fell down the chimney, seventy-five feet high, breaking both of his legs. He was Rescued by cutting a hole in the chimney at the bottom large enough to pull him through. Contact with the walls in his descent saved his life. “Two of the toes of my buried leg overlap each other and pain me dreadfully,” said the wife of Jacob Berean, of Moriboro, Mass. The leg had been amputecl and buried one month. The husband, unknown to the wife, had the m leg exhumed and toes straightened out, and she said she knew by the relief that followed the exact moment the act was performed.

William Elwood, a noted New York gentlemanly burglar, was reeqgUly discovered eating soap. His fellqfar-pris-oners say he has eaten two day for a month in order to reihaced his weight and give him a consumptive appearance. When searched tobacco was found in his armpits. Physicians say this will reduce weight. Elwood is awaiting trial for the burglary, and for shooting a policeman. There died in Wallingford, Connecticut, lately, a spinster, who remained one on account of a curious pre-nqptial quarrel. The day had been fixed for her wedding, and she and her intended husband began to put put down carpets in the house they were to occupy. She wanted them laid one way, he another. They quarrelled and separated. He died shortly afterward, and the lady never married. A man, who used to preach the gospel in the settlements has written to a friend in Eureka, Nevada, that he is running a bar in Uleda, Montana, and that hispartuer is Yaughn, an old-timer from California, who used to deal faro in Colorado, and was sent to the penitentiary for burglary. “He is a good gambling man,” declares his ex-clerical partner in a burst of admiration, and adds by way of a personal vindication : "Belling whisky pays bettor than preaching, and besides it is no harder work.” ,

There are seven sisters in New York who possess GOB inches of raVen black hair, and a statistician recently computed that their combined hair, if placed in single strands, would reach over 160 miles. They put their hair in silk bags at night to prevent it from tangling. The father of these girds, Eev. Fletcher Sutherland,has been pastor of the Methodist churches in Genaseo, Lyons, and Lockport, New York, and is the only survivor of President Buchanan’s inaugural dinner, given at the National Hotel in Washington, at which some forty guests were pois-? oned. Among the young men of title and fortune who may be said to be coming on for the next London season is Sir Henry Alfred Doughty Tichborne.who will in May next be of age. The youthful Baronet is now in his twentieth year, having been born in May, 1866. The necessity of defending his property against the celebrated Tichborne claimant has entailed upon his trustees the enormous expenditure of £120,000. His estates are in Hampshire, Lincolnshire, Dorsetshire, and Buckinghamshire, and represent between 11,000 and 12,000 acres. Thexe are, in addition, London properties, bringing up the gross rent-roll to £28,000. The anglers in Northern waters have laid aside their rods and reels until the soft winds of Spring open the dogwood blossoms. But the genuine angler during the winter months always carries in his side pocket a sinker or a fly to remind him of past delights and joys Co come. One of the beanties of fishing is its .pleasant memories; a mean man may fish to kill time, but he never loves the sport. When the grandest news that was ever sent to the world was ready to be heaalded, neither priests, nor doctors, nor lawyers, nor statesmen, nor merchants, nor editors were chosen to repeat the “glad tidings," but humble fishermen of Galilee. The S.-n Francisco Society of Lady Agists id having a great time. It doesn’t know whether to call itself “lady” artists or “women” artists. It has long been a local habit to take matrimonial squabbles and all matters requiring peculiar finesse and exquisite blandishment to General Barnes. Accordingly, one of the ladies thought she would do a deter thing, and get the General to settle the vexed question of names. So she stated the case to him. After mature deliberation,partly over the matter in hand, and partly over a complicated shot at billiards, the General rendered his decision : “Avoid-both names,” said he. “Why not be original and euphony ions, and call yourselves ihd San Francisco Society of She Painters?” There

was a rustle of stylish petticoats and a sudden chilling vacancy in the apartment /I, It takes very little sometimes to separate two loving hear! s and make them meet thereafter as strangers. Recently in France a young artist was about to be married to the girl of his clioioe, but begged her for his sake to abandon the use of a bustle, as the sight of one gave him a pain. Instantly her warm French blood began to boil, and throwing her beautilul head proudly back, she gave him to understand, in a tone of voice that made him wish he had belonged to another generation, that where 3he went her bustle would follow close behind, wedding or no wedding. He also had blood that would boil an egg, and he plainly informed her that, since she preferred her bustle to him, she could marry it, and he would hunt up some female who would dispense with that appendage aud give him the preference. Near Cliehalis, in Washington Territory, last October, two boys, John Browning and Ben Prindle, figured in a bear-fight. The boys wdre out for birds, and while passing through a dense thicket, heard a fierce growl—a growl which made their blood curdle and their hair to stand on end. The boys soon discovered that they were surrounded by bears, and that, though well armed, it.was barely possible for them to escape. A monster black made a pass at Prindle, who instantly pulled both triggers, but the gun kicked and knocked him heels over head, with bruin in pursuit. Browning, seeing the plight his companion was in, took deadly aim and sent a bullet crashing through old bruin’s brain. Two others attacked the boys, but young Browning shot them .both, just as one of them was preparing to make a meal of Prindle. Three shots in rapid succession killed three bears and saved two boys. So relates the local chronicler.

The participants in “Japanese weddings,” a form of entertainment very popular at church socials in towns where the appearance of the “Mikado” has suggested the idea, are experiencing considerable embarrassment in New York, and elsewhere, over the fear that they are actually married, after all. The marriages were intended, of course, to be mock affairs, but the ceremonies having been performed, in some cases, by clergymen cr other authorized persons, a not unreasonable suspicion has gained ground that the Japanese unions are sufficiently American to be legal. In one instance mentioned, where the young man and woman who kindly personated Nanki-Poo and Jum-Yum for the benefit of their non-theate»-going neighbors, had each formed previous matrimonial engagements, great confusion and dismay exists. It is probably the wisest and saf-ast plan for those desirous of witnessing the joining of two Japanese hearts to go to a professional show, where there is no danger that the performance is anything but “play acting.”

The birth of a huge iceberg, a . phenomenon that has been seen only once or twice by a European, and to a certain extent has remained a matter of .theory, was observed by the Danish explorers on the east coast of Greenland last summer. The bergs are formed by breaking off from the end of glaciers extending from the perpetual ice of the unexplored interior to the coast and into the sea. The water buoys up the sea end df the glacier until it breaks by its own weight with a noise that sounds<-like ] o ud thunder miles away. The commotion of the water, as the iceberg turns over and over in the effort to attain its balance, is felt to a great distance along the coast. The natives regard it as the work of the evil spirits, and believe that to look upon the glacier in its throes is death. The Danish officers, when observing,the breaking off of the end of the great glacier Puissortok through their telescopes, were roughly ordered bv the Esquimau escort, usually submissive enough, to follow their example and turn their backs on the interesting scene. They had happily completed their observations, and avoided an embarrassing.conflict witli their crew by a seeming compliance with the order.

There is in this extreme north of Utah a magnificent subterranean reservoir of first-class soda-water, bubbling and effervescing out of the ground in such quantities tliat all America might be supplied. In the extreme south, on the road to Orderville, is an exquisite circular lakelet tffiat is always just full to the brim with water as clear and as green as bervL And where the water overflows the lake’s edge it incrusts the ground, and 1 the grass,- and the fallen leaves upon it with a fine coaling of limestone, so that the brim is grawmg higher and higher with the imperceptible but certain growth of a coral reef, and in the course of generations the lake will Become a concreted basin.