Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 January 1886 — The Gulf Stream. [ARTICLE]

The Gulf Stream.

Edwin and Matthew Arnold are no relation whatever to each other, and are much annoyed at being so often mistaken for each other. In plain language, the two men detest each other. Matthew calls Edwin a poetaster and Philistine. Edwin styles Matthew an egotist and pedagogue.

<, A Syracuse paper mentions a remarkable historical fact, to the effect that Commodore Vanderbilt once shook hands with an engineer on the New York Central road, and remarked: “I am not ashamed to shake hands with such a man as you are.” For the benefit of generations yet unborn it is to be regretted that no report was made of what the engineer said.

A Kensington firm sends out a circular offering titles and decorations at low prices and on the installment pay plan. Pijipal decorations are the cheapest, and Austrian the dearest. The plices range from $4,500 for a barony to $15,000 for a dukedom. Our Detroit electric light men find little inducement to make such purchases; the returns are not as good as those from Aidermen.

Venerable mail-carriers seem to be not altogether uncommon in Sullivan County, New York, where Fredrick Richards, who is 92 years old, and who carried the mail on a fifteen-mile trip for sixty years, recently gave up his route, and it was taken by Adam Linklepaugh, 82 years old, who is now carrying the mail there. Richards has twin sisters, Mrs. Betsey Brazee, and Mrs. Catharine Ryder, both living at Richmondville, Schoharie County, New York, at the age of 90 years.

Mr. Garrett, of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, has good looks, good health, good digestion, one hundred pairs of trousers, a million-dollar dwelling, a big railroad and telegraph line, and several millions of dollars. Still he is not happy. His neighbor on Mount Vernon place, Baltimore, with whom a lawsuit is pending over some trifling obstruction, threatens, if he loses it, 4o turn his elegant house and grounds into a colored orphan asylum. And his name is Jones.; Such is the Irony of fate.

A cobrespondent of the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal tells of * remarkable result of the use of steam as a disinfectant of ships. The vessel io be treated was made tight fore and aft, and the steam turned on for the requisite time. The hold was found to be in good condition after the cleansing, and the disinfectants entered the cabin. But here they discovered that the fine furniture and cabinet work had fallen apart and lay in a comprehensive heap on the floor . The steam had melted the glue.

George Bancroft, the historian, delivered his eulogy of Abraham Lincoln before Congress and the officers of the national government just twenty years ago. Congress adopted a joint resolution of thanks to Mr. Bancroft, copied almost ""Verbatim from that passed when John Quincy Adams delivered the oration on Lafayette. When the addrsss was printed Mr. Bancroft insisted on having the title page state that it had been delivered before “the Congress of America,” instead of “the Congress of the United States of America.”

A correspondent of the New York Journal of Commerce calls attention to the effect of the laws of some Northern States prohibiting the killing qf bobolinks. This bird breed in the Northern States, and in the fall migrate southward. Known as the reed bird in Pennsylvania and the rice bird at the South, the bobolink is a great and highly-prized article of food, is hunted by sportsmen, killed in thousands, plenty in the markets. Thus he is protected at the North for the benefit of the Middle and Southern States. The same is true of woodcock.

Wonderfully sweet and fresh is the description in Mr. Tennyson’s new volume of poor Molly Magee, whose lover, Danny O’Boon, strayed into a bog one night and was not heard of for forty years when his body was fished out of the bog unchanged by its long soaking: •Oeh, Molly Magee, wid the red o’the rose an' the 1 white o’ the May, An’ yer hair as black as the night an' yer eyes as bright as the <’ay; Achora! yer lasts little whisper was sweet as the lilt of a bird; Acushla f ye set mo heart batin' tn music wid “ ivery word. An'sorra the queen wid her • scepter in such an illegant lian’; An’ the fall of yer fcot in the dance was as light as snow on the lan’.”

In receiving visitors the President has peculiar habits in the management, of his arms and hands. When he is pleased or contented to listen, he holds his hands about six inches apart, with the back part of his hand against his coat The fingers generally are quiet; but if they begin to work or contract, he is growing tired.' Then he will shift from one foot to the other. If the man bores bin) the arms gradually come forward. The move is gradual; but if tljo infliction continues the hands fall Jo the side—thumbs in. If still the visiter persists in staying, the arms go out

and the thumbs beat against his side. Then is the time for disappearing. The new Tay bridge, to take the place of the one where the great horror occurred, when completed will be rather more than two miles long, its cost between £600,000 and £700,000, and some 21,000 tons of new ironwork will be used in addition to the sidegirders of the old bridge. The eightyfive openings which form the total length will increase in span from fiftysix feet near the shore to 245 feet at the center of the bridge, which will be some seve’nty-six feet above the water. Another curious piece of information is that if the 3,500,000 rivets which will be used in the work were laid lengthwise they would cross the broad river more than 100 times.

Crater Lake is thus described in a petition that is being numerously signed in Oregon to make a national reservation of the wonder: “The surface of the lake is 6,200 feet above sea level,and it is aboutjeight miles long and six miles wide. It contains a circular island 600 feet high, on which is found an extinct crater which is ninety feet deep and 475 feet in diameter. In another portion of the lake is found a conical-shaped rock, which is perpendicular, and rises to an altitude of 2,200 feet above the water's surface. Other rocks of remarkable form and elevation towor high above the lake. The lake walls are nearly perpendicular, and vary in altitude from 1,000 to 2,000 feet.” . •

The London Athenaeum states that the story of Goldsmith’s arrest by his landlady and Johnson’s sale of the “Vicar of Wakefield” are in danger. It is impossible that this account, received from Johnson himself, should not be substantially true; yet, in his introduction to Mr. Stock’s new sac-simile of the first edition, Mr. Austin Dobson shows that it will have to be reconciled with certain inconvenient facts. He holds that the book, as early as the 28th of October, 1762, became rhe property of three persons, one of whom was Benjamin Collins, the Salisbury printer. This exonerates Mrs. Fleming, Goldsmith’s. Islington landlady, from her traditional asperity, as Goldsmith, at that date, had not gone to Islington; and it fixes some time anterior to October, 1762, for the composition of the book, which was a point hitherto in some obscurity.

There are forty-five men in Congress, only one of whom is a Senator; who are 40 years of age or less. Thb youngest Representative is Mr. La Follett, of Wisconsin, aged 28. Just above him in age is Mr. Ward, of Chicago, who is 29. ' Mcßae, of Arkansas, is 34. Hopkins, of Illinois, is 39. Thomas, of Illinois, is the same. Four Indiana members are under 40. Taulbee, cda .Kentucky, is 34. McAdoo, of New Jersey, is 32. Belmont, of New York, is 34. Pulitzer, of New York, is 38. Blanchard of Louisiana, Maybury of Michigan, Tarney of Michigan, Nelson of Minnesota, Laird of Nebraska, Stabluecker of New York, Reid of North Carolina, Hemphill of South Carolina, and Taylor of Tennessee are 36. The youngest Senator is Kenna, of West Virginia, 37. Next is Riddleberger, of Virginia, 41, and the third is Aldrich, of Rhode Island, 44. The two oldest men in Congress are Senators Morrill and Payne, born in 1810. Mr. Waite, of Connecticutt, was born in 1811, and is the oldest Representative. Mr. Eddridge, of Michigan, was born in 1813, Singleton of Mississippi and Kelley of Pennsylvania in 1814, Senator Sawyer of Wisconsin and Mr. Plumb of Illinois in 1816.

Experiments lately made in London to determine the number of animal organisms in the drinking-water used in that city have produced interesting, not to say alarming, results. It was learned that in water taken from the Thames River no less than 1.500 microorganisms existed to the cubic centimetre. The West Middlesex water contains not quite so much animal life. That taken from chalk wells is worse. It is not assured that these micro-or-ganisips are fatal, but there is at least a suspicion in the case. The inference is that the fewer the organisms the less chance there is that some of them arc of a dangerous type. When they rise above a certain number there is a possibility that some of them are the veritable germs of zymotic disease. Two methods of testing water are now applied —one the detection of organisms by the use of gelatine and a process of “cultivation,” the other by determining hoiv much oxygen the water will consume. The oxygen test is considered a particularly good one, as animal life’ requires oxygen while vegetable matter yields up that gas. The examinations made are at least interesting, and it is perhaps in this field that we shall find some day the source of many dreaded diseases.

•Some fresh information about-the Gulf Stream is given by a Boston scientist. It is a stream of warm bine water hot more than fifty fathoms deep, and it flows due east at a rate that would take it to England withinloo days. Oft Cape Hatteras thia north* ward-flowing stream is in the form of a fan, its three warm bands spreading out over the Atlantic surface an aggtega’e breadth of 167 miles, while two cooler bands of an aggregate breadth of fifty-two miles are interposed between them. y- '■ <>. • 'I. ' ‘