Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 March 1887 — Benedict Arnold. [ARTICLE]

Benedict Arnold.

George Alfred Towns end is threatening the world with another book, which will deal with Dr. Priestly and the administration of George Washington, introducing the Federalists and incidents in the lives of Jefferson, Burr, and Hamilton. j~ The tobncco cultivation is rapidly progressing in the Crimea, where successful attempts have been made to acclimatize the best Turkish kinds of tobacco, which are also the least known in Russia, such as are known under the namefc of Basnm, Fersisand, OujoundJova, and Yenidje. «. The Regent Of Bavaria is making his sons learn useful trades. Prince Rupert, who will probably be King some day, is apprenticed to a Munich woodturner, and works daily at his bench. Prince Francis is learning to paint houses and Prince Charles is an indus; trious market gardner. s A resident of Kidder County, Dakota, went into an unsettled section of that Territory last summer, forty miles ahead of a new railroad, and cut 100,000 tons of hay. The railroad crawled up to his stacks during the fall,and he is now selling his hay for .$8 a ton. He expects to make over*4loo,OOff by his enterprise. Secretary Whitney recently had the Marine Band to play at his house and afterward gave it luncheon. When he invited them to the table he asked their nationalities, and said: “I have hog arid hominy for the Americans, macaroni for the Italians, and sauerkraut for the Germans.” Then he out terrapin and champagne for them all. Mrs. Lille Prok, of Ogalalla,’ Oregon, has not made any crazy quilts lately nor done any Kensington work to speak of, but so far this winter she has killed seven bears. It may be added that she has her husband so welltrained that he never stays out after 9 o’clock, and when the steak is burned or the coffee weak he never grumbles. A Number of .Boston capitalists are building a railway car of steel. Instead of forming their car by the current square-box pattern, they will use, as far as possible, a curved design. Hotair pipes will heat the car, and a compressible platform will render telescoping an impossibility. The general adoption of such a car would be a most desirable result. A Yaldosta, Ga., man, driving along the road near his home, saw a large bald eagle devouring a goose near the roadside. He alighted, gathered a light wood knot, and advanced upon it, but the eagle, so far from fleeing away at his approach, stood by its game and showed fight. The man walked to within a few feet of it, and, with a welldirected blow with the light wood knot, knocked it over. o. Miss Julia J. Stenson was married recently in New York to Dr. Henry P. Loomis. The bride wore a dress more than a century old. It was made for her maternal great-grandmother in 1778, and worn at her wedding, when Alexander Hamilton was groomsman and Gen. Washington and Jiis staff were present as guests. It was worn for the second time by the bride’s mother forty-five years ago. Although the best of the public lands have 1 gone, it is encouraging to note that there still remain unsurveyed about 9,000,000 acres in Colorado, 12,000,000 in Arizona, nearly 30,000,000 in California, 49,000,000 in Dakota, 7,000,« 000 in Florida, 44,000,000 in Idaho, '7,000,000 in Minnesota, 39,000,000 in Nevada, 74,000,000 in Montana, 31,000,000 in Utah, more than 20,000,000 in Washington Territory, and so'on. - •••:- ’ w — 1 1 ----- Mr. and Mrs. William Goose, of Jeffersonville, Ind., recently celebrated the sixtieth anniversary of their marriage. They were both born in the county and have lived for fifty-seven years on the farm where the anniversary •was celebrated. They have nine children, the eldest in his 60th year and •the youngest in his 41st. There were also present thirty-five goslings in the name of grandchildren and nineteen as : great-grandchildren. “I should like,” says John Rnskin in a recent letter to a friend, “to see home rnle (in my sense of ruling—not yours) everywhere. I should like to see Irelandjunder a King of Ireland; Scotland under a Douglas, tender and true; India under a Rajah; and England under her Queen, and by no manner of means under Mr. Gladstone or Mr. Bright.” This confirms the rumor that the Empress of India considers Mr. Ruskin a crank. Senator Beck is indignant again. He says: “What do you think of this for insult ? I don’t know what some of my constituents take me for. This letter is from a young man who lives near my home, and he has the cheek to offer me 10 per cent, of his salary for the first year if I secure him an appointment in the railway messenger /service. This is a sample of some of the — ifti, V

letters wiget. I have received a lot of such offers, and might make a fair salary if a Democrat had any show, but he has not.” . JMiss Maud Banks, daughter of Gen. N. P., is now regularly on the stage. She is playing Parthenia in “Ingomar” in the small towns of Pennsylvania. The General, who is now 71 years of age,* still holds the office of United States Marshal in Boston and runs an experimental farm of sixty acres just outside the city. Miss Aland is a pronounced brunette, and she wears her hair after. Mrs. oelveland’s style. Sho claims to bo delighted with her profession. Mrs. Harriet Van Ackkn, who has been in the penitentiary at Syracuse, N. Y r ., for ten years, serving a life sentence for the murder of her husband, is dead. On her death-bed she charged Loren Grover with the crimo, and said that she was an unwilling witness to the deed. Grover compelled her to promise never to reveal to anyone wlmt had taken place, and she never told the secret except to her confessor. Another instance of mistaken duty by a woman. - Some thousands of people visited Princes end Tipton, says the London Globe, to witness the funeral of Air. Samuel Alurfitt, who was recently exhibited as the largest man in the world. The deceased, who died after a few day’s illness, was a native of Wimblington, Cambridgeshire, and was 55 years of age. His dimensions were as follows: Height, 6 feet 1 inch; weight, 40 stone; girth of waist, 100 inches, and he measured 20 inches round the calf of the leg. A hearse could not be found large enough for the deceased’s removal, and the body had to be conveyed on a flat. The sashes had to he removed from the windows, and nearly twenty men wero employed to get the coffin through the window on to the flat.

The woman Thomas, wlio was guillotined with her husband recently at Romorantin, was the first female executed in France since 1872. The man, it appears, met his death with great firmness, but bis wife made wild supplications for mercy on behalf of her little damghter, to whom she asked the executioners to send locks of her hair, which they cut off, preparatory to her being placed on the block. She had to be carried in a half-inanimate condition to the guillotine, but when her head was placed on the plank she tried to jerk it back, and struggled violently. Deibler’s men had to bold lier down by tho shoulders until the knife fell. While the blood was being sponged the husband was led to deatji. He embraced the. chaplain three times, and then placed his head calmly on the block. The guillotining of the woman has been described by soirio of the eye-witnesses who were accustomed to capital executions as the most horrible scene which they had ever beheld. A fire which took place lately in a remote village in China, destroyed a collection which was one of the moat remarkable in tbe world, says a foreign letter-writer. Tbe descendants of Confucius are the only persons outside the imperial family ■whose titles descend unimpaired from ' father to son. In other cases the son’s title or rank it the nobility is one degree lower than his father’s, so that every noble family in tbe course of a few generations merges in tbe commonalty. The male heirs of the family of Confucius are dukes, and have resided for nearly twenty-five hundred years in their ancestral home in the province of Shantung. The residence Mas recently destroyed by fire, and all the historical articles presented by successive dynasties and admirers of the philosopher during all these centuries were consumed. As the present duke is a lirieal descendant of Confucius, there can be no doubt of the authenticity of the collection, which can now never be replaced.

Benedict Arnold was a native of Connecticut, where be was born in Norwich, January 3, 1840. He joined the patriots soon after the Revolution broke out and was commissioned a Colonel in the service of Massachusetts. In 1775 he led a force of about 1,000 men through the northern forest with the intention of capturing Quebec. Gen. Montgomery’s forces were joined by Arnold .at the St. Lawrence, and the attack made but it failed. Montgomery met his death there and Arnold was seriously wounded. Arnold became a Brigadier-General. He commanded in Philadelphia in 1878, and, living extravagantly there, contracted debts. In 1779 he married the daughter of Shippen, afterward,Chief Justice of the State. Charges were made against him and lie was sentenced by court martial to be reprimanded by the Commander-in-Chief. Washington was very mild in his reproof. Arnold was very much chagrined. In August, 1780, he requested and was given command at West Point, and this important fortress he offered to surrender to Sir Henry Clinton. The capture of Andre disclosed the plot of the traitor, and prostrated it. Arnold escaped to a war vessel of the British. He at once entered the British service, and commanded an expedition against Virginia. Near the conclusion of the war he went to England, where he met with po special marks of favor. He died in London in 1801, poor and depressed. During the eleventh century musical notes were invented, windmills were first used, and clocks with wheels wero introduced. T