Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 January 1890 — MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. [ARTICLE]

MISCELLANEOUS NOTES.

, Sir Francis Grenfell has an extremely wealthy .aunt, who wrote him a cheek for $50,000 when she heard the account of his brilliant victory in Egypt. A Bohemian stone-cutter of St. Paul, Minn., named August Boorfried, has discovered a combination of chemicals by the use Of which the hardest stone can be dissolved and cast into any desired shape, the casting being as hard as flint, and capable of taking on a brilliant luster. It varies in color according to the stone used, and can be had from a bright red to a beautiful azure blue. While in the fluid it cun be used for coating anything having a stone or glassy surface. Mr. Boorfried claims that car wheels and rails can be made in this way. He will start for the East in a few days to secure the backing of wealthy capitalists. The man who will succeed Abdul Hamid, Sultan of Turkey, is awretched, lean, pale-faced creature of five and forty, named Mohammed Rechad. fie is the Sultan’s own brother, and is kept a close prisoner in the palace grounds, lest he should conspire for his Majesty’s downfall. He has certainly no such intention, but usage requires that the Sultan’s heir-apparent should be treated as a suspected criminal, and Abdul Hamid is much too nervous a creature to innovate in this particular. He has a horrible fear lest his brother, Murad V., who became crazy from having been raised to the throne too suddenly, should recover his senses, but of this there is no chance, and now that Murad’s mother is dead, there will be no one to prevent the poor lunatic from bemg hurried to his end by a pinch of something in his coffee. Murad’s mother, the Sultana Nadine, superintended his household and never left him. It would have been impossible to molest him while she was alive. In consequenca of the success of the smokeless powder, the Italian Government has suspended the manufacture of all other kinds of gunpowder. Queen Victoria’s recent visit to Wales brings out the statistics that qdrihg her reign of over half a century twelve days only have been spent in Ireland. The great church of Le Sacro Coeur, built on the highest point of Monttnatre, is nearly finished, and it is thought that it will “take its place among the cathedrals of Europe.” The first section of the railway from Pekin to Chinkiang has progressed as far as having tenders made for its cons ruction. The sum estimated for r ills and plant on this line is $70,000,UJO.