Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 January 1890 — THE NEWS OF THE WEEK. [ARTICLE]

THE NEWS OF THE WEEK.

A Coursing club is an association of more or less rich young men who are more rather than less idle, and who desire to play the part of sportsman with the least possible' danger of fatigue to themselves. Since he returned to Teheran the Shah of Persia has shown signs of an inclination to adopt certain civilized methods in his domain. He has had a number of fonl-smelling houses pulled down and has ordered a system of sanitation for the Perisian capital His subjects think he has lost his mind. , """ - jQj ' Dr. Gayvonne, a noted European physician, informs a more or less hairless generation that he has discovered the bacillus of baldness. The importance of this announcement can be appreciated only by those who have, watched the descent of man towards a bald-headed and unornamental condition. - Th« development of the accident inlurance business in this country of late has been very wonderful. All aver the country employers in large j concerns are insuring all their employes in the accident companies besause it cm be done for less than by eo-operation among the men of a single concern.

Taxes in Turkey are calculated to be just high enough to prevent any poor man from getting enough money to leave the country on. The exact sura is left to the collector to determine, and he has power under the law to give any citizen fifty blows with a stick. Rhubarb and rugs come from Turkey, but that's all the good there is in her. A Boston item says that the author of “John Ward, Preacher,” Mrs. Humphrey Ward, looks askance on the woman’s rights movement, and has a sister married to Professor Huxley. She shuns publicity, writes a singular masculine hand and is a complete enigma to her own family, who are still trying to find out what all the fuss is about. A Scotch society in London professes to have found a treasure in a portrail of Robert Burns, painted by the famous Sir Henry Reyburn, which was unearthed somewhere in an old picture shop, and is supposed to have been lost for ninety years. An artist is restoring it with a view to exhibition in Edinburgh and ultimate sale to some rich American. The present Sultan of Turkey is the son of a Kurd slave who was in the harem of his reputed father. His real father, it is believed, w?'S an Armenian coachman, attached to the court Far from being mad, he has all the sharpness of an Armenian. He is an abject coward, and is probably making a purse for himself, as he is as ready as toy pasha to take bribes, A boy in Baltimore is known as a human magnet His hands and fingers possess a peculiarly attractive force. Pins and needles cling and dangle from the tips of his fingers as from a magnetized bar. Smooth and dry glass and metallic substances he lifts by merely placing the open palm of his hand on them. He has thus raised pieces of glass tubing weighing as much as five pounds. ■’ The lesson which our sister republics on this continent most need to learn is not liberty, but union. It is a more fundamental idea than many people suppose. Its apex is the cohesion of states, its basis is the adhesioi of individuals. Spanish-Americant have readily grasped the thought thal no despot shall rule them; they have been slower in conceiving the idea that they must rule themselves. Gladstone has opinions on all subjects, He thinks that Beethoven is ths greatest composer; that the best women singers are those that art healthy, strong, and inclined to obesity; that 90 per cent of the London opera-goers care only for the singers, and take little interest in the works which are represented; that the pure, fresh voice of a boy chorister Is more pleasing and affecting than the voice of any female soprano. Of all royal personages, the Prince of Wales is the most noted for the enormous quantity of luggage which he causes to be sent with him on his journeys. He takes whole boxes of hats and huge trunks of dress suits, ■ morning coats and other changes. He makes a point when Visiting anywhere of not being seen twice in the same coat, and the variety of hie gar* ments is as astonishing as the tailor’i bill for them must be long.

Right* sf s Chinese BstbsaA If a man beats his wife, but does not break her limbs or maim her, the law takes no notioe of it: if a wife beats her husband she is liable to receive 100 blows, and the busband my separate from her. Those who have been shocked by the sale al women in the famine regions will be interested in knowing that the law provides that “he who from poverty sells his wife shall not be heavily punished; iet the woman revert to the last husband (that is, to the man she was sold V.o.’’j ’ ’ . • ...

DOMESTIC. St Paul will have no ice pstaee this year. The Grant locomotive works will be removed to Chicago. July 1 the navy will have a new flag and the Union Jack forty-two stars. Benjamin H. Day, founder of the New York Sun, died at New York, Monday. Charles A. Cobler, an L. & N.conductor, was shot and killed by a tramp near Louisville. James E. Kent assistant cashier bf the Cairo & at Cairo, is an embezzler of SI,BOO. At Memphis, Emanuel Thomas, a cook, decapitated Henry Trice with a butcher knife. Both colored. < John Newman and Ernest Lomberg were killed by a Monon engine. at Chicago, .as they stepped off a street car. i By a collision of freights at Scottsdale, Pa_, Engineers Johns and Dayton were badly hurt and fifteen cars wrecked. j Jehu Baker has decided to contest the * seat of W. S. Forman, member of cCon. < gressfrom the Belleville (Ill.) district. Mrs. Paul Ruthert, of Tarentown, Pa. was murdered, Monday night, by burglars who plundered her husband’s jewelry store. • • "

AidermanDonohne descended from the bench at Wilkesbarre, Pa., and soundly thrashed a man named Shiner, for wife- ‘ beating. j Mr. Edward T. Waite, son es the late Chief-justice Waite, died at an early hour Tuesday morning at his mother’s home in Washington. _JThe_ twenty-second annual convention of the Woman’s Suffrage Association has been called to moet at Washington February' IS to 21. * In the Lampson-Marquis contest for Lieutenant Governor of Ohio, tie taking of testimony on behalf of Lampson will be begun January 3. In a drunken row between two laborers at New Orleans, William Burton shot and killed John Schaffer, forty-five. The murderer was arrested. Another clerk in the Buffalo postoffice has been arrested for robbing the mails. He is a young married man named Ed ward F. Bapst. He confessed. The thirty-five Texans arrested for mur der, on Wednesday, are held at Galveston without bail, by order of United States District Judge Boor man.General Boulanger denies the report that he has been engaged to deliver a course of lectures in the United States. He says he never thought of going on a lecturing tour in that country. The Harvard University catalogue for 1889-90 shows that in the current year the net gain in students is 180, the largest annual increase since Dr.E Hot became President. The total number of students is 2,079. A starving family of eight persons were discovered in an isolated place near Mer yer, Pa., Tuesday. The parents were taken sick with fever and tne children could pro cure no aid. It is not thought that they can recover. The Choctaws of the Indian Territory have sent word to the United States Commissioners that they are willing to meet them and arrange for the sale, at $1.25 per acre, Ol q 1! their lands of the ninetysixth meridiau. A shocking tragedy occurred at Meadville, Mo., Monday. John Barbee, aged seventeen, and Edward Davis, aged eigh teen, became involve 1 in a dispute which terminated in Barbee disemboweling young Davis with an ugly looking knife. While crossing the railroad track to the station at Kinzers, Pa., Tuesday morning, Mrs. Annie Mcllvaney and her eleven-months-old child were struck by a fast freight train. The child was instantly killed and the mother so badly injured that she will die. A cave-in of large proportions occurred at Plains, a suburb of Wilkesbarre, P.a» v Friday. Without warning, the surface of the earth settled and great holes appeared, some of them thirty feet deep. St. Leo's Catholic Church was damaged, as was the parsonage and several other buildings. Reports are published showing that since 1880 the taxable property of the United States has increased $6,963,000,000,and that in the same period the actual wealth of the country increased $18,652,000,000. The total wealth of the country, exclusive of pub He property, is placed at $61,459,000,000. The west bound vestibule train on the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Indianapolis railroad collided with a freight engine which was partly on the side track, at Morristown, Shelby county, Wednesday morning, wrecking both engines and piling up sev eral cars. ’Noonewas killed and no one dangerously hurt. Bush Miller was married on Christmas to Annie Miller, of Columbia, N. J. While the couple were en route to the home of the groom in Stroudsburg, Pa., Miller was shot in the back by John W. Snyder, a rejected lover of the bride. Miller wiU die. The bride was also shot, but was not seriously wounded.

Thursday the electrical execution machines at Sing Sing prison, New York, were tested by a committee for the State, composed of Dr. Carlos F. MacDonald, Dr. A. D. Rockwell, Dr. P. H. Landy and I electrical assistants. The tests clearly bowed that the dy numos were even more 1 deadly than had been represented. When run at less than the ordinary number of i revolutions per minute the electrical pressure was found to exceed 1,6(M) volts, instead of being only 1,000. This proves that, i at about 300 times a second the pressure

runs above 2,000 volts. A farmer named David Sells was Jailed at Council Bluffs, Friday, charged with being an accomplice of a gang of sharpers, who have swindled grangers at Macedonia out of sums aggregating $5,000. The vic- , time were induced to undertake the dis I poeal of counterfeit money, being first ■ hoodwinked with supposed specimens of . marvelously perfect bogus bills, which, ' however, were in reality genuine currency. Each dupe was to be furnished with whatever amount of “goods” he wanted at $3 for sl, his deposit basing left at a designated spot, where an hour later the counterfeits Would be found in exchange. When the ! hour expired the sharpers and all money, I

genuine and bogus, were missing. The prisoner. Sells, was himself a loser. It was through him that the other victims were drawn into the scheme/ A serious accident occurred at a Christmas celebration in the town of Bourbon, Hl., Tuesday night. Samuel Beardsley, a well-known merchant of the town, was enacting the part of Santa Claus at a Christmas festival and was dressed in the usual costume, composed largely of raw cotton and other inflammable material. The cotton accidentally caught fire and in an instant Beardsley was enveloped in flames. He endeavored to reach the open air and in so doing plunged into the dense crowd—mostly women and children—that thronged the room, and a terrible panic ensued. When the ■victim of the flames was reached by those retaining presence of mind enough to aid Jlim he was in a terrible condition, being burned from head to foot in a shocking manner. He can not live. A number of women and children were quite seriously hurt by being knocked down and trampled upon.

Three children of Mrs. Lena Schip were , burned to death at their home in v Omaha, shortly after eight o'clock, Thursday morning. One was a boy >of seven years, another a girl of four, and the third a baby boy six months old. The woman’s hus band deserted her eight months ago, and she has since been earning her living by taking in washing. Thursday morning she started the kitchen fire and locked the door, and went out to get some clothes During her absence the house caught fir and the children were burned to death in the presence of a hundred people who were powerless to save them.

Dr. Courtney, of Glasco, Kan., the scene of the recent White Cap outrages, was arrested Thursday, on the complaint of John McKee, who was visited by the regulators Tuesday night. McKee tells a pitiful story. He said the visiting party accused him of robbery, and when he could not confess to the crime they beat him severely with whips, and afterwards hanged him from a road bridge by the neck three times in succession. The third time he lost consciousness, and when he recovered he was lying in the middle of the bridge, more dead than alive. A vigorous effort is being made to bring the '‘White Caps” to justice.