Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 January 1890 — Untitled [ARTICLE]

Is our time there is a strange want of discrimination between the artistic and the brutal use of what are called forbidden things, as literary materials. It is not “locking b ickward” the people of this country need so much as looking forward, although, possibly, the hindsight may help the foresight. ! Asocial authority declares that s man can afford to dress badly if he is I a genius or a chump. But if he isn't | Mie or the other of these two things ‘ he must toe the mark of fashionable! convention.

A weekly paper proposes to inform fathers and mothers how to develop the powers of a backward boy, but what parents are more interested in is how to throttle the powers of the forward lad. As OUB thoughts follow close in the dawn we are impressed with the sameness of the human lot, which never -altersiulhu •orj—hunger ajid labor, seed time and harvest, love and death. A NEW process for burning coal without smoke h:s lately been discovered. It consists in sprinkling water containing a special preparation of resin over the coal, and the result is that there is no smoke, and the glow is as intense as coke. The bloody Apaches, now supposed to be prisoners at Mt Vernon barracxs under guard of United States soldiers, continue to slab and steal and gamble and get drunk and lead a licentious life just as they did while roaming the wilds of Arizona unrestrained. Imitation is the sincerest flattery. Ft Is said that at least six novels by popular writers of fiction are to be written this year, based, like “Ben Hur” on scenes and incidents in the Bible. Joshua, David, St John, St. Paul and other Bible worthies are to figure in these novels.

No nian or woman now living- will ever date a document without using the figure 9. It now stands on tho extreme right, 1889. Next year it will be in the third place, where it will remain ten years. It will then move up to the second place. 1900, and there it will rest 100 years. Other things being equal, if a man wishes a thorough education he must begin by going through a college course, though it is true that many of the best educated minds have never received a collegiate or university training. But they have spent in study the time such a course would require. One of the superstitions is that the senators take snuff, but the fact is that few of themuse tobacco in this form. When they do the government furnishes it- They get it from twoiittto bfaclf boxes on either side of the president’s platform. The boxes are fastened firmly in niches between the wall pillars. The trouble in this country is t hat we have too many colleges, and many young men are induced to attend them who might better be devoting th e' years to preparation for employments' for which’a collegiate education is not necessary or even desirable, and for which alone their aptitudes and capacities fit them. Plans for giving England and France better means of communication than by water have always been impeded by England's jealous regard for its insular situation. This senti- I ment now shows itself in opposition to the bridge which engineers of both nations propose to build across the English Channel. While the slave trade in Africa has never been more active than at present, the destination of this human property has long been a mystery. Where and into what countries the thousands taken out of Africa were sold was a source of wonder. A Turkish gentleman, writing to the London News, reveals the fact that Constantinople is the great slave market of the world. The true test of morality in literature is its effect upon the mind of the reader, and by the test every book should be judged. The real question is not whether all the incidents recorded in the story are incidents to be approved, or whether all the characters have acted as a high morality dictates, but whether, on the whole, the tendency of the book is to make the reader love vice or loathe it. As is well known, the sale of baking powders containing alum and other injurious substances is absolutely prohibited to all the foriegn countries that have food adulteration laws. There is no economy from any point of view in using an adultered baking powder. At least 75 per cent of the powders on the market are adulterated. Manufacturers of baking powders should be required to publish on every package tbe£ingrediente of the powder, SO that the consumer may be protect* M.