Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 April 1890 — WINGED MISSILES. [ARTICLE]

WINGED MISSILES.

An Ansonia, Conn., druggist has ah electric bell in a cabinet containing poisons. When the door is opened the bell rings, reminding the what be is handling. Secretary Tracy has sight in one eye Only. When young ht? taught school in northern New York, and an unruly pupil .threw a slate at him, striking him in the eye and destroying the sight. John Jacob Astor owned 2,700 high class dwelling houses, rented at an . average of $2,000 a year each. He owned besides tenement houses in untold number and no end of real estate devoted to business uses/ The emperor of China visits the empress dowager at the Nanbai palace every five (days to inquire after her majesty’s health. The visits are always made early in the attended by a vast retinue of | personal followers. . It is said that four years after the fight ,at Chickamauga the battlefield shone lfke bright moonlight, even on the darkest The light came from the phosphorescent exhalations of the decaying bones of tbe-heaped-up dead.

Dora Labouchere is a lively and spirited phild of six years, with raven-black hair, dark eyes and olive complexion. At the private view of the “Truth Toy Show" she noted as hostess to some hundreds of visitors with perfect ease. Joseph Southerland who was the powderboy on the vessel which first brought to England the news of Nelson’s victory at [Trafalgar, attained his 100thyear at Milton, Siltingbourne recently. He has good health and has all his faculties intact. The young princess of Monaco speaks English without the slightest accent and is very fond of English customs. She has an Englishwoman for one of her ladies in waiting, and especially invites English ladies visiting Monaco to call upon her. Near Cold Springs, Harnett County, N. C., lives a remarkable old lady. Her name is Mrs. Phoebe Wilson, but far. and wide she is known as “Granny Wilson.” She is one hundred and nine years old and has ,been twice married. Bushy head, the Cherokee chief, now in W ashing ton, is tall, with a brown skin, but with tho features of a Caucasian. It is said that he is not more than one-eighth Indian. Some years ago he married a niece of Senator Butler, of South Carolina. It is announced that E. H. Barney, the millionaire skate manufacturer of Springfield, Mass., will present to that city his entire estate of 20.) acres at Pecowsic, together with his residence—one of the finest in Springfield— to be added to Forest park. Somewhere in the West Indies an Englishman claims to have discovered what he calls the “whistling tree.” It has, he says, a peculiarly shaped leaf and split pods opened, the motion of the breeze through which causes a peculiar whistling sound that can be heard at a great distance. A new York bank president says that during the past twenty-eight years the amount or money lost by all the national banks through dishonest practices does not exceed $7,000,030. In view of the vast Bums handled by the banks during these years, he considers the amount small.

A Michigan paper tells of a farmer catching a fellow going out of his pasture one night with a sheep on his back and blazing away at hjip with a shotgun. The paper naively adds that the fellow dropped the sheep, went to Ann Arbor the next day, and when he returned he had a glass eye. Uncle Joe Haddon, who is still living in South Carolina, was sent out to America in 1888 by an English company to take charge of the first locomotivo on the old South Carolina railroad. He is now eighty-six years old, and still does a hard day’s work as a miller and machinist on a Carolina

plantation. A Canton, China, paper estimates that 750,000 people die every year in China by fire and flood, but It is not satisfied. "The fact is,” it remarks, with cold blooded cynicism, “the great need of China is the sudden removal of 2,000,000 or 3,000,000 inhabitants to make elbow-room for those who are left” The prince of Wales is patron of a combination fair and military athletic exhibition which is to be held in May for the purpose of establishing at tbe posts of the British army dubs to be known as soldiers’ institutes, which it is believed will greatly improve the social condition of the rank and file. Says the Rei I Kwai Medical Journal: Apropos of the suspected influence of the climate of Japan in the causation of rheumatism and neuralgia in resident foreigners, it is interesting to note that horses imported into Japan lrom China and other countries are soon more or less disabled by rheumatism.

The usher of the English court of probate and divorce has just died, leaving a fortune of §100,090, accumulate! from a salary of $750 per year for thirty-three years, and from the tips that flowed in upon him in a stream, averaging nearly $4,000 per year. Suitors, jurymen, witnesses, reporters, and lawyers all have to tip the usher iu the English courts. Of the 4,200 kinds of flowers which grow in Europe, only 420 are odoriferous. The white flower is the most common, there being 1,194 kinds of that color. Less than one-fifth of these are fragrant. Of the 951 kinds of yellow flowers sevent.y-seven are odoriferous; of lha 833 red kinds, thirty-one; of the 303 violet-blue kinds with combined colors, twenty-eight are fragrant. Frances Berry Whitcher is scarcely known by name to the present generation of American readers, yet she wrote one of the most popular books of her time “The Widow lledott Papers.” She was born In Oneida county, New York, in 1811, and died there in 1352. In 1817 she married Mr. Whitcher, an episcopal clergyman, and it was the peculiarities of his flock Which she portrayed in her '‘papers.” In a court at Drogheda, Ireland, a Mr. Kenny, being suod for rent due on a house that be had leased, pleaded that his wife had been frightened by a ghost that appeared at their bed and, threw something upon them during the night, und that the place was on that account uninhabitable. The oourt held that the sac« -hat a house was haunted was no defense in such a suit, and gave a verdict ror the plaintiff. W. A Merryday, of Polutka, Fla, has an owl that is as tamo as his store cat. All day long tho “Irishman’s parrot” rests on the rafters overhead in the grain-room The cat and owl have formed a strong at tachment in the last four months for each other, and It is not an unusual sight for the cat to go off and return with a rat for hit owlship. In return for the kindness the owl will take Its paw and scrat 4» the oat's fleas, when pussy will purr and rub up against the owl’s feathers, bolu looking perfectly happy all the wbila