Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 August 1891 — MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. [ARTICLE]

MISCELLANEOUS NOTES.

There are 1,000,000 people in Liberia. .. Uncle Sam has seventy-five women lawyers. A revival of battledoor and shuttlecock is promised. A woman at St. Johns, N. 8., controls the ice trade of that city. Weigh your words and do no throw in too many fbr good measure.—Dallas News. * A ten-thousand dollar monument to Victor Hu wo is to be erected in Jackson Park, Chicago. Mr. Pitman says that only one person in eight who profess to write shorthand can’ transcribe his notes. A Hannibal (Mo.) man won a wager of $5 by gating two pounds of lirnburger cheese in five minutes. Africa is a land of many tongues. The Bible has now been translated into sixty-five of its languages and dialects, j A Chester (Pa.) mechanic has calculated that he has walked 17,250,000 steps in ten years going to and from hiswof¥r The fancy ball given lastmonfe in Paris by the Princess de I&on caused pn expenditure in that community of $60,000. There was a pie-eating match at Leoti, Kan., on the Fourth, but unhappily the pie gave out before the contest was decided. If all the mountains in the world were levelled the average height of of the land would rise nearly two hundred and twenty feet. “Did you ever go up in a balloon?” “Once.’ “What were your sensations!” “Oh, same as usual. I wanted the earth.” —Harper’s Bazar. His Majesty of Greece has the smallest income of any sovereign, viz., $260,000, and this includes $20,000 each allowed him by Great Britain, Russia and France. A peculiar glossy and transparent cloth is made from the fibre of nettles, which is used among other things for belting of machinery and it is claimed to have double the strength of leather. The banana, which is of the Malay - origin, is a developed tropical lily from which by ages of cultivation the seeds have been eliminated and the fruit for which it was cultivated greatly expanded. The habitual fishermen of Boston harbor say that the recent naval shambau there caused all the fish to strike out for deep water, and that they are slow about returning. One of the queerest names for a street-is that borne by a public thoroughfare in the annexed district called Featherbed lane. Tt—is supposed to have been so christened because it is full of rocks. —New York Sun. A German girl who arrived in New York, Thursday, to marry an old lover, was met at the wharf by the groom, but she immediately refused to keep her promise, declaring that she never thought he was so homely. The costliest dresses in the world are worn by the women of Sumatra. They are made of pure gold and silver. After the metal is mined and smelted it is formed into fine wire, which is woven into cloth and afterwards made into dresses. Mrs. Frank Leslie has announced her intention of leaving the greater part of her property to found an institute for the instruction of women. The property which will be set apart for the foundation the institute will be the procSfcls from the sale of her various publications, which she values at about six hundred thousand dollars. x ~ “Tlie Merchant’s Free Kindergarten” is the last organized of the twen-ty-sevea schools no wjinder the care of the Golden Gate Kindergarten Association, of which Mrs. Sarah B. Cooper is the untiring and most successful president. Over 2,220 children are enrolled in these kindergartens of San Francisco. It is the most popular of all the charities. The statistics of the average size of families in the various countries of (Europe, which are of considerable Interest for the status of public morals, are the following: France, 3.03 members; Denmark, 3.61; Hungary, 3.70; Switzerland, 3.94; Austria and Belgium, 4.03; England, 4,08; Germany, 4.10; Sweden, 4.12; Holland. 4.22: Scotland, 4.46:1ta1y,4.51),5pain, 4.65; Russia, 4.83; Ireland, 5.20. A Rome correspondent of the New York Mail states that the revenues of St. Peter are diminishing year by year. The pilgrimages which in times past furnished the heaviest

contingent of pecuiary gifts becora rarer and rarer. A press dipatcl says: The Vatican authorities hav« requested the papal nuncios at for eign courts to invite contributions ti compensate for the speculative losses -in fee—Peter’s pence funds Th« pope h'as decreed an extension of thi marriage tax to all Catholic states. Among the special students atßyrz Mawr College is Miss Urne Tsuda, a Japanese woman, who is the teachei of English in the Peereses’ School at Tokio. Miss Tsuda was one of the five little girls sent in 1871 by the Japanese government to be educated in this country, she and one companion remaining for ten years. She is interested in raising a fund to estab lish scholarships in the United for Japanese girls who will fit themselves here and return to Japan as teachers in girls’ schools to be established there.