Rensselaer Republican, Volume 24, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 September 1891 — MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. [ARTICLE]

MISCELLANEOUS NOTES.

A horseshoe-turning match a*, Beaver Falls, Pa., was won by .A. Coleman, who turned a dozen shoe: in twenty-eight minutes. It was one of Daniel Webster’s auditors who was moved to remarit. when told after his death that Webster had paid the debt to nature “Oh, well, I guess it’s the only debt he ever paid.’’ Anna Besant lately took 125 girls for a day in the country. The littlf picnic cost the Blavatsky Lodge $55. The girls were all working girls, anc many of them never before spent a whole day in the country. More than four hundred marriec wpmen have applied to the Bureau o’ Charities and Correction in New York since the Ist of January for re lief for themselves and children, having been deserted by their husbands. - “Mother Stewart,” of Ohio, th< originator of the famous woma-<s temperance crusade of fifteen years ago, has returned from a trip tc Europe. Her temperance addresses in Paris are said to have been the first delivered by -a—woman —m t hat city. “No, Bobby.” said his mother, “one peice of pie is quite enough foi you.” It’s funny,” responded Bobby, with an injured air. “You say you are anxious fbr me to learn to eal properly, and yet you won’t ever give me a chance to practice.—Wash ington Hatchet. General Butleris wife, of whom hf writes so tenderly in his memoirs, was an excellent elocutionest, sun Sassed, in the opinion of many, bj 'anny Kemble alone. She knew several of the Shakespeare plays by heart, and believed that they were the work of Bacon. The Count De Lesseps has nine children by his second wife. The eldest is not more than twelve year? old. It is curious to see them all gc riding in four vehicles. The Count comes first with his fat spouse anc the baby, then come tjie rest' in the rear, resembling in all a small-size baby show. The wife of a Swedislr railroad superintendent, described as a magnifi cent but spoiled beauty, recently blew out her brains with a pistol. Her cause for suicide she set down thus briefly in a letter to her hus band before she shot herself: “1 follow my canary bird. Good-bye.’ Her bird had flown away a couple o: days before.

Mr. Darius L. Goff; a mill-ownei of Pawtucket. R. 1., has in the hal’ of his house a wonderful clock. II is wound by the opening and closing of the frent door. It lights the gas jet in the hall in the evening and turns it out at bedtime. In the morn ing it wakes the servants, then stirs up the family, and lastly rings the breakfast beil. It strikes the hour In all the rooms of the house at once. Mr. Rita Kittridge, of Augusta, Me., is nearly seventy-nine years of age. and has just completed the task of writing one of President Har rison’s messages, ten thousand words long, on a postal card. With the aid of a microscope the writing can be made out with rather less ease than print. Mr. Kittridge has also written the Lord’s prayer in a circle three-sixteehths of ah inch In diameter.

A North Farmington man claims to have discovered something queer about this year, aside from its rains. He says his house faces the north east hnd the ell sets back, forming an angle. In this angle he placed his thermometer when he moved intc the house thirty-one vears ago. During this long period, Le says, the sun has never shone on his thermometer until this summer. The building has not been changed, yet the sun now shines upon it at a certain time in the day.—Lewiston Journal. □lt is an unwritten law of th< Treasury Department that no womar shall be transferred from an incoming steamer to a revenue cutter ano so landed in New York. Russell Harrison's application for a tug makes the rule noteworthy just at present. Mrs. Morton, wife of the Vice President, was met at quarantine by her husband, but she came tc port in the steamer, just the samp. An exception, however, was made by Cleveland when he had Lamont meet the President’s prospective bride, Miss Folsom.

“Do you know,” said a well known ex-Confederate officer, “that the Confederate Government was the only government in the world that really enforced prohibition? During the war the. government prohibited the manufacture of liquor in Virginia. It was here that the army was, and the same prohibition extended to the other southern States. This law was made because the government wanted all the grain to feed the people. The further result was that the Confederate army was the soberest army the world ever had. The little liquor that could be had was only obtained by the prescription of a surgeon. The first three barrels of liquor for medicinal purposes were jent under guard through West Virginia and consigned to a leading surgeon. -Thev were carted over the mountains and several days were occupied in the trip. At their destination the barrels were found to be empty. At first this was a mystery, out an examination showed that a gimlet hole had been bored in each cask, the liquor drawn out and the hole neatly plugged. The whole battalion sent along as guards” for this liquor had fn this way swallowed it ail gradually, and though a big row was raised, it was impossible to fix the offense on any one.