Rensselaer Republican, Volume 24, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 October 1891 — Then and Now. [ARTICLE]

Then and Now.

Boston Traveler. When a railroad was proposed from Boston to Albany the Boston Courier of June. 1827, said: “Alciblades, or some other great man of antiquity it is said, cut off his dog’s tail that quidnuncs might not become extinct for want of excitement. Some such motive, we doubt not, moved one or two of our natural and experimental philosoohers to get up a project of a railroad from Boston to Albany, u project which every one knows, who knows the simplest rule in arithmetic, to be impracticable, but at an expense little less than the market value of the whole territory of Massachusetts, and which if practicable every person of common sense knows wbuld be as useless as a railroad from Boston to the moon.” A pi&us inhabitant of the Nutmeg State thanked God that he lived “in a hilly country, where it was impossible to build railroads.” Now the Air Line runs within a few hundred feet of his house.

Wouldn’t Quit Jail to Save His Life, St. Louis Republic. _ Nine of the twelve prisoners in •the county jail at Poplar Bluff, Mo., made their escape on the night of the 4th. But that is not so remarkable as the fact that Dr. Harbin, who is sentenced to be hanged earlv in November, refused to go with them and regained in his cell to await his fata They were determined that he should go and began filing the lock from his cell door, but he begged them to stop, saying that he did not wish to escape hanging in that way. He is living now bj grace of a reprieve for forty-two days, granted by Governor Francis August 20, the day before he was to have been executed, and the scaffold is still beside" the jail awaiting its victim.