Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 July 1893 — PEOPLE. [ARTICLE]

PEOPLE.

During the period that Mrs. Antoine Bourbon, better known as the Princess Eulalia or the Infanta of Spain, tarried in the World s Fair city as its guest something like four hundred female, infants were registered on the records of the bureau of vital statistics as having arrived in time for the Exposition, but not one'parent honored the charming stranger by naming his her. The fact is regardedas remarkable. Celebrities of any character have had a surfeit of this honor in the past. 1 Believers in signs and omens will find causefor believing that the inillenium is at hand if people continue to occome victims of a tender conscience at the rate so far established for the current year. Only the other day a man down east settled up for a rent bill contracted by his great-grandfather forty years ago, and now the dispatches tell us of a heavily veiled young woman calling at the New York custom house on the 12th and handing the collector three fifty dollar bills pinned to a slip of paper inscribed ‘‘Restitution.” Such occurrences are rare, but pleasant to contemplate, and prove that there are still saints oh earth. Dear Doctor Depew take a roseate view of the outlook that many thinkdark, and says the World’s Fair will clear up the air while the people go to the Park. For the cash they will spend will accomplish the end long sought for by sages so wise, who by plot and by plan have got in the van, and intend the laws to revise. And he thinks that the hoards will be brought from old gourds and stockings or musty bank vaults, and go in pell rnell and visibly swell the life blood of trade that now halts. Let us hope it is true and cease feeling blue and each one and all do his share; now don’t stop to stickle but spend your last nickle for the good of the trade and the Fair.

President Cleveland has been censured in many quarters for delaying the proposed extra session of Congress until September. The same dispatches, however, bring the information that oyr chief executive is growing so obese that he has been compelled to adopt the most_rigid dietary rules, and that he is unable toobtain needed exercise on account of' his superfluous adipose tissue. Taking the two together and adding the intervening stretch of hot weather that is to ensue, the explanation of the postponement of the extra session is apparent. Few reasonable people will find fault with the arrangement. Legislation in Washington during the heated term is by no means a pleasant pastime.

This great republic has $93,000,000 in gold and hundreds of wagon loads of silver in its treasury. Out of our abundance we are conducting a gigantic exposition and indulging as a nation in a prolonged holiday at a great financial loss. Yet in the midst of this fabulous wealth and unrestrained hilarity, parsimony has permitted the sacrifice of precious lives, and continues to tempt fate by exposing government employes to needless perils in “death traps” that are by courtesy called government departments and buildings. Evidently there has been fearful blundering on the part of those high in authority in the past, and a criminal responsibility will surely rest upon the people at large who have permitted, and continue to endure such organized manslaughter and calamity. The latest scheme of professioal tramps is to wager that they can walk to some far-distant point and subsist en route without spending IT cent of money. Such tourists are no longer a novelty, owing to the credulous good nature of people in general and the agricultural population in particular. Just what special claims a man has to the hospitality of fanners or any one else at whose doors he may apply for entertainment with the statement that he is traveling on a wager not to pay his way and must.reach his destination by a certain time, hence is unable to work for his meals and lodging, is hard to understand, nevertheless such impudent assertions have been triumphantly successful in quite a number of casesand have wqd for the pedestrian not only the hospitality but the good will of many hardworking, honest people and much notoriety as well. People throughout the country would do themselves and the country at large a service .by refusing to encourage such characters. It is only proses-

slonal beggary, and the beggars; themselves will generally laugh at/ the simple credulity of the people on* whose good nature they impose themselves and their already threadbare sceme for obtaining a living without work. ( Chicago swells and swell esses depleted the world’s supply of diamonds to the extent of $2,000,000 last year. A diamond broker of that city is • authority fbr the statement that the possession^of genuine diamonds is no indication that the wearer is possessed of wealth—but rather the contrary. While some wealthy people have a penchant for the glittering baubles, a majority of wealthy people are inclined to plainness in their attire and adornment and do not care to advertise their financial standing by a profuse display of jewelry of any kind. However the love of diamonds is a taste that is developed by a great many wealthy people who make no display of their possessions and- only accumulate them as a fad or as a pleasant investment of their surplus cash. London is now the center of the world’s diamond trade. Previous to the Franco-Prussian war Paris had a monopoly of the. traffic. Twenty-five million dollars’ worth of rough diamonds were found in South Africa in 1892. The cable brings from London a full description of the silk stockings that are. to figure more or less conspicuously at the approaching nuptials of the Princess May. These garments in thgfiynt place are white, which is supposed to indicate that the black stocking has had its day and is no longer fashionable. They are also adorned with lace insertion, very wide, with a double drawn thread pattern which has been christened the "royal rib'’ and is something quite new. This information is of doubtful importance, but the great dailies have given it space, and we are determined to keep up with the procession and will let our readers know what is going on in the world. We feel it to be our duty to keep our friends from accumulating an oversupply of black hosiery. The change is viewed with dismay in London, but the edicts of the court are irresistible, and those who persist in wearing colored socks and stockings willbf necessity find themselves at variance with the great popular heart that ever throbs in unison with the pulsations that actuate the acts of a titled aristocracy.

x ni: scales have turned- An Ohio farmer Tlias actually ’ “done up” a green goods swindler. A gullible, granger near Cleveland set up the job, and with the assistance of two of his neighbors a trap was laid that worked beautifully. It was arranged that the gullible granger and the green goods man should meet at an hotel in Cleveland. They were to pay SSOO for $1,500 in spurious bills. When they were in the room the sharper proposed that the farmer turn over the SSOO, and that the “green” should be deposited at a designated place. “J-41 count it right here,” said the granger. Accordingly the sharper produced $1,500 in good money to throw the granger off his guard. Suddenly the farmer grabbed the swindler by the throat,-exclaiming: “I am a detective and you are my prisoner!” But the alarmed swindler tore himself loose and dashed out of the door, leaving fiis $1,500 on the table. The money was locked up in the hotel safe, but will probably be divided between the astute grangers.

A cancer ate away part of the upper lip of a man in Shelbyville, Ind. A bright surgeon has supplied him with a rubber lip, adorned with an artistic mustache, which seems so natural only a close observer would note that the whole thing is artificial. Capt. James B. Hatch, of Springfield, Mass., one of the few surviving old sal ts of the palmy days of the American —merchant marine, and now seventy-seven years old, was on the ship with R. H. Dana when he made his voyage described in “Two Years Before Mas.t.” Captain Hatch figures'm the book as “Mr. H.” He says of the book: “I think the things he says are true, but he stretched them so as to make them read well. He especially stretched the truth when he made himself out t> be a good seaman, for he was only a boy without much experience." Frank G. Peters, the Yale athlete, who recently died in Superior, Wis., was a huge fellow physically, with a tremendous determination. is football victories, when he was captain, were won largely by pure push and will power, though he was a thinker and planner beyond most athletic leaders. His death revealed the spirit of the man. He was told in the morning of the day he died that death was Betel's quietly said: “I shall make a fight for life.” About half an hour before he died, while he was unconscious, he was heard to mutter: “I showed the ‘Yale sand’ as long as J could."