Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 March 1894 — MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. [ARTICLE]

MISCELLANEOUS NOTES.

Artificial ice was first made in 1783. f - The practice of hypnotism is considered a crime in Belgium. Fish are becoming scarce in the seas around the British coast. A good quality of rope is now being made from the pineapple fiber. Nearly half of all the real estate In. the German Empire is mortgaged. The first public school in this country was established in Boston in 1-335. Drovers assert that a Sheep, when lying down, weighs more than when standing. A London engineer has a plan for storing heat in specially constructed boilers for use whenever wanted. Our grand business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand. —Carlyle. ; - - Whenever lightning strikes the Sahara desert, it vitrifies a small portion of the sand, making a sort of A Buffalo barber has put out this sign; “Hair cutting Ordinary mortals, 15 cents; foot-ball players, 50 cents.”

A burning mountain is visible near Concord, Ky. It is supposed to be fed with oil that oozes from a crevice in the mountain. Nearly everybody smokes in Japan —men and women. The girls begin when they are ten years old, and the boys a year earlier. The stamp-collecting fad is on the increase. Last year two London auctioneers disposed of about £15,000 worth of stamps. Albert McDonald, of Macon, Mo., was so afraid that he would lose a large fortune he had just acquired that he shot himself. France uses a new kind of fuel, just invented. It is composed of petroleum, which is solidified with the addition of sawdust and pitch. A milkman’s mule in Louisville, .Ky., returned to duty after a vacation of twelve months recently, and remembered the door of every customer.

In a Scotch asylum there is a woman whose one form of insanity before she was incarcerated consisted in having her horses’ shoes of solid gold with gold nails., each set of shoes and nails costing $2,500. A man caught a large bass at Centerville, Mich., the other day, in an unusual wayi He was sawing ice on a pond, when the point of the saw struck the fish, whioh, impaled on the point of the Instrument, was unable to escape. Pew people become wealty through playing cards. A gentleman named Godali, in England, who had handled more of them than any other man in the country, lately died, leaving a 1800,000. He rarely played them, however, It was his business to make them, and he manufactured millious of them every year. Some oue has suggested the addition of kitchens to churches, to supply food to hungry people, and thus tempt the needy to take part in the devotions. A Boston evangeli-st ridicules the idea, saying religion is coming to a pretty pass when you have to supply “a flapjack to every worshipper —cooked while you pray.” Distressing want still exists among the fishermen of the Gulf bavous whose property was swept away by the great storm of last October. In the tangled undergrowth of the islands the remains of a victim are sometimes found even now. The buzzards have perhaps left little else than the bones, but letters or papers in the rags of clothing identity the unfortunate. A petition for the remission of certain taxes, which the fishermen of Cook bayou have drawn up for submission to the police jury of the parish, speaks eloquently of their destitution.