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

PEOPLE.

There are ninety-eight no-license towns in Connecticut. “The words of a man’s mouth are as deep waters, and the well-spring of wisdom as a flowing brook.” The United States steamer Pint a, in Alaskan waters, is practically without a crew, nearly every man having been arrested and placed in /ail, as a result of a recent ordei by United States Marshal Porter, for having formed illegal marriage relations with native women.

Chicago theaters and music halls ire said to have adopted the London fashion of permitting actors and Actresses to play engagements at various houses on the same night. The time for their appearance on the various stages, is accurately fixed md the performers are hurried from place to place in hacks without shanging their stage clothes or makeU P- .

Our Indianapolis exchanges bring the inforifihtion that*here,,is.a;great deal of suffering and destitution in that city. The same papers also tell us that English’s Opera House, seating upward of 2,000, was packed to the dome at four performances of of Sinbad last week, at prices fifty per cent, above the regular schedule. Both statements are probably true. Hard times seldom affect the show business. People have been known to sell their cooking stoves to get money to go to a circus.

Ad English farmer is said to have succeeded in grafting a tomato plant upon a potato vine, and the hybrid production rewarded the ingenious agriculturist with a double-headed crop—tomatoes above ground, potatoes beneath the surface. We do not vouch for the truth of this story and advise our readers not to . waste too much time with similar experiments. Still if they feel like emulating the Englishmen’s example we will be glad to give to the world the results that may be attained.

liter?AßKh g RST,. the. noted, New York divine, who has aefneved a great deal of notoriety through his strenuous efforts to reform the morals of the great metropolis, in a recent interview expressed his unqualified admiration for beer gardens, stating that they were a “beautiful institution” in Germany. He will not, however, start a beer garden himself. Some people will think the eminent reformer is a little “off” to thus supplement his remarkably stringent efforts towards a suppression of the social evil with an indorsement of an- institution—so intimately connected with that evil in all large cities.

The United States in 1893 exported $854,000,000 worth of products of various kinds. Our mines, forests and fisheries supuiied about ten per cent, of this amount. Manufacturers 27A per cent. We exported twice the sole leather that we did twenty years ago. There was a remarkable increase in the amount of zinc exported, the amount for 1893 being 7,000,000 pounds against 73,000 pounds in 1873. Our total exports and imports combined were in 1892 slightly less than those of France, slightly more than those of Germany, and only 51 per cent, of the combined exports and imports of Great Britain, which imported about 2,000 millions and exported about 1,400 million dollars worth of merchandise and specie.

Tiie fact of the death of Emin Pasha in the wild© of Africa by this time seems to be pretty well established, and altogether his demise is the worst blow the Associated Press has sustained in recent years. When all other news items were scarce Emin could always be relied upon to furnish somethin# sensational—either by his allowed discoveries, or by falling out of a window on account of near-sightedness, occasionally varying the monotony by dying as a victim to cannibals and shortly thereafter having himself discovered jn good health by some enterprising newspaper man. Mr. Schnitzer has long been a source of profit to the press and we are not likely to find his equal as a perrenia! fount of paragraphic pleasures. Thebe are some things in the world that are likely to remain unsolved mysteries till the crack of doom. Many of these secrets are of trifling moment, but their very in- 1 significance renders the mystery surrounding them all the more aggravating. For instance, a brass coin has recently been found in an Indian mound, near Hock wood,

Tenn. It bears an urn buhring Incense and inscriptions in Hebrew as follows: “Shekel of Israel,” and “Jerusalem the Holy Land.” The coin was discovered by an ignorant farm laborer without sufficient intelligence to perpetrate fraud. How the coin got into the mound is the mystery. Antiquarians believe that the coin is one more proof that America was in ancient times settled by the lost tribes of 1 Israel, a theory that has been often advanced but never satisfactorily demonstrated. The coin is now in possession of the Tennessee Historical Society.

A very level-headed and practical English misionary named Boothe is alleged to have conceived the idea of converting Africa into ,a civilized and Christian country by means of huge coffee plantations that shall give employment to the natives while they are being instructed in the tenets of the Christian religion, the profits-that will result from their labors to be used as a means for the establishment of other plantations that, shall in turn serve as stepping stones to still other missionary plantations—and so on indefinitely until the entire tropical world shall khow the truth and by the truth be freed from tiie bondage of savage deeds and bloody rites that has for ages held them in durance vile. The scheme is said to be in actual operation, Mr. Boothe having only a few years ago been given SIOO,OOO by Englishmen to carry his ideas into practical effect. He controls 100,000 acres now set to the coffee plant and he intimates that in four years from the time he set the plants his farm will yield a profit of $l5O per acre, all of which he will use in missionary work. Mr. Boothe estimates that he will have converted all the heathen in Africa with the means already in hand and its natural profits in thirty-three years. This may all be true or not. but if it is it would seem that a glut in the coffee market and a sharp decline in prices are possibilities in the near future.

M. Pickard, the French commis-sioner-General for the Paris exposition of 1900, already has 100 clerks at work. The King of Greece is said to be very polite. He understands twelve languages, and never speaks angrily to his queen in a language that she comprehends. ~ The late Ferdinand Pousset, the. Parisian brewer who died worth $500,000, left large sums to several artists and journalists who frequented his place. □ Prof. Huxley, the great scientist, is a keen-eyed, sharp-featured man. He is quite crotchety, almost cranky, in his way, and is renowned for his irascible temper. Rev. E. Payson Hammond was the first American clergyman to enter Alaska. His first meetings were held at Fort Wrangel. He went without compensation or promise of support.

Johann Most has lost much of the fierceness of demeanor and appearance that made him conspicuous a -few years ago. - He has grown stout, “and his ,liou-iike mane has given place to sleeker locks. His very speech has grown tame. Olaf Petersen, a Swede, went West thirteen years ago to grow up with the country. His family is growing more rapidly than his bank account. He settled in Sabine eount\, Kansas, and has tweuty-onc-children. The first single child was followed by two sets of triplets, then seven sets of twins. According to the San Francisco Examiner a wealthy Chicagoan is having made in that city a fur coat that is to cost $2,500. Eight black Alaska sealskins compose the bod.} of the coat, and the cuffs, of Kamchatka silver-tipped sea otter, arc worth $250 each. The coat is lined with brown satin and weighs twenty pounds.