Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 April 1894 — Page 6

THE REPUBLICAN. —" 1 " * 111 i GxbRE E. Marshals? Editor. RENSSELAER —INDIANA

“Th® heart of the prudent petfeth knowledge; and the ear of the wise seeketh knowledge." It is estimated by competent financiers that the shrinkage in the value of silver during 1893 in the United States occasioned a loss equal to the cost of the civil war. A Texas firm advertises as an encouragement to matrimony, that it will furnish the license, pay the preacher, furnish a house and provide a wedding feast, everything, in fact (except the girl), to be paid for on the installment plan.

A new Diana has been made to replace the statue on the tower of Madison Square Garden at New York, that was taken to adorn the Agricultural Building at the World’s Fair. The one at the Fair was removed from the building before the fire destroyed the dome, and is now in a place of safety. The new Diana is said to be much brighter, so bright in fact that a good view can not be obtained on a sunny day. Qualified suffrage for women seems to be one of the “coming events’’. Several Western States have already passed laws which permit women to vote at school elections,on propositions to increase municipal indebtedness, and to increase ■the tax levy. Massachusetts lags behind in spite of her reputation as a center of reformatory influences. The Legislature has just given the proposition to allow women to vote its annual set-back. Never since 1867 has a woman's suffrage bill passed even one branch of the Massachusetts Legislature.

Messrs. Clapp & Co., bankers and brokers. Mills Building, New York, have issued an elegant volume entitled “Leading American Exchanges” which is elegantly illustrated and a veritable mi ne_x>f information. The book contains illustrations of twenty-four Exchanges, with history and sketches and data concerning eleven others; quantity and value of America’s natural products at home and abroad; a record of prices during 1893. that daily pre - vailed at speculative centers; storage capacity, rates and names of those who control grain inspection at trade centers, together with a mass of information on financial and business subjects of great value. The volume is beautifully bound in beveled boards, gilt edges, and will be sent to any address for $2.00.

It is gratifying to know that the newly instituted regulations for the inspection of immigrants sailing from foreign ports for the United States are having the desired effect. Steamship companies are becoming extremely careful as to the class of people from whom they select or solicit patronage. So rigid has the examination become that at one great port the United States surgeon reports that out of the last 15,000 immigrants examined by him he found it necessary to reject but two, while not one of the total number passed by him as coming up to the requirements of the law was rejected on this side of the water. The condition of our foreign population would have been vastly improved had these regulations been instituted years ago.

Court circles in Belgium are excited over a series of crimes alleged to have been committed by a high government official and his wife. They are accused of poisoning no less than five relatives in order to obtain large sums of life insurance. The deaths of all the victims occurred within the past four years, and the beneficiaries of the life policies have in each case realized from 120,000 to 130.000. The last death was that of the brother of the accused woman, which occurred March 6. The undue haste to realize upon the policy exhibited by the accused aroused suspicions which led to investigation and the discovery of poison in the stomachs of all the victims. The suspected persons move in the highest official circles. The ghastly story is known but arrests had not been made at latest cable advices, but will follow soon. The statement that there is actual slavery now prevailing in the Republic of Liberia, which was established as a result of the anti-slavery movement in this country as a refuge for the African slaves of the United States who cared to avail themselves Di its advantages as a place of freedom, will be received with incredulity by many. Yet such a statement fkL a' SK A. b

is made by Rev. G. W. Chapman, a missionary of the Free Methodist churc l !). who has but recently returned from the Black Republic on the west coast of Africa to his home at Carthage, 111. He asserts that he was offered a robust man in exchange for fifty yards of calico, and ’the alleged owner of the slave was a native Liberian. Slavery is not countenanced by the laws of Liberia, but is practiced and sustained in spite of them. Many instances of this came under Mr. Chapman’s notice. The missionary is greatly discouraged at the outlook for Christianizing Liberia, and thinks that missionary efforts in that direction will prove futile. The country is still given over to the most degrading superstition, and the savage orgies witnessed by Mr. Chapman convinced him that any efforts that might be made to bring about any extensive and radical change in the habits and mode of life of the mass of the native population would only end in failure.

New York has a statute that carries imprisonment as a penalty for smoking cigarettes. A young desperado of thirteen years, hardened in the crime, was locked up for two days in the Tompkins county jail, recently. Hundreds of thousands of other offenders against the same law were allowed to go free. Cigarette smoking is, no doubt, a dreadful crime, but can hardly compare to the greater crime against humanity in thus discriminating against a poor little boy of thirteen. Laws, to be useful as a reformatory influence, should be impartially enforced. A law to -punish dealers for selling cigarettes to immature persons would be far more effective and more easily enforced, and would be in the line of substantial justice. Dealers in cigarettes, tobacco, firearms and liquors are, as a rule, people of mature age, and are therefore accountable. A small boy with a few pennies can hardly be considered in that light, and it would be extremely difficult to make him understand that the simple action of trading his coppers for the forbidden fuse transformed him into a criminal character. We are liable to be “reformed" too fast.'

New York City has had a great deal of fun with its new cable road in Broadway. The machinery at no time has worked in an altogether satisfactory manner. Trivial accidents have made life a burden to the public and the managers. But these were trifling in comparison with the grand smash-up that resulted from a grip failing to work on March 31. The car plunged down Broadway at the rate of eight miles an hour, crashing into coupes, carriages, crowds or anything upon its track } followed by an excited populace yelling, screaming, howling, with the gong sounding a warning and affrighted people running for their lives. The police mounted the car and took turns at yelling and rescuing pedestrians who seemed likely to get caught. The power house could not be reached by telephone for fifteen minutes. Meantime a general wreck resulted. A coupe was mashed into kindling wood and other minor casualties occurred. Fortunately, no lives were lost, and, what is more wonderful, but few people were in any way injured, though there were many narrow escapes.

The legal status of a pig’s tail appears to be one of those things “no fellah can find out.” A Pennsylvania woman recently received a porcine caudal appendage by mail. Her husband was indignant and held that the sender was guilty of libel. He sent the extremity to the Postoffice Department and demanded revenge. An Inspector was detailed to ascertain the napae of the sender and to look up all statutes that could possibly have any bearing or relation to the matter, but it was found that the attenuated and offending end of the porker’s anatomy had no standing before the law. The unfortunate woman and her irate spouse have no redress, and if the decision of the authorities is allowed to stand, the useless curlycue can be mailed from any desire or motive that may prompt a joker to squander bis jjash..for stamps. It has been many years since the pig’s tail has attracted the attention of the world in so marked a manner. It is an old saying that “you cannot make a whistle from a pig’s tail.” Yet a woman in 1876 did that very thing for spite, and sent it to the Centennial Exposition, where it attracted great attention and became a • source of endless mirth. Since that day we do not recall any instance wherein this appendage has emerged from the obscurity that has been its one great characteristic, until this effort in the Keystone State.

ALTOGETHER LOVELY.

The Comeliness of Christ a Leading Characteristic, Hlb Beauty Beyond Comparison—Ancient and Modern Ideals—Dr. Talmage’s Sermon. The subject of Dr. Talmage’s sermon at the Brooklyn Tabernacle,Sunday, was “Fairest of the Fair," the text chosen being Solomon’s Song v, 16, “He is altogether lovely." He said: The human race has during centuries been improving. For awhile it deflected and degenerated, and from all I can read for ages the whole tendency was toward barbarism. But under the ever widening and deepening influence of Christianity the tendency is now in the upward direction. The physical appearance of the human race is 75 per cent, more attractive than in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. From the pictures on canvas and the faces and forms in sculpture of those whose who were considered th e grand look in g men and the attractive women of 200 years ago I conclude the superiority of the men and women of our time. Such looking people of the past centuries as painting and sculpture have presented as fine specimens of beauty would be in our time cansidered deformity and repulsiveness complete.

It was not until the fifteenth century, or until more than fourteen hundred years after Christ, that talented painters attempted by pencil to give us the idea of Christ’s face. The pictures before that time were so offensive that the council at Constantinople forbade theiivexhi bition. But Leonardo da Vinci in the fifjteenth century presented Christ's face on two canvases, yet the one was a repulsive face and the other an effeminate face. Raphael’s face of Christ is a weak face. Albert Durer’s face of Christ was a savage face. Titian's face of Christ is an expressionless face. The mightiest artists, either with pencil or chisel, have m ade sign al f ail urc in attempt ing to give the forehead, the neck, the eyes, the nostril, the mouth of our blessed Lord. But about His face I can tell you something positive and beyond controversy. I am sure it was a soulful face. The face is only the curtain of the soul. It was impossible that a disposition like Christ’s should not have demonstrated itself in his physiognomy. Kindness as an occasional impulse may give no illumination to the features, but kindness as the life-long, dominant habit will produce attractiveness of countenance. as certainly as the shining of the sun produces flowers. Children are afraid of a scowling or hard visaged man. They cry out if he proposes to take.them. If he try to caress them, he evokes a slap rather than a kiss.

Alas for those people who do not like children! They had better stay out of heaven, for the place is fuil of them. That, I think, is one reason why the vast majority of the human race die in infancy. Christ is so fond of children that he takes them to himself before the world has - had time to despoil and harden them, and so they are now at the windows of the palace and on the doorsteps and playing on the green. Sometimes Matthew or Marker Luke tells a story of Christ, and only one tells it, but Matthew, Mark and Luke all join in that picture of Christ girdled by children, and I know by what occurred at that time that Christ had a face full of geniality. Not only was Christ altogether lovely in his countenance, but lovely in his habits. I know, without being told, that the Lord, who made the rivers and lakes and oceans, was cleanly in his appearance. He disliked the disease of leprosy not only because it was distressing, but because it was not clean, and his curative words were: “I will. Be thou Glean.”

Sobriety was also an established habit of His life. In addition to the water He drank the juice of the grape. When at a wedding party this beverage gave out, he made gallons on gallons of grape juice, but it was unlike what the world makes in our time as health is different from disease and as calm pulses are different from the paroxysms of delirium tremens. There was no strychnine in that beverage, or boxwood or nux vomica. The tipplers and the sots who now quote the wine making in Cana of Galilee as an excuse for the fiery and damning beverages of the nineteenth century forget that the wine at the New Testament wedding had two characteristics, the ohe that the Lord made it and the other that it was made out of water. Domesticity was also His habit. Though too poor to have a home of His own, He went out to spend the night at Bethany,two or three miles from Jerusalem, and over a rough and hilly road that made it equal to six o r seven ordinary miles, every morning and night going to and fro. I would rather walk from here to Central Park or walk from Edinburgh to Arthur’s Seat, or in London clear around Hyde .Park, than to walk that road that Christ walked twice a day from Jerusalem to Beth any. But He liked the quietude of home life, and He was lovely in His domesticity. Furthermore. He was lovely in His sympathies, Now, dropsy is a most distressful complaint. It inflames and swells and tortures any limb or physical organ it touches. As soon as a case of that kind is submitted

to Christ He, without any use of diaphoretics, commands its cure. And what an eye doctor! He was for opening the long-closed gates of sight to the blue of the sky, and the yellow of the flower, and the emerald of the grass. What a Christ' He was for cooling fevers without so much as a spoonful of febrifuge, and straightening crooked backs without any pang of surgery, and-standing whole choirs of music along the silent galleries of a deaf ear, and giving healthful nervous systems to cataleptics. Sympathy ! He did not give them stoical advice or philosophize about the science of grief. He sat down and cried with them. John Murphy! Well, you did not know him. Once when I was in great bereavement he came to my housed Kind ministers' of the gospel had come, and talked beautifully, and prayed with us, and did all they could to console. But John Murphy, one of the best friends I eVer had, a big souled, glorious Irishman, came in and looked into my face, put out his broad, strong hand and said not a word, but sat down and cried with us, lam not enough of a philosopher to say how it was or why it was, but some how from door to door and from ceiling to floor the room was filled with an all pervading comfort. “Jesus wept.” Aye, He was lovely in his doctrines. Self-sacrifice or the relief of suffering of others by our own suffering. He was the only physician that ever proposed to cure his patients by taking their disorders. Self-sacrifice! And what did he not give up for others? The best climate in the universe, the air obheaven for the wintry weather of Palestine, a scepter of unlimited dominion for a prisoner's box in an earthly court room, a flashing tiara for a crown of stinging brambles, a palace for a cattle pen, a throne for a cross. Self-sacrifice! What is more lovely? Mothers dying for their children down with scarlet fever, railroad engineers going down through the open drawbridge to save the train, firemen scorched to death trying to help some one down the ladder from the fourth story of a consuming house, all these put together only faint and insufficient similes to illustrate the grander, mightier, and farther reaching self-sacrifice of the “altogether lovely.” Do you wonder that the story of His self-sacrifice has led hundreds of thousands to die for Him? In one series of persecutions over two hundred thousand were put to death for Christ’s sake, For Him Blandina was tied to a post, and wild beasts were let out upon her, and when life continued after the attack of tooth and paw she was put in a net, and that net containing her was thrown to a wild bull that tossed her with its horns till life was extinct. All for Christ! Hugenots dying for Christ! Albigenses dying for Christ! The Vaudois dying for Christ! Smithfield fires endured for Christ! Furthermore, be was lovely in his sermons. He knew when to’ begin, when to stop and just what to say. The longest sermon he ever preached —so far as the Bible reports Him—namely, the sermon on the mount, was about sixteen minutes in delivery at the ordinary rate of speech. His longest prayer reported, commonly called “The Lord’s Prayer,” was about half a minute. Time them by your watch, and you will find my estimate accurate, by which I do not mean to say that sermons ought to be only sixteen minues long and prayers only half a minute long. Christ had such infinite power of compression that He could put enough in His sixteen-minute sermon and His half-minute prayer to keep all the following ages busy in thought and action. No one but a Christ could afford to pray or preach as short as that, but He meant to teach us compression. And his sermons were so lovely for sentiment and practicality and simplicity and illustration, the light of a candle, the crystal of the salt, the cluck of a hen for her chickens, the bypocrites’dolorous physiognomy the moth in the clothes closet, the black wing of a raven‘the snow bank of white lilies, our extreme botheration about the splinter of imperfection in some one else’s character, the swine fed on the pearls, wolves dramatizing sheep and the peroration made up of a cyclone in which you hear the crash of a tumbling house unwisely constructed. No technicalities, no splitting of hairs between north and northwest side, no dogmatics, but a great Christly throb of helpfulness. Yea, Christ was lovely in his chief life’s work. There were a thousand things for .him to do, but his great work was to get our shipwrecked world out of the breakers. That He came to do, and that He did, and He did it in three years. He took thirty years to prepare for that three years’ activity. From twelve to thirty years of age we hear nothing about him. That interveing eighteen years I think he was in India. But he came back to Palestine and crowded everything into three years —three winters, three springs, three summers, three autumns. Our life is short, but would God we might see how much we could do in three years! Concentration! Intensifi--ieation! Three years of kind words! Three years of self sacrifice! Let us try it. What a marvel It is that all the nations of earth do not raise up in raptures of affection for him! I must say it here and now. I lift my right hand in solemn attestation. I love Him, and the grief of my life is that Ido not love Him more. Is it an impertinence for me to ask, do you, my hearer —you, my reader, love Him? Has He become a part of

your nature? Have you committed yotir children on earth into His keeping as your children in heaven are already in his bosom ? Has He done enough to win your confidence?. Can you trust Him.living and dying, forever? Is your back or your face toward Hims Would you like His hand, to guide you? His might to protect you? His grace to comfort you? His sufferings to atone for you? His arms to Welcome you? His love to encircle you? His heaven to crown you? And if, entering the gate of that heavenly city, we should be so overwhelmed with our unworthiness on the one side and the supernal splendor on the other side, and we get a little bewildered and should for a few moments be lost on the streets of gold and among the burnished temples and the sapphire thrones, there would be plenty to show us the way and take us out of our joyful bewilderment, and perhaps the ’woman of Naiu would say, “Come, let me take you to the’ Christ who brought back my only boy to life,” and Martha would say, “Come let me take you to the Christ who brought up my brother Lazarus from the tomb,” and one of the disciples would say, “Come and let me take you to the Christ who saved our sinking ship in the hurricane on Gennessaret,” and Paul would say, “Come and let me lead you to the Christ for whom I died on the road to Ostia,” and the whole groups of martyrs would say, “Come let us show you the Christ for whom we rattled the chain and waded the floods and dared the fires,” and our glorified kindred would flock around us, saying r? “We have been waiting a good while for you, but before we talk over old times, and we tell you of what we have enjoyed since we have been here, and you tell us what you have suffered since we parted, come, come and let us show you the greatest sight in all the place, the most resplendent th rone and upon it the mightiest conqueror, the exaltation of heaven, the theme of the immortals, the altogether great, the altogether good, the altogether fair, the altogether lovely!”

Do Dogs Have Souls?

N Y. Sun Dr. Gibler says that the animals, like men, are endowed with souls. Thus nothing would distinguish a man’s from an animal’s soul unless having an intellectual part of his nature different from his soul. Today a reporter asked Dr. Gibler if he thought dogs had souls, and he replied: “Dogshave souls. A dog’s soul is just like a man’s soul, though it lacks some of the properties of the human soul. Dogs have reason. They can communicate with each other and readily make themselves understood to other dogs. This is a matter of everyday observation. As an instance of their reasoning powers I will tell you something that I have noticed myself scores of times. If a dog with hydrophobia appears, the most quarrelsome and vicious dog will become terror-s trickeh ins tan tly no matter how small the mad dog may be. Ido not mean to say that dogs have a spirit. 1 think there is a distinction between the soul and spirit. By soul I mean that the animal has the indestructible vital principle —the principle of life. I not know whether Dr. Pasteur believes that dogs have souls or not. “I know that he has always been as careful of them in operating and making exneriments as if they were human. What do I mean by a spirit differing from a soul? Well, Ido not care to argue that point. It belongs to psychology and it leads too far to discuss.”

Starvation in Spain.

London Standard. The distress among the laboring population of Andalusia is growing s more acute every day. At San Lucar, near Cadiz, where riots occurred last week, bands of famishing workpeople, yesterday, pillaged the bakeshops, and their demeanor was so threatening that the few available police gave way before them. At the old town of Ecija, on the river Genii, in the province of Seville, there was rioting in the streets, and the munipality had to distribute 3,000 bread tickets in order to calm the mob. At Tarifa, near Gibraltar, 2,000 workpeople went to the Town Hall to demand work. At a Cabinet council ft was decided that public works should be carried out in the provinces of Cadiz and Granada with the view of providing for the unemployed. Great precautions have been taken to protect Parliament from anarchist outrages.

Britain’s Big Army.

London Court Journal. The physique of the British army may not, perhaps, be all that it ought to be, but so far as numbers are concerned our military forces are in a very satisfactory condition. In case of need we could put in the field for service at .home a force of 332,000 men, exclusive of the militia reserve. We have 94.000 militia. 10,000 yeomanry, ai.d nearly 228,000 volunteers. The regular army numbers close upon 220,000 of all ranks, and these could, on an emergency, be supplemented by 80,000 reserve men and 30,000 militia reservists, making in all a total of 330,000 men for service abroad. We have thus a grand total of 662,000 men available for service at home and abroad. At no time was there so large a force of enrolled men ready to be called upon for service should occasion require. Now and then you hear of a charitable coal dealer, but he is not likely to go very much out of his weigh to be so.

AN OPEN LETTER

President Cleveland’s Ideas on the SituationStands byTa.lfT Reform and Inlsts tfiSf Party Pledges Should be Redeemed. President Cleveland has forwarded the, following letter to the Hon. Chauncey F. Black, President of the national Associaof Democratic Clubs: Executive Mansion, l Washington. April 28, IBM. I “Hon. Chauncey F. Black, Esq.: “Dear Sir—l have carefully read the communication you have lately placed in my hands, setting forth the. future purposes and present needs of the National Association of Democratic Clubs. The achievements of this organization should be familiar to all who are interested in the continuation of Democratic supremacy and should enlist the encouragement of those who appreciate the importance! of any effective dissemination of political doctrine. Your association has done much by, way of educating our people touching the' particular subjects which are recognized as belonging to the. Democratic faith; but it seems to me that its best service has has been an enforcement and demonstration of the truth that our party is best organized and most powerful when it strives lor principles instead of spoils, and that it quickly responds to the stimulus supplied by an enlistment in the people’s cause. This acknowlegdment of the important services rendered to the advancement of true Democracy suggests that the national association of Democratic clubs and every other Democratic agency should labor unceasingly and earnestly to save our party, in this time of its power and responsibility, from the degradation and disgrace of a’failure to redeem the pledges , upon which our fellow countrymen entrusted us with the control of their governmi nt. All who are charged on behalf of the Democratic party with the redemption of these pledges should now be impressively reminded that as we won our way to victory under the banner of tariff reform, sq the insistence upon that principle is the condition of our retention of the people’sf trust, and that fealty to party organization demands the subordination of individual advantages and wishes, and thd putting aside of petty and ignoble jealousiesLundjbickcrings,'.when party principlesTand party integrity and party exist- -. ence are at stake. I cheerfully inclose a contribution to thd funds necessary to carry on the good work of your organization, with a hearty wish for its continued success and usefulness. Yours very truly. .

GROVER CLEVELAND.

DIAMOND ANNIVERSARY.

Elaborate Preparations Being Made for the Odd Fellows Celebration May 10. The preparations for the great celebration of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the I. O. O. F. at Indianapolis, May 16, are elaborate and now nearly complete. Twenty-five thousand Odd Fellows aro expected to be in attendance. W. H. Leedy, chairman of the committee of arrangements, expects to have five thousand men in the parade. There will bo fifteen floats in line. On one of these will bo thaH smallest, the tallest, the largest and the' oldest Odd Fellow in tho State, the oldest Odd Follow in the State being also the oldest in America. He resides in Hondricks’county, and has been a member in' good standing for sixty-five years. The smallest Odd Fellow in the State is Frank G. Epply, of Anderson. Ho is tour feet, four inches high, and beside him upon thei

THOMAS WILDETY,

Founder of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. float will stand the tallest in the State, Louis Steeg, of Greencastle, who is six feet, six inches high. The largest Odd: < Fellow in tho State is Mr. Thurman, of Mooresville, whose weight is 360 The programme for tho day is as follows: Forenoon, reception of Cantons, Lodges and Encampments. Tho uarade will form at 1:15 p. m. and move sharp at 2. At 4 p. m.. Canton Elwebd Stokes medal prize winners—will give an exhibition drill in Monument Place. At 4:30 the Patriarchs Militant degree will be exemplified by Canton Wabash at-. Lorraine Hal). From 5 to 6 p. in. Sister Rebekahs will give an informal reception to the Grand Sire and Grand Master. In the evening two or more meetings will be held at English’s Opera House, Grand Lodge Hall, and probably at other halls if necessary. Grand Master Talbott will preside at English’s and Grand Patriarch Shirts at the Gland Lodge Hall, and during the evening will probably change positions. The speakers will ho Grand Sire Campbell, Judge Chipman, D. G. M.; C. F Northern, Grand Warden; John B Cockrum, P. G. P.; Judge Wiley. P. G. M.; C. C. Binkley, P. G. M.; J B. Kenner, P. G. M.; Enoch G. Hogate. P.G. M.: W.B. Myers. P. G. M.; Mrs’ Anna L. Henderson, Past President Rebekah Convention; the President of ths National Convention, and others. Hon. Ben 8. Parker will read an original poem on tho occasion. The programme will be so arranged that tho Grand Sire, Grand Master and Grand Patriarch mav appear during the evening at both meetings.

Medicinal Item.

Tcxun S'.'tings Jones —Dr. Blow told me yesterday that during the past month he cured fifteen cases of grip. Smith—That’s strange! He told me he cured three hundred cases last month. Jones —He did, eh? Well, that shows that he thinks you are twrns as big a fool as I am. It is said that the wreck at Kingsbury Laporte county, last fall cost tho VVabasb road $200,100 and that *1U),000 went t« ■atisfy tho claims for the killed and Injured.