Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 May 1894 — TOPICS OF THESE TIMES. [ARTICLE]

TOPICS OF THESE TIMES.

PROPHETIC EGGS. Farmers near Marshall, Mich., were greatly agitated, recently, over an apparently supernatural warning, □n several farms in that vicinity eggs were found bearing the inscrip-’ tion: “Look out for May 4, 1894.’ The letters of the inscription were light brown and perfectly legible. In all the cases the legend was the spme, and were doubtless made by the same stencil plate in the hands M the same practical joker with the Taeh’ameeiid in view, ire. - ; to cateh the same gudgeons with the same bait. To carry out the joke the hens disappeared for a period of several days, when thev as mysteriously reappeared on their accustomed roosts. The only really unaccountable feature - of the entire transaction was the reappearance of the hens. Why any one who would take the trouble to abstract the hens from the coop should ever go to the additional trouble of returning them is indeed a mystery. It is needless to say that nothing unusual occurred in all that region May 4, and up to date we have no returns to indicate that anything remarkable transpired in any part of the globe on that date — barring, of course, the appearance of the Great Coxey in the Washington police court. The joke is not altogether new, eggs having been used as a medium to frighten credulous people both in Europe and America at various times. As far back as 1808 an egg was found in a Lisbon church on which was foretold the destruction of the French, who then had control of the city. Great excitement resulted, but the wily French thwarted the scheme by having several hundred eggs engrossed with a flat contradiction of the propheey found in the ehurob and scattered them in aUXhe hen’s nests throughout the city. The preponderance of miraculous testimony ap-. peared to be in favor of the French, and the phlegmatic Portuguese deferred their revolt against French authority to some more favorable occasion.