Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 June 1894 — PEOPLE. [ARTICLE]

PEOPLE.

It is reported that when King Behanzin, of Dahomey, found that escape from the French was impossible, he summoned his aged mother and said to her: “I am going to surrender to France. My father must know of it. You, therefore, shall see him and tell him.” He thereupon had bis mother beheaded, while he calmly looked on, smoking a pipe. Herr Krupp, the great gun maker, presented 100,000 marks to the city of Essen in honor of the last birthday of the Emperor. The money is to be used to found a fund for the benefit of the Essen poor, to be known as “the fund of Emperor William II and Prince Bismarck.” His majesty gave permission to have his name coupled with that of the ex-Chancellor. Stories about Martial Bourdin, the anarchist who was kilted-in London, are coming out. He used to tell the the following himself: One day he was riding in a ’bus down fleet street. The vehicle was crowded, and Bourdin held in his hand a bomb. Opposite sat an elderly lady. Unable to reach his pocket for the fare, Bourdin apologetically laid the bomb in the old lady’s lap. With the old lady, however, ignorance was bliss. Things are not always harmonious when great men meet. On the occasion of Emerson’s last visit to England he sought out Ruskin and went to his house to see his pictures and other works of art there. Ruskin talked with amazing volubility about his treasures, until the sage of Concord, himself a somewhat reticent talker, could no longer bear the stream of pessimistic words. “At last,” he said afterwards to a friend, who had only recently made public the anecdote, “I could not endure it any longer, for his thoughts were black as night, and I took a sudden leave of him.”