Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 August 1894 — MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. [ARTICLE]

MISCELLANEOUS NOTES.

The South expects to make $325,000,000 from its cotton crop this year. Bola is the name of a new discovery made in the forests of Surinam. It is a substitute for the rapidly disappearing indian rubber and guttapercha. Washington is to have a museum for all sorts of curious lil'e-saving appliances, including the earliest kinds of life boats, rockets and life preservers. j The Year Book of the Y. M. C. A. for 1894, recently published, shows that there are 1,439 associations in existence, with an aggregate membership of 232,653. The number of reindeer owned by a Laplander in Sweden varies to a considerable degree. The poor may have from 300 to 700, and the rich Laplanders will keep 1,000 and even 5,000.

What is claimed to have been the fastest long-distance freight run ever made in this country was made from Memphis to Kansas City by a special train loaded with bananas, on June 13, the speed averaging 40.4 miles an hour for 384 miles, and reaching a maximum of sixty-four miles an hour, which was kept up for -six miles.

“Twenty or thirty years or so ago,” said an observer, “I think the majority of men carried the pocket handkerchief with a liberal corner of it sticking out of the upper outside coat pocket. Comparatively few men do so now. We are certainly not less jaunty than we were, but we don’t seem to display our jauntiness in that particular manner.”—New York Sun.

In a list of forty-seven colleges and universities reported the aggregate number of honorary degrees conferred this year is 157. Brown University leads these educational institutions with seventeen degrees awarded. Sixty-three degrees were conferred upon clergymen, nine upon college presidents and twentytwo were captured'by professors in the several colleges of the country. Only ten degrees went to foreign countries.

The Japanese smoke in a peculiar manner. The pipes have very small metal bowls, with bamboo stems and metal mouthpieces, and only hold enough tobacco for three or four whiffs. They use a tobacco which is cut extremely fine, and looks more like light blonde hair than anything else. It is a very good quality.however. The Japs take a whiff of smoke and inhale it, letting it pass out through the nostrils. They rarely smoke more than one pipeful at a time.

General Ogle, a member of the Pennsylvania Assembly, had beeq deputed to compose an address to the newly elected President, An-drew-Jackson. When the bluff old warrior submitted his document to the House, a fellow member, a dapper little fellow from Philadelphia, observed: “Pardon me, General, I hesitate about making any suggestion to so distinguished an individual, but I can not refrain from saying that it is customary with cultured letter writers to write the first personal pronoun with a capital ‘l.’ instead of a small ‘i.’” General Ogle returned a look of scorn. “Sir,” said he, “when I write to so great a man as Gen. Andrew Jackson, Democratic President of the United States, I abase myself. I abase myself, sir. I use as small an ‘i’ as I can put upon paper.' But. sir, if ever I should have to write to a little snipe like you, I would use an ‘l,’ sir, that would fill two pages of foolscap!”—Munsey’s Magazine.