Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 December 1894 — Literary Notes. [ARTICLE]

Literary Notes.

“For He shall deliver the needy when he crieth; the poor also, and aim that hath no helper/’ The single issue of the indianapois News of November 24 contained ;he accounts of no less than six suitides in Ind iana alon e. —~~ “Genf.rai/’ Fry, of industrial ame, is now chief lecturer to a new 'church” at St. Louis, whose creed loes not require a belief in the Deity, ihe Divinity ofChrist, or in a future state of existence. Its avowed design is to meet the the social, iniustrial, moral and spiritual denands of liberal minds who do not ind congenial surroundings in the Existing orthodox denominations.

The Minnesota Relief Commission, •rganized to aid the unfortunate victims of the forest fires in that State last summer, has closed up its work for thisyear, asfhe TreaSuryMs low empty. The Legislature will be isked for an appropriation, to con.inue the work. The commission las built 275 housbs, and complete »utfits of household goods have been urnished to over 450 families. Reief has been given to 2,400 persons. There is now no actual suffering. The times have been “awful hard” or quite a spell. There is no doubt iboutit. Still,some people have maniged to get along quite comfortably. Tor instance, there is that lonesome Orphan known officially as the ‘American Type Foundry Cotn)any.” The total assets of this “inant” aggregate $9,661,888.18. _A_ •eport filed at the session of the offijials at Newark. N. J., Oct. 24, ihowed that during the last year the running expenses of the business imounted to $153,571. The profits luring that period reached the very landsome figure of $184,004. The *ype foundry men do not appear to oe in the business “for their health.” Our readers who may occasionally read the alleged war news from China and Japan, for lack of better Bn ter tain men t not be misled by words whose ( meaning they fail to ?omprehend. The dispatches are ‘mostly Greek” to us, but we have nanaged to grasp a few facts. For instance the Chinese tael and the Chinese tail are very different articles. The Chinese tael is a silver coin valued atabout'7s cents. The Chinese tail —pig tail, so to speak — s the elongated hirsute extension which is the Chinese mark of manlood, and its value cannot be estimated in coin or bullion, —This disjunction is reasonably clear to us, jut we confess to being a little nixed on the true status and past ietails of the conflict. _■ . “Ring out the old ring in the new” s the order of the day. Mr. Blanchird, of Clinton, believes in a variation of the old custom. He was ‘rung in"—in Jail —with the old iheriff of Vermillion county and ‘rung out” —or run out—with the idvent of the new official. Mr. Blanchard, so far as heard from, is entirely entirely satisfied with the •esult of the election. He “wanted i change and got it.” Mr. Blanchtrd is “wanted” on a charge of brgery. The responsibility for his iisappearance has not been defilitely located, as lie failed to notify the retiring and incoming sheriffs of the exact moment of his departure. He probably did not like to interrupt the ceremony, being of a bashful turn, and therefore “stepped out to see a man” while the transfer was Oeingmade. The old sheriff said to the new sheriff, “Well, I’m blanked.” The new sheriff said. “Me, 'too!” The prevailing low prices for all kinds of farm animals, and especially horses, has been generally regarded is a misfortune to the agriculturalist. Yet, as with most questions, there ire (wo sides to the matter. A competent authority has recently made >otne experiments which seem to prove that the farmer, can, if he will, reap a very great advantage From this condition of the horse market. This authority states that a three-horse team will accomplish very much more than one-third more i work than a two-horse team, in al- I most any branch of heavy farm ' wbrk. The animals will remain in in far 1 bettercondition also. Where the work is always considered so heavy for two horses that frequent rests.are necessary, time is lost by ! the “hired man,” which is extremely bad economy, the man’s time beind too valuable to waste in allowing an animal to rest. By the addition of a third horse this waste is at once stopped, or at least made unaecces- ’ i.

sary. We are hot an expert on such matters, but our impression is that our farmers might find it very profitable to figure on the possibilities in this direction.

Medical practitioners can hardly be said to have as yet reduced their art to an exact science. One school says that meat must not be taken into the human stomach. Another school says that an excess of vegetable food tends to impoverish the blood. One school says that whisky of all poisons is the most deadly—ruining body and soul. Another school prescribes whisky for every ill in general and for consumption in -particular. One school says tobacco is ruining the rising generation and ignores the fact that octogenarians continue to die in peace after a lifetime of devotion to the weed. The latest fad, or discovery, is that of a down-east M. D., who has promulgated the rule “To breathe again the human breath is poison and ruinous to health.” From this source has sprung the manufacture of “twin beds” for married people, so that they need no longer run this awful risk. Those old-fashioned couples who have lately been eelebrating their golden weddings will be astonished to learn what great risks they have been exposed to during every night of the past fifty years. The “twin bed” edict is not likely to prove popular with newly married people at least.

The announcement that Harpers will print during 1895 the “Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc,” written by “the most popular of living magazine writers,” has set curious persons wondering who this author is. It ought not to be very difficult to find “the most popular magazine writer.” In order to attain this distinction, he of she must have written stories that were afterwards reprinted in book form, and the statistics of the circulating libraries would give some valuable hints on this point. Besides, the number of American-popular magagine writers who would undertake to put into a novel the most romantic series of events in all history is not large. The authorship of “The Bread winners,” we believe, has never been divulged. of men and women have claimed to know who wrote it, and several interesting persons have said modestly that they were the authors, but the public does not yet know whether anybody has told the truth. It remains to beseen whether the “Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc” will provoke as long a search for the writer as “The Breadwinners” did. At present “The Breadwinners” has no rival in popular anonymity: it hardly has a second.