Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 July 1879 — Wise Rats. [ARTICLE]

Wise Rats.

It appears that although the Kelly farm at Garbuttsville is nearly all that could be expected of a form —it has one drawback—the grounds are infested by rats to an extent almost as unbearable as Haemlin before the Pied piper paid it-a visit. Mr. Kelly is not the man to sit quietly down and allow rats to walk away with his substance without remonstrance, and he set to work devising means to banish the superfluous rodents. Various banes were tried with good and had results, and although scores of rats were poisoned, scores remained to plague the proprietor. After exhausting considerable patience and expending quite a sum of money in the Surchase of poison for the rats, Mr. [elly began to regard the matter as serious and consulted with his neighbors as to what they knew about that branch of farming relating to weeding out rats. A hundred plans were given him in a week, each of which was guaranteed as infallible. Most of them depended for success on inducing the vermin to eat something' that would result in their dissolution. Mr. Kelly had tried in that direction so long and fruitlessly that he had little confidence in the prescriptions and determined to test a plan based on another theory. One old and sage granger told him to set a fish hook on an elevation in such a way that a rat in jumping at the bait on the hook would catch on it and remain hanging. His squalling in this position would intimidate all the rats in the neighborhood and they would decamp. This plan was tried, but although finely pointed fish hooks were set never a rat impaled himself, but stole the bait and wagged his tail iu derision at the hook. When Mr. Kelly saw that he was defied lie swore that the rats should die and he himself suffer no more from them. He had in reserve a plan that would finish them without mercy. True, it had a feature of cruelty about it, but what of that; had they not forfeited all right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiuess by their insolent demeanor and persistency in wrong doing? This receipt came from an old soldier. He should catch a rat in good condition, put him in a trap, visible to all his fellow rats and allow him to starve to death. It was promised that toward the end o his days he would squeak dreadfully and scare all the rats out of the barn, after wljich, on the fourth day, he would expire himself. A rat was caught and placed in a box trap in the barn. No food was placed near him, and he was watched to observe his decrease. He was comfortable after the first day and no worse off the second. On the third day of his confinement he assumed to be about as happy as a] rat could be and was as sleek and active as ever. On the fourth day, when it was expected that the bones of the prisoner would protrude from the skin and all the other rats would have fled, Mr. Kelly’s hired man visited the bam and saw the trapped rat partaking of a generous meal from scraps of meat stolen from the house dog’s dish by the kindred of the imprisoned rat. Mr. Kelly is still looking for rat-bane.—[Rochester (N. Y.) Union.

Falling Families. The changes in society are indicated by the occasional appearance of names in the police reports or in other disreputable connections. Here, for instance, was the Aspinwail divorce case, which recalled a name once noted among the aristocracy of the drug trade. This class of men made money rapidly and the Aspin walls were among the leading names. Here too, is Carson Brevoort, who, when called to pay a debt pleads usury. Were there any basis for such a defense, it would still be contemptible for any one who claimed true manhood to offer, but in this case it is merely a sham, and only reveals meanness of character. Brevoort evidently has peculiar notions about paying debts. Not long since, a man who had lent him money called to collect the loan, and was so roughly handled that he had Brevoort arrested for assault and battery. On the present occasion the defense is usury. How strange this seems in the son of Henry Brevoort, who once led the fashion of New York! This is the way, however, in which the great families decline, until they “die out.” I well remember the time when Henry Brevoort gave a grand fancy ball, one of whose guests was Washington Irving. It was the first entertainment of the kind which erer had been given in the city, and attracted a rare degree of attention. I was at that time a mere lad,

in the service of a young merchant, whose wife then referred to the glory of the Brevoorts in glowing terms, to which the former coolly replied, “Pshaw! do you think that we ever can go into this society?” Well, the brat illustration of the changing nature of social life is found in the fact that while the Brevoorts have sank out of i notice, the above named merchant has for years been prominent in the Fifth Avenue. He still occupies an eminent social position, being dis tinguished for wealth and social post tion. In this manner the old and effete aristocracy is displaced by the vigor and enterprise of the new ele-

ment which iscontlnu&Uy attracted to the metropolis. At the time the Brevoort fancy ball thrilled the highest walk of society, Wm. H. Vanderbilt was on a form on Staten island. His father then owned the ferty to New York, but also had a tract of land where he could raise his own vegetables and perhaps have some for the market. Contrast this humble condition of the family with William’s present princely state. Look at the reception tendered him oh his return from England by the railway officials who filled a steamboat and made the cabin ring with huzzas. This man can not go to Europe without being escorted to sea by a steamer laden with his retainers, who receive him on his return with equal honots. When he travels, a palace car such as no European prince has ever beheld, is at his service, and his grandeur has reached a degree which the former railway magnates never dreamed. — [New York Letter to Cincinnati Gazette.

How the Indian* Make Their Arrow Heads. A young man in the Smithsonian Institute (writes the Washington correspondent of the Cleveland Leader) had just made public the discovery of the method employing in making the stone and volcanic glass arrow heads, daggers, knives, axes rfhd razors, of the pre-historicraces. Up to this time this has been a great problem to all antiquarian student, hut no theory has ever been advanced showing so practical results as Cushing’s. He started to solve the difficulty by putting himself in the identical position of the Aztecs or Mound Builders—without anything to work with except sticks, various shaped stones such as he could find on the banks of any stream, and his hands. After making some rude implements by chipping one flint with another, he discovered that no amount of chipping would produce surfaces like the best of those which he was trying to imitate. He therefore came to the conclusion that there was another way of doing it, and, by chance, tried pressure with the point of a stick, instead of chipping by blows of a stone; then presto, he found that he could break stone, flint and obsidian in any shape he chose. Soon he had made spear-beads, and daggers that would cut like a razor and as good as any he had before him, which had been picked up from all over the world By a little mere observation, he found that the “flaking,” which he calls his process, on the old arrow-head left grooves that all turned one svay. He produced a like result by turning bis stick the easiest way from right to left. He therefore concludes that the prehistories were right-handed people like ourselves. This conclusion is reinforced by the fact that occasionally an arrow-head is found that has flakes running from left to right, showing a left-handed person. The importance of the discovery is, it shows that the early races were able to do this work without the use of iron or bronze —a thing long doubted.