Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 November 1879 — ODDS AND ENDS. [ARTICLE]

ODDS AND ENDS.

JapAii has fine macadamized road*. Russian ladies take part in boat races. Russia's army is fearfully addicted to drink. French doctors treat infectious diseases by telephone. ‘ Americans spent more than a million dollars in Switzerland last year. One thousand persons in Paris are engaged in the manufacture of silk tights. • t The ore from the Sierra N a vada mine in the Comstock district, ispayings42C to the ton. . . America lias one hundred and fifty exhibitors at the International Exhibition at Melbourne. Thomas Spurgeon, son of the great English divine, is going to Australia as an evangelist. The Georgia Legislature summarily dismissed a prupoposition to adopt the {JofTitt bell punch. The 60,000 camels that perished in the Afghan campaign cost the British Government $5,000,000. The Agricultural Department has in the botanical gardens at Washington, 120,000 thrifty tea plants. Th e Pen nsyi van ia Rail mad Com pany offers prizes to its employes for the detection of unsafe bridges. The best coon dog in Chester county, Pennsylvania, is owned by a stock company of fifteen persons. Amos Kidwf.ll of Mt. Gilead, Ohio, ran against a wire clothes line in the dark, and put out both eyes. The fashionable amusement for ladies in Rome just now is to attend trials in the magistrate courts. The Roman Catholic authorities have completely broken up the Feuian organization at Manchester, England.

The American Isabella grape vines • were the only ones that did well in the Wurtemberg, Germany, vineyards this year. Dr. Glenn, the late honorable bilk candidate for Governor of California, -raiseds2,2lo,ooo worth of wheat this year. The widow of ?x-President Polk lives at Nashville, Tenn. The remains her husband are buried in her d oor . yard. The person who hitches a horse to a shade tree in any city or town in Indiana subjects himself to a fine of five dollars.' A colony has been sent out fromltaly enroute to Florida to engage inthe culture of oranges, lemons, olives and almonds. Georgia’s cotton crop is growing year by year, but her gold mines are more than making up for the decrease. George Francis Train, who has subsisted for four tears without meat or stimulants, is said to be the picture of health. - The wefod markets of the west and northwest are j>oorly .supplied in consequence of the demand for teams to haul wheat.

The poor fellows who only have on- can understand how the Sultan of 'Turkey’s 800 wives get away with $lO,60 >,OOO a year. » Mr. Whittler pronounces the title of his little pm-m * Maud Meuler, instead of giving it the broad Yankee sound, Muller. Wasbcrg castle recently purchased by Eugenie, is four hundred years old, and has one hundred and twenty-two windows to its front, A cow at Elkhart got choked on a cabbage stalk, aulPln her attempts to relieve herself, rolled into the St. Joseph river and was drowned. Mayor Price 6f Boston urges the City Qouncel to avail itself of the present low prices of real estate to purchase grounds for city parks. Six hundred Sweedish farmers are awaiting the rejmrts from Manitoba which will be made by the seventy pioneers on the way there. Some men get their punishment in this world. Henry C. Worth, author of Grandfather's Clock, hasi gone insane over the elopement of his daughter. The home of Sara Bernhardt is fitted .with automatic doors which fly open the moment you step upon the threshold. Door handles are dispensed with. A Hampton, N. H.. farmer, 82 years old, who had b-eu unable to read common pript for fifty years, has suddenly come into the possession of his eyesight. A MEsker's Bri'sh, South Africa, diamond digger recently three stones weighing 94}, 20 and 10} knrats. The largest sold on tbfe spot for $35,000 Gustave Mausmjro, of No. 73 Forsythe street, New York, was killed by a flower pot. which fell from the third story window sill of a house beside which he was working Friday. The culture of sheep in Germany has increased the wool fibres from 5,500 to the square inch in the common stock of thirty years ago to 45,000 in the best breeds of the prerent day. Henry Ward Beecher is reported to have said: >|When I die I would rather be buried iu Indianapolis, the scene of my early labors, than anywhere else on earth,”

It had been discovered by many married couples in an Indiana town that the so-called minister who for years has been joining them together never had a legal or a church license. Tilere are said .to be fully 200,000 beggars tramping through the German empire, and they, are estimated to get as alms not less than $1,000,000 annually, ip money, not counting the food and clothing given them. ‘ Over six hundred forgotten paintings by the masters of the sixteenth century have been discovered in the lofts of the government buildings ait Florence. They will be placed in the Royal Gallon, . Robert M. and Stephen A. Douglas,

sons of the late Senator Douglas, have drawn $58,000 from the Treasury, the proceeds of a long standing litigation against the United States, recently decreed by the Courts In their favor. A wax-work figure of Franklin, exhibition in France, is labeled, "Franklin, Inventor of ; electricity. This savant, after having made seven voyages around the world,-died on the Sandwich Islands, and was devoured by savages, of whom not a single fragment was ever recovered." - f In all the cities of Brazil daring days of carnival, black women are seen sell-

ing "cabecinhas," which are made of delicate sheets of pure india-rubber, tied up in the form of a globe and filled with colored and scented waters. They are thrown at persons of tiie opposite sex. and burst on striking, flavoring the individual with a perfumed bath. The Sultan of Zanzibar is civilizing his country with a vengeance, He has suppressed the slave trade' gives dinner parties after the most approved European fashion, keeps a brass band on the porch during his soirees, uses illuminated menu cards, drives a coach and four aud dresses his outriders iu scarlet and gold. Wm. Hazlett is'the most miserable man in Oregon. Finding death creeping on apace, he took a bundle of greenbacks containing $22,000 and chucked it iuto the stove, remarking that his heirs would not quarrel much about the disposition of his property. A change in the weather brought (he old man around all right, and he is living on the charity of heirs, with a prospect of many years of helplessness before him.