Rensselaer Union, Volume 1, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 August 1869 — CURRENT ITEMS. [ARTICLE]

CURRENT ITEMS.

The Chinese Emperor, aged 15, is soon to be married. Cleveland has a White-Stocking Club of croquet girls. There are seventy-five elementary schools in Sierra Leone. Mrs. Stonewall Jackson has lately received a bequest of SIO,OOO. A glover down East has hung up a mgn, “Ten thousand hands wanted imihediately.” A lady at Newport has a ring cut out of a solid diamond, and said to be the only qnc in the country. At the Kansas State Agricultural College, at Manhattan, there were 121 students enrolled last year. Mr. John Bigelow, for many years connected with the New York Evening Post , and latterly Minister to France, Is now chief editor of the New York Times. Major General Wool prepared a speeeli.of welcome for the 7th regiment, at Troy, N. Y., recently. He was too feeble to read it, and had it read by another. Avery Lester, of Ledyard, Conn., seventy-eight of age, and infirm, has read the Bible through seventy-four times sin£c his confinement to the house. The New York World pronounces the notion that oysters are not good to eat in the summer months a perverse whim. The deep-sea oyster is said to be the best in July. A recent cyclone at Calcutta did an awful piece of work in blowing off the roof of the hospital and killing several patients, blowing down trees and houses and playing the mischief with the crops. There are 669 Young Men’s Christian Associations in the United States. Many of these own, and more of them are erecting buildings for their special use. The actual membership of all classes will reach ( about'9o,oo6. ' - - In New York, the other day, a brute undertook to make a horse draw a load of iron, weighing about a ton. The driver cursed and cudgeled. The horse pulled and struggled; until finally, with one desppajeHyap, tjjhe re\l in the A Little girl, eight years of‘age, dred at Pittsburgh a few days! ago,, fmfti lockjaw, tbe result, it is alleged, of an operation performed at a dentist’s office, in extracting a tooth. It is claimed that the operation was performed in such a rough manner as to cause lockjaw.

A London letter states that “ the Prince iff Wales lately visited the Earlsworth idiot Asylum, made a speech, laid the corner-stone of a new building, and Gien received four hundred scarlet leathern purses, each containing a cheek for one hundred guineas, handed to him by a procession of four hundred young Indies." The Board of Trade of St. Louis has appointed a committee of twelve to ipfae by subscription $120,000 to build an iron seagoing propeller to inaugurate direct trade 'between St. Loins artd foreign Tdrts. The vessel will-be of 1,000 tons capacity, aid ■ Will not Usavr aver six feet wheh UghL ~, Rev. . Dni John Toma • of* Pfafafirfd,' Massachusetts, recently returned from tjvo months' trip to California. Dfoung bis absence he traveled about 1,000 miles each Week, and on his Way home stopped at Salt Lake' Ctty&nd preached ih the Tabernacle to 7,000 Mormons. The famous “ haunted house ” in Watertown, Mass., of whiefi a highly sensational account, with illustrations, was given in a magazine a year or more ago, has been transformed into a quiet, pleasant home, a gentleman who was not afraid of “ ghosts” having purchased it at a bargain and improved its surroundings.

Thebe is a mechanic in Jefferson county, Miss., who with $390, in 1867, purchased sixty-two acres of land, made last year enough out of it to pay for his place, and made a good living out of his crop besides. This year he rents it for one-tbird of the gross crop, and his tenants have nearly thirty acres in cotton, and ten to twelve in corn. The Opinion Nationals publishes that France employs 502,812 public functionaries, whose united salaries amount to $68,288,555. The Emperor'and the Imperial family enjoy an income of $5,300,000. The Senate costs $1,020,000, the ministers take about $200,000, the prefects fully SBOO,OOO, the Generals and officers of the staff some $1,600,000, etc. In a recent debate in the Spanish Cortes, a very active and intelligent workingman, M. Alaina, deputy for Barcelona, took an important part, his speech attracting great attention and being much applauded. This was the first time that a Spanish Parliament has seen a workingman debating, cm terms of equality, public affairs with a Spanish grandee and a Minister of Finance.

Ida Lewis, tlie Lime Rock heroine, don’t like her pictures. She says “that picture in Harper’s is awftil, I cannot bear to look at. it.” She and her sister, who fa very handsome and bashful aud afraid of the water, are to marry brothers, and Ida’s wedding, which was to have been this month, naJ been postponed for a year. A humane society in London has voted Ida a gold medal.

Johnstown, Pa., has a musical curiosity in the person of Eddie Hohmann, who is six and a half years old, and can play skillftilly by note several airs on the violin. When six years old he could play Yankee Doodle from the notes. What renders his musical precocity all the more remarkable is the fact that he has not yet mastered the alphabet. Thews are said to be in our country a total of six millions two hundred thousand dhe hundred thousand Quakers. If we reckon three persons to each church member, which la a low estimate, there will be about nineteen millions of our population directly and indirectly connected with the Evangelical chnrchee. The Roman Catholic population is reckoned at five millions. Delirium tremens is generally supposed to be confined almost exclusively to excessive consumers of ardent spirits. Cases are not wanting, however, to show that light wines and tobacco, when used immoderately, will occasion th* disease.’’ In ». Louis, Michael Wigand, aged 38, died of apoplexy, after suffering from the usual

symptoms of delirium tremens, and ak‘- is supposed to have been the direct cause' of his death. Chicago and China “ shook, hands ” on •Change to-day. At 12 o’clock Presklent Richards introduced to the members of the Board and numerous visitors i who were present, Messrs. Sing Man and Choy Chew, representatives of large commercial houses in China and San Francisco. Short speeches were made, and the reception was extremely cordial, boding well for our relations with those who follow these avtnt couriers.—Chicago Journal, 4th. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, tne oldest qf all missionary organizations, recently celebrated its one hundred and Sixty-eighth anniversary, in the city of London. It supports wholly or in part four hundred and seventy-seven clergymen, and abqut eight hundred lay teachers and students, in training for the work of the church in foreign parts. The Archbishop of Canterbury; presided at the meeting, and delivered a very appropriate address. •' ! ' The other day a number of eggs were taken from tbe henhouse of one of our citizens and transferred to a bowl In the pantry*—weather 102 in the shade. Several days after, one of the family was surprised on going idto the patitry to discover the head of a little chicken peeping ant of >ne of the eggs, having picked hi? way into the world! The egg turned out to have been a nest egg, ana the little chicken, which is still living, owes its existence to tbe strange combination of many hens and the hot weather.— NorfsQc Derg Book. i The Court Journal notes a rich Httlc bit of Scandal on the tapis m the Faubourg St. Germain. Count has the misfortune to be blessed with a prodigal son, who has been going so fast that the father cut off all supplies. In a fit of revenge the young liopenil spent his last louis in a corduroy jacket and blue trowsers, and set up as a commissionaire in front of tbe Count’s mansion. In order to attract consumers, he had tbe family arms engraven on his crochet. The little comedy has been going on for some time, and neither father nor son appear inclined to give in. To bring matters to a crisis, the son has just announced his intention of marrying a young fruit-seller in the neighborhood.