Rensselaer Union, Volume 1, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 September 1869 — CURRENT ITEMS. [ARTICLE]

CURRENT ITEMS.

Ida Lkwih In to lmrc a homestead. Robe Sadneau, a Hungarian girl, has murdered 40 Austrian officers. It is said that Victoria can run a sewing machine as well as an Empire. Geo. Peabody lins gone to Salem, Mass. His health is very much improved. Mariiiaor of first cousins will be illegal in New Hampshire on Christmas and thereafter. More deaths by drowning from surfbathing have been reported this year than during any previous one. It is libelous in England to call a' man 11 no gentleman,” with intent to bring him into contempt. . The University of Deseret, in SaltL&e City, contains 223 students, of whom 120 arc males and 103 females. It is said by a California paper that General Ilosecrans will make five millions out of his mining speculations. Rev. Olympia Brown has commenced her labors as settled pastor of the Univcrsalist Church at Bridgeport, Conn. Tub water power of Niagara Falls is said to be sufficient to perform all the manual labor of the State of New York. The Revenue Bureau publishes an estimate that there are 70,000,000 gallons of whisky in the bonded warehouses of the country. The Mount Cenis tunnel will be com pleted, it is now confidently asserted, in 1872, when trains will pass through the Alps direct from Paris to Turin. Many of the fashionable churches in New York have been newly frescoed and fitted up during the summer vacation, and all of them opened on Sunday, September 5. Ben Perley Poore lately gave his daughter, aged fifteen, a birthday party,at which were 200 guests. They danced in the barn, which was carpeted for the occasion. The State of lowa, according to a census recently taken by the Town Assessors, contains a population of 1,011,952, being an increase of 109,909 in two years. A few days ago the lightning struck the truck of the New York and New Haven Railroad, about three hundred yards in the rear of a train, and the shock was distinctly felt by the passengers. TnE average time required for a finger nail to attain its full length (from the root to the commencement of the free edge), is about four and a half calendar months. The toe nails grow much more slowly.!

The production of beet-root sugar in Europe last year was as follows: 220,000 tons in France, 165,000 tons in Germany, 97,500 in Russia, 92,500 in Austria, 32,500 in Belgium, 15,000 in Poland and Sweden, and 7,500 tons in Holland. Archrishop Purcell, of Ohio, is the oldest prelate in the Catholic church, having served since 1832, and now being over 70 years of age, although still hale and active in mind and body. In his time he has consecrated more than 40 bishops. The Passagassawaugees are a set of cruel desperadoes who ,under the pretense of being a base-ball club, are driving the compositors of Main into early but hospitable graves. It is fiendishly proposed to drown them in the Chinquassabamtock. Judge Jere S. Black, of Pennsylvania, has sued the Louisville & Nashville Railroad Company for injuries snstained on their road some months ago. The refusal of the company to pay the Judge’s physicians $6, 000 is the reason for the present suit. A young physician in Mcklenburg, Germany, claims to have discovered a specific remedy for consumption. He has communicated his discovery to the Berlin Academy of Sciences, whose report on the same is eagerly looked for by the medical fraternity. , A Frenchman, near Chalons, recently died of hydrophobia from the bite of a dog received six months before. He voluntarily wont into a close room, from which he warned his friends, and received the con-, solations of religion through a hole in the window. A Mrs. Will reached New York a short time ago, in pursuit of lier runaway husband, having followed him from England to Australia, Shanghai aud Cape of Good Hope, and learned that he had lust left New York for China. Where there’s a Will there’s a way. She started immediately for China. A Cretin recently murdered three small children at Murzsteg, Germany. The children had teased him for some daj’s past One morning when he found them alone, he cut their throats. When the unfortunate mother of the little ones returned home and found them weltering in their bl*od she went mad.

A German lady who has recently resided in Troy, and is 81 years of age, set out alone, a few days ago, on the long journey to fatherland. On theday before, she visited her friends, walking at least ten iuiles/and paid a visit to the grave of her husband. It is understood that she is to be married during the passage over to a gentleman about twenty years her junior. Two boys in Springfield, Mass., neither of them over 12 years old, resolved to commence life on their own account, and on a recent Thursday took their guns and a small wagon and struck out. One of the boys left a note for his parents to the effect that “We shan’t drink, and can take care of our selves all right; don’t worry about us.” On the following Saturday night, their courage and provisions having given out, they returned home, stating that they had passed the time in the woods. A story is told in a Paris paper of a new method for recovering one's debts. The other day a crowd gathered in the vicinity of the Odeon round a girl with a wooden leg whom a gentleman at an adjoining window was apostrophizing with loud cries and gesticulations. It turned out that the girl was a washerwoman, who had gone to the gentleman to ask for payment of her bill, and finding that the money was not forthcoming, she had seized her customer's wooden leg, which was lying in the corner, and had walked off, declaring that she would not return it till she was paid. Startling screams were heard issuing from one of the hot sulphur b& thing-rooms at Sharon Springs, N. Y., the Other morning. The attendants burst the door im expecting to find somebody cooking from accidental inability to turn Off the hot water. But no; for amid the artistically curling vapors of the bath, stood a victim of enameling, gazing distractedly at a mirror, which showed her fece and bust gradually turning black under the combined Influences of sulphur and enamel, By the

next conveyance a lady left the Springs, wearing a very thick veiL Among the vessels lost in the cyclone that swept over the Bay of Bengal In 1867, were the steamer Thunder ana the ship Morayshire. Search was made for them, hut no trace was discovered, and it was taken far granted that both had gone down at sea. Tho other day a party of fishermen, driven for shelter into an ont-of-the-way creek some four miles inland, stumbled upon the hull of a ship, which proved to be the Morayshire, and further in found a larger steamer with masts and fnnnels still standing, which answered* to the description of the Thunder. -The steamer had £163,000 on board, which is doubtless yet in her bullion hold. Painful speculations are, of course, called up as to the fate of her crew and passengers. What that fate was, may never be discovered. It is conjectured that they could not have lived long, even if they had survived the cyclone, as the place is malarious in the extreme, and infested with tigers. What is, perliaps, the strangest, is, that. these vessels have been lying two years within a few miles of the mouth of the Hoogly.