Rensselaer Union, Volume 2, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 October 1869 — CURRENT ITEMS. [ARTICLE]

CURRENT ITEMS.

Boston claims to have made $500,000 by the Peaco.Jnbifee. ■ , • " * This Avondale fund lias reached a sum in excess of $200,000. The steel sword-scalibard is to be abolished in the Engpfh army. A New Hampshire man lias collected 200 specimens of birds in tliat State. John Jacob Astor’s son William has gone to Rome td study as a sculptor. The capital of the 44 Boston banks represented at the clearing-house amounts to $47,100,000. A woman who tried to get run over on an English railway has been sent to. prison for three months. A NeW Yqkkeii was fined $16,000 the other day, and to satisfy the judgment he gave all hia property—ten eents. Ida Lewis, the Newport heroine, says she has told her story for 10,000 persons, and is tired of it , , An Aiderman of London, Ontario, has presented a littje bill for boarding Prince Arthuf, at ths rate of £1,250 per diem. The Paris and Constantinople Railroad will place the two cities within sixty hours of one another; 'The rtad will be about 2,000 miles long.- . . : At the Columbus celebration by the Italians of Cincinnati, Angelina Pralesia, a lady 103 years old, led off in the grand dance, apd afterwards danced ten sets. A letter from Brussels announces that a M. iLariduran Inis Invented ail apparatus by which he is-ablc to extract firedamp or any other vicious air from mines. , A two-year old colt was ’found in Phillips, Me., stuck all over with porcupine quills. Seven men worked for a long time to extricate the spines with nippers. The Czar of Rusiia has authorized the opening of subscriptions throughout the Empire in aid of the mpnument to be erected to Huniboldt in- Berlin.

A. citizen of Limington, Mei, lost a gold chain in 1837, and supposed that it was stolen from him. A few weeks since he found it while plowing a piece of land. At Bowling Green, a few days ago, a little boy, while passing by a horse, struck it upon The flank, when H kicked him on the forehead, crushing his skull fatally. In a sham fight at the Belgian military fete, two squadrons Of cavalry, at fall charge in opposite directions, ran into each other in turning, a-hill, and broke the bones of I'4 gallant dragoons. AN Irishman, from Dublin, worked his way-out to Jacksonville, Fla.,,a year or two ago, and borrowed money to stroll up the St. Johiis. He novi l refuses $29,000 for the place he suttted upon. The will of Benjamin Chamberlain, of Randolph, N. 'Y., lias been upset by a court because he gave 'his family $40,000 and bequeathed $300,000 to religious purposes, which the court decided he could not rightly do. ’ Rev. Dr. Sprague has resigned the pas torate of to« Second Presbyterian Church, in Albany, N. Y.—a society which he has ministered to for upward of forty, years—and the church has voted him an annual pension of $2,000. '* • While stacking fodder near Brownsville, Tenn., the other evening, a negro was struck by lightning and Instantly killed. It is said that every bone in his body was crushed almost to atoms, and yet his flesh was unbroken. The Hon. Ginery Twitchell, Member of Congress from Massachusetts, a millionaire, drove a stage oym his old route from Worcester to-Barre, the other day, on the same stage that he used to mount as regular driver thirty years ago. Buch is life. Two Americans, dining at a Paris restaurant,contracted a bill of 57 framS, which they thought rather steep, and tendered a 100 franc bill in payment, when, to their astonishment, another franc was added for the trouble of changing so large a bill! Adelina Patti’s engagement with Strakosoh for an American tour extends from Sept. 1, 1871, to Sept. 1, 1872, the journey to and from France included. She is to sing 100 times here, and receive $2,000 each night. Half the total sum is now deposited with the Rothschilds. A NewMilfordbr (Conn.) was recently summoned before the Superior Court at Litchfield as a witness in an impeachment case. Not relishing the idea of twenty miles ride to court, he wrote to the prisoner’s counsel tliw he “ had been exposed to the small pox : If it look he would be about to break out; but, if it was inouted upon, he would go.” The excuse was accepted. > A female somnambulist In New Haven left her bed the other night, went to the closet, selected the laudanum bottle from a number of others, and took a hearty draught. The cold air, or something else finally awakened her, and when she found out what she had done there was a lively stirring far a doctor. She was kept walking for seven hours, and narrowly escaped fatal consequences. | JCooper, who was Adjutant General of the Confederate army during the war, says the Confederates lost, in round numbers, 260,009 men by death, during the war; of which 60,000 were kUled in battle, and 800,000 as prisoners, disabled pnd deserters. He also says that the whole number of men in tl»e Confederate army from first to last, numbered 600,000,, of whom not more than 400,000 men were enrolled at any one time. The report of the Medical Department of the British army states that during 1867 there were 73,420 men serving in Great Britain and Ireland. The admissions into hospital amounted to 63,904; the deaths to 690, of which 53 occurred when the men were absent from their corps, and the average number constantly non-effective from sickness was ff,flß. These numbers give the following* proportions to every 1,000 men: Admitted to hospital, 8.70; deaths, 9,40; consfantly Ul, 42.47. Hon Rufus Dwinkl, of Bangor, Me., who recently died, was one of its wealthiest citizens, and left a remarkable wQI. He gave,.among other bequest*, flO/joO, divided in'different sums, tq trustees, to be used “ purely and solely for charitable purposes; SI,OOO each to the editors of the Bangor Whiff, toshow his “appreciation of their valuable sendees hi the good cause in which they are engaged,.politically and socially.” and $2,000 to a friend, In proof of hia “ appreciation of his friendship, and not.because he needs it.” A Silesias paper the following anecdote of Count Bismark; ** The peasants on the Count's estate had got into the bad hapit bf Working <m Sundays. The Count heard .of it, and wrote.to hia bailiff: ‘ There must, he .an and. to that? The WSSgi:

yet they have their own bit of land, to look’ after, and so they haw only Sunday left to do it in? But the Count will not fls>' ten to such excuses, and writes back 5 ‘Frdm this time forward a new order!* to lie introduced, - When my pboplo’Mye land, and their corp is ripe, they ao# fobpgirt with their own first? The bailiff in-, forms the peasants”’of-the Count’s (fair 1 mands, and adds, 'But now np more wurk , on Sundays? The result is that the peasants say to each other, * The- master' shift 1 not tone a farthing by caring for its lirAi so let us work with a Will,’ and they dp it, too. Never was the work done so wn and so rapidly, and the.bailiff could write! to the Count a few days afterward, * That . was a capital hit, afrd nobody has had rt morn advantage from it thau we. :It was all finished in the twinkling of un eye.”’ ■ The New York IKorZd says; “ For once ' the astronomers have been ‘proved frf ho wrong. According to their calculations., the sth of October was to be a day marked by unusual atmospheric distarMricea.’W* tending over both hemisphere*. At; I.Pl* m. on the morning of that day the jnoon was at the part of her orbit 'Which is nenri cst flic earth, and her attract ion wa*, •therefore, at its maximum force. At noon . on that day the moon was bn the earth’s * equator, ‘a circumstance which never qqv ; curs,’ say the astronomers, ‘ withput marked atmospheric disturbanceß.’-At 2 p’ 11 m. of the same day, lines drawn from tlfe earth’s centre cut the sun and moon in the same arc of high ascension, so that tffe at-‘ traction of both sqn. and moon wm acting in the same direction ; the new moon, ip other words, bring on the earth’s rtjuaror When in perigee. This extraordinary corit* bination of conditions, it wm fluid,, would be certain to cause unusual high tides AM destructive storms on tie SUI; but ‘these t predictions were singularly falsified,-i<uul the day was one of the most nleaaaht wi: have had for some time. Had the pfedievl tian been far the 3d instead al U»g October it would have Come iriuch nearer fulfillment.” .'*•