Rensselaer Union, Volume 2, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 August 1870 — CURRENT ITEMS. [ARTICLE]

CURRENT ITEMS.

A Joint Concern— Anxiety about the butcher’s bill. The Japanese have Just got to using American kerosene lamps. At a recent concert In Paris the Marseillaise was sung thirty-two times A London market man was recently arrested for selling the meat of a donkey. A charming milkmaid of Vermont to under arrest for breaking the oow’s back. Dividends are applied to keep the policy in force in the Washington life of New York. Experimental Philosophy Trying to borrow an umbrella. Moral Philoso-phy-Refusing to lend it. A Maine farmer gets up an hour before daylight, so as to put in twenty-five hours a day. The Charter of the Washington Life secures all the profits to the Insured. More than this cannot be done. The New York Evening Pott says there have already been eight days this year hotter than a single day last summer. A constant reader writes to ascertain if the cold shoulder so often given to poor dependents is bak’cd or roasted. The Richmond city government recently passed a regulation forbidding policemen to smoke, drink, or carry canes while on duty. Always do as the sun docs—look atthe bright side of everything. For, while it is just as cheap, it is three times as good for digestion. A Milwaukee ‘‘nuss’’ says: “’Taint much trouble to take care o' sick pussons; most on ’em don’t want anything, and, if they do, they don’t got it.” For thirty days recently past the mean temperature in Boston has been five degress above the average for fifty years past, and the first nlno days seven degrees higher. The cigars consumed in New York city amount to about twenty-three and a half millions a year, an allowance of twenty-three and a half cigars to each individual. A boy in a Maryland town fell dead the other day, after making a long run, “ clear round the bases,” while engaged in “ the national game.” The exertion was too much for hu stock of vitality. Worm lozenges sold in several Massachusetts towns, have been analyzed and found to contain strychnine, in a quantity calculated to cause great damage, if not death.

A man named James Jason, who was sentenced to the State prison in the year 1847, irom Posey county, Ind., returned to his former residence a few weeks ago, and found it occupied by his grandson and great grandchildren. At the time Jason was sentenced, twenty-three years ago, he was fifty-two years old. Tiie editor of the Blair (iowa) Register is in the watermelon business. He recently put this card in his paper: “To the person leaving the largest melon at this office during the season, we will send the Register for one year.” The largest and best melons in the county are being rolled into the office, and he and hia friends are feasting. A Mormon taint has discovered and published in the church organ a sure preventive of small-pox, which is: “After being exposed, eat a sufficient quantity of onions to move the bowels, and go on about your business. Try It, and report the effect to this office, so that it may be published to the world with more signatures than one.” The following is a succint but spirited account of the history of the Kilkenny cats: There onst was two cats in Kilkenny, And aich \ bought thore wa* one cai too many ; So they quarrelled and fit, And they gouged, and they bit, Till, excepting th.ir nails, _ ; And the tips ot their tail*, IdWMTor two cats, there warn’t any. “You have been a good scholar in your day, Ned; quite conversant with bookkeeping, I presume.” '‘No, sir, I can’t say that I am. What makes you ask such a question?” “Why, because you have no less than a dozen of my books; but noafitSf them returned, owing to your book-keeping abilities. Titr Supreme Court of Pennsylvania has decided that where, by negligence, sparks from a locomotive set fire to a warehouse near a railroad track, the railroad company is liable for the damage done by the fire; but the same tribunal decides that, if another house catches irom the flames of the burning building set on fire by sparks from the locomotive, the owner of the said premises has no remedy. A Pittsburgh man was in the habit of keeping a paper of arsenic in an old clock. His wife becamA very much depressed in spirits, owing to the heat and household cares, and knowing of the old clock deposit, made her quietus with the arsenic. Had it not been handy she Would probably now be alive. Papers of | arsenic arc not convenient articles to have lying ready in one’s house for any .emergency.

The Hartford Post has a sovereign preventive for hydrophobia, as follows: “If you see, your dog or your neighbor’s dog going mad, or think he is a dog that looks as if he might go mad, administer unto the cur, as a preventive, half an ounce of strychnine. Keep doing it until the animal pays no attention to any remark you make, and he will never hydrophoberin thin world.” The report that a young man in Alleghany, Pennsylvania, lost his speech by the explosion of a fire cracker, on the 4th of July, has bothered the eminent doctors. They all went to writing about the different organs of speech that must have been effected by the explosion, and now it turns out ihat it was a written speech that he- lost, which was in his pocket, and took fire from the firc-crackcr. A correspondent of the New York Tribune among the lakes of Maine writes that he asked a boy which was the best of several small lakes for fishing. The boy answered: “ Lake Pissaquattisaquaquapassamoquidynixeum ” —. At this point the correspondent walked away, reached a neighboring lake, fished three hours, and returned. On his way home he met the boy where he had left him, still looking on the ground, and just finishing -the name—“ oloosikuhugenisnuggi.” The writer dates his letter at “ Lake Munkatnnkoobogsquroitakooloonatic.” Toe Syracuse Journal says: “We were shown this morning a miniature steam engine, luanuiacturea by Mr. J. B. Crawford of Glasgow, Scotland. It is perfect in every part, and so small that it can be covered with a frdy’s thimble. It can be worked by steam, for which Mr. Crawford has a small apparatus prepared, but he usually works it by atmospheric

pressure through X flexible tube. with rubber air receiver. Mr. Crawford is an engine manufacturer, and made the engines on the Canard line of steamships. The pet engine was made aa an amusement and to ahow what could be done. It to undoubtedly the smallest working engine ever made.”

A fly shortened by several minutes the life df John Real, the murderer, who waa recently executed at New York. The Sheriff had arranged to raise his hand as s signal to draw tns black cap, and afterward to wave his handkerchief for the cutting of the rope. While standing with his hat in one hand and his handkerchief in the other, awaiting the end of the religions ceremonies, a fly happened to light upon his nose, and he unoonscioualy raised his handkerchief to brush it away, which the hangman, of course, took to be the pre-arranged signal, and at once cut the rope. “ Bovs," said old Silas, “ here to a watch that I wouldn’t give for the best cow in Squawvllle, n at the same time taking from bis jacket pocket a bulls eye watch about the size of a small tnrnlp. “Last fall, when I was digging potatoes, I lost this ere watch, and never found it until Deacon Daniels brought it to me one day last week. The deacon was going to Squawville, and in passing near my potato field, he heard the watch ticking, and followod the sound for nearly a quarter of a mile, and finally found the watch where I lost it six months before; and would you believe me, gentlemen, that watch never varied a second in all that time.” F J. Allday. of Ba inbridge, Georgia, publishes the following card in the Sun of that city : '■ I feel it my duty to say to the public that, owing to Whisky and Fool, a few weeks ago, I acted in bad faith toward my wife in making accusations against her that are entirely without foundation; and, as snch accusations have met tye public ear, I feel it my duty as a husband to coirect them publicly, which I freely do by saying that I am wrong and she is right. And, now, since Whisky, Fool & Allday have dissolved copartnership, I have been made to see my errors, of which I heartily repent, and would say, that a better woman, or wife, or stojl mother never lived—and let all the shame rest on me.”