Rensselaer Union, Volume 5, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 October 1872 — CURRENT ITEMS. [ARTICLE]

CURRENT ITEMS.

A SEA-SAWf—The sword-fish. A matter of course—Racing. The first game of life—Bawl* ’ A marine plant—The beach of the sea. 'Cloth for a Bak^ti— Dough-skin. 1 Diet fortraining base-ball players —Batter pudding. <• ' There noven was an hondst red-breast —he’is always a robin, A New Hampshire woman has sold $457 worth of blueberries this season. In Springfield, Mass., the street cars bear the inscription, “Will you ride?” At a California picnic a-gentleman fiddled a den of serpents out of their lair. Two parties of Memphis squirrel-hunt: era recently brought home 80,075 scalps. A bald eagle, flying with a pig in his talons, was recently shot in Kentucky. Russian horse-raisers consider it doing well if only twenty per cent, of their slock is stolen. An Irish editor can see. no .earthly rea-son-why women should not be allowed to become medical men. A certain young lady, in making.a pair of gentleman's pants, got a' Joke on herself by sewing the straps and buckles on in front. j Small snakes, some of them nine inches Tong,' resembling whiteTHfeads,liave been found in apples in Ellenville, Ulster County, N. Y. Theodore Hook was asked ? to review “ Three Words to the Drunkard.’’ “Oh, my dear fellow, that I will do'in three words: Pass the bottle.” A gentleman from California assures us that earthquakes are so common at San Francisco that even the. ragged urchins in the streets have shock heads. Premiums, policies and dividends are paid in cash in the Washington Life Insurance Company, of New York. Solomon says: “A virtuous woman is a crown to»her husband.” By this rule the most valuable of the sex is only worth one dollar and ten cents. The Masonic fraternity are soon to hold a grand fair in New York city, the proceeds to beused in building an asylum, in the interior of the State, for Masons’ widows and orphans. Miss Partington writes to her aunt that tire"'iSrida+wvaver which the papers talk so much about, has not touched that town for six years. A hundred thousand dollars has been appropriated by the city of New York for a Museum of Natural history and Art, to be erected in Central Park. An English traveler says: “Put an American baby six months old On its feet, and it will immediately say, ‘Mr. Chairman,’ and call the next cradletoordcr.”

They have some plucky women in Muscatine, lowa. The Journal tells of one who wormed-her way across the street at the point of her parasol through "a passing drove of cattle. Mosquitoes are reported so thick at Key West that it is sometimes impossible to see a person across the street. That’s probably when there is no person across the street to see. Captain Rodolphus Sheldon recently oaptured at the niQuth of the St. Lucie river, Florida, a large sea-cow, or manatee, which weighek 1,500 pounds, was 11 feet in girth and 13 feet long. In one of the suburban schools a teacher gave out the word “psalter” to a class in spelling. It was a poser to alj till it reached the foot of the class, when a curly headed little fellow spelled it -correctly, and being asked tfr define it, shouted out, “More salt.’’ It may not be generally known that snake-poison is useful for medicinal purposes in these days, and that, under the name of “Crotalus Horridus,” the poison of the rattlesnake is utilized in pharmacy. _ bombardment from a neighboring ledge of rock, which is being blasted. Holes have been knocked through the roofs of several buildings, “ and a rock weighing fifty-pounds dropped! down in front-of-a; lady’s parlor window. At the convention of the New York milk producers in New York city, the other day, an imaginative speaker declared that the noise of mixing milk and water at Jersey City, in the early morning, sounds like Niagara. A New Jersey genius is all ready to bridge the Atlantic. He has perfected his plans, and figured it out, and it will take only the labor of a million of men for a century. Ho is willing to stake other people’s last dollar on the success of the scheme. At Valley Stream, L. 1., a man fell between two trains of cars, in attempting to jump from one to the other. With the of a slight contusion he was ."Unharmed. When some of jhe -railroad employes stooped to pick him up he waved them off, saying: “I can pick up my own corpse.’’

A recent writer says of the rextrordinary dryness of the climate of the Argentine" Republic: “A bowl of water left uncovered in the morning is dry at night; ink vanished from the" inkstand as if by magic. The bodies of dead animals dry up instead of decomposing) and neither exercise nor exposure to the Sun’s rays produces perspiration.” Wk. Hurd, a jeweler of Mason City, lowa, has invented a clock, which, for novelty, at least, is a wonder of mechanical art. The works are in the hands, invisible to the eye. The dial of the clock is marked out on the window of his store, and the clock has had many admiring and wondering spectators. The two fine arches ofthe Manchester (Va.) free bridge, spanning the tracks of the Richmond & Danville Railroad in Manchester, recently completed, are to be immediately pulled down, they being too narrow to admit of passage through them of several large stones that have been quarried up the river for the Cnited States Government. , “Lame 1” sighed Mrs. Partington, “here I have been suffering for three mortal weeks. First I was seized With a bleeding phrenology in the left hemisphere of the brain, which was exceeded by a stoppage of the left ventilator of the heart. This gave me an inflammation in the borax, and now I’m sick with chloroform morbus. There is no blessin’ like that of health, particularly when you are ill.”' , „

A Western editor relates tiiat he once stopped at a restaurant in Washington, D. C. , and, noticing, that the waiter was -uacommonly -sobei- asked him if .he. was sice. “Yes,” very curtly, “I is.” “What’s the matter ?” /“Why, sir, Washin’ton’s. the worst place ever I see. When it’s dry you can’t see where you’re gwine, and when it’s wet you can’t go.” The mixing iron scraps, flliagSxOr drilling chips frota machine shops, in the soil about the roots of pegr . trees, is be..coming general with some of our best | fruit growers. The health , and produc- : tiveness of the trees are greatly promoted j thereby. Pieces of iron hoop, old scythes, ;‘and .other useless bits of iron, have long been use U-by the successful growers. .—Scientific American. ... ‘ An inhabitant of a suburban town, after spending a convivial evetnifig; was disj covered, among the carrots ana (of his humble garden, wrappedjn •■Sliiiii i ber. T “Well, Bill,” said- an admiring friend, as,he ilitr prostrate Youth, * “What are you doing out here ?” “Watching for a hen that's stole her nest,” was

the sententious answer. “But, what are your eyes shut for, Bill »” “Don’t want the old hen to see me,” gruffly replied the sleeping philosopher. California wives who have worthless men for husbands have just found out that the homestead law of 'that State is a nice thing. According to that law a wife alone can make a homestead of the property which she and her husband own, and on which they reside. The. husband’s consent is not requisite, the law stating that “the homestead land and house, not exceeding ia vajutf $5,000, can be selected by the husband and wife', or either of them. - ——— A seal’s paradise has been discovered, arid will soon be invaded by hundreds of enterprising fishermen. Around a group of small, uninhabited islands Beflff..South Shetland, south and east of Cape Horn, for-twenty years and over, thc-EofLeyed seals have sunned, themselves and gamboled in perfect security. But nqw a change is to come o’er the spirit of their dreams, and it will, fronrthis out, become the struggle of their lives to see whether they or elegant young lady will wear their skins. The Amherst, VS7 this story: “On the land of Thomas Hughes is a bold spring of cold water, wlrich continually throws out peach-stones in a/perfect state of preservation. Bushels of stones have'been-oleared away, and. still they cprqe. We ha ve no doubt th at many years ago, before the memory of our people, there was a distillery at this spring, and that it now bursts through the mass of stones below the surface and throws them out. We know a first-rate large-peach orchard in this county-Whieh frew in the following singular manner: Ir. Stennett cleared the land, put in tobacco, and the third year wheat, and an orchard of peaches came the land, and are now growing and bearing It was ascertained that some forty or more years ago the land was cultivated, and an orchard on the place, and it had grown up, and when cleared by Mr. Stennett, the land was in second-growth timber.”