Rensselaer Union, Volume 5, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 February 1873 — CURRENT ITEMS. [ARTICLE]

CURRENT ITEMS.

Ta* Kansas Pacific haa forty-fire miles or snowfence. _Ta*ma are fourteen strings banks in Chicago that hold in the aggregate sll,*13,908 deposits. predicted that the Mississippi will be higher than has ever been known, on tha opening of navigation. T«n Louisville printers are talcing tarna at having the small-pox, and contributing to each other's relief. . Old Texans declare that they never knew, by actual experience, what cold * waakiier was before this winter. Tun starch factory of St. Joseph, Mo., is shipping five car-loads of starch daily, and the people there feel stnek up. Ldtooln, Neb., is rejoicing over tbe prospect of an appropriation of SIBO,OOO for a Government building in that city. San Diego, Cal., is luxuriating on green peas and ripe tomatoes, while San Barbara prides itself on Us fine strawberries. For $1,000,000 cash in hand a New Yorker agrees to tear down one of the pyramids, bring iL,to New York and set it up again. That Maine man who has slept on & hay-mow every night for twenty-five years, had to get into tbe house this winter or lose the other ear. Another scheme is on foot to build a railroad from Salt Lake City to connect with the Union Pacific Railroad at Echo. This is to be a wide gauge. Wht are coals tbe most contradictory articles known to commerce? Because, when purchased, instead of going to the buyer, they go to the cellar. The Pennsylvania tavern keepers threaten to raise the price of lodging for man and beast if their licenses for selling liquor are taken from them.

A young lady at South Norwalk explained that her father conducted an aquarium, which was much better than saying he kept a fish market. A Jersey City gent lately had both ears grazed by bullets while escorting home & girl whose hand was wanted by a rival. A very unhealthy town is that. Two Chinamen were recently shot in Virginia City, Nev., while engaged in stealing, and a Nevada paper says that part of theChinesc problem la-solved. - There is a family at Newark, N. J., Whose members are dying off from sheer excess of fat. One of the children, aged thirteen, recently returned to 180 pounds of dust A Georgia negro was overpaid SIOO on a check by a bank, and he returned the money. The local paper says this is another evidence that the race can never be cftfllzed. - " A Hungarian by the name of Bango, recently arrived at St. Joe, was robbed by a fellow-countryman of $7,000 in greenbacks which he had concealed beneath his pillow. The recent decline in the price of coal oil 1b a matter of congratulation to the undertakers. They say that folks don’t kindle fires with the stuff when it gets beyond a certain figure. Wedding cards in Denver consist of a jack of diamonds and the queen of hearts, with the contracting parties' names thereon. If the bride’s mother is living the ten of clubs is enclosed. A negro in Coffee County, Ga., who bet $2.75 that he could ride a roan mule with a pine burr under the saddle, lost the money. He was followed to the tomb by a large and enthusiastic audience. Louisville has a new Chief of Police, and he has awkwardly- arrested several leading citizens whom he found in gambling rooms. It will take him some weeks to get acquainted. —Chicago paper. Work on the North Pacific Coast Railroad, to run from Saucelito northward near the ocean shore, will soon be commenced by 1,500 men, and the company expect to reach the Russian River this year. Boarding-house chicken soup cam be made, it is said, by hanging up a hen in the sun so that her shadow shall fall into a pot of salt water. The only trouble is, that on a cloudy day the soup is liable to be weak. ; The champion hunters of Oregon are J. J. Crawford and David Thomson, of Douglas, who In nine days killed four panthers, three bears and two lynxes. In the year they killed sixty-one animals of these species. A lady called on a witty friend, who was not at home, and finding the piano dusty, wrote upon it “slattern.” The next day they met, and the lady said, “I called on you yesterday.” “Yes, I saw your card on the piano.” There is a rumor out that the Agricultural Colleges which do not conform in their courses of study jo the law of Congress which calls them into life, will get mandamuses served on them from the United Slates .Supreme Court. Some questions very naturally suggest themselves to an inquiring mind. An amateur farmer wonders “why, on all this fair earth, the ground is bottom side up, so that it must be turned over with a plow before corn can be raised ?" Over SIOO,OOO in bonds, mortgages, etc., stolen from the banking house of Clarkson & Co., Lancaster, Pa., on the 15th January, have since been found under a stairway leading to the basement of St. Paul’s Reformed Church in that city. Two men who stole a ride on a Texas freight train were locked in and switched off the track at a way station, and had to remain in their close quarters for ninetysix hoars without food or water, and at the end of that <|Me were imprisoned as vagrants. A chunk of gold, Weighing over 240 pounds, and worth about $50,000, was found in the claims of Yo Yen & Co., at Moore's Flat (Gold These claims are owned by a Chinese company to whom they were sold cheap, having, as was supposed, been exhausted.

A wedding was broken np at Columbus City, lowa, in the following maimer: The preacher asked if any one hjd any objections; the young lady said: “Yes; pectant bridegroom folded his broadcloth and silently stole away. „'■■■■■ The Bt. Paul Pioneer says John Kegan, of Plainview, 70 years of see, bivouacked in a snow bank for forty-nine hours during the late storm. He was fearfully bruised by pounding himself to keep from freeling, but beyond that he suffered no serious injury, ' r The Cleveland Herald understands from a reliable source that very extensivestock yards are to be built on the line of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railroad, between that city and Painesville, to accommodate the largely increasing stock business of the road. A steamboat landed at Marion Bend, Ky., recently, and put two negroes ashore who were sick with the small-pox. The citizens were afraid to go near them. They were without shelter, food, or medicine, and of course died neglected and alone. The hogs devoured their 1 Detroit’s chief of police had a telegram from an Interior town saying: Arrest a man with red hair for running away with my wife.** Upon walking four blocks the chief met no lest than 15 redhaired men walking with ladies, mid he concluded that the eloping couple could pats through the city la safety. ! bPsxcE Pettis, convicted at Boston,

of forgery, thinks that the old detectives of Boston were hard to trade with; New York officer* were satisfied with half, but, in one bargain with the Boston officers, seven or eight years ago, he had to pay them 66 per cent., which he calls taking a mean advantage. ; While the workmen were engaged in sinking a vertical shaft at the Black: Diamond Coal Company’s mine in Mount Diablo, Cal., they came upon a frog at a depth of 172 feet. It was imbedded in solid sand-stone, so that the impression of its form was perfect upon the rock around Its but, nevertheless, it was alive, and lived for twelve hours after its extrication. A Brookfield man write* for the best way to manage a bull. If our Brookfield friend has got a bull on his premises, and the bull is well, he don’t want to manage It. All he has got do is to get a few things hastily together, mortgage his place and steer straight for the west. He might as well try to ward off a streak of lightning with a fifty cent pa: nt brash as to manage a Bull —Springfield Republican. Frolicsome columns of sand, ten feet through and ten hundred feet high, are waltzing about Nevada in a manner that is, to say the least, quite mazy. The twenty-two mile desert is their dancing floor. For the most part, they observe the most platonic demeanor towards one another, and trip it singly, like a spinning Shaker spinster. A Curious suit has been begun in the Superior Court at Hartford, Conn., by a man named Conway, to recover $3,000 for the death of a child who died in 1870 from the effects of a cold, taken while on one of the boats of the Hartford and New York Steamboat Company. Conway claims that there were no accommodations in the cabin or elsewhere, and that the consequent exposure was the cause of the death of the child.