Rensselaer Union, Volume 5, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 March 1873 — CURRENT ITEMS. [ARTICLE]

CURRENT ITEMS.

At a church fair in Brooklyn, N. Y„ a man paid sllß for a pen wiper. The seven paupers on the Marshall County, lowa, poor farm last year cost the county $7,587. A little girl at Dubuque amended the Lord’s prayer by asking for her daily gingerbread. A man named Faust has sued the city of Cleveland for $5,000 for catching the small-pox. A flock of 200 quails were found frozen to death in Delaware county, lowa, just after a heavy snow storm. A young Irish girl at Jacksonville, 111., has hair that reaches to the floor, and has refused SIOO for it. GKANDFA'CIiUders, oi Cass County, lowa, aged recently married a sweet lump of a girl of only fifteen summers. The Governor of lowa has appointed Mrs. E. M. Wright, of Des Moines, matron of the Soldiers’ Orphan Home at Cedar Falls. 1 A. M. Simpsqn picked up a piece of gold in Wyman’s Ravine, Butte County, Cal., weighing 30 ounces. Glenwogd, lowa, has a sensation in the shape of a human skeleton found by a wood-chopper on cutting down a hdllow tree. The trustees of Yassar College have interdicted the wearing of collars and cuffs by the fair convicts confined in that voluntary penitentiary. An invoice of Wisconsin tobacco of the crop of 1872 sold in New York City recently for twelve cents per pound, which shows it to be of a superior quality. A petition has been sent to Congress asking that body to offer SIO,OOO reward to the person who finds a sure cure for smallpox. A Philadelphia boy has shown the world the valueof picking up small things. He has stolen over 300 door-mats since November. The recent accident on the Allegheny Valley Railroad has called forth general condemnation of the practice of mixing passenger coaches with oil cars. Mischievous boys in Fredericktown,' Mo., daub the front-door knobs with tar on Sunday evenings for the benefit of the beaux calling upon their sisters. Rev. Silas White, of Page county, lowa, was arrested for using obscene language in-a prayer at a revival meeting and was fined $5 and costs. Basswood shoes, hollowed and fashioned from the primitive tree, are much worn by Eastern mechanics at their shop work. They are imported from Michigan. Ninety- six of the doctors of Montreal signed a paper designed to “undeceive the publio mind of the mischievous error that alcoholic liquors are beneficial.”The Boston Advertiser says there are 2,768 places in Boston where intoxicating liquors are sold in defiance of the prohibitory laws of that State. The lowa Press excursion this year will be to Niagara Falls, by way of Chicago and Detroit. The Association meets at Cedar Rapids on the 10th of June. The people of New York will vote, next November, whether Judges shall hereafter be appointed by the Governor, or elected according to the present system. Fishing upon Green Bjy is said to have been better the past winter than for many winters previous. The catch was very large, and the quality of fish caught very fine. crA boy at Jackson, Mich., named Clancey, who is only 13 years of age, recently dead-headed it to California and back again. That boy will he a newspaper man some day.

Mra. Jake Bolton, of Rowe, Mass., 93 last May, braids seven palm-leaf hats for bes usual day’s work, besides doing some chores about the house. She learned the art when about 70 years old. An inmate of the Hartford (Conn.) Insane Asylum has just been discovered to be a woman,slafter having passed herself off as a man for many years before she became afflicted with mania. The Louisville Courier-Jourruil says: “An English naturalist tells us there are 54 distinct species of fleas. The last time we slept in a Cincinnati hotel we could have sworn there were 54,000.” Petitions are circulating in California, asking Congress to appoint a commission to examine and report od the practicability of turning the Colorado River into the Colorado desert. * 7 , The Boston Herald says that Boston has more bar-rooms than Chicago, a fact which attests the efficiency of the .pro-

hlbltory liquor law and the industry .and incorruptibility of the State constabulary.' CftBAB Rapids, lowa, has a hog that hibernated for thirty si* days beneath five feet of Bnow, and came out all right With the exception of being frozen a little about the hams and somewhat thin in flesh. Rio Janeiro mail advices say the ravages of the yellow fever are carrying off a hundred persons daily. Very few Americans are taken with the disease, it being conflned mostly to the Portugese ana Italians. The newspapers down East have discovered a family in Oldtown, Maine, in there are fourteen children, all boys, the oldest of whom are but seven years of age. There are four sets of twins and two of triplets. This is the way they keep up the balance of power in Kentucky: “To the wife of James Bradley, of Fayette County, a son—Jeff. Davis. To the wife of Robert Ritchie, of Fayette County, a son -U. 8. Grant.” Among the curiosities of a Paris pawnshop is an umbrella which has been in pledge for forty-seven years, the original mortgagor or his descendants having regularly paid the interest on the loan during that-time.