Rensselaer Union, Volume 5, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 July 1873 — CURRENT ITEMS. [ARTICLE]

CURRENT ITEMS.

Music by a brass band is announced as a Sunday attraction in one of the churches at Newport. A N*W Haven genius has invented a street-hoeing machine with which one man can clean a mile of pavement a day. An old chap at Oil City, likely to dia, has burned up $16,000 so that there will be no quarreling over his will. An Alabama lawyer, defending a murderer, spoke nineteen consecutive hours, and the jury convicted his client in seven minutes. The Missouri River has made a cut-off at the Big Bend, four miles south of Onawa, lowa, thus transferring about 1,500 acres to Nebraska. Sunday-schools have been running in Indianapolis for fifty years, and yet;-says a local journal, eight’ out of ten of the male citizens wink when they callfor soda-water. ' ’ The most beautiful boy baby, under two years, receives five dollars premium, and the most beautiful girl baby, same age, receives five dollars at the Howard County (Iowa) Fair. A miser named Anthony Berger, who occupied the position of night watchman in a. bank, died at Burlington, lowa, recently, leaving property worth $150,000. A gentleman and wife recently arrived at Albany, N. Y., eh route for Saratoga, having driven the entire distance from Omaha. The time consumed was some six weeks. • A firm in Dubuque has just completed the manufacture of two iron steam yachts, one for use on Clear Lake and the other for Storm Lake. They are screw propellers modeled after the Clyde clippers. The locomotive of a Western express train collided with a hand-car, and smashed the headlight. The conductor was equal to the occasion. He just stuck his diamond breast-pin in the cow-catcher, and the train moved right along. Articles of incorporation of the American Central Telegraph Company have been filed in the office of the lowa Secretary of State. The capital stock is $1,000,000. The principal place of business is Davenport. The total absence of bootjacks, pomatum pots, and other household missiles in the remains of the Swiss lacustrine villages, leads Dr. Hartman, the distinguished ethnologist, (ft. the conclusion'th at the domestic cat was"unknown to pre-historic man. The priest of St. Patrick’s Church at Memphis, on a recent Sunday, riot only gave his congregation permission to eat meat on Friday, but recommended it as necessary to the health during the prevalence of cholera. A new swindle has been perpetrated in Wayne County, Mich. Under pretense of starting free libraries in every township, two sharpers would get the signatures of a well-to-do farmer on a blank sheet of, paper and afterward write a promissory' note on the other side, using any signature, the farmer’s name being the indorsement which enabled them to sell the note. A Philadelphia surgeon was called the other day to a house up-town to amputate the leg of a woman. He is a nearsighted man, and when he reached the house he got into the wrong room and calmly sawed off the limb of the servant girl, who was a German who had come over two days before, and who thought it was one of the customs of the country. A New York Central Railway conductor seized a nebbydressed young fellow who had dropped an insulting note in a lady’s lap on his train the other day, dragged him from his seat, and led him by the ear through the train to the smoking car, where hebaffe him remain. The passengers enjoyed the young reprobate’s discomfiture. A hound was chasing a fox, near Laurel Hill, North Carolina, a few days since, when the latter, being tightly pressed, took refuge *in a hollow log, entrance into which it effected, at a knot-hole. The dbg coming up, and finding that the fox had gotten into the log, thrust his head into the knothole after the fox, and got his head fast therein. Being unable to extricate himself, the dog died, and the fox, being cut off from the only avenue of escape from the log, likewise perished, both of them, evidently, having died of starvation. As THE eccentricities of genius arc ever interesting, we are pleased to mention an excellent gentleman of San Francisco, whose costume -owns two beautiful and peculiar features. These are a very gorgeous neck-tie several yards long, whose ends float behind him like the StarSpangled Banner, and. a lafge stick of brilliantly-xariegated candy, resembling an infant barber’s pole, arid projecting from his mouth. Wherever he goes he is accompanied by these charms, and a consequent triumphal procession of boys. A Strange Incident. —A Pennsylvania woman, who has for years been afflicted with catarrh, and has been treated by eminent physicians without obtaining relief, dreamed that a stranger came to her. house and gave her some medicines, saying that they would effectually cure her. Next day, on going to the door and looking out, she saw the identical man of her dreams approaching the house. He offered her a bottle of medicine to cure her catarrh. She took it, followed his directions, and is now—as bad as ever. The Titusville’s (Pa.) Herald says: “A younglady whose tpa struck ile’ a few years ago, and who has since been al boarding-school, recently returned and a party was given for her benefit. Upon the bottom of her invitation-cards she caused to be inscribed ‘R. S. V, P.,’ and one was sent to an illiterate rich fellow, who has also made his money by boring. He did not come, but sent a eard with the letters ‘D. 8. C.-C.’ Meeting him in the stfeet, she asked him what the letters meant. ‘Tell me first what yours meant?’ ‘Oh! mine was French for ‘Respond if you cannot except ’ ‘Well, mine was English for ‘Darned sorry I can’t cohie.’ ’> The thriftiness of Mrs. Weller, whose first husband’s garments so fortunately fitted theelder Samivel, is equaled if not surpassed by that of a widow of Portland, in the canny State of Maine. Perceiving that her adored departed’s silver toffinplate was lying about generally in the way, and desiring very much a pair of handsome new gold-bowed spectacles, she invited a passing peddler to a barter of the same. Leaving the room for an instant she was shocked on returning to find that lovely coffin-plate and the merchant alike gone. Her frantic grief was something too sacred to dwell upon. The police, however, recovered the silver treast ure, and her calmness, if not her happiness, is restored. -- A Black and White Boy-Combina-tion. —A remarkable boy was to be seen at the Nashville depot yesterday; in fact one of the greatest curiosities of the age. He is half white and half black, not in the mulatto and miacegnation sense, but the lower half of his body is whiter than white folks usually are, while the upper portion is black as midnight. His mother, a coal-black negress, was with him, and they left on the Nashville train at 7 o'clock last - evening. He is but three years okf and has already learned to make money out of his peculiarities. He made several nickels yesterday in a very few minutes. There is a round patch, about three inches in diameter, of perfectly beautiful hair on the top or bis head, which h surrounded by little kinky negro wool — Louiertille Ledger. ■PnCUUAKITT OF THE WATERS OF LaKB Tajiob.— We believe It is a well-establish-*

cd fact that the bodicsof persons drowned in Lake Tahoe have never been recovered, the clear cold waters of the lake absolutely refusing to give up their dead. This circumstance, which at first thought appears strange, is .accounted for upon the hypothesis that the waters at the bottom of the lake are sb icy cold as actually to arrest decomposition and consequent expansion of a dead body, one of the conditions under which it would be expected to return to the surface. Whether the victims who repose at the bottom of the pellucid waters of this far-famed lake undergo petrifaction, or are transformed into mermen and mermaids, is a secret which will never be known until they come to the surface at the summons of Gabriel’s trump.— Gold Hill (Net.) News. Very Much in Earnest. —A few days since a farmer in Mad ison Township quar,. reled with his wile and left home. He returned in a short tithe and the. quarrel was resumed and continued to such an extent that he expressed a desire to be out of the world? H is wife intimateth-flraf-nolhing would please her better, and offered to do her part if the rifle were only loaded. He went into the house, got the rifle and ammunition, and loaded it in the presence of his wife, but was very careful, when she was not looking, to slip the ball down his sleeve. After the gun had been capped he handed it to her and went into the yard; she followed as far as the door, when she took deliberate aim and fired. The husband dropped in the grass, to all appearance dead; and lay there a short time before his wife came to him. It did not take her long to discover that he was “ playing possum,” and, grasping an axhandle, she attacked him so fiercely that but for the interference of some of the children she would have crushed his skull. It is needless to add that there will' be a divorce.— South Bend (Lid.) Tribune.