Rensselaer Union, Volume 5, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 August 1873 — CURRENT ITEMS. [ARTICLE]

CURRENT ITEMS.

A ftsh recently caught in Red River, Texas, had a centipede inside. The guests at Mount Washington have anew-balling for one of their amusements. . WnxTA.it Butler, of Lenexa, Kan., raised 1,842 bushels of oats from twenty acres of land. A band of wolves has taken possession of the poorliousc at Oskaloosa, Kansas. A female Arc company is talked of at Lewisburg, Pa. The export trade of Boston has more than doubled in two years. A Massachusetts State constable frightened a woman to death. A man with one leg celebrated the Fourth of July by climbing to the top of Pike’s Peak. An Ohio woman fears to go overland to —California this summer, ' because she would have to go through Cholerado. A young gambler, aged fourteen, lately fleeced a member of the Texas Legislature of $ 1,200, at “a little game.” “Give us water or give us death,” cries the Denver Tribune. Most Western men would prefer the former alternative. A grain dealer at Davenport, lowa, got neatly swindled out of S6O in money and fifty grain sacks, by an “honest farmerlooking” fellow. A farmer in St. Clair Count}-, 111., lias just harvested from twelve acres'of ground 588J£ bushels of wheat, being but a fraction less than forty-five bushels per acre. The grasshoppers of lowa are addicted to bad habits. They chew tobacco, and are making a bad raid upon that crop as it grows. The new $lO National Bank bill is to be issued about the Ist of September. No issue of other denominations is Wo be made before Congress meets. A hotel-keeper in Sterling, Mass., got up a few nights ago to take some essence of peppermint, and swallowed corrosive sublimate instead. Southwestern sanitarians have settled it to their own satisfaction that “indigenous cholera” owes its origin solely to eating fruit containing the ‘‘germs of caterpillars.” An old couple living near Sparland, Til., were recently divorced. The husband has since married the hired girl and the ex-wife taken the hired girl’s placg. Two Kentucky youths were invited into the bushes to see a serpent. They didn’t see the snake, but saw a pair of pickpockets decamp with their money aud things. A piece of glass an inch long was taken from the head of a Rochester man, recently, in whose skull it had been imbedded for twenty years. He had complained occasionally of a“pane” in the head. A frontier correspondent who saw Capt. Jack after his capture, writes that, in his opinion, the Modoc Chief's appearance would have been vastly improved if he had been washed before lie was ironed. A Lawrence girl, about to sue a false admirer for a breach of promise, compromises the matter for. $6 and a new watch. Now she can get another lover, and let him run on tick till she wants more money. In a recent case of assault with intent to kill in Indiana, it was shown that the affray came about from a father insisting on remaining in the room with his daughter and her beau. The sympathetic jury acquitted the young man. The colored citizens of Summit County, Ohio, have presented a petition to the State Constitutional Convention to have the word “negro” prohibited by constitutional provision, front being used in public documents and school books. “Rebecca Jones, you arc singing through your nose again,” exclaimed a Wisconsin music teacher, and Rebecca was so mortified that she rah out and jumped into the river, but was rescued. E., Robbs & Co. have commenced suit against the city of Cincinnati to recover $130,000 for lumber destroyed by the great coal-oil fire in June, on the ground that the oil was stored in violation of a city ordinance, and that they repeatedly requested the city to enforce the law. At the Caledon ian Club games at Scranton, Pa., recently, the feature was a fat woman’s race for a new bonnet. It was an oily affair. The leanest contestant weighed ISO, and three others weighed respectively, 200, 242 and 251 pounds. Among the incidents of the cholera in the South is mentioned the fact that many mocking-birds and canaries sickened and died, while those which frequented the garden* instincTively -fled to-the woods, and did not return until the cholera took Its departure, From some of the letters which have recently appeared in American papers it would seem that European kings, princes, and statesmen are just now particularly desirous of pouring their secrets into the sympathetic ears of American newspaper correspondents. Dr. J. R. Brown, living near South Bend, Ind., killed a rattlesnake with a rake' a few da vs ago, and afterward in handling the rake, communicated some of the snake’s poison to an abrasion on one of his fingers. His whole system became imbued with the poison, which he neutralized with ‘‘spr, frumenti” in copious doses. A Westchester, Pa-., paper-states that a ‘‘Melanerpes Enthrocephalus” lias been observed in the park; and then, lest this portentous name should frighten, away all the women and children, explains that the monster in quest ion is only the red-headed wood-pecker. The Germans of Chattanooga have wholly escaped theclutches of indigenous cholera. They ascribe the fact to the use •f lager beer instead of whisky and brandy, and not a few say they owe safety to onions. Such is Ihe sober statement of the Memphis Appeal. A youthful couple of runaway*/ in Texas having obtained a license, repaired to a clergyman on Red river and desired him to perform the ceremony. He/ however, declined on account of their [youth, and for fear the law might hold bim responsible. Not to be outdone they stowed themselves on a cottonwood log and drifted far enough out into the stream to be considered out of the State, while the the water’s edge, and pronounced words of the ceremony which made them man and wife. A stranger who is visiting Danbury proposed to one of our citizens, Saturday, that he would get a barouche . if the’.citizen would furnish ladies, and take a drive out of town in the evening. The citizen agreed, and went home to getTeady. His wife noticed the particular toilet, and asked him what was up. He didn’t appear to know that anything was up, and she said no more. Shortly after he left, she went to his place of business and learned that he was to take a drive. The carriage was out in front of the hotel the party was to start from, and near it the curious woman found her husband’s partner in the scheme. She asked him if the carriage was going to R , and he, believing her to be one of the invited, replied in the affirmative and helped her in. She was no more than comfortably settled In the back seat, when her husband came down the hotel steps with the couple he had engaged, and reaching the carriage, proceeded to bow them in, when his smile was petrifie I into ghastliness by the vision of hu affectionate wife, pleasantly located on the back seat, and going through a

brief rehearsal with her fingers. One instant he gazed frantically at her, and then giving expression to his pent-up feelings with the simple exclamation, “By hokey!” he turned and fled. —Danbury News.