Rensselaer Union, Volume 5, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 August 1873 — CURRENT ITEMS. [ARTICLE]

CURRENT ITEMS.

Several lowa towns prohibit the sale of newspapers on Sunday. Ax agent of the fire-fiend has notified Cincinnati that it will be her turn next. Thirty-three persons were recently taken ill at Pittsburgh from eating smoked whitefish. Red foxes are becoming a nuisance in Kentucky. Pigs, poultry, and young lambs suffer. The richest man in Denver is a Mexican with an Indian wife,, and she leads the fashion. A snow bank, four rods long, two rods wide, and three feet high, remained in Buckland, Mass., in the middle of July. A Connecticut paper speaks of the reign of {error in that Stat? because a man has been arrested for stealing an umbrella. A Cleveland youth had his hand taken off in a planing-mill lately. He was to have given it away in marriage next day, anyhow., If Saratoga is the Bethesda of our nation, it is probably on account of the number of “pools” gotten up there every summer. During a recent storm in Nortli Carolina every telegraph pole for a mile on one of the railroad lines was shattered by lightning. Servant girls in Montana get S6O gold a month, with the use of a piano and sew-ing-machine, besides three nights “off”, in the week. A destructive freshet washed away the corn patch-of a Wisconsin farmer, and laid bare an almost inexhaustible lead mine. A mechanic in Portsmouth, N. 11., has not been able to do any work in eleven years, on account of a friend crushing his hand while shaking it. A child was born in Worcester, Mass., the other day, whose mother is nineteen years old, grandmother thirty-six, and great grandmother sixty-five. A Massachusetts woman went before a justice the other day and swore that a neighbor woman had bewitched her into having cramps and spasms. One day lately Mrs. Dr. Mary Walker was arrested in Baltimore for wearing pants. And the next day Baltimore had her “conflagration.” Judgment: A blue lizard, living oh a rock of precisely the same tint, has been found upon the Island of Capri, and is cited as another instance of natural selection. The Transcript, a Georgia paper, says that it “can’t saj- as to the crops around there, but Georgetown is the place to get into a fight if any one is aching for exercise.” Twenty-eight different kinds of “bitters” sold in. Rhode Island for “strictly medicinal use” are undergoing analysis by the State chemist from an excise point of view. A Virginian writes to a Richmond paper that he is opposed to the election of a> unmarried man for Governor, and that he would not vote for his own brother were he a bachelor. Cazenovia, in Madison county, New York, is a haven for perspiring humanity. It is said that quilts are used on the beds all the year round. Indian corn will not mature, nor will peaches ripen. The tarantula is a malignant little beast. One came all the way from Cuba lately to bite a Portland fruit dealer. He made the voyage in a bunch of bananas and took the first opportunity to carry out his fell design. The young person who blows out the gas, shuts the window and retires to his peaceful couch, has turned up again, this time at Dubuque, where there were two of them, man and wife, and both had a narrow escape. ....... The Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad have open top cars attached to each one of their passenger trains, for thejputpose. Of allowing the passengers to view the country and beautiful mountain scenery as they pass along. The way types can be eccentric is shown by an lowa special as it appeared in a Chicago paper, about the arrest qf a mail robber, “upon whose person was found rifled letters and two kegs!" Mail keys of course. A veracious New Hampshire agriculturist solemnly asseverates that after the grasshoppers had eaten up all his hop-vines he saw them with his own eyes making united efforts to pull the poles out of the ground. Gov. Woodson, of Missouri, and Gen. Jas. Craig, and severaLother gentlemen of St. Joseph, Mo., went across the line into Kansas, recently, to shoot prairie chickens, and were arrested and fined for violation of the Kansas game law. Spiders “weighing three or four pounds” are among the natural attractions of Florida, if travelers’ tales may be believed, though there is a suspicion 'that arachnids and arrack-punch somehow got mixed in the heads of the observers. The students-editors of a small Western college paper having printed some remarks in ridicule of a woman lecturer, have been sued by her for $20,000, which’ sum, remarks the Detroit Tribune, “is an easy thing to get out of almost any college paper.” _ The gallant editor of a Southern journal is in a bad frame of mind because'a ladv, who exhibited, canned fruit at an agricultural fair, was,only awarded a blue ribbon, while a young man who, on the same occasion, excelled in shooting at It mark got $l5O. Think of the noble red man running a sawmill! But this is what some of the Klamath Indians in Oregon are doing and the mill turned out 250,000 feet, last year. But it is shameful to bring these sons of the forest down from hair to milllogs. One of th'it austere professors of Yale came rushing out to find tire man who had dared to pull the college bell. He was told that Yale had won every one of the boat races, and saying. “Go ahead, boys,” he returned to his home, mollified and beaming. In the digging of a well at Newark, N. J., the other day, the workmen struck “He.” About two barrels' of good oil were pumped the first day. The owner proposes to bore deeper wth proper apparatus, in the hope of flnding__a more abundant supply of the valuable liquid. -A gentleman who has tried it says the best way to catch a rat, which has found its way into your room, is to lay a boot flat .upon the floor, close to the mold board. The rat will run into the boot leg for protection, when he is readily cantured. Cotton is cultivated with success in Nevada. A Southern man named Carter has over twenty acres in Muddy Valley, Lincoln County-. Both climate and soil are said to be favorable to the plant, and the average yield is greater than on Southern plantations, and the quality superior. If a man must be robbed .by highwaymen, Wisconsin is the place to have it done. A pair of these gentry who were robbing a farmer, the other day, held an umbrella over his head to keep the sun off while they went through him, and offered him a sip of good brandy when they had finished the job. A singular phenomenon in the shape of a shower of pebbles happened thirtytliree miles off the coast from Portland, pelting the deck of the steamer New York, while on its way from St. John to Boston. It is the opinion of an eminent

geologist that the stones were taken upfrom the bed of some fresh wafer brook by a whirlwind. * The live Stock dealers of Missouri recently held a meeting at Kansas City-, at which the late action of the Missouri railroads in abolishing return passes for stock shippers was fully discussed. A decided dispositiqn to ship by steamboat was manifested unless the railroads will consent to abandon the stand they have taken. A beautiful specimen of official fidelity to trust occurred at Lancaster, Pa., recently: The mails of that„ city were conveyed to the depot in the evening, and left unwatched upon a railroad truck; while the officer having them in charge was busy here and there, two mail bags disappeared and were found in the streets, minus the money that was in them, next day. A ♦earful combat with a monstrous reptile took place in Peoria, recently, according to a local paper, which says: “A rural gentleman, visiting a friend in the Third Ward, found in the back yard, after dusk, an immense snake lying in the grass. He procured an axe, and when he had chopped the reptile into about a dozen pieces, he discovered it to be a garden hose which had not been properly- hung up in the coal shed.” • Medicated Crackers.—M. Limousin, a Prussian apothecary, incloses powders, such as quinine, aloes, rhubarb, and other drugs disagreeable to swallow, ih crackers. The cracker is split and a matrix made within, in which the powder, carefully measured, is placed. The two parts of the envelope, which is quite small, are then closed together and secured. When taken, it is soaked in water for a moment until softened, then gulped down whole. Stewed Tomatoes—Select very ripe tomatoes, skin and slice them, rejecting the hard parts. Put in a porcelain saucepan, with a little salt and pepper, and simmer for one hour and a half. Add a piece of butter, or two tablespoonfuls of beef, mutton, veal or chicken gravy. Toast a slice of bread, cut it into inch bits, and put in the dish in which the tomato will be served; turn the contents of the saucepan, over it. The Poughkeepsie (N. Y.) Press tells a good story of a cow owned by one of its subscribers. She claims the right of beJn^milked.. r .fi.rsL :A hired. man,wlm ignorantly commenced milking another cow first, was: driven from his seat and much frightened by the manifestations of the animal that considered herself thus slighted. The owner soon conquered a peace by milking the furious beast, after which she was as quiet as a lamb, and didn’t care whose turn came next.