Rensselaer Union, Volume 5, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 September 1873 — CURRENT ITEMS. [ARTICLE]

CURRENT ITEMS.

Salmon in the Sacramento river, Cal., are becoming very plenty. lady in kMghton, Pa., has picked 400 quarts of blackberries this season. A Des Moines father advertises that he will exchange one of his newly-arrived twin boys for a girl. Mr. Turner, of Manchester, Tenn., celebrated the wedding of his daughter by thrashing his wife. A widower in Manistee, Mich., who has forty-eight children living, Jias just married his fourth wife. A woman named Berks exhibited a patent churn of her own manufacture at a Kansas fair and secured a premium. The “Biggest Grumbler” in Montana has struck quartz that nets S2OO per ton, and he growls because it don’t go $250. A Navarre (O.) youth severely horsewhipped his unindulgent father. He wanted to see “who bossed that ranch.” A MAN in Warrenton, Va. K poisoned melons in his garden for the benefit of thieves, and killed a valuable colt of his. Clay similar to that used in Germany in the manufacture of so-called meerschaum pipes has been discovered at Middletown, Pa. Montgomery Co., Kan., raises stalks of cotton two feet three inches long, threefourths of an inch in diameter, with bolls on each joint. The projected tunnel under the Detroit river has been abandoned in consequence of information derived from the small experimental tunnel. An Omaha woman committed suicide the other day because her husband remonstrated in profane terms when he found a dead horsefly in a wheat-cake. A Detroit lady died of hydrophobia, and the dog that bit her still lives, in health and spirits, wagging a mournful reproach at her vivid imagination. Charleston, 8. C. claims to be one of the healthiest cities on the continent, basing its assertion upon the fact that only fifteen deaths occurred there in one week recently. In Rich Valley, Dakota, Wm. Strathern owns a four-legged chicken in good health. The extra legs are more ornamental than useful—do not seem to be of any service. We shall hereafter know what a pugnose is worth, Mrs. Kitty Lake, of Philadelphia, having fallen and broken her nose and sued the city for $45,000 worth of satisfaction. The people of California have a theory that the real pearl oyster is to be found in their waters, and are determined, if possible, to add pearl-fishing to the number of their industries. Miss Jennie Burnham, who was drowned recently in Grand Bay, N. IL, had been preceded to a watery grave in the same waters by an uncle, grandfather, and great-grandfather. Peoria has very human dogs or the newspapers are not to be believed. One has died of delirium tremens, two of small pox, one of cerebro-spinal-etc., and one has committed suicide. A jealous Saratoga woman recently prevented her husband’s attendance at a ball by carrying away every article of clothing he owned, ana hiding them in a barn three miles away. ' Eating an Indian turnip two years ago has produced a moustache and sidewhiskers on a three-year-old boy in Salem, Ind. The youths of the town are now living on little else than these vegetables. A sanguine Virginian is writing a pamphlet to prove that the Dismal Swamp is capable of being reclaimed by drainage, and he predicts that it will at some future day be the richest district in the South. A Green Bat man called a young lady his “precious darling little honey-dew of a blooming rosebud” and then stood a breach-ofpromise suit before he would many her. The State Geologist of Texas has had reported to him the discovery, near the first station from Devil’s River, of a cave, the interior of which contains very remarkable painting and sculpture, apparently of Aztec origin. A Georgia bride is described in one of the local papers as “looking a very lily cradled in the golden glimmer of some evening lake—a foam-fleck, snowy, yet sun-flushed, crowning the ripplings of some soft southern sea.” —. —» ——; A couple of Washington clerkshaving disagreed about a young lady, undertook to carve one another to pieces with army sabers. Those implements not being of a very deadly character, nothing to compare with manure forks, they did not severely hurt each other. Thebe is no justification for suicide; but we are prepared, on short notice, to shed tears for the man or woman who can find it in his or her heart to censure Mr. Wade, of Huston, for shuffling off, when it is known that of his fifty children, the yellow fever left to Mr. W. but forty-one. A San Francisco milliner has invented a hat which will probably sell well in cases where blushing is not, so spontaneous as it might be, fir used te be. When the wearer bows or lowers her head abruptly, a tiny pair of steel clamps compress the arteries on each side of the temples, sending the blood at oneffto the cheeks. ;, ■ ■ ‘ A couple of nice young ladies in Quincy, 111., settled a dispute with pine boardsand finger-nails. The one with the finger nails came out ahead, lacerating her antagonist unmercifully. The affair wound up in the police-court, where they were both fined. The local paper which describes the affair mercifully withholds the ladies’ names for the reason that they are both engaged. Another attempt is to be made to settle the peninsula of Lower California. Mr. W. G. Schofield, a relative of General Schofield, is in charge of the enterprise. He has contracted for the planting of one hundred acres of hops and thirty acres of tobacco, with which to test the soil about Las Vallicitos, and, if successful, the experiment will be extended next year over a large scope of country. Mr. Schofield asserts that the peninsula is rich m gold and silver. We love to commend successful industry in young people, especially when they are faithful to their poor old parents. There is a girl in Oakland, Cal., who, by patient industry, a quick eye and a nimble hand, has not only supported her aged mother, but accumulated a nice little Sierty of SI,OOO or so, consisting mosts jewelry and other small valuables could be handily carried off from the - different placesdn which she had been employed as a domestic.— Exchange. Emotional insanity has developed in a somewhat remarkable way in Massachusetts. An infant was found in a nicely . wrapped package, at the Fitchburg Depot, in Boston, the other night, and on it was a of paper stating that the baby belonged to a certain lady in Lowell, and had been taken, in a “fit of insanity,” by the nursery maid. The name of the emotiohat abstractionist is not made public, but, were it known, she would doubtless be overpowered with offers of situations in “respectable” fiamiHes. The Lafayette (Ind.) Journal reports that a citizen of that place, passing over a bridge In that vicinity, the other day, observed an Individual busily engaged driving large spikes into the timbers on the (wutb aide ofit at very short intervals. He - -

wondered at the time what object the man could have in view, but Upon going over the bridge again, a few days later, saw the same man carefully gathering up the wisps of hay which had accumulated on the spikes from the numerous hay wagons, which daily puss through that side of Qte bridge. The champion for novelty in chicken raising is N. M. CheMey, of Belvidere, Vt. His “improved system” consists in keeping two “professional sitters,” all the other hens being trained to 1 lay their eggs in the two nests, the “setting” going on all the while, so that the eggs are daily mixed. During the past season eighty eggs were laid in the nests, seventy-five of which were successfully hatched. After the hatching was well along he took off one hen and gave her fifty chicks to tend, the other hen sitting two weeks longer and coming off with the remaining twentyfive. The Cincinnati Gazette says: “The writer of this saw a mjm yesterday who came to this city in 1810 with his fat her from Pennsylvania in a two-horse wagon. They drove up Main street, and when they got up a little above where the new post-office is to be located, a man came along and asked .him if he owned that team. When told he did, he offered his father seven acres of land in a square block Coming up to Main street. The old gentleman took a look around, and said he ‘wouldn’t sell his team for the whole town. Drive on, boys.’ The team at that time was probably worth between seventyf?ve and one hundred dollars.