Rensselaer Union, Volume 6, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 October 1873 — CURRENT ITEMS. [ARTICLE]

CURRENT ITEMS.

Nit P*otn*-A fisherman’s. Appropriate Slang for Burglars Give os arrest. Boston drinks <5,000 gallons of sodawater erery hot day. * Thiktt women are employed on tlie daily prese of New York. ==st _ =; L ; _ = The patent ice-machines used in the South clear 700 per cent, profit Wht is a talkative woman like the ocean? Because you can’t make her dry up. A patient in the Jacksonville, 111., Insane Asylum has recently fallen heir to ♦6,000. An oak recently cut on the Derby, R. 1., turnpike measured nine feet in diameter. For finding a $l5O pocket-book, a Rochester, N. Y., boot-black received twenty. five cents. The Registered Letter Department earned the Government $85,000 net profit the last year. A Borb— The man whopersists in talking about himself when you wish to talk about yourself. A TRACT of 50,000 acres in McDowell County, N. C., has been sold to an emigration company. The anchorage and unexposed parts of the Niagara Falls suspension bridge are as sound as when first put in. A quilt exhibited at the Central Illinois Fair, made by Miss Sarah Breckon, of Morgan County, contains 38,517 pieces. Two men at Minerville, Mo., have found, only eight feet below the surface, a lump of lead estimated to weigh 60,000 pounds. The question of the advantage of disposing of the dead by cremation is again revived, and finds numerous zealous advocates. ,

A Detroit (Mich.) boy makes on an average over $25 per week blacking boots and selling newspapers, and has now in bank $l,lOO. The cultivation of the silk-worm is now becoming so extensive in Mexico as to bid fair to have an important influence upon the silk trade. The hull of the British ship Confidence, the flag-ship in the battle of Lake Champlain, is being raised from the bottom of Plattsburg Bay. span of the great r'.otunda of the Exhibition gilding at Vienna is over 110 yards, or double Resize of the dome of St. Peter’s, at Rome. No actor has yet been able to counterfeit that expression of joy which a man shows when discovering a ten-cent sta mp in his paper of tobacco. - ■ 1 An historic character recently died at Lancaster, Nr H., in the person of Julia A. Miller, who was the great greatgreaV grandchild of King Philip. "• The great equatorial telescope now being constructed at Cambridge, Mass-, for the Naval Observatory, will be finished the latter part of this month. Ppotographs of the counterfeit SSOO bills have been made six times larger than the originals and distributed to the banks throughout the country. To give an idea of coal production, it may be stated that with 100,000,000 tons a girdle of (x»«l three feet wide and about seven feet high might be put round the earth. Sweden has hitherto mainly depended on England for coal, but henceforth she is likely to derive sufficient for her needs from her own mines, which arc in process of development, It used to be the boast of Oakes Ames that he could import iron and steel from England, make them into shovels, and then undersell British shovel makers in the Birmingham market. The most accurate estimates state that China possesses coal-fields to the extent of over 400,000 square miles, One province (Shansi) having no less than 31,000 square miles with veins from 12 to 30 feet in thickness.

A v eccentric old gentleman named Johnston has recently taken up his abodei in the woods near Lafayette, Ind. He has no shelter save the trees, no bedding save a coffee-sack and an old coat, and his larder is a hollow-tree. A Mon mon farmer has succeeded in playing a thorough confidence game on the potato bugs. He planted a grain of corn in each potato hill, and as the corn came up first, the bugs thought it was a corn-field and started tor other scenes. Joseph Gales Forster, the well known spiritualist, claims the Kirby reaper and mower to be the work of some inventive soul in spirit-land, who dictated through a medium the manner of its construction out of such materials as this poor sphere affords. The new blacksmith shop at the Rock Island (Ill.) Arsenal is one of the largest in the United States, if not in the world. It is built of stone and iron, has a frontage of 210 feet on the nratn avenue, with two wings, each 350 feet long and 00 feet wide. Much anxiety is felt in Sonoma Valley, Cal., from the discovery of a grape-louse on the roots of the vines, similar to the one that destroyed' the grape crop in France. A committee of wine-growers has been going around among the vineyards examining. A Boston preacher, in speaking of the danger of permitting the Bible to be crowded out by the newspaper, perpetrated the following pun: “ Men nowadays,” said he, “ arc like Zaccljeus—desirous of seeing Jesus, but they cannot because of the press.”

A gentleman, addicted to scientific-in-quiry, has discovered that .thirty-three - » complete the cycle of the potato bug '”n; that 700 of the critters are the V- uct . of Dne - fem ? le ’ froD ? Which the family' S rows . ln the second generation to 245,000, m the third to *2,700,000. Two babies were shipped several hundred miles by express, in Oregon, recently, and arrived at their destination all right; but the express agent was almost worn out telegraphing ahead for milk, shingles for spanking purposes, and other necessaries. —— The Ann Arbor (Mich.) Courier talks of the champion sunflower. The stalk is nine and a half inches in circumference at the ground, and the lineal measurement of the stalk and stems is 151 feet. It has eighty-one fruit-bearing flowers, with more in prospect. P&OEKBSOR Wyman, during his examination of the mounds in Florida, found many human bones split up in the same manner as those of animals. From this he concludes that the aborigines were cannibals, and that the bones were broken to obtain the marrow after the flesh had been eaten. When Horace Greeley visited Yosemite he picked up in the trail a horseshoe, and hang it on the knot of an oak U-ee for whoever might choose to use it. No one took it, ana in time the knot grew over the horseshoe, and recently the portion of the tree containing it was cut oat and brought to San Francisco as a memento of Mr. Greeley’s economy. ”.. AN eld bridge is being torn down in Meriden, Conn., and Mr. Jared Lewis, of that place, states that when a boy he was told that the regicides of Charles I. were sheltered under the spot where the bridge has so long stood. They escaped from New Haven to Meriden in 1664, and were compelled to take refbge under the predecessor of the ancient structure now being demolished.

A fond lowa father writes to an exchange that he is annoyed by his son staying out at nights, and asks for a remedy for the evil. The exchange replies: “There are several remedies. The- boy’s spine can lie broken with an ax, or he can be nailed to the floor with a red-hot railroad spike driven through his abdomen ; but the most effective way is to compel him to wear patched clothing."^ The Secretary of the Navy has issued an order that will fill our foreign squadrons with dismay. A Lieutenant having returned from a year’s cruise in the Asiatic squadron heavily in debt, the Secretary lias seut him back with orders to stay until his debts are paid. That unfortunate young man will be compelled to broil and freeze in India and Japan until he can exhibit the receipts of his washerwoman, his tailor, and his tobacconist to the cruel Secretary, and thus' secure his release. As there are doubtless dozens of other officers on foreign stations who are likewise in debt, they will read of this incident in the light of a solemn warning, and at once borrow enough money from their luckier fellows to discharge their foreign debts before their ships are ordered home. The other day, as Mayor McFadin and T. M. Guggenheimer, of Logansport, Ind., were out hunting on the prairie, they came across a very large and very odd procession. The weather had been dry, and the ponds on the prairie had failed in water- The turtles and frogs, who had been living and thriving in the vicinity of the ponds had thus been cut off from their supplies. They stood it for a day or two, but finally became too “dry” for frog endurance and decided to migrate. When seen by the Mayor and Mr. Guggenheimer, they were marching in solemn procession across the prairie to a pond three miles distant. The procession was three-quarters of a mile in length and onequarter in width. The turtles were in the lead, the frogs bringing up the rear. The Mayor vouches for the truth of the story. This occurred about six miles northeast of Kentland, Newton County. According to an eye-witness, the frogs seemed afraid of the turtles and remained behind. They traveled at the rate of one mile iu three hours, and reached their “spa" about sundown.

The Baltimore American describes one of the most mysterious works of art, now exhibiting in Paris, that has ever been ..witnessed-there. It is a diorama of the siege ol' Paris, and all Paris is running wild to view it. There is some species of optical illusion in connection with it that no one seems able to understand. Although a painting, it so closely resembles nature that on suddenly entering the hall the spectator is bewildered,and invariably complains of dizziness as liis eye scans the intervening scenes and the distant horizon, presented to view. The building in which the diorama is submitted is circular, and about 300 feet in diameter,with a glass dome. On entering it the visitor passes along a rather dark passage to what seems the centre of the building, and then finds himself on a circular plattdrm on the top of a veritable hill of earth, strewn with cannon-ball and shell, the object of the artist being to place him in the fort of Issy, surrounded on every side by the incidents of the siege, with the city of Paris an' l its monuments, domes, and steeples, in the distance. By close examination it co.uld be discovered that the nearer earthworks of the picture, and even some of the cajmon, for a distance of thirty or sixty feet from the edge of the platform, is veritable earth and undoubted cannon, and real willow gabions and sandbags, but the exact spot where the substantial ended and the canvas began was not so easily detected. The whole seems to be a piece of legerdemain in art that has never been attempted before.