Rensselaer Union, Volume 6, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 October 1873 — CURRENT ITEMS. [ARTICLE]

CURRENT ITEMS.

George Law lives on $10,000,000. lowa has 10,500,000 acres of land under cultivation. Colorado will complete 336 miles of railroad this year. Over one hundred ladies are studying law in the United States. Rhode Island has 138 cotton manufactories in running order. f.Kun ore has been discovered three miles north of Lyons, lowa. Death is as the foreshadowing of life, ljfe die that we may die no more. The Remingtons are furnishing Spain with rifles, and are making fortunes. Peoria, El., claims tc be the most ancient settlement west of the Alleghanies. Nilsson expended SBO,OOO in gold upon toilettes from Worth before leaving Paris. Chicago has about twenty churches now building, which will cost about $3,000,000. An experiment shipment of uncooked meat, preserved by a freezing process, has been dispatched fro m Australia for London. Internal revenue receipts since the beginning of the present year exceeded those for the same period last year by about $1,000,000. Mrs. Hera Wilbur, of Greeley, Col., once a Michigan schoolmarm, has plowed and sowed thirteen acres of wheat this season. Women have rights there. The Tobacco-Leaf says: Pennsylvania, next to Connecticut, is now raising the most superior tobacco for smoking purposes produced on the continent. The new Illinois homestead law exempts from seizure for debt homesteads to the value of $1 ,000, and adds a sewing machine to the list of personal property exempt.

The largest run ever made in Eureka, Cal., was by the Richmond Reduction Works, which, in twenty-four hours, turned out 63,000 pounds, nearly thirty-two tons, of bullion. The Lewiston (Me.) Journal says that a piece of slate was taken from the Mayfield quariy, recently, thirty-three feet long, thirteen feet deep and three feet thick, without crack or scar. - - James Houston, Natividad, California, sowed 1,300 pounds of white Chili club wheat to twelve acres, and harvested 44,802 pounds. Some portions yielded ninety bushels to the acre. The hottest military post on the North American continent is Camp Mohave, on the great Colorado River. For many days during the past season the mercury' has stood at 122 degrees in the shade. The Dominion Government has forwarded a gold watch and SSOO to the Rev. Mr. Ancient, in acknowledgment of his gallant conduct toward the passengers and crew of the ill-fated steamer Atlantic. New Jersey’s contributions to the statuary hall in the Capitol, at Washington, will be semi-colossal statutes of Richard Stockton, and Gen. Phil Kearney, the former in marble, and the latter in bronze. . The plan of correcting the echo in public halls, by stretching wire across them from, wall to wall, has had a practical trial in the cathedral at Cork, Ireland, and is said to have given satisfactory results. TtniMAs: “Well, Mrs. Simpson, and ’ow be it that the milk in these parts are rose?" “Mrs. 8.: “Why, you see, Tummas, this late rise in coal liev caused hiron to go up so, that they hev riz the price of pumps.” The amount of land devoted to wheat culture in Great Britain is only one half larger than that devoted to the same object in the State of Illinois. Illinois has 2,600,000 people to supply; Great Britain 83,000.000. The Pennsylvania Railroad Company have reduced the number of hours for laborers and roadmen New Jersey to eight hours per day, and the pay-rolls will be reduced accordingly. The laborera strike against it. A Kansas pastor has wisely declined an addition of SIOO to his salary, on the f round that the hardest part of his labor eretofore has been the collection of his salary, and it would kill him to undertake to collect a SIOO more. A blind man of Wallingford, Conn., has won his support by sawing wood, being led to the piles of wood by his boy, who then was wont to leave him to go to school and at night return for him. By slow and toilsome steps he at length accumulated SI,OOO, which, a few days since, one of his children drew from the bank on a forged order, and abscended with it to parts unknown. E. 8. Knight; of Nashua, N. H., claims to own the oldest coin in America. It was coined during the reign of Alexander the Great, who died 323 B. C. The front bears the head of the King; on the reverse is the figure of Hercules, also in Greek letters “King Alexander.*’ The coin was found by a native of Caesarea while digging in the ground, and by him given to a missionary in Asia. The following sentence, written out in full, was pronounced by a justice of the peace in Gwinnett, Ga.: “let the prisner Stan Up, sir, you has bin Found Guilty & tried uv the Offense uv shutin at your Nabor. Yu shal then be took from the bar uv this court by the honorable baleef of this court, and carried into the adjined county uv rock-Dale, and thar you shall remain in everlastin banishment forever from the honorable county of guinuett." The amount of timber cut on the head waters of the Mississippi River and its tributaries during the past year was equal to 1,579,000,000 feet. This quantity, estimating the yield of the pine lands at 10,000 per acre, would inquire the denudation of 155,000 acres, or nearly 250 square miles of land. When these pineries, the last we have, are exhausted, the fence and building question will present itself in a new ana troublesome aspect to the Western farmers. —Evergreen and Forest Tree Grower. A strange fatality has attended the family of David Sublett, of Indiana. In 1857 a daughter was murdered by her husband, for which the son-in-law was hanged. Two years ago a son, George, was killed by the cars while lying drunk on the track. Shortly afterward a son-in-law was killed in the same manner. A year ago another son-in-law was shot and killed; and now, last of all, a few days ago a son was found murdered a short distance from the family residence.

The Cherokee organization known as Kee-too-wahs is a sort of Know Nothing Indian society, with secret rules and passwords. Its object is the preservation of Cherokee nationally, not by unlawful mews, but by putting down intemperance, and making the Indians a unit for their own welfare. That this society, which includes most of the influential men of the Cherokee tribe, should be misrepresented by the white speculators who desire to get into the Territory, is not strange. -• ---■■■ - The late Dr. Nott, stated on reliable authority, that only 30,000 barrels of wine were produced yearly in the island of Madeira; and yet, after supplying the continent of Europe with unknown thousands, 50,000 barrels of what is called Madeira wine are annually sold in this country. The district in which Champagne wine is made produces only 800,000 baskets or dozen yearly. Of this 680,000 are known to be exported to other European nations; and yet about one million of baskets are annually sold in vVuMWJ J* j

A herEtt naturalist named James Gatley, has lived in a retired woodland nook in the town of Hyde Park, Mass., for eighteen years. He is a nattve of England, and is now sixty-thrbe years old. He has an absorbing passion for his profession of naturalist, which he has followed from boyhood, and his hut is a perfect museum. containing among its treasures filly cabinets of birds, frogs, fishes, foxes, porcupines, otter, raccoons, and, in fact, nearly every kind of animal that is found in New England. Dozens of persons visit the old man's interesting shanty every day, and do all they can to spoil his reputation as a hermit.