Rensselaer Union, Volume 6, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 May 1874 — CUBRENT ITEMS. [ARTICLE]

CUBRENT ITEMS.

A St. Louis paper inquires why the portrait painters of that city don’t go to sailing flat boats and make a reputation. New Yobkebs are still howling for rapid transit, and they wouldn’t be satisfied if shot from the mouth of a cannon. Rhode Island and Massachusetts are negotiating in real estate. The former ha< a factory to build, but is crowded for room. Suits of black silk and grenadine combined will be one of the summer fashions —this on the authority of Monsieur Worth. A Chinaman can swallow a dose of Cayenne pepper without looking red in the face, and he chews red pepper without a wink. The objection to amber ear-rings is that they cast reflections upon the face and cause the fair wearer to appear to have thejaundice. , The Postoffice Department has decided that female officials are more honest than males. Now let Susan B. jump up and swing her bonnet. An lowa woman gpt mad and left her husband because he washed his feet in the dishpan, and the neighbors don’t sympathize with her a bit. A contempobaby wants all its exchanges to warn women to jump into a creek when they discover that their clothing is on fire. Jump, ladies, jump! An old bachelor editor has discovered that girls are plenty in Baltimore, but stifled a sigh when he learned that a marriage license costs $4.50. A married woman in Brooklyn issuing a married man for a breach of promise Committed eleven years ago, and her husband is her main witness. A New Yobk Custom-House man writes that he has heard ladies of refinement, wealth, position and education, lie & customs’ officer out of countenance. Rich gold mines are reported to have been discovered in the mountains on the north fork of the Ouachita River, near the Choctaw line, in the Indian Territory. A West Newbury (Mass.) man has won a wager of sls by eating twelve boxes of sardines, a quart of law pea beans and a pound of bar soap within three days. The latest is described as 11 trimmed inside with gold fringe and tassels, with very showy urns on the top, draped with gold and plumes.” This is a Hartford hearse. Butt colored linen traveling suits trimmed with a darker shade of the same material will be much worn during the season and are cut and made in the polonaise style. The Hill Brothers, farmers of Windsor Locks Station, Conn., are the proud owners of a cow which turns the scales at 3,000 pounds. She is six years old, and was raised by her present owners. A Louisville boy wanted to leave a cold world in which his mother would only give him two pieces of pie for dinner, and so be swallowed several percussion caps, but they didn’t kill him. Two Detroit girls have been arrested for getting on a locomotive, opening the throttle-valve and starting the machine. They then jumped off, but the engine ran through a freight train doing S7OO damage. An East Lyme (Conn.) man, who had §ot sick of harboring tramps, took one of tern before a trial justice, the other day, but what was his astonishment when the vagrant produced a bank book with $1,300 to his credit m it A numbeb of nervous invalid ladies in Columbus, Ohio, recently published a card complaining of the excessive tolling of church bells on Sundays and during the week. This had the effect of stopping the tolling of bells altogether, except to call “ meeting” twice on the Sabbath. They have sharp lawyers down East. One of them marketing for a dinner, asks a poultry dealer, “Is that turkey a young one?” “Yes, sir.” “Will you take your oath on it?" “Certainly, I will.” Lawyer administers the oath, charges $1 for the service, and takes his pay in poultry. A Hartford man put a valuable cluster diamond pin in a little box and hid it in the stuffing of a lounge for safe keeping, some time ago; a few days since he earned the lounge to a furniture man to have it repaired, but didn’t think of the precious gems; they have disappeared, but the furniture man says he doesn’t know anything about them. Thebe are a dozen Irish women in Boston who are “ boss” workwomen and scrubbers, who hire hundreds of persons to clean the places of regular customers, and who have become nch at the business. One of these “ boss” scrubbers has succeeded in buying a $25,000 house on Kneeland street, and rides in her gay carriage in imitation of Beacon street ladies. Kentucky comes to the front with one of the greatest marvels of the present age. In a town of considerable size in that State there resides a lady who makes it her boast that she has had but one new bonnet in forty years, has made but two calls on neighbors in eighteen years, and has taken but one meal away from home in all that time. And yet she is well off, in good health and all her limbs perfectly sound. The conduct of State Constables Maxwell and Skinner in making a seizure of liquor at Wildes’ Hotel, at Chicopee Falls, Mass., recently, while the proprietor’s daughter was dying in the house, and another shortly after when the preparations for the burial were being made, excited a wide and deep feeling in the community, and a petition, signed by more than 400 residents of Chicopee Falls and Chicopee, was sent to Boston asking for their removal.

A woman named Mary A. Whitten, about sixty-five years old, was found dead in her house on Brackett street, Portland, Me., the other day. She was somewhat eccentric and lived alone, receiving no visitors. Her non-appearance, therefore, excited no comment until it was observed that no smoke issued from her chimney and there were no signs of life about the house. The authorities were notified, and on going into the house found the woman stretched on a mattress on the floor. She had apparently been dead a week or ten days. Not a morsel of food of any kind nor a particle of wood was found in the house. It is supposed she was taken too ill to go but and purchase food, and actually starved to death. A Massachusetts farmer says: “My cattle will follow me until I leave the lot, and on the way up to the barn-yard in the evening stop and call for a lock of hay.** Smithson says there is nothing at all remarkable anout that He went into a

barn-yard in the country one day recently, where he had not the slightest acquaint' ance with the cattle, and an old bull not. only followed him until he left the lot. but'took the gate off the hinges and raced with him to the house in the most familiar way possible. Smithson says he has no doubt that the old fellow would have called for something if he had waited a little while, but he didn’t want to keep the folks waiting for dinner, so he hung one tail of his coat and a piece of his pants on the bull’s horns and went into the house.