Rensselaer Union, Volume 6, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 July 1874 — CURRENT ITEMS. [ARTICLE]

CURRENT ITEMS.

Small-fox seems to be very popular among the Chinese in California. The ladies’ dress-reform question is now agitating the country to a greater extent than ever. The Anthropometrical is the name of a new association. This is tiie scholastic way of saying journeymen tailors. Two girls have gone into the green hide business in San Francisco, and are making money. Neither of them is over seventeen. A girl arrested in Boston the other day for stealing an apple was sb weak for want of food that she fainted away in the court-room. Jackson Gerard, of Benton, Me., went to sleep soon after leaving the breakfast table a few days ago, and at last accounts all attempts to awaken him had proved unavailing; ————- Dorothy Williams, of Wyoming, started to walk three miles to church the other day, and they found her tom into about fifty pieces, the result of meeting a grizzly bear of low moral character. Gen Thomas Ewing, of Ohio, proposes to donate a tract of land for a miners’ school or school of miners, and measures are'under way for the establishment of a National institute for practical miners. A convention of workingmen, delegates from trades-unions, factory operatives and labor reformers generally, will be held in Worcester, Mass., about the middle of August, to nominate a State ticket. It is understood that a number of lady students are to enter the Boston (Methodist)' School of Theology next fall, the Trustees having assured candidates, that the doors of the seminary are open to all, without respect to sex. A New England philosopher has discovered that the dull times are a blessing in disguise, because “there is probably no other way of checking the feverish intensity of American business life and compelling the busy workers to take it easy.” A little girl in Rowley, Mass., has earned a dollar and a quarter by Catching woodchucks at twenty-five cents apiece. She snaps them up as they .put their heads out of the hole. Such a live steel-trap will not be particularly safe to meet one of these days. The Dallas (Tex.) ‘Herald records the story of two young men who, while out riding, saw a poifket-book lying in the street, and they both jumped from the buggy to get it. The hurry broke a finger of one of them and dislocated the ankle of the other, and the pocket-book contained nothing. Because he bad been sued for $29, a Barton (Vt.) man committed suicide, declaring that if he had got so low that his name was not good for $29 he did not want to live any longer. Such sensitiveness is extremely rare in America, and our friends in England must not be misled by an isolated case like this. The “ Excelsior Magazine,” one of the choicest and most artistic of monthlies, is published at $3.50 a year. New subscribers are offered a $4.50 field croquet set and the magazine for $4.40, only 90 cents additional. A handsomely-illus-trated Fashion and Etiquette Supplement goes with it. Rare inducements to get-ters-up of clubs in money or premiums. Sample copies 25 cents. Office, Room 59, No. 157 La Salle street, Chicago, 111. * The Japanese have taken a sudden fancy to the German language. They learn rapidly, but they are fond of change and have no perseverance, so that the teachers are obliged frequently to alter the subject of study. Moreover, the best pupils leave them just as they are beginning to get on; directly a Japanese understands a few words of Gennan he goes to Yeddo to seek employment. Fortunately tlie number of pupils is very great. Since the Emperor himself has taken to study, and Govern- 6 ment appointments at Yeddo are only given to educated people instead of being sold to the highest bidder it has become fashionable to go to school. There was a very sad occurrence lately, near the residence of Jonathan Herrington, a few miles northwest of Hillsboro, Mo. Elijah Burgess with his family were visiting Herrington’s, and the boys were out on a steep bill side orbluff. They had been amusing themselves rolling stones down the lull, when two of them concluded to go to the foot of the bluff-to see the rocks jump oft'. A large stone’ was started from above and. warning given to the boys below, when a little son of Burgess, nine years of age, stepped out from behind a tree and the rock strack f him on the head, smashing his skull and killing him instantly. ‘ A prominent oculist says that the contagious Egyptian or granular inflammation of the eyes is spreading rapidly throughout the country, and that he has been able in many, and, indeed, in a ma jority of cases, to trace the disease to what are commonly called rolling towels. Towels of this kind are generally found in country hotels and in the dwellings of the working classes, and, being thus used by nearly every one, are made the carriers es one of the most dangerous and, as regards its symptoms, most troublesome diseases of the eye. This being the case, it is urgently recommended that the use of these rolling towels be discarded and thus one of the special vehicles for the spread of a most dangerous disorder of the eyes—one by which thousands of workingmen are annually deprived of their means of support—will no longer exist. Of all places in the world to select as a retreat from the scorching heat of a June day, an ice-chest is perhaps the last, and yet George Straubel did it. George had formerly been bar-keeper at Apollo Theater, but on Monday was living at 815 South Fourth street. He had been suffering to some slight extent from cotte, and was also perspiring proftisely. Do what he would, he could not keep cool. The more he tried to keep cool, the more he perspired, and at last the brilliant idea struck him that a brief retirement in the ice-chest woulfl set him up all right. It did the lager good, and why shouldn’t it do George Straubel good, too? 80 be got into theme-chest, and very sooAelt cool enough Ihe perspiration was checked, and when Straubel got out of the ice-chest the perspiration didn’t return. On the couldn't get warm, and he continued to get colder and colder, qptil in a short fftne GeOrge Straubel was not only as colA as death, but he was Louis Republican