Rensselaer Union, Volume 6, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 July 1874 — CURRENT ITEMS. [ARTICLE]

CURRENT ITEMS.

Five hundred patients receive treatment in the Athens (Ohio) insane asylum. Not more than two of the nine furnaces in Sharpsville, Pa., are now in operation. The expenses of the Holly water works, Titusville, Pa., are but SIO,BOO per year. Sixty thousand quarts of strawberries were shipped from Milford, Pa., in a single day recently. An inventive genius in Ohio proposes -to furnish horses with false teeth, so as to conceal their age. Seveuau residents along the Mohawk Flats, Pa., have engaged in the cultivation of sweet potatoes. •Five times John Happy, of Vermont, has been engaged to one girl, and he has not made her Happy yet. Thirty-five citizens of Center Township, Boone County, Ind., have reached* the age of seventy years. A mu. that everybody should not be brought before tw house this summer —the mosquito’s. A merchant who has suffered from the moiety system styles the Government officials “ infernal revenoodles.” A performer at the coming circus is styled “ the human anaconda.” It is to be hoped he will not prove a boa. A Leavenworth paper notes the*death of a man of “ thirty-five years' standing.” Chairs must he scarce out there. France, notwithstanding her disturbed political condition, produced more books last year than any other country. “ This engine won’t work,” said a fireman to the chief of a fire department. “ No wonder,” said he, “ it was made to play.” The Spragues are under a cloud-yet, and it isn’t necessary to have a pass from one of them in order to travel across Ithodc Island. The wind-mills introduced in the Granby (Nov.) mines to pump out w ater have proved a failure, and the idea has been abandoned. John Grogoin, of Maine, has just got mad about the Modoc war, and is com ing West with fire in his eye and a shot gun on his shoulder. A Detroit boy propounds the awful -query: “ Which had you rather do, be eaten up by a tiger, or have all the maple sugar you can swnllcr?" Come, now, let’s say no more about Laura Fair. When one remembers that it was a lawyer she shot, the crime is robbed of its rough edge. Commodore Vanderbilt admits that he isn’t much on orthography, but Blinkers asks: “What in thunder does a man worth $87,000,000 care about spelling'? ” DußuquE has just platted a new cemetery with a race-track around it, and now if they would give achromo tbevery pur- . ttlAii.se rof a lot tlie thing could be made to pay. ' .. *:__.:* When a man is found on the highway in Missouri with two bullet-holes in liis head, the verdict of the Coroner’s jury is “ that it looks like shooting, but may have been suicide.” Georok'H. A very, of Boston, who recently walked 100 miles in twenty one hours and forty minutes, is going to start from Boston for Montreal, 460 .miles, Sept. 1, intending to Walk the distance in eight days. Prof. Hitchcock, of Dartmouth College, will shortly receive from New Zealand two skeletons of the extinct bird, the dinoris, or dodo, the first ever brought to this country. The San Francisco trotting horse Bam Purdy was sold by auction on the 24th ult., for $21,500.' Messrs: McCord and Frank Malone, of San Francisco, were the buyers. A grafeshot, probably fired during the Revolution, was found the other day in the heart of a tree twenty inches in diameter, near the spot at Center Rutland, Vt., where the old fort stood. A man who liad spent over two years and $2,000 in lead mining at Joplin, Mo., has just made a strike which will likely .repay him for his time and outlay. Recently he took out 10,000 pounds. The Joplin (Mo.) Bulletin wants a railroad from that place to Kansas, City. It claims for the-town a population of 8,000, together with 180 business houses and twenty-five furnaces, which run day and night. Tiie son of an Emir had red hair, of which lie was ashamed, and w ished to dye it. But his father said: “ Nay, my son, rather behave in such a manner that all fathers should wish their sons had red hair.” - " A couREspoNDF.Ny informs us that in Germany, when the vote of the jury stands six against six, the verdict is left to the decision of the .Judge. A majority of votes either acquits *'er convicts the prisoner. » A Paterson (N. J.) man who had placed several lightning-rods on jits house was’* delighted during a recent storm at seeing it struck in two places, • while the house of his neighbor, Who was too mean to pay for a,lightning-rod, was not struck at all. < Tiif, Trustees of the Worcester (Mags.) Academy have received the sum of $1,600 from William BucKuell, of Philadelphia, tbe income of which is to be applied to sustaining a scholarship for tbe most courteous Christian gentlemen among the students in the academy. X New Orleans young woman who writes pieces for the papers says that occasionally a woman meets a man to whom she says: “On the barren shores of Time, O my soul’s kinsman, I have found in thee my ‘pearl of great price,’ and there is nothing more precious out of heaven!” This young man does not grow in the North. TiiEfother day a young lady in Philadelphia became so much embarrassed by a proposal f rom, her lover that, in her agitation, she swallowed a needle. Young men cannot be too cautious about such things. They should never make such propositions to girls untll tbey have thoroughly examined their mouths to see whether they have any needles in them or not. Prof. Adler, of the Cornell University, cannot see what the name of the shad s derived from, unless from the German Word xchuile, signifying something like Our English word “scathe”—to injqre or inflict loss. The shad has been described contemptuously as the poor man’s fish; and from tiffs association of it with poverty the Professor thinks that its name may have come. Naturalists bewail the apparent fact that the elephant, like the whale, is being driven into extinction by the persecu- '

ttßiroUftiftfikind. In Indhfjitlio;matters have pursued him no, far inland {that he is scarcely more common , now in the habitable part of that country tiian is the red deer in England; agd in Burtnah and Ceylon only has the lAige and docile animal a refuge from extermination. Medical science in Holland claims to have discovered yet another .Remedial power of that beneficent substance, quinine. German physicians, 'who have used it for several years inibeirpractiee, say that quinine is a sovereign cure of smhll-pox, if administered ih a pure state aqd at an early stage of the disease. It acts as a prompt antidote to the poison of the dread malady, but must be given in large doses. ' The first American whaler which, ever doubled Cape Horn was the Rebecca, built by Claghorn, who was also the architect of the famous frigate Constitution. She was launched in 1785, in New Bedford, and though she was of only 185 tons she was regarded a big ship jn those days, and the compliment of commanding her was given to Capt. Cornelius Grinneil, father of Henry and Moses H. Grinnell, of New York city. During the reign of the Directory she was taken by the French, recaptured by the British and restored to the owners through heavy salvage. The Rebecca was lost dJ sea in the winter of 18034.