Rensselaer Union, Volume 6, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 July 1874 — CURRENT ITEMS. [ARTICLE]

CURRENT ITEMS.

There are 6,000 Catholic Indians in Washington Territory. Alabama is calling attention to her newly-discovered coal-beds. Alphonse Kahk defines dyspepsia as the remorse of a guilty stomach. In San Francisco Sunday is as much a holiday as at Paris or New Orleans. Although a woman’s age is undeniably her own, she does not always own it. A Western exchange complains of two-legged hyenas in the village graveyard. A Richmond negro killed himself by partaking of pounded glass and jellycake. Europe consumes about two-thirds of the petroleum produced in the United States. A precocious Ohio boy tried to kill a cat, and shot his grandfather with a tenpenny nail. A Louisville lady has recovered SIO,OOO for being dragged and injured by a street car. The candid are saddened by undeserved censure and humiliated by undeserved praise. Two colored men in Georgia had a little theological difficulty, and settled it with bird-shot. California is largely cultivating, besides the grape, oranges, limes, citrons, figs and walnuts. A Salem (Mass.) woman ate a rose and died. It is supposed the leaves dovered a poisonous insect. Cremation is prospering in Germany. There are now eighty-two cities with cremation societies. Naturalists claim for the erow that it is one of the bravest of birds, because it never shows the white feather. Mrs. Mary Strain, of Pittsburgh, Pa., has married three brothers in succession. She believes in brotherly love. Burlington is now the largest city in lowa, having, according to the new directory, over 25,000 population. The young lady who mistook a bottle of mucilage for hair-oil has bien too “ stuck up” to go to parties since. Muscle vs. Brains. Thirty-two candidates passed their intellectual examination at West Point, and ninety-five the physical test. Gold may be hammered into sheets so thin that 282,000 of them placed uue above the other will only occupy the height of one inch. A Piqua (Ohio) girl who had a quarrel with a lover remarked to a friend that she “ wasn’t on squeezing terms with that fraud any more.” A Connecticut editor announces that he has bought a SSOO dog, and can now meet the most irascible caller with a smile of calm content. An unsophistocated person once declined a plate of macaroni soup, with the remark that they “ couldn’t palm off any biled pipe-stems on him.” A Maine book-agent has been disabled by the kick or a horse, and the proposition to give the horse a public testimonial creates no little enthusiasm.

It has been calculated that if Chicago and St. Louis keep up their competition in directories at the present rate each will have a population of ten millions by the year 1884. A scientific friend who had been reading, with great patience, an exhaustive treatise on the “velocity of light” says that he now knows how it is that his gas bill runs up so rapidly. A trout weighing fourteen and threefourths pounds was hooked in Lake George the other day by a Mr. Buel, but it was found necessary to shoot him in the head before he could be landed. The fashion of wearing the wedding ring on the finger next to the little finger originated in an ancient superstition that there was a mysterious connection between that finger and the human heart. A story is told of remarkable sympathy existing between a little boy in Northern New York and his severed arm, so that when the latter was roughly handled the child would scream with pain. A London correspondent writes: “By the way, it is rather odd —but I have not seen in any English paper a word of comment on the marriage of Mr. Sartoris with a daughter of the President of the United -States.” A ijttle son of Thomas R. Sheldon, cashinr of the First National Bank at Athens, Ohio, recently sat down in a bucket of boiling water, producing injuries which resulted in death the day following. A snob in Saratoga complains of some cheeky members of the “ crews’* in can* vaß shoes and blue Uniforms intruding themselves in the parlors and ball-rooms among ladies and gentlemen who are in evening dress. 4 By the falling in of a part of the roof of a coal mine at Newcastle, near Hanging Rock, Ohio, the other day, Francis King, a miner, was terribly crushed, so that his recovery is very doubtful. No one else was injured. “ Wiiat do you know of the character of this man?” was asked of a witness at a police court the other day. “ What do I know of his character? I know it to be unbleachable, your Honor,” replied he with much emphasis. “ Charley, what makes your cheeks so red?” asked his sister’s admirer of a little five-year-old. “ ’Cause I put some of sister’s paint on. She puts it on every day.” It was a painful disclosure for everybody—at least Charley thought so after the visitor had gone. ■

Two recipes are given in the Scientific American for removing tallow and white lead which have been applied to polished parts of machinery to prevent rust: 1. Use turpentine, and rub it in well. 3. Try a concentrated solution of caustic potash, scrubbing with an old scrubbing brush. Ban T'b vncisoo is.going to try a little fair of her own, representing the industrial development of she Pacific coast and also of China, Japan and Australia. San Francisco is unusually happy in the promise that her Pacific telegraph cable will bring a greatly increased trade from the East. A young fellow in a Western town was fined $lO for kissing a girl agatMtjM# will, and the following day the datosel sent him the amountt»f the fine, wftn a note saying that the next time he kissed her he must be less rough about it, and be careful to do U when her father SM not about.