Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 January 1875 — Quaint Anniversary Customs. [ARTICLE]

Quaint Anniversary Customs.

On the anniversary of the battle of Blenheim each year a gentleman may be seen getting off "the train at Windsor and carrying a white flag up to the castle, depositing it into the hands of some court official with great solemnity and ceremony. On the anniversary of Waterloo another gentleman proceeds to the same place, also with a flag, though this time the bunting is a tricolor. On a certain day in every October, should you happen to be in the office of Her Majesty's “ Remembrancer," in London, you would see three very dignified gentlemen, with heavy watch-seals and bristling sidewhiskers, diligently engaged in splitting fagots of wood and counting some horse shoes and hobnails. Such are a few of the lingering relics of the poetry of feudalism in England. Blenheim was given to the great Duke of Marlborough and Strathfieldsaye, to the greater Duke of Wellington, on condition that the ceremony detailed above should be performed annually forever. The city of London holds possessions in the shire of Salop so long as certain officials make woodchoppers and nail-reckoners of themselves once every year. What would occur if these flags did not arrive at Windsor, or those nails were not counted, is as mysterious as the consequences of “naming a member" in the House of Commons. It pray at least be taken for granted that some worthy old Tories would be heard to deplore the fact that England was “ going to the "dogs." Nobody—except, perhaps, Bradlkugh and a few others of his sort—thinks of abolishing these absurd though not unpicturesque performances. Even Temple Bar is allowed to totter on its feeble foundation, though it threatens to fall on the heads of passers-by any hour of the day; and here seems "to be the limit passed between a harmless keeping alive of quaint old customs and the dangerous preservation of what is old simply on account of ' its age.— Appleton s Journal. —Ladies owning lap-dogs will please take notice: The Michigan Southern Road has decided that only a lap-dog “ in the arms of its mistress” will be admitted into the passenger coaches. All other dogs must travel in the baggage-car at the rate of twenty-five cents for the first 100 miles and ten cents for each subsequent 100. Baby-wagons are charged the same price as dogs.