Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 March 1875 — GLEANINGS. [ARTICLE]

GLEANINGS.

—The British Government hasgranted $5,000 to secure observations of the total | eclipse of the sun in April next. —Chicago has strawberries in market, but dealers have to keep a stove for every strawberry, and prices are awful. —Mrs. Gen. Meyer, of Washington, has one advantage over her neighbors. Being the wife of “ Old Probabilities,” she knows what kind of weather to ex pect for her receptions. —ln view of the long-continued financial depression of the country, the Christian at Work calls upon the President to proclaim a day of fasting and prayer throughout the land. —Prof. Ford of Niles, editor of the Michigan Teacher, In alluding to the failure of the Compulsory School law, says that in this free life of ours the State must draw and not drive; must allure rather than compel. —The Americans are the greatest pa per consumers in the world, using seventeen pounds per head .per annum, while the English consume only eleven and a half pounds and the French seven pounds to each inhabitant. —rOrizaba, Mexico’s great mountain, is the home of the heliotrope and the Irish potato. Both are found growing wild on the mountain sides, and the Uncultivated S»tatoes, though rarely exceeding an ch in diameter, taste as good as any other. —The Baptists erected four church edifices in Colorado during the year 1874, costing in the aggregate $8,260, the average debt on them being but $225. This does not include what was done in church building at Denver and Central City. —The cold has been very intense and protracted all over Europe this winter; snow, wind, ice and rain are abundant. Some astronomers say the earth is going back to old Father Sun, but to outsiders it roughly appears he is according his offshoot a rather cold embrace. —The British and Foreign Bible Society has, during the past year, distributed two editions of the Finnish Bible, numbering 27,000 copies. Missionaries in other parts of Russia report the demand for Bibles to have exhausted an edition of 10,000 copies. Another one is being prepared. —President Eliot, of Harvard, says of the compulsory physical exercises in schools: "They should form a part of the programme of every school for boys and should be insisted upon just as regularly as Latin and mathematics from the time a boy is ten years old until he is sixteen or seventeen.” —Among the methods proposed for crossing the English Channel is the novel one of an artificial isthmus which is to extend from the opposite coasts of England and France, leaving a small space for the passage of ships. It is estimated that the expense of this work would not exceed that of the proposed tunnel. —Jennie June writes that “Jay Gould at one time offered a million of dollars for the purchase of the Times, but Mr. Jones, a good, clear-headed business man, with a natural pride in a paper which he has built up, told him money would not buy it; that New York city did not contain enough money to buy the New York Times." —Archbishop Manning is said to have remarked that he had long sought for some instances of invention or discovery by a woman, and the best he had been able to find was Thwaites’ soda, water, an improved make of soda water invented by a Miss Thwaites, of Dublin, an amateur chemist, which drove all other kinds out of the market. —The Washington gymnasium has a new member in Algernon C. F. Sartoris. As the feat of standing on the head, with the heels touching the side of the wall, has long been the boast of the gymnasts of that city, the country will wait anxiously for the debut of this little young foreigner, who is said to turn a tolerable handspring when in good condition and fully aroused. —A joke is going the rounds m press circles at Toronto, Canada. The editor of the Globe on a recent Friday engaged the chief Parliamentary reporter of the Mail, Mr. Parkhurst, by an oiler of £SO a year higher salary. The Mail,' on the following Monday, returned the compli- - ment by securing the services of Mr. Horton, chief reporter of the Globe, at a like increase. —ln a clinical lecture by M. Bucquoy delivered at the Hospital Cochin, he expressed his preference for lemon juice as a local application in diphtheria to acids, chlorate of potash, nitrate of silver, perchloride of iron, alum or lime water. He uses it by dipping a little plug of cotton or wool, twisted around a wire, in the juice and pressing it against the diseased surf ace four or five times daily. —Seventeen years ago a Louisville woman was told by a clairvoyant that she was destined to marry an auburnhaired young man with blue eyes and a heavy mustache; that he would soon be rich, and that they would have two children —a boy and a girl. She did marry the auburn-haired man. They have five children now, the auburn hair has disappeared from the husband’s head, and he is getting fifteen dollars a week. — Louisville Courier-Journal. —lt is announced that a gentleman of New York intends to establish and endow in his life-time an American College of Music to be dedicated to the daughters of America. It is proposed to erect in New York an edifice of architectural beauty and large proportions with all the appliances necessary tor the purposes of both a scbbol of music and the rendering of the works of the great masters for public entertainment and instruction.

—Russia had during last year 77 war vessels, with 911 officers and 12,500 sailors, in the Baltic Sea; in the Black Sea 9 vessels with 320 officers and 3,000 sailors; in the Caspian Sea a flotilla of 11 boats with 20 officers and 1,150 sailors; in Siberian waters a flotilla of 11 boats with 140 officers and 1,200 sailors. The 9 ships manned by 3,000 sailors do not look precisely as if the son of old Nic had been kicked out of the Black Sea, after all the fuss and muss of the Crimean war. —The Omaha Smelting and Refining Works have been in operation four years. The works turned out $1,000,000 in 1873, and the operations during 1874 may be briefly stated thus: Amount of base bullion separated and refined, 7,000 tons; ore smelted, 2.000 tons; coal and coke consumed, 6,715 tons; value of gold and silver produced, $1,360,000; lead shipments, 6,500 tons, valued at $800,000; number of men employed, 93; wages paid, $65,000; paid on freight, $250,000; tor expressage, SIO,OOO. —A Moscow correspondent relates a terrible accident which happened in

the Grand Theater at that place. A servant was carrying some costumes into the clrapery-room. He approached one of the gas-lights and a dress caught fire, but he did not perceive it, and set one of the girls afire. In a moment several of the dancers were burning. One of them ran out in! the street, seized a hackdriver’s fur and extinguished the flames, thus saving her life. Three of the girls were dangerously wounded and would probably die. The rest were saved. —There is a Bureau of Education in the Department of the Interior at Washington, of which Alex. Shiras, D. D., is Commissioner. Its business is “to collect such statistics and facts as shall show the condition and progress of education in the several States and Territories, and of diffusing such information respecting the organization and management of school systems and methods of teaching as shall aid the people of the United States in the establishment and maintenance of efficient school systems, and otherwise promote tfie cause of edu cation.” —About Chapultapec, Mexico, is a grove of gigantic cypresses, said tojbe from 1,500 to 2,000 years old, with trunks scarred and tom by shot and shell fired in the many battles that have taken place in the immediate neighborhood. On the top of the rock is the old Spanish castle, built of porphyry, marble and sandstone; It contains a fine scientific library and conservatory. The whole rock beneath it is honey-combed with passages, stables, cellars, dungeons, storerooms and powder magazines, some of which were excavated by the Montezumas. —Thomas Durfee, who has just been elected Chief-Justice of the Supreme Court of Rhode Island, made of the Legislature the somewhat remarkable request that, before he took his seat, the salary of the office, which was $5,000 a year, or SI,OOO more than that of the As-sociate-Justices, should be reduced to $4,500, because, he says, the AssociateJustioes have almost as much work to do as the Chief-Justice, and he thinks that SSOO is difference enough between the twd. He delayed taking his seat for the express purpose of making this request, as the salary of the Judge cannot be changed during his term of office, and so the Legislature passed an act reducing the salary to $4,500.

The National Teachers' Monthly says: “We should compel an original but indolent pupil to be faithful to the author in hand by demanding of him ‘ the words of the book.’ By this course his originality will not be impaired, while his accuracy and industry are increased. But we should never be satisfied with the words of the book from a child capable of memory recitations only, and should never ask of such a question that would suggest even remotely on what page or part of the page its answer could be found. The bright child sees through rules, principles, definitions, descriptions and expiations without burdening himself with the medium of his enlightenment; the dull one grasps the language of the author—only that, and nothing more.” —The colored churches ot this country may be designated as follows: The African Methodist Episcopal Church, founded by Richard Allen, having over 200,000 members, and is distributed through most of the States. The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church is an offshoot of the preceding, numbering nearly 100,000 members. The two are sometimes briefly known as the Bethel and Zion Churches. The Colored Methodists, in connection with the Methodist Episcopal Church, are a numerous body. Their preachers, in some instances, are organized in separate conferences, and in some places are united with the white ministers. The Colored Methodist Episcopal Church is an offshoot of Southern Methodism. The African Church has six Bishops, the Zion six, and the Colored Church four. —ln 1867, Mr. Berger, a Parisian, lost his wife, whom he had married three years before. He has been almost heartbroken ever since, living in the room where his wife died and in which her portrait was hanging. His wife’s sister at the time of his marriage was a little girl but she has now expanded into a handsome womjn. For years she had not seen M. Berger. The other day she knocked at the door of his apartments. The servant was absent and M. Berger opened the door. She entered and lifting her veil, said: “ Do you not recognize me?” “My wife!” he cried, then suddenly recoiling, “ No, no, she is dead! it is her spirit returned to earth!” The poor girl tried to reassure the widower and explain that she was no ghost but his little sister-in-law, now grown up, and who had arrived in Paris the day before. “No, no, help!” he shrieked, and fell back dead.

—Tapioca is the product of a plant that is cultivated very extensively in the Malay Peninsula, where its culture is ah most entirely in the hands of the Chinese. The tubers of the plant (Manihot utilissima), which weigh on an average from ten I to twenty-five pounds, are first scraped and then carefully washed, after which they are reduced to a pulp by being passed rollers. This pulp is carefully washed and shaken up with abundance of water until the f ecula separates and passes through a very fine sieve into a tub placed beneath. The flour so obtained is repeatedly washed, and then placed on mats and bleached by exposure to the sun and air. It is finally converted into the pearl tapioca of commerce by being placed in a cradle-shaped frame covered with canvas; it is slightly moistened and subjected to a rotary motion, by which means it is granulated, it is next dried in the sun, and finally over the fire in an iron pan greased with vegetable tallow, and is then ready for the market.— Journal of Chenittry. —At a meeting of Spiritualists, held in a village not a great way from Scranton, and not long since, one of the members of “ the circle” received a message from a friend in the unseen world to the effecf that h® would certainly die upon a certain day and hour, mentioning the time with a positiveness that to the circle and the gentleman referred to left no room for doubt. The message also conveyed an admonition to the effeetthat he should, in anticipation of the event, im-. mediately procure a life-insurance policy for SIO,OOO for the benefit of his family. In obedience to the suggestion the policy was secured, and upon the appointed day and hour the man died. The wife, upon applying to the company for the amount named in the policy, was informed that the policy was voided by reason of her husband’s having committed “ moral suicide”—that is, died because he thought he must do so in accordance with the supposed message. The wife has now brought suit against ,the company for the amount of the policy. —Scranton (Pa.) limes. ''