Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 April 1875 — GLEANINGS. [ARTICLE]

GLEANINGS.

—Bartoris has an incoma of $40,000. —California has $140,000,000 banking capital. —Mrs. Blaine and Gail Hamilton are sisters. —England is on a grand wild-goose chase for more of Shakespeare’s books. —Bret Hart* is fat and lazy and don’t care a flip whether he writes anything or not. —lt seems as if all the little children who used to say such bright things were dead. —lndian corn, according to a French physician, is “ an infallible cure for consumption.” —A little work on British wild flowerp, considered in their relation to insects, Has been written by Sir John Lubbock. —Said W. H. Aspinwall to his children : “ Whatever charitable gifts your conscience prompts you to make, make in life.” —There were 1,900 Baptists, white and colored, in Texa9 in 1847, but now the aggregate of white and colored is said to be 65,000. —The oldest citizen of Reading, Pa., died recently at the age of ninety-seven. He moved to that place when eight years of age. —According to the scientist of the Buffalo Express eggs can be cheaply cooked by eating corrosive sublimate and then swallowing the egg raw. —The iron is about to enter the soul of the imperious singer Nilsson. She owns lots of property in Boston, and it has just been heavily assessed for “ better rnents.” *„ ~ -

—lt is reported that Carl Schurz will practice law in New York, and that he has already been engaged as counsel of the Hamburg Steamship Company, at SIO,OOO annually. —lt is said that the Japanese law requires that when a person cuts down a tree he shall at once plant another in its place. In this way the supply of wood is kept up. —“I dreamed I was* spelling at a spelling-match and never missed a word,” is what young ladies say now when they recover from the effects of laughing-gas. —An eminent French physician-all French physicians somehow are eminent —declares that the decrease of dyspepsia in France is owing to the number of apples eaten by the people. —Patient to doctors after consultation: “Tell me the worst, gentlemen; am I going to die?” Doctors: “We are divided on that question, sir; but there is a majority of one that you will live.” —The Newcastle Chronicle gives an account of a donkey belonging to Thomas Newton, which was attacked by rats and nearly devoured. Think of an American mule being injured by rats, or even lightning. —The medical editor of the Boston Times says the best way to cure rheumatism is to drive it from the legs to the arms, down the arms to the hands, thence crowd it into one finger and have that cut off. —The Philadelphia Conference is the largest contributor to the Methodist mission funds, its total for 1874 being $55,017. This great result is due to thoroughness of organization and careful training of the people. —A Baptist paper is of opinion that the Baptist Church in the United States stands just now in need of three things: A wise exercise of discipline, more personal enthusiasm and a greater union and connection of effort. —Presbyterian union in the Dominion of Canada is jeopardized by the indisposition of the Legislature to pass the necessary enabling act. A meeting has been held in St. Paul’s Church, Montreal, to protest against this course.

—There is now a respectable evangelical church in Nazareth, and several villages in the vicinity have evangelical schools. The number of native Protestants in Galilee is from 500 to 600, and there are as many children m schools. —Kinglake, in the last volume of his “ Crimea,’- says that the phrase “ biting the dust” is more than a figure of speech. A man suddenly killed, in the act of strenuous bodily exertion, will, by mere muscular action, appear to bite the dust. —Employes in factories in England have to pay for carelessness. A man employed in some iron works at Wakefield was recently sent to prison for three months for criminal negligence which resulted in injury to some machinery. —The Archbishops of York and Canterbury and all the English Bishops but two congratulate the clergy and laity on the prosperity of the church, and strongly admonish the former against ritualistic practices which tend to isolate the clergy from the people. —The statistics of thirty-three out of the thirty-seven conferences of the Methodist Episcopal Church South show an increase for the year of 35,276. The general minutes, soon to be published, will probably show the total membership of this church to be 700,000. —lt must be a great comfort to Gen. Meyer, head of the Signal Service, to oecupy the position he does. Being “Old Probabilities,” he knows just what kind of‘weather to-expect when going home rather late after a little fun with the boys —St. Louis Republican. —A Bavarian recently shot an apple from his boy’s head, a la "William Tell, at a distance of 210 feet, hitting the apple injfhe middle. He was about to repeat the experiment when the police, instigated by the lad’s mother, interfered and stopped the dangerous sport. —Every year a pastry-cook in Dresden cooks up a lot of pancakes, in one of which a ducat is placed, and advertises the same, thereupon all the good people of that city rush to invest five pfennings in one of the cakes, in the hope cf being the lucky winner of the prize. —A man in Paris advertises a method for enabling everyone to omit the high chest C, and adds that a month of medical treatment is suffieient. In this connection it should not be forgotten-that building a small bonfire on the spine is called medical treatment over there. —ln answer to the absurd rumor that she had separated from her husband, Mme. CatacSizy writes from Paris: “ Not only am I not separated from my husband, but never did I more love, esteem and admire him than I do now, and never have we been happier than we are since our departure from America." —lt is sad to think of the condition of the man’s soul who says that the more peevish women there are in the world the sooner shall we be able to listen unmoved to the filing of a saw. —~ —A gentleman in San Joaquin County, Cal., owns a flock of 2,000 ‘ewe sheep,

1,300 of which had 2,400 lambs this season, thus increasing the flock 120 per cent. Nearly all of the sheep produced twins, and twenty of them produced triplets. —An inebriate precipitated himself down-stairs and on striking the landing reproachfully apostrophized himself with: “If you’d been a-wantin’ to come down-stairs why in thunder didn’t you s«r so, you wooden-headed old fool, an’ I’d a come with you an’ showed you the way?” —An inch on a man’s nose is proverbially of some account, and M. Derrisart, of Paris, is likely to know of exactly what account. His nose has taken to growing lately, and grew half an inch in eight days. He is at the Hotel Dieu, in Paris, and all the surgeons of France are rushing thither to see him. —The amount of coal shipped from Northumberland County, Pa., in 1874 was 1,221,550 tons, by thirty-three colliers, of which the Cameron and Big Mountain shipped the heaviest amounts, each over 100,000 tons. The total shows a slight diminution compared with 1873, when 1,234,069 tons were shipped. —lt is given out from Berlin that the Prussian authorities, always looking ahead, intend Germanizing the English language and rendering its study obligatory in the Fatherland, with a view to the future when England and the New World will be provinces of the German Empire and, as such, occupied by Manteuffel. —There are 4,000,000 cats in Great Britain, and it is estimated that each cat kills an average of twenty mice or rats every year. It is estimated, farther, that every rat or mouse, if it lived, would injure property to the extent of £1 sterling. If all this Is true, pussy saves to that country every year $400,000,000, and she might pay off the national debt if she chose.

—Congress has provided for the purchase of 3,000 negatives of photographs of distinguished Generals and public mem nowin possession of Brady, the Washington photographer, at whose galleries, during the war, many prominent citizens had their pictures taken. The negatives are to be used for the reproduction of the portraits, which, when finished, are to form a national portrait gallery. —A writer in the Methodist is of opinion that the denomination “have outgrown mainly both the use and the necessity of the office of Presiding Elders except in sparse and newly-settled parts of the country.” He thinks that the number should be increased, each Elder be assigned to a church of his own and given the chair of six or eight churches, and their appointments remaining with the Bishops. —Frederick Stiebman, watchmaker in Paris, said his soul had passed into a watch at which he had been working for twenty years. One day this watch lost many minutes, the next day it gained many; thereupon Frederick went to bed and said he was very ill. The watch stopped, and Frederick, when he saw the hands motionless, sprang up from his recumbent posture and fell backdead

—The Toledo Blade says that “ the study of any foreign language in the primary schools does detrimentally affect the English student, who must necessarily neglect the elementary branches to follow its pursuit. We firmly believe and can further testify from personal observation that no advantage has been gained, either by the study of the modern or classical languages, until the pupil has been well grounded in the rudiments of English.” —Somebody wants to know “who wrote that article” in the Houston (Tex.) Telegraph , and it promptly responds thus: “ The man who wrote that article early in life was a hard-working blacksmith, later he was a deck-hand on a steamboat, then he was a cow-boy ©n the frontier, but of late years he has followed the profession of a prize-fighter. He only became an editor to reduce his flesh by starvation so as to become more of a success in his peculiar line.” The Telegraph received no further inquiries. —Golden Hair.—Since golden hair is so much in favor, it is well for mothers to know that they can preserve the golden color of their children’s locks by a persistent and careful washing with castile soap and water. The hair should be braided and dipped repeatedly into the suds and then wiped with a towel, and this operation should be performed once in four or five days. If persevered in, the roots of the hair may darken as the child grows older, but the mass will keep its sunny tints as long as the owner wishes. Exchange.

—The other evening when a Sixth street father boxed his son’s ears as a punishment for impudence the lad stood before him and remarked: "See here, father, I was reading this morning that the drum of the ear is one of the most sensitive things in the human system. A sudden blow upon the ear is* liable to produce deafness, and the practice of cuffing children cannot be too severely censured. It is but a relic of that dark period when a man with a wart on his nose was put to death as a sorcerer.— Danbury News. —A Washington correspondent, "t describing a stroll up Pennsylvania avenue, says the display of turnouts is magnificent nowadays. Mrs. Grant is very fond of driving and may be seen daily in a high park phaeton, the gift of Gen. Butterfield. The President’s horses are high-spirited animals. When he drives it is generally alone in a buggy. Mrs. Sartoris and Miss Barnes still take occasional airings together, but not as frequently as they did a year ago. Among the most stylish turnouts to be seen these bright days are those of the foreign Ministers. The family of the British Minister arejfcsent this winter, and, as Sir Edward Thornton is a great pedestrian, their equipage is no more seen. The Peruvian Minister is very wealthy. His handsome young wife ana her two step-daughters are out on every fine afternoon. They have a close clarence, and also an open carriage for mild and warm weather. The Secretary of the Treasury and the Secretary of War both have blooded Kentucky horses for the family equipage. —The great Bessemer steamship, which was to abolish the horrors Of the English Channel, has been tried and is only a partial success. The ship steamed from Hall to Gravesend in a gale of wind and proved an excellent seaboat and fast. Her two faults appear to be an excess of draught and the unsteadiness of her movable saloon. The former is partly accounted for by an extra supply of coal, and may be got rid of in one way or another —must b£ got rid of before she can enter Calais on an ordinary tide. As to the saloon it appears that the machinery intended to control it, and to neutralize, so far as it is concerned, the movement of the ship, is in some way defective. The salopn can be handled with ease, but cannot be kept still* in other words,

shares the motion of the ship. These facts are gathered from a letter written to the London Times by Lord Henry Lennox, who came in the ship, and who explains that the present trouble arises partly from some wrong arrangement of the levers and partly from the inexperience of the man who works them.