Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 May 1875 — VARIETY AND HUMOR. [ARTICLE]

VARIETY AND HUMOR.

—A lord of the uisles—the usher. —Cheese factories are. well under whey. —ln one part of Norway the longest day is three months. What a splendid chance for a lazy man to start a daily paper. —A dressmaker’s apprentice speaks of her cross-eyed lover as the fellow whose looks are cut bias. —An old resident of Troy, N. Y., predicts a cool summer. Thousands of people would like to interview that man for about ten seconds. —A Philadelphia dry-goods merchant has just received $25,000 life insurance on a bankrupt creditor. —North Carolina sticks to it that she made the first Declaration of Independ ence, -and means to celebrate its centennial. All right. —They say that the old tree on which Farmer Lynch first illustrated his law is still in good condition. Time ehough yet, therefore, to get a few slips for grafting. - , —A newspaper-biographer, trying to say his subject “ was hardly able to bear the demise of his wife,” was made by the inexorable printer to say, “ wear the chemise of his wife.” —Out in Nevada they are making a fuss over some “ sweated” double-eagles. Pass them this way. We do not trouble ourselves about the perspiration.—Philadelphia Times. —Gov. Hartranft, of Philadelphia, is said to possess the inkstand which the signers of the Declaration of Independence used when they appended their names to that document. —This conundrum is respectfully submitted to the best speller: If Si-o-u-x spells su, and e-y-e spells i, and s-i-g-h-e-d spells side, why doesn’t s-i-o-u-x-e-y-e----s-i-g-h-e-d spell suicide. —Some men are born serpents, like the tempter of Eden. They spend their lives prying into every place; they disrupt families, churches and every circle into which they are permitted to enter. —The world hath such a store of fools That he who would not see an ass Must stay at home and bolt his door, Atjd break his looking-glass. —Boileau. —When you see a girl with a hard word worked in the corner of her handkerchief instead of a monogram she’s from Boston, where the orthographomania has obtained the greatest hold. —The new patent gutta-percha white shirt bosom, which does not wrinkle and can be sponged off, is probably the only article in the world equally popular with engaged young men and inveterate tobac-co-chewers. —ln Paris, they say, the best of men lie ten times a day, the best of women twenty times a day, the fashionable man a hundred times a day. No estimate has ever been made as to how many times a day a fashionable woman lies. —A girl out West ate seven pounds of heavy wedding-cake Jm order that she might dream of her future husband. She dreamed that a man with teeth a foot long, dog’s feet and a hair-lip sat on her all night, and rather than marry him she contemplates suicide and an early tomb, where the bobolinks sing. —The latest outrage of the Italian brigands upon the Appian Way, leading into Rome, was their attack upon a party of English ladies, who not only lost their money, watches and finger-rings and ear-rings by the fierce attacks of the ruffians, but also parts of the hands and ears that held the jewels.

—ln a Cincinnati spelling-bout the other night the Rev. James M. Johnson failed to spell his word correctly, through sheer carelessness. The word was “ nosegay,” and Mr. Johnson sailed in on n-o-u-s nose, g-a-y gay, nosegay. Instantly he saw by the smiles of the crowd that he had erred and hastened to repair the break with n-o-ug-h-s nose, g-a-y gay, and was greeted with tremendous applause. —Ladies are sometimes surprised at the rapidity with which an apparently heavy black silk will go to pieces. - A recent writer says this is often due to the fact that it has been “weighted.” This process, originally adopted for the purpose of making up the loss occasioned by ungumming, is now carried so far as sometimes to increase both weight and bulk threefold. The weight is added by treatment with salts of iron and astringents, salts of tin and cyanide, and results in an entire change both of the chemical and physical properties of the silk. It is an agglomeration of foreign matters without cohesion, burns like tinder, and, worse than all, is said to be known to have absorbed gases until enough heat was caused to produce spontaneous combustion. Ladies should be on the lookout for such silks as these. —The fashion which forbids the widow on marrying again to appear at the altar in a bridal veil is derived, like many of our customs, from mediaeval superstitions. The church regarded the second marriage of a woman as inflicting a stain upon her womanhood. For this reason, while the virgin bride stood at the altar decked in all the insignia of virginity—white veil, flowing hair, crovn»'(wreath), ungloved hand—the widow who married again was allowed none of these, and was especially required to appear at the altar gloved, in order that her hand, which a second marriage was supposed to pollute, should not touch the pure, sanctified hand of the representative of the church or his sacred robes of office.. This is a curious ; uperstition, and like others of its sort produces an effect upon our habits and manners long after the cause is for. gotten. " . „ v —The home circle—walking around with the baby at night.