Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 June 1875 — BREVITIES. [ARTICLE]

BREVITIES.

It is plain that Carruth, the Vineland editor, is a bullet-headed man.. A Boston street-car conductor hanged himself rather than use a bell-punch. Thk Shinpao newspaper of Shanghai prints choice pieces of news in blue ink. “In strawberry short-cake it isn’t the cake that’s short; it’s the strawberries.” —N. T. Commercial Advertiser. Mr. Kellogg, a Northampton (Mass.) blacksmith, although ninety years old, continues busily at work at his trade. There has been cut upon the waters of the Presque Isle, Maine, during the past winter, some 10,000,000 feet of lumber. Give a man a light heart, a white hat. and a new suit of linen, and for a day he is above the cares and depressions of this world. The first English strawberries appeared in the London markets on the 23d of March and were sold at the rate of about $1.50 per dozen. It is said that an onion-grower in Massachusetts who refused three dollars a barrel for his crop lately sold 212 barrels for fifty dollars, the best offer he could get. The Hawaiian Government proposes to send to the Centennial Exhibition a complete model in relief of the islands, showing their topography and physical geography. Op a thousand dead horses taken to the New York offal dock during the past winter, 350 had died from rot and other diseases of the hoof caused by traveling in salted slush. A good many of those Eastern fellows seem to be preparing just now to spend the summer abroad, by borrowing all the money they can get, and becoming suddenly u embarrassed.” It recently rained boiled shrimps in France, the contents of a waterspout apparently being tumbled on the country after the sun had heated the water sufficiently to cook the game. Minister Dufaure has ordered the French priests, who are salaried officers of the Government, to sing hereafter Sunday in church the “Doming,salvarn sac Republican.i” —“ God save the Republic.” It isn’t often that any ordinary person accumulates a board bill of $40,000, but a San Francisco man has brought a suit for this amount for boarding the wife of a relative from March, 1849, to July, 1862. Michel Levy, the famous Paris publisher, left about $4,000,000; but, hunt where they may, his heirs cannot find the will which he is known to have made, and hence do not know to whom the fortune will fall.

On Monday evening his wife asked him where he was going, as she observed him putting on his overcoat. “I am going to sally forth,” he replied ; and she warmly rejoined“ Let me catch you going with any Sally Forth.” The Gzar of Russia will soon receive a magnificent present from the corporation of London, in the form of a casket weighing nearly seventy ounces and composed of the finest gold and enamel. It is a souvenir of his London visit. The Springfield (Mass.) Republican says tobacco raising has proved the financial ruin of North Hadley. Recent failures foot up $225,000, real estate has fallen one-third in the town, and business is almost hopelessly stagnant. A Brooklyn Baptist minister recently said: “My salary is $2,000 a year, but I cannot live on it.” “ How do you get along?” asked a friend. Said he: “I eke it out with what,l saved when I was on Cape Cod at a salary of SSOO a year.” Amos, alias “Chicken,” Forbes, of Rochester, beat his wife, and, when pursued by the police, fell dead in the street —from chicken-heart-disease, one would suppose. The daughter checked her mother’s wailing with: “ Shut up! do you want him to come back and pound you again?” A legacy was left the town of Marblehead, Mass., by a former citizen named Abbott. It has been decided to expend the money in erecting a brick building, with stone trimmings, of sufficient size to contain a hall seating 1,200 persons, and a library of 20,000 volumes, together with ample accommodations for all the town officers. The Taunton (Mass.) Gazette says there is an old lady in that city, ninetysix years old, who every spring runs a good-sized garden, doing”all the spading, planting, hoeing, weeding, etc., with her own hands. This year she has already started her peas ahd potatoes, and proposes to obtain a full crop if working will do it.

In the first Masonic lodge of Jerusalem, it is said that the Master is an American, the Past Master an Englishman, the Senior Warden a German, the Junior Warden a native, the Treasurer a Turk, the Secretary a Frenchman, the Senior Deacon a Persian, and the Junior Deacon a Turk. There are Christians, Mohammedans and Jews in the lodge. A youth apprenticed to a Mr. Hill, of St. Pancras Parish, in England, recently became possessed of the idea that he was the genuine Roger Ticliborne. His master, while acknowledging that he did liis work properly, had the deluded youth sent to the w T orkhouse; but the parish guardians compelled the employer to take him back to finish his indentures. This is the season when the young miss who has been at boarding-school a year “ finishes her education;” when it does no good for her old country lover to come hanging around; when she hates to have her plain old father come up from the farm to see his “ darter grad’ate,” and when she writes to her friend that she’s glad her “ hawid studdies is done.” — Exchange. Gambling for enormous stakes prevails in the miniature Kingdom of Monaco. At the salon of M. Le Blanc an American is said to have lost recently $150,000 and a Russian Princess $1,500,000, at which she went raving mad. A Scotch Duke won $60,000 in less than hal an hour and lost all that and a great deal more before the end of the same day. There were three cases of suicide within a week, owing to disastrous losses. The silver mines at Newburyport, Mass., are pronounced by competent authority to be but “ float” ore, and not true veins. It is asserted that the mines are in the hands of speculators, wfio revive the flagging interest of the community by burying ore in new places and digging it up again and proclaiming a new find; and that the recent demonstration was all show, and the ore shipped ostensibly for smelting was worthless trash. Little do women care for wit, or beauty, or true merit; they acknowledge them, but only with their lips. “I like him”—that is the word which says everything and carries all before it. Very

much like the choice of & hat or ribbon: “ I like it.” This phrase means she finds some secret harmony, some keen delight, the satisfaction of some strange personal desire, extreme, eccentric, even. So. an easv carriage, fresh gloves, a gay, witty phrase, a penetrating tone of voice have each their influence; in short, the style of cookery best suited to her palate—in a wqrd: “I like cherries, I take cherries.” — Taine. The ingenious French have contrived a novel way to impress the barbaric mind. M. de Brazza who has charge of the expedition to Senegal, carries an electric battery in his pocket communicating with two rings on his hand, and with other apparatus scattered about his person. When he shakes hands with a savage chief that chief will be very much astonished, for an electric shock will run up his arm, and he will see lightning playing about the head of his visitor. Naturally he will think he is being interviewed by the devil, and will be ready to consent to anything in order to get away. In an early day, before National Banks were invented, and while gopher scalps were a legal tender, people were in such “ indignant” circumstances that names were scarce, consequently a large number of people had the same designation. Each member of 10,000 tribes had the appellation graced by application to the author hereof; all the balance of the world were called John Smith. Several branches of the family still exist to perpetuate the name and virtues of the original proprietor, and each bears his name in full. One of them has hunted up the various metamorphoses the cognomen has undergone since that big incoherency at the tower of Babel, and reports as follows: In Latin, John Smith is Joannes Smithus; the Italians smooth him off with Giovanni Smith; the Spaniards render him Juan Smithus; the Dutchman adopts, him as Hans Schmidt; the French flatten him out into Jean Smeet, and the Russian sneezes and barks Ivan Smittowski. When John gets into the tea trade in Canton he becomes Jovan Shimmit; but if he clambers about Mount Hecla the Icelanders say he is Johne Smithson; if he trades among the Tuscaroras he becomes Ton QuaSmittia. Should he wander among the Welch mountains they talk of Jihon Scmidd; when he goes to Mexico he is booked as Jantli F’Smitti; if he mingles among Greek ruins he turns lon Smikton, and in Turkey he is utterly disguised as yourself—Voe Self. Good-by, John.—Zewa State Register.

The testing of oils in a simple mode has always been a desideratum. Miss Kate Crane, in the American, Journal of Pharmacy, gives an account of a series of experiments instituted by her, which tend to show that much reliance can be placed on the figures produced by droping oils on the surface of clean water, first proposed by Tomlinson. In her experiments a'single atop of oil was allowed to fall from a burette held at a distance of four inches from the surface of a dish of clean water. The time required for the production of certain figures was carefully noted, as it appears that several oils will produce very similar figures ultimately, if sufficient time be given. Oil of turpentine spreads out instantly and begins intestine motions, finally forming a beautiful lace-work. Oil of cinnamon forms a figure not more than half the size of the above. In a few seconds small portions are detached and separate into distinct drops. Oil of nutmeg forms a large figure instantly, the edge showing a beaded line. Poppyseed oil spreads instantly to a large figure, retaining an unbroken form for a few seconds; then holes appear around the edge, and soon the whole surface is broken up with curved lines. Cod-liver oil spreads into a large film. A little way from the edge small holes appear and in a minute or two the surface is studded with them These gradually enlarge, assume irregular shapes, and become separated by branching lines. As these oils give difterent figures and behave differently when mixed with one another or with lard oil, this method may be of very great use in the preliminary testing of suspected oils.