Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 July 1875 — BREVITIES. [ARTICLE]

BREVITIES.

A. New York personal inquires for a lady with “blue eyes dressed in black.” The first railroad in Prince-Edward Island was recently opened for traffic, and the first 11 train took ten hours to travel 103jniles. 1 Wh&n a Tennessee dog bites a man the man can recover one dollar damages from the owner. Six bites per day would be fair wages. The Paris Moniteur made the strange discovery that the Schiller was wrecked on the seventieth anniversary of the death of the poet. Rev. Dr. Miner, of Boston, denies that ministers’ boys are the worst in creation, and cites instances where they have not gone to the bad. The cane and rice crops of Louisiana are in an exceedingly promising condition, especially along the coast between New Orleans and the Gulf. The arbitrators of the Maryland and Virginia boundary '’dispute, having heard the statements from both States, will decide the controversy on the 30th of J une. The Memphis (Tenn.) waterworks were sold at auction May 20. for $170,000. The sale was under a mortgage, the purchasers buying in behalf of the bondholders. It is a subtle remark of thfe Chicago Journal that “there isoften just asmuch difference between two sisters as there is between a trailing arbutus and a horseradish plant.” Call loans are so low in New York that when, between friends among the brokers, small balances are wanted for over-night use, the consideration is “cigars for two.” Two years ago a Pennsylvania serv-ant-girl was sent to prison for stealing S2OO from her employer. The money was found the other day where the man had hidden it. George Francis Train says that he’ll saw wood all day next Fourth of July in order to show his contempt for the day we celebrate. Let the committee wait upon him and try to buy him off. The conductor of one of the grammar schools in Nashua, N. H.. has discovered a useful method of teaching grammar and rhetoric. The pupils are awarded two marks for every error in a local newspaper. An intoxicated Indian was burned in a Nevada hut, and an account of tue accident says that when the fire reached his stomach it lingered there, emitting a steady, blue flame until about a quart of bad whisky had been consumed. A Berlin paper cautions persons against a trick now very successfully practiced by the sellers of blooming plants. The camellias and tulips make a fine show in the pots, and fetch handsome prices, but when the purchase is taken home the flowers are found to be attached to the stalks with fine wire. It has come out at last in Paris. Abelard and Heloise were never buried in the cemetery of Pere la Chaise, and oceans of tears and tons of “garden sass” have been lavished upon sham graves by the love-lorn maidens of Paris for 400 years, more or less. A proposition to restore the tomb brought out the facts of the case. The Danbury News tells a story about a woman in that town who sent to the grocer’s for half a peck of tubers. The grocer thought that she must have meant tuberoses and sent the boy to the seedsman, who Ailed the order, and waxed savage when the woman explained that she wanted potatoes. The woman was a Boston woman who had married a Danburv man. - 1 " • An ingenious Italian has evolved a process of ending wars and discontinuing the silly practice of pretending to be Kings when there is not a ghost of a chance of sitting on a throne. His idea is to establish a Joint European Com-, mission to select a given number of candidates for the thrones of the Continent and give them each a year of it in each country. Alexander, tue man w r ho was shot four times by a polieeofficer in Philadelphia, refused before his death to tell the name of his murderer, and in Brooklyn a similar case has occurred. A rowdy was stabbed fatally three times in the lungs, and, when asked to tell who was his assailant, replied: “I’d die with the name of the fellow in my throat before I’d give him away.” A Paris correspondent, with an eye for unpleasant sights, has seen in a store window a wooden pipe, with the advertisement: “Pipe found between the teeth of one of the Schiller victims, price five francsand also a Swedish frequenter of one of the cases who wears attached to his watch-guard as a charm a glass eye, formerly worn by his mother, who has been dead pome years. “ Greenhorn Luck” is a legend in the mines. An incident illustrative of its meaning occurred in Nevada County recently. A young man from the in poor health, thought he would exercise his muscles by digging a little. Tfyey sent him to Deadman’s Flat as the nearest place where a pick and pan could be used. He went there and began to dig. He took out S3O that day, and has done well since.— Alta California, Attention is being drawn in England to the value of the mule. At a recent show the prize mule stood seventeen hands, and was proved to be much stronger than a horse. Another animal exhibited, and which was only twelve and a half hands high, had been driven the previous week 220 miles in forty-two hours, and entered London on the evening of the second day at a pace of ten miles an hour, with no marks of fatigue. TnECiondon Lanret, discussing football as a cottage sport, says that while it is perfectly safe when engaged in bv boys who are sound and healthy, ye"t with grown-up men the case is different. Foot-ball is essentially a rough-and-tum-ble game, and man does not fall as lightly or as cleverly as a boy can. A collision which simply “ knocks the wind out” of Hie latter may seriously injure or even jtSbiqre some important organ in the formeLfr Jay Cooke is credited with this mode of fishmg at Put-in-Baj 7 , for a description of which all lazy fishermen will be thankful: “He had a large glass jar filled with minnows in the place which he frequented. The big fishes would swarm around the jar, seeing their coveted prey, and hungry for the expected feast. He would drop his hook among them and haul out the victims of his novel delusion with the utmost ease and rCadim** until tired of the unsportsmanlike sport.” The Minong (Mich.) Copper Mining Company is about to inaugurate operations on an extensive scale at Isle Royale. There are some sixty ancient pits on the company’s property, and it is

estimated that with the tools.then in use it must have taken a hundred thousand men a hundred years to perform the work done by that ancient and unknown race. Certain it is that copper exists there in almost inexhaustible quantities, and no mine has yet been developed on one of these ancient sites which has not proved nrofitable. A REMARKABLfe verdict was returned at the Cheshire Quarter Sessions at Knutsford, in England, the other day. Two men who were accused of destroying fish by putting chloride of lime into a stream at Woodford were, after a long deliberation by the jury, found not guilty of the offense with which they were charged, but were, with solemn formality, pronounced guilty of “ fishing,” with which they were, not charged. The Chairman, Sir Henry Main waring, characterized the verdict as the silliest he had ever heard in his life. The men were of course discharged.

The water furnished to the residents of Washington must be in a condition which would shock even the least fastidious stomach. A recent cleaning out of the sediment of the main reservoir from which the citizens derive their supply of water developed the fact that thirty-one bodies of dead infants had been deposited there. Other complaints are made that the bodies are filled with small dead fish, and the fear is expressed that if the pipes are not flushed or washed out in a few days the cholera will break out in that city before two weeks, as it did in Norfolk in 1853. The ‘Christianburg (Va.) Mewmer says: “A preacher who lives in our county, and is about sixty years of age, married a young couple a short time ago, and thereupon was challenged by the bride for a foot-race. The distance was measured, and the old parson and young bride took position, and upon the drop of a hat the race begun. The young filly, though encumbered by her surroundings, fairly flew ahead of the old stager for a moment. When, however, the spavin got the use of his limbs, and fairly under way, he caught up with the nimble gazelle and passed under the pole well in the lead, to the amusement of all. Not very long since- the wife of the professor, Mrs. Agassiz, rose one morning and proceeded, according tp custom, to put on her stockings and shoes. At a certain stage of this process a little scream attracted Mr. Agassiz’ attention, and not having yet risen he leaned anxiously upon his elbow, inquiring what was the matter. “Why, Professor, a little snake has just crawled out of my boot,” said she. “Onlyone, my dear?” returned the professor, calmly lying down again; “there should have been three.” Tie had put them there to keep them warm. Pleasant man to have in the house, particularly in one’s sleepingroom.— New York Letter. “Unser Fritz”’ two eldest sons are upon a pedestrian trip in Germany. They travel in strict incognito , accompanied oniy by their tutor. At Goecke’s hotel, in Fritzlar, the excursionists, looking perhaps rather tired and travelstained, ordered coffee, for which the landlord considerately charged only two silbergroschen a head, on the ground that his guests were probably “ a couple of schoolboys on a trip from Cassel.” In another place their order for three rooms was bluntly refused, and they were otherwise treated with a contemptuous disregard, for which mine host could not find sufficient apologies as soon as he had been made acquainted with the real character of his visitors.

At Villeneuve, St. George, near Paris, a gentleman has a pond in which heraises leeches for the market. He feeds them quite often upon aged and infirm horses and other animals, which the leeches suck to death. He had a family horse which was quite a favorite of a child of his, but, becoming useless by age, he drove him into the pond to feed his leeches upon. His child, coming to the pond soon after, and seeing his favorite in the water, endeavored to get the horse out, thinking he had fallen in accidentally. In this endeavor the boy himself fell into the pond, and when rescued was covered with leeches, which, before they could be taken fromhim, had sucked so much of his life’s blood from his veins that he died in an hour afterward. A New Orleans lady had her sleep oddly disturbed one night lately. She was lying quietly in her bed when she was disturbed by a noise in the vicinity of her child’s cot in the same room. She raised herself and peered intently into the darkness, when she discovered a black object climbing up the bed-post. Summoning up all her courage she sprang out of bed, when the black object leaped toward her, and the nbxt instant she felt the sharp fangs of some animal in her flesh. Her shrieks for assistance seemed hut to enrage the beast, and it climbed up her body, fiercely burying its sharp teeth deeper at every move. Finally assistance came and a light, and then the quality of the monster appeared—it was a huge raccoon, one of the largest ever seen, and in apparently a frenzy of rage it sprang forward to attack another woman who entered the room, and dying only after a hard fight. The injured lady was found to have received twelve deep wounds, enough to indicate the fact that an escape from even death was fortunate..