Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 August 1875 — BREVITIES. [ARTICLE]

BREVITIES.

The noblest Row-mans of them all—the Cornell students. Between 400 and 600 sheep in a recent storm in Wethersfield, Vt. „ Tte Baltimore packers are prep^ r , mo . to do an unusually large business Scanning peaches. \ There is talk in Weste; m Texas of es _ tablishing a new State v with San Antonio as the proposed capita).. A clock has bast been repaired at Mauch Chunk, F'a., which has been running for forty-five years. Apiarists say they have never known bees to swarm and leave their hives so late as they have done this year. “No, ma’am,” said a jeweler to a beautiful lady, “I don’t trust anybody these days. I would not even trust my feelings.” When you see a shiftless man you. can be quite confident that) at some period of liis life he found a four-leaved olover. ; i; The introduction of machinery for separating slate from coal is depriving thousands of boys of work in the anthracite coal region. The frog - pond of Boston Common has been thoroughly cleansed, but not a frog was found. One solitary turtle was the only inhabitant. The London News attributes the recent heavy failures in England to the high rate of interest paid oh deposits by the ioint-stock banks. The hay crop in Western Massachusetts is but little over half an average crop. In many places on thfi uplands grass is almost a total failure. The prevalent “ summer complaint” is that oysters are out of season. Some people are shellfish enough to want everything ah-the year round. The Salt Lake Tribune charges that • Brigham Young and the lesser priestly saints have stolen lumber to the value of $3,000,000 from the Government. A Pennsylvania man captured a rattlesnake and set about teaching it some tricks. He was on the high road to success when they had to bury him. American quail thrive well in England, and now they are to be introduced into Ireland, as it is deemed a better country for them than the sister isle. “ A Pittsburgh man has invented an iron shirt.” — Miners' Journal. There’s no doubt either that the shirt in’ question will prove the thing for hard-ware. Mrs. Partington says 'that if the English Constables have any humanity they will keep the riflemen from hitting the bull’s eye so often in mere wanton sport. The worst feature in this whole Charlie Ross affair is that a brand of execrable!! mean!!! sticky!!!! chewing-gum!!!!! has been named alter the poor little abducted. Business opens first-rate considering the tight times. Two people in Delaware have already been choked tc death with peach-stones, and more cases are daily expected. First Swell —Deuced hot, Fwank! Call a cab. Second Swell—Tell you what, old fellow, you shout and I’ll hold up umbwellar. Get through it that way. [Plan adopted.]

Austria employs traveling agricultural professors, who go from place to place delivering lectures and instructing the farmers on topics connected with their vocation. A young lady who vainly tried to stare a gentlemen out of countenance, looking at him through the border of her fan, sub sequently told him he mustn’t fan-see he’d 4 eider down. Many young British naval officers who have served from six to nine years at sea are Wing dismissed the service, as they fail to reach “ a new standard of theoretical knowledge.” “ Will you have a small piece of the light meat or a small piece of the dark?” asked Bob’s uncle, as he carved the turkey at dinner. “I will take a large piece of both," answered Bob. The Ottojnan Government, in view of a diminishing supply of horses, has issued a peremptory edict that henceforth no Arab horses shall be exported from the producing provinces. The Bishop of Manchester, England, preaching at Urmston recently, remarked that he desired above all to see the Church of England recover her glorious title of being the poor man’s church. Mr. and Mrs. Edinburgh have gone to St. Petersburg; and if Alexis hears any more about ’is ’ighness’ abuse of his Russian spouse there will be trouble; and Alexis is’the larger man of two. Political capital can be found by a French newspaper when news cannot. A Bonapartist paper discovers that the only walls which withstood the Toulouse floods were built under the Second Empire. Thomas Moore, the poet, stopped for several weeks nearly a century ago in a house in Norfolk, Va. The building is -still standing and the inhabitants of the city talk of celebrating the centennial. The Jersey farmer sits among his potato vines and weeps, like Jeremiah in the vineyard, all because he has a visitor from the West —whose initials are “C. 8.,” and whose whole name is Colorado Beetle. One of the oldest, ablest and best-known members of the Suffolk (Mass.) bar once dryly said that there was no such thing as knowing what law was until the Supreme Court had had its opportunity to guess at it. The Paris Financial Journal is written up by five editors, who send their copy from their places of residence. In the number of June 19 the copy of each editor was sent from a Paris prison. Banking is not so free over there.

London’s newest entertainment is a ■“ soiree of hair-dressing,” in which a professor of the' art performed on chosen heads before the public with the skill and artistic sense with which -Paganini performed on the fiddle. Pot both of your lower limbs into one leg of your pantaloons: take the other leg, roll it into a bunch and tie it behind you; then try to walk. That will teach you how nice and comfortable an ultra-pull-back dress is —Exchange. “What are you about?” inquired a lunatic of ajjook who was industriously picking the feathers from a fowl. “ Dressing a chicken,” answered the cook. “ I should call that undressing,” replied the crazy fellow. The cook looked reflective. The Lewiston (Me.) Journal says: ** This is pronounced an excellent season for bees. One gentleman savs his colony of hives has already increased to nine, and the indications are that he will gain three more swarms. They are laying in honey rapidly.” Ih a late speech before Parliament Dr. Kenealy said his enemies should “ like a dew-drop from a lion’s mane be shook to airy air.’’ This remark excited the pity erf all his hearers, who pronounced him in-

sane. was decided to treat him as a ImH jiless innajic f or talking such non- ? e Ase. After a time it appeared that the line was a correct quotation from “ Troilus and Cressida,” Act 111., scene 3 The principal interest , which attaches to the recent death of ex-Emperor Ferdinand, of Hungary and Austria, is pecuniary .owing to the fact that, under a private arrangement with the present house of Austria, made in 1848, he shared half the imperial privy purse with Francis Joseph. The present Emperor has always paid over the one-half regularly, although it left him rather short. He will probably not mourn much over the eld gentleman’s decease. The Pilgrim Society, of Plymouth, Mass., having delayed for years to call for the appropriation of $3,000 granted by the Connecticut Legislature in the year 1856, in aid of a proposed “ national monument to the forefathers,” the Connecticut Comptroller concluded to look into the matter a little before paying it. He found the monument in process of erection, with a promise of completion before the centennial year, and will accordingly pay the appropriation. According to the Springfield (Mass.) Republican, the fate of the Pomeroy boy is not settled yet by any means, the action of the Governor’s Council against him being purely advisory. If Gov. Gaston is opposed to the execution of the bov he will probably continue to withhold the warrant on which alone can the extreme penalty be inflicted. The Governor’s Council were evidently divided on the question of commutation, but Lieut-Gov. Knight cast his vote against it. — k -. Miss Mary Willets, of Richmond, Va., refused to allow the appraisers to enter a room of her late father’s house, and after repeated efforts to enforce the order of chancery two or three officers and an ax were finally necessary before she could be taken from her room and brought to court. Her obstinacy was so extraordinary that the Judge ordered a commission delunatico before punishing her for contempt. The commission will probably find the whole story to be that when a woman won’t she won’t. The volcanic outburst in Iceland has now ceased, but the devastation is enormous. The surface of the ground for an extent square kilometers is covered almost uniform layer to a depth of over an inch. The quantity w hich fell is estimated at no less than 4,000 tons. The number of persons who are reduced to penury by this disaster is about 5,000, or one-fourteenth part of the population. This misfortune will undoubtedly stimulate the Icelandic emigration to Alaska

Capt. Webb, an English sailor, has recently accomplished the task of swimming from Black Wall to Gravesend, a distance of twenty miles, on the Thames. He accomplished the distance in four hours and fifty-three minutes, going with the tide. The water carried him, we are told, four miles an hour. If this is the case, in the fiveJiours less a few minutes it took him to swim down he must have been carried almost exactly twenty miles. Either Capt. Webb didn’t do any very tall swim ming, strictly speaking, or there is some mistake somewhere. The modem school-girl must have queer ideas. In a conversation with a New York reporter at a hop at Vassar Tuesday evening one of them queried: “ Are you single ?’—an affirmative answer being given. Then she asked thoughtfully: “Do editors ever get rich?” The “pencilheaver” again replied in the affirmative, and instanced several leading journalists, and then added: “I leave for New York to-morrow, and it will take me three days to pay my taxes and cut the coupons off my bonds!” “Is it possible ?” replied the miss, “and you so young, too!”—Poughkeepsie Eagle. There is a bonanza to be had for the picking up somewhere along the Union Pacific Railroad. A tew days ago a gentleman and daughter, traveling east, entered the hotel car for lunch just after leaving Ogden, Utah. At table the daughter removed several handsome rings from her fingers and handed them to her father to take care of until the lunch had been disposed of. The gentleman took up some chicken-bones with the hand containing the rings, and in a moment of ab-sent-mindedness threw bones and rings out of the open window of the car. The rings were valued at $1,700 A new productcalled “appartine,” and useful as a glaze or finish for papers and fabrics, and doubtless to be applied in time to many other uses, has just been brought out. It is made by stirring twenty parts of potato starch into 100 parts of water, and then adding ten parts of potash or soda lye of twenty-five degrees. The whole is stirred vigorously till the milky mixture becomes transparent, viscous and stiff. Poured out and dried, it gives thin sheets of a colorless, odorless, transparent substance, resembling horn, but more pliable and tenacious. As a stiffening and surfacing material it is said to possess many valuable properties.

Enoeneers are well aware that in some cases explosions occur in mines where the safety-lamp is in use, In such instances the explosion has been observed to take place most frequently after the firing of a blasting shot in the vicinity; and, as it is almost certain that the penetration of the flame through the gauze of the lamp is not due to a sudden flow of gas from one part of the mine to another, experiments have been instituted to determine whether the transmission of the sound wave, or wave of compression, may not be the origin of the mischief. With this object a tube is arranged, at one end of which there is the inflammable current enveloping a safety-lamp; in the center is a loose diaphragm, and on a pistol being fired at the other end the explosion will cause a sound wave to be propagated along the tube. On the arrival of this sound -wave at the extremity of the tube the combustion passes from the inside_to the outside of the safety-lamp.— N. Y. Sun. The idea wuich has been proposed ol using glass for lining tanks, etc., and to take the place <of the ordinary enamel surface given to.irdn is. likely to be practically realized on an extensive scale, a method for its accomplishment having now been devised, which is spoken of as answering every requisite of success. The chief advantage to be gained by this process is a surface easily cleansed, and the possibility of perfect cleanliness, as for fermenting vats, etc., and it also offers a solution to the lead-poisoning difficulty. It may be used, too, for veneering and decorative purposes, in many cases with very good effect, especially as designs may be colored and placed under the glass, ana thus be preserved frpm fading and, wearing. Another suggestion made in this connection is that thick glass might easily and cheaply be cemented to the walls of hospitals, and thus prevent the retention pf the elements of disease. It would, employed in this manner, be non-absorbent, imperishable, easily cleaned, readily repaired if damaged by accident, and, unlike paper and paint, would always be as good as at first