Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 September 1875 — BREVITIES. [ARTICLE]

BREVITIES.

Queens of ’Arts —female graduates. Song of the kettle —The dull-simmer. An ingrain car-pet—A polite conductor. Sweets in adveYsity—A sugar-house failure. In Great Britain only three printers are authorized to publish the English Bible. . The Chinese interpretation of going to law is: “Losing a cow for the sake of a cat.” If young ladies don’t want to get stout, let them linger over their meals. Haste makes waste. A deaf-mute named Acheson, now in Newport (R. I.) Jail, has four brothers, a wife and four sons who are also deaf and dumb. The impostor who gave himself out, some months ago, in India as being Nena Sahib has been sentenced to imprisonment for four years. There will be an annular eclipse of the sun on Sept. 29, which will be visible in this country. At all places east of the Mississippi the siin will be eclipsed. When a man sees a cat moving unsuspectingly along, within easy range, he will involuntarily look around for a stone, however good and noble he may be. Geologists have discovered that the ground of Southern Indiana' Kentucky and Tennessee is slowly rising, at the rate of about a foot every twenty-four years. The tobacco-worm has attacked the plants, and good elocutionists are posted on the fences by the farmers, reading the excellent anti-tobacco tracts by the late Mr. Trask. To prevent her lover from “ going back” on his promise, a Detroit girl always introduces him to her friends as “my intended husband.” So says the Free Press. Secretary Bristow has refused to remit the fine imposed upon a New York excursion steamer for carrying several hundred more passengers than she was allowed to do by law. “Burning incense, Mr. Brown?’ ’ said Mrs. Farringtosh, as she passed Brown in the act of lighting his post-prandial cigar. “No ma’am,” said the practical Brown, “ I am burning twenty cents.” A cloud of grasshoppers struck at Essex, Mass., the other day, on the beach, when the tide was high, and the eels came up by thousands, without waiting for invitation, and gobbled up the aforesaid ’hoppers.

There are 300 glove and mitten manufactories in Fulton County, N. Y., 250 in the town of Johnstown. It is estimated that two-thirds of the buckskin gloves and mittens made in the United States are made there. There is a Jersey farmer who ought to get rich. Whenever he sees a neighbor’s boy squirming down the road with his hands clasped across his stomach, he always goes out into his watermelon-patch ana counts the melons. There is not a broom factory in the South. Yet, if a market was created for broom-corn, farmers could realize SIOO per acre by its production, and the capital invested in the manufacture would pay 40 per cent.— Vicksburg Herald. A Massachusetts man, wanting power for his mill, which is on the river side, has hired an idle steamboat, backed it up in a proper position, and, taking off the paddle-wheels, bolted the steamer fast, and it furnishes all the power he wants. Mrs.Colton, who was married in Barnum’s balloon, denies th.e report that she and her husband lived unhappily and had separated. Mrs. Colton says that they are devotedly attached to each other, and that their baby, called the balloon boy, is a great pet. Prof. David Swing has an article in a late Advance apologizing for “the fashions.” He declares that “ one of the dearest laws to the heart is the law of 4 Something Else.’ Yesterday is a withered rose; new buds must be found for tomorrow.” It was confidently expected that rare minerals would be found in the Hoosac tunnel, and possibly some new ones were discovered, but in this the lovers of mineralogy have been disappointed. The main rock consists almost wholly of mica schist, talcose schist and slate. A Newport (R. I.) tradesman who had occupied one shop for twenty-eight years was surprised the other day by a woman who came in and paid him for three pounds of corned-beef, at five cents a pound, which she bought of him soon after he came to his present store. A new printing machine, which is said to be a modification of the Walter perfecting machine, is now building in England. When completed, it will not only print an illustrated paper on cylinders, but will print both sides at once and deliver it completed, at the rate of 12,000 an hour.

They have just dissected an elephant in Philadelphia, and they found that his, stomach was “ a sac six feet in length.” Ifteome creature with a capacity to appreciate good cookery, such as Sam Ward has, possessed a gastric surface of that extent, what new revelations lite would have for him. The prospect of being conscripted for the army or navy does not seem to be relished by the young men of Brazil. The Government appears more likely to obtain money for exemption than men to fight. Hundreds are entering the police force in the South, pacing S3OO merely to avoid service in the army. Beautiful story: Burning building; female seminary; crashing timbers; one child missing; a yellow-haired girl rushes from the crowd; rescues child; excites the admiration of a Captain in the French army; marries Captain; yellow-haired girl Mme. Mac Mahon; Captain how Marshal of France and President of the Republic. Lovely! A. Sunday-school lecturer recently said that according to an old Scotch proverb “ an ounce of mother was worth more than a pound of preaching.” One of his listeners was heard afterward to remark confidentially that his mother’s poundings were not issued to him by the ounce—she never struck less than a ten-pound whack, even when she used her lightest slipper. There were 2,076 national banks in op. eration at the close of the fiscal year, having an aggregate of individual deposits on hand of $686,478,630.48. The surplus fund of the banks amounts to $133,169,096.79; the capital stock paid in $501,568,563.50; national bank notes outstanding, $318,148,406; specie on. hand, $18,959,482.30; whole amount of business done, $1,913,239,201.16. It has long been a question what the Maine tanneries would do for bark when the hemlock forests should become exhausted, which bids fair to occur at no *distant day, but it has now been found that the sweet which springs up in great quantities where the woods are removed, possesses valuable tanning properties, and measures are being.taken at Ellsworth and vicinity to utilize it

There is one refreshing fashiop this summer., Women never, wore then - hair more becomingly dressed since the days when Phidias and Praxiteles executed those incomparable embodiments of Grecian women that have been tlie delight of all lovers of true art ever since, and will continue to be as long as the world endures. — Providence Journal. The Boston Globe tells the following as “ a true story”: “A minister, newly settled in one of the ‘ waste places,’ was walking in the village cemetery one day, when he saw one of his parishioners standing by the ‘family lot.’ ‘ Are these the graves of your children ?’ ‘Yes,’ said the man, looking about. ‘Here is Tom, there is Bill, this is Mary, that’s the baby,’ and then, pointing contentedly to a corner gay with flowers, ‘ there lays tlie old woman, all blowed out.’ ”

A Washington correspondent of the Boston Journal reports that a Government official, who has been at some pains to investigate the character of the claims upon which pensions are paid, gives it as his opinion that at least one-fourth of tlie pensions now paid are based upon false and fraudulent grounds. The amount thus wrongfully expended will reach nearly eight million dollars per annum. The cases will be carefully scrutinized and analyzed as rapidly as possible. The Quebec Chronicle says that a movement is on foot to effect a revival of the ship-building industry of that city. A cooperative association has been formed for the purpose with a proposed capital of $500,000 in SIOO shares, payable 2% per cent, per month; and the Chronicle understands that the intention of the company is to turn out next winter three ships of 1,250 tons each, which will either be offered for sale or sailed, at the company’s option. They recently had a very droll discussion in the French Academy in session on the dictionary. They were divided on the word republic. M, Mignet, M. de Broglie and M. Jules Favre were almost ready to come to blows. In the midst of the storm a member arose very calmly, and the Academy heard a voice it has never heard before, that of M. Ollivier, who never yet pronounced his initiatory discourse. He proposed a definition that was unanimously accepted. It was as follows: “ Republic, a state in which the rulers are chosen by election and in which power is not hereditary.” According to a statement in the Engineer a week’s work in Birmingham comprises, among its various results, the fabrication of 14,000,000 pens, 6,000 bedsteads, 7,000 guns, 300,000,000 cut nails, 100,000,000 buttons, 1,000 saddles, 5,000,000 copper or bronze coins, 20,000 pairs spectacles, six tons papier-mache wares, $150,000 worth of jewelry, 4,000 miles of iron and steel wire, ten tons of pins, five tons of hair-pins and hooks and eyes, 130,000 gross of wood screws, 500 tons of nuts and screw bolts and spikes, fifty tons of wrought-iron hinges, 350 miles length of wax for vestas, forty tons of refined metal, forty tons of German silver, 1,000 dozens of fenders, 3,500 bellows, 800 tons of brass and copper wares—these, with a multitude of other articles, being exported to almost all parts of- the globe.