Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 October 1875 — BREVITIES. [ARTICLE]

BREVITIES.

The cattle disease yields to cowrect treatment. Don Pedro, of Brazil, who is coming to visit us, owns the finest diamonds in the world. Indians are no respecters of color; they had just as soon take a blond scalp as a brunette. Mother Nature has spread the bed of the ocean with sheets of water. Damp sheets, eh? When a man winds up his clock he expects it to go, but it is different with business affairs. , _ “ He strained at a gnat and swallowed a calomel,” was little Johnny’s version of a recent text. Fast friends are good to have about when friends are needed, but they should not be too fast. A marriage-certificate is a noosepaper which almost every man subscribes for, sooner or later. No more ten-cent scrip. Secretary Bristow is sending out silver ten-cent pieces in their place. Indian real-estate motto: “If any commissioner attempts to beat down the price shoot him on the spot.” The fast time made by the new postal trains is accounted for by the fact that the wheels of the cars are not tired. The philosopher of the Lowell Journal says potatoes are so cheap this year it makes one feel mean to be caught eating one. When a man listens to you very attentively, either you are telling him something he knows or something he does not believe. The time is slowly, but surely, coming when the woman without will look with bitter envy upon the woman within a sealskin cloak. A Yank is going to lay car-tracks in St. Petersburg. That’s a blessed despotism, and there’ll be no crowding cars there, you may be certain. None of the new postal-cards have yet been issued, and no issues -will be made until the old ones on hand (about 1,000,000) are disposed of. The prisoners in the Nebraska State Penitentiary publish a newspaper. The round of the local reporter is said to be somewhat contracted. — : ——- The good do not die always early. There is Mrs. Finch, of Rutland, Vt., who lias had but one bonnet in twenty years, and never complained. President Garrett, of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, says when the winter comes the fast mail-trains will come to grief on cracked rails. Letter rip. It seems that undertakers are all in favor of cremation. Probably because they will urn so much more than by the present method of disposing of the dead. A church at Colchester, Conn., now uses a bass-drum to regulate the time of the singing, and the man who used to play the bass-viol looks on the innovation as a base violation of precedent. How many accidents might be averted did people generally understand that The Englishman was right when he said that the man who makes newspapers is an “ lied-hitter.” The railways in India seem to run to bridges. A single English firm has built no less than 10,000 iron bridges for the Bombay, Baroda and Central India and Indian railways. The last one constructed and sent out is to have an entire length of 9,088 feet. T ,.:- • A sea-gull of the largest size recently swooped down on a crab in Lake Pontcliartrain, imbedding the lower part of his bill in the crab’s back, but the crustacean seized and crushed the upper portion in his saving claws and a boatman rowed out and caught the crab and the bird.

When one makes a narrow escape it is usual to say that he saved himself “ by the skin of his teeth.” In the most splendid of all compositions (see Book of Job, chapter xix., verse 20), it is written: “My hone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth." Mrs. Simpson, the wife of a cashier at Bradford, in Yorkshire, Eng., has been sentenced by the borough magistrate to a month’s imprisonment for cruelty to her stepchildren. On one occasion one of the children, a girl nine or ten years of age, being afraid to go home, went to the cemetery and slept on her mother’s grave. An old man named William Yately has just died at the alms-house,, in Trenton, N. J., who had not tas(!% any kind of food for twenty-seven days before his death. During that time he subsisted entirely on small doses of whisky, given to him periodically. He had been an inmate of the institution for two years. TnE last words of a young Philadelphian, whose full soul loathed the obituary column, ere he went to meet his grandfather were: When ’Motions sore I bear no more And doctors do despair, Don’t let G. W. write me up At ninety cents a square. The French Court of Cassation has just given a decision of interest to gleaners. It is now decided as contrary to law for a farmer to turn sheep into his fields for two days after harvest, or to glean the fields himself or to sell the right, because ‘ the poor would thus be deprived of the benefit which humanity and law have reserved to the indigent.” The Berliner Centralbatt mentions that there are at the present time 168 cotton mills, with 2,059,350 spindles, in Switzerland, which are divided 1 amongst the cantons as follows: Zurich, 12 mills; Berne, 5; Luzerne, 2; Schweiz, 9; Glarus, 18; Zug, 4; Soleure, 1; Bale, 2; Schafihausen, 1: St. Gall, 1C; Grisons, 5; Aragon, 20; Thurgan, 6; Canton Yaud has 8 cotton mills. A professor of music at Trieste, M. Rota, has succeeded in teaching a numffer of deaf-mutes to sing. Impossible as this seems it is quite true, as a public exhibition in Paris, given by these deaf-mutes, proved. They not only sang in perfect time but preserved the pitch, which was conveyed to them by the teacher in some mysterious way. 1 . • There is a curious double oak tree in a garden in South Beaver, Pa., which begins at the root with one trunk. This divides into two about a foot above the surface of the earth, continues thus for ten feet, and then becomes united again. Each of the twin trunks, at the point of division, measures about a foot in diameter. The way to make a good dentifrice is to dissolve two ounces of borax in three pints of boiling water. Before quite cold add one tablespoonful of tincture of mvrrh and one tablespoonful of spirits of camphor. Bottle the mixture for use. Add one wineglassful of the solution to half a pint of tepid water and use it daily. It preserves and beautifies the teeth and arrests decay.— Excharge.

Hydrophobia communicated by a pasteboard dog is the latest medical novelty. Tyro months ago a mad dog was killed in a house after having bitten at nearly everything in the room. One of the things m which he buried his teeth was a little boy’s toy dog made of pasteboard. Subsequently a man used this pasteboard dog to stop the blood from a cut in his hand, and so the virus went into his wound and he died. There are now eighty American-made locomotives in Russia. They are coalburners and much larger and more powerful than the small wood-burning locomotives heretofore built in Russia or imported from Germany, France or Belgium. The American locomotives cost 25,000 silver rubles each, and the German locomotives 18,000 to 20,000 rubles, but the American locomotive is 50 per cent, more powerful than the German. We learn from our genial friend, Conductor 8. K. Blawson, of the Savannah & Charleston Railroad, that a day or two since the train coming to this city was stopped by a monkey while in rapid motion. It seems that the train was bowling along at the rafe of twenty-five miles an hour, when suddenly “ down brakes” were sounded, the engine bell ringing vigorously at the same time, and the locomotive came to a stop as the brakemen sprang to their posts. The conductor was rather mystified, and at once proceeded to investigate the matter. It was discovered that a monkey, which was confined in the baggage-car, had broken loose and was amusing himself swinging on the bellrope, and the engineer was thus signaled to stop. The explanation of the sudden stoppage occasioned fhuch ''-diversion anjong the passengers, and the monkey became quite a hero. —Savannah (Ga.) News. At one of the railroad depots the other day a lady walked up totheticket-window and smilingly said: “I know just how women are, and I don’t propose to bother anyone. Answer me a few questions, and I’ll sit down and say nothing to no one till train time. How far is it to Grand Rapids? What’s the fare? When does the train leave ? When do we arrive there ? When do they check baggage? Which track will the train start from? How will I get to Muskegon from Grand Rapids ? How far is it ? What’s the fare ? Do I change cars? Is there a palace coach on the train ? Shall I get a lay-over ticket ? Can I check my baggage clear through? Is there a conductor on this road named Smith ? Do you allow dogs in the passenger cars, and can a child ten years old go for nothing ?’ ’ Having been answered, she kept her promise to sit still, and the depot policeman never had the least bit of trouble in seeing her off. —Detroit Free Press.