Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 October 1875 — BREVITIES. [ARTICLE]

BREVITIES.

The leaves are taking their leadings. The epizootic has appeared .in Boston. Dress rehearsals Trying on new clothes. Charity is the locomotive of love under full motion. Manual labor for women—-Mending their husbands’ trousers. •» Economy may lead over a long road, but it ends up in a gold-mine. Brooms are being shipped in large numbers from California to Australia. No person is perfectly civilized who makes a trumpet of his nose in public. Many a haunted heart is hidden bbhind a diamond pin and a marble-front shirtbosom. A resident of Harrisburg, Pa., has a collection of 1,600 copper coins, no two of which are alike. A mild winter is predicted because Jack Frost has been sent to the Kentucky Penitentiary. A man in Tioga County, Pa., has raised two crops of potatoes on the same piece of ground this season. An exchange philosophically remarks that the most eloquent man is the man who means what he says. The average human will f chase a dozen miles to discover a bad deed, and not raise his eyes to see a good act. A Hibernian horticulturist exemplifies! the multiplying powers of nature by pointing out how pears grow into threes. A French priest has refused 2,000,000 francs bequeathed to him by his brother because the brother had led a wicked life. Kerosene, buzz-saws, guns and threshing-machines are all pulling together to make this a busy world —for the Coroner.

“ Mush and milk festivals” and “ applebutter parties” are social events frequently chronicled of late in Pennsylvania papers. Isn’t it strange that while Nature clothes the trees with thick foliage in the summer she makes them go bare in the winter. If carpet-tacks were not so much given to the acrobatic feat of standing on their heads they would save a great deal of pain in this world ■ ' Figaro reports that a distinguished engineer believes that the tunnel between France and England can be completed for $30,000,000. Maine actually imports lumber for building purposes, that is, the better grades of pine, which are received from Michigan by rail. , A Pennsylvanian, to prove that potatobugs are not poisonous, swallowed a handful of them. The last articles he vomited up were his socks. Every young woman contemplating marriage should studiously prepare herself for that condition by learning how to split kindling-wood. A farmer at Sheffield, England, was fined £2O for failing to inform the authorities that the foot-and-mouth disease existed among his stock. There are in the United States seventeen establishments where locomotives are built,' thirty-six car--wtreel--manufactories" and ninety-two car-shops. In the fall-a livelier color comes the bonnettop above; In the fall a young gal’s fancy turns to strings that match her glove. —Boston Traveller. The people of the Colorado Valley in Texas are going largely into the sugargrowing business. Land and climate are both adapted to the purpose. The Herald of Health announces the remarkable’ scientific discovery that “ freckles indicate a defect in digestion,” which is really r something new under the sun.

The Detroit Free Press has heard that a certain woman is writing a lecture on “ Woman’s Duties,” and cruelly suggests that her first duty is to burn the manuscript. A man can see more bad things in a circle of humans in a minute, after he has been kicked out of it, thak he could have seen in a year had he been permitted to remain. Twenty-five and in some cases 50 per cent, has been taken oil' from the price of rents in New York city and suburbs, and yet there are hundreds of tenements standing idle. Matter-of-fact item from Springfield (Mass.) Republican : “ Over 30,000 boxes of new German cologne have been shipped from a factory at New Canaan, Conn., since July 20.” A Georgian local editor is taken across the knee of the Columbus Enquirer for rushing into print about the “extreme felicity” with which he sampled “ some sorghum sirup.” A man can carry SSOO in his vestpocket, but a woman needs a morocco portemonnaie, as large as your fist and too heavy to be carried in a pocket, to escort a fifty-cent scrip. A “moose trot” came off at Ottawa, Ont., the other day. The animal is said to be perfectly domesticated, exceedingly kind and docile, and one of the squarest trotters in the world. The Hartford Times says tlie Connecticut apple crop will not be over one-tenth of the abundant total of last year; and the same thing is true, it believes, of Massachusetts and Vermont. Mr. Gladstone still indulges in his favorite exercise of felling trees. He goes to work in true woodman fashion, with his braces thrown off behind him and his shirt-collar unfastened The wedding season is now fairly open, with the supply of brides fully equal to the demand; bridegrooms shaky, with a disposition on the part of maternal operators to bull the market. The Paterson (N. J.) Guardian says that the outlook for the locomotive works of that city was never darker than at present. There is scarcely any prospect of work for the coming winter. There is nothing more dangerous than . telling moral truths; it is like handling a misty pistol—you never can tell which of your friends it will hit, after it has glanced off yourself. An Arab chief at the Marseilles opera especially admired the trombone player, expressing his wonder “to see that Christian swallow so much brass. I cannot yet comprehend where he puts it.” The Lynchburg Republican notes signs of business revival in Virginia inconsequence of the belief that the crops ot corn aqd tobacco are tlie most bountiful that have been produced in the State for a number of years. Mibb Sophia Arms, of Springfield, Mass., in a somnambulistic freak cut all the hair from her head one night recently. To avoid similar mistakes, young ladies, should take off their ringlets and frizzes obefore going to sleep. Miss Annie Wyatt, of Shady Dale,

Jasper CoHinty, has a wonderful pet pigeon, which alights on her piano while she is playing and goes through the evolutions of a waltz with remarkable ease and grace.— -Savannah (Ga.) News. Westervelt wept when they pronounced him guilty, and poor Mr. Ross wept that the whereabouts of his little boy had not been revealed. Surely the innocent and guilty of this world are ever weeping together. A Nebraska paper credits Byron with having written “ There’s a divinity which shapes our ends, tojigh hew them as we may.” But we still rough-hews to believe that they were penned by any-one but Shakespeare.-— Chicago Times. Jn the abbey of Grotta-Ferrati, near Frascati, Italy, a palimpsest has just been discovered which contains, under the Gospels, an invaluable manuscript, of Strabo that supplies a large number of deficiencies found in all previous manuscripts of the geography. Two expeditions from London to New Guinea are now being projected. One of them contemplates the establishment of a settlement on the eastern coast of the island. It is generally believed that the unclaimed portion of the island will shortly be annexed, to the British Empire. If our horses are to have the epizooty this season, now is a good time for Mr. Keeley to trot out that motor of his. By the way, those thirty days, the expiration of which was to see a train of cars drawn from Philadelphia to New York by the mysterious power, have passed, and twice thirty days back of them. A St. Louis reporter was sent (into the country to gather crop statistics. About dusk he reached a spot where the horsepower of a threshing-machine had been at work, and he patiently followed the track nearly all night. When waked up from a slumber into which he had fallen exhausted, he said that it was a dreadful long distance between houses. In Kansas City, Mo., a few days ago, an Irishman named Pat Whilen saved the life of an old man, snatching him from before a locomotive which would have run over him. Pat was paid for thus whilin’ away his time by the magnificent gift of two dollars from the old man’s son, who said he wouldn’t have had the old fellow killed just then for twice the money—he couldn’t spare time for the funeral. A German paper expresses uneasiness at the decreasing population of Prussia proper. Between 1861 and 1864 there was an increase of 8,400, but between 1864 and 1873 there was a decrease of 12,922, and between 1867 and 1871 one of 56,440. Allowing for the loss of life in the last two wars and for the Prussian soldiers quartered in France at the time of the census, the loss of population in ten years amounts to 52,200. A remarkable water-proof has been invented in Paris. It is of silk and may be folded almost as small as a handkerchief. Wheß unfolded it offers an ingenious series of pockets of different shapes, made to cover the fan and other trifles which are essentials to the feminine toilet. The hood can be raised over the head by means of a spring so constructed as to prevent the hood from resting on the bonnet and- Tftussing the- -flowers or other ornaments. No longer will the crafty resident of Troy, N. Y., order the succulent oyster stewed, nor roasted, nor fried; nor will he hereafter indulge in the steaming fragrance of the savory oyster-pie; nor yet in the mysterious compound of escaloped oysters will he ever indulge. But none the less will be the consumption of the luscious bivalve, though it will be taken only on the half-shell. A strictly truth ful newspaper relates that a pearl worth $l5O was found in a Troy oyster served up raw, while another pearl worth S4OO was found ruined by having been stewed. And the rush for raw oysters on the half-shell in Troy is becoming a mania among all classes A sad story comes from France. During the war with Germany a fanner named Roullon, living at Baume-le-Rollande, was brutally shot down by the Germans in the presence of his wife and children. The war over, the widow sold the ruins of her farm and went to Paris, where she worked for the support of her family. At length these were old enough to be placed out at service. But the poor woman could never forget the terrible loss of her husband and the ruin of her family, and the other day she committed suicide by inhaling the fumes of a charcoal fire.’ On the table was found the following letter: “The remembrance of the past~is too much for me; I cannot support it. Now that my children are old enough to earn their own living I can die in peace and join my dear husband. Adieu!”

It seems impossible for European manufacturers of Cashmere shawls to attain to the perfection of the Oriental article, nor is this to be wondered at when the fact is considered that in the production of the richest specimens of the latter scarcely a quarter of an inch is completed by three persons in one day. Sometimes, however, in order to hasten the process, a shawl is made in separate pieces at different looms and the pieces are afterwartl sewed together, this being done with such marvelous dexterity as almost to defy detection. The shawls are made both long and square, the former generally measuring four and one-half feet wide and twelve and one-half feet long, and the latter five and one-fourth to six feet square. It is well known they are exquisitely soft and warm, surpassing in these respects every other clothing material. In some parts of Asia these shawls are worn in precisely the condition in which they come from the loom, but all those destined for India are carefully washed and packed.— N. Y. Sun. A method of bronzing cast-iron, recently introduced in Paris, is said to render the copper so thoroughly adherent to the iron that there is nothing required between tlie two metals, and they are so completely united that, if an accident happens, the cast-iron will sometimes scale off with tlie copper; it is said, moreover, that the deposit of copper is perfectly even, n<K thicker on salient parts than in hollows or .Under cuttings. Mention is made of a number ot huge statues having been covered with copper by this method, and, among other works, two bulls, larger than nature, presenting each a surface of at least 132 square feet, and on vases, candelabra and decorative castings of every kind—all with invariable success—and the copper deposited on the works is never less than 1-100 of an inch in thickness. It is stated that the cost of these works is not more than doubled by this valuable application, and the copper, when carefully treated by a French bronzist, presents an appearance very little inferior to genuine bronze. This process is also found peculiarly adapted to the tinning of copper or cast-iron vessels, the adherenCeof the two metals being complete, and the coating of tin may be of any desirable thickness; the articles are simply first scoured, and then those to be

coppered are dipped into a bath of melted chloride or fluoride of copper and cryolite, to which chloride of barium is added. —lndustrial Exchange.