Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 October 1875 — VARIETY AND HUHOR. [ARTICLE]

VARIETY AND HUHOR.

—New Jersey invests $2,000,000 per annum in cranberry culture. —Rush County, Tex., has the only chestnut tree in the State. —There is a piece of soap in Albany supposed to be 100 years old. —Several Atlantic cities are trying to put down the fiddling, harping and begging nuisance. —The Dalmatians in San Francisco are raising money to send to the rts(jef of the Herzegovinian sufferers. —lt is said that in each of the forty-five tobacco factories of Richmond are organized bands of colored vocalists. —Fall River operatives who have been left out of work are frequently found as stowaways on European steamers. —Arsenic-eating is universal among the Styrians, who believe that it is conducive to strength and the attainment of old age. —Those who doubt the utility of female colleges will be silenced on learning that 1,300 letters were mailed from Vassar College recently. —The tongue of* a horse became paralyzed in Oneida Valley, N. Y., lately. Being unable to take food or water he died. A very unusual case. —A French widower says that when a Frenchman loses his wife it is his first duty to cry over his loss, and then it becomes a habit and finally a pleasure, —A man who bought a chest of tea in Binghamton, N. Y., found in it a stone weighing twelve pounds—a sort of thing neither to cheer nor to inebri—Gen. Jefl(. Thompson is credited with the prediction Thar by Jan. 1 the Mississippi will have cut a new channel near Vicksburg, leaving that place two miles inland. —A small island has within the past twelve months formed in the Delaware River, opposite Borclentown. Vegetation has taken hold upon it and it is frequented by birds. —No news having been received for some time from Lieut. Cameron, of the African research expedition, the Royal Geographical Society of England, it is stated, have grown uneasy as to his safety. —The Twelfth Maid of Oxford died of a piece of wire about six inches long,such as is used in baling hay, and which, as a

post-mortem showed, had penetrated some distance into the substance of the heart. —Respect old age. If you have a maiden aunt thirty-three years old, and she is passing herself off as a girl of twenty, there is no excuse for you to expose her. The more you respect her age and keep still about it the more she will respect you.— Taunton (Mats.) Gazette. —An amateur sportsman in the Catskill regions was understood to have shot a* bear the other day, and the telegraph offices within 100 miles of the neighborhood were paid to send the news to the gentldmftn’s friends in town. It was subsequently ascertained that the bear was a cow. —Equestrian precocity is encouraged in Kansas. At the Leavenworth County Fair the premium of a saddle and bridle was bestowed upon “ the best boy rider under seven years of age.” The young Alexander thus bestriding the Kansas Bucephalus will grow to be a centaur in time. — N. Y. Tribune. —Said a wife to her husband: “ How is it that you can’t come home nights in some sort of season?” The gentle retort was: “You got me in the way of it. Before we were married you used to throw your arms about my neck at three o’clock and say: 4 Don’t go, darling, it is early yet,’ but now if I happen to stay out till two it is a terrible affair.” —The last Legislature of Nevada placed a price of three dollars on the scalps of coyotes, designing to exterminate them because they killed the\rabbits. The latter have now become so numerous in some sections of the State that the farmers propose to urge upon the next Legislature to change the statute —to place a small premium upon the scalps of rabbits, and let the coyotes alone. —Nothing tends more thoroughly to shatter one’s confidence in outward appearances than to see a young man, clad in the height of fashion, saunter into a crowded restaurant, pull off hfs kids languidly, seat himself at a table, consult the bill of fare and then immediately afterward to hear the waiter’s voice ringing out the magic words: “ One plate of hash and a glass of water. — New York -Commercial Advertiser.

—A correspondent of the Jewish messenger says: The small boy sharpened his pencil and wrote the adventures of the day. The diary was passed around, and we admired the graphic description of sea life, couched in sentences like these: “June 13th, Very Ruff. June 14th, Ruffer to-day. June 16th, To-day we went Olnots. It is still very ruff. J une 17th, There were not many at dinner to-day, and I liked the plums. June 19th, I didn’t keep a diary yesterday. Ma said it was the plums. 94 nots to-day.” —All children can learn to sing if they commence in season. In Germany every child is taught to use its voice while Voung. In their schools all join in singing as a regular exercise as much as they attend to the study of geography; and in their churches singing is not confined to the choir, who sit apart from the others, perhaps in one corner of the house, but there is a vast tide of incense going forth to God from every heart that can give utterance to this language from the soul. In addition to the delightful influence music has upon the character it hfcs also a marked influence in suppressing pulmonary complaints. Dr. Rush used to flay that the reason why the Germans seldom die of consumption was that they were always singing. —American Magazine. —Alaska is not a Territory to which the emigrant has been powerfully attracted hitherto. Its settlement has seemed likely to be postponed until that remote time when the inhabitants of all the rest of the country should begin to feel uncomfortably crowded. If, however, anything can turn a steady current of travel toward a new land it is the discovery of gold therein. Report of such a discovery in Alaska has recently been made. It needs confirmation, it i? true, but that is all that is necessary to attract adventurers in greater numbers than could the most salubrious climate or a tropically rich soil. Golddigging is the least profitable of all digging—to the diggers; but that lesson is never learned by those persons who suffer most from ignorance of it.— N. Y. Evening Post.