Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 November 1875 — Augustus the [ARTICLE]

Augustus the

Wayland Hoyt writestorthe Boston Journal: In the beginning of the eighteenth century there reigned at Dresden huge profligate called Augustus the" Strong. He seemed to think that the people were but common food for Kings. His oppression and rapacity knew no bounds. He was called the Splendid as well as the Strong. He would outshine Solomon. It is stated as veritable history that he left behind him 352 children. His magnificence was wanton. A gvpsv party at Muhlberg cost $6,000,000. He built the Japan Palace for one of his mistresses, the floors of which were covered with carpets of the rarest feathers. He sold a regiment of a thousand men, with horses and harness and arms, for a few choice vases of curious fashion. His private treasury—the celebrated greeh vaults of his palace—was crowded with precious stones and gold, wrought into grotesque figures; with ostrichs’ eggs decked out with blazing magnificence into fantastic shapes; with musical clocks and hundreds of other toys, collected at untold expense. I never saw diamonds until I saw them in those same green vaults. They seemed as plentiful

as the pebbles in the streets. There is a bronze room and an ivory room and a mosaic room, and a gold and silver room, and a room of precious stones and a regalia room, each thronged with various ornaments and objects worth millions, but as useless, most of them, as children’s playthings. There are caricatures formed of enormous pearls. There is the throne and court of the Grand Mogul, Areng Zeb, consisting of the monarch" himself "on a golden throne, surrounded by his guards and courtiers—altogether 132 figures—in gold and enamel. There is precious dric-a-brac enough to stock a dozen palaces to repletion. I wearied of it utterly before I had passed a fourth of the distance through the rooms. The larger share of this useless magnificence was gathered through the extortion of this profligate Augustus. But even he managed to do a noble and useful thing. Tlie formation of the Dresden Gallery of Pictures is largely owing to him. It you cannot with historical verity say the formation, at least the great extent of it is his work. In this gallery are collected 2,400 pictures, many of them the finest masterpieces.

The Indians in parts of Nevada are busy gathering pine-nuts A white man qould not -gather a sack full ii L a months but the average squaw will gather over 100 pounds a week. The cone, which contains the nut, is pulled from the tree and roasted, the turpentine beingsufflcient to burn them. This opens the layers, and die nuts are shaken out. The Indians used to exchange them tor their weight in flour, but the increased demand has considerably raised the price. They were about to bury a woman at Bradford, Mass., the other clay, but were compelled to postpone the funeral indefi. nitely to gratifv a sudden whim of the corpse, who asked to be turned on her side. The ladies present were justlv indignant at such conduct on the part of the deceased, and went home declaring that, if she was going to interrupttheir pleasure in that way, she might have her next funeral all to herself—Daniury Neum. Kansas has almost a monopoly of the cultivation of tlie castor-bean. A castor aril factory has been started at Fort Scott.