Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 January 1876 — VARIETY AND HUMOR. [ARTICLE]

VARIETY AND HUMOR.

—Parties of miners are said to be leaving Cheyenne for the Black Hills almost daily. —Helmbold is becoming a sort of lunatic asylum jack-in-the-box. They have him strait-jacketed again in Pennsylvania. —Forty-five mutes from the Maryland Asylum spent Christmas at Baltimore among their friends. They passed their holiday very quietly. —A Tennessee court has just decided that a teacher has the same right to enforce obedience from a child that a parent has, and can therefore inflict corporal punishment when necessary. —A man in South Hadley, Mass., who has just got out of a lawsun, wants to obtain a large framed picture of a cow, with one client at the head and the other at the tail, pulling, and the lawyers meanwhile quietly milking. —The antipathy of the public to gas companies is the same all over the world. Individuals are so unreasonable. Here's a Springfield (Mass.) man now contesting a gas bill of eighteen dollars, for no better reason than that there are no burners in his house. —Oomplaint has been made against several milkmen in Virginia City, because an occasional crawfish has been found in the bottom of milk pitchers. Do tlie Oomstockcrs expect the dairymen to furnish them trout and salmon? — tian Brandecn Bulletin. —Prof. Doremus having demonstrated the fact that an average-sized squash can lift 200 pounds, there no longer remains ■any mystery attached to the wearing of tremendous stovepipe hats by slim young men in their teens and standing collars. Prof. Doremus is a public benefactor. —People who use hired pianos in the •city of New York are musing over the late decision of Judge Daly, inasmuch as it notifies those w-ho hire such musicboxes that thq instrument can be seized for their debts. The dealers who do a large business in hiring out pianos are greatly disturbed by the decision. —Ladies (says a fashion writer), you may friz your hair, do it up high, let it down low, have it hanging on your backs, “scrambled” over your foreheads, “ banged” into your eyes, puffed up at the sides, w orn waterfall style, tied up in a dolghnut, or any other way you may please, and it will be all right—for fdshion says so. —There will be four eclipses the coming year—two of the sun and two of the moan. Only two of them w ill be visible in this country, namely, a partial eclipse of the moon at midnight, March 9, and an annular eclipse of the sun March 25. Sept. 18 a total eclipse of the sun will be visible in Australia and the Southern Pacific region. —Kate Coffin, of Newburyport, Mass., was a belle in her youth and a pauper in her old age. She found herself in middle life in destitute circumstances, and utterly refused to do anything for her own support. She said she could never forget that she was born a lady. A few days ago she died, aged eighty-three, and was buried by the town. —The other day a Detroiter walked up to a crowd of boot-blacks always hanging around the Postoffice, and, pointing to the largest boy, he asked: “Bub, can you tell me the*meaning of the word absquatulate?’’ “No, sir,” promptly replied the boy; “ I blacks butes and brings up coal, and I don’t know anything about drug-store words.” —He sat in a railway car. His head was thickly covered with a mass of red hair. Behind him in a seat sat a man with hardly any hair on his head. He said to him: “I guess you wasn’t around when they dealt out hair.” “ Oh, yes, I was," replied bald-head, “ but they offered me a lot of red hair, and I told them to throw it into the ash-bin.”

—A Circassian girl in Reading, Pa., shows a pair of stockings that she says she made entirely out of her own hair. They are thick, heavy and soft and seem to be of pure hair. ’ The upper edges are secured with scarlet worsted work. She says her hair grows to a great length and that she is compelled to have it cut. The stockings were knit while she was on exhibition at Barnum's Museum. —Mr. Israel Fegely, of Longswatnp Township, Berks County, Pa., has three frogs in his house, which he has tamed and made household pets of. They have taken up their abode among a number of w indow plants, where they sleep at night and feed upon the aphides, plant-lice, and other insects injurious to plants. They have become greatly attached to their new ■home and hop from one room to the other. —Bernard Eith, of Cincinnati, shot himself through the heart because he was 'dunned for twenty-four dollars. After all, happiness and misery are relative terms, and debts, upon which happiness and misery so largely depend, are philosophical abstractions. Bernard Eith, who could not bear to owe twenty-four dollars, .shotld have lived in the age of chivalry, when nobody would have lent him the money. —Mr. Plimsoll has secured immortality already, whether he ever has a monument or not. A short yellow band," painted amidships, about six inches below that which has always been regarded as the ship's water-line, which is being put upon British vessels by order of the Board of Admiralty, is called by the sailors ■“ Plimsoll’s mark.” It has made a considerable difference ia the amount of cargo which it will be lawful for the ship to •carry. —There is a girt in Hoboken, N. J., sensible in other respects, who has a mon■omania that she is going to be married •She imposes upon ner parents or relatives with a sweet and romantic narrative, gets them to fix up her trousseau and wedding feast and discovers at the last moment that the bridegroom is not forthcoming. Now the young men of Hoboken are ungallant brutes to let the performance halt for lack of so trifling a piece of stage property as a bridegroom. —An eight-year-old boy in the North End sent the following" rather warm epistle to one of his little playmates: “ Dear Minnie i love the i ador you don’t show this to; your mother. If I don’t love Che may the lions tear my heart out may i bib thrown from a third story window if i -don’t love you may i be torn in 3 halls by wild beests but i do. Answer this. •Get good paper and leave a sheet for .me you are a pretty girl aud I’ll have you. Charley.”— hulianapolia Herald. —We notice that there is a determined on foot to banish the frying-pan from our female colleges. This is another of the innovations of the age the policy of which may be looked upon as extremely -doubtful. In our young days the old ' woman used to regard the flat side of a frying-pan as one of her moat potent arguments in keeping the rising youth in the straight and narrow path, and it didn’t

leave half so many marks as a broiler, neither.— Preu. —The Chester (Pa.) News of a recent date relates this story: “ Edward Kline, oi this city, saw an owl siding on a tree on Third street, near Franklin. The owl was about 150 yards from him, and he ’marked to others who saw the bird that he could throw a stone from w here he stood and hit It. The others doubted his ability to do so, but he soon convinced them of the error of their judgment. Selecting a stone Mr. Kline threw it at the owj and brought down his bird, killing it instantly. He hit it fair on the head.” —Mr. Donald G. Mitchell had an amusing encounter with a snobbish Yale stu-dent-recently. A correspondent of the Springfield Z’epuMfr/i/i gives it as follows: “ A Yale student, riding out to call lately on the charming bevy of daughters that cheer the heart and home of the’ farmer of Edgewood, found a man dressed in rough clothes at work near the entrance of the place. ‘ Here, old fellow,hold my horse,’ cried Yalenslan. ‘Are the ladies at home?’ said he, as the person addressed teok hold of the animal, as the rider dismounted. *'No, sir; you will not find them at home,’ said the supposed gardener. * Wei 1, then, here’s a dime for you,’ said Yalensian, remounting. The money was declined, and the student rode away utterly ignorant of the reason why he did not find the ladies in, which he afterward suspected when he learned that his conversation had been with the author-farmer himself.”