Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 January 1876 — BREVITIES. [ARTICLE]

BREVITIES.

American oysters are exported to England. The New York Sun wants a Governor who will write a .niessage only six inches long. ■ The more a man or woman knows the less he gossips about neighbors, Culture kills gab. Heavy strata of anthracite coal have been discovered in the Apennines, near Genoa. . . A Virginian goes to school to his wife, and she makes him stay after school when he’s unruly. Profanity and plug tobacco are the crutches on which many a boy walks to a loafer’s grave. The Alla California wants every man who wears a diamond on his shirt front arrested on suspicion. Centennial girls that will be in demand this year—those with red cheeks, white skin and blue eyes. “Why, Mary Ann, what in the world arfe you doing with the scissors ?” “ Shure yez tould me to scallop the oysters." According to recent statements ten steamers and 1,500 lives have been lost on the Pacific coast within the past few years. Why is it that butchers and grocers will insist on putting “ Happy New Year” at the foot of an outrageously big bill? Columbus discovered America, but when a boy he had as much difficulty in seeing an empty wood-box or water-~pail as any other boy. ,1 A contemporary gravely asserts that the entrance of the centennial year was more demonstratively, celebrated than any of its “predecessors.” Men of genius always get into debt, but every man who fails to pay his board-bill is not necessarily a genius. He is another kind of genius—a deceased vegetable. “ bo you wouldn’t take me to be twenty?” said a rich heiress to an Irish gentleman, while dancing the polka. “ What would you take me for, then?” “ For better or worse,” replied the son of the Emerald Isle. A dandy, getting measured for a pair of riding-boots, observed: “Make them cover the calf.” “Heavens,” exclaimed the shoemaker, astounded, surveying his customer: “I have not got leathe’’ enough.” ? The shortest will on record reads: “ San Francisco, Oct. 25, 1875. All the property that I have belongs to my wife, Anna Scherp. This is my will. Franz Scherp. Witnesses: Peter Kerna, Joh. Orths, T. B. Moorbrick.” The California wool clip of 1876 is estimated at 50,000 pounds; with good seasons in two years it will amount to 60,000,000 pounds annually, and in three years to 75,000,000. California is now the first wool-growing State in the Union. Prof. Tice seems suddenly to have lost his influence on the weather, as all his predictions for the winter have failed. After all we shall have to fall back on the old-fashioned almanac weather-tables for anything approaching correct prophecies. —Detroit Free Press. A young British officer having got drunk and behaved disgracefully, the Duke of Cambridge, Commander-in-Chief, has sentenced him to wear his uniform -constantly for one year. The British officers affect never to wear their uniform except when on duty. There is no better, no safer way, no easier way, no surer way of saving children from the debasing influences of the street, from corrupting association and from the acquisition of vicious ahd hurtful practices, than to make home attractive— W. W. Hall.

Lumbermen in Ottawa, Canada, are said to be sending up lots of teams to the woods for the winter at seventy-five cents to one dollar a day. Choppers are crowding to the offices for work and are taking whatever is offered. Wages are not within 50 per cent, of what they were last year. Two of our School started out the other day to pay a visit to one of the schools. On entering the yard they saw a little boy playing around whose face, hands and clothes were not quitfi as clean as they might have been. One of the Commissionerscalledhi nr up and told him he had better go home and get his mother to clean him up a little and make him appear more decent. On the boy approaching the speaker the other Commissioner was heard to exclaim: “Why, dash it all! that’s my boy!”— Rochester (N. Y.) Union. M. Buffet has addressed a circular to the Prefects throughout France, regulating the destruction of wolves, which are, it appears, making themselves more than ordinarily disagreeable in certain districts. In one.place, out of a flock or 397 sheep seventy, two were* found dead and twenty-eight had disappeared. In the absence of the officer specially charged with the extermination of wolves and known as the Lieut, de Louveterie, M. Buffet recommends that the gendarmes should be intrusted with the arrangements for battues. A Louisville drummer stopped not long since at one of our Green River hotels, and the next morning a chambermaid came in to arrange his room. Be approached her, and, gently putting his arm around her waist, said: “You are my darling,” and then stole a kiss from her red, pouting lips. What did she do? Why, she seized the foot-tub where he had just washed his feet, and bathed his head with the contents; then she shampooed his hair with the coal-grabs; perfumed him with the water in the slop-bucket; washed his hair and whiskers with the blacking-brush; rubbed him down with a brush that had been used the day before in painting the hearth, and knocked the dust out of his clothes with a poker. Then doubling up her fistsL and shaking them at him she said: “This (the right one) is certain death, but as l’ra not the foolkiller I’ll not use that on you; this (the left one) is six months in the hospital.” Then she hit him a blow that sent him through the window. 1 He alighted on the roof of a shed-room, and rolled off into a pig sty in the back yard. This disturbed the big dog, and his dander “ riz,” and he fastened on to that drummer quick, which brought him to a halt, and the servants hastened to his relief. He was taken to jail as a supposed insane tramp or showman, and the local paper in its next issue gave a long account of the mysterious disappearance of a Louisville drummer from the House, who left without taking his baggage or paying his hotel bill.— Hartford (Ay.) Herald.