Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 July 1876 — PERSONAL AND LITERARY. [ARTICLE]

PERSONAL AND LITERARY.

~Mr»- A. T. Stewart is seventy-two years (if age. New York Commercial Advcr- • liter calls Sergeant Bates an old Roamin’ soldier. . # „ is the name of one of the chieftains of the Osage Nation of Indiaw.. dA' —Maggie Mitchell, It is said, will retire from the stage at the cpd of this year on account of finpaiml health. r-In England they drtn’t say “ Forger Winslow,” as we do. They insist upon calling him “fiie Rev. E. D.” —“ GaW Hamilton” is rather short and dumpy in figure. Her face 1* not handsome; but she Ut , one of tba spiciest and most entertaining ladies in Washington. —George Law, the wealthy New York banker, is nearly sixty years of age and weighs 800 pounds, but » tender-hearted and sheds tears when speaking of his mother. —.Hie mediate cause of Commodore Vanderbilt’s illness is said to be excessive smokihg. It is a pitiful thing to see a young man of eighty years thus broken down by the indulgence of a pernicious habit.— Detroit fret I*reu. —Ax-Handle” Smith, a famous agitator among the workmen of New York, died at Bellevue Hospital a few days ago. He earned his living by making handles for «d2es, mallets and other ship-carpen-ters’ tools; and it was among ship-carpen-ters that his influence was most fe t. He was scrupulously honest, pious, a temperance advocate, a liberal politician, and a small patterned philosopher. It is scarcely necessary to add that he died in abject poverty. His age was seventy-three years. —Mr. John Neal, the Maine author who died recently was not) a friend of classical English. Writing in 1828 he said: “I do not pretend to write English; that is, Ido not pretend towritewhatthe English themselves call Englishr-I do not, and L hopc I* never shall, write wbat is now worshiped under the name of classical English. It is no natural language—it never was—it never will be spoken alive on this earth, and therefore ought never to be written. We have dead languages enough now, but the deadest language that I ever met with or heard of was that in use among the writers of Queen Anne’s day.” —A stickler for correct orthography writes as follows to the Pottsviile (Pa.) Miner: “I red anartickle on spelling lately, and found sum kurius things which mite bear reprinting,, and which mite interest yure readers. There wuz a time when people rrte the word ‘ music* musicke and musick; but kustom has drqped the ‘k’ from, all words but words ov one syllable. Now, Y did our lexicografers not drop the ‘k’ in such words too ? It wood be shorter and easier to write, ‘ Die gave Jac a kic and a noc on the bac with a thic stic.’ And Y do the words convey and inveigh, deceit and receipt, not terminate with more uniformity ? It wuz such words that diskuraged yure correspondent so much that he never learned to spell korrectly, as U may C in this artickle.”