Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 July 1876 — PERSONAL AND LITERARY. [ARTICLE]

PERSONAL AND LITERARY.

—Yale College has made Gen. Sherman a Doctor of Laws. —Appletone' Journal announces that Prof. Huxley will visit this country inAugust. —The London Observer remarks that Andrew Lincoln wasn’t very much known when he was selected for the Presidency in 1860. —Pierrepont Edwards, British Consul at New York, is a match for Edwards Pierrenont, American Minister at St. James, so far as names are concerned. —Gen. Custer was thirty-seven years of age, a graduate of West Point Military Academy, and began his active service as a Second Lieutenant of cavalry in 1861. He served through the entire war in various capacities, and rose to the rank of Major-General in the volunteer service. He was’also brevetted Major-General in the regular army, but his legitimate rank in the service was that of a LieutenantColonel of cavalry. —’Die origin of words is always attractive study, but sometimes there is more imagination than fact in the discoveries made. Among the latest origins discussed is that of the noun “derrick,” meaning the lifting apparatus eveiywhere used. The word is said to have come from one Derrick, in England, who was hangman. The Puritans brought the word to this country; and, while the executioner is quite forgotten, his name lives, like that of M. Guillotin, in the machine. “ Derrick” appears only in American dictionaries. —When Dom Pedro was in Newport he requested the blind mute, Oliver Caswell, of Conanicut Island, to visit him, which he did. Mr. Caswell, who is a brother of the New York druggist of that name, was bom deaf, dumb and blind, but, like Laura Bridgman, his other faculties have been educated to a marvelous degree and he can earn his own living. He does his share of the labor of the household, and is quick to understand information of any kind if it is conveyed to him by touch. Dom Pedro was greatly interested in him, and at parting filled one of the beautiful little baskets which Mr. Caswell had brought as a specimen of his handiwork, with gold. —The Indianapolis Journal makes an amusing mistake in saying that William Cullen Bryant has been elected President of Williams College, to succeed Dr. Hopkins. Dr. Hopkins was succeeded in 1872 by P. A. Chadboume, who is still President of the college, and hopes to remain so for many years to come. Mr. Bryant has been elected President of the Society of Alumni. By the way, Williams College is disposed to make an unnecessary fuss about Mr. Bryant, cackling whenever his name is mentioned, like a hen with one chick, to emphasize the important fact of her maternity. Inasmuch as Mr. Bryant left the College in his Sophomore year, and is now only an honorary alumnus, there is something unseemly in the annual fetich-worship at Williamstown of which he is the object. He has alwas accepted the homage of the college people with a certain condescension, and as if it more than half bored him. — Chicago Tribune.