Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 April 1877 — Page 2

The Rensselaer Union. . . W” •'! ■ —r ■ RXNBBELAER, . « INDIANA.

EPITOME OF THE WEEK.

CWMMT MUASMPHS. 'Walter Bagehot, the distinguished En«U* writer w ao-omy, fodaU. Cbl. Mitchell, an American officer of tea Kgyptiaa ataff, is a prisoner in Abyssinia. Mbs Alta M. Hulett, the well-known Ckirefo woman lawyer, died at Ban Diego, OaL, aatheMth. _____ Callaghan & Lynch, heavy stock broken in Ban Ftancisno, have failed, with liabilities naohing •900,000. The trial of Peter B. bwceney. the ** brains" of the New York Tweed Hing, has been fixed for the fixat Monday in June » The Indianapolis Typograpnical Union No. 1 recently pawed a resolution to disband aad return its charter to the National Union. • The late John D. Lee, the Mormon reneatly executed for “ participetion in theMountJ ainWeadnvu mama raw," left eighteen widows and aixty-foar children. The Rhode Island House of Representatives have defeated the proposition to amend the Constitution so as to allow women to vote when taxed, by a vote of 26 to "ZII The New England Glass Company, ot East Cambridge, Mate., has decided to wind up its bnsintwa, being unable to compete with Southern and Western concerns. A resolution has passed the Massachusetts State Senate submitting to the people a ' proposed amendment to the Constitution giving to women the right to vote stall elections. The Kentucky Cash Distribution Company, a lottery concern, has lately filed a petition in bankruptcy. One drawing has taken place and another baa been extensively advertised. ___ The Secretary of the Treasury has issued the forty-fourth call far the redemption of MObonda The call is for •10,000,000, and the internet and principal will be due aad payable on the 27th of June. The fast-mail train from Scotland, known as the “ Flying Scotchman,” ran off the tack at Morpeth, England, on the 24th. The train was thoroughly wrecked, and five persons killed and many wounded. An Amsterdam banker recently offered Russia a loan of 25,000,000 roubles, at eight per cent, but the negotiation fell through because the hanker insisted on disarmament and an engagement to raise no other loan for five years.

A London correspondent of the Edin* burgh Scotsmen aaya Mr. Eugeae Schuyler, United States Canaul-Oeneml at Constantinople, fa in trouble with hie Government inconsequence of his published communications in reference to Turkish outrages. The Pennsylvania Legislature has elected Cameron to the United States Senate, to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Simon Cameron, his father. The vete in joint convention stood: Cameron, 147; Dill (Dem.), 92; scattering, 8. Regulations have been issued by the United States Treasury Department which permit the shipment of silver directly to parties making deposits. The United States pays the transportation expenses. Deposits must be not fans than <I,OOO nor more than <IO,OOO. In the contested election case of Pacheco as. Wigginton, in the Fourth California District, the Supreme Court of that State has overruled Wigginton's demurrer to Pacheco’s (Bap.) application for a writ of mandamus commanding the Secretary of State to issue a certificate to Pncbeoa. • t According to a late Washington telegram, the roll of the House of Representatives of the Forty-fifth Congress, as prepared by Clerk Adams, shows 138 Republicans and 153 Democrats, two coo to in Louisiana bring doubtful Kight Mate are contested by Republicans and three by Democrats. The Special Committee of the Ohio I mpsljfan; to investigate into the circumstances attending the Ashtabula disaster submitted their report on the 220. They conclude that from 80 to 100 persons lost their lives; that the bridge failed becaaae of faulty construction, and that such defacta could have been discovered at any tone by careful inspection. The Secretary cf the Treasury has issued a circular, in which he indicates the rules regulating the employment of persons in his department. This states: First, that no more persons will be employed than are actually demanded by the wants of the service; second, tost those employed will receive the same pay as those in ordinary employment; third, that the heads of banana must look after their subordinates and report from time to time as to the needs and efficiency of their charges; fourth, in regard to extra clerk-hire, it must be regulated by the neoeeritoe es the ease and the term of the appointment must be stated in the contnoL

CONDENSED TELEGRAPHIC NEWS.

Private advices received in Vienna on the 23d, deacribeaffaiiw in Conctantinoplea* extremely critical. The {Remaa had thraatenedto clove all tee moaques. The Pope has lost the uaeof his legs, and tee to be carried about in a chair. Hie general health wm fair, on the 23d. He had canned a circular to be waned to the Bishops, counseling the expected period of inmwend prrwition At the meeting of the Cabinet in Washington, on the 2*d, the pnqxMitton to withdraw the troopn from Lontoiana and South Caroline was defeated by a vote of Bto 4. It was decided at the Cabinet meeting, on the 23d. to invite Messm. Chamberlain and Hampton to come to Washington and confer with the President, and later in the day such an invitation waa written and John D. Lee, the hero of the Mountain Meadows massacre in LK7, waa executed on the horrible crimewaa what be Claimed to be a full and true history of the butchery. Just before he was shot, Lee declared that he had done nothing wrong, design

edly, in the affair; that be did all in his power to save the emigrants, and that his conscience was dear before God and man. His death was iMtantaaeous, five guns being tired, and the bullate lodging in the legion of the heart. The thirty-fourth University boat race was rawed on the Thames on the 24th, and resulted in a dead beat. A Pera correspondent, on the 25th, telegraphed that the Montenegrin delegates had intimated their intention of quitting Constantinople, the Porte refusing to yield to their demaud*. On the 25th, It was reported at Washington that Senator Gordon, before the completion of the count by the Electoral Commission, went, with John Y. Brown, of Kentucky, to Messrs. Foster and Matthews, of Ohio, and demanded a written pledge that the Hampton and Nicholls Governments should be recognised, whatever the result of the count might be. It was alleged and also denied that such pledge was given. Gen. Grant and wife arrived at Cincinnati, on the 25th, from Washington. His Holiness, the Pope, is ill again. He is constantly subject to fainting fits, and, on the 26th, it was thought that he would not recover, although his immediate demise was not expected. According to a Washington Associated Press dispatch of the 26th, the President had stated that he had given no assurance of immediate action in respect to the withdrawal ot troops from Louisiana and South Carolina. A military riot occurred in Mayence on the birthday of the Emperor William. There was a fight between PniMiian and Hessian soldiers, iu which several were killed and fortywounded. A Captain and Lieutenant were among the killed. Tite dam of a reservoir at Stafford, Conn., gave way on the morning of the 27 th, destroying about twenty buildings and tearing up the railway track between that village and TollandyTwo lives were lost. Loss from f 1,000,000 to 92,000,000.

On the evening of the 27th, J. C. Swayaie, editor of the Topeka (Kan.) Blade was .killed in a street fight with James W. Wilson, ’formerly of the Daily Times of that city. The difficulty arose out of articles published in the Blade, which were offensive to Wilson. Proclamations were issued, on the 26th, by the rival claimants to the Governorship of Louisiana, each claiming to be at the head of a fully organized State Government. Nicholls called on the people to pay their taxes, and Packard announced that the State Treasurer refused to recognize Nicholls. The telegraph operators throughout Turkey have struck, and few lines and offices were open on the 28th. In secret session, the Turkish Chamber of Deputies discussed an address to the Sultan, all the s]>eakers declaiming vigorously against foreign intervention with the domestic affairs of the country. A special from Tucson, Arizona, gives the following as the correct copy of the original order directing the Mountain Meadows massacre: BPBCIAL ORDER. Salt luke City, April 19,1858. The officer in command of the escort is hereby ordered to see that every man is well prepared with ammunition and to have it ready at the time you see these teamsters 100 miles from the settlement. President Young advises that they should all be killed to prevent them returning to Bridger to join our enemies. Every precaution should be taken, and see that not one escapes. Secrecy is required. By order of Gen. Daniel S. Wells. Jambs Ferguson, Assistant Adjutant General. The following gentlemen are announced as the Commission to visit Louisiana, and have signified their acceptance: Judge C. B. Lawrence, of Illinois; ex-Gov. J. C. Brown, of Tennessee; Gen. Joseph R. Hawley, of Connecticut; Gen. John M. Harlan, of Kentucky, and Wayne McVeigh, of Pennsylvania. The United States Treasury Department has issued a circular recommending vigilance on the part of customs officers in the matter of the importation of homes, cattle, sheep and swine, so as to provide against the introduction of the rinderpest, which is pronounced infectious as well as contagious. The Treasury Department announces its belief that the entire 4X per cent, loan will be placed before the meeting of Congress in December. Already 9130,000,000 have been taken.

A New Star.

Since first this paper was written, anew star has appeared in the constellation Cygnus (the Swan.) On the evening of Nov. 24th, Prof. Schmidt, Director of the Athens Observatory, noticed there a star of the third magnitude. Not only was no star of that brightness there before, or any star visible to the naked eye, but it was found, when catalogues and charts came to be examined, that no star had ever been noted there, even in lists meant to include all stars down to the tenth magnitude. For instance, Argelander has made such a list, and charts from it, showing no less than 824,000 stars—that is, a hundred times as many as we can see on the darkest and clearest night; yet his list showed no star where the new one had appeared. Astronomers, however, do not suppose the new star is really new, except in the sense of being seen for the first time. They know that when last a new star appeared in Ulis way, it was found to be one of Argelander’s army of 324,000 stars, and watching that star (which had appeared in the constellation of the Northern Crown in May, 1866), they found that though it faded gradually out of sight to ordinary vision, the telescope could still follow it, until it had sunk to the tenth magnitude, at which degree of luster it remained and still remains. Ao doubt if we had had full lists of all stars down to.the fifteenth, or perhaps the twentieth, magnitude, we should have found that the new star in Cygnus was simply an old faint star which had brightened up suddenly, and remained for a time as one among the stars adorning our skies. Examined with an instrument called the spectroscope the new star gave a very strange account of itself. It was found to be emitting the same sort of light as other stars; but, beside that light, it emitted such light as comes from intensely-heated vapors. Among the vapors in that star thus (for the time) intensely hot, were hydrogen, the vapors of the metals sodium and magnesium, and a vapor known to be present in enormous quantities in our sun’s outer atmosphere, as seen during times of total eclipse. All these vapors surround our sun; and it is very probable that if anything caused our sun to blaze out with greatly increased light and heat, folks living oh a world circling round some other sun would find the same peculiarities in our sun’s light as we have found in the light of the new star in the Swan. What caused that star to blaze out in that strange way, we do not know. We should like to know, because we might then determine whether the cause which had so disturbed that sun might not be one from which our sun may one day suffer. Whatever the cause was, its effect did not to the fifth magnitude, in another week to

the sixth, in yet another to the seventh, since which time (Dee. 15th) it has very slowly diminished, and is still (Jan. sth) above the eighth magnitude. But although the unusual light and heat of that remote sun faded thus quickly away, yet if inhabited worlds circled around that sun, the cooling of their sun must have come far too late to save those creatures* lives. If our sun were to shine even but for twentyfour hours with several hundred times its usual heat, it is certain that every creature on the earth would be destroyed, and when the sun returned to its usual luster it would shine on a system of worlds on which not a single living creature was left.—Pref. jR. A, Proctor, in St. JfiAoku for April.

The Russian Peasant.

Tn* Russian peasant is not a bad fellow, but he is not picturesque, chiefly because he is a trifle too well off to be sentimental himself, or to be the subject of sentimentality in others. The law makes him at birth a member of the rural commune, nr village community, and secures to him as long as he lives the means of earning a living. He is his own master, or as much so as anv man not a hermit can be; that is to say, he has as much weight as any of his fellows in the councils of the commune, and the commune is to him the source of all law. His land, in many parts of the Empire, is apt/o be sterile, but it belongs, as he does, to the commune, and cannot be taken away. His homestead is exempt from execution, and so are his horse and his farming-im-plements, And his tools, if he is a mechanic. fie must work hard all his life, and his taxes are heavy; but the obligation to pay them rests upon the commune, not upon him individually, except as the commune requires him to pay. He eats black bread, and drinks bad liquor, but he has enough of both. His condition is not quite so good in some respects as it was when he was a serf; but the difference is largely the result of bis own choice. It arises chiefly out of the desire cf each married peasant to set up an establishment for himself, a practice which has increased the cost of living witnout adding anything to the working-power of the community. The practice works its own cure, in part, and peasant families are still large, as a rule, the family being in all cases a sort of co-operative society for purposes of work. The family may consist of any number of persons, and embraces commonly the representatives of two or three generations. There is one recognized head in each family, who may be either a man or a woman, and may or may not be the oldest member of the' family. The qualification requisite for this domestic headship is executive ability, and its possession secures authority by common consent; but in grave matters this family president acts only by and with tiieconsentof the family senate. .He directs the working, sells the products of the work, and buys supplies, but at every step advice is offered and heeded. The family usually includes the married sons and their wives, but not the married daughters, who belong to their husbands’ families. All the earnings are held in common, and this rule prevails even when some of the male members, whose labor is not needed at home, go away to St. Petersburg or elsewhere to work at handicrafts. There are some such workers in newly every family, and in winter, when the farm-work is done, other members go away in like manner in search of employment, each sending his earnings home to be placed with the common fund. If a married son secedes from the family, and sets up one of his own, he is entitled to take nothing away with him, but must begin over again, working upon his part of the common land For this he is fully equipped, and, like his brethren, he can eke out the scanty livelihood thus earned, by working occasionally for hire, under the steward of the neighboring great estate. His farm-work is simple. His land is divided by communal authority into three parts, one for summer grain, one for winter grain, and one to lie fallow, and even his days ol beginning particular operations are fixed for him, so that he has no need of judgment as part of his equipment for independent farming. He has need only of three things, namely, himself, his wife and his horse, and these he has. These three constitute the laborunit, as Mr. Wallace phrases it; that is to say, all the work is done by precisely this combination of forces, anil, no matter Tiow large a family may be, its members work in groups of two, one man and one woman, each group using one horse.— Appletons' Journal.

Cerebral Localization.

The question as to how far the brain exercises an influence on the motions of animals has been engaging scientific men for years. Dr. Broca was among the first who investigated the subject; he proved that when a man was deprived of the faculty of speech by a stroke of apoplexy, there invariably existed a lesion at the very same spot in' the brain, viz., in the anterior region, and on the posterior side of the third frontal circumvolution to the left. Hence the conclusion that thia was the seat of the faculty of speech in man, and thus one was led to conceive a special place for every intellectual action. Fritz, Hitzig, Ferrier, Carvilleand Duret, the most prominent among those who have treated the question, operate as follows: They take off part of the skull of a dog, then apply electric wires to dis ferent parts of the brain thus laid bare, and watch the motions produced. Certain points cause none, so that it is not the whole brain that acts on the muscular system, but only special points. Ferrier operated on monkeys in the presence of the London Royal Society. According as he touched various parts of the cerebrum, the ape would shake his fist at the public, raise or stretch a leg, or cut faces. It was shown that in the monkey the center of motion of the tongue answered exactly to that to which the faculty of speech pertains in man. From all this it follows that the surgeoiwnay now know precisely the point of the skull at which to apply the trepan. Thus, not long ago, a man was brought into the Hospital St. Antoine. He had received a blow on the left temple, and, on coming to himself again, could only speak with difficulty, and then he would call a fork an urnbrella, a lamps hat, and so on. Moreover, his right arm was half paralyzed. The surgeon at once knew what he had to do; he applied the trepan to the proper spot, and hit upon a piece of bone that compressed the brain. This splinter waa removed, and the patient at once recovered the use of his right arm. A few days later his tongue was freed from all impediment, and he left the hospital perfectly cured.— Galignani'e Messenger. A spendthrift, who had wasted nearly all his patrimony, seeing an acquaintance in a coat not of the newest cut, told him he thought it had been his greatgrandfather’s coat “So it was,” said the gentleman; “and I have also mr greatgrandfather ’a land, which is more than you can say.”

SENSE AND NONSENSE.

Jonimi* is unite sure the picture of a Spitz dog he drew on the parlor wall was good, because it made his father mad. “Am Independent editor is a man who will crowd out a new advertisement to make room for a fresh piece of spring poetry,” says a Southern paper. Prof. Proctor says the earth is growing bigger. Yes, it has got so big that it frequently rises up and bumps a man as he goes home in the morning. A universal dogma of fashion Is: Bien chawue, bien gantee a un joli mouchoir depoAe (well shod, well gloved, and a pretty pocket-handkerchief.) Farr agut was lashed to the mast, but every autumn the pigs go willingly to the mast without the necessity of being lashed or driven by any other harsh means. “ Ho, all ye dyspeptics 1” says a patent medicine advertisement If all the dyspeptics would hoe regularly their number would be reduced amazingly.— Exchange. Mrs. Middlerib says, speaking of effective irony, her husband's heelless hose present the most striking specimens of sock chasm she ever saw.— Burlington Hauk-Eye. “ My son,” said a doting mother to her eight-year-old son, “ what pleasure do you feel like giving up during the Lenten season?” “Well, ma, I guess I’ll stay away from school,” was the reply. A San Francisco man, with a $2,000 a day' income, has a penchant for getting his money's worth. Considering the saucer a part of the cup, he insists on both being filled when he orders a cup of coffee. The best or most extensively advertised hotels are always the most prosperous and popular. This is the rule all over the world, from Iceland’s Greasy Mountains to Coral’s India Strand. We call, the attention of Bonifaces to this fact.— N. Y. Evening Mail. It would appear that the experience of the Profitable Lodger of old was the same as that of the lodger of the present day. “For the bed is shorter than that a man can stretch himself on it, and the covering narrower than that he can wrap himselt' in it.”—lsaiah xxviii., 20. About the sickest typographical error we have seen for some time is the recent announcement that a certain gentleman would deliver a lecture “on the small-pox for the benefit of the poor.” The editor wrote “ on the 6th prox.”—and the intelligent compositor will accompany a colony to Texas next month.— Norristown Herald. “ Oh, what becomes," said Chloe fair, “ Of all the pins that from my hair I drop unheeded on the floor, And never miss or see them more?” “ My dear,” said Darwin, “ they all go Into our mother earth below; There their development begins, And ending they are terra-pins I” A man in Ansonia, Conn., had a tooth drawn. The charge was fifty cents, and he tendered a twodollar bill. The dentist having only one dollar in change, the obliging customer deliberately sat down and had a sound molar extracted to make the change even. Here is a chance for some one to say that this tooth-out story is too-thin.

Said he: “Oh, he’s seen a great deal of trouble in his time for so young a chap. Why, he used to come here with two gold watches on and a spring overcoat on each arm—just gay, you know. Now, he has to have his linen duster dyed, and he looks around for a place where they can dye two colors, so as to have a facing on it, Rough, ain't it?” Dean Ramsey relates that at a certain dinner party the hostess observed that one of the guests-an Hon. Mrs. Murray, had no spoon for her soup, and called the attention of' the servant to the fact. The man-servant, who was an eccentric character, replied to his mistress, in a voice which was heard all over the room: “ Mum, the last time Mrs. Murray was here we lost a spoon!” In Philadelphia recently the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania denied the appeal of a man condemned to death, upon the ground that he was too poor to have the papers in his case printed, as the rule of the Court requires. Rather than remit a rule made for their own convenience, the Judges therefore decided that a man possi. bly innocent should be denied the benefit of an appeal and hanged. “It's all very well,” remarked arednosed man in a*bad hat and an ulster of the vintage of ’73, “ it’s all very well to say let business revive, but what we want, sir, is confidence, public confidence, sir. Each of us must be willing to bring out our hoarded dollars and put them once more in circulation. Then the skies will brighten, then—by the way, I changed my vest this morning—lend me fifty cents, will you?” The care with which the “best room” wds kept from use by our ancestors, and indeed is now by some of the good coun-ti-y wives of the was illustrated in the case of a good lady who in her last illness was visited by her pastor. Being asked if he was resigned, she replied: “lam perfectly happy, Brother B ■■-. I have made my peace with the Lord, and got the key of the keepin’-room under my pillow.”— Boston Bulletin. “ What’s broke loose, Charley? Where are you going in such a hurry?” “I’m going to the store.” “ Trade must be active with you.” “ It’s not the trade that has called me out. But I’ll explain the thing to you to keep down infernal suspicions. There are three partners in our store, and we have only two chairs. The last man that comes in the morning has to stand up all day. It is very important for me to get to the store early this morninggood day.” A party of plantation negroes were engaged in pitching coppers. It was discovered that after a while’ several coppers were missing, though no one had been detected in picking up any but his own pennies. One old negro, whose coppers had mysteriously disappeared, at length becoming satisfied in his mind that there was foul play going on, and observing that one of the barefooted party had a peculiar way every now and then of jerking his foot up to his hand, called a pause in the game, sayinsr: “De gemman wif de tar on his heel will pleas to wifdraw.” The suspected individual retiring on this polite invitation, the game went on without the mysterious disappearance of any more coppers. <

Peculiarities of Some Animals.

Cats are affectionate; they love young chickens, sweet cream and the best place in front of the fireplace. Dogs are faithful; they will stick to a bone after everybody else has deserted it. The donkey is an emblem of patience, Sit if you study him closer, you will find at laziness is what’s the matter with khn. The eagle is the monarch of the skies, but the little king-bird will chase him to his hiding-place. Monkeys are imitative, but if they can’t imitate some deviltry they are not happy. Hens know when it is going to rain'

and shelter themselves, but they will try to hatch out a glass egg just as honestly as they will one of their own. Hornets have more fight in them than anything of their size, but tnere is no method in their madness; they will pitch into a meeting-house when they are l furlous just as anxiously as they wtti into * sleeping baby in its cradle. Flies toil not, neither do they spin, .yet they have the first taste of all the best gravies in the land. The cuckoo is the greatest economist among the birds; she lays her eggs in other birds’ nests, and lets them' hatch them out at their leisure. Rats have fewer friends and more enemies than anything of the four-legged persuasion on the face of the earth, and yet rats are as plenty now as in the palmiest days of the Roman Empire. The serpent and the crab change their clothing each year, snd the raccoon lives all winter long on the memory of what he ate in the summer. The horse gets up from the ground on his forelegs first, and the cow on her hind ones, ana the dog turns around three times before he lies down. The elephant has the least, and the rabbit the most, eye for his size, and a rat’s tail is Just the length of his body. The roof of the thoroughbred dog’s mouth is always black. So is the bottom of the cat’s foot who is a good mouser. The spider is the only creature that catches its food in a trap, andasheep will live without water longer than any domestic animal. Thofox is the hardest to catch in a trap, and a musk-rat the easiest, and the mead-ow-lark, is the shyest of all the birds of the air. The crow flies six miles, and the wild pigeon sixty, an hour, but the hummingbird beats all things on the wjng. The horse will eat ten hours but of every twelve; the ox lies down and chews his cud half the time; and the hog never knows what it is not to be hungry. The wild turkey can run faster than he can fly, and. any man who is a good walker can tire a deer out in twenty-four hours. —Jonh Billings, inN. Y. Weekly.

The Charm of Perfect Manners.

This is a grace of which I think American women are becoming very careless. They are so beautiful as a race, so accustomed to conquest, that perhaps they are getting to believe that Pope’s line, “Look in her face and you forget them all,” applies to manners; but a beautiful woman without good manners is a flower without fragrance. She is worse—she becomes a positive nuisance, j presuming on her beautv and abusing one of God’s great gifts. You must look at her, but you look to regret, to disapprove; instead of being chained for life to “ sweet looks married to graceful action,” you grow to despise and hate her. When womeft reach a larger grasp on the subject, and observe this great rule that “ the possession of power is better than the show of it ” —they will have advanced far beyond their present status. The end and aim of the weak and uncertain is to appear strong and well posed, at whatever cost. It has apparently struck some women in the society of our new country, which must ever be on a shifting scale, that they appear to stand well by being disagreeable—that an air of hauteur and rudeness is becoming and aristocratic. It is the mistake of ignorance, and would soon be cured by a careful study of the best models in Europe. Such women are like those inexperienced skaters who start on their slippery journey with heads in air and backs preternaturally stiff: they are apt to see stars before they have gone far. It would soften many of the jealousies and asperities of American society had we some of' the sere’nity on the subject of our worldly means which obtains in Europe. Did we dare to say, “ I cannot afford it,” how many heart-burnings would cease! It is a very charming thing to be rich; it is nice to have comfortable carriages, broad acres, large dining-rooms and troops of gay friends to whom you can offer an unending hospitality. It is an inconvenient thing to be poor, but it is not the worst of evils. Cannot we all remember many a choice little dinner where the talk made us oblivious of the claret, and many a delightful evening in a small house innocent ot upholstery? Do we really love our friends in proportion to their wealth ? Clearly no. Then let our society move on irrespective of the great question of money. Some money is necessary, a great deal is not, to a perfect society. Agrowing evil would thus be driven away. It is bad for a Nation when women dress better than they can afford to dress. The growing excess in this particular has within a few years become a source of severe temptation to weak women. Women cannot be blind to the influence of dress. One class dress for men; another entirely for women, for what do men care for the superior fineness of camel’s hair, of the difference between Point d’Alencon, Point d’Aiguille and Venetian Point? Yet good dressing need not be expensive; expensive dressing is often very bad. As Worth, the man-milliner of Paris, said, rather sententiously, "You must express yourself in dress,'not let dress express you.” The introduction of art schools for women has been, and w ill continue to be, of immense advantage. There will be an end ©f these horrible head-dresses, when women have acquired more correct, notions of what is truly artistic. Art, too, is essentially refining, and often lifts a woman out of the arena of petty maneuvers and petty contests. Her peaceful triumphs with the pen, the pencil, the harp and piano, or. far better, with her voice, give her a world of her own wherein she happily lives. Still, a taste for society is as pronounced a taste as that for music or for literature, and it can be made a very noble taste. The best and must unselfish heroines I have ever known have been women of society. They mingled in it without losing truth, honor or generosity. If the society of our equals be our prevailing taste and amusement, by all means let us cherish it, but let us seek not merely to gratify this taste, but to cultivate and improve it.—Lippincott's.

Extraordinary Archaeological Discoveries.

In Stoddard County, Mo., strange archaeological discoveries have been made and unique relics of a forgotten race exhumed. I have written to the World already of inscriptions on a tablet of stone inserted in the inner wall of a ruined temple in Guanajuato. The writing is in the same characters, if my memory be not grievously at fault, as those used by the sunworshipers of the old temple of stone in Western Mexico. The tablet exhumed in Stoddard County is of glazed terra-cotta, and is almost as perfect as when deposited in the mound from which it was taken a tew days ago. It Is ten and a half inches wide and thirteen inches long, and covered with characters clearly cut, bearing a suggestive resemblance to Sanscrit

letters. On both sides of the tablet appear these unique hieroglyphics. The tracing was evidently executed when the clay jraa.'yet goft and thin; it was dried, hardened and glazbd. The whole appearance at this leaf from the Continent's remotest history has many characterlrrticKoff the library tables of the Assyrian King Assur-Bani-Pal recently dug from the mounds at N when I remember how near the Triteness is to the inscriptions in .the old Mexican temple, lam persuadqU plorer wilt yet have photographs made of all thane drawingraaMMA -W that discovered cm astohe noC Ty froru Tuscaloosa, Ala., and, compdrftg the strange records -of the \wrimown races, ascertain their origin, anaaeteimine perhaps the vexed question of unity. The characters of this MisßdtffT tablet are arranged in regular IJneiorj-oyts and are clear and distinct in outline. A key to solve the mysteries "WvtfVed in these two “pages’* of prehistoric lore would be an “ open sesame” to the prorfoundest mystery that affects the furtuwua of the human race. Is there no Chanipollion to make stones eloquent, dead, centuries loquacious, rind to invest mtemniMs habiliments of ancient life? Wtite the Mound-Builders of the of ,$e Mississippi of the same race, with those who reared temples at Cliichen and Cbp«r and Otoluin and Palenque? Wefe the bearded Natchez Indians the draeyhdawfaf<as they claimed, of this race, whose power was coterminous with the two oceans, snri extended, as their raconteurs told'Kie follotyers of Bienville and LaßaHe, even to Africa? They said that wheft thp continent was contulsed, as nev&’’ before or since, their broadest, riehest.- domain east of Florida and South America wks sub<. ; merged and' the west, was uphetiVed: The French forefathers of the writer of this said further that the Nat chert r lhdiftns were never beaten until their presto'tyefo made drunk, and sacred Area that hnrned perennially on the great nu>und below Natchez were suffered to beCoAiddtflrtet. When this cataclysm befell the hapless' race no further serious resistance Was_enJ countered by the French invadcML i Ther Natchez were destroyed or dispersed, abd this was the end of the latest and very re: mote descendants of the that left traces of their toil every whfre.frdru the great lakes to the Gulf, in tire Valjgy of the Mississippi. Whether the writer of the strange glyphs on the Qtoddajd County stone was of the Colhuas, dr. Tpll tecs, or a wanderer from the Orient, a voyager with Hanno or some Phoenician who passed beyond the Pillars of, Hercules for return no more—these are inquiries, to beg solved by him who translates, jne stoiy inscribed on this tablet and on that in the , old temple of Guanajuato. If Congress should appoint a comraissionz. ta. survey’ the lowlands of the Mississippi, if only with reference to the possibility of controlling its floods, much might De done in the way of exploring the hidden mysteries of the swamps, once the unique and ancient civilization, The Stoddard County tablet has been forwarded to the learned Orientalist of Harvard University. Though thesimilar-. ity between tire characters employed by the Mound-Builders and the /Sanscrit “ letters” is striking, it is perhaps only fanciful, and a careful analysis of. the structural forms of these glyphs may reveal no likeness whatever to alphabet)?./ cal language. In fact, the'inscription may be wholly idiographic, and the language emnloyed by the writer mtiy fipt have been developed into lexicographic unity. If this be true, speculative archaeologists may again infer that this was the oldest of inhabited continents and the seat of the earliest civilizatioa .ot.- qur race.— Cor.N. Y. World., ,e* ut*/)

A Russian Crowd.

Every crowd has a physiognomy and al character of its own, and after experience of an English or an Irish crowd, ofie. ta, rather pleased with a Russian one. Not that it is particularly clean or savory, but it is so extremely good-natured and wellbehaved. There is very little pushing dr | elbowing. Everyone is courteous 'to his" neighbors, and you are sure' iMt' to’ Aen any acts of brutality, or to incur fetiy Sari-’, ger in mixing in It. Smiling,'gbotf-na-’ ’ tured faces are everywhere, fia fftetfef what the rank or position, for goqd-Jiymor . is indeed the chief Russian virtue. And then such a curious mixture of people in such acrowd!—ffiftrchantsdnth loffjf, dark-blue or black caftans, reaching to their heels, and their cravats tied tight around their throats, not showing a shirtcollar, if they indeed have one; striut old?, women with silk kerchiefs wound abdut their heads so as to conceal tlieir' ' hafr; shoemakers’ boys and apprentices in What seemed a dirty muslin dressing-gown; hr-' tisans in their blue working-blouses; the ordinary town peasant in his red shitygud , high boots, and the mwthik, fresh from the country with coat of qndyed homespun, cloths wound round legs pt stockings and sandals made of plaited linden bark; here and there a student wijnt dirty shirt ant) long hair and mqe|,fpul fe finger-nails, evidently or the idea that neatness is incompatible with learning; there will probably be apriestnr twt>£kttd. a few soldiers.— Eugene Bokuyler, in Scribner for April. - »A

Obeying Orders.

That ancient gentleman, Lord William | Lenox, has bedn writing about the celebri- 1 ties whom he has known during htslong life, and in the course of hlsteminiscenc'es tells this story of the Duke of Wellibgtonf “ The late Lord Derby, phen having one of his country mansions decorated, way having the central floor either, painted r tesselated. Ayoung man was at work one of the waifs,' when the" Ear,l qxdsjpdi., number of slippers tq be ihXqvpj. oq door-mat, desiring this young man to order any one that came in ! pair before crossing the passage apdpdtl t mg to the order, * if ope fails to sHead iW you must take him by ; the shoulder and turn him out.’ Soon after a-mtfiy i ro—turned from hunting, and the Dutav with * his splashed boots, opened the door and rushed along the hall. The young man immediately jumped off theMSdaeT’ on which he was painting, and seizjng His Grace by the shoulder, fairly pushed him out of the house. In the the afternoon Lord Derby summoned W the household and men at* work into thestudy, and, seating himself beside the great warrior, demanded who had had the impertinence to push the Duke, out of doors. The painter,, all es a tremble, came forward any said: ‘lt was L my. lord.* ‘And pray.’ tejoindl the ‘how came you to do itF ‘Uy your orders, my lord.’ On this Hra Grate turned round to Lard Derby and,mailing, drew a sovereign out of his purse, which he gave to the workman, adding *¥oh were right to obey orders.*” 1/ 5, The New York City Mission is doing a great work among the humbler classed,. The society employs thirty missionaries, who have, with volunteers, made* over 90,000 visits during the past year. ---v-