Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 August 1877 — PERSONAL AND LITERARY. [ARTICLE]

PERSONAL AND LITERARY.

—lt is said that Longfellow can’t be lured into an after-dinner speech. He is said to have replied to an invitation: “ I wouldn’t touch a toast list with a pair of tongs." —Mr. Alexander H. Stephens has written an article on the “ Letters of Junius” for the International Review. He disputes every claim to their authorship that has ever arisen. —The ludicrousness of using “United States” as plural is exemplified in the extreme in the London Newt, which says, speaking of Robert Dale Owen, “ the United States were his home.” —William Lloyd Garrison is remarkable for his youthful appearance in his old age. A writer in a Liverpool paper says: “No one would take him to be in his seventy. third year. He is one of the youngest septuagenarians I ever saw.” —The statement is made that 19,000 copies of the first number of the Nineteenth Century were sold, and that this is unprecedented in the case of an English magazine; but the Cornhill, when it started under Thackaray, reached 80,000. —“ Whistling Jack” is an aged negro, who frequents the ferry-boats and the piers along the North River, New York, whistling the most popular airs and imitating birds and insects. He is said to have accumulated something snug by his musical talents. —The Pittsburgh Pott says that there is no truth in the current reports of the sacking of Gen. Pearson’s house by the rioters, of insults to members of his family. of the exhibition of a coffin destined for her husband to Mrs. Pearson, and of that lady’s hair turning white in a night. —Mr. Judah P. Benjamin was not bom in Ban Domingo, but in one of the British West Indies, which circumstance enabled him to obtain admission to the bar of England. His fee in the Almaden quicksilver case was only $20,000, instead of $500,000, as stated. He made a large fortune, however, by his practice in the'South before the war. His investments of his professional revenues were improvident and unfortunate. Buear-planting swept off about $200,000, Tehuantepec a large amount, and a guano speculation in South America the remainder of his hard earnings. Finally, the downfall of the Confederacy drove him a fugitive from our country. In an open boat, rowed by a negro, he passed from Florida to Nassau, where he landed with a single dollar in his pocket. The war had destroyed every vestige of his properly. He has since at tainea a high position at the English bar. Many of the editorials in the London Timet on American subjects are understood to be from his pen.— Chicago Tribune.