Rensselaer Union, Volume 10, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 March 1878 — PERSONAL AND LITERARY. [ARTICLE]

PERSONAL AND LITERARY.

—England talks of making Stanley a Baronet. —lt can at least be said of Senator Sharon that he mines his own business. —Lowell Courier. —Since 1860 the lecture fees of John B. Gough have averaged $127 each lecture. —Hon. J. Willis McNard (colored), who used to be a State Senator in Florida, is now watchman in the Postoffice Department in Washington. —The New York Express is quite decided in its opinion that Mr. Ross wouldn’t know his lost boy Charley, even if talking face to face with him —The death of Hon. Gideon Welles, of Connecticut, reduces the survivors of Lincoln’s first Cabinet to two persons—Simon Cameron and Montgomery Blair. —Stanley is having a first-rate time knocking around with “them Kings” in Europe. A reporter will find his level wherever you put him. — Detroit Free Press. —The oldest Postmaster in the United States is Nathan Wood, who has been Postmaster at Deep River, Ind., for more than forty years, having been appointed by Gen. Jackson’s Administration. —Mr. George Bancroft, the American historian, is a reader of the newspapers. He subscribes for many of the prominent journals of the country, and clips as he reads. His scrap-books are many and large. —Montgomery Blair announces his intentioiTto write a history of the administrations of Jackson and Lincoln, in order to put his father in his true position respecting the great events and men of his day. —Mark Twain says that, though the report of his becoming editor of the Hartford Courant was incorrect, he was exceedingly gratified to-receive a number of subscriptions for that newspaper on the strength of it. His joy was only clouded by the reflection that an equal or larger number of persons must have written to the editor of the Courant discontinuing their subscriptions. —Mr. Montgomery Blaii is credited with telling this story: “Van Buren said to me in St. Louis, when I told him his son, Smith Van Buren, had been marred: ‘I thought he had given that girl up. Well he’s ruined. She is very rich. Now he’ll give up his profession of the law, where he had great ability, and become really a rich man—the least useful of human things. Poor Smith!’ ” —This is one of the latest stories about the Pope: “Not long after the Pope’s return to Rome, in 1850, a beautiful young English lady was out sketching with a maid near the Porta Pia. The Pope came out in his carriage, descended, and began to take his usual walk. The maid having gone to ask his blessing, returned to say that His Holiness would gladly give his hand to be kissed to her young English mistress. ‘ Indeed,’ said that lady, with a toss of her heretical head, ‘ I think my hand better worth kissing than his.’ The Pope, who had approached unseen, anj overheard this speech, laughed gently, and said, to her great confusion, ‘That is perfectly true; but you will allow an old man to bless you, nevertheless.’ ”