Rensselaer Union, Volume 10, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 March 1878 — PERSONAL AND LITERARY. [ARTICLE]

PERSONAL AND LITERARY.

—Speaker Randall believes in total abstinence. —The name of Peoci, the new Pope, is pronounced Petchee. —Gen. Braxton Bragg’s son is City Attorney of Mobile, Ala. —Mark Twain calls his dog Joseph Cook, because he can't quite unnerstand him. —His breath was the last thing Crnlkßhftnk drew, according to the Boston Post. —Mrs. Hayes receives on Mondays, postponing the washing till Tuesday.— Boston Post. —Serg’t Bates is carrying bricks in Chicago. That’s sort of hod.—Commercial Advertiser. —Williams, the newly-elected Senator from Kentucky, was formerly an Illinois farmer near Bement. All the Justices of the Supreme Court are married men, and their wives arc with them in Washington. —A writer in Scribner says President Lincoln wrote and rewrote several times his famous Gettysburg address. - —William Cullen Bryant says that Bayard Taylor is a man who has never ceased to be an American, in being a traveler abroad. —Among the various ways in which Stanley has become a man of mark is that of being styled the “ Bismarck of African Exploration.” . —Mrs. Elizabeth F. Denny, who died in Pittsburgh, Pa., a few days ago, gavq away during her lifetime at least $1,000,000 to charitable institutions.

Donald G. Mitchell sits down on old chairs. He says an abominablymade old chair is no more to be venerated than an old scoundrel of a man. —Mark Twain writes to a friend in Detroit denying the charge that he is lazy. Instead of being lazy, he says he has no less than four books under way, with the title of each nicely written out in a plain hand, and the first chapters headed off. —lt is related of the rebel Gen. Jubal Early that he would never approve a furlough when the applicant was to get married. Being an old bachelor himself, he thought all soldiers should adopt that style of life while the war lasted. He used to say that every officer who married either proved himself utterly worthless or straightway got himself killed. —Mr. Fred Seward frequents parties at Washington in a black skull-cap, and many people there wonder why he wears it. They forget that he nearly lost his life when the attempt was made to assassinate his father, the very night that President Lincoln was fatally shot. The skull-cap now worn by Mr. Seward conceals a silver plate which was inserted when his skull was trepanned after that murderous attack. —The name of D’lsraeli has never been borne by any other family than that of the present Lord Beaconsfield, and, as he has no living relatives, will, expire with him. Among the 600,000 Jews expelled from Spam in the sixteenth century was an ancestor of the Premier, who at that time assumed the name of D’lsraeli. The father of Beaconsfield withdrew from the Synagogue in London because he had been fined £4ofor refusing to serve as*Warden.