Rensselaer Union, Volume 10, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 March 1878 — PERSONAL AND LITERARY. [ARTICLE]

PERSONAL AND LITERARY.

—A colored man in Boston is named Yale College. -Over 20,000 copies of Joseph Cook’s books have been sold. —Blair is the only living member of Mr. Lincoln’s Cabinet. —Gov. Williams, of Indiana, has discarded blue-jeans and appears in broadcloth. —A new dictionary of the Yaghan language, spoken by the natives of Terra del Fuego, which will contain 16,000 words, is being prepared by Rev. T. Bridges. —l)r. Oliver Wendell Holmes writes with a broad gold pen fixed into a quill handle. The pen has done duty for twenty years. He writes only in the morning, for three hours a day. —Mr. Caleb Cushing has received a fee of more than SIOO,OOO for recovering the estate of a Cuban which was seized by the Spanish Government, and another claim for $2,000,000 has been made, which, if established, will make Mr. Cushing a very rich man. —Ex-Senator Wade had some queer kinks in his mind. He was a firm believer in Spriritualism, and looked on death as a mere change of scenes. Another striking peculiarity was the dread he entertained of sitting for a picture. He used to say often that he had as much respect for a dentist’s oflloe as he had for a photographic gallery.

—Mr. Simmon’s new bust of the late Senator Morton was copied from photographs, as a young sculptor of Indianapolis, who took a mask of the Senator’s faoe after death, refused the use of it except on payment of $2,000. The Morton vaults was opened that the sculptor might see the face ho wished to mold; but the features, in spite of the embalming, were too wasted to be recognized.—A'. Y. ■ Evening Post. —Miss Julia E; Smith, of Glastonbury (Conn.) fame, remembers that fifty-nine years ago the month of February was much milder than has been the closed. The Superior Court being in session, her father rode to Hartford on horsebaek daily and returned at night, the traveling being as good as in the summer time. There was no sleighing throughout the winter, but after the Bth of March there was good sleighing for thfeo weeks. —Bayard Taylor says that the secret of his enormous power of work is an unfailing appetite, a capacity for smoking tobacco interminably, and eight hours’ good sleep every night. So imperative has the habit of sleeping at a” regular time become that, when now and then he has had to defer going to bed at the usual time and has tried to induce wakefulness by drinking two or three cups of the blackest coffee and by other means, he has nevertheless dropped asleep while working at tils desk,