Rensselaer Union, Volume 10, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 April 1878 — Names of Vehicles. [ARTICLE]

Names of Vehicles.

Among the medley of names at presenter recently given to pleasure carriages some are unintelligible, while others defy all etymological scrutiny. The landau is named from a town in Germany; it is a coach that may be used open or closed at pleasure. The landaulet. as its name implies, is a lighter and smaller landau. The barouche, a favorite open carriage in summer, is of French origin, as is the barouchet.—- The britzschka was introduced from Russia about half a century ago. Why the phaeton is so named we cannot pretend to say; but the vehicle so called belongs to the barouche and britzschka group. The cabriolet is French, and so is the vis-a-vis. Droitzschka came from Russia or from Poland —an odd kind of an affair, modified in England into a vehicle fitted for invalids, aged persons and children, with its formidable name shortened into drosky. The curricle is one of the few kinds of two-wheelers with two horses abreast; while the tandem is a straggling affair with two wheels and two horses, but one of the horses behind the other. The cab (short for .cabriolet) is a handy bachelor’s vehicle; the gig is about the lightest of all, being little more than an open-railed chair, supported on the shafts by two sidesprings: the dog-cart is a gig, with a space underneath to contain either dogs or luggage; while the tilbury, named after the coachmaker who invented it, is a modified cab. The stanhope, named after a noble Lord, is another of the family of single-horse, two-wheelers; and so is the sulky, for one person only; and so the buggy, and the jaunting-car, and the whisky. The dennet, we are told, has three springs peculiarly arranged, and “ was so called because the three springs were named after the three Miss Dennets, whose elegant stagedancing was much in vogue about the. time this vehicle came into use.” The French misanthrope, for one person, was probably the origin of our sulky. The fly is a roomy carriage let out to hire; whv it is so called is not quite clear. The French fiacre neither denotes a particular person nor a special origin; there happened to be a figure of St. Fiacre in front of the building whore the first lender of these vehicles kept them. When we consider how readily the name hansom has come into use among us, as the designation of a vehicle, we need not marvel at the French having adopted fiacre. Victoria, clarene©, ham, are so many proofs of the ease with which the names of persons are given to new forms of carriages.—AU the Year Round.

The jEtna Lifk Insurance Company, of Hartford, Conn., with its assets of $24,141,175.20 and its clean surplus of nearly four and a quarter millions of dollars, and its well-known economical management, has recently received a well-merited indorsement from the Special Commission appointed by the Legislature of Connecticut a year ago, to investigate all the Life Insurance Companies of that State. The Commission say of that it is “ not only solvent, but financially sound, and under the management of officers and Directors of large experience, sound judgment and unblemished character, and entitled to the entire confidence of policy-holders and|he public.” During the year 7,892 lodgings were fiven free at the Bowery Branch of the bung .Men's Christian Association; 210 garments were given away, 33,470 meals were furnished, and 25,441 meals were sold. The meal-tickets given to business men amounted to 10,750. There were 623 applications for employment, 119 of which were successful. The aggregate attendance at all the ipeetings was 66,574, and 149 hopeful conversions were reported. About three-fifths of the jury trials in this country include at least one man on the jury who ought to nave been born a mule.-^Detroit Free Press.