Rensselaer Union, Volume 10, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 June 1878 — PERSONAL AND LITERARY. [ARTICLE]

PERSONAL AND LITERARY.

—Prof. H. R. Palmer and wife sailed for America, May 18th, in the Scythia. —Mrs. A. T. Stewart owns a solitaire diamond worth $35,000, which is said to be the largest in the United States. —The late Rev. Dr. Putnam, of Boston, never would consent to the engagement of an assistant. He said he had rather preach poor sermons himself than listen to them from others. —lt being proposed to erect by public subscription a monument over the grave of Charlotte Cushman, the Utica Herald remarks thatshe left over $500,000, and made no appropriation for a monument; nor did she leave a cent for charitable purposes. Conclusion: the heirs can afford to put up a monument.

—The bepuzzlements of the English language must be something fearful to a nervous foreigner. The padded cell of the maniac would be the destination of anyone who attempted to comprehend the following: The dyer dyes awhile, then dies— To dye he's always trying; Until upon his dying bed He thinks no more of dyeing. — N. Y. Herald. —Gen. Grant’s visit to England has given rise to a lawsuit. The Council of Sunderland entertained him and charged the ratepayers with the expenses of a special train, the ringing of bells and music. The bill was then charged to the borough fund, but the ratepayers objected to this on the f round that the money collected Was irected by the statute to be applied to certain purposes, of which the reception.of Gen. Grant was not one. The Court before which the case was brought sustained this view of the case, and so the gentlemen who got up the reception must pay the expenses, some SSOO, out of their own pockets

—Mrs. Myra Clark Gaines is at present a picturesque feature of Washington society. At seventy, she is a small, delicate woman, with bright, restless, black eyes, clear Complexion, auburn hair, without a single thread of silver in it. (She wears a wig.) Wears pale blue and lavender bonnets of a decided scoop-shape, but otherwise dresses in good taste; she says she can out-walk, talk, dr laugh any woman in the United States, and expects to live fifty years longer, but disclaims any intention of levying upon the land in the moon. Says when she gets h,er dues she will build a hotel for workingwomen that will, put Stewart’s all m the shade. She speaks in tender tones of her “ sainted husband, Gen. Gaines,” demised forty years ago, and believes she is carrying out his wishes in giving the greedy lawyers plenty to do.—(Jhtca'tfo Tribune. —Mrs. Mary Ann Booth, widow of the late Junius Brutus Booth, has sold her farm near Belair, Md., containing 148 acres for $8,500. This is the farm upon which the great actor Mved for a number of years, and where Edwin Booth was born. Junius Brutus Booth, being an Englishman and never having been naturalized, could not hold rear estate in fee-simple, and consequently in 1824. leased the farm for 1,000 years from Richard M. Hall at a yearly rent of one cent. Booth, before his death, made an assignment of the property to Edwin Forrest, the actor, from whom it. was purchased by the late Rev. Thomas S. C. Smith, of Harford County, in 1868. Mr. Smith held the title a very short time, and assigned it to Mrs. Booth, who has just sold it. The lease has 946 years yet to run.— N. Y. Evening Pott

The phonograph may bottle up the woice and pass it down to future ages; but the smile that twists the face of a man as he seeks solitude and gazes upon his name in print for the first time will always have to be guessed at.