Rensselaer Union, Volume 10, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 August 1878 — INCIDENTS AND ACCIDENTS. [ARTICLE]

INCIDENTS AND ACCIDENTS.

—ln the Fifth Virginia Congressional District, Mr. Miller is a candidate for Congress and his son-in-law, Mr. McKenney, is a candidate for a clerkship. They hold different views on the currency question. At a recent meeting McKenney interrupted his fatherindaw; the old man resented the interruption; McKenney stooped to pick up a rock, but the old gentleman caught up a shot-gun and nearly blew off his left shoulder.

—A Willimantic (Conn.) girl, employed in a thread factory, wrote her name and the words, “Wanted, a husband,” on a spool recently, and when it had been wound with thread it was sent to a South Norwalk shoe factory, where it fell into a Ridgefield man’s hands. He began a correspondence; the girl replied that she was engaged, but would find him another as good as she, and a marriage has just taken place as a result of the spool’s message. —As Jacob Landis, of Erwin, N. Y,. was twisting a wisp around a sheaf of wheat, the other day, a large rattlesnake sprang from the straw, directly toward his face. The farmer mechanically threw his hand out and caught the snake around the neck, just in time to prevent its fastening its fangs in his nose. He held the snake firmly in his hand and called for aid. A companion ran up and cut the serpent’s head off with his scythe. The rattlesnake had wound itself so tightly about Landis' bare arm that a broad red mark on the flesh showed every coil. The snake was three and a half feet long and had nine rattles. —A Norwich man saw, the other evening, a swallow whose actions reminded him of a cat’s playful antics with a mouse, The bird was in pursuit of a gaudily-colored butterfly, and as it'chased the tiny insect over the house-top and through the tree-boughs, the observer noticed that as often as the butterfly was caught by the bird it was ejected from its mouth, and the chase, with all its features of hot pursuit, cap*ture and escape, was repeated a score or more of times. At length the bird, tired of its sport, descended on the insect with a swoop, caught it in its beak and quickly devoured it. — New Haven Palladium.

—A strange accident occurred to-day on the Springfield, Jackson & Pomeroy Narrow-Gauge nekr Bainbridge. The train which arrives at Bainbridge at noon remains thirty minutes for dinner. To-day was left standing on thb track as usual while the engineer and fireman went to a house about 100 yards distant to get their meal. They had been gone but a short time when a man named A. Pepper pulled the pin connecting the engine with the trajn, climbed into the cab, and pulled the throttle wide open. The engine shot ddwtTthe track like an arrow until it reached a curve about a mile distant, when it jumped the track, rolled over on its side, and became a complete wreck. Pepper was instantly killed. What his motive was for so strange a deed is a mystery. He had at one time been a well-to-do farmer, but had squandered his means by dissipation. Some of the citizens think he chose that as a method of committing suicide; others, that it Was a halfcrazy, half-drunken freak-— Cincinnati Dispatch. <