Rensselaer Union, Volume 11, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 February 1879 — PERSONAL AND LITERARY. [ARTICLE]

PERSONAL AND LITERARY.

—The lato Representative Schleicher weighed 850 pounds a littlo while before he died. —Dr. LeMoyne’s cremation furnace in Pennsylvania is paying so poorly that there is talk of turning it into a pop-corn factory. -.-The Rev. Jack Walkingstick, the Rev. Poor Wolf and the Rev. Mr. Whirlwind are members of the Cherokee Indian Baptist Association in the ludian Territory. —The sale of photographs of Government celebrities at Washington shows some curious facts. More of Mrs. Hayes’ photographs are sold than of any other person. Of the Senators, Blaine’s sells better than any other by one-half, Lamar and Gordon following. — N. Y. Evening Post. —The physician who is attending Justice Hunt, of the United States Supreme Court, says that though his patient is improving he fears that he will never recover the use of his side. His mind is perfectly clear, but while he can answer questions with “Yes” or “No,” he cannot connect sentences. —Although Senator Sharon, of Nevada, has held his office nearly four years lie has been so little in his seat that some of his colleagues had never seen him until his recent arrival at Washington, and very few of them-had made his acquaintance. He is fiftyeight years old and is described as short and thin, light-complexioned, unprepossessing in figure, and weighing scarcely more than 100 pounds.—Exchange. —Judge Henry G. Smith, of Memphis, Tenn., who died a few days ago, is described as a man of singular bravery, as is illustrated by the story of one of his cases tried years ago in Tennessee. He was to prosecute a man for murder. Friends of the murderer let it be known that they would kill whoever appeared as prosecutor. Mr. Smith began the trial by producing two pistols, which he kept'by him until the man was convicted. — N. Y. Evening Post. —Bishop Simpson (Methodist Episcopal) was about to begin his lecture before the Yale theolgical students, the other day, when he was seen to pause and look for something. “ Young gentlemen,” he said, “I find myself in the position of the preacher who was informed by a lady that thirdly had flown out of the window.” A part of his manuscript was missirg, and while Prof. Fisher went away to search for it the Bishop entertained his audience with a half-hour’s talk on President Lincoln.

—This story is told of Mme. Sontag, the singer > During her visit to this country, fifteen or twenty years ago, she was not pleased with the pitch of her piano. She sent for the tuner, gave him the tuning-fork, which had a lower pitch than the piano, and told him to tune the piano down to that. The man bethought himself of a laborsaving device. He raised the pitch of the fork by filing it off a little at the ends, and when he presented it again to Mme. Sontag, she found the piano in perfect accord with it, and was exceedingly delighted. —Hiram Y. Reese died, recently, at his home in Franklin Countv, Pa., aged almost ninety-two years. lie was tho father of twenty-live sons, twenty of whom are vet living,lhe eldest being sixty-six and the youngest twenty-four shears old. His lirst wife had six sons, ins second eleven and his third eight, and six of the children were twins. He was a soldier in the War of 1812, and had nine sons in the Union Army during the late war, two of whom were killed at the first Battle of Bull Run, a third at Ball's Bluff, and a fourth was drowned during Banks’ ill-starred Red River Expedition He was a remarkably robust pian. and never but onee during his fife did he take medicine.