Rensselaer Union, Volume 11, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 March 1879 — PERSONAL AND LITERARY. [ARTICLE]

PERSONAL AND LITERARY.

—Gen. Sherman and Jefferson Davis left Vicksburg, Miss., recently on the same railroad train. —A descendant of Eliot, who translated the Bible into the language of the Natick Indians, died a pauper at Cleveland, Ohio, recently. —The financial troubles of Archbishop Purcell have, the Cincinnati Commercial says, had a tendency to depress the price of real estate and to destroy business confidence in that city. —Mrs. Agnes D. Jenks, the celebrated witness, says the Washington Star, is one of the conspicuous characters who can be seen promenading Pennsylvania avenue in that city any fine afternoon. —Rev. Abel Manning, Congregauonalist, of Goffstown, Mass., is now ninety-one years old. He has preached 5,000 sermons, delivering 300 in one year. He ridicules the idea some ministers advance, that there should be but one sermon a week. —When Gen. Veach, of North Carolina, escorted Gov. Jarvis, Senator Vance’s -successor, to the Gubernatorial chair, recently, he shook hands with him, and said, “Now, Jarvis, I’ve done all I can do for you. Be comfortable, and you’ll soon get used to it. God bless you, and make me your successor. Good-by.” —The late Joseph Gillott, the steelpen manufacturer, after he became rich, had a mania for collecting old Italian instruments, and, although he knew nothing whatever about music, he became the owner of over five hundred violins and violoncellos—a large portion of which were made by the great artists of Cremona. After his death they were found lying in dusty heaps, or thrust away in boxes.

—Gen. Sherman is stoutly opposed to the marriage of Second Lieutenants in the Army. When he was staying at Atlanta, Ga., a few days ago, Lieut. Alfred Reynolds, of the Twentieth United States Infantry, called to pay h’s respects while on his bridal tour. “ What is your rank, sir?” said Gen. Sherman. “Second Lieutenant,” was the reply. “ Well, sir, you ought to be put to work on a farm,’’ answered the General. —The Russian language is one extremely hard to learn, and cannot be acquired with the dictionary and grammar. It has so many inflections and puzzling grammatical rules, and these are clogged with such lists of exceptions. sub-exceptions and minor subexceptions and words which, like the comets, have an indefinably erratic course of their own, the student of books becomes bewildered and throws up the study in disgust. —ln a letter to Mr. J. J. Piatt, of Ohio, written in 1875, Bayard Taylor said: “ You know how slow the public is to accept new impressions, but in my case there is now the beginning of such an acceptance—that is, the public is inclined to believe that I have done, or am capable of doing, better work than my narratives of travel. For ten years past I have been persistently snubbed by certain literary critics, by whom at least the sincerity and steadiness of my endeavors ought to have been recognized, and a large class of readers has been influenced by tbeir attacks. . I think the worst of the discouraging period is over, and it has not really hurt me. I am as full of hope, of will, and of new poetic conceptions, as ever before in my life. If I live long enough, my best work is still before me.”