Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 January 1898 — WASHINGTON GOSSIP [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

WASHINGTON GOSSIP

The President is pulling Senator Thurston one way and the beet sugar makers in Nebraska are pulling him the other %n the Hawaiian question. »♦ * * J. W. Shrague of Cincinnati has addressed a memorial to Congress asking the enactment of a law to provide the death penalty for the crimes of train wrecking and robbing. * * • The thirty days of mourning that have interrupted the social gayety of Washington will compel the administration to hustle in order to fulfill all of the formal engagements that have been made before the beginning of Lent. * • « The discipline at the naval academy was never so severe as at present. Capt. Cooper, the superintendent, is making a new and higher standard, both in conduct and scholarship, and has adopted some severe measures to test class honor among the cadets. «-• * When President Lincoln appointed Mr. Hassurek of Cincinnati ns minister to Ecuador he told him it was the h.ghest office in the gift of the nation, Quito, the capital, being nearly 12,(XX) feet above the level of the sea. Archibald J. Samson of Arizona now enjoys that honor. « • • Considerable alarm is felt concerning the illness of Secretary Alger. He has been confined to his house for three weeks, and nearly all that time to his bed. At first the doctor said it was only a bad cold; then he pronounced it a case of la grippe; then he decided that it was malarial fever, but now it is typhoid. • * • Representative Broussard of Louisiana has followed the example of Representatives Belknap of Illinois and Beach of Ohio in getting married, and it is hoped that the epidemic will spread in alphabet' leal order through the entire House of Representatives. Robert Adams of Phi.adelphia, Joseph W. Bailey of Texas and William Edward Barrett of Massachusetts are three young and handsome Representatives whose names at the top of the list in the congressional directory do not have the asterisk that indicates the matrimonial state, but there js still time for them to reform. When the “Cm” are reached Mr. Cousins of lowa will be the first to fall. •* • > The big Barnum & Bailey show is now in Europe, and Whiting Allen, the agent, is in Washington trying to arrange a plan for getting it back home without having to pay duty as on new imisirtations. After the big show set sail for England, a few months ago, it was discovered that there was no provision in the tariff law for bringing it bark into this country free <>f duty. The tariff makers had lind no experience with shows going out of the country with the intention of returning, nnd they made no provision for it. Even at a low appraisement it would take the Qgceipts of the show in London to bring it through the custom h<w in New York. The only way to get the show home is for Congress' to pass n joint resolution authorising the Secretary of the Treasury to let it come in free of duty, providing it brings nothing but what it took away with It last fall.