Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 February 1898 — QUEER STORIES [ARTICLE]

QUEER STORIES

Under a rule by which parcels weighing twenty pounds aud of the value of SIOO may be sent by mail between England and France it Is said that the postal authorities have had to handle bicycles. A shepherd at Chambery, Savoy, employs a horse instead of a dog to keep the herd together. The horse understands the orders given him and enrries them out as Intelligently as the besttrained dog. St. Louis boasts of a baboon that recently went on a lark, ate sulphur matches, red fire, gold paint and raw eggs, drank bottled beer and ended by throwing eggs at the reflection of himself in a mirror. According to an Indiana reporter, a woman leaned from a car window and asked a man to pick up a ring she dropped. He did so and discovered from the inscription on the ring that she was his long-lost wife. This is one of the stories that you have to take at one gulp to avoid strangling. After having been twice shot without being hurt, in the very act of stealing chickens, a Maltese cat of Pikesvllle, Md., was flnully dispatched by a citizen who had lain in wait all night for it in the henhouse. According to the neighbors’ records, the cat had carried off 100 chickens in a few weeks.

New York gypsies have been offering to exchange a woman for a horse. The woman is described as 20 years of age and pretty, with dark brown hair, fine teeth and blue eyes. She seemed much interested, watched each person who approached with a keen interest, and said if anyone cared to buy she would undertake to demonstrate that she was a lot better than a horse. There was a collision in the Danish State Railroad near Copenhagen some time ago in which forty persons were killed seventy wounded. The railroad at once admitted that it was to blame, and, Instead of lighting claims for damages, appointed n committee to settle with the claimants what will be fair compensation, so as to avoid having the claims brought into the courts. Howard Reed, of Milford, Pa., started out hunting for partridge and woodcock, and was followed by the house cat. All efforts on the part of the young hunter to drive the cat back .home were futile; it was bound to go with him, and It illustrated Its ability ns a hunter by Its “pointing” a woodcock, which young Reed shot. Then it “flushed’ a partridge, which was also baggt'd by the hunter. Reed says he would not part with the cat for the best bird dog in the country.