Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 35, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 February 1903 — Items Here and There. [ARTICLE]

Items Here and There.

The Rochester Daily RepubhU can got ont a special edition, last Wednesday, in celebration of the 17th anniversary of its fonnding. It was perhaps, the pioneer daily in Indiana in a~ small town. It was established by the late Major Bitters and is still published by his son. Laporte Argos: The First National bank, whioh is the place of deposit for contributions to the Reynolds Memorial fund, reports subscriptions to date amounting to SBB4. The Smith bank at Westvilla has reoeived contributions of several hundred dollars, and the total fnnd is in excess of S6CO. The contributions have been slow ooming in for several weeks, Government armories are working double time to manufacture I the new service rifle for the regular I army. The Erag-Jorgensen rifles, ; which were thought, when adopted I a few years ago, the most perfeot | that could be devised, will be retired and held in reserve. The state militia will probably be armed with them, and that may I mean that before long our Comi pany M. will be armed with a good repeating rifle, of modern, though not if the latest, pattern. A new swindle is being worked thusly: First you will get a deed to a lot in Deer Park, Michigan. Then in a few days you will get a letter saying that the donors understand that yon have not bad the deed recorded. They will offer to record it for you and to furnish an abstract of title for $2.50. That is three times what the lot is worth. Deer Park is on the northern peninsula of Michigan and is .located on a sand dune where you oonldn’t raise an umbrella.

A sweeping bill calculated to destroy horse racing and kindred sports in Illinois has been introduced in the legislature of that state. It makes it a penal offence for a person to rent rooms for the purpose of selling pools or conducting devices for recording bets or wagers upon the result of elections, trials of speed, of man or beast. It is not at all likejy that snoh a bill will beoome a law in a state where snoh a liberal and sportive city as Chicago is located,

Miohigan City has not yet given up the fight for the U. S. naval school to be established some plaoe on the great lakes. Another place lately mentioned is Indiana City, a place in the northwest oorner of Lake county, fifty years old but not a building in it. e principal oiaim for the place is supposed to be the faot that Congressman Crumpaoker owns 72 lots in it. Another strong claimant for the sohool is Put-in-Bay, Ohio, on the Lake Erie shore. So far, at least as scenic advantages go, that place is far ahead of Michigan City.

Somehow and somewhere a report was started that the governwas furnishing mail boxes free for nse on rural delivery routes. Tbe Postoffioe department has sent a denial of the same to Postmaster Moss of Logansport. It ooold scarcely be expected that the government should take upon itself each an enormous outlay when rural delivery has been only fairly installed and does not begin to pay its way. It is a great convenience to be granted tbe privilege of fres mail delivery without being given the box. It is a privilege that uone of the citizens of smaller oities and towns enjoy. Bome body has lately revived and revamped an old fake atory to the effeot that a bar of gold was accidentally spilled in the mint into the pot where the metal for the oent pieoes of 1)02 waa being

melted pp, and that the cents were coined before the loss ol the gold bar waa discovered, and that the cents are therefore worth a premium. 14 is the same story oil a slightly modified form, as was told years ago about the flying eagle cents of about 1857 and 8. Both stories were foolish fakes.