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About The Conyers weekly. (Conyers, Ga.) 18??-1888 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 24, 1885)
STRANGE CORNISII STORY. > _ Tlir Oath lie Took to Save his Uifo a«d How lie liept It. The Cornishman publisnes alleged a sensa tiouftl narrative of a murder to i ,-e been committed in the locality, the narrator professing to have remained tj. Vrt under a fearful oath imposed the on lira at tho time of the committal of led some fifty years since. The writer who signs himself “G. H. O and writes from Penzance, declares himself « ling to indicate where the body of * be murdered man was buried. The ,trry is as follows: The writer, then a ■ r:iior in a firm in London, of which lie is now the head, came to Penzance Sep¬ tember, 1834, to arrange, terms among local tin smelters. He left Penzance (! , ;e evening to visit a friend in St. Just, which is some six miles from Penzance. <)u the way there, in a lonely part of the j'oad, he met two men, when he heard ■one say, “That’s him,” whilst the other •asserted, “No, it Is not.” They again •faced each other, when the two men sa ; d •they had taken him for another person, idmost immediately a man approached mm the direction of St. Just, and the • writer called his attention to the suspi cious cliaracter of the two men. The iiian, who said he was a mine agent, laughed at liis fears and went on his way. He had only proceeded about a coupjo of hundred yards when he was seized with nervous tremors. His legs refused to support him and lie fell in the middle of the road, but thought it bet¬ ter not to stay there and so proceeded -nil hands and knees across the dusty road, scrambled up a small bank and found himself in a common, which ap¬ peared to be many acres in extent. He dragged himself to a heather-covered strip between two clumps of furze and threw himself at length and closed his eyes. After a little time he looked up and the moonlight mound. revealed to him a newly-made crouched and Hearing two shots fired lie waited, and he , sw the men just after coming with the body. To quote his letter, “Once more a thrill of horror ran through me. On they came toward the newly-made I grave, almost touching my feet as they passed. Then they turned to the right and threw the body into the pit with a I I thud which made every fibre in my body vibrate. The corpse in the grave the I j two men began to fill it up. Doing chat disclosed me. They had not lowered the I mound many inches when one of them I discovered me. They pounced upon I me and demanded wiiat I was doing there. I explained, but all to nt) pur pose. ‘The same pit will do for him.’ ‘Yes, shoot him.’ ‘No, cut his throat.’ ‘Stop, I’ll load my pistol again; don’t I leave any marks of blood about; push I him in the pit first and out his throat I afterward.’ These were the horrible I threats accompanied by frightful impre j cations which greeted me. Said one of the men to me again, ‘We have decided F | it to is bury hardly you alive, worth slip while off your burying clothes, that good suit of yours; it will do for one of us.’ I pleaded my youth, my acciden¬ tal and unpremeditated presence, my newly-made wife and only child, and this at last seemed to touch the hearts of the brutes. ‘Well,’ said one, ‘we will I spare your life on condition that you I swear, salvation as you hope for heaven and the of your wife, child and friends; you shall swear it, too, on the point of I this knife and the muzzle of this pistol, I that what you have seen this night you I ! will never speak of or divulge to any I human being for a space of fifty years I hom this day, when we shall be as this,’ I at the same time kicking into the grave I a clod of light-colored clayey soil. I j I did life swear ou that most lonely solemnly. heath of I bought West Pen- my I utb. I have kept my promise. It is a Aide over fifty years ago. I was then twenty-six years of age, so you see I am an old man now. Those men were mid¬ dle-aired, from forty-five to fifty, at that <mi ( >. Of his revisit to the spot he \\ntes: “As I approached the fatal spot tue road seemed entirely unaltered. T I solemnly believe that I crept through no very gap in the low hedge of earth 'Hitch still imperfectly protects the croft; "il [ stood between the self-same clus ( ' l « ot furze which formed my bed— 7 11Cai b’ tfly bed of death—and peep !'T’ as He murderers hid the result of lr uf arsed crime, and that I knelt on ttie undisturbed grave where their vic im s bones are now mere dust. After j 1 ; 11 a centm 7 I knelt again, not to im , 1’ 7° mt rc ot ’ . \ y m an as I did then, but of 7 1 ’ est unfittingly I have sinned in Ported pledge, and, to save I Rh studded ; ^ 1 heinous rom barm, crimin have als. ” reluctantly The House ami Barn. -- ■ |®<lmUsofte ‘-j en 4 r Sestion , in regard ,Ses to the floors n mho K ,, ble and mav just now lHnn ln c useful - Ventilation X e thin S> bl V there may bo Inortli ton ' tllk C ,i 1 1 ts * in ^ bl January a bouse and exposed having to wide the Ik?. end 111 the floors and neit)v° Y \ around the ar< S * r,le se may be closed maiidor l Ua Perm au ? ntly iu the folIowin £ L * - T A Paste * is made of pound It ii one u .’ ir ? e ff llar ts of water, and one L;-e ij ,. “tul , of oo alum; a number of news \ \ ^ 11 “acerated s thick in this paste, thus and I made ? ,; - as putty is wit i, 7 U c 7 13 cblse Prised l, into the cracks if m ,- and hardens into ■loaiiv 7 :USS r.‘u i e b a pter mache, which it Ideal* lavenuoa nf h 7 ?, aud - ®Hfl keep leave out sufficient a great k nes for the entrance of air for ventil \ r i l( ,u USe u provide case it is best to have •‘-arranged m -irv ventilation. especially for ^Ior!w ~----- r 7 l ^ rt3 gesT iVE,—Mrs. Winks: to-day tU 1 ot °‘ Haglia velvet broche ■' thatV^ - ,J Hs: “What under the sun is i&araeafv desimf; 1 1 those t^ 011 velvets know? in which It is the the i dg , iu tbe lie instead be tafcc.p* P of | u Qh * ! I have seen them.” I ‘'Thtw 7 ° U d be they are pretty ?” *«»e nni if the sunken desigu y poehm? ? <leuti ons in the cover of l0 Ppinr after y° u have been -Philadelphia Call. 1 ■*> 4 1 L VOL. VII. the Plight of fouls. Like the rise and fall of the starry host La! th’s myriads come and go; But Whence we speed through the infinite spaces— Speed as. the light and leave no traces— And what the calm on the pale, cold faces, And wither we pass to our shining places By far ce'ostial isle and coast, Oh, Lord, we may not know. In the hush of the holy Christmas-ti^e I think of the flight of souk; And over the doubts our faith denying, The prayers and tears that bewail the dyh.^ The heart’s w Id sorrow, the fruitless sighing, For form! beloved in the lone grave lying— Sweet as it rang by Bethlehem’s side The song of the angels rolls. And the peace of God-thv peace—de-cendj As the strain floa*s high and free; And, all my fears to the darkness throwing, I know that the stars the azure strewing, And the souls, like a river ceaseless flowing, Forever and ever to Thee are going— To the lov : that life and death attends, And the glory that is to be ! —Edna Lean Proctor , in Youth's Companion. PLEASURES OF FARMING A8 RELATED BY TIIE HONF.bl FARMER HIMSELF. The honest, farmer eat upon the seat of a dingy spring wagon that had once been red, which wa3 backed up be¬ tween 10 other dingy spring wagons that had also been bright colored earlier in their existence, at the Gansevoort market. Other honest farmers sat upon other wagon seats all about, and a general atmosphere of rusticity, hay, the simplicity, and vegetables permeated viciuage. To the dingy spring wagon first mentioned, upon which sat the honest farmer also referred to, were attached two dingy bay horses in rusty harness. These animals hung their heads as low as their check straps would permit, and gazed between tlieir blinders with bored expressions of countenance, which changed to looks of annoyance as the honest farther occasionally jerked when the lines they and had shouted: “W’oa,” there !” not the slightest inten¬ tion or desire to stir. The body of the dingy wagon was covered with dried mud that had evidently been accumu¬ lating for many moons, and the box was cracked and the paint had peeled away in flakes; but the honest farmer looked happy. “So you think you would like to be a farmer ?” said the honest member of that profession to the historian, from the seat of the dingy wagon. “I sup¬ pose the somebody has been telling you that farmer is the only independent man on the face of the broad earth, and that the rural life of the tiller of the soil is one long paradise of peace and happi¬ ness, with none of the harrowing cares of business or the wearing rush and grind of the great city to drive him to premature old age and insane asylums. Am I right? Yes; I knew it. There are lots of persons who float that story around. I wish they had to do a year’s work on a farm once. They would change their minds before the end of the first half of a forenoon’s work. ” “Why,” inquired the historian, in sur¬ prise; “do you intend that I shall infer that the'farmer is not this ideal of hap¬ piness that he has been pictured?” The honest farmer’s face split cross¬ wise into a beauteous rural grin. “Get up and sit on that bag of potatoes,” he said, “and I’ll tell you how the farmer earns his living. I’ll tell you how much work lie does, and then you judge for yourself. Let’s see: where shall I begin ?” “Begin with the 1st of January,” suggested the historian. “Well,” continued the honest farmer, reaching down from the seat of the dingy wagon to administer a slight kick to his dingy nigh horse and shout “W’oa!” though the beast had not moved for ten minutes. “Well, I’ll begin with the 1st of January; but recollect that I am not talking of the gentleman farmer, who directs his work from his house and keeps an overseer or foreman, but about the farmer who goes out in the barn and fields himself and earns liis bread by the sweat of his brow—one of the small farmers like myself. “To begin with, -1 have a farm of 75 acres, w hich fortunately belongs to me. Otherwise I should be obliged to pay from $300 to $500 rent per year, which would about swamp all the profits I get from it. Now, for farm work in Janu¬ ary. That is about the laziest time of the year for the farmer. I keep 10 cows and sell milk in the city, and so I am obliged to get up about 5 o’clock in the morning to milk my cows and get the milk to the station in time for the train at 8 o’clock. If it should happen to have snowed deeply I get up an hour earlier so as to make allowance for the additional time it will take to wane over to the station ffp to the horse’s body in snow. I have a hired man, of course, My hired man is a boy about 16 years old, and if you ever had to wake him up in the morning you’d think he’d just taken chloroform. I get so mad at that boy when I am a little late in the morn¬ ing that I sometimes lose my temper. He sleeps so hard that he might be kid¬ napped and given a Russian bath with¬ out waking up. I think of inventing a torpedo with a time fuse that will fire him up against the ceiling at 5 o’clock in the morning, and then I’d need an automatic arrangement to turn the bed into a sewing machine—like them ‘par¬ lor beds’ I see at the furniture stores— or he’d climb right back into it and go to sleep again. When you once do get him waked up he’s all right, though, for the day. Then we go out to the barn CONYERS, ROCKDALE CO., GA., SATURDAY, JANUARY 24,1885. you ever take hold of a pitchfork on a cold winters morning? Well, the handle of a pitchfork is the coldest tliinff there is. It’s colder even than the Village Trustee you voted for on the mormng after his election. If the tlier mometer is 10 degrees below zero in the morning the handle of a pitchfork will be 15 degrees below, and it’s a peculiar species cf penetrating cold that goes right through the thickest mittens. Af ter you’ve had hold of that pitchfork about six minutes you’ll begin to wish that your parents had been born on dif ferent sides of the globe and never met each other “When the water gets warm we mix up * lot of ‘chopped feed,' consisting of equal parts of hay and cornstalks, sprinkled with meal, and give each cow about half a bushel of it steaming hot. Then yon git down and take advantage of her distraction in eating it to milk her. If she were not eating she would take too much mteiest in being milked and perhaps give you. a kick sideways that would make you wish cows were born without legs and had to be propped across two carpenter’s horses to be milked. You take a one-legged stool and sit down ^ close to the cow to milk her, m such a position that she has you at her mercy. A great many cows take an infinite amount of pleasure in wait ing until you have got the pail full of milk and then pretending they detect, at a point within the line of direction of the milk pail, a fly, which it is their bound ed duty to feel of with the hind toot. Of course that tips over the milk, and eti quette demands upon such an occasion that you arise with a profane objuvga tion, take your stool by the leg and whack the cow across her southeudwith R. It doesn’t hurt the cow very much but relieves your own" conscience. The meanest gosh tiling to do to a cow is to call her a darned fool. That hurts her feeliugs and makes her wish she had been eaten when she was veal. Some cows are that mean by nature that when you go to milk them they hump their backs up and try to hold the milk in. The proper thing to do in this case is to give her a thump in the middle of her back with your fist. When you have done it . . ust will 3 once you realize that a cow s back is shaped like the roof of a house and that her spinal column the ridge pole, but your hand will get well m a week or two, and you will have the satisfaction of feeling that you know more about bovine anatomy than you did before you hit her. Experience is a great teacher. Well, when yon get the cows milked you go and clean off'the horse you are going to drive to the sta lion with the milk, or rather you let your hired boy do that and you go in aud get your breakfast—salt pork fried potatoes and coffee, all very weak but tile pork. Then I drive about two miles to the station—excuse my mixing up the personal part of the pronouns time I promiscuously* think but farmer and part it I you’re the of ft’s realize that I am —with the milk, generally cool in the country of a winter’s morning and when you get about half a mile in the sleigh, with the sharp wind blowing in your face, you begin to feel that purga tory would be a preferable place, because it would have the advantage of being 1 warm. “When you get back from the station it will be about 9 o’clock, and four hours’ work done. While you have been gone the hired man has fed the horses, the pigs, and the chickens—if he has done his duty. Now comes the business of watering them, cows and all. It’s not so much trouble to water the chickens as the cows, however. You will find in tbe country that a beneficent Providence has situated all barns about 100 feet from the pump. It is a special dispen¬ sation so that you shall not become ef¬ fete for want of exercise. You take two big pails to the pump, fill them, and stagger back to the barn, and the water slashes over from the pails into yonr bootlegs ?«s you walk, and which is very cooling when the thermometer is below zero. There is generally at the door of every well regulated barn a patch of ice which you slip upon, and then go down with the pails, spill the water all over yourself and soak your mittens so that it is warmer for the rest of the day to go with yonr hands bare. When you have vented all the blasphemy you know upon the catastrophe, and given each pail a furious kick—perhaps knocking the bot¬ tom out of one of them—you go back and get some more and lug that to the barn, and go back and forth thus until the beasts have had all they want. And you wouldn’t believe how much they will drink when you bring it to ’em. If you turn them out to a trough they wih take about two swallows of water apiece. If you carry it to them in pails they will drink three pailfuls apiece out of pure enssedness, just for the sake of seeing you carry it. After you get the animals all watered you and the hired man chop feed enough to last for the remainder of the day and the next morning. One of you turns the chopper and the other stuffs hay and corn-stalks into it to be chopped up. That chopper turns like a Waterbury watch, and when you have “chopped” for a half an hour you will b? willing to go through the machine yourself and come out in small pieces rather than turn it any longer. The man who invented those cutters ought to be treated that way, just as they utilized Mr. Guillotine upon his own in¬ vention in France. By the time the feed is chopped it is time to feed all the animals at noon, and then you go in to dinner. After dinner you exchange compliments with your wife, while the hired man chops wood. (You will please observe what a soft serving a term in State prison.) If there is not anything particular to do after dinner throughout the winter, there is always one resource. That is ‘snrout ing’ toes in potatoes. cellar You see, all the "pota ward spring, a warm begin to sprout to and if the sprouts grow too long they entwine together and make (he potatoes solid, besides decreasing the genitive power of the Vegetables If there is one thing that is perfectly heav enly it is to sit Upon a reversed peck measure in a potato bin and sprout po totoes hour after hour by the light of a lantern while you exchange stories from the almanac with your hired man. If you are of an imaginative disposition you can almost fancy that you are a Russian convict laboring in a mine in Siberia, the cellar is so dark and pleas ant. “Thus vou occupy yourself in winter. When gentle spring, ‘diphtherial mild ness, comes, Before you begin to get ready for summer. the snow is off the ground you begin to cart your fertilizer out to the fields so as to take advantage of the sleighiDg to get it there. You also take down all your rail fences and put them up again because the snow will have shifted them all, and you must get that done before the plowing season begins. Yow bu-gvL to plow as soon as the frost gets out of Yne ground, and with, this real commencement oi thfe ‘j.f* ricultural season your work begins. You have been comparatively resting all win ter to prepare for it. There are all the same ‘chores,’ such as milking, feeding, etc., to be done the same as during the winter, with the difference that you must get them done in time to be in the fields and have your breakfast eaten by seven o’clock. Then all day long you tramp up and down behind your plow, with about 86 pounds of mud on your slices, wishing, at the rate of three times a minute, yon were dead. You plow until dark, and then you go home and do your evening chores and go to bed. You. don’t get half rested enough by the time you are obliged to get up again in the morning, but you plow again all dav just the same and iustas Jikelv as not. when you get back at night you spend two or three hours— until midnight, say—in cutting potatoes in i;vo to prepare "hem "comes for plantin'* When planting time the little busy bee i» a Ibafer compared to you and you can never—unU you J try it— appreciate . , the ,, felicity , of walking . all da Y U P and down a plowed held with a -] as ^ e P° ,f s on y81111 ai ’L\carefully dro PP ir . >g'one . afier another at equal dis Lonees apaiv, and then going back with a doe and covering them up. It is al nillC11 inni .o plant corn and J ® aus and pumpkins and Lay. You ^ h % / >,g ag ? f seed ”° und wu-iwk’* iac ‘bed, from ^ which a l m ost you i makes scatter you it hump- over field, and when' it comes up you find lfc 1S ab sown ln spots, and your hired raan makes sarcastic remarks about it. “All through the lovely leafy month dune you s P end your time hoeing these same potatoes, corn, etc. The in venfclon of the Colorado beetle has added another pleasing complication to J be raisir) g of potatoes, for you now have an opportunity to amuse yourself by sprinkling tliGm. wit-li Paris green and wat e Y wldcb only makes tbem fat and riekes . th dru . 8t buy e ? ? ?^ you the stuff ?,' bowardthe latter part of June and the lust of July you begin haying, and 11817 J 011 work about hours per day. ? ,7^ bas *° b< -; b° mowed ur N aild and then then it allowed must be to 1 a ed u p into cocks. The nex., day it must be spread out and dried, and then cocked up again. Just as it is ready for the barn a thunder shower generally comes up and wets it so that you have to take three or four more days to dry it. Then you put it in the barn, and if there is one thing more than another that makes yon wish Darwin’s theory were true, and that you had been born 2,000 years ago, it is ‘mowing’ the hay away— i. e., chucking it under the eaves of the barn, while two men throw it in on you faster than you can take it away. It is sometimes warm, as you may be aware, in July and August, and it isn’t a cooling process to be close up under the roof of a barn working like thunder, but if your clothes are too thin the thistles in the hay stick through them, and lacerate at once your legs and your feelings. Between the first and second crop of hay there is just about time enough to hoe everything again, and after the second crop you begin harvest¬ ing. And oh, what joy unspeakable it i3 to dig potatoes and blind oats, and perform other similar operations upon grain and vegetables. This lasts until the cold weather, and then you have all the grain to thrash and all the corn to husk, and you come to market, as I have done to-day, once in a great while. It’s the only approach somebody to a holiday that you get, unless sues you because one of your cows tramples down $1.30 worth of his grain. Then you have a holiday in court, and have to do two days’ work the next day to make up for it. “And now,” concluded the honest farmer, “do vou still pine to be one of us ?” “Thanks,” replied the historian, “I should prefer to obtain a job to carry bricks ud to the top of a fourteen-story flat.” “It would be a great deal more fun,” assented the honest farmer. No Use.— The New Orleans papers say that it will be no use for unem ployed people to go down there Tor wor p iu connection with the Exposition; for there s none t» be had. NO. 44. A WOMAN’S CURSE. HO W IT I3AS FOlil.OtVEO A « A.1151.KII OVER LAND AND SE£ *OR TEN YBAItS Ami Forced Him to Break Up tiisN'etartcn-f Business and try to AInke Reparation Tor tbe Wrong; Done. “If you want to hear a strange story,” saula gentleman to a reporter cf the AVm Francisco Alta, “engage that gray haired man in conversation and get him to tell you his history. It Will repay you for jour time,” and be indicated a pre maturely-aged man with a sad face sit in the sun on one of the benches of the park. The reporter needed no sec ond invitation, and was soon seated by the man witl1 the strange history, “1 told,” said the seeker after facts, “that you hate a life story, strange in the extreme, and that you are not averse to relating it.” The e J es of t]ie mau were turned oh the speaker a moment, and then folding bis hands in his lap he said: “Yes, {t is a story. I am a murderer and a reformed gambler; but you need not shrink so from me, for the murder was not intentional. Ten years ago I gambling owned the largest and most popular parlors in the city of Chicago, aud on Saturday nights I dealt my own fa ro game, in which business, of course, 1 mad8 a g reftt deal of money. Many unpleasant incidents . grew out of my Y«a.!nftSP, but 1 always excused it on the ground thtA - men did not have to play m obliged y games to drink any poison".'" Yntt’e than. Y £ they &ftv got were to 2 notichg and expecting one young gum ln particular, who always came in it was my night to deal, “At first he played boldly, and as a consequence, lost heavily; but as he grew more familiar with the games he played carefully, and acted as though fife depended on his winning, which, in fact, was the case, as it afterward proved. I got acquainted with him, ad dressed him as Brown, but knowing that tb at was not his true name. I think he followed the game for months, winning a little sometimes, but generally losing }ieaviI .Y« Ali bast he came one night and 1 saw by his flushed face that he had been drinking, although he looked ap P :, rently cool. He sat down at the table, drew out a small roll of money, and il down before him, said : ‘There is in that little pile my torture, my honor and my life. I either win or lose all this night. Begin your game; I am ready.’ Others joined and played f or awhile, but finally withdrew from the game and watched the strange young man at my right, “He* played to win, but fate was against him, for he lost, won and lost again, and finally, after two hours of playing, evidently in the most fearful suspense, he lost Lis last dollar. Lean mg back in his chair, with compressed hos and a face blanched to a deathly whiteness, he looked me in the eyes a moment, and rising, said: “ ‘My money, honor and happiness have gone over the table, never more to return. I said my life shall go with it, audit sliali. Tell my wife I had gone too far to return.’ “ Before we could prevent it, he put a Derringer to his breast and shot himself through the heart, falling upon the table that had been his ruin and death. • < His wife came, awful in the majesty of her grief, and after satisfying herself that her husband was dead she asked: ‘Where is the keeper of this dreadful place ?’ I was pointed out, and, striding up to me so that her finger almost touched my pallid face, she exclaimed in tones that are ringing in my ears yet: ‘Oh, you soulless wretch, with heart of stone ! You have lured my husband from me, sent him to perdition, widowed me and orphaned my children. You are his murderer, and may God’s with curses wild rest upon you ‘Oh, eternally’!’ Aud a scream, my husband ! my children !’ she fell fainting on the body of the corpse. “I lingered for weeks in a brain fever, that curse seeming always to be the burden of my mind. On my recovery 1 burned the fixtures of my den and closed the place and devoted the most of my time to travel, with hope of escap. ing that woman’s just curse, butlcan’t I believe that it is on me forever and I feel that I was that man’s murderer. I am rich and my first attempt was to get the dead man’s wife to accept an annuity from me. but she refused all aid and tried to support herself by her own labor. I relieved my mind to some extent, however, by settling a certain sum on her and on her children, which passes through my father’s hands, and ostensibly comes directly from him. Her children are receiving a fine educa¬ tion by this means, and my will, safely locked in my father’s office, bequeaths to her and her children my entire wealth, some $100,000. My life,” he con tinued, “is devoted largely to visiting gambling dens, where I meet young men and warn them of their danger.” If you call for beans or hash, the waiter will smg out your order so that it will cause every eye to centre upon you; and should you indulge in roast turkey and cranberry sauce, he wiii walk up to the other end of the room and give yonr order in a voice so small that it can hardly be distinguished in the kitchen, and nobody knows that you are a swell for once, but he expects his fee all the same. A Look Ahead.—A Frenchman who recently died directed in hi3 will that the sum of $5,000 should be given to the “wounded in the next war with Germany.” ODDS AND ENDS. Seven- pound sage Lens are killed in .Nevada* Chicago boasts a population of 610,323. Cayenne pepper is a popular remedy for colds. General Butler smoke* fifteen ci¬ gars a day. Vienna Las an International Fisheries Exhibition. Belva Lockwood is said to be an ex¬ pert rifle shot. Portland, Ore., has lost $1,000,000 by fires tins year. The population of Pap*, according to recent returns, is 2,239,028. Babbits damage Australia to the ex¬ tent of $10,000,000 per year. Tiffi dentist to the court of Italy is an American, Dr. Chamberlain. The number c i Quakers in the United States i3 put down at 100,000. Baltimore boasts more pretty young girls than she has had for years. BaronessBurCext-Coutts is in failing health, aud rarelyeenters society. A Georgetown, Ivy., duck has three legs and feet, all fully developed. The Russians are reducing their war expenditures by $4,500,000 yearly. Opium has increased twenty-five per cent, in price since the Chinese war. A Georgia boy of eleven years is serving a term in prison for murder. QtfAnt are now so abundant in Cali¬ fornia that they throng the roadways. An Alabama farmer obtained eight gallons of molasses from 100 water¬ melons. Johann Strauss has celebrated his fortieth anniversary as a director in Vienna. One single oyster will produce 128, 000,000 young oysters in the course of one year. cel'ebrato The province of Quebec will November 6 as a clay of thanksgiving this year. The American colony in Paris is divided against itself and is already tottering. Two hundred cars are now in use' transporting fresh fruit from California to the East. Santa Barbara exhibits an onion weighing one pound and fourteen and a ..half ounces. " review at Berne, soldier Luring a ranks and shot a himself stepped from fc h e dead. CiW Jefferson Pavis has no male de¬ scendant to bear-his, name, although twice married. —_ Vi A popular sport ill Kid Bluff, oil tiro Pacific coast, is fishing for rats with a hook and line. A Nsw York artist exhibits a study from still life and the name of it is? “A Tramp at Work.” One grain of Dakota wheat in three* years produced two bushels of grain. This is authentic. The lightest, pleasantest article in the world is said by Englishmen to be the American buggy. There is a tree in California 450 feet high and 94 feet in circumference at the base of the trunk. It is asserted that about a third of the banking done in the world is done- in the British empire. William Miller is a Wisconsin farm¬ er who has made $1,009,000 out of the products of the farm. Hiram Grubler, a miser in Ivlingers town, Pa., lias become insane over he loss, by theft, of $2,500. Hundreds of German children are christened Elsa now in honor of Wag¬ ner's Lohengrin heroine. Wild geese are passing south a mouth earlier than usual and this is said to be indicative of an early winter. The Jews in Russia. A somewhat remarkable article has appeared in the Lasse he Revue, l>y Prince Dermidoff de San Donato, in which he shows the very oppressive legislation under which the Jews exist in that country. Except in exceptional cases, they are not allowed to live where they like, but are forced to reside in cer¬ tain provinces, and then only in the towns. By the law of 1865 this position was somew'hat ameliorated, ,.nd the Jew¬ ish workman was permitted to quit his birth-place and settle in another; but practically he cannot mow without a passport, which has to be renewed every year, and this may be refused on very slight pretense. Even if he was allowed to go, he would have to obtain a permit of sojourn from the municipal authori¬ ties of the town of his choice, which would probably be refused, and if this difficulty were surmounted, another per¬ mit would have to be obtained forcarry ing on his trade. His wife and children may accompany him, but no other rela¬ tives ; and if he dies in his new abode, his family are obliged to return to their original residence. Should he himself grow old ormcapable of getting his live¬ lihood, he has to do the same, even though it was thirty years since he made the change. In almost all parts of Russia, Jews are forbidden to buy or to cultivate land, and there are also re¬ strictions on their entering certain trades and professions. Romantic font Real. A letter from Worth, Ga*, says: Thirty-three years ago, when the Cal¬ ifornia gold fever was at its height, there lived in tins county a young man named Wilson, who had a pretty young wife aud child. A quarrel between the couple caused the husband to go to Cal¬ ifornia. A few years later it was an¬ nounced that he was dead. The widow remarried and the grave in California was forgotten. Last week there arrived in Worth a gentleman about fifty-five years of age, evidently a man of means, who began inquiring about the old fam¬ ilies. It was the long-absent husband, who was appointed Commissioner for California at the New Oilcans Expo¬ sition, and who was anxious to make up with his wife. He found his son, who is married and the father of a family, and has furnished them means to join him in California, where it is said he is a millionaire. Mr. Wilson continued on his wav to New Orleans,
