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It is an interesting fact, and one not
generally known, thas it costs on an av¬
erage more than twice as much to get a
patent in England as it does in our coun
try.
Newfoundland has taken to agriculture.
It produced the past year hay and pota¬
toes to the value of $888,000, and butter
to the value of $00,000. The fishing
industry is very precarious, and the re¬
sort to agriculture seems to be the only
hope for the colony.
Mrs. Elizabeth Carroll, of Warren,
Ind., claims to have been horn in Penn¬
sylvania in 1774. Her husband was a
soldier in the war of 1812. There is
good reason to think that Mrs. Carroll is
really 113 years old, although she is as
active as a woman of sixty.
A Western judge has decided that a
stockman occupying the public domain
as a cattle range acquires no right to the
same that will enable him to prevent
other stockmen from turning loose rattle
on the range, even though the first oc¬
cupant has deyeloped the water on the
-ange and has it fully stocked.
The Times of India ■ ays that a general
order is about to be issued by the com¬
mander-in-chief directing that cavalry,
like infantry, shall henceforth cheer
when charging. It is suggested that
when coiouels give out their commands
on other matters, soldiers might also be
permitted to express their approval by a
“hear! hear!”
The world’s coal supply seems to be
increasing rather than diminishing. A
vein of coal sixteen feet thick has just
been found at Whitewood, Dakota,
twelve feet below the surface, and sev¬
enty feet beneath that another vein more
than three times as thick has been dis¬
covered. The coal is said to be as good
as any in the country.
The English Board of Trade has made
a report, in which it alleges that the
number of paupers in the country now
are only 24.7 to the 1,000, while in 1870
there were forty to the 1,000, and that
the total number has fallen from 900,000
to 697,000, while the population has
increased by 5,700,000. In London, it
is alleged, there are now only twenty-one
paupers to 1,000 inhabitants.
A Chicago clothing manufacturer says
that he i8 obliged to pay particular at¬
tention to the hip pockets which he puts
in trousers destined for the AV'estcrn
trade. His Kansas and Iowa customers
demand a pocket capable of holding a
quart flask, but for the far AYest trade
the pocket is made deep and narrow,
with an unusually strong lining, so that
a pistol will fit snugly in it.
Michael Cahill, of San Francisco, is
well known in Washington. As far back
as 1876 he sent his application for a
patent for his rain-making invention to
the patent office, and as often as the law
required renewed his caveat by paying
$10. The drawing which accompanied
the application was a marvel. It repre¬
sented the rising moon and the setting
sun, a balloon, a man smoking a pipe
and a huge rain-storm. When Cahill
finally went to Washington it did not
take long for the officials to confirm their
previous impression that he was a crank.
At the same time they guard his crazy
ideas with great care and treat the whole
matter with amusing seriousness, because
he has not legally abandoned his absurd
claim. Commissioner Hall is particularly
inclined not to allow Cahill to be made
sport of by the papers. “You may laugh
at me,” he said, “but I have no doubt
that the time-will come when man will be
able to bring rain out of the sky whenever
he desires to do so. ”
Justice Jaunaech, of Kalamazoo, Mich.,
has a parrot that he wouldn’t sell for its
weight in silver. On five different occa¬
sions has this intelligent bird saved the
house from being burglarized. The last
time was on a recent night. The burg¬
lar got the door unfastened, but when he
opened it the parrot a-kefl, in a stern and
harsh voice: “Hello, there 1 What’s
the matter ?” The burglar didn’t answer,
but fell over himself in his desperate
hurry to get away.
“The general climate of England is
favorable to the development of cancer
says the London Standard. “Out of
every million deaths from all causes,
those from cancer number about 30,000.
This proportion is only exceeded by
phthisis, old age, convulsions, bron¬
chitis, pneumonia and ‘debility.’ Next
to consumption, cancer is the most fatal
of all the constitutional diseases; and it
has been steadily gaining ground for
more than twenty years. The deaths
from cancer per million of persons living
were in 1802, 301; in 1872, 431; in
1881, 520; in 1882, 532; in 1883, 540; in
1884, 500; in 1885, 506, and are now
close upon 600."
Madame Patti is not the only singei
with a castle to call her home. Minnie
Hauk owns a castle among the Swiss
mountains, where she spends her vaca¬
tions. It was at one time used as a
fortress, and the stout walls are six to
eight feet thick. The rooms are large,
but are so well filled with furniture, and
thewalUso thickly hung with pictures,
that they seem quite cosy. Here Madame
Hauk keeps the trophies of her career,
and here her husband stores his ethno¬
graphical collection. Three fine dogs
are Madame Hauk’s especial pets, anc,
she is very fond of roaming the moun¬
tains, while they follow at her heels oi
bouud up the steep paths in front of her.
Hour Glasses aud Half-Hour Glasses
Long before hour glasses, or sane
glasses, were used In churches to indi¬
cate the time occupied in the delivery of
sermons, they were used in tournaments
to limit the duration of combats and
prevent them from being really sanguin¬
ary encounters. Of two adversaries en¬
gaged accounted in “a gentle passage of arms,” he
was victor who obtained the
greater number of advantages before the
sand had run from the glass turned at
the commencement of the combat.
Sand glasses were employed, also, in
scholastic discussions. Pascal, for in¬
stance, in one of his letters, mentions a
discussion in which he took part in the
Sorbonne, when he spoke for half an
hour by the sand glass or sable. And
they were, eventually, so identified with
scholarship, as well as preaching, that
artists frequently placed an hour glass as
well as a book in the background of
their portraits of eminent scholars. They
were also made use of at sales. But
though sixteenth thus used in the fifteenth
and centuries, it was in
the pulpit of the seventeenth
century that they obtained their wider,
popularity, period aud that on they tombstones cf the
same were most fre¬
quently delineate!. The high pew, or
“pue,” as it used to he written, the long
sermon and the hour glass by the pulpit,
are as vivid a presentment of Queen
Anne’s time, too, as would be the snuff¬
box, the clouded cane, or the fans and
brocades of the fashionable folks who
took the air in the Mall.
Precise and gentle George Herbert
wrote down his conviction that an hour’s
duration was long enough for a sermon.
These are his words: “The parson ex¬
ceeds not an hour in preaching, because
all ages have thought that a competency,
and he that profits not in that time will
belike afterwards the same affections
which made him not to profit before,
making him then weary,and so he grows
from not relishing to lothing.” But we
must not assume that all sermons were of
a length that required an hour’s atten¬
tion. We may be sure, on the contrary,
that the sand in the hour glass with
which so many pulpits were furnished
was not always run out before the
preacher brought his discourse to an end.
—The Quiver.
Dignity does not consist in possessing
honors, but in deserving them.
MEXICAN DISHES
WHAT THE WEALTHY PEOPLE
OF MEXICO EAT.
lfctin£ Roses Preserved Entire and
Other Dainties—Some Natural
Z»ishes—A Mexican House¬
wife Making Duler.
Fannie B. Ward writes from Mexico
that not only the aristocrats, but all
Mexicans with any pretensions to social
standing, require that every dish, if it be
but a spoonful of -peas, be served as a
separate course, for which clean plates
must be provided, making the most and
common-place dinner a long always
ceremonious affair. Wine is
served with the substantial, and coffee
and cigarettes after dessert. The Mex¬
icans have no fondness for sour things,
therefore vinegar, pickles, etc., find no
place here but §ugar-tooth everybody has and a duleies, well
developed (sweet-meats), “ in great ” demand.
are
There is no end to the varieties
of duler which a Mexican house¬
wife will compound, from simple
taffy to the most elaborate preserved and or
candied fruits, sauces, jellies here, mar¬
malades. Canning is unknown
and it is not needed in a summer coun¬
try where fruits are perennial. entire, each I have deli¬
eaten sugar-frosted roses preserved leaf intact the
cate, upon fairy;
stem, making a conserve fit for a
and everybody knows that preserved
rose-leaves, like guava jelly, are common
in tropical larders. Since stoves are
comparatively unknown, and therefore
ovens are non est, except those ponderous b:ca(l
affairs of adobe used by the
bakers, pies and cakes are never seen in
the Mexican menu. To be sure, there
are various articles called cakes to be
found in a few French bakeries, but they
bear no more likeness to the cake which
graces the daily tea-table of every Amer¬
ican than tortullas resemble American
bread.
During my first year in this country I
greatly missed the accustomed edibles,
and found it extremely difficult to sub¬
sist upon diet so entirely new. One of
my earliest experiences was to reside for
four long months in a Mexican fami.y
who spoke no word of English and were
ontirely unacquainted with any mode of
living but people that essentially and Mexican. educa¬
They were of kind-hearted, wealth
tion, and exeedingly is called “good livers.” hospi¬
table what
Four times a day their table literally
groaned under its burden of national de¬
licacies; yet I grew thin and thinner,
and actually retired every night so
downright hungry that I could have
wept, if tears -would have brought
some good fairy with a slice of
Fankee bread and butter! Just fancy it
—four months without butter, tea, steak,
potatoes, pie, cake—in short, without
anything tomed, to compelled which one had suffer been the accus¬
yet to tor¬
tures of day, Tantalus by being seated four
times a an hour at a stretch, beside
tabies loaded with dishes one turned
from in rapid disgust. of flesh, Suspecting the cause
of my loss a sympathetic
German friend, who resided near the
border, sent me a huge, round loaf of
jelly cake, large as a milk pan and de¬
licious enough to gladden the eyes of any
home-sick Yankee. It arrived in the
forenoon, and, of" course, I carried it,
uncut, to my hostess, with a request to
put it upon the table. But what was
my surprise, on being called to dinner,
to find that the usual menu had been set
aside in my honor, and the festive board
bore not a single article except the big
cake, cut in enormous slices. Well, we
ate and ate of it, there being nothing else
to eat—and an hour or two later there were
three sick children; whereupon the lady
of the house, with her hand upon her
diaphragm, the “American remarked Pan Duler” that she (sweetened thought
bread) not so wholesome as Mexican
food! In this family it was the custom
at diucer to put ripe grapes into the
soup, or to slice peaches into it, or any
other fresh fruit that happened to be on
hand; and every one of them poured
molasses or curdled milk over the frejo'es
which had been fried in grease and
mixed with onions and cheese. AVith
them a favorite delicacy was young kid,
especially the brains and head. When¬
ever eabesa do cabrila (kid’s head) was a
dinner-dish there was great rejoicing
among the youngsters and an expression
of deep-seated the satisfaction upon the
faces of elders. The mistress of the
manse would arise and thrust her knife
just back of the forehead, scooping out
the brains and spreading upon hot 9 I
tortillas for the clamorous children. 1
One day the lady of the house—who, 1
by the way, was a lovely woman, a |
devout Christian, a tender mother and
devoted to her husband and home, I
accomplished, withal, for a Mexican |
woman—came to my room with the
astonishing information kitchen that she was
going duler, inhonor into the to make some
of her eldest son’s ‘‘saint’s
day," and wouldn’t I come out in the
course of an hour and witness her in the
act ? Certainly I would, and gladly,
too, for when a Mexican lady condescends
to put her dainty feet and unaccus¬
tomed hands into the servants’ domain,
it is a household event by no means
to be overlooked. So I wrote a dozen
pages, and to give then her repaired time to get the well under
which way, situated the to other kitchen,
was on side of
the great casa, beyond the sunny court
yard, with its flowers and fountain, its
banana and orange trees, at least an
eighth though of enclosed a mile within from my apar: mcnt,
the same adobe
walls. There she sat flat upon the floor,
in the middle of the kitchen (there being,
as usual, no chairs), her round arms
bared above the elbows, and her pudgy
little hands immersed in some sticky
compound, while no less than five ser¬
vants ran hither and thither to do
her bidding, bringing a little more sugar,
flour or water, stirring the coals in the
brasier beside her, greasing tins upon
which to drop the duler when cooked,
etc. Her beautiful dark eyes glared with
the excitement of the occasion, and her
husband and brother-in-law, Loth men
of middle age, one a celebrated physi¬
cian, watching the other her a dignified admiring judge, stood
with pride de¬
picted upon every line of their swarthy
countenances. Presently the children
joined the group. Several neighbors
dropped the in to add their domestic plaudits, and
soon innumerable
dogs, that cats, pigs and parrots—seemed to
feel something remarkable was in
progress and shared the general excite¬
ment. The duler turned out to be a sorfc
of candy, made of white sugar and flour,
resembling feeble imitation caramels of those when which finished—a
may be
bought anywhere in the United States
for fifteen cents per pound. That night
the exhausted but triumphant lady re¬
tired to rest in the happy consciousness
of a great achievement-, and for the next*
week we had caramels for breakfast,
dinner, supper, and “between meals."
A Lake Disaster Recalled.
The Lady Elgin, a lake steamer, col
lided with a sailing vessel named Augus¬
ta, and sunk in Lake Michigan, Septem¬
ber 8, I860. There were 297 persons
lost,many of whom were from Milwaukee.
Only about one-fourth of those on board
were saved. A song commemorative of
the accident is given below. It was sung,
says the Detroit Free Press, from Maine
to California, and will still be a sad and re¬
minder to many who lost friends
relatives with that ill-fated steamer:
THE LADY ELGIN.
Up from the poor man’s cotttage,
Forth from the mansion door;
Sweeping And across along the water
Caught echoing by the the shore;
Borne the morning breezes,
Cometh the on evening mourning, gale—
voice of
A sad and solemn wail.
Chorus.
Lost on the Lady Elgin/
Numbered Sleeping to with wake that no more;
three hundred
Who failed to reach the shore.
Oh, ’fcis the cry of children
Children Weeping for parents gone:
who slept at evening
But orphans woke at dawn;
Sisters for brothers weeping,
Husbands for missing wives—
Such were the ties dissevered
By those three hundred lives.
Stanch was our noble steamer,
Precious the freight she bore;
Gaily she loosed her cable
A few short hours before;
Grandly Joyfully she swept our harbor,
little rang her bell—
Ah. wa thought e’er morning
She would toll so sad a knell.
AVhat Is a Drought?
Mr. Symons, the English meteorolo¬
gist, would have three kinds of degrees
of drought recognized and precisely de¬
fined. A period of fourteen or more con
seeutive days without rain should be
termed an absolute drought; one of
twenty-eight or more consecutive days
with a rainfall not exceeding a quarter
of an inch should be called a partial
drought; and at least sixty days with
not over two inches of rain should be a
long drought.