The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1875-10-02 00:00:00

AMERICAN ITEMS.

A lady physician of Philadelphia has an income of
10,000 dollars a-year,
Mr. Ernest Longfellow, the eldest son of the
American poet, an artist by profession, is about to publish
a number of etchings of remarkable American scenes, and
Ins father contributes to the volume verses descriptive of
each.

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The dairymen of Ohio, United States, are preparing
to manufacture a cheese to weigh 29,000 lbs. (nearly thirteen
tons), the cost of which is expected to be 18,000 dollars. It
is to be shown at the Centennial Exhibition, Philadelphia,
next year.

Thirty-five lives were lost on New Orleans steamers
during the first half of this year, twenty-ope by fire.

An American widower was asked why he did not
have the picture of his departed wife framed as a memento
of her who was gone before. "Sir," said Ala man addressed,
"there is no necessity for it : her memory is kept verdant by
as.,,ociation. I keep a hardware store, and see flat-irons,
fring-pans, and rolling-pins every day. I used to feel 'em
The American Agricultural Bureau reports that, if
thoroughly ripened, the aggregate yield of corn this year
In the United States will exceed that of any previous crop.

In the Plymouth (Mass.) Museum there is a piece of
Pilgrim needlework, embroidered with coloured silk, now
sadly faded, in 1655, by a daughter of Captain Standish, and
bearing this devout prayer
:-
'Lorca Standish is my name,
Lord, guide my heart that I may doe thy will;
Also fill my heart with such convenient skill,
As may conduce to virtue, void of shame—
And I will give the glory to thy name."
Mrs. Mary Vaughn, of Williamson County, Tenn.,
celebrated her one-hundredth birthday lately. She has 450
living descendants.

The Secretary of State of Minnesota reports the fol-
lowing statistics of damage done by grECsshoppers this year.
Acres of wheat damaged or destroyed, 40,417;2 bushels of
wheat lost, 2,646,802; acres of oats damaged or destroyed,
52,125; bushels of oats lost, 1,186,733; acses of corn damaged
or destroyed, a 4,139; bushels of corn lost, 738,416.

The compl.ation of the bridge aoross the Missouri
River, at Atchison, Kansas, was the oocasion of the
"largest assemblage of people ever known in the Missouri
Valley," and a " demonstration " proportioned to the num-
bers. A serious disaster, however, occurred on one of the
excursion trains to Atchison. Two cars were throw-n from
the track by the breaking of a truck, and two men who
jumped from the platform of one at the cars were killed.

A philosophical farmer, in Tennessee, has furnished
to the Christian Observer a statement of the results of the
late floods on his own crops and land. The itemised account
of damage done by the water to Timothy seed, hay, fences,
ditches, stock, and utensils, foots up a total of 2,600 dols.
On the other hand, the farmer gained by deposit on 550
acres, from one to eighteen inches thick, which he valued at
10 dols, an acre. His clear gain from the floods was 2,900
dols.

At the latter end of the last century old Port Royal
disappeared beneath the waves in an earthquake, leaving
no other memorial behind than a few patches of reefs. On
calm and clear evenings, when there Ls not a ripple on the
glassy surface of the sea, you may look down into fifteen
fathoms of water, and see submerged houses, towers, and
churches, with sharks swimming quietly in and out of the
open windows of their belfries. The work of centuries was
destroyed in a few moments by one single convulsive throt.
of the film on which man has lived and speculated for ages
past. An American diving company, instigated in their
enterprise by tales of untold wealth buried beneath the sea by
the sudden shock, rescued no treasures but the big bell sus-
pended still in the bell tower, and donated the same to the
museum of the Islaid, where it may be seen, with many
puzzling inscriptions upon it which nobody has as yet been
able to decipher.