The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1873-02-08 00:00:00

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HOME, FOREIGN, AND COLONIAL.

MONASTERIES AND CONVENTS IN SWITZER-
LAND. —The Journal of Swiss Slat oaks gives the result
of a series or official investigations which have been
made by M. CerAole, Federal Councillor. on the
monasteries and convents in Switzerland. It appears
that the total number of three institutions in s.venteen
cantons is 88, 55 of which are convents, and that they
contain 516 monks and 2020, nuns. Of the monks 427
are patree, 28 prtree profess', and Slay brothers. The
total property of the monasteries and convents is valued
at 22,645,915 f. The canton which has most of the.: is
that of St.Gallen (3 monasteries and 10 convents ; next
are the cantons of Wallia and Freiburg (10 monas-
teries and convents each); Schwyz, Tessin, and S 4 to-
thorn (7 cash) ; Zug, a canton of only 13,000 inhabit-
ants, 6; Lucerne 5; Appenzell an I Graubunden,
4; Aargus, Nidwalden, and Obwalden with Uri, 4;
Glarus, Geneva, and Berne, 1 each. The wealthiest
of the monasteries are that of Einsiedlen, which
possesses a revrnue of 2,286,300!., and the Benedictine
monastery of Mariaetein, in the canton of Solothurn,
whose revenue is 1,584,455 f. The Capncia monasteries
have no permanent revenues.
- -

•
A PARADISE OF CO2ITENTMENT. —Central Asia,
and Khiva, and Turkestan, and "Transoxania," and
the Jaxartes, we respec.f ally leave to diplomatists,
and politici us, and special correspondents; but one
can well imagine the large number of people there are
who would be glad to make a rush to such a comfort-
able welle-o do couLtry as "Indekendent " Tartary
must he.—Pusch.

SUNDAY TRADING IN LONDON.—Two shop-
keepers in Whitecresisstreet have been summoned at
the Clerkenwell police court. at the instance of the St.
Luke's Ve dry, for Sunday trading. The proceedings
were instituted under the Act of Charles 11. Some
time ago the vestry resolved to abolish the coster-
mongers' stalls in the street on Sunday. It was pointed
out, however, that the shopkeepers carried on so much
business on Sunday m practically to lead the trade,
and that to remove the coetermongers only was but
one-sided justice. Eventually an agreement was come
to whereby all shop 3 were to be closed, and all coster-
mongers' stalls, barrows, !es., removed by eleven
o'clock in the morning. For • short time this suc-
ceeded, the costermongers keeping faith, but some of
the shopkeepers kept open, and the costermon!ere re
turned, complaining that while they were willing to
abide by the agreement the shopkeepers broke it. Re-
cently, the vestry decided to institute proceelinge
against some of the offending shopkeepers. It was
stated that the street was "a Babel" from an early
hour on Sammy morning till past three o'clock in
the afternoon. The Magistrate ordered each defendant
to pay a fine of Is. and the costs.
AMERICAN ICE HARVEST—Ever since the last
great snowstorm the ice companies along the Hodson
have been hard at work scraping the snow from the
frozen surface of the(river and planing the new ice far
harvest. Not in fifteen years before has there been
such splendid ice as now. The ice is of a magnificent
quality, not a particle of it honeycombed, but, on the
contrary, clear as glass and hard as rook. It is firri
nicely scraped and planed foga disten-e of the. c
acres in front of or re-,. ut ii, ,e,e, and then cut
up sato [docks of cakes 22 by 32 inchee, and in some
places 44 inches square, the work of cutting being done
by saws made for the purpose. Then a canal is cut
from the sawed acres to the mouth of the elevators at
the house, and through this canal the polemen shove
the ice along till it readmit the elevators, worked by
steam, which catch it up two cakes abreast and convey
it to open slideways on each floor of the building, when
it shoots out and down on to the floor over an
inclined plane, where dowers stand ready with
hooks and pack it away. Since the companies
have brought steam-engines into use to work
the elevators with, instead of horses, each
house manages to lift from the river and stow away 30
cakes of ice per minute, each cake we4hing, about
2501 b. This is 18,000 cakes per day, and as there ore
42 icehouses on the river, 756,000 cakes of ice are housed
daily, or, to get it into weight, 91,500,000 tons. One
tingle elevator is capable of putting in 2 250 tons per
day. It was expected that the entire crop would be
harvested by the Ist of February.
THE LATE EMPEROR NereLsox.—A London
correepondent has heard, on authority which he cannot
question, statements indicating that within a short
time of the present date, we should, had the Em-
peror survived, have seen a very important move on the
Imperialist chess board:-
-I am given to understand (he says) that two months
before his death the Emperor contracted a loan for more
than £200.000, a large proportion of which was auhscribed by
Americans in London. Part of the money was paid over to
the Emperor, and • portion which he thus received found
irtest,7ranyelint; zallocfig.intinscuebniler.ath
two
balance has beeees is
t
connection with this loan are worth bearing in mind, viz ,
that five or sir weeks before he died the Emperor was
visited by an en-Minister of the Empire, and one of his moss
influential supporters. In bidding the gentleman farewell,
the Emperor in rep,,rted to han used the following words
I pray you to return in ts o month+, for In two months I
shall be either dead, or something.' It 11 also stated that
when the late Empen r placed himself in the hands of his
medical men to undergo the operation which the advice of
the London physicians suggested, he stated to then, that he
was quite prepared to anima himself to them, but that
whatever they did must be done quickly, for circumstances
allowed of no delay."

ANOTHER RICHMOND IN THE FILM —2lg,
2lleerk.fjjerreria responiiible for the following story con
erroing the claims of a hitherto almost ignored branch
If the Napoleonic family to the French Throne. It
purports to be extracted from the New York Herald,
which, says Figaro, "publishes a proclamation from a
new pretender to the Imperial Crown, signed Colonel
Bonaparte, grandson of the ex-King of Westphalia
and Miss Patterson an American lady of B m altiore,
who was repudiated. Colonel Bonaparte, an the
nephew of Prince Jerome, considers himself the chief
of the family; his aunt is still living, and in eighty-
eight years of age. Some time bane we announced
that she W2B in a delicate state of health; but she has
now recovered. One of the reporters of the New York
Herald obtained an interview with the colonel, and
was received by his wife, a grand-daughter of Daniel
Webster, formerly President of the I nited States of
America. It appears that the arms of the Imperial
family are to be seen in every part of the house and on
almost all the objects in the house, which is ample
proof that the colonel intends to prove his c'aira he
the French Crown."

THE OLDEST INHABITANT. -We (Boston
paper) have been interviewing this distinguished
though mysterious citizen on the subject of the snow
storm. Ile appear° I to wish to meet somebody who
would "call this a snow-storm" Ile remembers wheg
there were Wt, of snow on the common, and the
boys used to coast from the top of Bunker bid mono
ment clear away down to Charles River. NVe don't
have no such weather now. Call this cold weather!
Why it's dog days and yellow fever to what it used
to be when I was young. Yes them was cold snaps
when me and Paul Revere need to skate down to
Minot's Ledge to play hockey with the Provincetown
boys. You'd Flay say it was chilly if you saw my
brother 'Lije's iron teeth (we didn't have no fancy
dentists in those days, and when 'Lush broke his
front teeth on a bet that he could chow a stick of
frozen mercury out of Captain Jones's thermometer
my uncle Eph, the blacksmith, coat him a new set)—
if you'd a' seen 'Lije's teeth glued together by the
frost so we couldn't open them without • cold chisel
and blasting powder you'd have said so too."

IN TN& Nsw FORE/ST.—From " Rarns,"
by Pearicitis Ws/ker.—The dialect of the Porset,
vicinity is ungainly in soruid, harsh and drawling, with
tsme in it, and Pp ken mainly with the t.eth shut :
—" liev'ee seen t' fox, Jurge? they'ee lost he, I bet !"
•‘ seed 'en goo in vuzz at t.' carnsr o' thick
" Big un_r* " Yrs, ! " Where bist gwine
new then?" " Whoam." " Thee's better ciime with
I." The "r" has not a burr, but a thin slurring rionnd.
They have a good many words not usual in book Eng.
hsh, and s one of thim expressive ; for example,
" flisky," small, like small rain; "buster," no se, con.
fusion ; "slummakin," [slouchy, careless, untidy!
" wivvery," giddy, as when the head swims; " mokins"
are coarse goiters; " humwater" so a cordial with mint
in it. They call the bog-myrtle or tweet gale the "gied.
I withy," and the white-beam " hoar-withy." The
word " idle" always means light-minde 1. careless
' flippant, which is traceable to the Anglo-Saxon mean.
Mg.
A TEETOTAL RAILWAY,.—The superintendent
of the European and North American Railway h&j
stiet to all the employes of the read a form of pled&
fin them to sign, whirehy they agree to alsetain from
intoxicating liqusie as a beverat,e, and the use of
profane ungentlemanly language. Avompsnying the
blank pledge is a circular informing the employes that
this step is taken in c sisequenee of frequitit com-
plaints at the office, and requesting those declining to
sign to give notice of their intentiene, that theiritlacee
may be filled by others.
A Cumuli CANE.— The Judicial Committee
of the Privy Council on Wednesday decided an appeal
from a judgment of the Supreme Court of China, by
which an astronomer named Von Gumnaoh, who had
been engaged for the service of the Emperor by •
! trusted and distinguished agent named Hunt, to teach
! the Western Selene., received £l,BOO as compensation
for dismissal, and T7OO salary. The appeal was based
I by Mr. Hunt on the ground that his cointnumcatioes
were privileged, and that there was no express malice,
and that the verdict was against the weight of the
evidence ; and the committee reversed the decision of
the inferior court.
I A GLIMPSE 01P THE OLDEN TIME.—(FrOIE
George Eliot, in "Middlemarch.")—"But come, you
didn't mean any harm. Somebody told you the
railway woos bad thing. That warn aJie. It may do
a bit of harm here and there, to this and to that; and
so does the nun in heaven. But the railway's a good
thing." "Aw ! good for the big folks to make mony
out on," said old Timothy Co ,per, who had stayed
Ibehind turning his hay while the others had been gone
on their spree ; seen lots o' things turn up gin' I
war a young un— the war an' the peace, and the
canal's, and the oald King George an' the Regen', an'
the new King George, an' the new nn as ha' got a new
nei time —an' We been all aloike to the poor mon.
What's the cant-Its been t' him? They 'n brought him
neyther me at nor be aeon, nor wage to lay by, if he
didn't save it wi' clemmin' his own inside. Times ha'
got winner for him sin' I war a young us. An' so it'll
be wi the railroads. 'They'll slily leave the poor mon
(miler behind. But them are fools as meddle, and so
I told the diem here. l'hie is the big folks's world,
this is. But per* for the big folks, Muster Garth, yo
are."

INHABITED HOUSE DITTY. —The tax on inha.
bited houses in Great Britain was charged, in the
financial year 1870 71, on 178,796 shops or warehouses,
of the aggregate annual value of £9,198,808, the gross
amount of the duty charged on them bong £229,953;
&leo on 68 635 beerhouses, of the annual value of
£3,588,428, the amount of duty being £89,686; also on
28;167 farmhouses, of the annual valne of £679.203, the
duty amounting to £18,939; and also on 520,795 pris
va..e dwelling house., of the value of £27,548,657, the
duty amounting to £1,032,208. The total is 796,393
houses charged, their annual value being £41,015,126;
and the gross amount of duty charged was
£1.368,786. When this duty was imposed, us subeti-
tution for the window-tax, in 1851, there were
found only 461.913 houees, of the aggregate value of
£21,703,466, liable to the charge; the subsequent In-
crease is due partly to the increased value of house
property, but still more to the crease in the number
of houses. The average annual value of each house
charged has increased in that time Irons £46 13s. I _id.
to 1:51 10e. The duty Is limited to inhab tad houses of
the value of £2O or upward. According to the Census
of 1871 the number of inhabited houses in Great
Britain Was 4,678,404, so that there appears; to be
3,882,011 not charged with this duty. By deducting
the annual value of houses charged for house-tan from
the total value of meamages aeseesed under Schedule
wnAohtoi
cf.ht.hgei:l4ndc t
onm
houseTgax,
edtuohft;Eialsogisir,sulgnadftoetroevbatlehn;h4olo:;:.e.h6oxusesThe6.
house ciuty does not extend to Ireland.
STRONG CHILDREN !—A clergyman says it is
carious to note how many people attend a circus "only
because they want to please their children; but still
more various to observe that in many instances it takes
two or three able-bodied men, with as many women,
to look after one little boy or girl."
A MISSING IMPERIAL TELEGRAM.—The Non/-
Deutsche Zeitung gives the history of • misting tele-
gram despatched from Sedan by King William to
Queen Augusta, and which it was believed had mis-
carried owing to the death or capture of the officer who
livered deZalyt i:ttsvh
he
einhlceeea u'
it wa:r t eer,
forwardediotf a e Ta Pt
ohP e a si
r d
Berlin,r Army
hut
tt
never reached the Queen. The telegram ran thins
To Queen Augusta at Berlin.—Field of Battle before
Sedan, Sept. I, 1875, 7 30, evening The French Army is cur.
roundel in Sodas, and the Emperor Napoleon hail given up
his sword to me. I have accepted, and I require the capita.
Litton of the army as prisoners of war. God hal Visibly
blessed us —WILLIAM."
THE HORRIBLE STORY FROM MOROCCO. —The
Gibraltar Chronicle of the 27th ult. says La
Alianza, a Jewish paper, puleiehes a horrible story
-coin Morocco the truth of which, as no confirmation
has been received by way of Tangier, may well be
doubted. Ac,conling to the Alianza, a rebellion broke
out (he date is not given) not far from Tangiertegainst
the Sultan of Morocco. It was speedily suppressed,
and the Pacha of the district, by wsy of punishing the
insurgents, ordered the heads of forty of their principal
men to be cut off, and notwithstanding that it was
Saturday, he compelled the Jewish butchers to put
them in salt, and so sent them to the Sultan."
AN AMERICAN BICH LIVING.—" On Ply.
mouth Church (Brooklyn) sale day for 1873 several
pews fetched a premium of 36/ dollars cash, in sddi•
tion to the rent of 90 dollars. The rental of the pews
amounts to 12,e00 dollars a year, but the premiums
realised at the sale reached 46,580 dollars ; and the
sale of chairs in the aisles will bring the total above
60,000 dollars. Mr. Beecher was present at the sale,
and made a few pleasant remarks before it began,"—
and, we should imagine, a few still more pleasant
ones after it was over.— Punch.
EXTRAORDINARY RESUSCITATION.—A remark-
able instance of recalling life by medical skill has lately
occurred in Brussels. An unfortunate workman, over.
taken by drink, had fallen into the Canal of Charleroi,
which passes through the lower part of the town, and
hisebody was not recovered for some considerable tie- c,
when it seemed hopeless to attem et t s c .he drowned
man to life, eel the hytanders, after exhausting the
cee e remedies, came to the conclusion that the man
was deal. By good fortune Dr. Jona, the medical officer
of the 3rd divieion of the Police of Brussels, was at
home, and his assistance was called in, and at once he
_resolved not to regard the case es hopeless. For three
hours, however, the most effective remedies suggested
by modern science were applied in vain, when Dr. Joux
determined to have resource to a more etringent treat-
ment, and proceeded to apply plates of iron heated to
a white heat to the upper part of the body near the
11101.11 vital organs. After a short time, to the astonish.
ment of the assistants, faint signs of breathing were
observed, and in the courses of half an hour the drowned
man awoke to life. At the present moment he is per.
fectly restored to health, and the only inconvenience
which he has sustained results from the severe cauteriza-
tion which his skin necessarily underwent. The novel
treatment which Dr. Joux extemporised so successfully
on this occasion may well deserve the attention of the
Royal Humane Society.
POSTAL CARDS IN PRANCE. —M. Wolowski has
reason to be gratified at the favour which the postal
cards, the introduction of which in France is due to
him. has met with from the public, the Post Office
having sold 7,412,300 during the first ten days of their
issue (remarks the E.onamist). The greater part were
for cir Illation between Paris and the Provinces, where
the difference of price between an ordinary letter IS
two !OUP, while in Paris the saving is one sou only.
The cards can hardly be taken as a specimen of French
taste, as they are rudely printed on material little
thicker than Rood writing paper, and are franked with
an adhesive stamp, instead of the stamp being printed
on the card Some improvements are, however, to be
introduced in the manufacture of them, and the two
sorts will be made in a different colour.
SATISFIED AT LAST !—The Pall Mall Gazette
remarks :
plaFinistweethahaual::7:r.etuht:botah,hluirgiree:goohihni:iwtea,me::per:o'pts:hteaglheedheldsttioont:fh:fil2irsimtivi.loadhak.g,:iduagrnTheieutrab°°e:elptd:h.;llneati,:lieole_esfuoll:eittl.ht'"etnitoi}cetoabinlederelLanh....4:modt."
owfof what
r crs provision,
thbhl
bitter east wind, with a heavy tall of snow, sharp frosts
dents 'as a relief from railway catualfes,", the Mario
A.'s- Arndt.% blessings such as we hire
right to expect in winter were yearned for by the
great heart of the nation with a longing which found vent In
prayers and lamentation. We have now got what we
wanted—snow, east wind, Ice, and all, and it is to lie hoped
we are satisfied at last. At all events, let us not incur the
charge of inconeietency by grumbling over the pleaaant
weather of the last Pi houra. At we wade through the snow
collected in the road ea> s and fracture our bones by slipping
upon the pavements, let us siot only preserve a cheerful
eemeanonr, int eive way to ecstatic delight at the happy
change which has occurred in the atmosphere, and enboy
ourselves to our hearts' content, forgetting for the moment
the sufferinas we endured during that weary pert whelk
the climate disgusted everybody by its horriole geniality,
THE FINITIVAL OF THE DEAD IN PARIS.—
Neither Madrid, nor Seville, ner Munich, nor Vienna,
nor yet Rome itself, can offer the sight afforded by the
streets of Paris on the' 2ocl day of November. The
churches, inside and out, are hung with black, the
bells neither chime nor ring, they only toll; the PALK
and lateral chapels are all ablaze with the number of
votive candles and expiatory tapers brought there by
the faithful the day before, on the Feast of All Saints.
Funeral muse, are chanted each hour from the high
altar, but there is no music, and no one comes either
to be baptised or to be married. The least ,upersti-
tons of men would shrink from an alliance sol,mulsed
under the shadow of those gloomy draperioa of black
and white, and no Catholic mother would suffer bar
child to be taken for the first time into a church on ths
"Fete des Slorte." Freels eight o'clock in the morn-
ing, there issue from each of the six or seven floors of
theme Paris dwelling., people of both sexes and of all
ages, dressed in black. The women, eves those who
have not recently last a relative, usually attire then,.
selves in the deepest mourning they poesese in their
wardrobes, and coins out as though for the funeral of
a parent or a child. The men would thmk it a breads
both of good ta,te and of propriety not to put on black
gloves and dark cravats. Workmen who have only
their blue blouses or their fustain clothes tie pieces of
black ribbon round their arm. By ten o'clock all the
thoroughfares are crowded with these pilgrims hurry-
ing towards one of the two great cemeteries of Paris—
that of Montmartre, or that of Pere la Chaise,—" Le
Jour des Moto," In the Cornhill Magazine.