The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1873-08-14
News and other Items.

The Hon. John p. Hale is slowly recovering.
Cockburn, the eminent English jurist, pro-
nounces his name "Coburn,' according to the
New York Evening Post.
The San Francisco scheme for taking pearls
at wholesale by an expedition in the schooner
Water Witch has failed. The crew deserted
before the boat could start.
In the year 1879 the average daily loss by
fire in Massachusetts was nearly quarter of
million dollars while in the country at large
sum. So says Boston paper.
Dickens, it is said, transmitted his wonderful
Evolutionary talent to one of his sons, who has
been reading his fathers works for some
charitable institutions, and acquitted himself
admirably.
Bjornson, the Norwegian novelist and poet.
makes nothing by his books, and gets but $3.50
year as minister of a small parish, which the
government refuses to increase. He is coming
to America.
The Knights of Pythias made their first great
parade in Boston on Tuesday. There were full
ly two thousand men in line, in uniforms and
carrying banners with designs and inscriptions
appropriate to the order. The dress of the
Knights consists of black coats and pants, broad
cross belt in blue and yellow over the left shoul-
der, red waist belt and small sword at the sideI
The insurgents in Paraguay made an attack
upon Asuucion, but were repulsed and drawn
off Caballero and q number of other insur-
gent Chiefs reported to have left the country.
How Minister Washburne came to be called
''Sir Elihu" in the Paris papers, is explained.
A hard N w in y,
Kentuckian who, Sir. wasitelling him. Sir, that
this country, Sir isn't fit, Sir to compare with
the bluegrass region, Sir, and you haven't, Sir,
got glass of Bourbon, Sir.
A GAINESVILLE, Ohio, paper records the recent
death near that city of boy seven years old
named Sheridan Stoneburner, who was one of
the triplets born to Solomon and Hannah Stone
burner, Nov. Is, 1866. The children were nam
ed IS. Grant, w. T. Sherman, and P. H.
Sheridan.
The Toledo 'Blade" recalls the fact that it
was William Allen, of Ohio, who in 1910 origi-
mated the story that General Harrison, at Tip
pecanoe, Fort Meigs and the Thames, showed
such marked cowardice that the ladies of Chill
licothe manufactured red petticoat and pre-
sented it to him. This earned Mr. Allen the
title ''petticoat'' ON the Wing transparencies Of
the day.
1t costs London million of dollars annually
to water her streets, and it is proposed to do the
work by system of permanently laid pipes, to
reduce the expense.
A clergyman of an original turn of mind,
living near Lexington, KY, has introduced into
his preaching the entirely novel feature of
laughing. He sometimes preludes his sermon
with several bursts of hearty laughter, which
he uses as he goes on to point his moral of the
absurdity of sin.
The total State debt of Alabama is $20,5OO
600, of which SIS, 200,O 900 is on railroad endorse
ments.
William Dodd, a prominent citizen of New
ark, N. j., died Saturday evening from some-
what remarkable cause. Deceased when a boy
swallowed beard of wheat, which lodged in
his lung, where it remained for three years,
well nigh causing his death from consumption.
At the end of that time he coughed it up, after
which he had robust health. Last New Years
Day sudden strain reopened thu old wound
as showed by the autopsy-and all the food he
swallowed was coughed up through the lung, SO
that he literally starved to death. Deceased
was 81 years of age.