The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1876-09-07
News and Other Items.

The Philosophers Club in Daniel Deronda Is
transcript from real life, being in its essential
details the history of small club of students
who used to meet, thirty years ago, at q tav-
ern in Red Lion Square, Holburn. George
Henry Lewes, the husband of George Eliot,
was member Of this club, and from him was
doubtless derived the material which has been
so skillfully wrought into the novel.
A few days before his death Mr.. Kerr had
conversation with his son in which he said
81 have nothing to leave you, my son, except
my good name. Guard it and your molher's
honor and live as have lived. Pay all my
debts if my estate will warrant it without leav-
ing your mether penniless; otherwise pay what
you can, and then go to my creditors and tell
them the truth, aud pledge your honor to wipe
out the Indebtedness
Fevers have been engendered in Montreal BY
burning collins which were exhumed from an
old burying ground at the new canal basin.
The bodies inferred in the cofins were those
who died in 1847 Of the ship fever.
A West Virginia editor laments the failure
Of the franking privilege scheme thusly: "We
used to get from seven to ten cents q pound
for Congressional speeches and Patent Ofice
reports
1t has. been ascertained that a klarge organi-
zation of beggars exists in New York, presided
over by woman, and having treasurer and
secretary.
1t was evening" Three of them were killing
a cat. Que of them held lantern, another
held the cat, and the third jammed the pistol
into the cats ear and fred, shooting the man
in the head who held the cat, and the one with
the lantern was wounded in the arm. The cat
left when it saw how matters stood, and that
ill-feeling was engendered.
There are five regular established matrimon.
ial agencies in Paris, and the proprietors all
complain that the market is overstocked with
girls.
Something novel in the way of suicide Is re-
ported from Alsace. A man put a dynamite
caltrldge into his mouth and then applied .
lighted match to it. The next second his head
and the upper part of his body was blown into
a thousand pieces. The mans brain had been
affected by the heat of the weather.
The Rev. Miss Ada G. Bowles has been se-
lected by the Pennsylvania Universalist con-
vention to preach the sermon at the next meet
ing in 1877.
The veteran of the German war, Field Mar
shall Wrangel, who was eighty years in the
military service on the 18th of August, received
on that day from the Emperor William sword
of honor, of the finest workmanship, the han.
die studied with brilliants.
The establishment of a whipping-post for the
suppression of hoodlHmism is now proI osed in
San Francisco.
A Scotch physician who has beenlnvestigat-
ing. the. relative mortality of town and rural
life, says that. were all the town children Of
Scotland reared in the country, at least 5000
lives would be annually saved to the popula-
tion; second, could the mortality of the towns
be brought down to that of the rural districts,
upwards of $4,000 lives would be thus saved TO
the population, and every individual living In
the large towns would, on an average, live ten
and a half years longer than heIhas any chance
of doing at present
The Turkish war office has, says!the Levant
Herald, telegraphed instructions to the Prov
idence Tool Company Omitted States) contract
ors for 6OO,0 900 Msrtini-Henry rifles, Of which
800, 900 remain yetito be delivered, to apply to
| the undelivered quantity the latest improve
ments in that weapon which have been adopt
| ed by the British army, and theyewill also be
| fitted with saber bayonets, instead of tran-
| gular ones Although 100000 of the undeliv-
| cred rifles are packed ready for shipment, they
| will be sent back to. the work shops in order
to be altered in accordance with. the decision OF
| the seraskerate.