The Portland daily press., 1877-04-16
News and Other Items.

Want OF anything else to say about Grant
leads the itemzer to say that he is going to
write his personal experience in the war. Grant
is the only party ignorant of the fact.
Some of the New York country papers are
poking fun at the clergyman who recently held
service at the State Reformatory and prefaced
his remarks to the prisoners by saying he was
glad to see so large number present
Mr.. E. c. Stedman will deliver the poem be.
fore the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa this year.
Mr.. Stedman being New Yorker and Yale
man, his selection is regarded as more marked
compliment on that account.
The Cheyenne Leader says the town is over
run with unemployed printers, penniless,
hungry, and footsore They have descended
upon Cheyenne like grasshoppers, and are in
starving condition.
They have curious way of deciding law
suits in Siam. Both parties are put under cold
water, and the one staying longest wins the
suit. In this country both parties are got into
hot water and then kept there as long as pos
sble. The result in the end is the same.
Among the Emperor Williams birthday
gifts was Brunswick sausage six feet high, a
gigantic aquarium, containing sea of trans
parent jelly, with eighty fishes ready for the
table, and an Easter egg of corn, flowers, and
hyacinths reaching to the roof of the hall.
G. D. Folsom, engineer of the Ashtabula
train, is slowly recovering from his INJURIES but
says he will never be able to run an engine
again. The locomotive is at the Lake Shore
shops, Cleveland, badly broken up, and it will
take $1,000 to put it in running order again.
A Jonesboro, Penn. paper is responsible for
the statement that, few days ago, while the
sun was shining brightly and the sky was clear
lump of snow weighing $50 pounds suddenly
fell to the earth and remained unmelted for
several days, during which time it was visited
by curious crowds.
Anybody who hasn't read enough about the
presidential dispute to satisfy him can amuse
himself with the remarks made by the mem
bers of the electoral commission in their secret
sessions, just published in copy of the Con-
gressonal Globe covering about hundred
pages.
1t seems to have just occurred to the Mary
land authorities that the Bennett-May duel
was fought on their territory, and at this late
day Judge Strong has charged the grand jury
of Caroline county to investigate the affair,
they find that it was perpetrated within that
county.
a very curious and remarkable experiment
has just been tried in India. A Mr.. Adams of
Bombay has invented solar battery, consist
ing of 200 small mirrors so arranged that they
focused the SUMS rays upon a small copper
boiler and generated steam in it in 20 minutes.
Mr.. Adams contends that he could by the same
means generate heat enough to drive the larg-
est spinning mill in Bombay.
The grand piano once belonging to Beethoven
is for sale. The instrument was made especially
for him by the piano manufacturer Graf, in
Vienna, at time when the composer was
already beginning to be deaf. and in order to
increase the tone it was strung with four strings
instead Of the usual three. After the death of
of the composer, Graf took the instrument
back again, and sold it to a lady in Vienna.
There appears to be no doubt as to its genuine
ness.
A New Yorker who is well posted says that
Mr.. William Vanderbilt has paid to each of the
other family heirs one million dollars, in addi-
ton to the one million left each of them by the
will. The old commodore originally intended
to have bequeathed them two millions each,
but one day he said to his lawyer: ''If I leave
each Of them two millions, they will want four
so will leave each one million, and that can
be doubled if it be necessary to keep them
quiet
The London correspondent of the Liverpool
Mercury says recent spiritual seance at the
capital was attended by half dozen persons
of title, including lady allied by marriage to
royalty, and adds: 'eThe crowning trick, the
convincing proof, was-what do you think,
for highly educated, refined and arstocratic
drawing-room party?- spirit dancing wildly
without neither garments, in very much the
same style as the witches in Tam O Shan ter,
I am told that the exhibition was amusing, but
not conclusive. Nobody seems to have been
disguised"
At the Philadelphia Academy of Music on
Saturday evening, at the end of the first act of
'sBaba," the musicians refused to play unless
they were paid their salaries, aud the only
music furnished or the remainder of the piece
came from a solitary violin. At the close of
the performance the supers and ballet girls de-
manded their wages, but they were not forth
coming, and 80 the disappointed players went
out from the theatre, arrayed in all the splen-
dor of their stage dresses, which they hold as
collateral for their salaries
The Wesleyan University Club had its an
nual dinner on Monday night, under the fol-
lowing conditions of servitude "All illusions
to Greece and Rome will be Kissed by the
walters, police reverse Recent graduates
may gyrate the pollex on the proboscis. Sealed
proposals for the consulate in Liberia win be
received by an attending bishop recently from
that diocese The contribution boxes have
been carefully mislaid, and no subscription pa
per of any description will be circulated. ANY