Connecticut western news., 1879-06-11
NOTES AND COMMENTS.

There is 8 story that wealthy Chicago merchant lately prevented the breaking of his will by calling his rela- tives about his death-bed and getting them to make affidavit before 8 notary that he was competent to make will. After the funeral it was found that all the property was given to lunatic asylum. Then the heirs tried to have the will set aside by showing that though sane at the last, in 1875 when the will was made he was raving mad. Thereupon the executor produced will exactly like the first, except that it was signed and witnessed few minutes be- fore the affidavits as to the testator's sanity was taken.
 A Russian paper says The depor- tation of the prisoners in Moscow con- demned to Siberia, under the new ukase of the Czar, began on the 9th of May, when three hundred persons were sent there by way of Niini-Novgorod. from the Moscow Central Prison. The sec- ond division of prisoners. 400 strong, are to be deported on the 18th of May the third division, 500 strong, are to fol- low on the 20th and the fourth division on the 26th. The Moscow prisons hold more than eleven thousand persons wait ing for transportation to Siberia. All the prisoners condemned to exile are gathered from the prisons throughout Russia, and concentrated in Moscow, before their departure for Siberia.
 Cholera has been making fearful havoc among the pilgrims returning from the Hurdwar fair, and is being spread by them through northern India. It is asserted that between 10000 and 30, 900 hillmen from the Himalayan dis tricts near Nynee Tal died on their homeward journey. Several cases, most of them fatal, appeared among the Eff. teenth Hussars almost immediately after their arrival at Meerut from Candahar, and it is supposed that the outbreak is due to some men having travelled from Mooltan in railway carriages which had been used by infected pilgrims. The has appeared in most cities of the Punjab, and the fear of the spread of the epidemic to Peshawur has induced the authorities to remove the greater portion of the garrison there. It is sug- gested that the Government might well consider whether it is not time to put an entire stop to those great religious fairs, seeing that they almost invariably form centres whence pestilence spreads throughout the country, and that the effective sanitary control of the masses of pilgrims assembled is almost impos- sible.
 The reported command of the Bur mese King to put several ladies of the royal family in chains and leave them to die of famine, frightful as it appears, is merely 8 fresh example of very com- mon form of native cruelty. When the English were preparing to lombard the Burmese Governor ordered several native Christians to be hung up by the wrists, and left to perish of thirst and hunger. A similar fate awaited the English and American missionaries, who were only saved by 8 timely capture of the town. Among the victims of this horrible practice was one of very sin gular kind. At the outbreak of the war in question, the King of Burmah had in his possession magnificent lion, pre- sented to him by the British Govern ment. Either from this circumstance, or from their having heard that the em- blem of England was a lion, the native priests declared that the fall of Rangoon and the defeat of the native General, Bandoolah, were wholly attributable to the enchanted lion" who ought to die accordingly, and the poor beast was actually starved to death in his cage.
 In some of its details, the recent catastrophe at Auteuil bears curious resemblance to the far more terrible calamity which desolated Paris on the night of Marie Antoinette's first arrival there, 8 circumstance afterward held by popular superstition to presage the dis asters of her own reign. A magnificent display of fireworks had been prepared on the Place Louis XIV. in honor of the occasion, and thousands of people assem.
 bled to witness the spectacle. But, by
 some mismanagement, one of the rockets
 exploded in the wrong direction, and sci
 fire to some hangings. Had the people
 remained quiet, no harm would have
 happened, for the fire was almost imme
 diately extinguished; but the crowd
 siezed with sudden panic, rushed like
 a torrent toward the other side of tho
 square, which was bounded by higl
 wall. In this quarter several deel
 trenches had been dug for the erectio,
 of new houses, into which the poo,
 wretches were precipitated by scores
 and instantly stiAed by the weight o
 those who fell upon them. Others wer'
 killed or maimed by the frightened car
 riage horses, who went charging througl
 the mass in every direction, dragging
 their vehicles after them; and grea
 number were literally crushed flat agains
 the wall by the pressure of the throng
 the force of which made the very ma
 sorry crack in several places. "Th
 whole square was like battlefield,
 said an eyewitness, "and many battle
 have had smaller return of killed an
 wounded" It is singular instance c
 the irony of history that among the SUI l ha IL
 occasion was the most terrible of all tn
 monsters of revolution, Jean Paul Marat
 It is a notion of the learned Dl
 Keith, of Illinois, that diphtheria come