Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1879-04-18
NO. 16.
IN GENERAL.

james Redpath has engaged Col. lngcr-
soil TO deliver one hundred lectures for which
he pays him the sum of S25, 600
Mrs John Hornie of Washington county,
KY, has surprised her husband with five
children at one birth. and they are all alive
and kicking, too. She has previously borne
twins and triplets.
Millionaire Vanderbilt has raised quite
breeze among the smaller Georgia papers by
inviting a colored servant TO sit at the table
with him while stopping at Jcssup (Ga.)
hotel, en- route to Florida. The hotel propri-
otor demurred and Vanderbilt left the house.
purse proud swell-head" and "iufcrnal
skunk" are among the choice epithets heaped
on the millionaire head by the local press.
Minneapolis Mimi, is possessed with
the idea that it is to become the focus of 1000
miles of narrow gauge railroads, and has vot-
ed S2jO,OOO by big majority to start the
ball in motion. The whole State of Minneso-
ia is wild over railroading again, and expects
to lay the greatest number Of miles Of rails in
its history this year The year 1871 has hith-
erto stood at the head with ijS miles.
Thomas Hardy, who is the only rival Of
William Black for the honor of being the
most popular of recent English novcists, is
thirty eight years old, and was educated in
provincial fillage, becoming, as one might
fancy, from his figures of speech, the appren-
tice OF a country architect. In London how
ever, he became a student under Bloomfield
and a disciple of the Gothic school. He won
prizes in architecture, and studied to be an
art critic. Finally he chose fiction.
A Missouri maiden was so bent on mar
rying the lover she had engaged to meet at
Belmont, that to escape the pursuing grand
father on the same train, she rode past Bel
mont and when two or three miles from the
place, with the train under full headway, she
suddenly ran out on the platform and leaped
OF, marvellously escaping serious injury.
She walked back to Belmont where she met
her man and was legally his before the grand
father could return to interfere.
A firm of booksellers in northampton.
Mass. has received nm order from Tarbor-
ough, n c., for three gross of "Emerson's
Evangelical Primer" That almost forgotten
work was published in 1909, and contained
Calvinistic catechism, scriptural passages, and
wood cuts Of saints in glory and sinners in
torment. On the title page was a recommen-
nation signed by numerous clergymen, in
cluding President Timothy Dwight of Yale.
Only thirty-six copies can be found toward
supplying the Tarborough demand.
-Spiceand Ind, has q Quaker shoemaker,
William Dawson. whose astronomical studies
show him to be quite a character in his way.
Dawson had few advantages of early educa-
tAbAl anu lAtAn l4tNtI tNlutu ONtI f-sibO year,
but he has nevertheless furnished Smithso-
nian institute and the meteorological bureau
at Washington with valuable statistics and in
formation for more than 20 years He has
also made himself telescope and mounted it
i'll an observatory of his own construction.
But Dawson needs books and instruments,
and Rev. J. c. Fletcher of indianapolis. hav-
ing found out the student in his obscurity. is
trying to raise funds for his benefit.
The first part of the new African cable
has left London. 1t will be laid along the
east coast of Africa from Natal in the south
ern portion Of the continent to Aden Arabia,
at the mouth of the Red sea. The first sec
ton between Natal and Zanzibar, some two
thousand miles long, is expected to be in oper-
alton by July. Steamers make the distance
from Zanzibar to Alden, another two thousand
miles, in a week. The completion of the Ma
tai and Zanzibar section will therefore bring
South Africa within seven days telegraphic
distance of London. Whom completed the
cable will be one of the longest in the world.
Another explorer has crossed the dark
continent Pinto, an enterprising Portu-
guese scientist, started from the coast in Oc-
tober, 1877, with 400 followers, only eight of
whom survived the privations and hardships
of the journey and the struggles with the ma
tyos. IL a communication to the Portuguese
government, Pinto says: In concluding
my journey across Africa, l struggled with
hunger, thirst thenatives floods, and drought.
have saved all my papers twenty geograph-
ical maps, three volumes Of notes, meteorolo-
gical studies, drawings and diary of the
complete exploration of the Upper Zambesi
with its seventy-two cataracts"
A professional beggar has recently died
in Berlin leaving a fortune of more than a
million and a half marks to his heirs. He had
many children and grandchildren, and lived
in splendid style, giving sumptuous entertain
ments, at which the champagne is said to have
run in streams The soirees were only attend
ed by middle class society, and We're held on
ly during the winter. In summer the jovial
old gentleman invariably left his house for
four or five months. 1t is now known that
he has regularly frequented, at least, until a
few years ago, the principal bathing places
of Germany, and that he gathered his i'm
mense plunder by begging. In wretched
dress, with an invalid's cap, blue spectacles,
long snow-white hair, and apparently palsied
limbs, he used to shamble slowly along the
promenades, and though he never directly
asked for anything, he looked so supremey
miserable that scores of charitable people
were seduced into pitying the fraud
Worth, the man dressmaker of Paris,
does not find the republic to his liking and
everybody can easily understand why. In ad-
ulllOu u Tue
been thought becoming for a republic, Worth
is no longer unrivalled in his special field.
There are other men dressmakers who are
thought to be better, and who do not make
dresses for actresses and so get themselves
talked about in the newspapers. Strangely
enough, while it is the republic of France
which almost destroys Worth it is the repub-
lie of the United States which saves him.
Mr.. Worth does not hesitate to say, that were
| it not for the ladies of the United States, he
would have to close up shop. American Ia
dies, therefore, he considers the best dressed
women in the world. As for the women of
his own country, Mr.. Worth (who is an Eng
lishman) has nothing good to say. They are,
it appears, in the habit of ordering dresses,
keeping them long enough to have copies
taken by cheap workers and then sending
them back because they ''do not fit'' or, if
they do not do this, they make him wait
terribly long while before they pay.