Osage Valley banner. (Tuscumbia, Miller County, Mo.) 1879-1881, 1880-05-13
Personal AND LITERARY.


a5 rlI
RoBERT FORTUNE, an English author
and botanist, employed in 1851 by the
United States 10 collect In China seeds
Of tea shrubs ard other plants, is dead;
aged siSty-seyen years.
THE neither OF Mr.. j. G. SAKE, the
poet, died recently in Vermont. Al
though in her ninety-hrst year, she was
q comparatively vigorous woman, her
hair not having even turned gray.
NJ. LoUIs F6vRE, the engineer-in-
chief who built the ST. Gothard tunnel,
fell dead in the tunnel on the eve of the
completion Of the boring. His bust
in marble is TO be placed over the en-
tranee.
TaE Introduction TO the Study of
Sign-Language Among the North Amer
ican Indians" by Colonel Garrick Mall
lery, u. S. A., has just been issued from
the Government Printing Office at Wash
ington.
BUCKLE acquired nineteen languages,
among them Maori and Walloon, and
wrote and spoke seven with nuency,
but, like so many persons who accom-
pfsh such intellectual feats, he only
passed Disraeli's " fatal 81 by a very
few years.
MIR. AUSTIN DoBsoN, the English
writer of UerS dc SOcietie, was born In
1S40, began to write poetry when he
was twenty-five years old, and the first
collection Of his "Vignettes" was made
in 1874. He has been Government
clerk twenty-five years.
PRINCESS ELIZABETH of Roumania isa
literary lady. She is the author of sew
eral works, and has also translated sew
eral Roumanian poems into English and
German. She has just received the
medal of merit from the ministers for
these literary achievements.
PRINCE BISMARCK Is more than six
feet three inches high, and is by no
means thin. He wears Uniform, and
the lapels of his coat, of q bright yell
low, oyerspread his immense chest He
writes.at his desk nearly all night long,
and then he sleeps until about noon.
MINISTER FOSTER, before leaving
| Mexico, received from the American
residents of the City of Mexico part
ing gift of silver fac simile of the
| Aztec calendar stone IN the cathedral
wall. The gift weighs about sixteen
pounds, and Is made of pure Mexican
Silver.
ZoLA, the popular French novelist,
works always in the morning; he can
not write after having tasted food.
/ Personally, he is the ordinary type OF a
| well-to-do tradesman, and only two
things strike one while in his society
| his lisp, and the extreme smallness,
whiteness and deicacy of his hands.
Mrs. FRANCES HOpGsoN BURNETT,
the novelist, has gone to Niagara Falls,
to have her foot on Canadian soil when
her new novel, Louisiana is pub.
lished in London, so as to get the ben.
eft of the British copyright law. She
will stay only so long as this object re-
| quires, and, on her return, she proposes
to take her first glimpse at New En-
| gland, staying for few days with
friends in Springfield.
Miss CHARLOTTE MARY YONGE, tn,
author, is now iifty-seven years old
She is woman devoted to religious
work, The profits of her book, tho
DAISY Chain" amounting to $4,000
she used in building a missionary col
lege at Auckland, New Zealand; while
large portion of those derived from
"The Heir OF Redclyffe" went to thu
equipment of the late Bishop Selwyn'
missionary schooner, The Southern
Cross"