The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1880-09-16

CURRENT ITEMS.
| "A butchers horse in Montreal trot.
ted fifty miles on race-course, in four
hours and fifty minutes.
The Sultan has so much fear of as
sassination that he has the locks of his
doors changed once a week.
| John Bright says that for every
heather converted in Africa there is a
chance to convert five in England.
Nineteen leading Afghans are pris-
oners in India, four of them being sons
and five grandsons of Dost Moham med.
Wool has been so cheap in England
that the Duke of Richmond could get
no buyers at Chichester for the fieeces
of his famous flock of Southdowns,
while at Lewes not single sale was
made.
The New England Granite Com
pany at Hartford, Conn.,. is making a
statue in white Westerly granite of
Alexander Hamilton, to be given by his
son, John c. Hamilton, to New York
City for Central Park. The statue is
eight feet high.
The brilliancy of the planet Jupiter
will be greater in October than it has
been for many years past. The large
red spot on his disk which made its ap-
pearance in 1873, and which is q puz-
zle to astronomers, is still visible, and
host of telescopes throughout tho
country are directed to this object of
interest.
"A bell in the chime in the tower of
the Protestant Episcopal Church at Low
ell, Mass, bears an inscription which
shows that it was gift of the late Ole
Bull in 1857, when he appeared in q
concert there to raise funds for its pur-
chase. It was tolled half an hour when
the news IF his death was received.
Says writer in the Parisian al
do not know which is the more exasper-
ating, an American woman fitting to
and fro in rocking-chair, or German
woman knitting, knitting. knitting, un-
til the kneedles seem so many restless,
shining imps. fancy that it requires
very high degrees of-of-breeding to
enable woman to sit still, quite still,
not to rock, or do fancy work, or even
sway fan to and fro."
The first coins of the United States
were struck with the portrait of Martha
Washington, Mr.. Spencer, who cut
the first die, copying her features in
his medallion. When General WASH
ington saw the coins he was very
wroth, and before any more were
struck off the features of his wife were
altered somewhat and cap placed on
her head, this being the original of the
present Goddess of Liberty.
1T is calculated by the advocates of
a reformed system of spelling that, by
the adoption of the phonetic rule, there
would be a saving to a writer of one
hour and twenty minutes in a day of
eight hours, or 400 hours in q year of
800 days. A saving of twenty per cent.
would be effected on the same amount
of literary matter in the London Times,
and an equal saving in the cost of new
books. Over all departments of En-
glish literature it is calculated that there
would be a saving of f10,0O0.O00 an
nually.
The New York Tribune takes up
the old cry and says, "The best private
houses would welcome an intelligent,
modest. expert American girl as house,
keeper, cook, or waitress, would give
her secluded home. high wages, a
luxurious table, and, most valuable of
all, protection. But they invariably
prefer to enter mills, to run sewing ma
chimes, or take places as unskilled shop
girls on wages that range from two to
four dollars per week; to lodge in gar
rets and live on starvation fare"
"A number of the Chinese students
now in the United States will soon be
sent back to China on account of Of
lenses which they have committed.
Among them is I. c. Chung, an excel
lent young man, who was graduated in
the class of 1879 at the Norwich
Comm Free Academy, and who is
dishonored for having cut off his queue.
Woo, the new Commissioner at Hart
ford, is very strict, and is conducting
the Chinese schools under the rigid
discipline of the Empire.
--"Go to the ant, though sluggard,
and be wise," bids fair before long to
gain new and extended meaning. Sir
John Lubbock long since made known
that the rival of the thriftless and friv-
olous grasshopper not only has polity
and laws, not only lives in highly Or
ganized society, having slaves and
mich COWS (aphides); but that it boasts
what men and grasshoppers alike seem
to have learned to do without, namely.
a religion, worshipping certain blind
beetle with great reverence and zeal.
Now comes another observer and insists
that ants have also language. the
signs of which are various motions of
the antenna. The new dialect, it is
averred, can be interpreted and formu-
lated with very little trouble.