The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1881-02-05
FOREIGN GOSSIP.

PRINCE GoRTCHAKoFF and Count
.Arnim, Bismarck's two best enemies,
are both spending the winter at Nice, in
the same hotel.
A MARRIAGE is expected to take place
between the hereditary Grand Duke of
Baden and the Princess Victoria of
sse-Darmstadt, daughter of the
Princess Alice of England.
THE lady stewardess of the household
of the young princess who is about to
marry the grandson of Victoria and
of Wilhelm, is great granddaughter of
William Won Humboldt.
EMPEROR WILLIAM, of Germany, on
his 10th birthday told his physician that
he would make him a count if he
brought him safely to his S0th. He
kept the promise and made another,
namely, to make the doctor prince if
he brought him to the Goth birthday.
AN American recently in Paris rang
the bell at the Morgue and handed to
the attendant a letter containing his
name, address, and the statement that
he was about to put an end to his life in
this way that his friends might not be
troubled with details, and while the
letter was being read, deliberately shot
himself through the heart.
AT the festivities of the recent royal
deer drives in Scotland, reel dancing
and the making of ''free forester" were
two of the features of amusement. Free
foresters are made by smearing the in
dividuals with stag's blood. In the case
of a lady touch suffices. Mrs. Corn
wallis West, who is a fine reel dancer,
was among those honored.
Ir has been the fashion to regard Bel
GUM as model country, but Florence
Nightingale's sister, Lady Verney, writ
ing in the Contemporary RevteeO, gives
no very pleasant picture of its rural as
poets. The scattered villages, she says,
lie very far apart, and Belgian villages
are peculiarly wretched-looking, the
dwellings one-storied and miserable, the
few cottages often mere mud hoveis
vegetables running to the very door,
with no path up to it, and not a single
flower; the barelegged, bareheaded
women evidently too ground down by
hard work in the fields, and anxiety for
the bare necessities of life, to care for
even strip of garden. If flowers were
to be seen, they were at drinking
house or atthe railway stations.
The failure in his old age of Mr..
Mechi, one of the kindest and most lib
eral minded of men, will excite wide
spread sympathy. For the last forty
years he has been one of the most prom
inent men in England, and Mechi's
magic paste and razor-strops have been
scarcely less renowned than Tiptree
Hall, his model farm near London.
Some twenty years ago Mr.. Mechi I'M
warily became connected with joint
stock bank which failed disastrously
and let him in for heavy sum, blow
from which, it is likely enough, he never
recovered. He was almost as. we'll
known to agriculturists out of England
as to those in it, and visitors of the first
focked to his farm from all
parts of the world. Mr.. Mech is de-
scended from the hair dresser of Queen
Caroline, wife of George H., who ac-
her when she came to reside
in England.
THE art of advertising has been car
ried to pretty high point in this coun-
try, but it has been left for an English
firm to stake the cake" The British
Government takes its decennial census
during the coming year, and the plan
which it has adopted is to leave blank
form with every householder on cer-
tain Saturday night, to be filed in by
him by Monday morning, when the
forms are to be collected. This will re-
quire several millions of blanks, costing
something like half a million of dollars,
but one mercantile house thought the
opportunity of getting its wares brought
TO the attention of every family in the
kingdom worth this little fortune, and
offered to furnish all the blanks needed,
provided it be allowed to print its adj
vertisement on the back. The Govern
ment refused the offer, and thus has de-
cided to make her Majesty's subjects
pay for what they might have had for
nothing.