Morning journal and courier., 1888-02-07


 the Hartford Courant in advocacy of a series of ''sacred" polo games Sunday evenings. Sacred polo game is good.
 There is thrift in Massachusetts. The sav- ings banks of thnt State have over $317, ,oOo,- 900 in deposits, and seven-eighths of this is safely invested within the State.
 An English woman has just succeeded in getting the court to order her father to pay her e25o for speaking disrespectfully of her. If this kind of thing spreads parents who don't think much of their children will have to be careful how they express their thoughts
 James Rogers of Provincetown, Massachu- setts, has found out that he cannot legally suppress church bell. He lived near 8 church, and he claimed that the banging and changing of the bell disturbed his rest and injured his health. He sued the priest in charge of the church, but the Supreme court has decided that the bell is @ necessity and the ringing must go on.
 Benjamin Franklin, of the Second Minne- sota volunteers, is the only man on the gov ernment pension rolls who sacrificed both hands and feet in the late civil war, and as there is no provision of law applicable to such special cases bill will be presented to congress increasing the pension he now re- ceives to $150 a month. He new receives the pay provided for soldier or a sailor who has lost both hands or both feet. Probably nobody will begrudge Benjamin the increase
 The attention of military men was last summer called to a new system of coast de- fences, advocated by Sir Andrew Clark of England, by which it was designed to do away altogether with iron plates, sandbags and masonry and to substitute for them simple hole in the ground, from which guns should emerge for firing and back into which they should immediately sink. In reality the idea originated with General Sheridan, who years ago employed it to good purpose in Indian warfare on the plains. The sug- gestion is once more called to notice by the announcement that the Australian colonies have adopted it for their own system of de- fence and, in fact, are already having some large guns cast in England. How far the method can be adapted to the varying con ditions of g long coast line remains to be seen.
 The scheme of Dr. Petersen for reaching the North Pole is a promising one. In view of the fact that the ice of the polar basin is in almost constant molten, and that in cer- tain years whalers or explorers have gone as far north as Franz Josef Land with very lit tie ice in sight, he thinks that if through in- ternational cooperation vessels are kept for number of years at the edge of the Arctic ice, east of Spitzbergen, at the mouths of the Yenesei and Lena rivers, and at Behring Strait, exceptional ice conditions at one or ! another of these points would offer favora- ble opportunity for dash to the far north, which would probably settle the problem of the North Pole. He would not have these expeditions make any forward movement until July, when many whalers return from Arctic waters and could report the ice condi- tions existing far to the north.
 National bank directors who have been afraid they might be held responsible for l their directing will be encouraged by the