The Portland daily press., 1889-04-13
----------------------------- -----------
PERSONAL AND PECULIAR.

The inventor of the puzzle called "Pigs in
Clover is amassing large fortune, and this
reminds contemporary that.it is the appar-
emily insignificant inventions which pay.
The return ball. wooden ball with rubber
string attached, made million dollars for
the inventor The same fortune was made
py the inventor OF copper tips for children's
shoes. and by the inventor Of the roller skate.
The needle-threader yields its inventor Sl0,-
900 year.
In number Of cities the electric lighting
companies have introduced another great
labor saving device which will be received
with favor by all professional smokers. 1t
is nothing less than an electric cigar lighter,
attached to the company's wires and placed
In tobacco shop. 1t works to a charm A
series of spirals of German silver wire are in
a box The current passes from the box
over wire to sort Of trumpet like that of a
telephone. In an orifice at the end of this,
large enough to admit the end of cigar,
there is a screen of platinum wire. To light
you cigar you must push the end into this
opening, pressing little button, turning on
heats the platinum to incandescence and
'prestoi your weed is lighted in an instant. 1t
Is another grand application of the electric
force to the use Of man.
M. Michel Eugene Cheuvreul, the distin-
guished French chemist, is dead. NJ. Chev-
reul was born at Anglers Aug. 81, 1856. The
son Of an able physician and the pupil of one
OF Lavoisier's ablest disciples, the young
chevreui early became !c,aaHss s2icuous figure
y an era mac spiendid by the genius Of
~s5avy, Faraday. Dalton and Thomson. His
first important work, before attaining the
years OF manhood, was chemical inyestiga-
ton OF the fossil remains exhumed by en-.
gineers in the valley of the Loire, and his
researches greatly aided the growth of the
infant science Of geology. Before the
Franco-Prussian war, M. Chevreul was much
better known to foreigners than to French
men. One morning the Prussan shells be.
gan to fall near the museum of the Jardin
des Plantes. He Shutdown and wrote to King
William, protesting In the name of science
against the Smelling of that neighborhood as
an act of vandalism. The appeal was listen.
ed to; the guns were pointed in another di
rection. t
Miss Minerva Parker, Philadelphia ar
chitect, has familiarized herself, not onl,
with her profession, but with every detail o.
the building trade; she can Judge of the ma
terial which is to go inlo the house and tn,
way in which the work is carried out as wei
as any master builder in the country Sh,
says that one of the most important parts O.
an architects knowledge in knowing how t,
direct the mechanics, and this she hersel
does with great skill. Buffalo also has
woman architect who is her husbands part
ner, and one of the vice presidents of the
Western Association Of Architects, and she
is the only woman member of the American
Institution OF Architecture, which has beer
in existence over thirty years. She was one
OF the designers of the new model school.
houses which the city of Buffalo has been
building, and these have been so much adj
mired that the plans are to be sent to the
Paris Exposition as part Of the educational
exhibit. She has made this her life-work
and as her husband seems eminently salts
lied, 1t is to be inferred that her work as an
architect does not interfere with her duties
as a wife.
A st. Louis Confederate writes to the
papers of one Of the features Of the close Of
the great war: Perhaps some of the sad
dest effect of the late war which yet remain
is the great number of people who are still
missing from their former homes and theil
old friends and relations. For instance.
had an uncle who came home shortly afte
Appomattox. He arrived about 3 o'clocl
one afternoon at his home in Kentucky, dis
mounted and kissed his wife fondly, walked
about the place for an hour with her, scarcely
speaking and very moody. Then mounting
remarked: MARY, I'm going off for little
whilei be good to yourself and the baby un
til come back, /" and he has never been seen
by relative since. We have indirectly
heard of him number of times, but on going
to the point where he had been seen, he had,
invariably, just left. We traced him to i
point in Dakota. finally. where he had estab.
lished quite sheep ranch, but week before
his nephew got there, uncle had sold at Q
great sacrifice and left. Southerners can re.
late hundreds OF such cases from personal
knowledge. There are scheduled regions In
Ozark country which are inhabited only by
these broken hearted men, now hermits, self
Isolated from society and their relatives
a supposed widow, or father Of children who
have. mourned him as dead for more than a
quarter of a century,"