Morning journal and courier., 1889-05-08
EDITORIAL NOTES.

We second the motion of the Hartford no member shall speak more than twice on one subject be enforced. At this rate the legislature will not get out till after having.
 The big show at Paris will make the lively city livelier than ever this summer. France has devoted very nearly nine million dollars to the exhibition from the public treasury, and it has planned everything upon a really magnificent scale. Eiffel tower, which looms four hundred feet higher than any other structure ever raised by man, and through whose wide-spreading base entrance to the grounds is made, is fair index of the character of the gathering above which it springs.
 Not long ago Professor Alexander s. Bell made some stir by announcing that there was danger of great increase in the number of deaf mutes in this country. In Minnesota bill has been introduced in the legislature amending the marriage law so that parties shall not be allowed to contract marriage while either is permanently blind or deaf and dumb Prof. F. s. Seliney ot Rome, N. Y., who has made a special study of this subject, says there is no danger whatever of deaf and dumb race and that deafness is caused by disease. Of the children who have been admitted to the New York State school for the deaf during the last twenty years only three-fourths of one per cent. have been the children of deaf parents. Professor Seliney asserts that out of score of children and grandchildren of deaf parents living in that city not one ia deaf or dumb.
 The government of China is at present hostile to railroad building, and it is related that this attitude of the government is due in part to the assertion of the court astrolo- gers that disastrous fire in the imperial palace at Pekin was caused in some super natural way by the building of the road al- ready opened. A more plausible explanation of the fire is that it was ineendiary. The building, it is said, contained the unaudited accounts of many years, which were to be ex- amined shortly, owing to the emperors &C., cession, and also large quantity of silks, furs and other valuables belonging to the crown, which were also about to be checked. It is suggested that the accounts would not bear investigation, that the silks and furs had long ago disappeared, that several high percentages were connected with the frauds, and that to get out of the difficulty the building was set on fire and destroyed, with all it's contents.
 The great tun designed to hold champagne in the Paris exposition recalls the history of the tun of Heidelberg. The first was begun in 1343 and was made to contain twenty-one pipes. Another, begun in 1589 and finished in three years, had diameter of IS feet and held 12e English hogsheads. third was made to hold 600 hogsheads, in 1864, and was destroyed by the French four years later. The one which at present is moulder- ing away and, according to Longfellow, is 'snext to the Alhambra one of the most mag | nifoent ruins of the middle ages," was be- gun in 1751 and was capable of holding l 283 ,O00 bottles. For nearly twenty years it | was kept steadily replenished. At every
 vintage the grape growers used to meet and
 dance on it's top. It was 24 feet high and 36
 feet in it's longest diameter. The biggest
 yats, however, have never figured in history.