Morning journal and courier., 1889-02-07

High license continues to work wonders. In Paterson, New Jersey, it has reduced the number of places where liquor is openly sold from 593 year ago to 43S. When the last of the old licenses run out next spring still
 more gratifying showing is confidently pre- dicted
 The present population or the United States is estimated at GA, 300, ,000. The total increase is now 100, 900 per month, exclusive of immigration, while the total number of immigrants last year was 5000. If immi- natural increase is retained, the next census, which will be taken July 1, 1890, will show
 about 67, 900, 900 inhabitants.
 They have bright boys in the old Bay State. Mrs. Rice, wife of the ex-governor of Massachusetts, recently brought home some of that curious New Bedford wood that burns with bright blue flame. She burned bit of it to amuse her little son and then hid away the rest. Next day she found him playing with one of the forbidden sticks. ''Why, where did you get thata" she asked; Chow did you know where it was?" "Mam- ma, dear," replied the seven-year-old philos- opher, miraculous intuition is not the result of forethought."
 People who watch the weather are apt to think that our climate is changing. Abbe doesn't think so. He remarks that the ex- treme changeableness of our climate from day to day, and from year to year, and our almost total ignorance of the laws governing
 these changes, render it impossible, at pres I ent, to know what the actual climate is or
 was; and so there are no d ata for determin- | ing, with an approach to certainty, whether ! it is changing or not. The chances are, in Professor Abbe's opinion, that we of New England are living in "the same old cli- mate."
 l The commissioner of pensions has notified the secretary of the interior that there will
 be deficiency of about eight million dollars | in the amount necessary for the payment of | pensions during the fiscal year ending with
 June next. When the appropriations for this year were made it was generally said l that congress had been extravagant. In the year preceding the pension expenditures had l increased by five million dollars and reached
 total of seventy eight milli Oh. To this con.
 gress anded another million, making the to- tai seventy-nine; and now even this large sum is found to be eight millions short. Whewi
 There is to be an important congress of the Scotch Irish race in Columbia, Tennes
 gee, on the 9th of next May. Distinguished orators and scholars of that race will read papers commemorating the deeds of the Scotch-Irish. Columbia was chosen as the
 place of meeting because 1t is central in loca
 tion and was the home of two famous Scotch
 Irishmen, Andrew Jackson and James K
 Polk. The date chosen is the most delight
 ful season of the year in that latitude, an6
 every effort will be-made to insure the com
 fort and promote the pleasure of those wht
 attend. The congress will be revelation tt
 many people, in that it will show how numer l ous and influential the Scotch Irish in thi
 country are.
 The first volume of the great Oxford die tionary has been published. The aim of tn work is declared to be 'sto furnish an ade ouate account of the meaning, origin an, history of English words now in general use < or known to have been in use at any tim : during the last TOO years. It endeavors q { to show, with regard to each individual word } when, how, in what shape, and with wha lsigni6cation it became English; what devel
 opment of form and meaning it has since r,
 I ceived; which of its uses have, in the cours