The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1890-08-23
PERSONAL AND PECULIAR.

Sixty-fve years ago Emmons Ridge was
arrested In Hartford, Conn.,, for selling ice.
the doctors of the city having decided that it
was unhealthy to use it.
A mortgage was raised from a poor wo-
mans house at Plainfeld, N. j., by water
melon seeds. The guests of a summer hotel
paid 80 cents apiece for the privilege of
guessing the number Of seeds in a water
melon and the proceeds were devoted to the
widow.
The most remarkable city In the United
States, according to the new census, is West
Superior, Wis. Since the last census it has
increased in population 1920 per cent.
which is the highest rate of increase shown
by any place. This marvellous rate of
growth is explained by the fact that there
were not any peo pie there in 1880, and its
site was bowling wilderness.
When Sarah Bernhard went to London
she had forty eight trunks with her. Twenty
of her trunks are made Of wood, about four
feet high, each divided into three compart-
ments and filled with her most valuable
dresses. Fourteen are made of wicker
work. also in three compartments each.
Three special trunks are set apart for hats,
arranged on pegs so that they cannot be
crushed. The whole outfit weighed three
TONS
A remuneratlve business Is done by little
steamer which frequently leaves Victoria,
British Columbia, always at night. with sew.
eral Chinese passengers on board-Some-
times five, occasionally as many as twenty.
These are secretly landed on United States
soil, and the owners of the steamer charge
from $40 to $50 per head for this service.
The artful Chinese thus evade our laws, and
come here In almost as large numbers as be-
fore we passed laws to exclude them as emf
grants.
United States Consul Spooner, who has
resigned the post at Prague, is down on Dor
tiers who control the front door: 81 will
never again live in town where latch KEYS
are not allowed. Another custom which an
noyed me exceedingly was this: Every nie hit
before retiring. when / would put my feet
up on the table, real American style, and
lean back to smoke my last cigar, the two
hand and kiss 1t. and then 60 through the
same rigmarole with my wife. I warned
VIII Rublee, my successor, of these draw
bracks to assuming office there, but he would
take II"
An old and strange custom prevails in
Venice when prisoner is about to be con-
demned to death. An exchange informs us
that just before sentence is to be pronounced,
a tall and ghostly looking individual, dressed
In long black gown, walks majestically to
the centre of the courtroom, bows solemnly
to the judges, and in cavernous voice utters
the following words: Remember the baker,"
Then he bows again and stalks away. Just
three hundred years ago baker was exc
cuted In Venice for crime of which he was
not guilty. When his innocence was estab-
lished, the judges who condemned him gave
sum of money to the city, the interest on
which was to be devoted to the setting up
and perpetual burning of a lamp, known as
the lamp Of expiation," in the palace of the
doges. 1t 1t still burning there.
William Tell is now officially relegated to
the limbo of fables. Scholars have long
since proved that the Tell legend sprang
from patriotic invention. and the national
government of Switzerland has yielded to
the scholars, and decreed that it shall hence
forth be excluded from all school histories
published by authority. Yet there cannot
be doubt that the heroic Tell, his defiance
of Gessler in Altorf market-place, his feat of
craftsmanship in shooting the apple from
his sons head at the tyrant's command, his
leaping from the boat and killing Gessler,
and his freeing Helvetia from the Austrians,
that all these tales have been a powerful
stimulus in preserving the sturdy indepen-
dence of the Swiss. 1t is pity to lose SO
benefcent alegend.-Springfeld Republican.