The St. Johns herald., 1890-12-04
FOREIGN PEOPLE AND EVENTS.

CHANCELLOR CAPRIvI, BiSmarck's suc- cessor, it is reported is betrothed to a niece of General von Waldersee, Con- mander-in-Chief of the German armies. THE Roumanian Government has offered prizes to the architects of all na-
 tions for the best plans for it's new As sembly and Senate chambers. The first prize for each building is 5000; the sec- ond S1,5O0; third, $500.
 THE London tower IS so far on it's way to become an accomplished fact that a site of three hundred acres has been purchased. One-half of this ground will be used for a site for the tower and the other half will be laid out in pleasure grounds.
 COUNTESS DE BIROM, nee de Lesseps, drives about Paris in her S1,SOO victoria dressed in white paneled silk with hand painted flowers. Her white parasol is ornamented with a Dresden china handle the cost of which would pay for a whole tea set.
 CARRIER swallows are now used in France by the military authorities in- stead of pigeons. A test was recently made at Rauboix, and fifteen of the birds were given absolute freedom of wing for the first time. They flew in different directions, and in about twen- ty minutes one came back and perched on the trainers outstretched finger. In half an hour every swallow was back.
 THE Empress of Russia, who, as the Princess Dagmar, was one of the royal beauties of Europe, is now so thin and haggard that the friends who have not seen her in half a dozen years do not recognize her. Since her accession she has lived in continual terror of assas- sination, either for herself or for her husband and son; or in the still more grim companionship of the fear that his consciousness of perpetual danger would unsettle the Emperor's wits.
 A VERY rich vein of iron ore has been discovered in KhersOn, near the village of fPrivolna about 300 sazhen from the river Ingula. It is estimated that the yield will be sufficient to keep fifteen iron factories at work. The Minister of Mountain Works has ordered engineers to sink shafts and to begin mining as soon as possible. With the rich yield of coals in that district it will be easy in a very short time to work the new mines for all that they are worth.
 IN MT. Gladstone's library of twenty five thousand volumes are two which were given to him in 1915, when the fu- ture statesman and bibliophile cele- brated his fifth birthday, one of the two shabby little booklets being the gift of the admirable Mrs. Hannah More-his "holy Hannah" as Horace Walpole used to call her-then already seventy years of age, but taking great delight in clever children, in which class her young friend Billy" Gladstone was conspicuous.
 SALI, the black boy who travelled with Stanley throughout his long and perilous expedition, is youth of some resource. Until his terrible book had got into his masters brain the boy had been accustomed to free access to Stan- ley at all hours; but now things were different; every time he approached the den the least thing he expected was that the ink-stand would be thrown at his head. He no longer ventured there in. One day he originated new way of saving his head; be had telegram to deliver, so he ingeniously fixed it on the end of long bamboo, and getting the door just ajar, he poked it into the room and bolted.