The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1890-07-24
MISCELLANEOUS.

! sandwich papers and other rubbish were
taken from the White House grounds
after the children's egg-rolling picnic
on Easter morning.
"A citizen of st. Johns, N. B., lost
a number of chickens recently, among
them rooster whose crow he knew
with his eyes shut He made detour
of the city, heard the rooster, insisted
upon an examination and found every
chicken.
"a numismatist suggests that GER
tain coin-say the fifty-cent pieces
issued during any administration be
stamped with the head of the President
of that date. They will thus serve as
an aid to history, rs do the coins of an
cient days.
"A man in village of Holland was
seen one day painting a heavy black
line on the gable-end of his house, and
attaching to it a date, say November
IS, 1882. Asked what he was about, he
said. 81 am moving my high-water
mark up to where the boys can't scratch
1t out again. / am sick of their pranks."
An old molasses candy woman used
to ask her juvenile customers whether
they wanted ''sticks or gobs." One day
her niece took her place, and put the
| question in this way: ''Will you have
| elongated pieces or condensed masses?"
And the youngsters agreed that she was
stuck up.-Youth's Companion.
"A Jackson County, Mich, woman
lost her husband, and in the first blush
of her uncomfortable grief she ordered
handsome monument to mark the de-
parted's resting place. Before the
stone was completed the widow had
taken a new hitch on life and married
again. She refused to accept or pay for
the monument, and there was lots of
| trouble in the household.
A vast sum was sunk in the tenn
porary plant used in building the Forth
bridge. The engineers estimate that
| $500, 900 was spent in this direction
alone. In scaffolding, flooring, shedding,
| ETC., 1000, 0O0 cubic feet of timber were
used. From first to last !, 200 tons of mere
| service bolts were needed to hold the
mass of material together Scores of
hydraulic jacks, sixty miles of wire
rope and rams innumerable were also
among the temporary appliances en-
ployed
"A Georgia editor has an old Confed-
crate shoe, manufactured for the gov
eminent in 1854, just before the war
ended. The sole is fully three-quarters
of an inch thick, ard is made of poplar
wood, evidently shaped with Ratchet
or drawing knife. The upper is at
tached to the sole with a strap of raw
hide, running entirely around the shoe,
the leather being held to the sole with
large carpet tacks. The upper is of
rough cowhide, dressed only on the in
side.
An old lady living at Lewisburg,
Ore, picked up an Indian arrow head
recently, that is quite a relic. 1t is
black flint interspersed with quartz,
pearl and emerald, and under the micro
scope exhibits roseate hue of exquisite
beauty. The Mollalla Indians forty
years ago told the whites of rock south
of Mount Hood in the mountains, that
shone with such intense brightness
as to excite superstition in the savage
breast to such an extent that they feared
to approach the sparkling luminary.
There is not much credulity to be at
tached to Indian tradition, but if the
stone from which this arrow head was
extracted could be located gems of great
value might be found.
The fruit of the eoco-de-mer, which
General Gordon believed to be the for
hidden fruit of the Garden of Eden, has
been exported to Europe. The nut
weighs twenty pounds and measures
twenty-five inches across. The palm on
which it grows (lodoicea sechellarum)
is 100 feet in height, and is only to be
found on the Seychelle Islands. Hun
dreds of years before the Seychelles
were discovered these nuts were washed
up on the Maldive Islands, and the wise
acres of those days told the people that
this sea-borne fruit had grown on a sub
marine tree, and that it had a mysterious
power of counteracting poisons. Hence
the name-coco-de-mer. It is probable
that Gordon met with illusions to this
wonderful nut in Arabic MSS, and after
ward visiting Seychelles was struck by
the beautiful and isolated group of
islands and their double cocoanut.