Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-11-12
CURIOUS CONVERSATIONS.

The first game of cricket was played IN
London. England, in l774.
AT Frankfort, Germany, 500 horse
power is transmitted by electricity to adistance
of l4O miles.
An Atchison candidate worked so hard
that he lost 20 pounds during the canvass and
then got beaten.
An old woman at Wichita has prophe-
sled that the world would be destroyed on the
l0tn OIL this month.
The Second Regiment of Illinois militia
has full enrolment. and all its members are
unuer ~ years of age
The Statistical Institute Of Rome an
nounces that 6S per cent of all Italians are un-
able to read and write.
NO other branch of natural history Gp-
proaches. in popularity that one which is de-
voted to the study of birds.
Before the invention of the telescope an
object upon the moons surface 50 miles in
diameter could not be seen.
The most abiding results of sunstroke
are all referable to impaired functional energy
of the cerebro-spinal system.
"A pair of bantam chickens were sold at
the London Crystal Palace for $780, which uas
almost twice their weight in gold.
Society is dull in Leavenworth because
of lack Uf young men, and dull in Topeka be-
cause of scarcity of young ladies.
"A bird is one of the most wonderfully
organized of all animals. and almost the whole
of its organization is arranged to facilitate
flight
One of the most singular facts about the
growth of London is its regularity. 1t may be
roughly taken that every month about l,006
houses are added.
-Asaioetida is a vegetable, not an animal
product. 1t is prepared from the roots of a
plant extensively grown in Persia, BeloOchistan
and Afghanistan.
The telescope enables us to measure the
invisible by first making it visible; the spectre
scope enables us to measure the invisible with
out making it visible.
The use of India rubber for erasing
pencil marks was first suggested in or just
prior to 1752 by an academiclan named Magel-
Ian. descendant of the great navigator.
Fashionable entertainments have been
enormously extravagant in London this season.
Several have cost between $4,000 and $4,000
Ihe flowers for bachelor party cost S5.OOO.
The Aryan race has proved itself i'm
mensely superior to the Semitic in its capacity
for political organization and for passing on to
systems of self-goVernment and federation.
-Swifts and swallows fly every year
from England to Southern Africa and to the
various oceanic birds is still more surprising.
-"Better late than never" was used over
800 years ago by Thomas Tucker, in his Five
Hundred Points of Good Husbandry." Later
on Bunyan used it in his Pilgrims Progress"
1t is asserted by French vintagers that
the grapes gathered at sunrise always produce
the lightest and most limpid wine. Moreover
by plucking the grapes when the early morning
sun is upon them they are believed to yield a
fourth more juice.
"A sunstroke is often attended with men,
ingitis, or cerebral changes, which may destroy
life or intellect sooner or later, or permanently
compromise the whole health or that of some
important function.
There are few such common-sense pro-
verbs as "every man is the architect of his own
fortune" Appus Claudius, a Roman censor,
used it in a speech delivered by him $50 years
before the Christian era
Birds are the only animals, besides
man, which can be taught distinctly to articu-
late and utter sentences, which, though Of
course not understood by the birds themselves,
are none the less surprising to listen to.
The salt works at Saltair, Utah, cover
900 acres. The vars are Is feet above the sur
face Of the lake. and are filed by means of
huge rope driven at a high speed, which lifts
the brine in steady stream at the rate of Is 900
gallons minute.
According to Weismann. every character
possessed by every animal is due to the preser-
vation in the struggle for life of minute acci-
dental variations in the molecular structure Of
germplasm, which alone has adapted every
being to its environments .......,
Bones are necessarily more or less heavy
structures, but the bones of most birds, while
their solid substance is exceedingly strong, are
wonderfully lightened by the details of its ar
rangement, and still more by the fact that
| most of them contain not marrow but warm
| (and therefore light) air.
1t is not SO long since that hod-carriers
were regarded as quite unworthy of the notice
| of bosses Things have changed, at least in st.
Louis, where hod-carriers get 50 day for eight
hours, while carpenters receive only 81 so for
the same time. The hod-carriers organized
and had the courage OF conviction.
Twelve years ago the German Govern
ment-a mighty powerful corporatiou-under-
took to abolish the Socialist party. As result
of a persecution, where there was one Socialist
at the outset there are now ten. The party has
become so strong that the Government has
been obliged to recognize it as political ele-
ment too powerful for repression.
ANY vessel causing a disaster at her
launch is regarded by the Japanese as doomed
to ill fortune for her whole career. At Osaka
lately a vessel capsized while being launched,
several persons being drowned. and her owners
determined TO destroy her at once before the
uulucky craft produced further catastrophe
The destruction was carried OUT by night with
much ceremony.
Some wealthy ladies of New York have
prepared a project for the starting of a great
daily paper here 1t is not to be an organ Of
women's political enfranchisement merely, but
but is to be champion of all her rights as q
dominating force in the oTlmunity. and as an
important factor in the social, business and in
dustrial world. 1t is to print all the news and
views that are of special interest in the develop
ment of femininity, and the expectation of its
projectors is that 1t will be scanned every day
By all the women of New York, if not by all the
men.
The grasshoppers are said to have been
human beings in an age before the Muses..
When the MUSES. came and song appeared they
were ravished with delight; and singing always,
never thought of eating and drinking, until at
last in their forgetfulness they died And now
they live again in the grasshoppers; and this is
the return which the MUSES. make to them
they hunger no more, neither thirst any more,
but are always singing from the moment that
they are born, and never eating or drinkingy
and when they die they go and inform the
Muses. in heaven who honors them on earth.