Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-09-14
CURIOUS CONVERSATIONS.


been discovered in Brazil.
Some genius has discovered that the
ordinary watch gives 116, IA 900 ticks a year.
The sail makers of Liverpool are agltat-
ing against the use of ofsewing machines IN the
stitching of sails.
The London school board are educating
0,S66 more scholars now than they were
three yearsago.
The University of Michigan has deter
mined to add women professors and lectur-
ers to its faculty.
The Utopia, which went down in Glib
raltar Bay with more than 800 people on
board, has been raised.
Every workman in Japan wears on his
cap and on his back an inscription giving
Ills business and his employers name.
The new German rifle carries but 223
grains, and has an initial velocity nearly
twice as great as ours The brllet is of lead
silver.
The Great Western Railroad, one of
the wealthiest in England, has decided to
abandon the 'broad gauge" of rails. This
rMallroad ram was the only one in England that
stlll chung to the system.
Thomas Walker, of National City, Cal,
exhibited ten big onions. the product of his
merce few days ago. The largest onion
weighed five pounds, and the aggregate
weightwas "a pounds.
AN aged couple have lust returned to
Connecticut after an absence of SO years. It
took them in 1898 to go from Glastonbury to
their new Western home in Illinois three
weeks and two days. They have come back
IN one day and two nights.
In telling big tree at Ivoryton village
T., a.,
woodsman drove his ak into a big round
stone exactly in the heart of it. With diff
Guilty he exhumed the rock, which weighed
30 or 40 pounds. How the stone got into the
tree trunk is mystery.
"A merchant in BrattIeboro, Vt, an
noyed by the condition of the highwaE be-
fore his store, wrote to a selectman during
the latter's temporary absence from town,
as follows: 1.-TWO men Stuck in the mud in
front of the American House Shall we at
tempt to get them out or erect tombstones?"
An acre of bananas will support 25
times as many persons as an acre of wheat.
One thousand square feet of land, growing
bananas, will produce 1000 pounds of nutri-
tlous substance. The same space, devoted
to wheat or potatoes, will produce only
80 pounds of wheat, or 80 pounds of potatoes.
The Pope's professedly military army
at the Vatican has the following strength
lieutenant colonels one major, two captains,
and four lieutenants. These 13 officers have
no fewer than 60 privates to keep under dis
cipline. The Papal cavalry consists of l3
men with eight horses.
According to an educational Journal
the number of 1lliterate persons in Russia,
Siberia, Roumania and Bulgaria forms so per
cent. of the population: in Spain So: Italy,
4s; Hungary, 43; Austria 80; Ireland, 81;
France and Belgium, Is; Holland, TO- United
States, 8: Scotland, Z; Switzerland, 255, and
in the greater part of Germany only per
cent.
The Japan Herald is authority for the
figures of gold output in Siberia from 1884 to
1887 inclusive: 100000 ounces, sl2O 900 900,
or $780, 900, and this with but little ma
chinery, efforts rudely systematized, and
stealage When the great Siberian railroad
is completed from the Caspian Sea to Vladi-
vostock, the Pacific, the output of Rus
sian gold will be greatly increased.
I'm 1886 the mica product of the United
States amounted to 147410 pounds, worth
s36S 525, while that of 1899 was but 49, 500
pounds, worth only $4,000 Since there is no
decrease in demand for this article, this de-
cline in the home production can be at
tributed to no other cause than the large
quantities imported from Canada and other
foreign countries.
The effort to employ good looking
young women as account collectors has not
turned out very profitable for the merchants
who employed them. After a fortnight's ex-
perience, three of the women became en-
gagged to men whom they tried to dun, two
of them married, and a few of the others
sympathized so deeply with the debtors that
they warned them when proceedings were
instituted SO that the debtors might escape.
America is essentially a country of fads,
and the newest of them all is for young
women to present their husbands and sweet
hearts with plaster casts of their hands and
arms. An Italian in Grand street, near the
Broadway, New York, is doing big busi-
ness in taking casts from fashionable Amer
ican ladies, who have adoped this new form
of birthday presents to men who are tired of
ciqar-cases, smoking jackets and pocket
books.
The greatest known depth of the ocean
in the Pacific is near the Ladrone Islands,
where soundings were made to the depth OF
&c, $50 feet, or g. little over five miles. In the
Atlantic the greatest depth found is just
north of the West Indian Islands, which is
%, ,25O feet, or nearly four and half miles.
In those parts of the ocean most free from
islands, as in the route from Newfoundland
to Ireland, the ocean is most shallowJsel
dom exceeding 1000 feet.
The Emperor of China celebrated his
Goth birthday recently by taking unto his
yelloW-robed. pig-tailed and imperial self
another wife. As he is only allowed to have
seven wives at one time. and has already
been in the marrying business several
years. he will soon have to stop, or kill off
few of his present wives and begin over
again. The amount of diplomatic fuss and
feathers involved in selecting wife for this
extremely fastidious youth puts Chinese
ladies into deliTious futter all over the
Flowery Empire until the agony is over.
The selection of a juryman in great mod
ern scandal trial is nowhere in comparison.
A wealthy Russian gentleman, living
in his own house on the banks of the Seine
has for the past ten years kept in a box in
private room the embalmed body of his
Young wife. She was murdered few days
after marriage, and her sorrowing husband
obtained the Cars permission to take the
body away with him. The law of France
forbids absolutely the keeping of dead
body in any place but cemetery, but the
Russian gentleman hopes TO obtain special
pernission from high quarters to remain the
custodian of his beloved relic. If not, he
to leave the country rather than
part with it.