The Opelousas courier., 1891-10-10
SELECT SIFTINGS.

The French watch product for 1890
amounted to 404, 436 watches.
A novelty in mems hats is a fac-simile
of the e'stove-pipe" made of straw.
An aged travelling scissors grinder has
died in Indiana. leaving an estate valued
at $21, 900.
In California there is a spring from
which rises such ~noxious gas that n
Whit of it will extinguish life.
A Philadelphia woman has just dis
charged a debt of three cents, which she
had owed for forty-three years.
William Woodward, of Baltimore, now
ninety years old, has been a Sunday
school teacher for seventy-two years.
A piece of crown land OF Pail Mall,
London, has just been leased at a rate
based on a selling price of $4,000, 600
per acre.
Near Parkersburg, W. Va, recently,
a young woman jumped into the river
and brought to shore two men who were
drowning.
1t is said that the FIVE leading hotels
at Saratoga. N. T., take in a Il aggre-
gate of So, 600, 900 a month during the
busy season.
The hailstones which recently fell at
Arkansas City, Ark, were about the
shape of a common soda biscuit and
nearly as big.
Hofhing pigeons are to be used on
United States men-of-war to communi-
cate with the shore. The initial steps for
such experiments have already been
taken.
A ffteen-year-old Virginia school girl
recently wrote a poem which contained
25G lines, each line commencing alter
nateIy with M and R, and from which
the letter l was entirely omitted.
A esberdash" was a name anciently
given in England to aasort of neck dress,
and the person who made OIL sold such
neck dresses was called a ssberdashe,"
hence the present term sshaberdasher."
Chicago and Milwaukee are to be
connected by an elevated electric rail-
way, the trains on which will u OYER a
mile a minute. The projectors hope to
have the road in running order by Janu-
arg |, 1898.
DIR. Hazard, of Allegheny City, Penn,
has organized a league for the extermin-
alton Of the sparrow. Each member
must kill fifty birds. The doctor hopes
to see the destruction of 759, 900 birds
Ia Allegheny County in the next three
years.
A 1aan with one of the most curious
p~ropensities lives in Shelton, Conn. He
has acquired an appetite for live bull
frogs, and swallows them with the same
ease he would swallow the most dainty
morsel that ever was cooked. His name
is John Stowe.
a sequoia tree has been found in
Kings River canyon, in the Nevada
mountain range, whose original diameter
exceeded forty feet, but has been re-
duced by fire to thirty-nine feet. This
is larger than any Of the gigantic trees
discovered in California by seven feet.
The finest display Of gold or silver
plate the German Kaiser saw on his
recent trip was in Amsterdam, where he
was dined by the Queen Regent of Hol-
land. The service. which is worth $50,
900, was originally made in London for
William and Mary, but was carried to
Holland after that kings death, over q
century ago.
Brown, a stepson Of j.. M. Shaw,
OF Lafayette, Ca, IS said to be cut
out for a snake eharmer. He is not
afraid of r~attlers. When he finds
one, If it is in the right position, be will
seize it with his naked hand BY the neck
just below the head. If it is not, he will
whip it until it IS cowed, and puts its
head under its body.