Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1894-08-13
OF GENERAL INTEREST.


 The perfection of the early printed books is due to the fact that the first printers were forced to compete with the best scribes and penmen, and were thus compelled to do good work in order to justify the right of the new trade to exist
 Paper has been made in China from time immemorial Outside Of China it was first made at Samarcand, in Turl1e stan, A. D. 750. It was imported into Europe from the east for two hundred years before the Europeans thought of making 1t for themselves.
 According to a German scientific journal, a material called flexible glass" is made by dissolving four to eight parts of gun-cotton in one part of ether or alcohol. and adding to the solution two to four parts of non- resinous oil, and four to ten parts of Canada balsam. The mixture is spread on plate of glass, and dried in cur rent of air at temperature of fifty de- grees The fesiduum Is a hard, heX- ible. transparent mass, resisting alike acids, aIkalies and salts.
 When 6 sugar refinery wharf needs a new floor the old one is not thrown away or sold to q junk dealer, but carted into the refinery and boiled. The blanks are saturated with sugar, molasses, and a variety of other things not usually deemed edible. The re- finery process, however. separates the absorbed sugar from the impurities, and the refners make very handsome saving by boiling up the old floor No body need be shocked at this economy, as sugar refining is all that the name implies.
 That was a novel idea, and possibly one worth following, that was recently carried out in a new house. The archi- tect was asked to design revolving sideboard set between dining room and buffers pantry. Oval iii shape. it pos sessed pair of fronts. asit were, either of which could be presented in com pany. By this means it is supposed dinners may be expedited the plates and accessories for d course being put in at one side, while the previous one is being served from the other.
 At one of the annual dinners of the New England society, of New York at which MT. Blaine and the late Gov. Van Zandt, of Rhode Island. were both guests, q little good-natured ehaff was indulged in as to the relative influence of the Hollanders and Yankees in the settlement and development of New York. T can give you the history of New York in a sentence, said Van Zandt, in whose veins coursed both Dutch and Yankee blood. '.The Dutch settled New York, and the Yankees settled the Dutch
 In New York photograph col lector's album there are the pictures of one hundred criminals who were tried and convicted in that city last year \ good proportion of them are men of fine appearance, with honest-Iooking faces and q pleasant expression. The owner of the album often shows these pictures to his aequaintanees, without telling who the men are; and he says that, of all the people who have seen them, not one has yet guessed that they are convicted criminals, or that they do not rank among the most respectable citizens. "What a remarkably hand some and good lot of friends you have, said clergyman after looking over the album, all the pictures in which have been chosen for the purpose which they subserve. Two of the photographs represent man killers now in prison
 Various experiments with the new rifles, which have recently taken place in Germany, have demonstrated in very conclusive manner that another war would practically be one of ami h1lation. A well-known French writer says that the battlefield would, at the termination of the engagement, be GOV cred with two or three hundred thou sand Gorpses, all crushed and broken, and would be nothing but 1 vast charnel-house. No one would be left to bury the dead, and pestilence would in its turn sweep away the country people. Pointing the moral, he adds that the man--emperor, king or presi- dent of a republic-who, under these condition, would expose the human race to such fate, would be the great est criminal the world had ever seen.- Army Masra ziDa