The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1897-03-22
ITEMS OF INTEREST.


valued at 81, 10000 The Shah of Persia
has sword valued at $4,000. which his
father wore on his first visit to Europe.
The most valuable sword in England is
that which was presented to Lord Wolse-
ley by the Egyptians. 1t is valued al S1O,-
900.
Some interesting details concerning
Dreyfus, which have reached Paris, are re-
peated by the London Morning Posts cor
respondent. II seems that the prisoner ap-
pears to be losing his will power. At the
beginning of his confinement on DEVILS Is
land he applied himself to mathematics
and pyrotechrics. Now, however, when
he seeks to forget his position by working,
he stops suddenly, throws up his arms
in sign of despair and filings himself upon
his bed. The instinct of self-preservation
still exists, and he is, perhaps, more sus-
piciouS than formerly. He prepares his
own food, and never eats again from a tin
OF preserved meat opened at a previous
repast. The expense caused by Dreyfus'
detention is causing dissatisfaction in the
colony, especially the item of 1900 francs
spent in telegraphing about him last year.
One of the big Lynn shoe shops made
pair of ladies boots for the Paris exhi-
biton of 1899 in twenty-four minutes, says
ScribEer's Magazine. A notary public fol-
lowed the operation. watch in hand. For
this feat the pair of shoes went through
the usual routine of the shop, but at ex-
ceptional speed; fifty-seVen different oper-
ators and forty-two machines were con-
cerned in the work, which required TWEEN
sy-six pieces of leather, fourteen pieces of
cloth, twenty -four buttons, twenty-four
button holes, eighty tacks, twenty nails,
two box-toes, two steel shanks and TWEEN
ty yards of thread Since that time the di-
vision OF labor upon pair of shoes has
become still greater, and there is a larger
number of machines employed, with the
result that a pair of ladies' boots can now
be made complete in this factory inside of
twenty minutes.
That mysterious airship which some
months ago disturbed the minds-or
dreams-of people living in the far west has
appeared again, this time at Omaha, says
the New York Times. The vessel, there
fore, has not been in dry dock all this time,
but seems to be making it's way eastward
by easy flights 1t still has an electric
headlight for the only distinctly visible
feature, but nothing is now said about
the strains of music that used to be heard,
and the aeriai passengers no longer drop
overheard empty bottles to dash them
selves and the hopes of thirty night wan
derers to pieces on the ground. One Oma-
ha observer says: 1--WE thought at first
a thing as an airship, l believe now that
this was one. There was a bright light
about a foot in diameter, and some of us
who saw it thought that we could distin-
guish some dark body below the light
but we might have been mistaken in that"
They might, indeed, they might
M. Paris, who succeeded to the seat of
the great Pasteur in the French academy,
referred in his inaugural address to the in
teresting theory that human beings and
all life are aggregations of microbes, says
the New York Journal. The microbes, -
he said, were known before Pasteur but
the part which they played in nature was
not clearly discerned. They penetrate into
the tissues of the human body and pro-
duce infectious disease; they people the
air; they fill the water; they saturate the
soil; they dwell in animals and plants;
| they develop us, serve our purposes and
| threaten us from all sides Nay, they are,
perhaps ourselves. The life of superior
beings appears to science as the result of
myriads of these elementary eXistences.
Their colonies, more and more populous and
| differentia ted, composed from the merest
insect to the rose, the cedar, the eagle, the
whale, the man, the immense and dazzling
network IN the meShes of which they
| ceaselessly circulate, destroyed and yet re-
| newed, ever since there has been produced
| and without doubt produced by them on
| this globe of ours the mysterious dawn
| ing of life. This, therefore, is what the
| study of microbes has revealed to amazed
| humanity
The Arabs have an old legend about
| the cat, which relates how that animal
was created to keep down the mice who
swarmed in Noah's ark and devoured the
| food Of the other inhabitants. Russian
peasants say that the furry coat of the
| cat was originally designed for the dog,
but that the nobler animal forfeited it
| by growing impatient at the slow distri-
| button of gifts at the creation, and, there
| fore, going over to the evil one in hopes
of getting something better Since then
| the dog has hated the cat. because he
| suspects her of having stolen his coat.
| The traditional association of cats with
| old maids comes from the fact that in the
middle ages cats were always kept in
nun nerieS. The belief that cats were con-
nected with sorcery and were the pre-
ferred attendants of witches is said to be
Of Egyptian origin. When Typhon, the
| evil spirit terrified the gods and goddesses
| so much that, to protect themselves they
| took upon them the shapes of animals,
| Bast, the cat goddess, who was also the
| goddess of witchcraft, assumed the shape
of cat. In medieval France cats had
| a bad name and it was customary to burn
numbers of them in a bonfire upon St.
Johns day. There still exists a receipt
| for money paid to one Lucas Pommer-
reaux in 1915 'for having supplied for
three years all the cats required for the
| fire on st. Johns day as usual" In the
south of France there is a belief that If
a cat be carried in a cart and the wind
blow from 1t to the horses, they immedi-
| ately fan tired, and if any part of the
drivers clothing be made from catskin,
the horses will feel as if they were draw
ing a double burden.
"A novel invention recently patented is
a marine floating safe, designed to preserve
mail matter and other valuables from be-
| ing destroyed with the sinking of a vessel.
II is elliptcal in form and has an outer
| shell or armor plate sufficiently thick to
withstand the force of the waves and pre-
vent 1t from being pierced by pieces of
wreckage. Layers of asbestos Cor other
fire-proof material inclosed between layers
of malleable wire fabric) cork incased in
wire, asphaltum and steel plate intervene
between the outer shell and central in
ner cabinet, these layers rendering the
safe fire, water and burglar-proof, yet
leaving buoyancy sufficient to allow the
safe to float with about 25 per cent of its