The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1899-02-26
OUT OF THE ORDINARY.

The oldest known dictionary in any Ian
guage was issued in China about eleven
centuries p. c.
The fasAst flowing river in the world Hal6ad is
the Sutlej, in British India, with a descent
of 1900 feet in $50 miles.
Thirty years ago the first postal card was
made in Vienna at the suggestion OF FRO
fessor Hermann, of the Technical lnstl-
tute.
At a Methodist school In China there are
fifty girls picked out of some river or pond,
where they had been thrown by parents to
drown.
A church in London still possesses an in
come originally given to it for the purposes
of buying fagots with which to burn
h~eretics.
A minister at Pulaski, Pa, has been dis
missed by his congregation because he in
sisted in a sermon that the rainbow existed
before the flood.
A law recently passed in Norway makes
girls ineligible for matrimony, unless they
can show certificates of skill in cooking,
knitting and spinning.
Artificial legs and arms were in use in
Egypt as early as b. Z. M: 1hey Were
clans of that early time.
India is like no other colony over which
Britain holds sway. 1t is a vast empire
with a population of more than 2W,OVV,OOO OF
people,, of alien race and religion.
A modification of the church fair idea is
a plan of a Methodist Episcopal Church in
Chester county. Pennsylvania, to have an
duCllOn VI ldII1, SlOSh cliA0 AAA4PlOAAAChb1g NAS
animals and goods to be solicited.
No industry except that of cloth manu-
facture has contributed so much to the
comfort and advancement Of man as that of
glass making, which is one of the Oldest
Of technical industries. Its earliest home
was Egypt.
Lord Jefries's bloody assize'' has been
Outdone by MIR. Bonner, an English lawyer
sent to Sierra Leone to try the natives
who rebelled last year. He condemned 154
men to death, of whom eighty-one have
been executed already.
Africa is the most elevated of all the con-
tinents. 1t is the Continent of Plateaus.
The great table-land in the south has a
mean altitude of over $500 feet; the wide
table-land In the north has an average ele-
walton of about 1900 feet.
The intimate relations of Japan and the
United States are illustrated in the forma-
ton of a Harvard Club in the capital of the
Oriental empire. At the organization there
were twenty-four Harvard men present
twelve Japanese and twelve Americans.
In Paris and other large towns in France
female bootblacks are increasing in number:
They wear q peculiar garb, not unlike that
of Sisters of Mercy, which renders their ap-
pearance rather neat and attractive. NOT a
few among them attend to their work with
gloved hands.
The car wheels made at the Pennsylvania
Railroad shops III Altoona are generally run
4C,0 miles on passenger coaches and are
then put on freight cars. A 42-inch wheel
now in one of the shops has been run over
0,00 miles, and a S6-inch wheel has tray
eled 600,O0 miles.
In a recent treatise on alcoholism by
Trull., 1t is stated that in England IS per
cent. of all cases of pauperism are due to
drink. and in Germany 80 per cent. In Ger
many drink leads to 1,600 cases of suicide a
year and supplies the iunatic asylum with
three thousand victims.
Ducks don't need water to thrive. There
are many Embarrassing plants in this coun-
try where thousands of the fowl are bred
each year for market, and where there Is
not even a puddle for them to founder in.
One of these farms is credited with an cut
put of 20D0 ducks a year.
The lower house of the Convocation of the
Church of England has passed a resolution
declaring that the law OF the church does
not recognize divorce, and asking the bish-
ops to devote themselves to securing acton
of Parliament to the end that the church
shall not remarry divorced persons.
The timber of the scaffold on which four
murderers were hanged at Chestertown,
Md, was afterward used in building a hen
house on ex-Sheriff Plummer's farm: It
is a significant fact that while other farm
ers in the neighborhood have suffered from
the depredations Of chicken thieves. PUN
mer's henhouse has never been robbed.
AT Caldwell Kan. the other day. a man
chastised his nelghbor for referring to his
child as a kid" When the case was
brought before a justice Of the peace Web
ster's Dictionary was consulted, and it was
found that kid" was there defined as "a
young child or infant" The indignant par
ent was, t%hereupon adtudged to have been
In the wrong, and was fined - ana costs.
France has now a law by which mar
riage may be dissolved without cost to the
applicants. The Paris divorce court devotes
Thursdays to gratuitous DEGREES. on one
day recently 294 couples were divorced dur
ing a session of four hours, an average OF
more than one divorce a minute. The ap-
plicants belonged TO the working class, in
which divorces were infrequent before the
passage of the law.
The density of the population of London
has been doubled since 1857. 1t is truly Won
derful, says the Lancet, that It's vast popu-
lation of G.291 .667. located on only 500 square
miles, should have in 1897 so low a death
rate as III per 1000. This rate IS not great
err than that of a fairly healthy rural dis
trict. England well deserves the name she
has received as the birthplace and home OF
= ~wtearxr aofanna aud nwoOffnA