Elk City mining news. (Elk City, Idaho) 1903-1913, 1905-02-11
QUEER SToRltS
~~~~~~~~~

South Africa is to enter the paper
making world, 1t having been found
that kind of grass which grows there
makes an excellent grade ofpaper. Brit
Ish manufacturers are already putting
up mills there.
The South American negroes have
queer way of decorating the graves Of
their dead friends. 1t Is the custom
down there to make border around
the grave of the medicine bottles used
during the dead ones last illness.
A blind man named Green made a
curious defense at Birmingham, Eng
land, to a charge of smashing a plate
glass window worth Els. He had been
blind, he said, for seven years. On
the night in question, he cried for as
sistance to cross the road, but no one
came. Then he heard some one at
distance and struck at what used,
when he could see, to be boards sur
rounding waste ground. He was aston
ished when he heard the sound Of
broken glass. The jury acquitted him
and he was discharged.
| Near Pontefract, France, lives a
banker who has museum of old doors.
| They are from old houses, castles or
abbeys that have some historic inter
est Quite lately he bid 200 in Paris
for the door through which during the
French revolution, Marie Antoinette,
Charlotte Corday Danton and Robe
sphere passed to the guillotine. One
of his doors is said to have shut off
Charles II. from his Roundhead pur-
suers, and 1t bears marks of batter
ing ram. A collection of ancient wealth
ercocks is also one of this mans pos
sessions.
A feature of low street life in Toxic
is the "kuisha," or moxa doctor, who
applies small pads, made of certain
dried herbs, to the skin, then setting
them alight, the ensuing blisters being
supposed to be most effective as a cure
for various ailments. Among the doc
tors remedies, too, are rhinoceros pills,
warranted a sure cure for tightness of
the chest, crashing Of the teeth and
depression of spirits, and "furidashi"
a popular remedy for coughs and colds,
which is said to expel the devils and
promote circulation; while musk pills
are prescribed as an infallible cure for
every i'll, from red nose to seasick-
ness. q
An engineer named Knorr, a Ger
man who has become a naturalized
Russian, built four of the great bridges
on the Trans-Siberian railway. includ-
ing the big Yenisel and Obi bridges,
, which cost, respectively, $2,35O,000 and
. 100000. They were great engineer
ing feats, and brought him information
al fame in his profession. But he was
pursued by curious fatality. A writ
er in 'T. A. T." says: He had five
daughters, who were famous in Russia
for their beauty, and whom he loved
dearly. Just after his first bridge was
completed one of them died; and as
, each of his three succeeding bridges
was built, another died. He would not
build fifth bridge.
Discipline is severe in the German
> army, and the treatment of privates
+ is sometimes unjustifiable. At Dessau
+ sergeant who had been drinking to
excess insulted two young women who
were escorted by couple of men in
the ranks. The privates protested to
, the minor officer, who drew his sword
and attacked them, in his drunkenness
: wounding one of the girls. In the af-
= fray which followed the sergeant was
disarmed and felled to the floor. All
three were put on trial. The sergeant
, was sentenced to prison for FIVE
months, while the unfortunate privates
were condemned to five years behind
the bar at hard labor, were dismissed
1 rom the service and were deprived
h Of their civil rights. Service as a pri-
: vate in an army so regulated cannot be
I cause of pride in time of peace.
a Do NJ nf