NEWS ITEMS by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 15, 1880

NEWS ITEMS.

By Editor

—A terrific gale passed over central Ontario the night of April 10, causing much damage.

—Russian advices up to April 11 say the death of Prince Gortschakoff is hourly expected.

—The Harrisburg, Pa., Car Manufacturing Company’s planing mill and ten dwellings were burned on the 10th of April.

—In the elections in England the majority for the Liberals is much greater than was at first reported. It was a decisive triumph for Gladstone.

—Severe repressive measures against the Jesuits have recently been enacted in France. Soon America will be the only refuge for these relics of the Inquisition.

—Seven hundred men, women, boys, girls, priests, and foreigners have been burned alive at Rangoon, Burmah, as sacrifices for the restoration of the health of the king.

—A friend writing to the SIGNS office on business, from Gunnison County, Colorado, says the snow is now eight feet in depth there; and that the fall for the winter has been twenty-five feet.

—The termini of the Southern Pacific and Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroads are now but 200 miles apart. The latter road having received subsidies from the State of Sonora, will make Guaymas, Mexico, its Pacific terminus.

—There is rejoicing, not only in all California, but in all the country, over the rebuke given to "Rev. Mayor Kalloch" in the late election in San Francisco. His desperado followers are foiled, and already business begins to show favorably.

—Dr. Dana of St. Paul, Minn., says, "it is a humiliating confession to make that a large per cent. of the Congregationalists who go West is lost to the denomination." A Catholic bishop said the same of his church, and it is probably true of almost every other.

—A writer in the Wesleyan Christian Advocate, of Macon, Ga., complains that he is sometimes called to administer the sacrament of communion to large, well-dressed congregations, with "a large, ugly, black bottle, filled with sour blackberry wine." He does well to complain.

—Instead of the concessions promised to the Jews on the anniversary of the Czar’s accession to the throne, the government has indulged in more severe measures than formerly toward them. To escape expulsion from St. Petersburg, they are now obliged to represent themselves as Protestant Christians.

—The Asiatic quarrel over Kuldja, is becoming somewhat complicated. English influence has prevented the ratification of the treaty by which China ceded that territory to Russia. Prussian influences also are said to be at work in the same direction. On the other hand Russia has incited Japan to declare war with China, and is now engineering a league against China between Japan, Siam, and Burmah.

—In a diocese in Ireland, the Bishop refused absolution to those who sold liquor on Sundays, and the sale was thereby stopped, and as a consequence two local prisons have been closed up as being no longer necessary. If no liquor was sold on any day, nearly all the prisons might be closed. This shows that the license of this curse is unprofitable to the government.

—The Chicago and Northwestern Railway Company require every man entering their employ to sign the following pledge: "I hereby promise and agree that, while I am in the service of the C. and N. W. R. R. Co., I will entirely abstain from the use of intoxicating liquors of any kind, including ale, beer and wine; and that I will not frequent dram-shops, billiard saloons, or other places where such liquors are sold."

—Hon. Wm. A. Howard, Governor of Dakota, died at Washington April 10, aged 67. He had been in poor health for some time. He was one of the most prominent citizens of Michigan for the last quarter of a century, and had been a leading Republican. He served three terms in Congress, where he took the foremost position. He was a man of large abilities and a most able and pungent debater. He was at the head of the Michigan delegation to Cincinnati, and it was his influence more than any other that wheeled Michigan into line at the critical moment and turned the scale in favor of Hayes.

—There was a heavy and damaging gale at Buffalo, the afternoon of April 10. The water was the highest for years, overflowing wharves and almost entirely submerging the island between the river and the lake, the inhabitants of which had to flee for their lives. A number of shanties and five boat houses were washed away. The lowlands from Erie street to Black Rock were entirely submerged, and a portion of the Lockport branch of the New York Central Road was washed away, so that trains had to be abandoned on the Main-street line.