p. 269 | News and Miscellany

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 7, 1868

News and Miscellany.

Can ye not discern the Signs of the Times? Matt. xvi, 3.

—A New Jersey court recently held that a decree of divorce granted by an Indiana court in favor of a party who had gone to that State, and had there temporarily resided merely to obtain a divorce, was a mockery and good for nothing.

—Twenty-one divorces were granted by the Supreme Court at its February term in Windsor County, Vermont.

—A dog died of consumption, at Springfield, the other day, after being the companion for some time of a person sick with that disease.

—Mr. Gladstone, on March 23d, introduced in the House of Commons the resolutions on Church Reform in Ireland, of which he had previously given notice. The first of these resolutions declares that, in the opinion of the House, the Irish Church should cease to exist as an establishment.

—The Clarksville (Ala.) Standard says that Union men in that place are not safe, and gives the following instances of threatened violence: One of the leaders of the opposing party boasted not long since in our hotel, that “in five years not one member of the Constitutional Convention would be living.” It is well understood what he meant by such language. It is only a day or two since one of the Reconstruction opposers attempted to get up a fight with the Sheriff of the county for allowing “Uncle Sam’s boys” to sleep in the Court-house.

—The habit of smoking is increasing among Englishmen. The Pall Mall Gazette remarks that in London twenty years ago, “nobody with any pretensions to the character of a gentleman would have been seen smoking in the streets; nowadays, everybody smokes when and where he pleases, save in his wife’s drawing-room and at church; and in the best clubs the best rooms are now given up to the smoking members of the community.”

—A Portland paper says that all along the shores of the bay there, immense numbers of frozen fish were cast ashore, chilled and dead by the almost unprecedented cold weather of the past winter. Such an event has not been known for many years. Thousands and millions of cunners are piled along the frozen beach.

Japan.

—Latest advices from Shanghai, state that the civil war in Japan has resulted in the defeat of the Tycoon, who, after a disastrous battle with the combined forces of the Daimios, fled to Jeddo. The Government of the Mikado has addressed a note to the foreign ministers in Japan, in which it pledges itself to the faithful observance of the treaties.

—The unhealthy tone of the Southern press, to which we have frequently alluded, is thus noticed in Harper’s weekly: No one who is in the habit of reading the newspapers printed in the Southern States can fail to perceive how incalculable is the mischief wrought by the treachery of the President, and the hopes he has aroused of a universal reaction under the auspices of the Democratic party, that will virtually give the victory in the long struggle to the enemies of the Union and of popular government. The fierceness, passion, extravagance, and folly of much of the Southern press ought to be made more fully known to the people of the rest of the country, not to excite animosity but to enable us to act intelligently. The spirit and tone of the papers of which we speak, and they are not exceptional, are not in the least changed since the darkest days of the old Slavery despotism when it was a crime to assert the truth of the Declaration of Independence in the slave States, and when, under the dominance of Slavery and the Democratic party, an American citizen had less protection of the rights of life and liberty in a large part of his own country than in Turkey.

Mysterious Disappearances in New York.

—The number of persons annually lost in the city of New York is very large, and the Metropolitan Police have a bureau especially devoted to the finding of missing people. No less than 239 cases of lost persons have been reported to this bureau within the past four months. Of these eighty-nine were adult males, thirty-five adult females, sixty-three boys, and fifty-two girls. The lost men are reported as generally young, and as having been engaged in business; the women were also for the most part young, but more old women than old men were missed. Of the boys the majority are set down as ranging in age from fourteen to nineteen, and the girls from fourteen to eighteen years. The latter, when found, have in almost every instance been discovered in disreputable houses.