News and Notes by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 22, 1883

News and Notes.

By Editor

Seventy-six buildings were burned in the town of Forest City, Sierra Co., Cal., March 15.

Madagascar has requested England and Germany to intervene to avert the bombarding of Tamativ by the French.

The venerable College of William and Mary in Virginia has been obliged to close its doors, as it had but one student last year.

A banker in Schenectady, N. Y., has swindled his patrons, principally farmers, to the extent of $250,000, and fled to Europe, leaving his family.

A liquor dealer of Whitehall, N. Y., has just been found guilty of 457 offenses. He was fined $9,000, with $500 costs, and a month's imprisonment.

The president of the Society for regulating the condition of the Russian Jews, stole 11,000,000 roubles of the society's money, and committed suicide.

The secretary of the California State Board of Harbor Commissioners has disappeared, after having embezzled $30,000. Dabbling in stocks was the cause of his stealing.

The New Jersey Senate has passed almost unanimously the bill prohibiting the sale of cigarettes or tobacco in any form to minors, under penalty of $20 for each offense.

Anarchy prevails throughout the whole country bordering on the Transvaal (South Africa), the natives having armed against the Boers. A battle has been fought in which the Dutch settlers have been badly beaten.

Nearly every member of the detective police force of Washington, D. C., has been indicted by the Grand Jury for receiving stolen goods. The police force of that city has been nothing less than an organized band of thieves.

A lady who was injured in the Spuyten Duyvil railroad collision, has just received $29,000 from the New York Central Railroad, the largest amount ever paid by that company. But even that is a cheap price for its negligence.

Two men who lived alone near San Jose, Cal., were murdered in their beds, and the house was set on fire and burned, on the 11th inst. The body of one of the men was found with four bullet holes through it; the other was burned.

A terrific explosion occurred in the Local Government Board offices, at Westminster, London, on the 15th inst., destroying much property. The loss is placed at £4 000; no lives were lost. The deed is quite generally attributed to the Fenians, and has caused the greatest excitement.

Some time ago the president of a Jersey City bank proved to be a defaulter. Then the cashier, and another employee pleaded guilty of the same offense, and all three were sent to State Prison. Now the teller confesses to having stolen $10,000, and has gone to join the others. Thus the whole working force of the bank is in jail.

A dispatch from Colusa, Cal., March 14, says: "The existing drought has seriously crippled business in this county, and hundreds will have to migrate in a short time. Already farmers have begun to sell what stock they can, and are driving the remainder into the mountains for feed." The crop outlook is very gloomy in other portions of the State.

The eighth annual report of the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, shows that in the past eight years 10,445 complaints have been investigated, involving 31,355 children; 3,068 cases have been presented, 2,818 convictions had, and 5,949 children have been relieved and placed in homes or institutions. There were over one thousand convictions last year.

The total number of persons arrested in Andalusia, Spain, for complicity in the anarchist movement is 1200. Of this number 300 are charged with murder, agrarian outrages, and with being abettors of the Black Hand Society. Sixty of the prisoners have confessed complicity in four murders. The existence of a branch of the Black Hand Society has been discovered in the northern part of Portugal.

Information comes to our Government that every measure is being adopted by the Chinese Government to drive Americans from the Empire. Onerous restrictions are placed on their business, and new enterprises are entirely prohibited, if conducted by Americans. What more could be expected? It could hardly be supposed that a heathen nation would be more magnanimous than a Christian nation.

A colored boy fifteen years old attempted to wreck the Overland express train from San Francisco, one evening last week, by opening the switch at a siding where trains do not usually stop. The padlock that secured the switch bar was broken with a stone. Two women who saw some of his movements, raised an alarm and frustrated his design. His object was to be revenged for having been put off from an emigrant train, on which he was trying to beat his passage to this city.

One of the principals of the public schools of Philadelphia says that the 50,000 pupils in the public schools of that city, a large proportion use tobacco, and that the habit has increased to an alarming extent since the introduction of cigarettes. He has called the attention of the Board of Education to the enormous consumption of cigarettes among the pupils, and has prepared and had printed a short statement of the physical and mental disorders produced in children by the use of tobacco, and has pasted a copy of it on the inside of the cover of every text-book used in his school. A good idea.

Recently a man was tried in Salt Lake for criminal assault on a girl at South Cottonwood. He was a Mormon in good standing, and the testimony on the trial showed some peculiar features of Mormon life. Several women testified to the practice of holding dances at which men and women drank whisky and indulged in immoral practices. The singular fact about this was that they gave these revelations as though such orgies were too commonplace to excite any comment. It is such little incidents as these which let light in on the boasted morality of the Latter-Day Saints. S. F. Chronicle.

A Boston man has invented a smoke-consuming apparatus, which has been employed in a soap factory in Cambridge to suppress the intolerable odors emitted in burning bones and offal. The experiment has proved a complete success, no offensive smell being perceived near the building. We hope the inventor will immediately get one out so modified that it can be employed to suppress the vile odors emitted by cigar smokers in the street and on the horse-cars and ferry-boats. The apparatus will then prove a blessing to suffering humanity. An item of interest to manufacturers is that by actual experiment of several weeks, in the factory above mentioned, the saving of fuel was 60 per cent.

Lompoc, a small town in Santa Barbara Co., Cal., has always been a temperance town. No saloon has ever been allowed in the place, the citizens having a practical and effective way of enforcing prohibition. Recently a saloon was opened, and the proprietors were told that it would not be tolerated. A citizens' mass-meeting was held in front of the saloon, which was conducted in crusade style. People attended from all over the valley. By a vote, all but a few young men were found to be in favor of maintaining the temperance principles of the colony. It was then unanimously voted that the proprietors be offered the price of the saloon and contents, that the people might have a bonfire, on condition that they bind themselves not to sell liquor again in the place. This offer was refused. The saloon was then voted a nuisance, and, after a few short speeches, and more pleading by the ladies, the building was promptly pulled down and torn to pieces. It was voted that any attempt at retaliation should be met with summary punishment, and that any one starting a saloon in the place again would find no mercy. They will probably not be troubled.