SECULAR by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 26, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 13.

Read the full edition

SECULAR.

By Editor

—France is making overtures for peace with China.

—The Bank of England covers three acres of ground.

—President Cleveland was forty-eight years old March 18.

—The British army, volunteer and regular, now numbers 392,200.

—Attorney-General Gray, of Delaware, succeeds Bayard in the U. S. Senate.

—The frost in the ground is nearly three feet deep in the vicinity of Boston.

—James N. Berry, of Arkansas, succeeds Secretary Garland in the U. S. Senate.

—Emperor William, of Germany, was eighty-eight years of age last Sunday.

—The damage caused by the recent dynamite explosions in London was only $43,000.

—There are about 100,000 Jews in New York City, and they have over thirty synagogues.

—A large portion of the New Jersey capitol building was destroyed by fire March 21.

—Reports from all parts of the country agree that a colder March never had existence. The suffering is terrible.

—The ice in the Mississippi is nearly two feet thick, and is causing gorges and floods.

—The schools in Montreal have been nearly stripped of pupils by an epidemic of measles.

—March 16, the city of Panama was attacked by a party of 250 revolutionists, but they were repulsed.

—The Samoan Parliament has passed an act for the annexation of the Samoan Islands to New Zealand.

—The Oriental Hotel at Seattle, W. T., was burned March 19, and in it two men were burned to death.

—St Joseph's Academy at Emmettsburg, Md., one of the finest Catholic structures in the country, was burned March 20.

—Great damage has been done by a gorge and overflow of the Missouri River at Waverly, Mo., and about a dozen persons have perished.

—The Supreme Court of Iowa has declared the Iowa prohibition law constitutional, and maintains the abatement of saloons as nuisances.

—The president has nominated and the Senate has confirmed Joseph S. Miller, of West Virginia, to be Commissioner of Internal Revenue.

—There are over fifty penitentiaries and 2,400 jails in the United States. They contain 50,000 criminals, and their estimated cost is $500,000,000.

—March 6, an explosion occurred in a colliery in Austrian Silesia, where 147 men were at work. We have not learned whether any at all were rescued.

—An Indian Industrial School is to be opened at Santa Fe, New Mexico, about the first of April. That city has given 100 acres of land to the school.

—Near Reading, Pa., are several communities of Hungarians, who have aroused the hostility of the neighboring farmers by eating up all the dogs they can get hold of.

—A freight train on the Pennsylvania Railroad was derailed near Carpenter's Station, March 16. A brakeman and four tramps were killed and twenty cars demolished.

—Secretary Lamar has ordered the public sale of all horses, carriages and equipments which belong to the Interior Department, except those used for trucking purposes.

—Further severe shocks of earthquake were felt last week at Granada, Loje, and Alhama, Spain. A number of houses in those places were destroyed, and several lives lost.

—March 18, 217 miners were shut in by an explosion of fire-damp in a colliery at Camphausen, near Saarbruck, in Rhenish Prussia. Only seventeen were taken out alive.

—A terrific explosion occurred in the Usworth Colliery at Sunderland, England, on the 3d inst. Twenty-seven persons were killed. The explosion is said to have been caused by fire-damp.

—Iron bridges are sent from this country to Brazil now at the rate of about four a month. They are shipped in sections, and when they reach Brazil, are put up in place of wooden bridges on the Brazilian highways.

—Large quantities of barbed wire for fencing purposes are now being shipped from this country to Brazil and to Central America. A short time ago a vessel sailed for Honduras with barbed wire as one-third of her cargo.

—During December, January, and February, five persons died in Otsego Co, N. Y., who were one hundred years old and upward. All but one died of pneumonia, and all were in good health till a short time before death.

—In the United States, during the month of February there were 202 fires, each causing a loss of $10,000 or over, the total loss being $10,000,000. For the two months of January and February the loss was $18,500,000.

—A horse named "Old Turk," died at the county farm, Richmond County, N. Y., March 6, that was within a few days of being fifty years old. His color was bay when he was young, but turned white as snow in his old age.

—The whisky-sellers of Iowa, are sending up a most doleful howl at the late decision of the Supreme Court. They claim that the enforcement of prohibition in that State has destroyed $16,000,000 of their property, and the industry by which thousands of laborers and their families were supported, has fallen to ruin under the hand of fanaticism. Good. We only wish the leaven would hasten to work its way to every part of the world, and starve out the vile traffic.

—The Lick Trustees have received a letter from the East stating that a perfect crown-glass disc for the great telescope at Mount Hamilton, California, has at last been made. More than twenty of such attempts have hitherto proved unsuccessful.

—Mrs. E. B. Crocker, of California, has given to the California Museum Association, a building and contents, valued at nearly $300,000, to be used for "science, art collections, and schools," provided the association will raise $100,000 for an endowment fund.

—A petition against woman suffrage, numerously signed by the most fashionable and wealthy women of New York City, has been presented to the State Senate. "They told Senator Otis that it seemed to them that every year the women suffragists got more and more attention, simply because they are persistent, while the great mass of women have refrained from making themselves heard."

—It has been discovered, says the Paper World, that in order to get the benefit of the low rate of postage in the United States, Canadian merchants and manufacturers who have a very large correspondence, send their letters in large bundles by express to the nearest post-office in the United States, where they are mailed at two-cent letter rate, whereas they would have to pay three cents if mailed in Canada.