News and Miscellany

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 2, 1872

News and Miscellany.

“Can ye not discern the signs of the times?”

By well authenticated statistics, Mr. Barrows shows that in the United States there are paid annually one hundred and twenty-nine millions of dollars more for intoxicating drinks than for flour, meal, cotton and woolen goods, boots and shoes, books, newspapers and other printed matter.

The New Regulations in Regard to Newspapers.—Postmaster General Creswell has directed the new regulation on newspapers sent by mail to be strictly enforced. No name or memorandum can be made on a newspaper inside of the wrapper on which the address is written. It is barely permissible to mark an article with pen or pencil. More than this subjects the paper to letter postage; and the violator of this law to a fine. No printed card, hand-bill, or advertisement, nor written notice, letter or slip of any kind whatsoever must be folded in the paper. To do any of these things is to violate the law. Printed slips pasted on the outside, or folded in papers or periodicals, soliciting notices, are also violations of the law. Senders of transient papers can send bundles of printed matter by weight or transient postage charges, but must not send any written matter in such bundles.

England has six new iron-clads launched, and a certain party of her people are very anxious to know what the United States intend to do about that treaty. Whether there is any connection between this feeling and that fact, we will not attempt to say; but the existence of the feeling is shown by the eager promptness of Mr. Disraeli’s inquiry of the government in Parliament, on the 14th, on the subject of Mr. Fish’s reply. Mr. Gladstone was not able to appease the Tory leader’s anxiety.

Bismarck has made another movement on the works of His Infallible Holiness. We read in a Berlin telegram that the Prussian government has “requested” a bishop of the Roman Church to revoke a sentence of ex-communication which had been pronounced, and which the civil authority deems “contrary to the law of the country.” “So much the worse for the laws of the country!” would have been the remark from Rome in such a case fifty years ago; but such a remark would be untimely now.

“Among the elegant forms of insect life, there is a little creature known to naturalists, which can gather around it a sufficiency of atmospheric air, and so clothed upon descend into the bottom of the pool. There you may see the little diver moving about dry and at his ease, protected by his crystal vesture, though the water all around and above be stagnant and bitter. Prayer is such a protector, a transparent vesture, the world sees it not; but it is a real defense; it keeps out the world, realizing for us what it is to be in the world, yet not of the world.”

The name of Michigan was originally given by the Chippewa tribe of Indians, who occupied most of the area of the State. It was, in the original, Mitchaw Sagiegah meaning “Mighty Lake-land.”

“The Sheriff broke up a baptism on the banks of the Ohio at Cairo, saying that the water was too cold, and if the minister persisted, he would prosecute him for murder.”