p. 764 | ITEMS OF INTEREST by A. J. B.

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 26, 1901

ITEMS OF INTEREST

By A. J. B.

— The new issue of postal cards, to appear about December 1, will bear an engraving of President McKinley's head.

— Dispatches state that General Weyler “may become ruler of Spain, as he intimated he would accept the dictatorship if the people ask it.”

— Miss Stone, the American missionary, is still in the hands of the brigands. They are holding out for the $110,000 ransom originally asked for.

— On the 30th ult. the police of Leipzig, Germany, seized “an edition of Count Tolstoi's brochure, ‘The Meaning of Life,’ at a Leipzig publishing house.”

— The annual report of the United States Commissioner of Pensions shows that most of the soldiers in the Spanish-American War have applied for pensions.

— The new ministry of the Netherlands decides to postpone the proposed drainage of the Zuyder Zee, which would add 750 square miles to the area of Holland.

— The immediate cause of Li Hung Chang's death is said to have been a hemorrhage caused by the angry excitement of a stormy interview with the Russian envoy, regarding Manchuria.

— It would cost $250,000,000 more to complete the Panama Canal, the value of the work already done on the same being $100,000,000. The total cost would therefore be $350,000,000, or “about $50,000 more than the highest estimate of the probable cost of the Nicaraguan route.”

— Commenting upon the social status of the Jew and his ostracism in most civilized lands, the Chicago Israelite says: “Is it any wonder that the Jew should be eager for money, which alone wrests from the world a title to equality? It may be truly said of the Jew that his smiling face hides a breaking heart.”

— The origin of the expression, “He has a feather in his cap,” is of interest. An exchange says that “none shall wear a feather but he who has killed a Turk,” was “an old Hungarian saying, and the number of feathers in his cap indicated how many Turks the man had killed.” This information is contained in the Lansdowne manuscript describing Hungary in 1599, now found in the British Museum.

— A New York weekly states that the Guelph family, to which Queen Victoria belonged, “can show the longest line of authentic succession through males of any that has reigned in Europe. They date from the Italian Guelphs of the eleventh century, and in Bavaria, Brunswick, and England have filled a place in history to the present day.” There are now but four male survivors in the legitimate line of the English House of Hanover, or the Guelph family.

A. J. B.