SECULAR NEWS | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · May 10, 1877

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 3, No. 19.

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SECULAR NEWS.

—France consumed 600 tons of cigarettes in 1876.

—In 1870 one-fifth of Egypt was said to belong to the Khedive and his family.

—Dr. Schliemann, the explorer of buried Greek cities, will soon re-visit America.

—The blackbirds are making a successful war on the grasshoppers in Western Iowa.

—More than thirty car-loads of immigrants arrived in San Francisco from April 27 to May 3.

—The Legislature of Minnesota has passed a bill authorizing women to practice law in all the courts of that State.

—Sage brush, which has hitherto been regarded as valueless, is being gathered and sold, by the cord, for fuel in Nevada.

—The extra session of Congress, which for several weeks has been understood would convene on the 4th of June, has been postponed until October 15.

—A train of twenty cars containing silks and teas from China and Japan has recently made the trip between San Francisco and New York in ten days.

—There are at present 1295 convicts in the State’s prison at San Quentin, of whom only six are females. A new cell building is to be constructed immediately.

—Four-ninths of the clerks of the various departments in Washington have been dismissed, or notified of dismissal at an early date. The remainder are reduced in salaries.

—Ex-President Grant, wife and daughter, sail for England, May 10. He goes to visit his only daughter who was married to an English gentleman a few years since.

—The small-pox and diphtheria epidemics in San Francisco are on the wane, there being but 11 deaths from small-pox and 76 from diphtheria during the month of April, while in March there were 39 deaths from small-pox, and 110 from diphtheria.

—Two ladies have received diplomas in the King and Queen’s University, Dublin, and the London University has just decided to admit women to medical diplomas. Women can now receive a whole medical course, preliminary and clinical, in London.

—It is positively asserted that ten persons were buried alive by a terrible landslide on the bank of a small stream 100 miles east of Montreal. Over an acre of land moved, burying a saw and grist mill, and a house, and turning the course of the river. Five bodies have been recovered.

—The loss of life and property by the St. Louis fire was much less than was first reported, still the accident was of sufficient magnitude to serve as a precaution to provide fire-escapes, and safety shafts for large hotels to furnish the occupants with means of speedy escape in case of fire.

—Among several counterfeiters who were recently arrested by the Secret Service, was the Hon. Thomas W. Marion, of Green county, Pa., who formerly represented that county in the legislature. He sold counterfeit money to one of the government officials, and represented that he had frequently addressed the Assembly with his pockets full of counterfeit money.

—Brigham Young recently preached a sermon justifying the Mountain Meadows massacre on the ground that the Gentiles had killed the original Mormon Prophet, Joe Smith, and had driven the Mormons from Missouri and other States by force of arms. He concluded by defying any power, “in Heaven or in hell,” to overthrow his church, assuring his hearers that the Mormons would continue their practices and dot the whole of Utah with their temples. It is doubtless in view of this and many other like utterances of the Prophet that the Mormons fear his arrest.

—A dispatch from Utah, May 3, says: “Mormons throughout the Territory are secretly arming, equipping and drilling, with a view to resist the arrest of Brigham Young should the present Grand Jury, which is composed of Gentiles, find an indictment against him. The Mormon co-operative store, which concern is controlled by Brigham himself, is receiving and shipping to various settlements in the Territory large quantities of ammunition and breech-loading rifles. Reports confirming these facts are coming in from all quarters, and a feeling of uneasiness among the Gentiles is manifesting itself.”

—Hon. John B. Felton, one of San Francisco’s oldest and most famous lawyers, died at his residence in this city, Wednesday, May 2, having suffered about twelve days from a stroke of paralysis which affected his entire right side. John Brooks Felton was born in Saugus, Mass., in 1828, and at the age of nineteen entered Harvard College where his brother, C. C. Felton, was Professor of Greek and afterward became President. In 1851 John Felton graduated and became tutor in the college. He afterward entered law school from which he graduated in 1853 with the degree of LL.B. He then visited France, where he remained between one and two years, engaging in pleasure seeking and the study of French laws, in which latter he became a very fine scholar. After returning from France he came almost immediately to California, located in San Francisco, and became known to fame in many of the heaviest land suits in the State. He it was who persuaded James Lick (deceased) to set aside his first deed of trust, and to supply the second, for which act he received the comfortable sum of $100,000.

In politics he was a Union man. At the first election of Grant in 1868, he was one of the Electors, and was also chosen to the same position on the Republican ticket at the last Presidential election. He served one term as Mayor of Oakland, and was twice a candidate for United States Senator, receiving each time only a few votes. The funeral services were held Friday, in the St. John’s Episcopal church, Oakland. A large procession was formed at his late residence and followed him to the church and from thence to the Mountain View Cemetery, where, after the burial rites of the Masonic Order were performed, his body was carefully deposited. Thus closes the life of another of California’s “great men.”