SECULAR NEWS | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Apr 5, 1877

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 3, No. 15.

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SECULAR NEWS.

—Paris has 51 daily papers.

—It is said that an extra session of Congress is probable—to convene the first of June.

—Currency has, for several days, been selling at 96½. It is worth nearly two per cent more than silver.

—Dr. Dio Lewis has taken up his residence in Oakland. He is having his usual success as a lecturer, in California.

—John D. Lee had sixty-four children and eighteen wives, only three of whom remained faithful to him to the last.

—Maine has got a new liquor law which fines any person who sells any other person intoxicating liquor, except cider, $1,000.

—Before the war, nine-tenths of all the cigars consumed in the United States were imported, but now the raw material is imported.

—The bill admitting Utah into the Union is now in the hands of the House Territorial Committee. The scheme of admission will bring the Mormon question into prominence.

—Wednesday evening, March 28, being the commencement of Passover week, was celebrated by all orthodox Jews with the accustomed devotion and old established ceremonies.

—Ex-Mayor Oakey Hall, of New York, has been missed for some time, and it is now reported that he went to Liverpool in disguise. The revelations in the Tweed case are supposed to have induced his flight.

—Dr. Hugh Glenn, of Colusa, Cal., in 1875, raised over 50,000 acres of wheat, bringing 1,600,000 bushels. In 1876 he raised nearly 40,000 acres. One “ranch” in Sonoma County had, in 1876, about 1,700 acres of potatoes.

—The “protocol,” which it was fondly hoped would bring peace to Europe, has at last been signed, but the papers report active war-like demonstrations both in Turkey and Russia. All hope beyond a temporary peace is delusive.

—The San Francisco Chronicle could not find room for a brief notice of the dedication of a church in Oakland, but gives half a column to the marriage of a sailor to a Chinese prostitute. Thus the wants of the reading public are served.

—Rumors that Gov. Axtell, of Arizona, was using his office in the interest of the Mormons have been afloat for some time. And now Brigham Young has disclosed the fact that while Axtell was Governor of Utah he baptized him into the church “and initiated him into the Endowment House ceremonies.”

—Last year 7,250,000 pounds of tobacco were imported into this State and sold to the retail trade for about $3,000,000. Besides this, California produced 2,000,000 pounds of the article. Thus less than a million of people consumed nine and a quarter millions of pounds of tobacco, costing the consumers not less than four and a half million dollars.

—The famine in India, which involves a population of over thirty millions, has proved to be much severer than was at first feared. A letter from Arcot, Jan. 26, says: “There is not a blade of grass to be seen, and the cattle are fast dying of starvation. The government is acting nobly, however, by sending millions of rupees on relief works every day.”

—Vesuvius has been much more energetic during the present century than ever before. The first known eruption was that which overwhelmed Pompeii, A. D. 79; it was not until the 17th century that the number of eruptions in the hundred years was as many as four; in the 18th century there were twenty-three; and in the present century twenty-six eruptions have already occurred.

—The execution of John D. Lee and his dying confessions have created great consternation among the Mormons, and Salt Lake papers report that many of those high in authority have taken to flight, while disaffection is showing itself among the Mormon population because of the evidence of the criminality of their leaders. The law-abiding population are hoping that more of the assassins and murderers in this hierarchy of sin may be brought to justice.

—Dr. Vaughan, a Roman Catholic bishop in England, preached a sermon lately, in which he asserted that there were “fewer scandals among them [the Romanists] than among other denominations, according to their numbers!” Whereupon one of the journals confronts him with the following figures: In the year 1870 there were committed to jails in Ireland 32,370 prisoners. Let a careful note be now taken of the religion of these prisoners. 3,768 of them were Episcopalians, 915 Presbyterians, 27,475 Roman Catholics, 211 of other denominations.

—We are informed by an Eastern exchange that seven steam street cars have been placed upon the Market street railway, Philadelphia. A small boiler encased in walnut is placed in front of the car, and by an ingenious contrivance the whole power of the engine is concentrated on the brakes. The trial trips were very successful, the cars being stopped in a few seconds, even when going at high speed, and the heavy grades near the Market street bridge not causing as much trouble as has been anticipated. The engines were noisy; very little steam escaped; horses were not frightened. Steam cars are soon to be placed on the street railway between Albany and West Troy.

—Superintendent Henry Kiddle, of the New York Board of Education, calls attention, in his annual report, to the great increase in the attendance at the Catholic parochial school. In 1867 these schools contained only 16,342 pupils, while at the close of 1875, there were 30,732 enrolled. In less than ten years he says the parochial schools show an increase of nearly ninety per cent, while the public schools have in the same time gained only about thirteen per cent. This marked difference is caused by the withdrawal of Catholic children from the public school under the influence of the crusade, we may fairly call it, which the bishops and priests have been waging against all Catholics who send their children to any other than the Romish schools.

—Mr. Alexander Sullivan who assassinated Mr. Francis Hanford, principal of the North Division High School, Chicago, last August on slight provocation, has been given his liberty. The Interior (a Chicago paper), thus comments upon the subject: “If there are any other professors or principals, or other cultured or peaceable gentlemen connected with the schools whom it is desirable to have removed, the way is easy. Let the gentleman desiring his removal arm himself with a good revolver, take his wife along, call the objectionable party to the door of his house, and knock him down. Then let the wife rush into the melee. These are all the preliminary technicalities necessary. The revolver will do the rest, and the heroic reformer of the common schools may hold his levee in due time. We shall have more of this, of course, and when the public become weary of the monotony of the thing perhaps some deluded individual, who trusts too implicitly to precedents, will be hung.”

—“Though there have been no new accessions recently to the European thrones,” says the Boston Journal, “excepting in Turkey, there is likely to be a coronation on the continent elsewhere than at Constantinople. Though the king of Denmark, Christian IX., has been on the throne thirteen years, he has never been crowned, the troubles prevailing between Germany and Denmark in 1863 making the times inauspicious for a costly ceremony. The country has prospered since, and the cost can be better borne now. There is withal a feeling of political discontent, which the king hopes to allay by being formally invested by the rank he has worn so long. He is at the present time fifty-nine years old. A curious fact in regard to the Danish kings is that they must be known by the name of Frederick or that of Christian, and a prince acceding to the throne, no matter what his baptismal name might be, would be obliged to take one of these names. Christian’s predecessor was Frederick VII.”