News and Notes by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 15, 1883

News and Notes.

By Editor

A stage was lost last week in Montana, and the driver and passengers were frozen to death.

A secular paper states that although liberalism is creeping into all the churches, it has not yet reached the contribution boxes.

The editor, proprietor, and printer of the Free Thinker of London have been committed for trial on a charge of blasphemous libel.

An earthquake recently occurred in southern Michigan and northern Indiana, that was severe enough to knock down stovepipes and crack windows.

The California Legislature has passed a bill making it a misdemeanor for any person to sell milk adulterated by water, salt, chalk, or other foreign substance.

Two different companies have applied for charters to build a ship-canal across Cape Cod, and are ready to deposit $100,000 or $200,000 as a guaranty before commencing operations.

At the banquet in honor of General Sherman’s sixty-third birthday, General Grant said that in fifteen months it would be possible to go by rail to Mexico from any point in the United States.

The estimated value of property in the United States in 1880 was $33,805,000,000, against $24,169,000,000 in 1860. That is, the gain in twenty years has been $1,320,000 a day, or nearly $1,000 a minute.

It has been discovered that four men in the office of Commissioner of Juries in New York have been receiving tribute from two or three thousand business men, who paid for being relieved from jury service.

German papers urge the establishment of an International Court of Appeals to take cognizance of decisions of all maritime courts concerning collisions at sea, with the view of establishing international steering rules.

The Czar of Russia now walks the streets of Russia without an armed escort. The police claim to have destroyed nihilism. We very much doubt it, however, and would not change places with the Czar, and run the risk.

The Indemnity Commission includes the diplomatic agents of England, Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, the United States and Greece, and is under the Presidency of Abdurrahman Pasha, Arabi’s Minister of Finance.

Gladstone, in a recent conversation, said that the curse of Ireland had been centralization. He said: “We are now trying to make the humblest Irishman understand that he is the governing agency, and also that the Government will be carried on for him and by him.”

The Chicago Tribune telegrams state as a result of a trip through central and southern Illinois, that the peach crop of central and western Illinois and part of Missouri, is practically wiped out, but that in the southern part of the State the buds of every kind of fruit are all in excellent condition.

The Ohio River is higher now than was ever known before. The towns along the river have suffered immense damage. At Cincinnati the gas-works are flooded, leaving the city in darkness; and the suspension-bridge can be reached only by boats. Thousands of people have been driven from their homes.

Woodhouse, the Poor Law Inspector, answering the demand for employment from the starving poor who had assembled at his hotel in Dublin, admitted that there was distress in County Donegal, and advocated emigration, when some one in the crowd exclaimed, “we would rather die than emigrate.”

The Guion Line steamer Alaska made the passage from New York in 6 days, 20 hours, and 33 minutes, being the best trip on record. She accomplished the oft-talked-of feat, of allowing her passengers to attend church in New York one Sunday, and the following Sunday attend service in England.

Two fights have recently occurred between Mexicans and Apaches, in both of which the Mexicans were victorious. In the last, at Secora, on the border of Sonora and Chihuahua, one hundred Indians were killed and sixty taken prisoners. Many horses and a large amount of supplies were captured.

The highly moral and instructive entertainment furnished in Metropolitan Temple, San Francisco, by the pugilists, has about finished the business of that institution. Kalloch now inclines toward Spiritualism, and it is expected that he will soon identify himself with that people. He will be a valuable acquisition.

The Original Jubilee Singers of Norfolk, Va., were arrested in Hartford, Conn., on a recent Sunday evening, for singing in violation of the statute of 1876, which prohibits concerts, theatrical entertainments, etc., on Sunday, under a penalty of not less than $25. Each person in the audience is liable to a fine of $4.

A solemn warning, printed on fine vellum, has reached the Czar and Cabinet, claiming universal suffrage, the right of the people to own land, freedom of the press, public meetings, etc. If these demands are not granted before the coronation of the Czar, the Revolutionary Committee sending the warning threaten violence.

By special from the Cheyenne and Arapahoe Agency, Indian Territory, it is learned that Eastern capitalists and stock men have purchased from the Cheyenne and Arapahoe Indians 500,000 acres of grass land from each, with the privilege of fencing the same and erecting the necessary ranch buildings and improvements.

Missouri has, next to Indiana, the largest amount of permanent funds devoted to school purposes in the Union. They aggregate $9,471,696, not including the annual apportionment of State revenue. The State has a school population of 741,632, and of this number 488,000 are enrolled in the public schools. There are 8,822 schools in operation, conducted by 10,607 teachers, and last year $3,468,738 were expended upon these schools.

Bismarck has no doubt nearly finished his work. He says that he is unable to attend the Reich stag this session, and probably will never attend again. He says that matters progress tolerably well without him, and that the empire is a machine that generally works capitally. Nevertheless his death would seriously disarrange matters, and as the good Emperor William is very old, the peace of which Bismarck boasts may not be of long continuance.

A system of fire-drill has been adopted in all the public schools of Oakland, by order of the Board of Education. There is no fixed hour for these drills; but once a week, without any warning, the gong sounds the alarm, and instantly the pupils file out of the building, the girls first, no one touching another under a severe penalty. At a recent drill in one of the schools, all the class rooms, containing 475 children, were cleared in eighty-one seconds.

A special to the Tribune from Washington says: The Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs to-day decided to report a bill to provide for the execution of the provisions of Article 20 of the Supplemental Commercial treaty of November 17, 1880, between the United States and China, for the repression of the opium traffic. It prohibits the importation of opium into the United States by Chinese subjects, under penalty of a fine of not more than $500, or imprisonment of not more than six months and forfeiture of the packages, and provides a similar penalty for the importation of opium into any open ports of China, or its transportation from one open port to another by American citizens. The bill is to take effect July 1, 1883.