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News and Miscellany

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Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Sep 16, 1875

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 1, No. 45.

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News and Miscellany.

By Editor

-The harvest is now over in Denmark and Sweden. The quality and quantity of the wheat is greatly above the average.
-The Prince of Wales will start for India on the 17th of October, and his visit will last six months. The expenditure to insure the necessary pomp and dignity will be about $710,000.
-Seven thousand women and children are now fugitives in Croatia, in consequence of the Herzegovinian insurrection. The insurrectionists have burned the towns of Tocuiza and Rorito.
-Two companies of Mennonites numbering in all 350, marched through Wall and Broad streets Aug. 23, to the banking office of Greenbaum Brothers & Co., had their drafts cashed, and started in the evening for their new homes in the West.
-A riot of some magnitude has been kept up for several days in Montreal, over the burial of a Mr. Gubard in the Catholic cemetery. His burial in their cemetery was offensive to the Catholics who rose to arms and threatened to make a bonfire of the remains if the burial is again attempted. They laugh at the idea that, because the burial is according to law, they must submit to it.
-The terrible fatality which swept away so many of the Fiji Islanders, and which grew out of an epidemic of measles, has, says the Alaska Herald, broken out in that region, and is spreading with alarming rapidity. It is confined to adults. At Kodiak, Woody Island, Allovia, and Eagle Harbor, the ravages of the epidemic have been fearful. The disease is known as the black measles.
-Superintendent Leach, of the providence public schools, is among the first of the teachers who are following where physiologists have led. He says, "To educate the mind when the body is in a nervous, feeble condition, is a fruitless and useless task. The first thing to be sought is a sound body with physical vigor. This should take the precedence of everything else; without this, any acquisition can be of little avail."
-Professor Hitchcock of Amherst College has prepared tables concerning a man's expectation of life, showing that the mortality of intemperate people is five times as great as that of temperate persons. In 100,000 it had been found that 16,000 intemperate people died to 4,000 temperate. He also calls attention to the effects of temperance on posterity, showing that almost all imbeciles were the children of intemperate parents. Science of Health.
-The school question—in other words the question of sectarian instruction in the public schools—is the all important question in the pending election in Ohio. The Democratic party has taken an attitude friendly to the views of the Catholics; but Protestants will come to this issue regretfully; they will not tamely submit to the subversion of the common-school system; and if Catholics take the question to the polls, Protestants will meet them there.
-Have communities any right, by legal process, or, speaking more correctly, by force, to deprive any man of such intelligence as he may chance to possess? The people of some of our States seem to answer in the affirmative. We are told that in the Iowa Penitentiary the prisoners are not allowed to read anything that will give them any information of what is going on outside of the prison walls, and we know of at least one other prison where only old newspapers reach the prisoners.
-The license system is manifestly a "success" in the State of Connecticut. A recent number of the Hartford Times reported that "on Tuesday there were seen on a wharf in that city no fewer than sixteen children, between the ages of four and eight years, all drunk!" They had, it is said, obtained access to some of the vile liquor of the dram-shops and drank enough to set them crazy drunk or helpless. "Some," it is added, "were weakly trying to stab each other with such weapons as they could reach." And Connecticut is, forsooth, a Christian commonwealth!
A Colossal Image.—In a Jaunt in Japan, by Mr Bassett of the United States Navy, we find the following interesting account of a statue of Buddha: "Threading the narrow streets our guide led us up a deep wooded ravine by a broad, leafy path. Suddenly there burst upon our view one of the most remarkable works of man that it has been my fortune to see. Securely embowered in the tall trees, in sight of the waves of the Pacific, is erected an enormous statue, in bronze, of Buddha, the Japanese divinity. It is in a sitting posture, with the arms resting in the lap in front, and is fifty feet in height from the stone platform, to which a flight of nine stone steps leads. Around the head are rows of enormous cockle shells, exemplifying the tradition that these animals sheltered the divinity from the heat of the sun. As an art expression of the ideal, the execution is wonderful. The typical state of complete rest and contemplation, which all good Buddhists hope to attain, is well suggested in the majestic repose of this colossal statue. Of all the wonderful works of this curious people, this is the most remarkable. To get an idea of its comparative size, we climbed to the front of the image, and stood in the palms of the hands. From this station we could see the bay four miles away.