SECULAR | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · May 21, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 20.

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SECULAR.

—Three inches of snow fell at Tunbridge, Vt., Sunday, April 26.

—Mormons in Utah are admonished to trade only with “the Saints.”

—“The Umatilla Indians protest against the sale of their reservation.”

—The postal money orders of Portland, Oregon, amount to $10,000 a day.

—Riel’s Rebellion is ended, and he is a prisoner in the hands of the Dominion.

—Business failures are reported as being on the increase.

—There are 10,000 students attending the Mohammedan University at Cairo, Egypt.

—In New York City about 450 children have died from measles since the commencement of the year.

—The latest accounts seem to indicate a peaceful adjustment of affairs in Afghanistan.

—An Underhill, Vt., man has sold 14,000 gallons of maple syrup in Cambridge, Mass., for $10,000.

—“All of the public school buildings in New York are to be connected with the city’s fire alarm system.”

—At Tallulah Falls, Ga., about 100 persons were poisoned, recently, by eating ice-cream which had undergone a chemical change in the freezers.

—The archbishop of Canterbury is said to be the only person who has been allowed to see the Revised Old Testament.

—According to the San Francisco Bulletin, eighty-eight cases have been tried in Police Court Number Two of that city, for breaking the lottery laws, most of which resulted in fining the offenders.

—“The pack of salmon on the Sacramento River thus far in the year amounts to 2,000 cases, against 30,000 at the same time last year.”

—During March last, 88,773 hundred weight of fresh beef were landed in England, of which 87,197 were from the United States.

—E. A. Burke, Director-General of the New Orleans Exposition, has resigned, the reasons for which are unknown.

—The town of Farwell, British Columbia, was totally destroyed by fire, May 6. The loss is estimated at $40,000.

—The negotiations for settlement of demands made by Japan upon China for the Corean Massacre, have resulted amicably.

—A son of one of the professors at Columbia University, Washington, died recently from the effects of cigarette smoking.

—In Osceola, Mich., 7,000,000 feet of lumber, worth $150,000, was destroyed by fire, May 16, and the fire is still raging.

—In boring an artesian well near Portland, Oregon, lately, the drill struck a big fir log, imbedded in soft rock, 725 feet below the surface.

—Copies of the Revised Old Testament were given to the London papers at midnight, May 16. It is to be issued in this country to-day, May 21.

—A Buffalo surgeon reports cancer cases as remarkably numerous in that section, he having met over 120 cases in a two years’ residence there.

—Ireland is said to have decreased in population from 1846, when it had 8,000,000 inhabitants, to the present time, when it has only 5,000,000 inhabitants.

—“Bismarck says that although he does not favor a law forbidding work on Sunday, that if the workingmen wished it he would support such a measure.”

—Stealing a red-hot stove has been outdone by the thieves who the other night stole the cornerstone of the Simpson Methodist Church at Long Branch.

—The ancient name of Afghanistan was Bactria. It was among the conquests of Alexander the Great, and it was there that he married Roxana, his first wife.

—The largest sale of cotton goods ever made in this country is said to have taken place in New York City, May 14, at which time $3,000,000 worth of cotton goods was sold—much of it at private prices.

—A coroner’s jury has at last been found that holds the proper party, the owner of the property, responsible for the death of an unfortunate man who fell into an unguarded cellar-way in San Francisco.

—The prospect for a good crop of grain in California is very poor, especially in the San Joaquin and Stanislaus Valleys; but the reports are more favorable from the southern portions of the State.

—The New Orleans Times-Democrat asserts that 170,000 of the people of that city have never visited the Exposition. But they expect people to travel 1,200 or 2,000 miles to do so!

—The Entomological Department at Washington has warned the farmers of an expected incursion, this summer, of two big swarms of locusts; but it has failed to give a remedy.

—Stanley, the African explorer, has been appointed governor of the Congo Free State. This is but a just tribute to one who has faithfully carried on the work Livingstone laid out.

—“The Iowa process of shutting up saloons as nuisances, by injunction, is reported to be working with celerity and efficiency which distance all previous methods of enforcing the law.”

—The San Francisco Chronicle gives Sunday, May 10, the title of, “A Day of Horrors.” It says, “Sunday, at police headquarters, is coming to be looked upon as a special day set apart for homicides.”

—At Lititz, Pa., May 12, Mrs. Plantz attempted to drown herself and five children, but only succeeded in drowning herself and youngest child. Her oldest son, a boy of only ten years, successfully rescued the others from the water.

—In attempting to move the British ship, Earl of Dalhousie, in San Francisco harbor, May 12, it capsized in about seven fathoms of water. The cost of raising it is estimated at about $20,000. No lives were lost.

—The N. Y. Herald’s Moscow special, May 11, says: “An extremely sore feeling prevails in military circles because war is postponed. Many Generals openly declare that a magnificent opportunity is now lost. The feeling is so bitter and widespread that the Czar has been advised to visit Moscow for a few weeks to calm the excitement.”

—Over 4,700 persons in Madrid have been inoculated with cholera microbes by Dr. Ferran as a preventive of the disease. The new system is said to be entirely successful and the epidemic is disappearing.

—The emigrants on a French steamer bound for Buenos Ayres mutinied on account of the bad food furnished. They were overpowered after a desperate fight, in which the captain and crew were badly wounded and several of the passengers were killed.

—It was announced to the House of Commons, May 11, that the British Government had decided to withdraw the troops from Korti, abandon Suakin, and indefinitely postpone the march to Kartoum to avenge Gordon’s murder.

—The successful grafting of muscle from the thigh of a dog to the arm of a woman is said to have taken place at Bellevue Hospital, New York. The woman’s arm, which was nearly useless before treatment, has become useful.

—President Cleveland received the Mormon Delegation with courtesy, assuring them that the Edmunds law should be carried out with entire impartiality, adding, “I wish you out there could be like the rest of us.”

—A terrific electric storm passed over Yreka, May 11. In less than an hour “2.05 inches of rain fell, deluging the streets, and pouring through the roofs of houses.” The rain was accompanied by the most vivid flashes of lightning.

—A cablegram from London, dated May 14, says: “To-morrow, Gladstone will announce the abandonment of the causes empowering the suppression of meetings, the censorship of the press, the search of domicile, and the trial by judges without jury.”

—Wallthurville, a small hamlet thirty-seven miles from Savannah, Ga., was the scene of a small riot last week, in which five were killed and four or five more badly wounded. The cause of the riot was a dispute over a game of poker accompanied by the usual hard drinking.

—A large number of persons of riotous character were assembled at Nelson’s Monument, London, making speeches against the Government’s budget proposal to increase the duty on spirits and beer. The police had to charge them several times before they could be dispersed.

—The large railway hospital of the Gould system, at Fort Worth, Tex., was burned to the ground on the 26th ult. The inmates, numbering thirty-two patients, were safely removed. The property, valued at $30,000, was the only hospital belonging to the Gould system south of Sedalia.

—“The limited express on the Pennsylvania Road, running between New York and Chicago in twenty-five hours, has become famous, but it will soon be replaced by a new ‘flyer,’ which is to run over the Lake Shore and Central and Hudson lines, making the distance in twenty-three hours.”

—Reports from Latrobe, El Dorado County, California, say that grasshoppers are doing destructive work there and in the eastern part of Sacramento County. After eating everything clean they get into the streams, cisterns, wells, and ditches, and die, making a stench almost beyond endurance.

—As an outgrowth of the movement begun by the late Dr. Muhlenburg, looking to the gradual restoration of a common faith, the assembling of the “First American Congress of Churches” took place at Hartford, May 11. The attendance is reported as large. The churches were nearly all represented.

—Among the articles lately received at the Dead-Letter Office was a loaded revolver, so arranged as to fire off when the pasteboard box containing it was opened. As one of the clerks opened the box, the ball went into the side of the building. The box was addressed to a young lady at Springfield, Mass., and is thought to have come from Boston.

—At a meeting of the Military Service Institute of the United States, at Governor’s Island, May 14, it was shown that the coasts of this country are almost without defenses. Senator Dolph, of Oregon, chairman of the Senate Committee on Seacoast, was present, and promised to aid in Congress any worthy scheme looking to the strengthening of our seacoast fortifications.

—The steamer Germanic was struck on the night of May 4, by a tremendous wave which swept over the deck, crushing the top of the pilot house, hurling the firmly-braced winch to the hold, carrying away the rigging and compasses, and twisting the railing into many fantastic shapes. Captain Kennedy, who commanded the steamer, reports this as the largest wave he has seen in a twenty years’ experience on the Atlantic.