SECULAR | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 27, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 13.

SECULAR.

—A gang of fifteen boy-thieves was recently arrested in Boston. —South Carolina's Legislature has voted a special tax on revolvers. —The prohibitionists of Connecticut have nominated a State ticket. —The Rhode Island Republican Convention has renominated all the present State officers. —One branch of the Canadian Pacific Railroad has been blocked for three weeks by snow. —The Swiss Federal Council has decided to grant the extradition of anarchists whenever asked for. —Mr. Budd, of California, has introduced a bill in Congress to prohibit the importation of opium. —Cincinnati's city engineer figures that it will cost $20,000,000 to fill in the flooded part of the city. —Twenty-seven Nihilists were arrested at St. Petersburg last week, including four artillery officers. —Dr. Horniann Keer says that the annual mortality from intemperance in Great Britain is 40,500. —Five men lost their lives in a snow-slide at Carey, Col., on the 16th inst. The avalanche was fifty feet deep. —The French Prime Minister Ferry pronounces general disarmament by the European powers an impossibility. —A little girl named Eva McMahon died of hydrophobia in the suburban town of Lake near Chicago, on the 5th inst. —There are but two teetotalers in the U. S. Senate, but it is claimed that there are not so many hard drinkers as in former days. —The foot-and-mouth disease, which has been so disastrous to cattle in southern Kansas and Texas, has reached southern Utah. —A prominent officer of the Belgian army is under arrest and will undergo an investigation on a charge of cheating at cards. —Young Findlayson, of Albany, Oregon, who murdered his grandmother last fall, has been convicted of murder in the first degree. —The sheriff of New York and four deputies have been arrested on indictments for forgery, perjury, larceny, and several other crimes. —March 16th, the female employes in the various Government departments at Washington were tendered a reception at the White House. —Sixty persons in a recent funeral procession at Danbury, Conn., had their ears, hands, and feet frozen while on the way to the cemetery. —A woman recently bit the hand of a man at Athens, Ga. The wound began to inflame, and the man is now lying in a dangerous condition. —Fifty-six young colored men and three women, from the Southern States, arrived at Bakersfield, Cal., last week, to be employed in cotton raising.

—At New York, S. W. Jacobs has gone insane over the Lasker resolutions, and J. W. Jacobs has become crazed on the subject of Salmi Morse's Passion play. —Last Saturday was the 87th birthday of the German emperor. Mr. Sargent, the American Minister, was invited to dine with Bismarck in honor of the event. —Six thousand rebels face the palace at Khartoum, on the right bank of the Nile. They recently fired upon 300 blacks sent down the river for wood, and killed 100 of them. —The yearly cost of the German army now reaches $116,000,000, and is met with much difficulty. It has been demonstrated that Russia, deeply in debt, can only borrow now on ruinous terms. —Two little colored children were brutally murdered, last week, and two others mortally wounded, near Augusta, Ga. The father and mother were at work when the crime was committed. —By mistake, four children of G. D. Alsop, living near Louisville, Ky., were given opium for powdered rhubarb, by their mother. Two of the children died, and the others are not expected to live. —During the past two months there have been several disappearances of young girls from the vicinity of Scranton, Pa., and it is now believed that they have been abducted by organized operators. —Some Philadelphia reporters at a seance of the noted Henry C. Gordon, who was materializing deceased persons, on the night of the 17th inst., made a grab for the "spirit," and, as usual, caught the medium. —A Pittsburg chemist is said to have discovered the lost art of making articles from obsidian, a species of volcanic glass, and among them black mirrors, which are used in the making of astronomical instruments. —The strike of factory operatives at Fischen, Bohemia, is spreading. Officials of the city have received letters threatening them with death. A battalion of troops has been dispatched to the center of the disturbance. —A bill pending in Congress provides that newspapers shall have an exclusive right to their news for eight hours after going to press, and any infringement upon the right may be prosecuted and damage recovered. —The Communists of Paris celebrated the anniversary of the beginning of the Commune of 1871, last week, by banquets in several of the suburbs. The speeches at these were violent and of a highly revolutionary character. —The Brooklyn, N. Y., Health Department has analyzed the candy known as "rock and rye." It was found to be flavored with "essence of whisky," or fusil oil. Large quantities of the candy have been sold to school children. —A farmers' convention of 150 delegates was held at St. Paul, Minn., for the purpose of devising protection against the extortions of the railroad companies and millers' combinations. Governor Hubbard addressed the convention. —Government officers in British Columbia have seized 2,500,000, feet of logs cut on the Canadian Railway belt by Americans, who intended to float the plunder to the Puget Sound mills. The spoliation has been going on unchecked for years. —The "San Joaquin Valley Regulators" shot and killed a saloon-keeper named Doane, at Modesto, on the night of the 19th inst., who had been warned to leave the county. Two other parties were warned at the same time, but they had heeded the warning and gone. —A second levee break has occurred at Roberts Island, San Joaquin Co., Cal., which, added to the one reported a short time ago, aggregates a destruction of 21,000 acres of wheat. It was considered good for thirty bushels to the acre, and the loss is not less than half a million dollars. —It appears that General Gordon has found the quieting of the Soudan insurrection a heavier undertaking than he anticipated, and asserts that he cannot defend Khartoum without a strong military force. Admiral Hewett has been instructed by the War Secretary to withdraw the reward of $1,000 for Osman Digna's head, which he offered without authority. —Nineteen Chinese lepers are in a hospital in San Francisco. They are persons who arrived not long ago, and the steamship companies decline to take them back, as they claim that the disease appeared since their arrival here. This is considered very doubtful, and the Bulletin queries why the companies are so cautious on this side, and so reckless on the other side of the ocean. —A Berlin dispatch says that Bismarck has received many telegrams from America approving his speech on the Lasker resolutions. It is said that Minister Sargent has been given his option, by our Government, of remaining in Berlin or accepting a Ministerial position somewhere else. —Another revolution in war implements is the dynamite gun. A hollow projectile is filled with dynamite, and thrown from the gun by compressed air. When the projectile strikes an object the dynamite explodes. The N. Y. Tribune says satisfactory experiments have been made at Fort Hamilton. —General B. M. Prentiss, a member of the court-martial which tried and convicted Fitz-John Porter, asserts in an interview at New Hampton, Ia., that there were votes in favor of punishing Porter's conduct with death, and that the sentence of the Court was the lightest that could have been inflicted in view of the testimony in the case. —A dispatch from St. John's, N. F., of the 19th inst., says: "At Heart's Content several houses were severely shaken by an earthquake yesterday. At Clark's Beach the ground heaved in undulations, and the ice in the lakes was cracked and rent. Two woodmen who were compelled to fly from the woods describe the hills as rocking and shaking. To-night the western sky is illuminated as with a conflagration." —This city was the scene of a terrible tragedy on the 19th inst., which terminated in the murder of an infant by a maniac mother, the suicide of the mother, the attempted suicide of the husband and father, and the probable insanity of a French woman, crazed by horror at the sight of the crime. The unfortunate mother partially lost her reason on the loss of another child a few months ago, which she charged a neighbor with poisoning.