News and Miscellany

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 22, 1873

News and Miscellany.

Storms and High Winds.

The storms of the last two weeks have been very severe and wide-spread. Much damage was done in Central and Southern Indiana and Ohio, as well as in the West. Heavy storms of equal extent have been rarely known. The papers give accounts of many storms more local in their severity. Taking the country over, it has been an unusually stormy period.

The St. Louis Times says, “There can be no good reason for attempting to suppress the fact that the cholera has reached St. Louis.”

New York, July 16.—English papers received say the earthquake in Northern Italy on June 29 was extraordinary. The solid earth seemed for a time converted into a liquid one, and houses were tossed about like ships at sea. There were fourteen movements, seven forward and seven backward, each occupying a second, as regular as the beat of a clock. Nine persons were killed at Belluno, and many injured.

Salt Lake, July 16.—A great sensation was caused here to-day, by the announcement by the Journal that Ann Eliza Webb, the young seventeenth wife of Brigham Young, had forever left him, carrying off her furniture and personal effects. Brigham will endeavor to replevin the goods. Mrs. Young is at the Walker House, and three leading lawyers are about to institute a suit for a divorce and alimony in a large sum. Great revelations are expected concerning the inner domestic life of the prophet. Mrs. Young is engaging the sympathy of the Gentile ladies, and the polygamous Mormons are a good deal disturbed.

Reports to the Detroit Post give an encouraging look to the peach prospects in Western Michigan. In some parts of the peach district, the raisers are said to be thinning out the fruit to save the trees from overbearing.

The New York Tribune cites two remarkable cases of cholera. The first case last year was that of a young woman whose case was “well-defined Asiatic cholera.” Under examination, it was found that after a hard day’s washing, she had partaken freely of corned beef, cabbage, green peas, and whisky, finishing her repast with the greater part of four large melons. The first case this year was that of a man, and this also “a well-defined case of Asiatic cholera.” It was found upon examination that he had had the ordinary summer sickness three weeks, and that on the day before his death he had been eating cucumbers and ice cream and drinking ale. Numerous other “well-defined cases of Asiatic cholera” may be traced to the same causes. Should not the verdict be, however, well-defined cases of American stupidity? As long as it is possible for any man to produce cholera by indiscriminate gluttony, is it not a little inconsistent to charge it to one of the mysterious dispensations of Providence?

A Mr. Drew, of Washington, states that in June, 1868, he had business with Oaks Ames, at the Capitol; that while awaiting Mr. Ames’ leisure to attend to him, he, Drew, saw the money drawn by Ames from the Sargent-at-Arms, on that $1200 check which was written as payable to “S. C. or bearer.” The “S. C. or bearer” excited the curiosity of Drew, and he wondered who “S. C.” could be. On Ames receiving the money, he walked back to a gentleman with whom Ames had previously been talking, and handed the money to that man, receiving some kind of a written document in return. Who that man was, Drew does not know, and has never since seen. When the Credit Mobilier investigation was going on, Drew was in Europe.

Henry Ward Beecher’s church has a total membership of 1982, of which number 1210 are women. For music, the church pays $6,000, divided as follows: Director, $2,000; tenor, $1,000; soprano, $900; alto, $600; organist, $1,500. The pew rents amount to $56,000.

The Record of Crime increases in fearfulness. The daily papers teem with accounts of murders, and other high crimes. The New Albany, Ind., Ledger says, “Within the last five or six years, nineteen persons have been hanged within the limits of this judicial district by vigilance committees, or, to give them their proper, shame-suggesting name, mobs.”

Since the fires of 1871, these scourges seem to be, not only on the increase, but startling in their extent, and rapidity of destruction. That of Michigammi was as sudden and frightful as that of Peshtigo. A whole village burned so suddenly that the inhabitants had not time to fully escape. Some were burned, and many saved by taking to the water, where some perished, and others were rescued after terrible suffering. The recent fire in Grand Rapids, Mich., presented the same features, as the following shows:—

“Grand Rapids, Mich., July 14.—One of the most appalling facts about the fire was the rapidity with which it spread. It seemed mad from the first. The smoke from the Bridge street house and barn, in which the fire commenced, rolled up in dark and frightful columns, looking as though it came from the mouth of hell, and before the few who had gathered there had time to express their wonder, the flames burst out and seemed to leap across Kent street to the east, and seized the Grand Rapids city mills on the west. In an instant, the mills and half a dozen houses were in flames. There was no power on earth that could stop its rapid progress. The engines were soon on the ground, but what water they threw upon the flames had no more effect than though it had been thrown from a spoon. The fire fiend was abroad and seemed to laugh at the Herculean efforts of the firemen. The fire rushed, leaped, and drove on like mad, and stopped not until it had swept out of existence everything in its way. It stopped when its work of destruction was done, when there were no more buildings in its way.”

A fatal epidemic has been raging among the cattle in the vicinity of Lawrenceburg, Ind. Forty-nine, out of a lot of sixty-two, died within three days.