Significant Items by R. M. Kilgore

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 8, 1874

Significant Items.

By R. M. Kilgore

(ONE who has been a close observer of morals, and a Judge of the civil courts, is certainly well qualified to testify of the

INCREASE of CRIME.

Judge Maxwell in his address to the Grand Jury of Polk County, said: “During the twenty years I have lived in Iowa, I have never known a time when the number and atrocity of capital crimes were so alarming. This is probably the last time I shall ever charge a Grand Jury in Polk County. I have no complaint to make against the Polk County jury; it has always done its duty, and its efforts have been well seconded by the Petit Jury. We have also had able prosecutors; and yet, with all our watchfulness, the disposition to commit crime appears to be greater than at any time during the past ten years. We do not know how many women and children have been killed in Des Moines; we only know that some of us have not been killed. During the time I have been on the bench the records show that in this district there have been nine hundred and seventy criminal trials, resulting in four hundred and four convictions and five hundred and sixty-six acquittals. Fifty-two convicts have been sent to the penitentiary. The amount of fines assessed is $11,951. $33,026 of these were fines in liquor cases. $16,420 have been collected.”

And another Judge grants indulgence to break the decalogue as interpreted by modern theology:—

Max Strakosch having announced an operatic entertainment by his troupe; in New York, the other night, the police board forbade it. Max applied to the Judge of the Supreme Court for an injunction restraining the board from interfering, which was granted. “Sacred concerts,” so-called, are given in New York nearly every Sunday night, and church choirs are full of operatic singers, and no protest is made.

This last sentence states a fact which must be admitted, and this custom, which prevails to so large an extent in the popular churches, entirely reverses the order of the poets. One sings:—

“Oh! for a thousand tongues, to sing My great Redeemer’s praise!”

And another commands:—

“Let those refuse to sing, Who never knew our God.”

The following would appear to indicate a fulfillment of Luke 21:25:—

In the gale on the 7th inst. a 2-acre island in St. Louis Bay, 1½ miles from Minnesota Point, near Duluth, was displaced, and floated 3 miles down into Duluth Bay, and landed at Allen’s ship-yard. Upon the island are pine trees that will measure 3 feet across the stump, and it is thickly covered over with other timber. The soil on the island is as solid as any on the mainland.

A typhoon in China, with earthquake and tidal-wave accompaniments, on September 22, ruined Hong Kong, Macao and other places, destroyed shipping, killed 20,000 people, and destroyed millions of property. During the storm, pirates burned 700 buildings in Macao for plunder. The bodies could not be buried fast enough, decomposition was so rapid, and 4,000 corpses were cremated, having first been smeared with tar.

R M. KILGORE.