SECULAR | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 6, 1887

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 13, No. 39.

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SECULAR.

—The new Lord Mayor of London is a Roman Catholic.

—The Hygienic Congress opened in Vienna September 26.

—Two cases of cholera have occurred on board ships recently in New York.

—Several severe earthquakes have occurred recently at Valparaiso and other parts of Chili.

—The British steamer Matthew was wrecked off Cape Finisterre, Spain, Sept. 28. Ten persons were drowned.

—The public debt was reduced $14,247,696 in the month of September. The national debt is now $1,255,526,670.

—Three men and two boys were suffocated and thirteen others overcome by gas, October 1, in the Bost Colliery, Ashland, Pa.

—It is said that the United States has now considerably more than 100,000,000 silver dollars stowed away in subterranean vaults.

—A French fishing boat was sunk by a collision, September 26, in the British Channel. Eighteen of the persons on board were drowned.

—A passenger train was hurled from a trestle near Jackson, Tenn., September 27. Nobody was killed, but about thirty were injured.

—Great damage has been done in Ontario and Quebec by the protracted drought, and bush fires. Many families have been burned out.

—Great destruction has been done in Mexico by the overflowing of the Rio Grande. It is reported that about 250 houses have been wrecked.

—Great excitement has been caused in France by the shooting by German sentries of two Frenchmen who happened to approach too near the German frontier.

—The Nizam of Hyderabad has offered to give to England £400,000 for the purpose of strengthening English resources along the line of defenses of the Northwest frontier.

—The death-rate of the world is computed about 67 a minute, 97,700 a day, and 35,639,835 a year; while the birth-rate is 79 a minute, 100,500 a day, and 36,792,000 a year.

—Mr. Powderly has refused to grant a charter for an Iron Workers' National District, and twenty thousand Knights of Labor threaten to leave the Order if he persists in his refusal.

—Smoke from the brush fires, and the fog combined are doing terrible injury to trade in and around Montreal. It is said to be costing the owners of vessels and shippers $12,000 a day.

—On September 27, a Chinese transport was wrecked on one of the Pescadores Islands, Peru. Three hundred soldiers and the captain and crew, with the exception of one man, were drowned.

—Here is an advertisement from an English paper: "To LET.—St. Katharine's, Verulam Road. One of the prettiest residences in Hitchin. Nine rooms, cellars, large garden. £50.—Dissenters not eligible."

—The anarchists are again growing defiant in Chicago. They tried to hold a meeting October 1, in favor of the condemned anarchists; the meeting was forbidden but they tried to hold it anyhow. The riot act had to be read, but, even with that, they were with difficulty restrained.

—Last week the boss mechanic on a Puget Sound saw-mill was caught by the machinery and drawn through a hole eight inches square, and escaped with only bruises and a crushed ankle, though his ankle was crushed before he reached the hole.

—The cholera is still raging fiercely in Sicily; about 100 deaths are said to occur daily. In addition to this the poorer classes are all being fed at public expense, as many as 13,000 persons being supplied with food from the Government kitchens.

—A man in California had a dispute with his hired men about a balance in wages amounting to $2.37. He went to law with them about it, lost his case, and with it costs to the amount of $100. This is a fair illustration of the gains of lawing. It is a gain to the lawyers and that is about all.

—General Crook has made his official report on the Ute "outbreak" under Chief Colorow, in Colorado. He says: "The Indians were pursued incessantly, and in every case the whites were the aggressors. Colorow had no desire to fight and made use of his weapons in self-defense only." And such is the cause of nine-tenths of all the Indian outbreaks and troubles that there have been of late years.

—The cholera is raging in Italy, it has broken out at Rome, and one fatal case has occurred in the Vatican itself. The Pope and his court are in a good deal of a fret, not so much on account of the cholera in itself, but because it is likely to interfere very materially with the Jubilee celebration. As the cholera increases and continues, the Pope sees fading from the prospect many rich gifts and much wealth from the offerings of devout pilgrims.

—Professor Huxley has set to work "to carefully investigate Spiritualism," and the fact is reported as "a good sign." Yes, it is a good sign of the progress of Spiritualism. But as far as knowing what it is, the world was just as wise before Professor Huxley began, as it will be when he shall have concluded his investigations, even though his decision be in favor of the reality of Spiritualistic phenomena; and that such it will be is altogether probable.

—The English correspondent to the San Francisco Chronicle speaking on the new war ship, the Trafalgar, says: "Fast cruisers and torpedo-boats are all the fashion in naval circles at present, and it is melancholy to look back upon the fearful sums which, partly in regular annual expenditure and partly squandered in heaps by the panic-stricken Government, have been wasted during the past thirty years in obsolete and useless types of heavily-armored vessels. Someone always had a bigger ship than we had, and we were always trying to outbuild her."