News and Miscellany

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Oct 7, 1875

News and Miscellany.

—The north wing of the new Insane Asylum at Napa is completed, and will receive inmates next month.

—The cost of mail service in the United States in the year ending July, was $14,845,-250.15. To meet this, Congress appropriated $17,548,000, which leaves $2,702,749.85 to meet any additional requirements.

—Out of the more than twenty-five thousand votes cast in San Francisco, the temperance candidate for Governor, an unexceptional man, in every respect qualified for the position, gets seventy-one votes.

—Thirty more Chinese students from the province of Shanghai are expected here soon to be assigned by Yung Wing, of Hartford, to various educational institutions in that vicinity.

—Latest official advices from Herzegovina are satisfactory. The insurgents now appear willing to negotiate with the Consuls. There have been no offensive movements for several days. The latest encounters terminated in favor of the Turks. The migrating families are beginning to return.

—Russia has her domestic troubles with a secret organization of fanatical socialists, who are rapidly spreading their ideas throughout the empire, and preparing for a revolt at the first favorable opportunity. The fanaticism has taken root in the upper classes. The government deals harshly with them—recently arrested 612 men and women—but they thrive on “persecution.”

—The vote in New Jersey on the proposed amendments to the State Constitution resulted in a large majority in favor of the amendments as a whole. Although some of these amendments were aimed directly at the supposed desire of the Catholics for sectarian appropriations and for a division of the school fund, and although the Catholic Bishop of the Diocese of Newark issued a letter against these amendments, the vote upon them was not materially reduced.

—The papal circular, just issued in Spain, forbids the exercise of any non-Catholic creed, requires the transfer of the superintendence over education to the clergy, and pledges the co-operation of the secular power in suppressing heretical teaching and literature. This has been followed by a statement that the failure of the government to accede to his demands will imperil the relations now existing between the King and Holy See. The result is great surprise and agitation among the Alfonsists. The re-establishment of the Inquisition, which is thus demanded would very quickly bring Spain into conflict with the Protestant powers.

—In England and our Eastern cities there is a mourners’ reform in progress—not exactly an organized Society of Reformed Mourners, but a public sentiment which aims to relieve families and persons who have lost friends, near or remote, from the burdens and expenses of sable goods, and white, and other fashionable inconveniences which are intended to express grief. This reform was adopted by many sensible and independent families in the West, years ago. They said if the love they manifested to the dead while they were living, by acts of kindness, respect, and helpfulness, were not sufficient to indicate real grief at the parting, the arts of the milliner and stationer would be poor substitutes.

STORM IN TEXAS.—Immense damage and very great loss of life have been sustained by the recent storms and floods in Texas. A fearful cyclone, followed by an unparalleled rise and overflow of the tide along the coast and up the bays, caused wide-spread ruin. A report from Galveston says that the town of Indianola is almost entirely demolished. The light-house, wharves, business houses, and dwellings are broken in pieces or swept away. There are only three houses remaining which are not deluged. The telegraph lines are down for miles. Railroads are washed away, and houses, fences and trees, are piled up in broken masses in the streets. Reports of the loss of life are conflicting. All agree that there were from one hundred to one hundred and fifty lives lost. Citizens are organizing for relief and will send food and clothing.