Items of General Interest
Li Lien Ying, "the power behind the throne" during the reign of the late Empress Dowager of China, Tze-Hsi, is dead at the age of 69. His fortune is estimated at $13,000,000, and was nearly all accumulated since the Boxer rebellion, at which time his vast treasure of gold, silver, and gems was pillaged. He began his career as a cobbler's apprentice, and later won the favor of the Empress by his good looks and engaging manners. He was, it is said, a cunning, unscrupulous politician and grafter, hated and feared by high dignitaries all over the empire. He lost all prestige on the death of the Queen, and pined away. His ill-gotten gain and honor brought neither joy nor rest in his last days. Prof. Ernst Sellin, the Austrian Egyptologist, thinks that he has found between Jerusalem and Jericho the ruins of a palace built by Herod the Great. The expedition financed by Jacob H. Schiff, of New York, has discovered the ivory palace of Ahab on the site of ancient Samaria, near the modern Nablus. Clay tablets with inscriptions are also in evidence. Doctor Morris H. Richardson, with an extended reputation as a surgeon, in delivering a lecture recently in the Harvard Medical School, stated that cancer on the lip is largely due to the stem of the clay pipe, and also to the cigaret, both of which remove portions of the membrane from the lip and thus make a seat for the cancer. A cow in Missouri, belonging to the College of Agriculture, a part of the university of the State, gave in six months 17,088.8 pounds of milk, thus beating the best record by 1,458 pounds. Her name is Missouri Chief Josephine. If used for butter the milk will produce between three and four pounds daily.