News and Notes by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Dec 23, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 49.

News and Notes.

By Editor

RELIGIOUS.

—The chapel of the Methodist mission at Nank'ang, China, was utterly demolished by rioters about the last of October.

—The first Protestant cemetery in the history of the city of Lima, Peru, was formally opened, and the first interment took place, October 28.

—At a conference of leading officials of the Salvation Army of this country, held at Rochester, N. Y., recently, it was decided to change the name to Christian Crusaders.

—A fire on the night of the 2d inst. destroyed the headquarters of the Salvation Army in London. As this was the supply depot of the army for the world, the loss was a heavy one.

—The Right Rev. Bishop Hennesey, in dedicating a large Catholic Church in Dyersville, Iowa, in the presence of 100 priests and 6,000 people, read from the altar a letter which he had received, signed "White Caps," threatening his life if he appeared at the ceremonies.

—Oakland's free library report for November shows quite clearly the mental trend of its patrons. Of 6,381 volumes taken out, 4,440 (over two-thirds) were fiction; 15 were religious. The remainder were fairly divided between belles-lettres, science, history, poetry, biography, travels, and juvenile books. This would indicate that the masses prefer fiction to truth.

—A layman writes to say that he hopes, before the discussion of ministerial titles is dropped, someone will turn his attention to "Reverend," as a clerical prefix or title. "I can see," he says, "a reason for the D.D., provided it tells the truth as to the man, and he got it honestly, but as to the 'Rev.' I am in darkness." The request seems to us to be pertinent. If our Lord meant to prohibit for all time the use by his followers of any distinctive title or appellation, in such commands as, "Be not ye called Rabbi," the conscientious scruples of some ministers seem to us greatly misplaced.—Examiner (Baptist).

—The Jewish Tidings says: "The Hebrew tailors of Albany have completed their organization for the promotion of Sabbath observance, and President David M. Berger goes to New York to see Rabbi Joseph on the subject." Upon this announcement the Jewish Times and Observer comments as follows: "If the Hebrew tailors of Albany desire to keep the Sabbath holy, and not to do any work on the day of rest, what is the object of consulting the great Rabbi Joseph of New York on the subject? We do not know of any popery in our religion, and a simple resolution of the tailors to abstain from working is sufficient."

SECULAR.

—A Republican (Hart) was elected mayor of Boston on the 10th inst.

—Two men were killed and several injured by the caving in of a coal-shaft at Butler, Pa., last Thursday.

—Robert Browning, the great English poet, died at Venice, Italy, December 11, at the age of seventy-seven.

—Influenza is reported as epidemic at St. Petersburg, Paris, and Stockholm, and seems to be spreading all over Europe.

—The test of the new eight-inch army rifle last Friday at Sandy Hook was entirely satisfactory. The range of the rifle is nine miles.

—The corporation of London has invited Stanley to accept the freedom of the city. The parchment conferring citizenship will be inclosed in a gold casket.

—It has been decided that the conference for considering the subject of the federation of all the Australian colonies will assemble at Melbourne in February.

—The largest diamond ever found of the sort used in glass cutters and for tipping drills has just been brought to this country from Brazil. It is valued at $5,000.

—Flora Batson, a colored opera singer, was recently refused admittance to the Arlington Hotel, at Santa Barbara, and a suit for damages will probably be the outcome.

—The governors of the thirteen original States had a meeting recently to take steps for the erection, in Philadelphia, of a memorial structure to commemorate the achievements of the nation in the first 100 years of its existence.

—The national palace of the republic of Salvador, with all the government archives, was totally destroyed by fire on the 10th inst. It is said that $3,000,000 could not replace the building. The origin of the fire is unknown.

—A Jefferson Davis Monument Fund has been started in Washington. New York has had a start of four years, four months, and twenty days in the matter of the Grant monument. Which will get his monument first, Grant or Davis?

—The town of Butler, Pa., was terribly shaken by a nitro-glycerine explosion on the 10th inst. Two men were loading a wagon at the factory, when it is supposed they let a can fall. The men and team were blown into fragments, and a greater part of the factory demolished.

—Another sad affair occurred at Johnstown, Pa., on the 10th inst. There was a large crowd assembled in the opera house, when an alarm of fire from the outside created a panic. In the rush to get out, thirteen people were crushed to death, and about seventy-five more or less injured.

—On the morning of the 5th inst., at Florence, Arizona, three of five Apache murderers, who were to be hanged that day, were found dead in their cell. They had in some way managed to strangle themselves to death. The other two were executed at the appointed time.

—Mrs. Sample, a negro clarivoyant, has been sentenced to two years in the State prison for forging a deceased colored man's name to a paper purporting to be his will, at Los Angeles. She is the noted "hoodoo witness" that figured on both sides of the famous Sharon divorce case.

—Great efforts are being made by the Argentine Republic to induce immigration from all parts of Europe. Large numbers of Germans and Russian Hebrews have already gone to South America. Sixteen thousand square leagues of land have been set apart for the use of intending settlers.

—Great excitement prevails in New Mexico over the depredations of the White Caps and fence-cutters. Hundreds of miles of wire fence have been cut, and several persons have been killed. The trouble arises from the unsettled status of the Spanish and Mexican land grants in that Territory.

—Oliver Johnson, the veteran editor and abolitionist, died at Brooklyn, N. Y., on the 10th inst. He was one of the organizers of the New England Antislavery Society in 1832. He was at one time mobbed in Pennsylvania for making an abolition speech, and narrowly escaped being tarred and feathered.

—Senator Morgan, of Alabama, wants the government to take steps to obtain a foothold in the Congo country. His object is to furnish a place where negroes in this country may emigrate and obtain positions and standing, socially, politically, and in business, which they never can hope to attain in the United States.

—The British Government has ordered extensive additions to the fortifications of Halifax, N. S. New guns of heavy weight and large caliber are being shipped from England, and the garrison is to be increased by two entire regiments. Victoria, British Columbia, is receiving similar attention. Extensive works are planning, and heavy ordnance is to be placed in position.

—At San Francisco Springs, N. M., a bar of bullion was recently found, which measured some eighteen inches in length by two-thirds of an inch in thickness, while it was four inches wide at one end and about an inch at the other. The assay gave $11,000 in silver, 18 per cent. in copper, and $200 in gold. It was found among the remains of an ancient smelter used by the early Spanish occupants of New Mexico.

—The Neue Freie Presse, of Vienna, has information that a Japanese envoy will be sent to Europe to negotiate treaties with the maritime States on a very liberal basis. The points proposed will be that all Japanese ports shall be opened; that the tariff shall be raised to 12 per cent. ad valorem; that consular tribunals shall be established, and the Supreme Court so composed that the Europeans sitting upon it shall be in the majority.

—It is estimated that 1,000,000 acres of land in the Sacramento Valley have been laid waste by the heavy floods occasioned by continued rains upon the snow in the mountains of Central California. Thousands of acres of grain have been washed away, and the loss in this alone has been roughly put at $5,000,000. The Sacramento River rose twenty-seven feet seven inches above low-water mark, a height unprecedented in the history of that region. Had the water continued to rise another foot, it would have flowed over the levees which guard the city of Sacramento, and other cities in the valley. Only a few lives were lost.

—Thursday evening, December 12, a meeting was held in Washington to perfect the organization of the Northwestern Congressional Association, to be composed of senators, representatives, and delegates from California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, and Idaho. The object of the meeting was to secure unity of action among the representatives in Congress of the great West upon measures affecting that whole section, the question of partisan politics being left entirely aside.

—Among the many topics of world-wide interest presented at the International American Congress at Washington, are measures for the security of international peace and comity, and a scheme for the arbitration of international differences and difficulties. Committees have been appointed to work out the details of an international system of customs, regulations, to consider uniformity in weights and measures, in shipping dues, and commercial sanitary laws, together with such matters as banking laws, monetary conventions, and the making of a standard international coin.