Items of Interest by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Jul 29, 1908

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 34, No. 31.

Items of Interest

By Editor

"The Western Watchman" notes the fact that the Catholic Total Abstinence Union, of Eastern Pennsylvania, in a series of resolutions adopted, declare that the game of baseball is conducive to temperance and morality, in that it promotes healthy bodies and clean minds. We wonder if that will help some of our Sunday-law friends to be more lenient to Sunday baseball.

We note as a matter of interest that a candle ten feet high, which will burn for two years or more, was manufactured in New York recently for an Italian. It measures eight inches in diameter, and weighs 310 pounds; its sides are decorated with pictures of flowers and reproductions of paintings of a religious nature. It is made entirely of beeswax and cost $300. Presumably it will be placed before some shrine for religious purposes.

The seven lean years recorded in the latter part of Genesis of the famine in Egypt finds confirmation in the Egyptian records themselves. The hieroglyphic inscriptions translated by Brugsch Bey show that 1,700 years before the Christian era the Nile for seven consecutive years did not overflow, and famine, pestilence, and misery followed. "We know," he says, "that the date of the seven years of fruitlessness mentioned in Genesis was B.C. 1700, and thus what has been looked upon as a fancy, has thru these hieroglyphics become a matter of history." The failure of the Nile to overflow, the withering of the vegetation, the lands devoid of crops, famine, and the consequent scourges, are all depicted in the pictures which the student has been able to decipher. And yet he who believes the word had all this information and much more long before.

"The Ave Maria," a Catholic paper, thinks that a good many Protestants nowadays "would be secretly rejoiced if a division of the school fund or some other plan permitting of the teaching of religion in the schools were effectively carried out. Admission of error is not a pleasant task, but this country is rapidly awakening to the fact that the legitimate product of godless schools is not a moral, tho he may be a clever, citizen." And yet while there should by all means be religious teaching in connection with education, or all true education ought to be based on religion, it is not the place of the state to teach it.

The arsenals of the Philippines are being filled with war material, the entrances to Manila and Subig Bays are being fortified, and military roads are being laid out along the coast. So a recent San Francisco paper states. It continues: "Since the first of the present year the shipments of ammunition thru this port amount to about 25,000,000 rounds of cartridges, and in addition to this there have been shipments totaling nearly 35,000 new Springfield rifles. There are, however, less than 20,000 troops in the archipelago."

Fifty wasted years.—Despatches from Paris tell of the death of a woman who has lived the life of a recluse for fifty years because of the death of her husband on her wedding-day. The blinds of her house were never opened, and in all the years her servants never permitted a person to enter her presence, and they never spoke a word to her. She leaves her fortune to found a home for old people; but how much better for her and doubtless many more, had she devoted those wasted years to some useful purpose.

Floods at Lincoln, Neb., July 6, caused great damage to property, and nineteen were reported drowned. The water was as deep as fifteen feet in places, the wells are filled with surface water, gas and electric plants inundated, and all traffic paralyzed. Hundreds were rescued from the lowlands with boats.

The Socialist nominee for the presidency, Martin R. Preston, is a convict serving a twenty-five year term for murder in Nevada. He is also under the constitutional age. The candidate for vice-president is Donald Munro.

The pope, in a recent pontifical document, removed Great Britain, Holland, Canada, and the United States from the jurisdiction of the propaganda, so these countries will no longer be considered missionary lands.

A destructive fire occurred in Boston July 8 which caused the loss of more than one million dollars in property. A quarter of a mile of the dockage was destroyed. One life was lost.

Intoxicated schoolchildren are said to be causing considerable annoyance to the teachers of Geneva, Switzerland. The new vintage of wine coming on, the people allow their children to use the old wine to make room for the new. Tramps are given wine when they ask for a drink, and it is rare to see a child in that district without a little gourd of wine slung across his shoulders for personal consumption.

About one hundred theater cases were dismissed from Judge Porterfield's docket in Kansas City, June 24. Fifteen hundred Sunday-closing cases still remain in Judge Wallace's court. Thus far, since the Sunday-closing crusade started last September, eight theater cases have been tried, resulting in four acquittals, two hung juries, and two convictions, with a fine of one dollar in each conviction. It costs Jackson county about $75.00 a day in jury fees alone during the trials of these cases.

President Roosevelt is being besieged by magazine representatives, who offer fancy prices for African hunting stories. The highest price offered is $12,000 each for five stories, more than the President receives yearly in his present position.

An earthquake of from ten seconds to half a minute was felt in the lower part of Mexico June 30. Some property was destroyed, but no lives are reported lost.