Out of the Ordinary: Sundials and Washington Elms

1903

Herbert Spencer has for years turned out an average of 330 words of revised manuscript per day.

The city of New York has a considerable amount of property which it rents to private tenants, but it is also a tenant under 403 leases, which cost annually for rent $817,000.

A writer in Charities places the number of crippled children who applied for relief at the New York hospitals during the visit of Dr. Lorenz at 8,000, nearly all of whom were sent away because of the inadequacy of the hospitals for their care.

P. S. Devine of St. Louis owns a sundial made by Thomas Jefferson. The authenticity of the relic is attested by documents duly sworn to. In order to tell the correct time the dial must be set by the north star.

Buffalo physicians, in an operation the other day, took out of the patient's stomach nearly 500 tacks, knife blades and nails. That stomach must have been used to hard wear.

An insurance company in New York has just paid $100,000 for a five-foot strip of land, in order to keep the windows of its building from being closed up by another structure. The phrase "free as air" is not of universal application.

Lawrence McAlpin of Philadelphia has just celebrated his 100th birthday. He was born in Ireland and laid the first rail on the Madison & Indianapolis railroad. He has had 17 children. He lost track of four of them — two sons and two daughters — several years ago, but thinks they are now living in Canada.

A curious recognition of the right of women to hold public office has, with little gallantry, been made in Pike county, Pennsylvania. Porter township has so few voters that Mrs. Sarah Miller was placed on the Democratic ticket for school director, there being no other available candidate, one Democrat being the nominee for three local offices.

Congressman Heatwole of Minnesota is a continual cause of envy among colleagues whose digestion is not of pristine vigor. The Minnesota man attacks and assimilates all sorts of incongruous feeds. The other afternoon his luncheon in the house restaurant consisted of a milk punch, a chicken sandwich, an oyster stew, a piece of custard pie and two cups of coffee.

In compliance with appeals from many patriotic citizens of Hartford, Conn., Philip Hansling. Jr., superintendent of streets, consented to forego his determination to cut down "the Washington elm," opposite the Wadsworth athenaeum on Main street, that city. He trimmed the overhanging limbs, which might fall during a gale and do injury to persons or property, and gave the chance to the old tree to add a few years to its history. There is a tablet on the trunk of the tree placed there by the Daughters of the American Revolution in memory of the time when Washington visited Hartford and stopped beneath the tree.