Animal Planet — "Pets of Honduras"

1896

Honduras seems a paradise for pets. Parrots of every size, from that of a sparrow to the great green macaw, three feet long or more, can clamber all over and about the house and never know a cage. Chachalacas trot through the patios or courts of the houses in the towns, and bitterns stalk disconsolate about. Fawns and children play together in many a yard, and coons and sometimes an armadillo are playmates for little ones who have few dolls. In the Sambo hamlet of Ulun, a tame anteater was offered to me, and while we talked of it, a woman came in leading a gibeonite which took occasion to nibble its owner's bare heels while she bargained.

As I lay in a hammock in a Waikna hut one day, a peccary came within my reach. With a convenient stick I ventured to scratch his brown and bristly back. Down he flopped on his side and grunted in sweet content as long as the tickling went on. From that moment he was my ardent, much too ardent friend and faithful follower. I could not go ten steps without finding him at my heels, and his jealousy was as instant as it was fierce. Woe to the dog that dared come near me. A sudden rush, a quick upward thrust of those gleaming tusks and there was a bleeding gash in that dog's quarters, if he was not agile beyond the average of dogs. And the snapping of those tusks had a sound that was most suggestive, particularly to a white man groping in the dark for the olla that holds the drink. Peccaries are not really the nicest of pets for people whose visitors are nervous. — Outing.

The Hand Upon the Jail Wall

1896

Upon the wall of cell No. 7, in the County Jail at Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania, is the imprint of a man's hand, which would not attract attention were it not for the strange story connected with it — a story which can be vouched for by many of the town's citizens.

Alexander Campbell, of Lansford, was an occupant of the cell in June, 1877. The Mollie Maguires were holding their reign of terror throughout the coal regions at that time and he was arrested and sentenced to be hanged in connection with the murder of John P. Jones. He stoutly asserted his innocence, and it was only through the confessions of his comrades in crime that he was convicted. The night before he was hanged he stood on his cot, and, it is said, placing his hand upon the wall, he declared that in proof of his innocence the imprint would remain upon the wall forever. The impression of the hand can be as plainly seen now as if placed there yesterday, though the walls have been whitewashed often.

The phenomenon has been viewed by many, but none of them has been able to suggest a plausible solution of the mystery.

The cell is regarded with awe by the prisoners in the jail, and if any of them become unruly the warden has only to threaten them with a night in cell No. 7. — New York Herald.

A Glass Tombstone

1896

A glass tombstone; that is certainly something unique. Such a grave marker stands in but one place in the United States, and that is the cemetery overlooking the city of Kittanning, Pennsylvania. It has but recently been set up there, over the grave of Mrs. Elizabeth Pepper, of Ford City, by her son, Matthias Pepper.

Not one of the piles of marble and granite attracts so much attention as the piece of polished glass, with clear inscription, which stands on a gentle slope falling slowly from the hilltop.

Matthias Pepper, who had the glass set up, is assistant superintendent at the Ford City factory. The piece used as a grave memorial is a part of a large plate which was made of unusual thickness for the construction of circular panes to cover the portholes of ocean steamships. The practical indestructibility of glass was its quality which suggested to Mr. Pepper its use in the cemetery.

Marble and granite seem to many to be almost eternal in their hardness, but they are far from it, and not at all to be compared with glass. Wind and rain, heat and cold have their effects on stone of any kind, and finally wear away the hardest granite and cause it to crumble. Go into any old graveyard, where stones were erected more than one hundred years ago, and it will be found to be the exception where all the lettering on the monuments can be made out. The stone has crumbled and the outline has been obliterated. No such effect is produced by the weather on glass.

The Pepper monument is of plate glass one inch thick, a foot and a half wide and four feet high. It stands in a mortise cut into a cube of sandstone. The top of the glass is arched. The lettering on it is made by the "sand blast" process, and is distinct. The monument bears this inscription:

In memory of Elizabeth Pepper, of Ford City. Died February 4, 1892. Aged seventy-seven years.
Also William Pepper, husband of the above. Died ——. Aged ——.

From this inscription it may be inferred truly that William Pepper is still living.

This new use for plate glass is likely to become extended, for it has many things to recommend it. The transparency and purity of the material are suggestive and appropriate. It is easily and quickly etched, its cost is not great, and in durability it surpasses any other available material. — Pittsburg Dispatch.

This Man Had Courage — Sold His Skin for Grafting

1896

Half a dozen men were relating experiences of college days when a young physician said that in cases where students were obliged to eke out their expenses in a professional career by every possible means there often occurred pitiful examples of their courage.

"Suppose, for example," said he, "a case of skin grafting comes to the clinic, any student who will give up his skin is paid five dollars for each bit. I remember one instance in particular, that of a hard working young man who gave ten bits of flesh to graft a new face on a badly burned baby. As the flesh must be healthy and fresh nothing can be used to deaden the pain and it is cut from the inside of the upper arm, the most sensitive part. Slices the size of a silver dime are taken and laid quivering on the wounded part where a new skin is to be grown. This fellow stood there several days and allowed the surgeon to slice off pieces from both arms, each piece bringing the amount stipulate, which paid for extra books, clothing or food, and the poor fellow minded neither the pain at the time of the operation nor the lameness with which he was afflicted for weeks after, neither did he fear the risk of blood poisoning or other difficulties which might ensue.

"He had the satisfaction, however, of seeing a baby face resume its healthy form and his examinations were passed with brilliancy. He is to-day a man well known and honored in the profession." — New York Herald.

Dogwood's Many Uses

1896

Dogwood wands make excellent whipstocks, and are used in some of the best whips. They are cut sometimes by coachmen in the suburbs and sent to town to be dressed and made up into whips. The stocks made of this wood are notable for their ornamental knobs at regular intervals, being the truncated and rounded branches. These are imitated in some other whipstocks, but the imitation is a cause of weakness. The dogwood stocks are extremely tough and elastic, being comparable in elasticity with whalebone.

The wood is used also for butchers' skewers, and some philologists conjecture that the first syllable of the name is a corruption of "dag," meaning a spine or dagger. Dogwood, as being peculiarly free from silex, is used by watchmakers and opticians in cleaning watches and lenses. The bitter bark of the dogwood is used also as a substitute for the Peruvian quinine tree.

Dogwood is notably of slow growth, and in all thickly populated regions the tree is recklessly despoiled for the sake of its blossoms, so that the supply of the wood for commercial purposes is not large. — New York Sun.

Wise Words — "Get Experience Firsthand"

1896

Get your experience firsthand.

A burnt child dreads a whipping.

It is easy to make a failure of success.

Women make friends; men keep them.

Every man has enemies of whom he is justly proud.

If there were no wise men there would be no fools.

There is an old saw to cover every species of deviltry.

There are many days when the road seems to be all uphill.

Believe only half that you hear, and tell only half that you believe.

With a good many women interest is only another name for curiosity.

Some men reach a turning point in life every time a pretty woman passes.

Economy follows the acquisition of wealth about as often as it precedes it.

The average popular song attains its greatest popularity when it is forgotten.

Don't try to do right. The right is done without trying. — New York Press.

About every third woman is convinced that she is some kind of a martyr.

The man who marries only to "get a home" shouldn't kick if he doesn't get one.

Women will do much to please the men but more from fear of what other women will say about them.

Whenever a man does anything especially mean he is prone to lay the blame on poor, weak human nature.

President Garfield's Assassin — A "Stuffed" Human Head

1896

All that remains above earth of the irresponsible crank who fired the shot which ended the life of President James A. Garfield is the skeleton, brain and stuffed head, which are now preserved among other ghastly relics in the Army Medical Museum at the city of Washington.

The skeleton was cleaned by the museum workmen immediately after the execution, and has since been kept in a glass case in an out-of-the-way corner of the great National repository of ghastly curios. Each bone is carefully lettered with indelible ink, probably as a means of identification should the skeleton or a portion of it be stolen.

The brain is kept in a large glass jar of alcohol, and, like the skeleton, its presence in the building is known to but few outside of the employes.

The most grewsome memento of the great tragedy of 1881 kept by the museum authorities is the mounted head of Guiteau. Before putting the body in the boiler for the purpose of removing the flesh from the the bones, the head was cut off and the skull denuded of its skin and flesh. After this had been done, the skin was sewed up and stuffed, so that it would look as lifelike as possible, and then pickled in alcohol.

After this ghoulish work had all been completed the flesh was cremated by those having the work in charge, this last act taking place on the night of November 27, 1882. — New York Advertiser.

Economy in Small Ways

1896

The little leaks in the household expenses, says the Jenness-Miller Monthly, are the most mischievous. The big ones are prominent enough to compel attention. Do you not, for example, trust all your tradespeople implicitly? You can't afford to do so.

The head servants in the Vanderbilt and Astor, and other wealthy families have among their chief duties that of weighing the household supplies. Dry goods measurements in the large shops are generally very accurate because the employes are under strict orders to be exact. But grocers and butchers will bear watching. Get for yourself or your kitchen priestess a set of measures and some scales, and after you and she have learned to use them, you will be amazed to see how much you have been paying for that you haven't had.

Even in the most reliable shops — so called — the weighing is very lax. Butchers claim that the deficiencies in their weights are all due to the waste in trimming. Very well, order the meat sent untrimmed. You will get fresher meat, and what you trim off will often give you nice bits for the stock pot, suet, etc. Try it and be convinced.

A quick-witted housekeeper says she has earned many a dollar in plumbers' bills by buying a force cup and learning to handle a wrench. Despite washing soda and potash, now and then something unmeltable slips through the sink strainer and clogs the pipe. All the more modern plumbing has a nut at the bottom of the "goose-neck," just below the sink. By setting a pan beneath this, and with a wrench loosening and then removing the cap, the obstruction will generally be found right there. Sometimes the force-cap applied over the strainer in the sink will be sufficient to clear the pipe without taking the cap off the gooseneck. If both fail, no harm will have been done, but one or the other, or both, succeeds often enough to make it worth while to exercise one's ingenuity a bit.

Massachusetts Court Severe on Husbands

1896

According to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court husbands can no longer rule their wives. The Court says, in rendering a recent decision:

"By virtue of this legislation a married woman becomes, in the view of the law, a distinct and independent person from her husband, not only in respect to her right to own property, but also in respect to her right to use her time for the purpose of earning money on her sole and separate account. She may perform labor, and is entitled to her wages and earnings. If she complies with the statutory requirement as to recording a certificate she may carry on any trade or business on her sole and separate account, and take the profits, if profits there are, as her separate property."

Her husband can appropriate neither her earnings nor her time, but he is obliged to support her as in the old regime. He has few rights left, though, for, "to a certain limited extent, as for example, in fixing the domicile and in being responsible under ordinary circumstances for its orderly management, the husband is still the head of the family." — New York Press.

Queer Nobles

1896

Fancy being able to purchase a wealthy nobleman's residence for $75. Yet that is the sum which was paid the other day for the house in which the late Lord Donington passed the greater part of last winter.

His Lordship — he died a few months back — possessed a seat called Farleigh-Hungerford Castle, in Somerset, England, but he had been induced, as he had several other residences, to let the castle for a term of years. When he got ill last year he fancied that the air on his Farleigh estate would benefit his health, but he scarcely liked to intrude himself on his tenant, and so, in one of the fields near the castle, not included in the tenant's lease, he had a wooden hut built, twenty-seven feet by twenty-five feet and some twelve feet in height. This he had divided into four cabin-like rooms, and in that little place, accompanied by a couple of servants, he passed several months last winter.

He was the husband of the late Lady Maud Hastings, who, on the death of her brother, the last Marquis of Hastings, became Countess of Loudoun in her own right. — New York Mail and Express.

Indians Believed to Be Syrians

1896

Canon J. D. Good, of British Columbia, tells a San Francisco Call reporter that his long residence among the Columbian Indians warrants him in saying that the latter are of Syrian origin, and are, in fact, Syrians now, having the customs and language. "I was astonished at the richness of this language." he said, "and its wonderful capacity for accurate expression.

"I found many pure Syrian words in it, as, for instance, Eneas and Solomon-Chute, among proper names. The words of the language are historical and traditional, and observe the same laws as those of the Syrian language. I think the language of the Thompson River Indians is one of the Toranian tongues. There are direct Syrian words in it.

"Then there are other evidences that these Indians are the Syrian descendants. Their medicine man is the same as the Syrian seer. The burial customs are to this day the same. Besides this there is the character of the people, who are Syrians in thought, habits of life, and general customs.

"When I first went among the Indians they had their war chiefs as well as their civil chiefs — the same as the Greeks. All I saw in every way convinced me, and I have during the ensuing years been very fully confirmed in my conviction that these Indians are Syrians."

Why They're Called Tumblers

1896

Every day we drink out of a tumbler. Why is the large glass that holds our milk and water so called? Years ago Professor Max Muller was giving a luncheon at All Souls' College, Oxford, to the Princess Alice, the wife of the Grand Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt and the second daughter of Queen Victoria. There were not a dozen guests besides the Princess and her husband, and a very agreeable luncheon we had, with talk on all kinds of interesting subjects.

But what excited the curiosity of all strangers present was a set of little round bowls of silver, about the size of a large orange. They were brought round filled to the brim. Those, we are told, were tumblers, and we were speedily shown how they came by their names — a fitting lesson for the guests of a philologist. When one of these little bowls was empty it was placed upon the table mouth downward. Instantly, so perfect was its balance, it flew back to its proper position as if asking to be filled again. No matter how it was treated — trundled along the floors, balanced carefully on its side, dropped suddenly upon the soft, thick carpet, up it rolled again and settled itself with a few gentle shakings and swayings into its place, like one of those India rubber tumbling dolls babies delight in.

This, then, was the origin of our word tumbler, at first made of silver, as are all these All Souls' tumblers. Then, when glass became common, the round glasses that stood on a flat base superseded the exquisitely balanced silver spheres and stole their names so successfully that you have to go to All Souls' to see the real thing. — Jeweler's Circular.

The Deadly Grape Seed

1896

The grape seed, having been relieved of the charge of causing appendicitis, seems to have taken a new tack and is trying to do its mischievous work in another fashion.

An official of a New Jersey county is in a critical condition from the effects, it is said, of a grape seed. He ate some grapes and took great care not to swallow the seeds, but by some accident managed to inhale one, which lodged in the upper portion of his lungs. Himself a physician, he realized the necessity for care and rest, and supposed he had given the seed ample time to become encysted, which however was not the case.

There are a number of cases on record where small articles of various sorts have been drawn into the lungs with the breath. In several instances irritation had begun that ended in death. Sometimes, though, the article becomes coated with exudations from the surrounding surface and is gradually covered up, forming a lump that one may carry through the remainder of life without serious injury. Postmortem examinations have disclosed several of these cysts which had nothing to do with the death of the subject. — New York Ledger.

Introducing the X-Ray

March 1896

From Vienna comes the news of a wonderful discovery in photographic science. It is no less than a means of photographing the interior of solid, opaque bodies.

By the new system the bones of a man's hand were perfectly photographed, the flesh being invisible in the picture. Broken limbs and bullets in human bodies were also successfully revealed, as well as objects placed in a wooden box.

Professor Rontgen, of the University of Wurzburg, is the inventor. The light he uses to photograph by is produced by what is known as a Crooke's pipe, viz: a vacuum glass tube with an induction electric current passing through it. The result is a light that appears to penetrate organic substances just as ordinary light passes through glass. The inventor throws open a wide field for the deduction of new truths in electricity and optics.