News of the Week

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · March 3, 1885

FromAdvent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 62, No. 9

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“Tidings of these things came.”—Acts 11:22.

FOR WEEK ENDING FEBRUARY 28.

DOMESTIC.

—Three cases of arsenical poisoning by wall-paper were reported Tuesday at New York.

—Stanton, Mich., was visited with a $25,000 fire Sunday morning, sixteen frame buildings being destroyed.

—The bill to re-establish capital punishment passed the Michigan House yesterday.

—O’Donovan Rossa is preparing a manifesto and is also planning a lecture tour.

—Failures for the week number 270, against 254 last week, and 237 in the corresponding period last year.

—A new and rich discovery of lead ore has been made by a German miner on land three miles east of Galena, Ill.

—While at work Wednesday at Lafayette, Ind., Edward Burkhalter, a teamster, became suddenly and incurably blind. The glare of the snow caused the malady.

—Near Williamsburg, Pa., Wednesday, a sled containing nine boys and girls dashed down a hillside and came in collision with a passing wagon. All were wounded, five quite seriously.

—A convention of electric-light men convened in Chicago recently. Delegates were present from all parts of the country, and the science of utilizing electricity was discussed in all its bearings.

—Near Erie Tuesday morning three cars of a passenger train were ditched by a broken rail, one man being killed and four others fatally injured.

—During the past week 1,400 children have had their throats blessed by a priest at Kalamazoo, Mich. This operation is believed by many to insure against throat diseases for a year.

—A huge meteor, throwing off smoke and flame, and hissing loudly in its passage, swept over Victoria, B. C., Monday morning, and was seen to plunge into the sea and sink.

—A passenger train on the Illinois Central which left Bloomington on the 16th reached Kankakee Monday, consuming, on account of the blockade, 168 hours in running eighty-six miles.

—Lieut. Greely says that of his nineteen men who perished, all but one were smokers, and that one was the first to die. The seven survivors were non-smoking men.

—Near Indianola Junction Saturday evening, a Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy train jumped the track, the passenger coach plunging down a low grade and resting on its roof. Six passengers were wounded.

—It is stated that at a meeting of Irish Revolutionists Tuesday night at Buffalo, delegates being present from New York, Chicago, and Detroit, an invasion of Canada was projected in case Dominion troops were sent to the Soudan.

—Whole families in Gilmer, Braxton, Calhoun, and Clay Counties, W. Va., are without food, and money is so scarce that ginseng and produce pass current. A special measure for relief has been introduced in the State Legislature.

—The educators of deaf mutes held an interesting meeting in Chicago a few days ago. Prof. Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, and Dr. Gillette, superintendent of the State Deaf and Dumb Asylum, discussed the question of the best methods of instruction. Professor Bell favors the articulation method. Dr. Gillette insists that mutes will always stick to the sign language.

—Hiram Pierce, Commissioner of Indian affairs, recently remarked: “There are 200,000 inhabitants in Washington, which is the capital of this great nation, and the center of its refinement and culture, and yet there is more drunkenness and crime here than among the 250,000 Indians, who are savages, and have never felt the elevating influence of our modern civilization.”

—Mrs. Grant has given her consent to a Vanderbilt proposition to secure to the government the perpetual possession of Gen. Grant’s war relics and souvenirs of his journey around the world. Mrs. Grant has been appointed trustee of the relics, and will hold them until the General’s death.

FOREIGN.

—Orders have been given for the dispatch of 10,000 troops for the reinforcement of the British army in the Soudan. It is stated that several thousand rifles and some ammunition have been shipped from French ports for conveyance to El Mahdi. Great indignation is expressed in English official circles at this covert aid afforded by France to England’s enemies.

—An international meeting of anarchist workmen was held in Paris Feb. 22. Four thousand persons were present, including several members of the Chamber of Deputies. Resolutions were adopted, declaring implacable hatred against tyrants, protesting against wars of conquest, and expressing sympathy with the workmen of all nations.

—Khasm Mous, a messenger sent by General Gordon, states that according to the most reliable native accounts, the rebels, when they entered Khartoum, pillaged the town and massacred the people. General Gordon, with a number of Shoghehs, retreated into a Catholic church and refused to surrender. The Mahdi thereupon shelled the church, and everybody within was killed.

—On all sides it is admitted that there is more intelligent handling of the Mahdi’s forces than ever before. The news from Suakim shows that Osman Digna is gathering a large army, fairly armed. It is not thought that there will be any British advance on Berber before the autumn. Heavy desertions of Irishmen are reported from all regiments ordered to the seat of war.

RELIGIOUS INTELLIGENCE.

—The salary of Francis Asbury, the first Methodist bishop in this country, was $64, and his traveling expenses.

—The General Ministerial Association of Portland and East Portland, Or., Tuesday passed resolutions that would not marry persons divorced for other than Scriptural reasons, nor the guilty party who had been divorced for the latter cause.

—The Northwestern Christian Advocate is pronounced in its opposition to the skating rink. In a late issue it says: “We challenge all solicitous parents to test the rink craze thoroughly. As a result, no solicitous parents will hesitate to utterly prohibit their children from attending the rink.”

—Bishop Taylor’s little missionary army destined for Congo land took its departure from New York a few days since on the steamer City of Montreal. The company consisted of twenty-nine men and women and sixteen children—the largest band of missionaries that ever sailed from this country. They propose to land at the Portuguese town of Loanda, on the western coast of Africa, and from that point penetrate into the interior on foot, or with means of conveyance as they may be able to secure.

—It may well cause a sensation, and a deeply painful one in Roman Catholic circles—the announcement made in high mass in the Montreal Cathedral the other day, that a number of relics brought from Rome in 1880 by Monseigneur Fabre, Bishop of Montreal, are not genuine, and that his lordship has been victimized by a Jewish relic merchant of the Holy City. This is very sad—and the pathos of the thing lies in the fact that these bones have been working several very satisfactory miracles during the four years they have been adored. It was wicked in that Roman piracy to sell old tibiae and fibulae and clavicles for sacred relics, which were not sacred, but very, very secular. But the bones are not wholly blameless; they ought not to have worked such miracles. It is a satisfaction, though, to know that the osseous reminiscences have been destroyed by order of the Pope. And we hope never to record an imposture on the part of any old bones again.—Christian Work.