OCR Text |
Show CLIPPED AND CONDENSED. The number of raco courses around Paris has increased largely, and the betting which they engender has become a serious evil. Tho Heligolanderg rarely lock their doors, but when they do they leave the key where it can be reached by anyone seeking admission. A woman at Chester, Pa., dresses her children in their bathing suits, distributes distrib-utes them on the front lawn and then turns tho hose on them. Tho board of education in Columbus, Ohio, has decided that hereafter there shall be no difference in the salaries paid to men and women who are teachers teach-ers in the public schools. Tho birth rate in England and Wales has been decreasing ever since 187ti. The last quarterly report shows no diminution, the rate beiug only about four per thousand above the French average. A census taker at Danbury, Conn., encountered the wife of an Irish hod-carrier, hod-carrier, who tried to conceal her husband's hus-band's humble occupation by stating that he was an "ascender and descender." descen-der." The inhabitants of Heligoland have a strange custom on new year's eve. They then perambulate the streets with broken pots and pans, which they place before their friends' doors, and the man who has the largest heap before his cottage cot-tage is considered the most popular. A youngster fell from the Michigan Central train, making forty miles an hour, near Albion, Mich., and when the train load of horrified passengers was backed to where it was expected to find the mangled remains, the baby sat laughing and playing in the sanil of the embankment. One of tho standing properties in the prison of Uskub, Macedonia, is a collection col-lection of small ants. Fifty ants placed on the body of a man chained to the floor so that he can't move limb or head will cause as extreme torture as can be devised. The Blisslield, Mich., postmaster has issued a formal notice that he won't lick stamps for anybody, and that hereafter letters dropped in the mail box with 2 cent stamps don't go. He says that the letters will be held for postage even if a $5 bill is pinned to everyone. The breaking out of the influenza in Iceland has caused a considerable panic, as the consequences of the disease there have been serious. Of the 57,000 inhabitants in 1843, 2,000 diod of the influenza, and in 1876 1,500 persons were carried off by the same disease. The recent increase of the salaries of government officials in Germany will swell the civil list in the postal department depart-ment by about $2,500,000. As 85,000 persons (85 per oent of the German postal pos-tal employes) are affected by the increase, in-crease, no one will get a Very big slice. |