The Jews of eastern Palestine and Asia Minor have a queer tradition which has survived from ancient times and tells of a remote period in their history when every fully developed Israelite was equipped with three perfect eyes. The two main optics, according to this curious old-time legend, were situated in the front part of the head, just as Jewish and other eyes are to-day, but the third–the one that made the early patriarch a monstrosity–was located in the back of the head, just above the nape of the neck in the edge of the hair. This wonderful third eye was not “evoluted” out of existence, as useless organs generally are (according to the ideas of the progressive scientists), but was closed by the divine injunction on the day when Moses was given the tables of stone on Sinai. You remember that God’s command on the day that the tables were renewed was to the effect that no should be seen in the vicinity of the holy mount. (See Exodus xxxiv., 3).

The believers in the three-eye tradition says that Moses supplemented God’s command by ordering the faithful who were encamped in the valley to turn their heads from the mountain. This they did, but took good care to uncover the eye that was situated in the back of their head. Moses, noticing this show of duplicity on the part of his followers, asked God to close the third or rear eye, and since that day the Israelites, in common with the remainder of humanity, have been forced to depend on two eyes only.

The following account of a rather peculiar incident will interest our readers. It is taken from one of last Saturday’s Detroit dailies:

Ann Arbor, Mich., Oct. 12.–A letter received by a student from Denver, Col., states that the late Robert C. Greiner made a curious bequest to the U. of M. Greiner is a native of Jackson, Mich., and was killed two months ago in the boiler explosion at the Gumry hotel. His wife died with him.

The will was written by Greiner himself. He gives everything to his wife, with reversion to his or her parents, should they survive, the final legatee being the sisters of mercy, who are to use the estate for orphans and poor children.

But the last clause concerns the U. of M. It directs that, after his death, his right foot shall be amputated above the ankle and presented to the Ann Arbor medical school. It is to be mounted as a skeleton prepattion [sic] and labeled: “Bob’s game foot.”

Mr. Greiner had a peculiarly deformed ankle and dislocated toe, which had been a great source of trouble to him, but such a puzzle to physicians that he came to take great pride in it. Hence his desire to perpetuate the abnormality.

As the will is not witnessed, it is void and cannot be carried out, except in the disposal of his personal property. If the dead body is personal property, the toes go to Ann Arbor. If not, the U. of M. cannot receive her bequest.

His wife’s heirs, who live in Jackson, Mich., have begun suit, claiming that he died first, so that his estate vested in her, and on her death in them. His heirs, who also live in Jackson, contest this; and as the estate, realty and all is probably worth much more than $100,000, there will be an interesting litigation.

University authorities have heard nothing of the peculiar bequest, and it is not known whether he ever was treated here for any of the difficulties arising from his deformity.

There is not a railway man on the New York Central who runs on freight trains that does not believe that the through freight known as A. S. No. 1, is a “hoodooed” train. The train runs from Albany to Suspension Bridge, and in the past few years has met with many accidents. Saturday morning the “hoodooed” train left Syracuse on time. Charles Detsel, a brakeman, who has been running on the road for the past five years, was assigned to make the run as forward brakeman. Detsel did not wish to take the run, saying to his companions that the train was “hoodooed,” and that he believed that he would meet with some bad luck. Everything went right until the train reached Coles’ bridge, between Lock Berlin and Lyons. A brakeman on a westbound local that followed saw Detsel lying in the ditch at one side of the track, and the train was stopped and the injured man taken to Lyons. The entire scalp was torn off his head and he is in a dying condition. It was this train upon which Conductor Gowan was killed at Adams Basin Wednesday of last week. His death was caused in a similar manner. Conductor Orr met his death last summer on this train, and it is a fact that the “hoodooed” train met with five accidents on five consecutive days about a year ago.

[tags]Ann Arbor Register, May, 1895[/tags]

The report comes from Tacoma that the cuticle of Tom Blanck, a desperado who was killed a few days ago, will be tanned and made into pocketbooks. While in jail in Seattle Blanck made a wooden imitation of a pistol, with which he held up the janitor and escaped. He was followed by the jailor and a posse and killed, as he would not surrender. Exactly how the pocketbooks will be disposed of is not stated, but judging from the results of several enterprises of this kind in the past, the owners of Blanck’s skin will have no difficulty in disposing of their manufactured stock. One of the inhuman practices brought to light by the investigation set on foot by General Benjamin F. Butler into the affairs of the Tewkesbury (Mass.) poorhouse was the skinning of dead patients and the making of souvenirs of various kings of the skins, for which the keepers or others in the scheme found a ready market. The same state of affairs is said to have existed at the Ohio State Prison, in Columbus, fifteen years ago. Prisoners were knocked in the head or shot on the slightest provocation by the keepers and guards, who were all banded together for the traffic in human skin souvenirs. These outrages finally became so flagrant that an investigation was held, which resulted in the turning out of all the keepers and guards in the prison. None of the men were ever prosecuted, as it was impossible to get tangible evidence. There must have been money in this human skin traffic or the men engaged in it would not have taken such chances. There are many persons whose morbid tastes make them delight in the possession of just such grewsome souvenirs and it is not infrequent that some man of a reckless, roving disposition and a checkered past is seen proudly displaying a tobacco pouch, purse or other “pocket novelty” made from the skin of a human being.

[tags]Ann Arbor Register, July, 1895[/tags]

That belief the Chinese have in the remedial qualities of substances forming a part of the human body seems to be irradicable, says the New York Times. Thinking that Europeans still held the same ideas led as much as anything else to the Tien-Tsin massacres of twenty-five years ago. Prehistoric man drank from a human skull, believing that the uncanny goblet had a certain potency. Not so long ago the skull of a suicide was used in Caithness as a drinking-cup for the cure of epilepsy. Cases have been cited where superstitious people, within the last thirty years, have dug up bodies so as to possess themselves of skulls for the same purpose. As late as 1678 in the official pharmacopoeia of London College of Physicians mention is made of the skull of a man who had died a “violent death.” For centuries in the past, for the manufacture of certain quack nostrums, notably an ointment, ground skulls were used. The medical books of Nuremberg of 200 years ago always cite mumia–or the embalmed flesh of mummies–as a sovereign cure for certain diseases. The Egyptian mummy was a specific for one malady, the Teneriffe mummy for another. Excluding all the other strange substances employed in early medicine, there is a trace of cannibalism in the used of these mummied substances. It has been shown that cannibalism does not arise in all cases from hunger, but that to heat human flesh is a religious rite and favored by the gods. In some remote manner it has something to do with sacrifice. Describing superstitions, the fact is cited that to-day Irish peasants use skulls to hold water in under the belief that the water thus becomes curative.

[tags]Ann Arbor Register, July, 1895[/tags]

People in Paris have been deceived recently by two remarkable beggars. One was an old widow of over 80. She had been living in a house in the Rue du Texel, upon the charity of the other lodgers. She was an object of pity, this distressed, yet ladylike and gentle old woman, and the little purse made up for her each week was contributed to gladly by those who were under the same roof with her. Her room remained locked for over forty-eight hours and the police were called in. The old woman lay upon her bed. A doctor was called. He said she was dead, and an examination indicated that the cause was starvation. There seemed to be nothing work making an inventory of, but the police investigated perfunctorily and under a heap of rubbish they found 3,500 francs in large bank notes. A more careful search revealed in the straw of her bed a heap of bonds and other securities to the value of 30,000 francs. The “poor” old woman’s heirs are being sought for, but there is not the faintest clue to them.

A clever swindler presented himself in Paris under the guise of a deaf mute. He was first noticed by the police while conducting an energetic begging campaign from house to house. Upon being arrested he went into an energetic pantomime, to which the officers paid little attention. In the police station he suddenly lost his infirmity and uttered a torrent of invective against the police. It was afterwards found out that, speaking five languages, he had plied his trade in all the countries of Europe and with remarkable success. His method of operation was to visit only the houses of the wealthy and to strike for large sums. In Paris his operations netted him not less than fifty francs a day. He would first write tot he families he intended to visit. They were always of the foreign colony. The letters would detail his pitiable state. They were well written and seemed to have the impress of truth upon them. A few days later he would call, and, contriving to be seen by master or mistress, would show a host of certificates of physicians, mayors of cities and commissaries of police in proof of what he had written. The interviews with these wealthy people were naturally had upon paper, and the answers to the questions put to him would be so beautifully and carefully written that they would seldom fail to win the sum sought. This young man–Gustav Remshager–is now held by the police, and his conviction is practically assured.

During a recent religious festival at Alvartirunagari, on the banks of the Tambramini, a terrible tragedy was enacted by an elephant. Like most large temples this has its periodical festivals, one of which has just been celebrated. Certain elephants were brought down from Nunguneri and Tinnevelly for the festivities of the occasion. All went smoothly till, unfortunately, the large elephant of Nunguneri, being in a rut, run amuck. The mahout unwittingly took up a little child (son of the Temple Darmakartha) and placed it in front of him on the neck of the elephant. Alarmed at the state of the elephant, the mahout endeavored to quietly pass the child out of danger by handing it to somebody behind. He was not quick enough to elude the sagacity of the elephant, which snatched up the child, put it into his mouth, and began munching it. The mahout, horrified at the sight, jumped down and tried to extricate the child, which he succeeded in doing, but not before the child was well nigh dead. Indeed, it only breathed for a few minutes afterward, and then expired. Enraged beyond all bounds, the animal became furious, and in its mad rage seized the mahout, dashed him to the ground, and then trampled out any little breath that might have still remained in the body. And here comes a strange and touching incident. Repenting seemingly of his awful misdeed, the elephant gathered up what was the moment before his master, proceeded to his (the mahout’s) house, and, depositing his mournful burden at his door, passed on. The people generally, in great dread, closed their doors and windows. The elephant wildly rushed along the streets and came to the temple, the door of which, too, had been closed. It thereupon battered the door, and passing into the enclosure, furiously attacked the little elephant of Tinnevelly, which it pierced with its tusks and soon killed. Emerging thence, the elephant rushed madly along the river close by, where it began throwing mud and sand all over itself. In the meantime, the police constables had got their muskets loaded, and, climbing out of danger, took potshots at the furious animal, which they eventually succeeded in disabling and ultimately killing.

[tags]Ann Arbor Register, September, 1895[/tags]

Pittsburg Dispatch: “You would be surprised at the number of mental travelers that are in a community,” said a railroad man yesterday. “I mean people who travel only in their minds; who, to indulge this mania, make a collection of railroad literature, such as is issued in time-tables, excursion books, pamphlets, etc. You have often heard people talk knowingly of a place which you have best evidence that hey have never visited. They can discourse fluently upon the hotels and principal sights of the city, even tell you of the trains and the connections they make, or describe the small stations through which they pass going there. If you have ever known a man or woman like this, then you have met a mental traveler. He might also be dubbed a railroad literature fiend, as this it the title by which he is known among the employes of a railroad office, who look no further into the motives of men than the surface. We have hundreds of such men and women who come tot he office after every piece of literature the railroad prints, from the local time-tables to the book descriptive of a southern or western jaunt. Their thirst for this kind of literature can never be satiated; it seems to have the same influence as alcoholic stimulants–the more they get the more they want. We have men who are employed in leading positions in banks and business houses who come to us daily with the question, ‘Anything new out?’ When the people live in the city they usually call upon us daily, but when they reside in the country their visits are at longer intervals. We have one old man who comes from Westmoreland county who never fails to appear upon the same date of each month. He seems to revel in going through the large batch of time-tables and books that have accumulated since his last visit. He never varies in his mode of procedure. After supplying himself with a sample of each one he comes over to the window, and, with his face wreathed in smiles, in the intoxication of his delight, he says, ‘How’re you, anyhow?’ After being assured that our health still permitted us to continue at our business, he always asks, “Well, kin you tell me how much’s the fare to Boston?’ When this information is given he invariably remarks, ‘Well, that’s gol darn cheap, that is.’ Then he lapses into a thoughtful mood, from which he breaks by making the assertion, ‘Confound me, I’ll go down therw next year.’ Then picking up his grip, he starts off and we do not see him again for a month. He has been going to Boston ‘next year’ to my own knowledge for six years. These mental travelers get more satisfaction out of their dreamy wanderings than the usual tourist of the day who travels not to learn, but to kill time. One man told me that he had never been to Washington in his life, yet was as familiar with the getting there and the city itself as if he had lived there his lifetime. He can talk about the streets and numbers, and can direct people from one place to another with more accuracy that the average Pittsburg policeman can give you information about his town, and gets it all from railroad literature. You watch the time-table racks of a railroad station and notice what a high class of people these mental travelers are.”

[tags]Ann Arbor Register, April, 1895[/tags]