Second Engineer Wilson De Hart, of the fated steamer Longfellow, lives with his wife and children at 126 West Eighth street, and was among the saved, says Louisville Courier-Journal. His wife dreamed Wednesday night that the boat was lost with all on board and it preyed so on her mind all day Thursday that she tried to persuade her husband not to make the trip. After bidding him good-by on the boat she told the chief engineer, Dan Halley, of her dream, and with tears in her eyes, begged that he endeavor to influence her husband to remain at home, as she knew the boat would be lost. On learning of the accident she ran almost all the way to Promley in her endeavor to keep pace with the floating wreck, and was almost wild with grief before the news of her husband’s rescue reached her, and she then refused to be convinced until he was brought to her.

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

Mr. Noah Brooks, who is publishing a series of personal reminiscences of Lincoln in the Century, tells the following strange story:

On the day mentioned, Lincoln narrated an incident the particulars of which I wrote out and printed directly after. These are his own words, ad nearly as they could then be recalled:

“It was just after my election in 1860, when the news had been coming in thick and fast all day and there had been a great ‘hurrah, boys,’ so that I was well tired out and went home to rest, throwing myself down on a lounge in my chamber. Opposite where I lay was a bureau with a swinging glass upon it (and here he got up an placed furniture to illustrate the position), and looking in that glass I saw myself reflected nearly at full length; but my face, I noticed, had two separate and distinct images, the tip of the nose of one being about three inches from the tip of the other. I was a little bothered, perhaps startled, and got up and looked in the glass, but the illusion vanished. On lying down again, I saw it a second time, plainer, if possible, than before, and then I noticed that one of the faces was a little paler, say five shades–than the other. I got up, and the thing melted away, and I went off and in the excitement of the hour forgot all about it–nearly, but not quite, for the thing would once in a while come up, and give me a little pang as if something uncomfortable had happened.

“When I went home that night I told my wife about it, and a few days afterwards I made the experiment again when (with a laugh), sure enough the thing came again; but I never succeeded in bringing the ghost back after that, though I once tried very industriously to show it to my wife. She was somewhat worried about it. She though it was a ’sign’ that I was to be elected to a second term of office and that the paleness of the face was an omen that I should not see life through the last term.”

That is a very remarkable story–a coincidence, we may say, to which some significance was given by the cruel death of the president soon after the beginning of his second term. I told Mrs. Lincoln the story, and asked her if she remembered the details. She expressed surprise that Mr. Lincoln was willing to say anything about it, as he had up to that time refrained from mentioning the incident to anybody and as she was firm in her belief that the optical illusion (which it certainly was) was a warning, I never again referred to the subject to either the president or his wife.

Subsequently, Lincoln’s version of the story was confirmed by Private Secretary John Hay, who, however, was of the opinion that the illusion had been seen on the day of Lincoln’s first nomination, and not, as I have said, on the day of his first election.

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

Fire Marshal Whitcomb has been pretty busy taking testimony in regard to fires lately, and while speaking about examining witnesses the other day he mentioned several curious things he had noticed. He says that in every case where he has discovered a pyromaniac he has had his suspicions of the person’s guilt aroused by a peculiar smile which plays around the mouth of the guilty one when under examination. It is hardly a smile, rather a peculiar puckering of the corners of the mouth, an expression almost indefinable, but it seems to mean, “Well, I’m too smart for you to catch me, anyhow.” The marshal says he can recall a dozen cases where he noticed this smile and at the time had no other cause to suspect a witness, yet by following these smiling ones he has obtained the most convincing testimony of their guilt an almost invariably confession from the guilty ones themselves.–Boston Transcript.

[tags]Ann Arbor Register, April, 1896[/tags]

Elias B. Dunn, the weather observer at New York, has been studying atmospheric electricity for two years, says the Boston Transcript. The sergeant, as they used to call him; the farmer, as they call him now, said the other day that he will live to see the day when electricity collected from the atmosphere and stored by some means which an Edison or a Tesla will have to devise, will revolutionize the world. The prophet expects that cities will be lighted and heated by atmospheric electricity; that every train and car will be run lighted and heated by it; that coal will become a curiosity, that steam heating will be a granny talk to the children of the next generation; that the telegraph and telephone companies will lose their monopolies; that war will become a farce because a touch of electricity will make the British Grenadiers or the German Uhlans or the Scotch Highlanders sit down on the cold ground powerless. Even the dreams of communication with the inhabitants of Mars will become realities, and a man will be able to strike up electricity as he does a parlor match. There will be no more trolley strikes, because there will be no more trolleys. Mankind will tap the atmosphere for almost any convenience except food and clothing, and even the clothing will be woven and the food cooked by atmospheric electricity; street cleaning will be as easy as the magician’s “Presto! change!” and everybody will live comparatively happier ever after. Mr. Dunn is sure that his ideas are practical and probable. The atmosphere is his constant study, and, having introduced general humidity to the public as the principal element in uncomfortable days, he has determined that the potent element for good in the air we breathe shall no longer be wasted. Why, he said, the whole atmosphere is soaked with electricity.

In torrid heats of late July,
In March, beneath the bitter bise,
He book-hunts while the loungers fly–
He book-hunts, though December freeze;
In breeches baggy at the knees,
And heedless of the public jeers,
For these, for these, he hoards his fees–
Aldines, Bodonis, Elzevirs!

No dismal stall escapes his eye,
He turns o’er tomes of low degrees,
There soiled romanticists may lie,
Or Restoration comedies;
Each tract that flutters in the breeze
For him is charged with hopes and fears,
In mouldy novels fancy sees
Aldines, Bodonis, Elzevirs.

With restless eyes that peer and spy,
Sad eyes that heed not skies nor trees,
In dismal nooks he loves to pry,
Whose motto ever more is Spes!
But ah! the fabled treaure flees;
Grown rarer with the fleeting years,
In rich men’s shelves they take their ease,–
Aldines, Bodonis, Elzevirs!

ENVOY

Prince, all the things that tease and please,–
Fame, hope, wealth, kisses, cheers, and tears,
What are they but such toys as these–
Aldines, Bodonis, Elzevirs?

Andrew Lang, in “Ballades and Verses Vain.”

A singular phenomenon was observed in the sixth ward, of this city, on the evening of the 7th inst. the day of the election. About half past seven o’clock in the evening, as the inspectors of the election were sealing up the ballots at Mr. McDonald’s store, a peculiar light was seen near the horizon in the south. For some minutes it was stationary and seemed to expand to the size of a large ham, and then contract almost to a point; then suddenly it shot like a rocket into the heavens at an angle of about 37-½ degrees. As it approached the sixth ward it passed directly over the street east of McDonald’s store, lighting up the entire neighborhood so brilliantly that a newspaper could have been read any where within three and a half blocks. As it passed by with a strange, whirling, buzzing sound, the inspectors of the election, Harry Hill at thei[r] head, rushed ed [sic] to the door and ex-alderman Woodruff says that he clearly detected a sharp sulphurous stench, reminding him of that cheerful theology in which he takes so much spiritual delight. The speed of this rollicking meteor appeared to slacken as it passed by McDonald’s store. Its form seemed to be angular, jagged and grotesque–a witty, laughing rhonibus [sic]. Suddenly the light expanded and in a moment after the aerolite struck the earth with a hiss and a thud. The next morning, as some medical students were going down town, they discovered the exact spot where it struck the ground near the south east corner of Alderman Peebles’ house in the middle of the the street crossing. News of the discovery soon spread in the neighborhood and by 8 a. m. several of the leading men of the ward gathered to “view the remains.” Mr. J. A. Scott, A. Wood, Charles Mc’Omber, Brother Woodruff, Prof. D’Ooge, Prof. Adams, Israel Hall and others were present and were much interested in examining the fragments of this strange visitor from another world, as they lay scattered upon the crossing. Alderman Martin seemed to be much affected, and as he reflected upon the crooked course of the strange fragment and the narrow escape of his friend Peebles from its fall, various and conflicting emotions struggled in his manly breast, and he “grinned a ghastly smile.” Supervisor Brown was there, and as he heard his distinguished constituents discussing the question whence came this remarkable projectile, a charming blush, like unto a maiden’s flush, spread over his benign face and crept beneath the auburn locks of his hair, while those who watched him closely could see a curious twinkle of the eye as he stirred the fragments of this busted aerolite with his cane. As the crowd was about to disperse, Mayor Smith drove furiously to the spot, and mounting the seat of his carriage, cried out, “Were did the lightning strike?” Upon hearing the impertinent inquiry Alderman Peebles, who had been a silent spectator of the gathering, suddenly returned to his virtuous cottage and closed its door upon the scene.

It has been a life-work of more than one to devise a mode of accounting for the world we are in with no agency of any intelligent power above nature, or with as little as possible. This is done, of course, “in the pure interests of science;” at any rate all desire of advocating atheism is disavowed. Some who labor in this line are naturalists; more are not. When the anonymous Vestiges of Creation appeared, the book was received as the work of some profound student of the natural sciences. But the zoologist wished he had known more of zoology; the botanist wondered at his botanical mistakes; and so through the circle. All found him weakest where they themselves were strongest. And the book, which was a nine-days’ wonder, has exerted no permanent influence on either natural history or theology.

It is a little remarkable to see a metaphysician like Herbert Spencer volunteering his aid in generalizing the truths which the botanists and zoologists have discovered, and which they are still tracing out to new discoveries. Is it that he supposes their minds so cramped by their investigations that they cannot or dare not go on to general principles? The amount of acute reasoning that has been expended on the flower of an orchis [sic] or a silkweed, is little suspected by most who are familiar with the subtleties involved in the consideration of an abstruse point in law. Men like Robert Brown and Richard Owen may be safely left to their own work. Nou tali auzilio. We know that there has been men who compiled an Encyclopaedia professedly out of zeal for the diffusion of knowledge, while among themselves they did not hesitate to avow it as the great task of their lives “to crush the wretch;” and that “wretch” was Jesus of Nazareth!

But we have less to do with the motives of Herbert Spencer than with his assumptions and conclusions. And in the outset let it be understood that they refute none of the teachings of the Bible. Could he but find evidence for them he would weaken certain arguments in natural theology, and take off something from the palpable absurdity of every atheistic scheme, but nothing more. It would remove certain results from the immediate to the mediate agency of the divine Contriver. The man who lets loose the ferret against the rats sends his design far beyond where his hands can reach. The zoologist who lays the head of a bird on an anthill uses the voluntary agency of other beings to free the bones form [sic] putrescible [sic] matters.

So, if it be not absurd to thank God for any event whereat we rejoice, how shall we limit his indirect agency? It may be that there is a sense in which he made the Pyramids and the Crystal Palace. And no one can prove that it is beyond the reach of Omniscience to wind up a machine as complicated as this world, so that each casual cog shall mesh in with one of effect even to the determination of where each leaf shall fall in all the life of every primeval forest. And intelligent beings might form part of the vast machine, seemingly as free in their agency as are the bees that swarm into the empty hive which their owner has made fragrant with hickory leaves. This is not our chosen way of explaining what we see, but it is less preposterous than a complicated code of self-enacted laws, and an eternal series of organic beings, which down to this winter, is seen to be in full career of rapid progress. But this interpretation of the Creator’s work excites the same disappointment as if what is treasured as an autograph should proved not a forgery, but the writing of an amanuensis. God is still the author of nature.

Our positive philosopher is very positive in his assertions. The patient naturalist who has sacrificed thousands of eggs in investigating the steps by which the yolk is developed into a chick, does not speak with more confidence of his conclusions from comparison of different eggs of the same hen at known intervals in the process of incubation, than our author does of the development of one species into another, assuming that unknown ages are competent to produce the change. But his whole scheme is unsupported by a single animal change that can be proved outside of human influences.

At the first glimpse any positive evidence of secular change in species might appear unattainable. It is not so. The entire history of many a species, from its origin to its extinction, can be studied in the strata of rock that were formed in part of their remains. None of them began in any other species, none ended in another. So far then as facts are concerned, the geographical discoveries of Lemuel Gulliver are on a level with the biological science of Herbert Spencer.

It is the first step that costs. The benighted traveler often has found as much difficulty in securing the first faint flame as in making all the rest of his watch fie. “Protoplasm, manifesting life, and yet showing no signs of organization,” is his starting point. Where do we find it? Who has seen it? Does it belong to the organic world–without organization? We wish to know more about this life without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days nor end of life. Is its life that of a crystal? Or is it merely geometricity, like the movements of animated oats, or the rose of Jericho? It is certainly a pity that this important abutment, whence the flying bridge must start, was not made firm beyond a peradventure. True it is sufficient that the protoplasm should have lived seventy million years ago. But are not the causes which then originated it still in action? Its very next door neighbors, protophytes and protozoa, are now by no means scares nor is their existence problematical. Strange that this protoplam should be so little known!

From these simple living cells, the theorist’s course in comparatively easy. Each living thing is an assemblage of facts; the prototype of scores, the humming bird of thousands or millions. A very skil[l]ful selection and arr[a]ngement is made of many that carry conviction with them. Grand that the Creator did make protoplasm and no other living thing, that he further enacted a complicated code of laws that execute themselves in some incomprehensible ways, and the order of being and development, may as well be, as Mr. Spencer would have it, as in any other way.

But that wonderful code of laws! Here are the yolks of two eggs. One is from the nest of an eagle, there other from that of a grouse. They are almost a liquid, but are, in fact, a conglomeration of delicate cells. But of course thee can be no very essential difference between them. The anatomist can find none at all. Outside influences must determine the shape of the creatures to come from them. No so. From one shall be developed a fierce eye, a hooked beak, and terrible talons; from the others a timid, defenseless bird. Nay, more; the offspring shall bear individual resemblance, not only to the parent within whose body its original substance took shape, but also to another parent with whom its connection must have been infinitesimal. The atheistic philosopher would have it that all the causes of these developments were wrapped up in that semi-fluid globe which cannot even keep its shape when laid on a plate. All the markings of a million of feathers in the egg of a peahen! For an uncreated law this is indeed wonderful–incredible.

But the development theory implies that accidental differences between parent and offspring may be perpetuated to succeeding generations. If any such peculiarity favor fecundity, tenacity of life, facility of securing food or escaping from enemies, it increases the number of descendants; and if the contrary, it diminishes the number of the survivors. And when the law of the survival of the fittest shall have culminated in an omnivorous animal of the size of the whale, that can leap as many times its length as a flea, with the cuirass of the crocodile, the tenacity of life of the tortoise, capable of outflying the condor and outswimming the salmon, as prolific as the rab[b]it, as cunning as the fox, with the intellectual power of Aristotle, the pertinacity of Grand, the eloquence of Demosthenes and the piety of Brainard, this globe will have reached maturity. We do not understand why this has not happened may millions of years since.

The absence of this all-prevailing supremus is not the only thing inexplicable in our theory. Of plants there should be just as many species as there are combinations of temperature, soil, moisture and other modifying circumstances; and, as two climates shade into each other, so should every two neighboring species. It should be as impossible to arrange them into distinct species as to classify absolutely the lumps of coal in a bin.

And there are some special difficulties. Does the working-bee transmit no sterility to her offspring? Ad did she inherit it from her prolific royal mother? The worker-ant is a similar puzzle. A still more remarkable one is the honey-making ant of Mexico. Certain neutrals secrete hone till they become shapeless living honey-bags. These the rest of the colony regularly destroy for food when other supplies fail. But their parents had no such peculiarity, and they transmit it to no descendants. By what modification of her wondrous law of descent–partus NON sequiter ventrem–is this peculiarity of the aunts transmitted to their nieces? Mr. Spencer finds no difficulty in arranging the animal creation into groups and imaginary series, each species of which might look like an improvement on the one supposed to have preceded it. But he makes no effort to prove that these species came into existence in any such order. And just here the facts are dead against him. For, granting that the creation of the present world was simultaneous, there is no question previous worlds had existed on this globe: they were furnished with life very different from ours. But it is far from true that there can be perceived any course of improvement from the “‘prentice hand” to the wonderful perfection ultimately displayed. The very reverse might be shown with much more plausibility.

The earliest of animals known till lately was a shell-fish called lingula prima. But it was not a poor helpless thing like the oyster. The Brachopods[sic], of which it was one, is the highest of mollusks, and after a wide prevalence in successive worlds is now almost extinct. The first reptiles that lived on this globe were not limbless snakes doomed to wriggle and crawl as they might, but mighty lizards before whom our creation would tremble. They walked, they swam, they flew. Birds to which the ostrich was but a chicken, have left their tracks in the sandstone. The elephant genus once traversed the snows of Siberia and Alaska; now it is reduced to two tender species in India and Africa. In short, it appears rather as if this globe had been spectator of successive interferences of creative power, as each organic form waxed old and ready to vanish away. And in each we love to trace, not the result of blind animal antagonism, but the mind of a Creator, a revelation of God to man. God grant that we read not the book of revelation in vain!–Zion’s Herald.

An expert in gems has lately called attention to a property in the diamond which has not hitherto been fully appreciated. Robert Boyle mentions a diamond that became phosphorescent simply by the heat of the hand, absorbed light on being held near a candle, and emitted light on being briskly rubbed. Observations by Mr. Kunz, the gem expert, confirm Boyle’s statement that diamonds become phosphorescent in the dark after exposure to sunlight or electric light by being rubbed on wood, cloth, or metal. This property is an important one, as it will help the non-expert to distinguish between the true diamond and other hard stones, as well as imitations, none of which is said to exhibit this phenomenon.