Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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HOW NEW YORK SHOPS. $20,000,000 Pass Over the Great City’s Counters For Holiday Things. Some person with a love for large figures has said that in Christmas week $20,000,000 is handed over counters of this city as tribute to Santa Claus, says a New York correspondent. That sum may sound suspiciously great, and the statistician might be charged with the evil of exaggeration, but when it is remembered that gifts for 3,000, 000 of people are purchased here $20,- 000,000 do not seem too large for the total. An average of a trifle over $6 per person is large, or small, accord ing to the financial rank of the reader, and in New York it is particularly dif ficult to strike a fair average, because of the extremes of poverty and wealth. The Fiftli avenue millionaire gives his wife a $30,000 diamond necklace, while the father of the east side brings joy to the heart of the child of the tenements with a gaudily painted ten- cent toy. One Christmas, a half a dozen years ago, William K. Vander bilt gave his wife, now Mrs. Belmont, a pearl necklace that cost him $1,500,- 000 to gather the fifteen feet of stringed pearls together. That same Christmas vantages. Bo Christmas Eve is the great shopping time for the lower part of town and the East side. Vesey street is the Christmas Eve stamping ground of the old First and Fourth Warders. The people for the most part of this district esteem themselves lucky if they can spend $2, and as this sum has to supply the Christmas din ner, as well as to bring Santa Claus to an abnormally large family of children, sharp bargaining must be done. Push carts lino the streets from Broadway to the North River, and al most anything from heavy clothing, household furniture, kitchen utensils, to tiny gimcrack toys can be bought. Ten cents is the prevailing price for the average run of things, and at a squeeze this can be brought down to nine, or even eight cents. Grand street is the centre of the great East side. The Bowery boy buys the Bowery girl a ninety-nine- ceut diamond ring there, and she reciprocates by purchasing a seven- caret, sevouty-ninc-eent diamond stud. T.alPst Slyl of the Duchessi tor of Louis X the suburtovn tc ns within fifty miles of New York dipbeir shopping. In Hairdressing. The latest st] e of hairdressing, that d’Angonleme, daugh- and Marie Antoin- .,EW FORM OF CUIFFCRE. A Kemnrkable flat. The Cincinnati Zoo boasts a curiosity in the way of a white rat. It closeiy resembles a miniature white boar and has two long tusks growing out of the sides of the mouth and curving upward to fully twice the length of the head. The rat is not more than a week old. Its parents are the ordinary white rats, beloved of the small boy, as also are its brothers and sisters. Being in a cage,.somewhat removed from view, no one paid particular attention to the white rat family. When the little monstrosity was discovered he was nearly a week old. The keeper promptly removed him from the rest of tho family and is bringing him «p most carefully. When molested tha ettp which was the popular vogue in tha «*> lv part of th. century, when the bon-io duchesse was exiled to Eng- lam is having a revival in France. It that seldom have Parisian cle- ” encountered a fashion more dif- £5 to revive than this one. It is a “^Complicated method of hairdress- 5?*ut perhaps for this reason it is likeh t0 be more P 0 P nlar - In or<Jer to *VV , *>lish it it is necessary to dtaiw f. cco / r straight up from the nape of tfte n , .. /. i_ au~i the m bead, tie it firmly on the top of the id then arrange it so as to imi- » /* « * V. ^ f ■m Mi little thing grunts like a pig instead of making the noise common to its kind. Wedding Threads. In certain parts of China the young «vomen wear their hair in a long, single plait, with which is intertwined a strand of bright scarlet thread, which denotes them to bo marriageable. A law of the State of Massachusetts prohibits towns from offering more than $500 as a reward for the arrest and conviction of a murderer. Biggest Sweet Potato Grown. & m lU Hi M \Y SCIENTIFIC SCRAPS. The mild climate of the sonthern portion of Alaska is due to the J apa- nese current. After several years of trial, pulleys covrred with papier-mache are gain ing ki favor among British machinists. The tint of birds’ eggs, especially the light colors, are apt to fade, on exposure in museums to too great sun light. This is the case with tho green ish blue eggs, as those of the murre. By experiment the darker colored eggs of olive brown or chocolate hue have been found to undergo little change. Lord Kelvin estimates that the age of the earth, since it cooled suffi ciently to support life, is about 20,000,- 000 years within limits of error, per haps ranging between 15,000,000 and 30,000,000 years. Eminent geologists, in discussing these figures recently, say that they think the true age is nearer 60,000,000 or 100,000,000 years. The longevity of astronomers has often been noted. A French-compiler finds that Fontenelle lived to 100, Car- loine Herschel to 98, Cassini to 97, Sir Edward Sabine to 94, Moiran to 93. Santini and Sharpe to 91, Yates, Airy, Humboldt, Bobiuson and Long reached 90. The long list of those who lived to 80 includes Halley, Newton, Her schel, Kant and Roger Bacon. A Massachusetts man has patented an X-ray machine for examining jew els consisting of means of producing the rays, a support for the jewel opaque to light, but transparent to the Roentgen rays, a screen for con verting the rays into light after the passage through the jewel, a mirror for reflecting tho rays and eyepieces for examining the reflected image. Compressed air is used in place of the old-fashioned well sweep to raise water from a well, the bucket being hung on one end of a rope with a hol low air chamber and a number of weights at the opposite end. The air is pumped into the reservoir to raise the weights and lower the bucket, which is raised by exhausting the air and allowing the weights to fall to the bottom of the well. * A singular effect of a bee sting is told by an English astronomer. The sting was not painful, but in about fifteen minutes the face of the victim, a lady, became violently flushed, aud blainsor white blisters appeared all over the body, arms and legs, aud then, more curiously still, she developed a sharp attack of asthma. This yielded to home remedies, and the blisters turned VSi AS xcT Lv Jfl St fi) 4* ■'Av HOW NEW YORK SPENDS ITS MILLIONS FOR HOLIDAY GIFTS.’ more than one child fonnd delight in a nickel toy. Christmases back John £>. Rockefeller sent a check for $100,- 000 to the Fifty-seventh Street Baptist church as a holiday offering, and the same day the organ grinder 61 Mul berry Bead dropped a couple of cop pers iu the plate of tLe Italian church in Roosevelt street. So much for the extremes of Christ mas giving in Now York. Fully oue-half of the Christmas shopping is done the day and tho night before Christmas; notone-half financi ally, but numerically. The moderate ly poor, the poor aud the very jJoor must wait until the very last minute to get their small funds together for the great event. The money gift of tho employer to the bread winner of the family is made tho day before Christmas, and often times the extent of that gift determines the scope of the Christmas shopping for the family. Again if Christmas comes near the end of the week, as it does this year, many will get their week’s pay on Thursday night. Another potent reason for delaying the shopping to the last minute is that things are cheaper on Christmas Eve than earlier in the week. Toys and games and clothing have suffered from the rough handliug, there are rips and tears which, however, cau be easily sewed up; paint has been scraped off, parts of games lost and numerous -other mishaps have occurred, all of which induces the shop owner to make a material rcducation in his prices. Again, he does not want to carry a single piece of his Christmas stock over for a year, as he loses the nse of the monsy. So he is eager to mark things down to the real cost, or a trifle below, if needs be, to get rid of them. People who have to watch the pen nies we quick to recognize these ad- Women with seven or eight children fate bows, toddling along in open-mouthed won- from ear to der manage to get through the alarm- back from tl ing crush with their trancelike charges behind this in some remarkable way. A man with back and tie< a hobby horse on one shoulder, a vc- hair. The f| locipede in his baud, a Christmas tree parting. Tl nuder his arm, big dolls sticking out short curls l] of every pocket, a dozen packages held each side b; m some miraculous manner in the there may b[ other hand, stops and buys a five and left of t| pound box of candy for forty cents, stows it away somehow, and goes on as happy as the millionaireridingthrongh the Park in his victoria. | Tongh girls not above sneaking a roll of ribbon under their wraps, were it not for the hordes of detectives which fill tho stores of Grand street, buy to the limit of their purses, bnt buy sharply. “lam going to bay a bennie for Jimmie,” says one to her friend. “Say, mister,” to the floor walker, “where do I buy der bennie?” “Hey?” “Der bennie? What floor is youse selling them on?” “The bennie?” “Yes, yer hungry-looking guy, der bennie. Don’t yer spose I’so got de price? I want to buy a bennie like dis.” Hero she caught hold of a man wearing a blue overcoat and held tho coat for the others inspection. “Oh, a coat—on the fifth floor, front.” “What d’ye ti’nk of dat? De guy didn’t know what a bennie was. He must be new on Grand street.” Then they take the elevator and she tells the man to let her off “where dere sellin* de bennies.” Fourteenth street and Sixth avenue is where the biggest part of the city, a goodly section of Brooklyn, a Iwge part of Jersey and a big portion of all lere must be a parting but it must not be far ! forehead. All the hair vision must be brushed [together with the back jnt hair has a central fcre is an arrangement of [ought into a bunch at leans of a side comb, or J a group of coqnes to right le parting. These coques A Kansas farmer, John Graham, of Abilene, has grown a sweet potato which he says is the largest in tho . world. It is twenty-five inches in cir cumference and nine inches in length. It weighs nino and three-quarters pounds. WERE BORN IN 1815. Ladles Who Claim to Be the Oldest Liv ing Twins In the Country. The claim of the Newell brothers, of Missouri, that they are the oldest pair of twins in tne country, will not hold, according to a correspondent of tho Chicago Times-Herald. Mrs. H. H. Johnson, recently of Kankakee, III., and now of Omaha, Neb., and Mrs. David Noggle, of Janesville, Wis., are one month older. These ladies are the twin children—Polly M. and Anna M.—of Benjamin and Eunice Mosher Lewis, and were born at Bristol, N. Y., May 29,1815. They were the young est of fifteen children. The twins went to Milan, Ohio, when about seventeen, married there, and in 1837 Mrs. Noggle came to Wisconsin to li ve tho life of a pioneer. Mrs. Noggle is a woman of native ability and can tell many interesting tales of early life iu Wisconsin. She is the mother of i • •• * » * n- -~r ♦ J/ OLDEST LIVING TWINS. were originally called “comb curls,” becanee taey were not allowed to fall, but were stiffly arranged and held in place by imall combs or hairpins. seven children. The sisters are both in fall possession of their faculties women of sixty- and are as flva. active as lours. 1 " *’ w * ' - More than half the streets of Berlin already are lighted with the best kind of gas glowlight—perfectly white, and five times as powerful as the old flame. Aug. 1 11,483 out of tho 22,006 street lanterns were fitted up with the new light, and the remaining 10,523 lan terns are to follow during the next six months. This new light eftects a large saving to the city. In future but 10,- 000,000 cubic meters of gas will be needed, against 17,000,000 before, a saving of a big sum per annum, with fivefold the illuminating power. Various Kinds of Drug Habits. Since many kinds of medicine began to be put into tablet form it is much easier to fall into the habit of giving yourself continuous treatment. The soda mint habit is the most common of all. You will find men nowadays who buy their tablets in quantities, and crave them as the cigarette smoker craves a smoke. The strong pepper mint tablet is also in great demand. Then there are cloves and sharp sting ing “breath sweeteners”—allintended to calm a disordered stomach or have a biting and warming effect. ♦ A druggist told of one customer who maintained that he would die of dyspepsia were it not for the constant use of peppermint chewing gam. Others will have nothing but the spruce gum aud the old-fashioned “rubber” gum. Men and women who.would not take an alcoholic stimulant under any cir cumstances keep their small pocketf stuffed with roots and herbs. Tha calamus root or the “sweet flag” is tha favorite nibble with the herb victims, although the lovage root is more stim ulating. There is a gentian habit and a gin seng habit. It often happens that some astringent root or herb is used as a substitute for tobacco, with the result that the tobacco habit is cured but is succeeded by a craving for the cure. Kolafrti tablets and other prepara tions containing the kola nut have lately come into use. The kola nut is a stimulant and tonic,and as it is more powerful than most of the dried roots aud herbs, it is sure to be popular among the “fiends."—Chicago Record. — ^ — , Her Specialty. “She has a wonderfully forgiving nature,” said one young woman. “I offended her, unintentionally, and when I spoke to her about it she said she was perfectly willing to overlook the past.” “Yes,” replied Miss Cayenne. “That is a specialty of here.” “What?” “Overlooking the pest. She seys that she is only twenty-eight years of age.”—Washington Star. ifLf m,