Michigan Affairs

S y. Braalora raiseu a large-waistea squash at Bentou Harbor which weighs 111 pounds and mensures six and one-half feet in circumfereuce. Tbe Fenton ladies band is booked for a tootiug tour of 3,ü00 miles in the southern states, beginning Oct. 17. The small boy and the 3-cent bounty aren't the only eneniies with which the sparrow bas to contend. Quails are said to be an invetérate foe of the English birds, and as the forrner are unusually ftbundaut just now the foreign intruder ia baving an especiaily hard time of it. The Cincinnati, Jaokson and Mackinac railway has been sold in two sections, under foreclosiire proceedings at Toledo, for tbe toial sum of $3,967,270. Mrs, .Tennie Sullivan is an Almont lady ,of 15 Octobers, who, after a long matrimonial experience of two months, is suing for divorce credentials. Strawberry blossoms and ripe raspberries of the second erop for the season are reported by J. C. Miller a Charlevoix gardener. Jackson is to have a football contest on November 7, in which a wbole raft of the state uuiversity kiokers are expected to particípate. An employé of the Jackson prison kitchen has been engaged in slicing bread for the prisoners for the past nine years, and estimates that the loaves he has carved in tbat time would make a wall 4 feet wide, 4 feet high, and 4 miles in length. Jackson's public schools have an attendance of 1,732 pupils. Counterfeit currency of the ?5 size is .circulating in some sections of the upper ■península. The Howell lad who cleaned his vest with gasoline and then lighted a match to see if he'd done a good job with the illuminator, is now caring for a lot of first-class burns. Miss Huldah Bates, who died recently at Gqodrich, nged 94 years. is thought to have been the oldest maiden lady in the state. The Cheboygan River Boom company has handled 56,000,000 feet of timber this season, which includes cedar ties, cedar paving posts, telegraph poles. and logs for umber. Six soldiers, stationed at Mackiuac island, have been arrested on suspicion of having plundered the cottages of resorters of their eontents. The proposition of the Grand Rapids furniture manufacturers to furnish the Michigan building at the Chicago World's faij, has been accepted by the state fair commission. The superintendent of the St. Ignace high school harvested a white deer recently, which he will have mounted by a Bay City taxidermist. There's an opening for a parson of the Congregational variety at Union City. A good salary will be paid to a man who 3UÍtS. Kev. E. H. Day, a Lawton parson, grew a pumpkin vine in his garden which measured 1,860 feet in length, decorated with sixteen goodly sized pumpkins. It required 320,000 baskets in which to market the grape erop of Lawton and vicinity. Port Huron is the home of a dude who has an eye to business. He recently accompauied eight young ladies to a local restaurant and ordered nine spoons and a single dish of ice cream. Boston capitalists propose to build a bad smelling tannery at Cheboygau, provided they can be assured of the necessary supply of tan bark for a term of years. The sexton of the Birmingham cemetery believes in distinetions with a diliernce, and only mows grass from those lots upon which the annual due9 have been paid. Port Huron has a new dry doek which holds 4,350,000 gallons of water, and yet the pumping arrangements are such that it can be made dry in an hour and a half. Grand Rapids has a gentleman who thinks that it will be no great task to keep a record of those who attend the weekly prayer meeting of his church, and is going to try the experiment that he may know just who constitute the faithful. James Lake grew 20,000 heads of cabbage in his garden at Stanton this year, and good solid hpads they are, some of them containing sixteen pounds eaeh of sauer kraut material. Competition among the three stage lines from Alpena to Hillman is so keen that one of 'em offers a ride and dinner free as an induceinent for patronage. Free cigars will probab'ly soon be added. Cassapolis has voted to bond itself for $10,000 worth of water works, and Mancelona will sail in half that value of th,e same artiole. Mrs. J. J. Bowerfield of Adrián, whose husband was one of the unfortunate mail clerks killed in the Kipton disaster, has settled with the Lake Shore Kailway company for the sum of $7,500. Rentable houses are so scarce at Byron that a local parson was obliged to live in the church basement for a time, until better quarters could be secured. The pine forests of Luce county are to laid low the coming winter to the extent of 100,000,000 feet. Talk of organizing a humane society at Muskegon. Surely there's an ampie field for its operations. Mra. Polly Goodwill, a lady of 86 summeas, feil down a flight of Hudson stairs, resulting in her death. Scarlet fever is so prevalent at Chesaning that the large schools have temporarily gone out of commission. Carson City kids are given to profane language; at least some of 'em are, and those who attend school are required to luemorize a Bible verse every time they audibly let go a cuss word. The enforcetnent of this novel rule makes some of the boys hustle to keep the record even. Iuhaling gasoline vapor may indícate a queer make-up, but a Belding cbild is so fond of the fumes that it was found insensible beside the family gasoline can, requiring the best endeavors of a physician for twenty minutes to restore it to consciousness. A. E. Preston, the fellow who worked the bogus express racket at Kalamazoo and other towns in the state, goes into retirement at Jackson prison for the period of two and one-half years. Muskegon has commenced the erection of her proposed soldiers' monument. After flguring the njatter over very carefully aeveral times, the state authorities at LanBing are fully convinced that the Michigan wbeat erop lor the year ol grace, 1891, measured up 30,412,730 bushels Í -ai uiore, no less. A Grand Rapids married woman, white, ! has developed a peculiar form of color blindness, as showu by her eloping with a ; colored man. The Ka'.amazoo postoffice clerks have a frantic time occasioually in sorting out the Smith mail aud getting it tothe right parties, as there are fifty-eight Smitbs who get their letters at that office. The Cadillac farmer who grew a i moth potato, weighing four pounds and teu ounces, has sold the overweight tuber for $1 to a curiosity hunter. C. H. Hackley, Muskegon's millionaire philanthropist, has been presented with a gold key tq the Hackley library building, which was donated to the city by himself. Thomas Roney, who died at Fremout recently at the age of 1U9, was an invetérate smoker for ninety years and but for this nnfortunate habit he might have lived to a good oíd age. Barry county people are agitating the question of building a new court house and jail at Hastings, acd the scheme may soon be submitted to a vote of the taxpayers. Average age of inmates of the state prisons of this commonwealth is 33 and the reformitories 13 years. Michigan's charitable reformatory and penal institutions are valuud at $5,183,284.73, while the cost of running them the past year was ál. 452,477.58. The inmates were divided as folio ws: Keformatories, 1,320; schools, 1,860; prisons, 2,703; a8ylums, 3,797; total number of people cared for by the statp, 9,680. Alpena's new mineral well is said to be surcharged with a triple plated odor that is not excelled by auy other brand of mineral water in the country. Bay City will soon add a chickory mili to her infant industries for the purpose of turning out Ainerican grown cofïee with a foreign odor. Three Jackson kids, the eldest of whom had seen but 6 summers, have been arrested for burglarizing a store of candy, cigars and tobáceo.