Gossip Of The Day

Dr. Linderman, Director of tlio United States Mint, estiroates the gold and silver production of the country next year at one hundred mülions of dollars. Mks. Abraham Lincoln, who is now staying with her sister in Spriugflekl, 111. , takes occasional short jralks on the streets, and is said to be gradually recovering from lier mental malady. John Makning, the well-known New York advcitising agent, has failted. Among his creditors aro a largo nnmber of Westem newspapers. The Chicago Tribune loses $1,170 by tho failure, and the Times $456. The famous diaraonda presentod to Minnie Sherman Fitch by the Khedive of Egypt remain in the New York Custoin-House. Mrs. Fitch says it would be altogether too dangerotis to remove them while burglars are, no doubt, on the qui vive to capture hem. Prof. Tice, the great weather prophet of St. Louis, had a narrow escape from death at Washington, last -week. Ho was taken with inflammation of the lungs from exposure in saviug a lifo in tho North rivor, and took too large a dose of an opiate to relieve pain. The physicians at one time despaired of saving him. Heee ia a warning to hot-tempered poople to place a curb on their angry passions. A Mr. Drury, of Oberlin, Ohio, got into a wrangle with a couple of mischievous boys, and during the quarrel feil dead in his tracks. Tho Coroner's jury rendered a verdict that he died from the effects of excitement and passion produccd by the altercation. Gbn. John Morgan, who has been living at the Upper Cascades, in Oregon, since tli e v,-ar, died there in September, under the alia-i of John Pendleton. The latter was the name of his mother, who lived in Oregon, and thither he escaped aftcr being wounded - not killed - in Tennessee, so long ago. Tliis is a recent newspaper report. Believe it? Db. Beabd, the Euglish physician, has taken the trouble to show that brains are conducive to longevity. Intellectual force, he says, is bnt a forra of vital forcé. The Doctor did not say, because it was unnecessary, that good moráis are even more conducive to long lifo than braina ; and that the people without brains frequently have a large supply of moráis. No One is expected to doubt the following o'er-true talo, reported by the New York World : " A Brooldyn weman was badly frightened by a cat some months previous to the birth of her child. Tliat child proved to be a girl, and is now 18 yeara of age and married. D uring her girJhood she gave no evidence of being affected by her mother's friglit, excepting, indeed, a propensity to chase mice and oecaaionally to sit on the backyard fence and yowl a little on moonlight nights ; but, strange torelate, since the birth of her own baby sho always lifts it out of its crib by the back of its neck wüh herteeth." L. D. Sine is a name familiar to newspaper readers in the West as the proprietor of a gift enterprise in Cincinnati, and as an extensivo advertiser of bis sábeme. We read in the Cincinnati Enqxiirer that he has bccome a hopeless imbecile, and has had a guardián apiminted to look after his property, whiloh amounts to several hundred thouaand dollars: Sine's history is a very remarkable one. He lost his sight througli an explosión of gunpowder while a printer in the Cincinnati Gazctte office. He was carefully nursed through ihe suffeiings which followed at his boarding-house by ayonnglady who subsequently became his wife. Affer that he sold cigars and other things to printers, and, being largcly patronized through fraternal sympathy, obtained a start in life which he raado 1he most of, being to-dav a wealthy man. Vmt now to his physical blindness hsw boen addcd a mental darkuoss that makes the old man truly an object of sympatliy. TnE Singer will case makes a cmïous rovelation of domeslic marmers. It lifts tho roof on a harem. Mr. Iaaau M. Singer, tlie colebrated sewing-ir.achine niillionnire, k-ft 13,000,000 and twentysix children- two having died- by fiVe different women. He got divorced from two of fcbem and was not ïnarried to the one whom he left tho largest portion of his property, though he publicly acknowledged her as his wife. The striking thing about the will is that he acknowledges all his iliegitimate childron, calis them all by name, and makes provisión for all ;f them. There is no shirking of responsibility, no mealy-mouthed subterfnge, no polite prevarication, bnt an honest confession of relations which most men would have shrunk from acknowledging before folks. Yet this modern polygamist was not only a auccesfiful inventor and business man, but a ehurch-goer and exemplary Cln-istian so far as the world knew. Charles Keade, in one of his novéis, revealed to the outside world the horrors of the "separate and silent pystem " of treatment iu vogue in many of tho Engli.yh prisous a few years ago. It may not be generally known t'-at the same inhuman scènes so graphically dcpicted by Bcade are beiiig enacted in some of the penal estiblislimentsof thiscountiy. In (be Auburn (N. Y.) Penitentiary, foii'.istance, the dai-k-cell treatment is in full blaat, and, judging from an account of tho mode iu widch it is ap'plied, wliich wc flnd in au Extern paper, it is not a whit less temWe Md inhuman than that which Ihe English novelist feit called upon to exposé and denounce so veheinently in his own country. In the Auburu pnson the dark cell is literally a living tomb, being a stone box three feet widc, six feet loog and eix feet high. The Hoor is formcd of a eiugle stone slab, the ceiling of a slab, and the walls of solid mascmry. There are to doors, witb no openings. A gilí of water and four ounces of bread form the allowance lor twenly-iour hoon. Such a horrible mode of treatment may be imagined, and we are not astonished at the statement that the reporta of (he prison ehow that more Üian one-half of the iusane cases at Auburn havo rosnltod from sucli puiiishment. Senatob Hamlin, of Maine, is goiug to do the best he can toward escaping from the odium lio lias suflbred ever since that amendment of liis to the postal law was passcd which doublcs the rates of postage npon transient newspapers. It is already onnonnoeti that he will take an early opportunity Lu the Senate to explaiu ibis connectiou with the matter, and will insist that he has been greatly misrepresented. Tho way of it was this : The express coinpanies were lobbying to got tbe laws amended so that paekages weighing as much as four pounds could not longer be carried iu the mails, on tho pleas that the mails were overburdened with that class of matter, and that the government was carrying it at a loss. The department showed that the former claim was not true, but could not deny that the latter objection was well fomided, nnd so pi-oposed to cheekmate the express companies by not roduoiiig the limit of weight, but doubling the rates of postago ou such paekages, and " tlirough an inadvertance," for which Mr. Ilamlin claims that he was not responsible, the ehiinge was mado to apply to newspapers as well. It is announced, by the way, that the doubling of rates on paekages has not decroased their number, wldle it has largely increased tho revenue, and the postage on newspapers will probably be put back to the oíd figures by the next Oongress.