Posted inTravelers' Tales

Outwitted the Orientals

An Experience With the Customs Officials at Kermanshah.

In eastern lands the collecting of customs dues is attended with perhaps more than ordinary fraud. In his book, “‘From Batum to Baghdad,” Mr. W. B. Harris has told his experience with the customs officers of Kermanshah. The incident had Its comical feature as well as its serious lesson:

Two hours later than I had Intended we made a start and, proceeding through the long tunnel-like bazaars, emerged from the town. Here fate had annoyance in store for me. At the local custom house the guards wanted to search as and make us pay duty on our scanty baggage.

Posted inDaily News Local Histories

Battle of the Amazons

Tragic Feats of a Heroine—A Female Pitched Battle—Sanguinary Results of Jealousy.

The Nashville Union of Saturday last tells the following extraordinary story:

One of the most sanguinary deeds growing out of jealousy, and one of the highest exhibitions of female courage we have seen any account of for many a day, occurred a few days since near the Last Tennessee line in the edge of North Carolina, bordering on Blount county. The account which we abbreviate from the several reports seems miraculous. The parties represented are creditable and respectable.

It appears that the wife of James Davenport became jealous of a young girl named Kate Jackson, represented as being quite handsome and lovable. Quarrels and contentions were fierce and frequent between the two ladies.

Posted inLocal Histories

Fall River Mill Owners Expected to Capitulate

Borden's Mill, Fall River

Call Conference for Monday, After Noticing Other Firms Increasing Wages.

Fall River, March 29. With the cotton manufacturers elsewhere falling Into line of wage advances set by the woolen mills the Fall River Cotton Manufacturers association today arranged a conference with the textile council on the wage question for next Monday. This action unexpected was accepted In the city generally as an indication of partial retreat by the mill owners from the position that they would shut down their plants rather than grant an increase.

Posted inDaily News

Witchcraft in New Jersey

The following report of a trial in West Jersey for witchcraft, is preserved in an Almanac published in the year 1807. The trial took place in Burlington county, in the 1730, a little more than a century ago, and as an incident of the “good old times” of which we often hear, has some interest for the modern reader. We find it in the Mount Holly Mirror.

Were there no other reason for promoting an increase of knowledge, it would be desirable for the sake of humanity only, to give such information as exhibits the singular ignorance of former ages and the improvements of succeeding generations. The following account taken from the Pennsylvania Gazette, of October 1730, is inserted to evince not only the absurdity, but the cruelty, of a superstitious error which about that period infected not merely the common people, but the expounders of law and dispensers of justice. We may now flatter ourselves that the terror of witchcraft is no more ; and that’a poor woman may be both old and ugly without being in danger of hanging for being too light in the water, or drowning for being too heavy:

Posted inDaily News

Two Wagons Hit by Streetcars

Young Man Injured in Accident on Hill; Horse Hurt in Second Street

Harry Bowers, aged 22 years, received severe lacerations of the head, when knocked from a wagon, which collided with a street car at Sixteenth and State streets this morning. Bowers was driving a double team for Lewis Stover, a trucker near Reservoir Park.

With Bowers was Clayton Fackler, another employee on the Stover farm. The wagon was en route east on the car tracks. Bowers started to turn his horses off the track when the car hit him.