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New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 178, 25 August 1876, Page 15

Th? Dublin ' Freeman's Journal' says : "Two more conversions of Oxford clergymen are announced. They are those of the Rev Edmund S. Grindle, M.A., curate of St. Paul's, Brighton, and Rev. Frederick W. Willis, curate of Brooking, the late ricar of All Saints' Church, Wellingborough. Mr. Willis is the third clergyman who has been converted to the Catholic Church within the last week." Pottstown, Pa., can boast' of as great a curiosity, says the Philadelphia ' Press,' as nearly any town in the Union. We speak of the Ringing Rocks, that are situated three and a half miles northeast of Pottstown post-office. We started early in the morning, and walking through and gazing on as fine and picturesque scenery as can be found in this State, we came in sight of the rocks. A wilder looking place it is hard to imagine. On the rocks are advertisements and autographs of people from all parts of the country. There is an eating and refreshment stand close by for parties, etc. On striking the rocks with our hammer they sent forth as rich and delicate sounds as the finest music-box. By striking different rocks we could get sounds of every note of an octave, and it is certainly the oddest freak of nature we have ever seen. The rocks cover about one acre of ground, and are a perfect mass of confusion, being piled together as if they had been upheaved by an eruption. They are visited every summer by hundreds of people, and no doubt will be visited during the Centennial year by thousands. The New York ' Herald, 5 ia a recent number, thus describes some of the effects of the preaching of the revivalists : — " The powerful exhortations and zealous and fervid appeals of Messrs. Moody and Sankey have had an effect outside of evangelism that is not generally known in the community. The fact is that there has been since the beginning of the revivals at the Hippodrome an increase in the number of people who annually lose their reason from outward excitement or from some peculiar frenzy monomania that may take possession of them for a time, to the exclusion of all other ideas. At some of the up-town station houses it has been noticed within the last 30 days that, coming on to the hour of midnight, men, and in a few cases women, have been brought into the station house charged with drunkenness and disorderly conduct whose appearance would be an absolute denial of the charge. These respectable well dressed people were discharged, of course, as the station house calmed them instantly, and extricated them from their religious frenzy, which was the cause of their arrest and seeming drunkenness. Sensitively organised people are of delicate fibre, and their constitutions are easily overpowered by the tremendous appeals made nightly by Mr. Moody, and there have been many cases of religious mania, resulting from the revivals, within the last three weeks, but. in nearly every case the friends of the unfortunate subjects of religio-mania have hurried them out of sight, either to give them private or close family care, or to have them sent to one of the many private lunatic asylums of the State." A Detroit widow owns and occupies a cottage under the shadow of a church steeple which is supposed to be in danger of falling when a high •wind blows. At midnight, a few nights ago, when the wind blew fiercely, she got up and dressed, called the children up and then dressed them, and folded her arms, with the remark i " Wow, then, if that steeple falls and kills us, people will know that we were a respect* able family, anyhow. George you brush up your hair a little more, and Sarah you take your feet off tho stove-hearth, and pin your collar more to the left !"