R. T. Van Horn & Co., Publishers.*

Thursday, May 12, 1870.

     Spring was yesterday robed in her most beautiful garments, diffusing abroad peace and gladness; giving token of the coming golden summer days.

     Doctors Lankford and Forrest, delegates from this city to the National Medical Association, now in session at Washington, are seeing lively times among the doctors on the question of admitting colored physicians into the Esculapian Brotherhood.

     Mr. Frank Hudson, the genial business manager of the Journal, was out of town yesterday on a visit to Topeka to witness the match game of baseball between the Forrest City and Kaw Valley clubs.

     Everybody likes to have a good thing.  These warm days good ice cream is good.  A good place to get good ice cream is at Messrs. Long & Hoffmeister's Ice Cream Hall.  Good lemonade is good, too.  At Long & Hoffmeister's is a good place to get good lemonade (Journal style, with a slice of orange, remember!).  One of the most elegantly fitted up ice cream halls to be found anywhere is the one we have mentioned.  All in favor of said resolution say aye.  The "Journal" office -- editors, proprietors, foremen, compositors, pressmen, and office boys, all say aye, and join in the toast -- "Messrs. Long & Hoffmeister, may their shadows  never grow less, and the shadows of their customers constantly increase."

     The young ladies of Bellevue Seminary propose enjoying a merry picnic next week in Col. Steen's Grove.

     Near 12 o'clock last night the alarm of fire was given, and the flames appeared to the southward, bringing prominently in view the steeple of hte Christian Church; and arriving at the scene it was found the church itself was on fire.  A small frame building adjoining it, on the rear, and used as a Pastor's Library, was fired by some means and speedily consumed, and the fire communicated to the roof of the church.  Then, while the flames flared up from the roof in the hinder part of the church, from the steeple in front came forth the alarm "ding dong, ding, dong; save me, save me," of the church bell.  The flames and the bell called together a crowd of two or three hundred; of whom a dozen or so undertook to do something to save the church.  A ladder was procured, and a number of buckets; and from a cistern not far off water was brought to quench the flames.  Fortunately the night was very still.  Had there been even a slight breeze the destruction of the house would have been certain.  But, as it was, the few men engaged in the work, with their feeble appliances, soon extinguished the fire.  One of the men on the roof lost his foothold, and commenced slipping towards the edge.  He let go his bucket of water, and managed to save himself by catching hold of a chimney, and so the surgeon lost a job.  It is believed that the fire was the work of an incendiary.  The loss was not over $100 or $200.