Local goings-on from the May 4, 1879, edition of The Daily Astorian:

• Notice: My wife Elizabeth having left my bed and board, without cause or provocation, all persons are hereby notified that I will not be responsible for any debts of her contracting after this date. J. W. Fry.

• Industrious tinsmith Henry Sindlinger’s fastidious, well thought-out suicide by pistol was as puzzling as his solitary life. “As regular in his habits as clockwork,” and “scrupulously temperate,” he took “special pains to destroy any evidence of the whereabouts of his family and friends.

It seemed his only misstep in life was once creating a contraption to heat “a hundred gallons of water to make blood heat in one minute” for William Uhlenart’s Occident bath rooms … “but Mr. Uhlenart was not insured against an explosion.” 

• Some remarkable shooting à la William Tell, was indulged in at the Third Street Shooting Gallery in this city yesterday. A man by the name of John Reynolds … permitted John Gorman to shoot at the bowl of a pipe in his mouth. 

Gorman hit the pipe bowl with the cartridge, but it seems to us to have been a venturesome piece of business.