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About Southwest Oregon recorder. (Denmark, Curry County, Or.) 188?-18?? | View Entire Issue (Oct. 7, 1884)
THE TKAMP'S NIGHT REFUGE. One of the Strange Sights of Gotham A Peculiar Place on Chatham Square. Detective Gilbert Carr turned the corner of Pearl and Chatham streets promptly at midnight, and shaking hands with the News reporter, said: "I'm not much behind time, anyhow. Where we are going you will eee a number of people whose f aces you may know from meeting them in the street, but you will see them as they really are." The detective stopped in front of a saloon in Chatham square and said ; This is the tramps' night refuge." It was a two-story frame building, and a coarse ly painted sign proclaimed it to be a hotel. Show cards in the windows an nounced hot free lunch and all hot drinks for six cents. "Just keep close to yourself," said Detective Carr, as he opened the door and stepped inside. A low-sized man with a heavy brown mustache behind the bar, a big kettle of beef stew boil ing away on the stove, and about twen ty tables at which nearly one hundred men were congregated. They were of all classes and conditions. Occasional ly one would call for a drink' and help himself to a plateful of the appetizing though not aristocratic stew with a listlessly mechanical air that would seem to indicate that he was conferring a favor instead of receiving one. Hav ing drank and eaten, he sank into a chair and looked steadily at the floor. Once in awhile he ventured to raise his head, but did so in a dazed, uncer tain way, a3 if afraid or ashamed to be seen. "You see that old man at the second table," said Detective Carr, "who i3 talking about stars and planets and suchlike? His face i3 familiar, isn't it? "Well, in years gone by, he was known all over the city as 'the tele scope man,' and had his stand in the square. He was as big a skin as there was in the business, and swindled many a man. He has no telescope now, but peddles pencils. "You see that man with the black mustache and dark eyes, who sells songs on Broadway? Six years ago he was in business in 3d avenue, and was worth from $10,000 to $20,000. He met with domestic troubles, and here he is. He may come to the front again; but I doubt it, for once a man comes here, it is rarely he quits until he is carried out, feet foremost "Over in the corner there, is the old East Indian sailor, who for years has solicited charity on New Chambers and South streets. Look at that chest and neck. What a powerful man he was when perfect Unfortunately, he shipped on an arctic whaler, was frost bitten and lost his legs. Still old Ram sur is no slouch to-day, and it takes four policemen to bring him in. "If you want to see an inventor who is always flat broke, there is one ready made for you that man with the keen blue eyes and gray hair, who is stand ing by the store. You see him during the day selling needle-threaders on Broadway. He has invented several machines which ought to have brought him a fortune, but others have reaped J the benefit of his brains. He is not the only man of brains here. There is a minister in that second chair and a journalist arguing with him. The man with the crisp black hair and bloate4 face, who is smoking that dir ty clay pipe, is one of the best engi- neersin the land, and the fellow asleep who looks as if he wanted to break his neck over the back of his chair, is a lawyer, and a smart one, too. How do they drift here, did you say ? I will tell you. Bum." By this time the lights had been lowered, and they, stretching them selve on chairs and tables, entered in to rest. Some removed their hats and boots, which they placed under their heads for safety. Others were not so careful and braved adverse fortune without a frown; one young man re marking: "WelL any feller what nails my kicks won't have much." So they slept undisturbed until six o'clock when the bar-tender beats the reveille on the tables with a huge cane. Ten minutes after, the. motley gathering had completely disappeared. They had washed themselves, stepped into the street and had been swallowed up by .the pulsing tide of the great city. Of the 2,500,000 packages of seed distributed by the United States agri. cultural department during last year more than 2,000,000 were furnished to .congressmen. HOLDING FAST TO LIFE. Experiences of a Fisherman with Crea tures that are blow to Die. "Yon will hardly credit it," said a Staten Island fisherman whom a New York Sun re'porter talked with, "but the head of a turtle will retain a very marked interest in existence long af ter its body has been served up in soup and steaks. I believe it is a well known fact, but I only discovered it six months ago. I found a friend en gaged in shelling a . small turtle, '.Now,' he said, putting the head on the dresser, 'that will be alive and active to-morrow morning.' ' Of course I laughed at him, but I agreed to call the next day and test his prophecy. Next morning my friend asked me to step into the kitchen. The head was still on the dresser, and though it had been separated from the body for at least sixteen hours, the eyes were wide open and bright 'Take care exclaim ed my friend, as I put my finger near the mouth. His warning came not a second too soon. The head of that turtle absolutely jumped at me. Where its motive power came from I cannot explain, but it moved two inches to ward me, and snapped at my finger with a viciousness that could not be surpassed by a cornered rat. I think it had been holding back its life, as men of strong will power, for. fixed purposes, have been known to do, un til an opportunity offered to revenge the destruction of its body, for after it had made the effort its eyes grew fixed and filmy, and in an hour it was dead. Next to the turtle in obstinate persis tence in living must come the eeL In recognizing the extraordinary length of time through which an eel clings to its being under the most unfavorable condition of all the removal of it from the water, a state of affairs suffi cient in itself to produce death. "I do not believe that cutting an eel's head off or severing the tail the same way shortens his life much. He dies because he is out of his element, and had he been left unmutilated he would live but little longer. Of course, if you put him in sections on the fry ing pan, you place upon him a burden greater than he can bear, and he dies quickly; but the lesser injuries, affect ing only the tail, head, or skin, seem to me to make but little impression. The fact is,an eel can live an extraordina rily long time out of water. They hab itually leave of their own accord and wander in the fields that slope down to a creek not far from here. I have often met in the early morning eels making their way down to the creek. They had spent the night in the mead ows in search of worms and were go ing back. Whether an eel or any oth er fish is capable of feeling acute pain I cannot say. This I can vouch for: When an eel has been skinned and be headed, and seems to be quite dead, a little salt rubbed on the surface of the body will be apt to restore life very quickly. A snake dies quickly under injuries. The average snake will not live three minutes after his head is crushed with a stick. The eye of the wild bird remains bright for some time after you have shot it and is likely to cause a tender-hearted sportsman on his first gunning expedition a good deal of self-reproach. "I do not know whether at any time clams have any self-assertive existence but that, in captivity, the clam i3 able to make himself excessively disagreea ble I have had occasion to know. Not long ago I brought home a big basket of clams. I placed them in- a dish pail, and left themjin the kitchen. In the middle of the night my wife arous ed me, saying that there were robbers in the house. AVith a pistol in my hand I wandered fromroom to room. I could hear a most extraordinary groaning and grunting, with an occa sional watery gasp, but, for the life of me I could not imagine where it came from. At last I went into the kitchen and the mystery was solved. Each clam, with his shell wide open, was making almost as much noise as a bullfrog in full Yigor. I filled the pan with fresh water, which brought eith er contentment or death; that is to say, it quieted them. Correct. Class in metaphysics. Teacher: "When has a man the most confidence in himself?" Sensible fellow "When he wants to buy something on credit" Teacher "And when the least?" Sensible fellow "When the bill is 'presented." A Bazaar In India. The immense number of stalls for sweetmeats is among the most strik ing peculiarities of a native bazaar. The consumption thereof must be tremendous, to say nothing of the quantity of sugar-cane which old and young seem to munch whenever they are not chewing betel. And yet the beauty of their teeth is by no means in accordance with our theories of the disadvantage of such dainties. Every mouth alike displays row3 ' of such dazzling iyory as put most Europeans to shame the latter too often remind ing us of that Northumbrian farmer who went to "canny Newcastle" to in vest in a set of false teeth, and re turned with a complete set of box wood, which, as he justly remarked, were only half and price "mair the col or of the auld anes." Perhaps respect ful insolence could hardly have devis ed a more cutting remark than that of a bearer, who, when his master had thoroughly lost his temper, observed with low salaam, and quite in accord ance with his duty as valet, that he thought master had forgotten to brush his teeth that morning! As to the na tives, they are forever brushing theirs, or rather polishing them with a soft, flat stick about the width of your lin ger. As you pass through a native town in the early morning, it seems as if the whole population had turned out of their houses to perform this part of their toilet in public, and such an amount of scraping and polishing goes on that you marvel how any enamel is left Nor is this the only part of the morning adornment that occurs in public The bath is either at the river or the open tank, but promiscuous washing goes on in the streets at all hours and seasons, as does also the work of the barber, who reduces the fine, silky black hair to a very small top-knot This is the only moment when the lower caste Hindus are ever seen bare-headed. If, there fore, you care to mark the strange di versity of cranial development between the elongated high skulls of the upper castes and the low type common to the serfs, or low castes, (in other words, the descendants of the Aryans and those of the aboriginal races of In dia), the barber's hour will give you ample opportunity for study. In short but for this little celestial, top knot you might imagine, as you glance at a group, of those shining skulls, that you had got into a colony of the hair less men of Australia; that curiou3 tribe of aborigines known as the Bald Men of the Finders and Albert rivers, who literally are destitute of any ves tige of hair, and go through life from their birth to their grave as bald as a billiard balL Certainiy mother nature would have saved the Hindus a great deal of trouble if she had created them with the same deficiency. Next comes the painting of those curious lines and marks on the face, denoting caste and otherwise symbolical. Some have three white lines, others perpendicular stripes; a small horizontal line on the forehead denotes having bathed, in fact, being ready for society. Other marks show at whose shrine worship ha3 been offered; the trident, for in stance, denoting the worshipers of Sisa. London Drinking Palaces; Strolling through the streets of Lon don one cannot but be struck with the number and prominent character f the public houses. The last few years have witnessed a great many changes in the general appearance and con struction of London public houses; and these changes have not invariably been in the direction which ardent teetotalers would desire. Instead of diminishing in number and growing more modest in appearance, these places for the retailing of spirituous liquors have put on naw and attractive faces. , All the changes are in the way of glare and glitter. You have to travel a long way now in London, at any rate to find an old-fashioned, low. roofed, straggling hostelry. This class of house is being steadily "improved" off the face of the earth, and the few tap-room lingerers of the old sort who still survive don't take kindly . to the meretricious attractions of the new style public house. The old fire-places and bar-rooms of yore are things of the past; while great glaring facades and more or less tawdrily-decorated modern rooms have taken their place. The old-fashioned consumer of f ourpenny half-and-half is almost frightened at the magnificence of the pier glasses and candelabra which the modem Boniface considers essential to his commercial success. It Overcame Mm. Before the Hale and Norcross fight came on this is tradition, almost there arrived in town a dissipated miner who had worked in the mine. He was pretty badly down, apparently, but he went into a broker's office, and, after being told to get cut as a tramp, he said he thought a good deal of Hale and Norcross and wanted to invest a trifling sum in it Two feet at $175, were bought for him, and he gave the certificate to the broker, saying that he was going down to Mexico prospecting, and he would like to leave it behind to be dealt with a3 the broker saw fit. He was not heard of for months. Hale and Norcross was up to $12,000 a foot One morning the broker found the dilapidated miner on his doofstep when he came down to business. The miner rose and said: "Well, I'm here. I thought I'd come and see you. I s'pose there ain't nothing left o' that Hale and Norcross. I guess you must 'a sold it out, but I'm down an' I ain't got a cent May be you'd lend me four bits to get a bit of breakfast?" The broker looked at him and gave him $5 to go and get a bath and a breakfast, and presently he returned. "Sit down and wait a minute. I'll make up your account presently." He left the dilapidated man on the edge of a chair. He came back with a check and sent his clerk down to the bank. The clerk returned with a big bag of gold. The poor chap watched the proceedings with a miserable in difference. The gold was stacked upon the counter. . "Look here. I've sold your two feet of Hale and Norcross for $25,000, and here's your money," The miner fell on the floor and cried like a baby. He could not read or write and had no idea what the mar ket was. He sent a draft of $2000 to his mother. The broker bought for him $20,000 worth of registered bonds, and gave him $2400 in coin, which he spent in three days. Two bunco men brought him in drunk and tried to get his bonds, but the broker drove them out, ?nd when the man got sober he came and had the bonds sewed into his clothes and was dispatched east. He has never been heard of since. The Sarest Tart or a Car. Four men half hidden in the smoke cloud of a smoking box of a sleeping car on the Hudson Eiver railroad, spent an hour discussing which part of a car was the safest to ride in. They finally agreed to leave it to the conduc tor. "Middle of middle car, right hand side," said that personage when asked The rapidity with which he spoke and the mechanical manner in which he made the reply, led one of them to halt him as he was passing on and ask him to explain himself. "Well," said he, "everybody asks me that question, and I am so used to an swering it that I've got it dowe to the fewest words possible. I shouldn't wonder if you were to ask me that when I'm asleep if I would answer it without waking up. The middle car of the train is the safest, because it is the furthest removed from a collision either in front or behind. Even if an engine plunged into an cpen draw bridge, it might not take more than a car or two with it Couplings would be likely to break, you know. Always sit in the middle of a car, because when cars telescope they are not apt o telescope many feet As you can't tell whidh end will telescope, and as both may, take to the middle. What ever car you go in sit on the right hand side of the bar, which is to say, the side farthest from the other track, because it sometimes happens that freight projects too far beyond a flat car and rips the windows out of pass ing trains." "Do railroad men observe all these precautions when they ride?" "They take no precautions at all. Those that I have mentioned are sensi ble, but you can't always sit where you like, and there are plenty of peo ple unlucky enough to be killed wher ever they sit. Railroad men never consider the possibility of accidents. They could not be railroad men if they did." Prof. Huxley says that in his voyage around the world, and in all his studies of savage life, he found no people so miserable, wretched and degraded .as those who exist in he poorer quarters of London. Ills Rival; "All i3 over then, Henry?" There was a world of anguish in the tremulous tones of the beautiful young girl as she uttered these worus. "All is over, MehitabeL" the youth replied in determined tones, as he . brushed the dust from the elbow which he had been leaning on the mantel piece. "All i3 over," he repeated, but a3 he gave utterance to this cruel de cision a spasm passed across his faceV and his eye-lids quivered with the emo-x- tion, which, man-like, he strove to con ceal. She drew a deep, tremulous sigh, and the rosy lips quivered, and two pearly tears trembled on the long, silken lashes. "You will have no divided affection ? she said. "I will have no divided affection," he replied, and there was no mistaking the firm, determined expression in his tones, and in the compressed lips and cloud-ruffled brow; "J must have your whole heart or nothing." "But he is so cunning, and he gives so little trouble." "It matters not He is a rival who disputes with me the sovereignty of your affections. I will tolerate no rival," and he drew himselt up proudly The beautiful girl threw herself into her lover's arms. "IIenry,"she cried, "he shall go. I am wholly yours. I'm not going to lose a husband for a miserable little pug dog." Henry strained her to his heart and calm, " smiling, white-winged, sunny eyed Peace contemplated the scene and dropped a tear upon the pug dog that blotted him out forever. It is from scenes like this that our country's glory springs. Tne Talue of Lemons. Most people know the benefit of lem onade before breakfast, but few know that it is more than doubled by taking another at night also. The way to get the better of the biliou3 system with out blue pills or quinine is to take the juice of one, two or three lemons, as appetite craves, in as much ice water as makes it pleasant to drink without sugar, before going to bed. In the morning; on rising, take Ihe juice of one lemon in. a goblet of water. This will clear the system of humor and bile with efficiency without any of the weakening effect of calomeL or. con gress water. People should not irri tate the stomach by eating lemons clear, the powerful acid of the juice, which is always most corrosive, inva- riably produces inflammation aftet) awhile, but properly diluted so that it does not burn or draw the throat, jt does its medical work without harnP and, when the stomach is clear of food, has abundant opportunity to work over the system thoroughly. A Musical Prodigry. Among the students of the piano now at the Paris conservatoire is num bered an American prodigy of such tender years that the personal inter vention of Ambroise Thomas was nec essary in order to obtain the gifted child's admission. Ernest Schelling, the prodigy in question, is only eight years and some months old. As the rules of the conservatoire admit no pupils under nine years of age, a spec ial relaxation of the laws was granted in view of the exceptional talent of the young pianist He has played in public ever since he was four years old, and during the past season he played at a charitable matinee in Par is, his fellow-performers being Mme. Sarah Bernhardt, Mile. Lureau, of the Grand Opera, and others' of equal prominence. Got, the actor, being recently in a small town in the south ' of France, volunteered for a benefit for the poor His name drew crowds. The mayor turned over in his prosy and pompous mind what he could do in acknowledg ment He invited the actor to a com plimentary breakfast, and placed before hitn an egg in which ten golden louis were concealed. Got took a spoonful, and discovering the contents, ceased eating. The other guests, who were in the secret, watched him attentively, and the hostess inquired why he did not finish the egg. "Madame," he replied, "I never touch the yelk." "Do you throw it away?" she asked with astonishment "No, I always leave it . for the poor." To know how to wait is the great I secret of success.