The Bloomfield times. [volume] (New Bloomfield, Pa.) 1867-187?, 1873-04-01
Gbe Gintes, Nem Bloomfield, 1)a.
Lost Occupations.

hVSb VOOupuuOhSs
Half century ago bellows-making was
thriving trade. Every house had its pair
of bellows, and in every well-furnished man.
sion there was pair hung by the side of
every fireplace. Ipswich, in Massachus-
etts, acquired quite notoriety all over
New England for the elegant and subtan-
tial articles of the kind it produced. But
as stoves and CRATES took the place of open
fire. places, and us coal was substituted for
wood, the demand for bellows diminished,
until the business as separate trade died
out
The same is true in flint-cutting. Flints
were once necessary, not only for fire.
arms but tinder-boxes, and tinder-box
was as necessary for every house as a grid
iron or skillet Every one who looks
back to childhood of forty odd years ago
must remember cold witer mornings when
the persistent crack, crack of the flint
against the steel sent up from the kitchen
an odor of igniting tinder and sulphur
which pervaded the house. have no more
idea what became of the fiint-producers
than the man of sorrowful memories who,
three or four times a week, called at our
door with birthstone matches for sale at a
cent the half-dozen punches. Both have
completely vanished from England and
New England as have the red Indians and
the Druids.
Then, again, are gone the pin-makers,
who, though they have been in their graves
this quarter of a century, still figure in
lectures and essays to illustrate the advan-
pin taking dozen men or more to cut,
grind, point, head, polish, and what not,
as it used to do, pins are now made by neat
little machines at the rate Of three hundred
a minute, of which machines single child
attends to half dozen.
Nail making at the forge is another lost
industry Time was, and that in this nine
teenth century, when every nail was made
on the anvil. Now, from one hundred to
one thousand nails per minute are made by
machines. The mailer who works at the
forge has but bad chance in competing
with antagonists and he would have no
chance at all were it not that his nails are
ten-fold tougher than the former. AS it is,
the poor men follow an all but hopeless
vocation, and are condemned to live in con-
tinual hand grips with poverty.
In the days of President Madison and
Monroe, and even later, straw-bonnet MAX
ing was practiced in every middle-class
house where there were grown families,
and straw plating formed the staple of do
mestic leisure work. AT my grand fathers,
around the huge kitchen fireplace, Caesar,
born slave, who sat ON an oak bench
directly under the gaping chimney, and we
boys, who crowded upon the settle, used to
pass Winters evenings splitting straws,
while the lassies were plating them. Then,
bonnest were bonnets, covering the head
with a margin of a foot or two to spare,
and presenting sort of conical, shell-shap-
ed recess, in which dimpling smiles and
witching curls nestled in comfort. The
work has banished, and will never reap
pear unless the whirligig of fashion should
glide again into the forsaken track.
EB" A certain doctor, who sometimes
drank good deal at dinner, was summon
ed one evening to see lady patient when
he was more than "half seas over,'
and conscious that he was so. On feeling
her pulse and finding himself unable tc
count its beats, he muttered, "Drunk by
Jover Next morning, reccollecting the
circumstances, he was greatly vexed, and
just as he was thinking what explanation
he should offer to the lady, letter was
put in his hand. "She too well knew, >
said the letter, "that he had discovered
the unfortunate condition in which she wat
| when he had visited her.v and She entrent