Connecticut western news., 1879-01-01
NOTES AND COMMENTS, f

illicit distilleries hourished and q wild eaters multiplied. The country is mountainous and rugged. The way to the stills is over tortuous roads and through winding paths thaE are seem ingly nothing but hog-runs through the wilderness. Over these roads and down steep declivities, almost impassable, itiis customary with distillers to5lead little shaggy mules, with which they are all provided, laden with corn ofaneat neces- sary for the manufacture of ' wild eat. 2 The apparatus is of the Fudest con struction. It consists of still n tub or two, and hollow log. The number of men engaged at each still is from two to SIX, or even eight or ten.} At present there are always informers to be ob- tained, but it was formerly far more diff fcult than now to discover illicit opera tions and arrest the operators. A year or So ago these aw-breakers had it all their own way. The whole surrounding country was in sympathy with the dis tiller. When revenue officers arrived, runners would hasten by short cuts, known only to the initiated, to the stills and give warning, while a so-called guide conducted the officers over longer paths around the mountain sides, giving the "wild-catters" Z" time 10 get away, and when the officers arrived they would find wrecked tub or two and a few smouldering embers, but not person save themselves within sight or any where near. E .ff
 A Richmond, Va., paper summing up the results of the bell-punch in whiskeyi saloons, says that the State during the year has derived an income of $83, ,669. IA over the old tax system. It adds This by no means comes up to public expectation. But candor re- quires that it should be said that the law has been poorly enforced, and that it is susceptible of many improvement Also, that the expenses of the second year will not be as great asthose of this year. A strong movement has been or ganized to secure the repeal of the Moi fet law. The dealers are willing to have their license taxes inereased until they will raise as much as the Moffet system now does. S Ef The Cincinnati newspapers report a love story with a very tragic ending. For more than year young law stu dent there has been paying attention to young lady whose parents at last looked upon him as an aspirant for her hand, and were quite willing to give their con- sent. The young persons, for some rea- son best known to themselves, while taking a drive last April, decided to go to a justice of the peace and get mar ried. During the following months they kept their marriage so we'll con- cealed that none of their friends eus- pected it, but last Tuesday they agreed that eoncealment was no longer neces- sary, and the husband informed his wife that. he would go to the justices office for the marriage certificate and would ! then claim her from her parents. He l left her in the best of spirits, but the hour for his return passed, and he did not come. At about midnight mes- senger arrived with the announcement that he was dead. In driving under a railroad bridge, a-passing train of cars frightened his horse, whicL ran away, and he was thrown out and killed. Se- cret marriages almost always have some unhappy ending, but few of them ter minate in So sad a fashion as this one.
 It was Oliver Wendell Holmes who years ago sang this refrain :F =A,s know two friends as much alike : ER As ever you saw two stumps;
 And no phrenologist could find
 l. szf A difference in their bumps. sS
 One took paper, and his life
 Was happier than a kings;
 His children all could read and write, And talk of men and things.
 The other took no paper, and, @
 aI .FfG While strolling through the wood,
 tree fell down upon his crown,
 -.-.. ,J And killed him-as it should.
 II Had he been reading of the newa, : At home, like neighbor Jim,
 I I'd bet tent this accident
 Had not befallcn him., .. +.~t,- l Go then and take the paper, nor pray delay, but go to-day, and my word heard i it is inferred, you'll live till you are gray ' As time goes on the history of the war; zcorrects. itself. General Jubal A Early gives the following account of tho fatal wounding of Stonewan Jackson He says :-s' Instead of riding to the front to reconnoitre the enemy and ther imprudently galloping back toward hi own line, General Jackson was slowly riding to the front, while making every effort to hurry forward the troops, whe1 he was fired on by portion of his owr men on the right (south) of the road, and obliquely from the rear, and then tho horses of his party that were not sho
 down wheeled to the left, and he gallope6 into the woods on the left to escape the fire, when he was fired upon by another body of troops on the north side of the ]. road.s It was by this last fire that Gen erat Jackson was wounded"
 "A Chicago theatrical manager wal lately interviewed on the subject o Sunday amusements in that city. H' said: ''My own and one other theatr, are the only two that do not give sucl performances. When companies bear ing respectable names indulge in thi' 1 practice, it is perhaps only question o time when we will have to follow suit
 or quit the business. hope to be savee the disgrace, but the outlook is no