St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1881-03-11
Our New York Letter.

NETIC CLUBBIST-CO-OPERAT COZ
FEE AND CLoTHEs-CREMArIo EX-
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS OF TELE-
GRAPH AFFAIRs-IRIsHMEN AND HoL-
LANDERs IN ALLIANCE-wHY JOHN
BULL Is GETTING TRoUNCED.
NEW YORK, March 1, 1881.
To the Editor of the CdledOnidn.
Well all the world and his wife have
HE'D to Washington to hurrah for the
new President and speed the parting
one. Still there are few people yet
left in New York, and dull as their do
ings may seem to be, as compared
with the festivities at the National
Capitol, your RADIX will do his little
possible to shed some light on them.
Among other peculiar products we
have lit ON a policeman who cures
headaches. The average boy in NUM-
cipal blue has been supposed to be
perfectly able to give headaches by
liberal exhibition of the locust on dis
orderly skulls, but Capt. Caffrey of the
LIST Precinct is a daisy magnetic physi-
clan. He laid his massive paw on the
fevered brow of reporter the other
day, and the grateful scribe records the
speedy exOrcion of the accusing fieud
which tormcnted him for indulging in
too much chicken salad the night be-
fore, and it seems the West street bro
kers, after heavy night at the Uptown
Exchange, which is fast driving the
quiet families away from the Windsor
Hotel, with the libatiOns accompanying
their frenzied buying and selling of ev-
cry conceivable kind of security OF
insecurity, go to Capt. Caffrey regular
ly to be cured. 1t is a strange story,
but it may be true.
AS the country is daily manifesting
signs of prosperity, certain constituent
members of it are beginning to grudge
living to some deserving fellow-citi-
zens, and are organizing cooperative
stores where Everybody is to get ev-
erything at half price, get reading
rooms and restaurants thrown in as iu-
ducements to chip in and divide any
thing short Of 500 per cent. profit on
the venture. If the treasurers don't
skip with the funds, it is possible one
may save few cents on the week s
groceries by travelling a few miles and
IdhluH INO Vi IuIct llucS Oh cars 10 yet
to the general store. Meantime the
great retailers will check the tendency
to cooperate by lowering their prices
and offering further attractions, and
between the upper and neither milestone
the small traffickers will come to grief.
| may be old-fashioned, hut think the
laborer is worthy of his hire, and in the
long run l think l get my moneys
worth with less trouble in the old way
of doing business. These cooperative
clothing and provision stores, under
the fostering care of Duchesses, and
other bigwigs, with whom it has been
a recent hobby, have been boosted up
to short-lived means in England lately;
but continued means here for such
schemes cannot be expected. They
are impractical, finical, fussy, and they
will fail.
Cremation is again getting good
deal talked about, and several officers
at the Navy Yard have been quoted as
taking active part in il revival of the
agitation for its general adoption. A
young German apparently so thorough
ly approved of their ideas that he de-
clined to wait till nature should have
prepared him as a fit subject, and pro-
ceeded to cremate himself alive. His
uncle a florist, had some extensive
greenhouses in Flatbush, not far from
Kings County Insane Asylum, and the
young fellow, who ought, one would
think, to have been placed in this lat
ter place, crawled into the furnace
which heated their houses. and shut
himself in to be reduced to ashes, after
leaving a written statement of his in
tentions. The pieces were buried, so
that the unfortunate experimenter
didn't get his own way, after all.
1t is nearly six weeks since the terri
BILE sleet storm broke down our tele-
graph system, and to this day the tele-
phone people have failed to get things
straight. They promptly sent in their
bills, however, for services they could
not possibly render, and in the majority
of cases have simply been laughed at.
They have been paid, however, by
some, and consider all gained i'll this
way as perfectly fair. They have not
resented the refusal to pay on the part
of their lessees with whom they didn't
fulfill their contracts, and quietly ac-
copied the loss, but they'll probably
make it up again by charging more in
the future, and SO welded to the use of
the telephone does every one become
who has once used it for any time that
if the rival companies can only lay
aside their differences and combine
against their customers they could
charge almost anything they liked, and
get it. Meanwhile the public has got
so disguised with the uusightly aud, as
it has proved, unreliable pole system
that much silent opposition to the re-
newal of the lofty wires is manifested.
Many business men have peremptOrily
refused to let the telegraph repairers
get on their roofs to mend and affix
wires, and in some cases where access
has been semi-burglarOusly obtained to
forbidden places from the summit of
adjacent property, the wires have mys-
teriously been cut and thrown down.
The end of it all will no doubt he the
early adoption of the European plan of
underground wires. l shall say nothing
now about the consolidation of the
telegraph companies or the fight of the
French cable people with them. These
are matters which deserve, and get,
special mention, and your readers have
undoubtedly been supplied with all the
newspaper notices they are likely to
crave on the subject.
/ met O'DOnovan Rosa the other
day. The Irish agitator looks as peace
able as Methodist clergyman after a
long circuit ride, as he toasts his shiDs
at a roasting fire, while his horse is
carefully stabbed and his inner man is
bountifully refreshed. He is probably
up to some mischief as usual, though he
is making less noise about it than some
others of his comrades, who are troub-
led just now apparently, with an i'm