St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1881-01-21
Our New York Letter.

AOVEMENTS-O1STER BECOMING As
PEARLS OF PRICE-wIND AND WAVE
SWEPT WASTES OF THE HOME OF THE
CLAM-sooTHING SOUNDS FOR STORM
TOSSED sEAMEN-FoRTUNEs AND MIS-
FORTUNES OF MIGHTY MILLIoNAIREs
EPIDEMIC OF HEMPEN CRAvATs-
RHEUMATIC vAGARIEs OF SOME VERY
OLD FRIENDS.
NEW YORK, Jan. IA, 1881.
To the Editor of the CdledOnidn
One of the most cheerful conventions
held of late-like Falstaff, cheerful in
itself and the source of mirth in others
was the first annual meeting of asso-
ciated undertakes. These honest
ghouls have felt aggrieved, it seems,
by the piratical inroads on their earn
ings of lively stable keepers, church
sections and confederate wholesale deal
ers in millinery for the tomb, who care
not to whom they sell as long as they
get their money. So they banded to-
gether in self-defense. The profession
were in grave earnest and talked right
to tho point. They thought they ought
to have "the cream of the funerals
and not the skimmings, and have taken
measures to freeze out the interlopers.
Everybody has been trying to be funny
about them, and so I'll not try, just for
change. l only wish I'd heard of the
meeting in time, though. They kept it
very quiet and were very nervous
about being reported. But, of course,
some leaky vessel gave it all away.
Austin Goblin, the local railroad king,
has gone in hot and heavy for improve
ments on the Long Island Railroad.
He's going to make it the model one of
the country and develop the fertile
lands, which are in such close neighbor-
hood to the great city and have been so
long neglected. Eighty new locomo-
tives and ever so much new rolling
stock, for freight as well as passengers,
is to be supplied at once. There are to
be waiting rooms at every little stop
ping place-not before they were want
ed, as people had to wade perfect rivers
to get to the miserable little platforms
during the recent thaw-and, among
other improvements, the new duplex
Ericsson calOric pumping engines gotten
up by the Delamaters are to be used all
along the line, with the heavier steam
pumps they have just perfected for
more important work. The embellish-
ing the conductors with bell punches
has caused some dissatisfaction, but the
boys are taking it philosophieally and
now amuse themselves trying to induce
travelling small boys to attend them as
pages carrying the obnoxious anti
knocking down checks.
Talking of punches leads one to think
of punch, and punch of oysters, and
that reminds me that for the first time
in the century we are suffering from a
famine of the toothsOme bivalves.
Most of the sources of supply have been
frozen over, and slOOps have been ice
bound or wrecked by the dozen. The
choice varieties are being actually
wholesaled at Sl5 a thousand, and there
is like scarcity of scollops and CLAIMS.
The same terrible weather which so
harrows the souls of the oyster vendors
and saloon keepers has been playing
the mischief with that paradise of clam
eaters, Coney Island. The costly bulk
heads laid down by way of sea-walls
before the Manhattan Beach and ORR
entail Hotels, controlled, by the way,
by the same Austin Corbin, have been
ruined beyond redemption, and | hear
that the suggestion has been offered by
an engineer who had some experience
with resisting the entertainments of the
sea in India, to throw out groups of
rough ballast at right angles to the
shore, a plan which it is claimed tends
to cause the sand and shingle to accum-
ulate and at once checks the erosion of
the coast.
1t has been n tough time for sea-far-
ing men, and wrecks abound, and thrill
ing stories of wrecks just escaped fill
the papers. The genius of our people,
however, is ever ready for any occa-
sien, and L learn that as an aid te avoid
disaster, one of the most ingenious sig
nal buoys has been invented and put
into operation by Capt. Brown of the
| lighthouse service, now stationed at
| Charleston, S. c., which is as efficient
in its way as the famous Syren, or the
new automatic whistling buoy. The
last which depends on the movement of
the water and air in long tube, which
contains the whistle, must necessarily
be placed in deep water. Browns bell
buoy can be placed i'll very shallow
depths, Just where it can be most use
full and will sound with clear, distinct,
notes in the faintest ripple, a most use
full quality in calm with Il fog. The
clapper of the bell is a cannon ball
which moves on disc. If this were
simply like plate the ball would wear
groove and go tinkle, tinkle, all the
time without decided or loud noise.
Here is where the ingenuity comes in.
The disc is grooved with burrows from
the center. The ball bangs the bell on
one side, and then either rolls back and
bangs it again, or rolls to the center
and gets in another grove before the
warnin is repeated. 1t is the perfection
of simplicity, and the marine world is
in ecstacies over it.
Eighty millions of dollars is a very
comfortable little sum of money to start
business with. don't often trouble
you with financial news, for the very
good reason that the telegraph takes it
to you much quicker than the mails
which carry the letters of RADIX: but
when the telegraphs are all to be con-
solidated under one head, and that
bead the long Uranium of that dark
visaged and close mOuthed little man
who puzzles Wall street and the rest of
the world, the subject is worth men
tioning. There seems little doubt that
Jay Gould practically owns at this min
ute the entire telegraph plant of the
country, and all connected with it,
bodies, souls and breeches. As this is
but an item of his stupendous enter