The Opelousas courier., 1882-07-22
The Butcher.
Texas Siftings.

dpFOH llh6 tHdb Vi II UaIhoepeT, hence III
frequently happens, particularly in
Austin when the Legislature is in SEES
sion, that belated jewellers, who are re-
turning home early, just about sunrise,
frequently drop into a butchers shop
and request him to prepare them a
tonic. Or perhaps it is the smell of the
butchers breath that draws the belated
r~eyeier into the shop, for the number
of trips a butcher takes to the nearest
saloon to his stall is simply incredible,
His ostensible object in going to the
saloon SO often, is to "get change"
Whenever he sells a dimes worth of
meat, he has to rush off to the saloon
to get change. He never omits on such
occasions to change his breath. or rath-
er to strengthen it, for he usually ad-
heres to whisky straight. If you hand
him a FIVE cent piece for a piece of meat
for the cat, he will say, excuse me
until | get some small change" so alb
sent minded has he become from the
force of bad. habit. A gentleman of a
statistical turn of mind measured the
distance from a San Antonio butchers
stall to the nearest saloon, and found
that the butcher travelled seventeen
miles every morning, just to get change
toaccommedate his customers, although
like Polonius, he became a little weak
in the hams toward the latter end Of
the walking match. If one of the ends
of the track is O saloon door, almost
any butcher will distance the best
trained pedestrian in the country.
+. Perhaps some butcher will say that
he spends his own money for %tonics,
and it is meme of the public's business
what he does with his own resources.
That is just the point we are going to
elucidate right now. W. shall demon
strate that the conVivial walking
matches of the butcher are not entirely
at his W expense. The hungry pub.
lie has tt come down literally with gate
meney to see that walking match.
When yen ask for a porterhouse steak,
he produces a bone that looks as if it
belonged to a mastoden, with a little
meat hanging to it. He hooks this
bone on to his badly adjusted scales,
swings himself on it, and yells five
pounds You pay for five pounds of
meat, but you only carry off three
pounds of bone and six ounces of meat.
and the worst of it is, you do not get
all that, for be proceeds to chop off the
bone, which he keeps, and afterwards
sells it to a hotel to make soup out of.
That's the kind Of a philanthropist
some butchers are.
There are others who are not quite
80 enthusiastic. They do mob swing
themselves clear off the floor when they
weigh meat. They only keep a hand
rs big as a canvass-covered ham on
the meat to prevent it from blowing off
the scales. In law and equity, you are
entitled TO the butchers hand along
with the meat, for you have bought it
and paid for it, but he never delivers
the goods. He needs that hand in his
business. It is SO handy in weighing.
He sells that hand at eight or ten cents
a pound forty times a day, but he al
ways keeps it on hand. as it were, it
being SO useful in making change, lift
ing up beer mugs, and in removing a
customer who wants to have the meat
weighed over.
The butcher can be very sarcastic if
lie tries. Possibly his trade has some-
thing to do with his making cutting
remarks. Besides, he is a man of
having more on hand than he
has any use for, which may account
for the fact that he is never sent to
Congress or the Legislature.
We once suggested to a butcher that
he put his scales where the customers
could see The dial. not necessarily for
publication. but merely as a pledge of
good faith. aOIl, yes he replied
scornfully, suppose after d while
when you buy a FIVE cent soup bone,
you will expect me to put on my swal
ioWtail Sunday coat and my stove
pipe hat, hire the finest hack III town
and q brass baud, 90 in procession ia
your shanty. and deliver the soup
We assured him lie was mis-
taken, that no such idea had ever en-
tered our head, but we never after
enriched him with any more
suggestions how to acquire the esteem
and respect Of his fellow citizens. We
mention right here, %incidently, in
these remarks, that they do not
apply TO all butchers, but principally
10 the one who did not seem to need
my advlce where TO hang his scales.
During the riots against Jews at Bal
d, 70 Russian Poland, thirty or forty
sought refuge with their chill
lren in tho garretof q house used as n
'ynagogue. While thus concealed, Ia
suspense, with the rioters in