St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1883-02-02
Our New York Letter.

Our New York Letter.
NEW YORK, Jan. 20.
Some great and gifted .jackasses OF
an alleged sporting turn of mind are
deeply interested i'll the question as to
whether certain expert can or cannot
get away with IA brace of quails per day
for thirty days in succession. With
per devotes IA third of column every
morning to the record of the supposed
feat, and the betting is getting grand in
its dimensions while the performer goes
through all the necessary motions of a
bogus invalid, nauseated by the monot-
ony of his diet, has valet to lean up
on as he feebly totters along in the last
| stages of his battles, worries down his
mOrsels with pepsin, gin, cider and 9th
er queer mixtures and altogether makes
''holy show" of himself. Your IRA
dix" isn't in the hippOdroming business
/ plit mas OlNNh Hhtiil NNti uhN ipi tllON
months and is perfectly willing to do it
again if somebody else will foot the
bills. The tOOthsOme little birds are
more expensive here than in India or
| Central America.
| Other sporting characters are agog
about the -heralded arrival of Jem
Mace and a multitude of imported and
/ I'M 1,lr,r nulins Ht-hn
pying considerable space in the papers
just now. The great and good Joe Co
burn is back from State Prison, where
he sojourned for time to expiate the
killing of a policeman, and bids fair to
become wealthy. His friends have raj
lied around him, and he will, it is said,
start Il toney gin-mill, like the other
murderer who killed Jim Fisk.
Still other sports have gone to Cana
da to see the Montreal ice palace and
indulge in tObogganing, snowshOeing
and the bOnspiel generally, and then
outfiank Uncle Sam by laying in a
stock of cheap clothing. Our tailors
are waging dire war on each other with
no little literary and artistic skill in
elaborate advertising, but the tariff
gives the Canucks and smugglers a
great pull over them in moderation of
prices. A crOss-legged and crooked
hearted capitalist of the writer's ac-
quaintance, after any unsuccessful bit
of nickle-plated Jay Gouldism, invest
ing in bogus mines or something of the
sort, invariably HES himself to Cana
da for consolation for day or two and
comes back in new raiment most cheer
FIJI - DO la hn
tom seems likely to spread, and we
may expect our Norther II neighbOrs
will be Overrun with vacation tourists
who will save their expenses by replen-
ishing their wardrObes where clothes
are cheap.
The farmers of scientific turn of
mind have been holding a convention
here to have a good time in general
and discuss the glories of ensilage in
particular. This system of storing
green fodder under heavy pressure has
met with great favor, and seems TO be
Il pronounced success; but it is by no
means the novelty people are apt to
consider it. In 1864, violent tempest
wrecked the standing crops all over
Australia. The ruin was apparently
complete, but some smart but unknown
genius took a notion to save something
from the general ruin and baled a lot
of the green oats and wheat subiecting
it to hydraulic pressure, just like so
much cotton and then exported it to
India. The writer's father, colonel
in the British army, bought the first
bale ever sold, and it was good horse
feed. The government tried it after
ward and ever since this ''Oat-hay" has
been a staple article of export to India
from Australia. 1t is identical with
ensilage fodder and has the advantage
that it can be pressed anywhere and
stored in any barn, thus doing away
with the expense of specially construct
ed pits.
Twelve dollars a day is pretty good
pay for a mechanic. That is what the
boss Zimmerman gets at the Paterson
iron works. His little tool hits 1000
pound stroke, and while he could make
horse shoes with it, so skillful is he, he
is usually engaged on more important
work. Just now he has finished up a
new rudder, forty feet long, for the
great ocean steamer, the City of Ber-
lin, which lost her steering apparatus
i'll a heavy gale recently, and is now
ont of water for repairs in the great
dry dock at the Erie basin. There is
such perpetual howl about the absO
lutte deafness of our shipping interests
that it is somewhat of a surprise to
find we have such admirable applian-
ces in full working order and flourish
ing. 1t costs money to run dry docks,
iron works, etc, and people don't run
them for the fun of the thing by large
majority.
The good people of our city are get
ting more fickle-minded every year. 1t
is not long ago that suites in modern
apartment houses were quite in de-
mand, the result was that speculative
builders have filed the uptown ave
nues with them. Now the average