Morning journal and courier., 1884-02-22

thing. They relate story of 8 country town officer who was both g deacon in the church and a general in the militia A brother officer on R field day on riding up accosted him as Deacon" ''Stop that, said he. Don't call me deacon, I'm general today"
 From an early period 8 military title, no matter how small, was desirable thing. In Woodbridge is an old graveyard wherein Is, or was, an ancient gravestone on which was engraved "A Corporal in his Majesty's Train Band and Deacon in the Parish of Amity-' Amity Is the original name of Woodbridge.
 Sham fights, we observe, were common at general trainings, and the militia of that era supplied their own arms, many of them old fashioned English hint-locks, and heirlooms from the Revolutionary war and that of 1872. It was then the general custom for each householder to have firearm in his house
 Our lower Green on training days 60 years ago was gay place. Each company had it's assigned spot of rendezvous: the Grays in front of Trinity church, the Foot Guards in their scarlet uniforms, short brooches, high boots and big horse hair caps at the south end, few rods farther east the Down Town ''melish" (citizens without uniforms) and generally 100 strong in front of the now Ex change, then Thad. Beecher's house and store; the artillery company in front of the jail, now the City Hall; the Horse Guards in front of Judge Dsggetts now Mir. Trow- bridges; at the north end of the Green, and
 
 church. As the bulk of the population was then south of Temple street this was 8 much smaller company than the ''Down Towns"
 About the year 1880 our three ''crack" companies, Grays, Guards, and Blues or srtil- lery had each their full bands of music all volunteers. The instruments were different somewhat from those now in use, serpsnts, bassoons, daReolets, Turkish bells, &c. The bugle was the Rrandest instrument, the cornet as now known not having been invented. d. kl,- . what was wanting in music was made up in noise, and when the rival companies met in marching the streets, each band accompanied by it's tagging crowd Of admiring boys, the jargoR was simply horrid. The band master of the Grsys was an Englishman named Lee, who it was said had been bugler under Wellington in his famous Peninsula cam paign.
 training day was day of jubilee. Booths were erected around the Green extending from Court to Chapel and thence up to Tenn pie street, and the people from the country Hocked to town in large numbers. All sorts of liquors and goodies were offered for sale. pies, cakes, boiled eggs, gingerbread, hot oy sters in bowls, &c., and the vendors would call out their various wares, 'FWalk up gentle men, walk up, fine oysters, fine oysters, hot AS -O
 Profanity vas more common than TOW and intemperance largely prevalent. Enterprieing
 
 days and furnished trays of it for the boys. These trays were, ssay 16 by 10 inches, and held each about Is strings of candy. The boys suspended these trays by cord to their necks carried them ia front and selling each stick for Q cent cleared three cents on every trayful, large sum to poor boy of that day, to whom opportunities for earning money by selling anything were rare. There was then no such thing known as boys selling newspapers the streets. The Green was thick with these urchins bearing their trays of Linked sweetness long drawn out" and being made of the best of West India mo- lasses with no sugary adulterations it was superior to anything now supplied by our confectionsrs To sell ''cockeena," as this candy was called, was quite desideratum with poor boys.
 Gambling by the roulette tables and shoot ing with bow and arrows for cents was large ly practiced and dancing and fiddling carried on under tents, ''double shuttle and break down." Before night the liquor had got well circulated when more or less fights took place with pushing crowds and seizures by the constablss and conveyances to the jail followed by drunken, hootirg bands. The shooting with bows and arrows was by me- Rroes:and:half breed Indianswith their squaws, melancholy remnants of dying race. In those oldea times there were o0d, half-de- m nted characters that on training days made sport for the boys. The occasion brought out these degraded creatures who thus be- came the butts of the young and thoughtless. Among these odd characters old negro called Mack, who lived with his family in 8 cave on the face Of Pine rock. On train ing days he regularly appeared on the Green with his fiddle in the old time costume of a Revolutionary soldier, blue coat and scarlet facing The boys supplying him with liquor he generally got uproariously drunk, in which condition his eccentricities were great source of sport. Another odd character was Sylvester Potter, or Wet Potter" as he was called, whose home WAS near Snake hill. He was a small thin man with high thin pip ing voice, and face so shrivelled, wrinkled and wan that it seemed but little more than the face of a skeleton covered with skin Looking at him one would say ''that man is the personifcation of poverty and misery" If in the course of his life he had even half a dozen times dined of and to his fill from good luscious tender porterhouse steak well cooked with trimmings to correspond, 1t would have saved him from such wretched- ness of expression. He was pervaded with . vein of natural wit that wss all the more pungent coming forth from such gloom stricken face and delivered in such high squeaking tones. He was peddier, and his establishment an old cart and broken-down skeleton of 8 horse as wretched for horse as his owner was wretched for a man. On an occasion the boys whose butt he ever was secretly took the finch pin from his cart and then started the old bones on 8 run. In the result Vet was spilled out, but going out all in heap and in 8 soft place, the aid of doctor was not re- quired. In alluding to this event he said :: Ut was lucky escape for my life and I should have been sadly missed, for good men are scarce" Some college boys, on an oeca- sion of Vets absence from his horse, sus- pended placard over his ribs with an in scription as annexed: