The Arkansaw traveler., 1886-03-13
Written tor THE ARKANsAw TRAvKLKR.
 NEW YORK LETTER.
 BY ALEX. E. sWERT.
NEW YORK February z4 I88


 Mir. Jake Sharpe, by which the tax payers have been fleeced in a very lib- eral, but, at the same time, unostenta- tious manner.
 Not much else is talked about by New York tax payers just now. Of course there are times and occasions when the conversation drifts temporarily into other channels.
 l suppose that if an indignant tax payer, just before retiring, softly impales an army-sized tack with his naked heel, he gives Sharpe and his crowd a tempo rary rest, and permits the conversation to drift into sacred topics, while he is prizing out the firmly imbedded tack with the stove scraper. It is only on such great and solemn occasions that lake gets half holiday. The regular bill of conversational fare invariably consists of Jake Sharpe on the half she'll with alder. manic sauce, and music by the brass band of the local press.
 Ifyou see richly dressed gentleman on the street car reading newspaper with an expression of countenance suggestive ot raging crisis in his internal depart ment, you may be sure he is a chronic tax payer who is reading how tbe alder manic banditti gave away the Broadway franchise which was worth millions. That's why he squirms.
 If large incandescent tears of indipna- tion crystalline oH the peak of his nose and he lifts up his voice and howls like a bench.legged flee whose tail has been crushed out of all semblance of humanity by being run over by the hind wheel of a loaded furniture wagon, then you may be sure that the sufferer is a heavy tax payer, and that his mental sufferings are proportionatel intense.
 am afraid that men who are not ad- dicted to the tax paying habit do not sympathize sufficiently with the degraded victims of this fearful vice. The torture of the poor wretch who has to pay taxes on few hundred millions Of real and personal property in New York must be frigh.ful beyond description. Thank heaven {! have never alo we'd this vice to gain the mastery over me. have been total abstainer all my life. All journalists are singularly temperate, in fact almost frantically abstemious, when it comes to disbursing actual money, even tor such legitimate purposes as quench- ing their thirst, or buying fresh shirt in which to reyel while. the other is being washed on a long, lingering credit.
 But speaking seriously, the corrupt, but otherwise inefficient, government of the city of New York is driving away gen. tlemen of culture and refinement who are desirous of making large and perma- nent investments. l, for instance, will not make any large investments in New York. shall retain my capital in my vaults, and when summer comes 1 will draw it out in glittering nickels, and go on trip to Coney Island, where will squander it with lavish hand in sucking in invigorating sea breezes and succulent clans, which, if they were not so tough, might be used as substitute for gutta percha. A Coney Island clam is harder than the way of the transgessor.
 The daily press of New York has got the range of Jake Sharpe and every morn, ing tons of red hot shot are poured into him, after which he goes before the in- committee and i, cro $ exam ined by Roscoe Conkling. Like the skinned eels Sharpe rather likes this, and | feels lonesome if he don't get his red hot shot from the press, and his constitutional faying alive at the hands of the sarcastic Lord Roscoe, who like PooA Bah ia the " Mikado," is a very naughty and exclu. sive parsonage who never condescends to skin alive any criminals except great ones.
 Some of the aldermen who are sup posed to have been fabricated have gone to Florida 10 .ecupera.e, which means to avoid arrest. the climate of Florida is only half as bad as has been represented those aldermen have already been over taken and paid off in full by the aveng- ing Nemesis, which presume is the technical term, for the typhoid malarial fever makes the hardy British immigrant look like one of these "before taking pre-Raph elite chromos that adorn the patent medicine advertisement columns of the daily press.
 It is the universal public sentiment that Sharpe should suffer some adequate pun. ishment, such as being boiled in oil, or