Arizona silver belt., 1888-12-29

it is today it was much more of Q custom than now for mechanics and apprentices and other day laborers to carry their midday
 meal with them to their work. Men and 1 boys who toiled in factories and stores could i be seen in the morning trudging along bear l ing bright, shining tin dinner pails. Today it is pretty hard to find approximately as | large a number who follow this old habit. ! Not more than one man out of ten in the business and factory region below Thirty 1 third street can be found with his pail If a workman couldn't go home at noon from l his shop in the days ten and fifteen years ago, about the only way to satisfy his P o'clock i hunger was the one which now seems to ba scorned CT discarded because of inconveni. ence. Of course there are some who cling to | the old fashioned idea, aud in certain locali. ties the worl,men can't get along without i their kettles. But these are rare instances. The only places where the rule seems to be for dinner pals is along the wharves, and even there the custom is falling away.
 CARRYING A PAIL.
 A down town tinware merchant said the stheE sISS-s,sS used to do big business in the i-,-s57J 7Jsl.--- dinner pails butfor eight years now it seems to have amounted to nothing at all The causel Why, l guess it must be that mechanics and others don't like to have the trouble of carrying Q pail to work in the morning and back at night. It's inconvenieEt in the surface and elevated cars, for the cof- fee is likely to be spilled in the jostling and crowding of the cars. Then, if a man is near enough to his workshop to be able to walk there, he isn't likely to carry pail, for, of course, he had rather go home to dinner. No, the bulk of workingInen in New York to-day seem to do without pails such as we used to see when we weren't so populous and proud. Still they get hungry when noon comes around, and they must feed. Lots of them bring meat and bread from home in paper, and throw the paper wrapper away when they are done with it.
 "1heIr drink? Well, they can work the growler, or go out and buy lager or anything sise. Besides, there are more inexpensive eating houses now than before, and plenty of men who used to carry their dinners with oaem find it just about as cheap to go out and e3t. This is more convenient, too Some workmen on houses in process of con stTuction in new neighborhoods must carry sai-s, but they wouldn't if they could help it. Often the free lunch gives a man stay to as stomach, and he makes his supper a heavier meal than it used to be. Thls also lelps do away with the dinner pail. Out on Inc aqueduct and along railway lines being quilt or repaired the Italians don't use the pail much The cooperative mess which they nave seems to do pretty well for most of them, and those who dor' have that stuff s-leir food in paper in thelf pockets"
 A REGULAR EVOLUTION.
 In spite of all this falling off in the use of he dinner pail in New York city, the dinner pail of this day is better than that Of ten years ago. It has gone through a regular svoiution. First it was simply a plain ket- 5le with a cover. You could put in meat and bread and pie and pickles and whatever other solids the appetite craved; but there wasn't any room for coffee unless you put it il a bottle. Then somebody devised pail with two compartments, one pail fitting into mother. In this way coffee might be car jed in one of the parts. Then some other genius got up pail with four or six separate )arus, all fitting into each other and making ; possible to carry four or six articles apart rom each other.
 This was good, but it was discounted by he fellow who got out a patent on device whereby the coffee could be heated at nooa- lime wherever the workman might be. The ievice consists of a wad of asbestos cloth two inches in diameter and an inch thick This $ covered with tin, and there is an opening 1t the top exposing the cloth. The whole thing is just like a small round tin box packed with asbestos and open at the top. The workman can carry or have at isshop some alcohol, and @ cents worth poured on jhe asbestos will do to heat his coffee 4 great many mechanics have this asbestos eontrivance and like it. More of the con trivances are probably used in other towns than this. One other scheme has been patented. It consists of tin pot, which may be filled at noontine with water and lime. The heat so generated will warm any thing placed over it, and as the compart- ment holding the coffee fits over the con- partment in which the lime and water are, .he coffee may be heated very quickly. This invention hasn't met with general adoption. There are other complicated dinner pails, into the bottom of which lamps may be fitted They are mostly used in smaller cities.-New York Sun.