The Arizona sentinel., 1889-12-28
CAPTURED THE GANG.
An Old-Time Photographers Re-
 markable Exploit.
A Combination of Morphine and Whisky Too Much for the Robbers-A Big Lesson to the
 Narrator.


 The itinerant telegrapher is essential ly story-teller. A roamer and rover by bent of natural disposition long enough to refurnish wardrobe and put little money in his pocket for incident Gl expenses; then he fits to some other rcene; and every change of location adds to fund of reminiscence and ''shop- talk" on which he is ever ready to draw for the entertainment of an appreciatlve listener.
 One of these migratory gentlemen was observed a few days ago engaged in sup porting the iron frame of the door lead ing into the Washington street entrance of the Western Union office, and his store-houSe of recollections was prompt ly tapped.
 "Yes," he said, 'I am telegrapher. Not one of the kind who hold forth in the corner drug store at fifteen dollars month, live on one meal a day and secreted cans of Liebig 'pinched' when the drug clerk is out and the operator IS running the shop, but gilt-edged re- ceiver and fast-sending 'rusher.' Ihave had varied experience in getting to what I consider the top round of the ladder in the 'perfesh.'
 ''I started out as an apprentice to a man with a cork leg. This man had various outside duties to perform, such as swinging ponderous gate over one right of way when trains on the other wanted to go by; cleaning, lighting, and getting out the switch-ia1nps at night, talking shop, and answering p calls a signal sent out by the train-dispatcher every half hour. Every operator was supposed to answer this or get credit for being asleep-the one answering the most in a month getting five dollars from the company. Well, l was this mans 'student,' and to pay him for teaching me the mystery of the dots and dashes I relieved him of all of his outside duties and nearly all of those inside, very soon after I had mastered the alphabet.
 ''How stuck-up was when I could sit in and answer those 9 callsl And what a snap it was for my mutilated-in-the cause friend! I can see myself now sit ting in his chair, watching first the in strument and then the clock, and when the half-hour came around grabbing the key and snapping out g in what would appear to me now to be very 'ladylike' manner. All this time the old veteran was in the back part of the office Snor- ing away, and only getting up when I called him to get orders for an out going train.
 ''In few weeks graduated from this first condition and entered the second. My! my. but what nuisance a kid is in the second one. He has acquired the alphabet and can get word or two here and there in a sentence and straight way imagines he is an operator, and with little more practice says he can take an office out on the road. That is the time when trouble begins for the old ones on the line. He commences at one end and goes through the entire string of offices, asking them in his jerky student style if there is any one there that wants to '6rastis' (this is the word the average student generally Gldh6S MnCu uC UIlGS bO NTlU6 DEdC- tice0. With what glee he says pa, pa when he discovers an office where there is another student, always ready to re- spond 'pi, pi' to his pa, pa.' This dis play of emotion and response, so fla miliar to the telegrapher, is the unsuc- cessful attempt of the novice to make the letters h and "a in saying Ina, ha.'
 +~ rending experiences of that time. i'm agined myself equal to the task of talk ing train order and let the old man sleep one night, and tackled it. never C6d know how much that ttrain-dispatcher swore at me until l got to be dispatcher myself. The order started: sTo Condr. and Engr. Train No. - The dis patcher got as far as No when I trem- blingly opened the key and said: Go ahead, condr.' Again he started: 'Condr and engr. -once more I opened and said: sPledSe go ahead, con An eXclama- tion point from the dispatcher and an other start. By this time l was so rat tied that 1 could not have received it if my slow-sending student friend had been transmitting it. 1 broke him again, and, tearing up the order, asked him to please repeat it slowly.
 ''The answer came slow, but it was not the train order It sounded some thing like this: Who are you, anyway; where is the operator? Get him and tell him to keep his plug" student off of this wire I awoke the old man and got Giaclxed-un' apain by him for not havinp called him in the first place.
 ''This little experience took all of the conceit out of me and really was good thing in its way, for it spurred me on to renewed exertion. I got the oper- ator to put an instrument on a report wire and practiced for hours at time Two or three months later discovered