Morning journal and courier., 1891-09-07

fumed waters so dear to the feminine
 heart. Every family has & skeleton in the
 closet, however, and monsieur's family, which consists only of himself, is no eI- ception to the general rule. He has his | skeleton, in fact he has scores of them in
 closets and otherwise-the majority other
 wise. The truth of the matter is the old Frenchmsn deals in skeletons.
 Living as he does in & neighborhood
 thickly populated by ignorant negroes, who are, as a rule, very superstitious, De
 Robaire has found 1t necessary to ply his queer trade as secretly as possible. The
 doctor" has occupied his present head | quarters for the last quarter of a century
 and enjoys quite large practice among
 the colored people, who would have noth- ing to do with him did they suspect the weird doings about the little shop. The second floor boasts of only two small rooms, the rear one being used as &
 workshop, while the other, directly over
 the store and fronting on the street, serves
 the double purpose of bedchamber and
 store-ro
 Such another bedchsmber as the one oc-
 cupied by the old Frenchman probably
 does not exist, and how monsieur manages
 to sleep the sleep of the just among such gruesome surroundings is an insolvable | mystery to the few who have been admit ted to it.
 The walls of the small room are orna-
 mented with skulls and crossbones and
 real life-size skeletons, or, rather, death size skeletons in all sorts of grotesque positions. Four hideous skulls grin from their positions on top of the four posts of the bed, and close to the sides of the bed stands skeleton with arms outstretched doing duty & clothes-rsck The whole is dimly lighted up by faint glimmer of light emanating from a lamp made of a ghsstly skull suspended from the middle of the ceiling with thongs of tanned hu man hide.
 De Robaire himself is an odd looking
 man, and the resemblance between him and one of his own skeletons is decidedly striking. He has gsunt, wolf-lke fea- lures, his thin upper lip and bony chin being adorned with an iron-gray mustsche and imperial His head is entirely bald save for few bristly red hairs standing up on his forehead like small bonfire, and under pair of bushy eyebrows of the same fiery hue his small black eyes glitter like coals of fire.
 For score of years he has been carry ing on his business in the old place, hay ing emigrated from France in 1865, com ing direct to Philadelphia, where he estab- lished himself in business. For s time he had a hard struggle to keep body and soul together, owing to the number of competi- tors in the field, together with the dullness of business It soon became necessary for him, in addition to his other trade, to set himself up a druggist, and he still runs
 his little shop, though principally as a de- coy.
 Late in the eos, when the Knights of Pythias were organized in this state, the demand for skeletons increased, ss they were used to great extent in the lodge rooms. De Robaire prospered, as & conse quence, since most of his competitors had given up the business.
 Of and on during the following twenty years business was dull and brisk by | turns, but tho old man had amassed | small fortune, and there is no reason why | he should longer continue in the business | except that he has taken liking to his | work, such as every true artist does. He I is an artist in the full sense of the word. There is undoubtedly no one who can ar ticulate a skeleton as neatly as he, and it | is no idle boast on his part when he claims | that with eyes blindfolded he can take &
 mass of bones representing the human | frame and build up the skeleton as it was | originally, without one bone out of place. Again, he can, by merely touching 6 bone, tell to certainty to what part of the frame of man or beast it belongs. | There is no possible way of determining | the nationality of the person who existed | around a certain skeleton during life eI- | cept that in the case of a negro the uper- | ture in the skull once covered by the nose
 is not so narrow and sharpened as a white | mans.
 "The doctor" while standing in his workshop a few days ago with his sleeves
 rolled up over his skinny arms, thus held | forth on the subject nearest his heart: "This skeleton you see me operating on have imported from France. You will mo- | tice the high polish on the bones, due to R
 method of preparation praeticed only by the French. They clean the bones by a process of maceration with muriatic acid, the whole operation requiring two or three months time, while in this country the bones are hastily and carelessly boiled and come out rough and dirty. In all my | twenty years service I have never come | across a Chinese skeleton. This is due to the fact that a Chinamsn believes he will | not reach heaven unless his bones rest in | the Flowery Kingdom.
 "The different prices of skeletons are
 based upon their degrees of hardness and
 whitensss, upon the development of the bones, and the amount or absence of fat | in their extremities. For this reason the French article is decidedly of more value | than the American or German. Up to | this year over twenty-six hundred skeIe- | tons have been imported into this country,
 but they have become scarce of late for
 some reason, and to supply the demand | find it necessary to manufacture them of
 paper. Of course have stock of them
 in my bedroom, but would not part
 with any of these. Mon Dieul l have
 come to look upon them ss dear friends
 and companions. Here you see my artii-
 cial skeletons made of papier mache, with
 artificial teeth, and the whole covered with
 a white polish which gives the appearance | of the genuine article. l can make three
 of these each week, and they bring from
 ten to fifteen dollars, while the imported | genuine article costs from thirty to thirty
 five dollars, and the domestic twenty dol | lars. But then the limitations are bought
 only by secret societies.
 | "Yss, have grown old in the business
 and love it. I have articulated and han
 dled over five thousand skeletons in my
 time"