Los Angeles herald., 1892-12-11

There is woeful lack of originality in
those election bets which are sufficiently
out of the common to attract attention.
One reads over and over again of the win
ner in a wheelbarrow and the loser at the
handles, of the loser peddling apples, or
grinding hand organ, or tramping so
many hours on certain block without
saying a word or shaving one side only of
his face, or wearing some ridiculous article
of costume, or doing some other silly thing
which hundred others had done before,
and which wasn't funny at the start.
Ben: Perley Poore, as penalty for bet
ting on the wrong man, had to wheel
barrel of apples from his farm, fifteen
miles away, into Boston. 1t was n new
thing then, and he was a prominent man,
30 all the city and suburbs made an occa-
sion of it. There were bands of music and
flags, firing of cannon and speeches, and
all the country was amused. The popular
vote at the recent election was only five
times as large as in 1852, but there GER
tainly were sou times as many whimsical
bets, and SO far as reported II third or more
of them were merely variations of the old
wheelbarrow business.
Before that Boston performance of 1859
the bet most talked about for many years
was that ''geometrical progression" agree.
ment between two prominent merchants
in 1928, and it was thought of sufficient
Importance to be placed in the arithmetics
rs an illustration. The Adams manNgreed
to pay the jackson man for each electoral
vote Jackson had over Adams at the rate
Df one doiler for the first, two for the sec
Dnd, four for the third, and so on. Jackson
got IT'S and Adams SO electoral votes, ard
the reader who has nothing else to do this
winter may calculate how much the Ad-
hms man had to pay.
The joke, however, was not all on the
Jackson's mans side, for when the winner
called for his wager the Adams man might
Say, Certainly, sir; make out your bill"
It is doubtful if he could find sheet of
paper large enough. And then the count
ing. In one of the old arithmetics it was
Estimated that at the rate of fifty dollars
minute the last payment would certainly
be made by the losers administrator An
bther bet which hass interested fsinly f:.ssily read
trs was that Of tie beautiful Cleopatra
The Egyptian queen, who bet with Mark
Antony that she would eat and drink
ut one meal to the value of-well, in our
money the sum has been estimated at s409,-
B43.
On comins, to the table Antony remarked
on the frugality of the repast, whereupon
the queen detached from her ears two
pearls of enormous value. One she dropped
into cup of strong vinegar and drank it
when it dissolved, and was about to send
the other after it when Minutius Plaucus,
the arbiter, snatched it from her, declar-
ing that she had already won. Another old
story is that of Asklepiades better known
rs Esculapius, the famous physician, who
bet large sum that he would never be
sick in his life He won it, too, for he died
of q fall received in extreme old age, never
having suffered a days illness. In 1926
the year of extraordinary rains in Europe
D Partisan banker named Bulliot bet
hll his ready money and all the notes he
could put up as wagers that it would rail-
on st. Gervais' day and forty days contin
nously thereafter He lost and paid al
the cash bets, but his family had him ad
Judged monomaniac and stopped pay
mcnt of the notes.