The Republican journal., 1897-09-02
Administered Aroostook.
Her Experience is Duplicated. However, in Other
Counties.


period of few years ago, agents of all
kinds, sorts, sizes and makes filled the
county, even as Egypt was filled with frogs
in the days of Pharaoh. Many and many
man, who is now hard pressed to pay
his debts, can readily trace the beginning
of his Indebtedness to the visits of sleek,
bland oily, smooth tongued agents, in
whose mouths butter would more than
melt, and who were as devoid of con-
science as an American crocodile. They
came, they saw, they sold, they skun,
they took notes, they took mortgages;
then came law suits, costs, foreclosures,
Insolvency, and financial death. In that
delightful period, when the simple son of
Aroostook went forth to his daily toll, he
found agents to the right of him, agents
TO the left of him, agents in front of him,
agents behind him, each with something
to sell, who bowed and smirked, and fiat
tered and cajoled, and pleaded and talked,
and urged and begged, with incessant
clatter, from the rising of the sun until
the going down of the same. All classes
We're pestered the same, doctors, lawyers,
ministers, farmers, merchants, and day
idpCltls. I1tht SuEtlhS. lutil dACtSlOlS,
the agents of those days We're no re-
spectors of persons. They would tackle
saint or sinner, the cradle OF the grave
anybody that they thought had a dollar.
Their glib tongues would make worthless
truck appear to be Of greater value than
the golden placers of klondike, and more
desirable than a reserved seat, in the front
row, in the New Jerusalem. Their skill
rl1ninnIa tinQ tapts and lyiou lltid
fiction appear like shining truth made
old Cloven Foot shake ON his throne and
tremble in his one shoe, lest he should
utterly lose his title as father of liars
They could pray, preach, exhort, dance,
swear, drink whiskey, gamble, all in the
same day. Anything to make dollar
was their motto.
Among the first of these genial gentle
men, from the great ''Outside' all
the rest of the world is called in Aroos-
tOok-to light down upon the county
were the top carriage men. They hauled
III long lines of miserably built, cheaply
constructed, hove together combinations
of wood, iron, ard ell cloth, literally
dosed with putty, black paint, and cheap
yarnish, which cost about forty dollars
each laid down in Aroostook and wheedled
farmers and others into buying them at
prices ranging from one hundred to one
hundred and twenty-five dollars apiece,
taking notes therefor signed by the buyer
and all of his family and secured by a
mortgage of the cart itself together with
the old family nag. For about three weeks
and four days the oil cloth top would
shine like FURNISHED domes of a Chinese
padoga, and the old cart would run fairly
well, and then the oil cloth would begin
to look like the sunburnt hide of Goldfish
in the evening shades, the wheels would
begin to wobble and each make a separate
track of its own, and the whole combina-
ton would squawk, and rattle and shake,
and clatler, and till the whole country
round about with discordant noises, al
most raising the dead when a graveyard
was passed. When the honest owner of
the combination was returning from pray
Ell meeting Sunday night, with his wife
and two innocent babes, his progress home
ward could readily be traced by the fear
full din made by his one hundred and
twenty-five dollar conveyance. To-day,
tie skeletons and wrecks OF those "hand-
sum kerridges beautify and adorn the
back yards OF many an Aroostook home,
and furnish roosting places for the fowls
Of the barn and birds OF the air. But the
l1OAtSs NHtlC ult LIG Ii lIltN were
good they have been paid: if they We're
not good, the makers thereof have been
sued, cited, arrested, jailed, and driven
into insolvency.
he IOad-cart men We're also early in
the field. Everybody must have road
cart, cheap two wheeled continuance, for
mud time, and solitary excursions such
as the young men Of Aroostook delight ill.,
and every body bought one. They cost
from six to eight dollars each, delivered
in Aroostook, and were sold tor twenty
and twenty-five dollars each For about
a year, road carts, red, yellow, blue, black
blonde, brunette, were more numerous
than potato bugs have become since they
learned about the Paris green law passed
by the last legislature. And then the
road carts began to disappear. They
broke down, they went to pieces, they
fell apart, they dropped into innocuous
desuetude. Their scattered remains are
found by lake, river and riil. No more
will they return. But the money paid
for them forever left the pockets of the
buyers, and they were just SO much the
poorer thereby Buying a road cart, as
the sequel has shown. was another step
towards insolvency.
The sulky- plow men also moved on
poor Aroostook. They too wanted a
share i'll the rich spoils of the Ammonitsh
war. They brought with them beauti-
full pillow, rugged up on wheels, with a
gaudy frame, nice seat, and levers to
work the thing with. 1t was as beautiful
to gaze upon as the chariots with which
the Egyptians pursued the children of
Israel.
The noble tiller of the soil was told how
easily he could do his blowing with this
continuance ride, smoke his pipe, and
take his ease while doing his work 1t
was boon that he had long been looking
for. 1t was the long promised Messiah
of plowdom. 1t cost as much as ten dol
lars to make it and deliver it in Aroos-
took, but the farmer bought it for thirty
six dollars, and gave his note for it, As
rule, one trial was enough. The thing
would not pillow, it could not sing, it could
not spin, and it would not do for a parlor
ornament it was as worthless as a con-
federate bank note. Sorrowfully and
sadly the purchaser sneaked it out behind
the barn, away from the prying eyes of
his fellow men, and hid it among the
weeds and rubbish, there to remain for
evermore. Ages hence, as some inquisitive
antiquarian stumbles over its remains, he
will ponder over it, and wonder what
manner of machine it was, and what it
was built for, and will HE it away to some
museum for the curious to gaze upon, and