Waterbury evening Democrat., 1905-02-10
TRICKS TO CATCH THE WISE.
Wagcrs That Resulted in Favor of the
 Persons Who Made Them.

Persons Who Made Them.
 A gentlemanly looking man, with the merest suspicion of q Yankee accent. has recently been going the rounds Of the West End. London bars and bil- Hard rooms, winning all sorts of queer bets from people who fondly imagine they "knew q thing or twO.'
 One that hardly ever fails to net him few shllings or sovereigns, as the case might be, he called his "fy wager" He would offer to bet. says Pcarson'S Weekly, that he could make a fly take all the matches out of ali ordinary stone match stand, such as is generally to be found on the coun. ters of most saloon bars. As soon aS the money was staked he would eaten q fly from the wall. take it by the tMo wings and keep putting it on the matches one by one, the insect mean while picking them up with its legs instinctively and with almost monoton- OliS regularity.
 The shabby genteel man. with the iron jaws and the gaunt cheeks. who used to haunt the Fleet street bars and
 bet umwary wightS that he would swal- low beer glass there and then. has lately joined the great majority. He died from an overdose of grOulil glass. ! for of course. he took good care to pound the tumblcr to dust before at ! tempting to fulfill the terms of his ] wager-the which. by the way. he in. varably won.
 X variation of this trick bet. how. ever. seems to he rife in Paris, where a certain M Aexandrc offered the other day to wager 1000 francs (GGU' 1 that he would swallow yard of gal vanizcd iron stove piping. His chal- lcngc was promptly accepted by curl- ous and guileless American. Where
 upon the intrepid AleXandrc repaired ! to a whitcsmith. armed with the piping. which was Onc-SiXth of an inch in l thickness and five inches in diameter.
 with the request that he would reduce i il to powder. The request was prompt | ly carried out Then, in the presence
 of the other party to the bet and a couple of witnesses. the layer of the i wager divided thc filings into five DOT | tionS. mixed them into five 'bocks' of | ger beer and tossed them off at inter. vais of ten minutes.
 \ we'll known "bookie" recently lost
 lpp to comparative stranger. who offered to bet him that he could pro duce three horses which could go nine tv miles in three hours. The layer ot the wager easily accomplished the feat
 by starting all three horses at once, by
 which artiticr thirty miles only was the distance they had to traverse in the time specified.
 Roger Crab wagercd ( 1000 that Inc ] would live for year on three shil 1 lingS and siXpence. and won his bet [ Indeed. ne more than won it, for al the end of twelve months he had man aged to save threepence out of his
 housekeeping money" his expenditure | for food. therefore. averaging just over | three farthings q week. For this sun even the cheapest of ordinary vege tartan diet. such as lentils. for in stance. was quite out nf the question aud he had io content himself with uctrI. soup thickened with corn four pudding made of bran and turniT leaves chopped together. and so forth Yet on this diet Crab not only sur 1 vivetl. hut actually gained some few pounds in weight. while. ss for his general health he declared that he had never felt better than Ire lid at tfs 1 termination of his self-imposed ordeal