Connecticut western news., 1910-11-24
GREENS FAKE "HOLD-UP"
How Farm-Hand Stirred the Com - munitY to the Highest Pitch of
 Excitement.

The exciting "man-hunt" that has kept Great Burlington and Berkshire County generally stirred up, of late, as 8 result of the hold-up of the paymaster. the deputy sheriff who accompanied him as body guard, and the superintendent of the Construction Co., recalls the equally exciting mau-hunt in which Ca- naan and all the region round about took part, something over S2 years ago in July. 1878, to be explicit-when one Mortimer Green, employed by the late William Bennett, started the story that he had been shot by an ugly tramp, and exhibited a wounded arm, both for pub- lioation and as a guaranty of good faith
 Greens story was that he was driving back from the Ashley Falls mill when, near Nathan Watson's farm he was stopped by two tramps, one of them a big slx-footer, who demanded that he surrender his team to them. Green re- fused to do so. when the big fellow at- tempted to get up on the wagon. Green struck him stlnging blow on the head with the butt of his horsewhip, where upon the tramp pulled a revolver and shot him, the bullet entering the arm near the shoulder, and making dan9er- ous wound.
 At that instant the team started and Green applied the whip and got away. On arriving at the Bennett farm, Mir. Bennett summoned Dr. Camp, who treated the wonnd, but was unable to extract the bullet. The neighbors were at once aroused to action in search for the perpetrators of the outrage. Dep uty Sheriff Richmond telegraphed des- criptions of the tramps to all the sur. rounding towns. The selectmen offered reward of Sl00 for their apprehension, and everybody turned out, armed with every conceivable and inconceivable form of weapon, from hint-lock musket to a pitohfork. Old men, young men and boys formed brigades of man-hunt, CTS and sallied forth with rifles, horse pistols, clubs, baseball bats, coupling pins, hoe handles, ,stoye-pokers, swords, bricks. hatchets-anything and everything that would serve as a weapon. Squire Peet armed whole squad with scythes and threshing fails, in local store.
 It was not long after this wholesale mobilization was effected that results began to result. That was before the days of the drastic tramp law, and tramps were plentiful A tramp hunt ing squad could 20 out at any hour of the day and get enough for a mess in no time, and the man-hunters soon began arriving with captive tramps, who were hustled before Green for identification. But Green failed to identify single one of them. It was memorable day for the tramps who chanced to be i'll this neighborhood, and they could never have forgotten it. As fast as the tramps were liberated and started on their way, they were captured by other bodies of search CTS and brought back to be inspected again, and again set at liberty. Those who once got within the danger zone had all kinds of difficulty in getting out of it.
 Jake Schermerhorn, who was sitting in front of Fuller 6 Peet's store in the afternoon of that memorable day, saw tramp coming down the town hall hill in an excited and half-scared sort of way. Jake promptly stepped out to meet him, whereupon the vagrant re- marked:
 "Are you goin' to arrest me, too? Say, they ain't been doin' thing to me all day but arrestin' me an lettin me go, an swear, don't know what it's all habout."
 Jake let him go.
 The sequel to the affair was, it was subsequently, charged, and never denied. that there had been no assault that Greens blood-curdling story was an in- vention, pure and more or less simple, and that he had accidentally shot him. self the day before he told his yarn, while fooling with revolver, and "the wound becoming painful, he had in- vented the tramp story to secure notor- iety and avert suspicion.
 The excitement soon died down, and sympathy changed to contempt and in- dignation as the fact dawned upon the populacs that the story looked f1shy enough, at the very beginning, to have stamped it as lie that ought not to have deceived anybody who would give it sober second thought However, that was not the first time, nor will 1t be the last, that a cock-and-bull story of that character, well stuck to by the inventors of it, will fool the people.