Connecticut western news., 1911-10-26
OLD-TIME REVELRY.
Payday in the Early Seventies Brought
 Strenuous Times.

nose oI the present SChCIdtioh OA Canaanites, who are prone to bemoan the boisterousness and night revelry which the ultra-radicals among the no license advocates dismally prophecy as result of return to the license rule, are re- ferred back to the halcyon days forty years or so ago, when the Connecticut Western railroad was in process of con- struction, and some of the huskiest and most warlike plug-uglles that ever in- vaded the peaceful valley of the Housa- tonic, were quartered here as members of the construction army gangs. They were industrious workers while they worked, and honest enough, but soldiers of fortune withal, and ready to fight at 1 the drop of the hat.
 For several days after each recurring payday they indulged in celebration, after their characteristic fashion, got drunk, paraded themselves boisterously around the streets, and varied the daily and nightly program with bloody fights. ! Compared to the debauchery of those days, the revelry with which the present generation are familiar is very much like a Sabbath school froiic. At any hour in the dead of night, the dwellers were likely to be reused from their peaceful slumbers by hideous yells and the most explosive explosives in the vocabulary, and on getting up and peeping through the window curtains to see what had broken loose they would be privileged to withess pitched battle-a real Donny- brook--in which from six to a dozen drunken ,gladiators were mixing them selves up and persevering in the mix-up until some luckless victim succeeded in breaking away, and running, with all the clothes torn off his body, to the nearest place of shelter and safety. These out breaks invariably occurred about payday, and were as sure to occur as payday was days, and the bar-room ofthe old Warner House was fayorite resort for the sport ing element, while the house was filled with regular boarders, including the civil 
 An incident in which "Billie" Hiester figured somewhat picturesquely is recall ed. Mir. Hiester's father, Judge Hiester, of Harrisburgh, Penn, and Mrs. Hiester, had come on from Pennsylvania to visit their son. The day of their arrival at the hotel chanced to be payday for the construction iaborers, and Billie" appre- hending the usual night boisterousness, went to Landlord Warner and requested him to see to 1t that there would be no unseemly racket about the hotel that night, out of consideration for the Judge and his wife 4-
 "That will be all right, Billie,"' the land lord assured him; "I'll see that it's so still, around here tonight, that you'll be able to hear pin drop. Leave it to me-"
 Billie left it to Warner, bubswith more or less misgiving, which proved to be well founded, for never before was such savage, such constant, or such protracted and bloody fighting as there was that night. They fought along the whole length of the hotel piazza, all around the hotel yard, back and front, and out in the street, and the battles were accompanied with loud, vehement, profane and terrify- ing language. -~
 By the efforts of a husky bartender and some of his friends the bar-room was cleared of its undesirable occupants and locked up tight while the fighting was at its height. One particularly pugnacious individual who had been put out, picked up stone and hurled it viciously through panel of the bar-room door. At that instant "Billie" Hiester, who had come out to reconnoiter spied him, and walking bold-I ly up to the burly stone-thrower, dealt him a blow under the ear that dropped h i'm to the ground in heap. It so hap pened that the late Dr. Cummings, who had come out upon his porch to sec what was going on, witnessed Billie's attack and essayed to reprove him for his un- gentle conduct.
 "What doyou mean, Hiester, by assault ing that man in that manner" he de- m anded.
 "Doctor," replied Billie, "while I'm living in this house it's my home, aud I'll defend it under any and all circum- stances"
 The doctor saw the point, and did not tarry to argue.