Lead Based Paint (1895 advertisement)

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, NY, March 1, 1895, p. 6.

New York Theatres

New York, 1895

Three Melodramas Which are Delighting the Public.

Melodrama has New York in its spell now. "The Fatal Card," which is a play of modern life full of all the pulsing issues and flesh and blood of the big world around us, has now been running at Palmer's theatre for three weeks to thronging fashionable audiences and is one of the three enormous successes now holding the attention of metropolitan theatre goers, the other two being "The Masqueraders" at the Empire theatre, and William Gillette's new farce "Too Much Johnson," at the Standard theatre. Singularly enough, too, these three great successes all belong to Charles Frohman, who has given New York all the big dramatic and comedy hits of this and last season.

"The Fatal Card" belongs to the sturdiest and most wholesome class of melodramas. It is stirring and full of thrills like all plays that sharply contrast vice and virtue and whose mission it is to strongly picture the punishment which follows sin and the reward that awaits the virtuous and upright, but its fascinating story is told in a novel and delightful manner, and no better acted play was ever put before the New York public. The great critic, Nym Crinkle, says that Mr. Frohman has again given to the stage "the tumultuous romanticism of intense action and once more planted melodrama squarely and successfully in the teeth of dilettanteism and prominent humor." And of the play he writes that it is "an intensely interesting story of a struggle. It tells it by action more so than by dialogue and it moves logically and directly to a crisis, carrying the sympathies with it. The actors as if enfranchised spring to their work with a vital impulse. It brings back masculinity to the stage and the manager insists on having it to the full possibility of a splendid company." This splendid company is the finest ever seen in melodrama. Manager A. N. Palmer who produced "The Two Orphans" and "The Lights of London" says it surpasses any of the great casts of olden days and the public has been most enthusiastic in endorsing all the loudest praise that has been written and spoken about the performances.

Four of the greatest character actors of the day, W. H. Thompson, W. J. Ferguson, J. H. Stoddard and J. O. Barrows are in the cast, while May Robson, Agnes Miller of the Empire theatre stock company have agreeable roles, and E J. Ratcliff, late hero of Shenandoah has romantic prominence as the lover whose life is saved at a horrible and critical moment by the father of his sweetheart. All the exciting action revolves around and then centres itself in this love story, Ratcliffe saves the girl's father's life from lynchers in the Rocky mountains and the father gives him one half of the ace of clubs for future identification. A band of robbers afterwards kill Ratcliffe's father and the son having tracked and discovered them is himself caught in their rendezvous and sentenced to a terrible death. He has but a minute or two to live when his executor finds the half of the ace of clubs. Ratcliffe is released and the chief robber, his sweetheart's father perishes in his stead. All this story is told in seven realistic and thrilling scenes. Amy Busby who was Richard Mansfield's leading lady plays the sweetheart.

The "Masqueraders" is another magnificent production. It cost Manager Frohman $40,000 to put it on the Empire theatre stage. There are fifty beautiful imported dresses in it that cost $20,000. Mr. Frohman's stock company gives a polished and brilliant performance of the play and Mr. Henry Miller and Miss Viola Allen, the leading man and woman of the organization, were never seen to better advantage histrionically. There is a great gamble scene in which Miller stakes $1,000,000 on the turn of a card against the wife and child of his successful rival and wins. Great crowds flock to the Empire to see this wonderful play.

"Too Much Johnson" is William Gillette's new farce in which Mr. Gillette appears as an exquisite liar from Yonkers and the most artful mother- in-law bamboosler that the funny men have yet produced. This hero is almost caught in an interesting flirtation and carts his household off to Cuba, where he borrows a stranger's plantation and fools everybody in the friskiest and most cold blooded way imaginable. "Too Much Johnson" is even a greater success than "Charley's Aunt" was last season. Fashionable audiences fill the Standard theatre at every performance and hundreds who come late are turned away.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, NY, Feb. 8, 1895, p. 2.

Disgraceful

New York, 1895

Three Hundred Prisoners in the Jail.

FOUR-FIFTHS ARE TRAMPS.

Liberated in Gangs Before Sentence Has Expired.

TO MAKE ROOM FOR OTHERS.

Are Justices Bribed to Send Vagabonds to Jail?

SHERIFF DOHT'S SHARP GAME.

Trying to Make the County Pay for Deputies' Badges that He Sells for $5 Apiece and Pockets the Money.

SOME OTHER IMPOSITIONS.

A disgraceful state of affairs has arisen in this county since Henry Doht became Sheriff.

Tramps have been taken out of the county jail, appointed deputy sheriffs, invested with the badge of office, armed with revolver and club, and sent to Maspeth and Ridgewood to do duty as policemen.

The county has been charged, and has paid, $3 per day for the services of these tramps as peace officers. Sheriff Doht broke the law when he liberated these vagabonds. He disgraced civilized methods when he made them officers of the state. What right had he to charge the county for the services of convicts?

Here is another disgraceful state of things. There are 300 or more prisoners in the county jail. That is 200 more than the jail can properly accommodate. Four-fifths of the number are tramps. Certain Justices of the Peace are making as many as 50 commitments a month. They show as much ardor in crowding the jail as if they were getting an extra fee. It was once the practice in this county for a certain Sheriff to give justices a private fee of 50 cents for each tramp committed. We have no proof that that is being done now, but never were so many tramps committed as now.

Only the other day the Sheriff, it is alleged, turned a lot of tramps and disorderly persons out of the jail before their terms had expired. Some had been in jail but a few days, it is said. Some had been sentenced from Jamaica. They came right back to this town, and sought to be committed over again. Doubtless the same thing happened in other towns. No doubt many of them were recommitted. Why should Sheriff Doht turn these prisoners out to let in others? He broke the law when he did so.

It costs $8 to $12 for each tramp committed. If the tramps that to-day are committed for 30 days should be let go one week hence, and should then be recommitted for another 30 days, and this practice should be continued, the county would be robbed of thousands of dollars. It does seem as if this is what is being done.

The late Grand Jury in the Court of Oyer and Terminer, Judge Bartlett presiding, made an investigation of the jail, and presented the following strong condemnation of some things that astonished them. The organs that are bribed by patronage to make excuses for the Sheriff and abuse THE FARMER will have trouble to get around this. The Grand Jurors say:

COURT HOUSE, Queens County, Jan. 28, 1895.

To Honorable Willard Bartlett, Presiding Judge:

DEAR SIR — We, the undersigned Grand Jurors, drawn and empanelled to serve at a Court of Oyer and Terminer held at the Queens County Court House, Long Island City, Jan. 7, 1895, do make the following presentment as to the sanitary condition, management, &c., of the county jail, as instructed by the court and as the law directs:

First — We have carefully gone through the jail and inspected the different wards, cells, corridors, kitchen and yards, and find them in as clean and good sanitary condition as the over-crowded condition of the jail will allow, and do so report.

Second — We also find that there are now confined within said jail nearly THREE HUNDRED PRISONERS, committed either for criminal offences or vagrancy. Fully four-fifths are able-bodied vagrants. We find it the practice of the town constables to arrest them, take them before a justice, who commits them to the County Jail for terms varying from thirty days to six months, where they are boarded and lodged at a weekly expense of three dollars per head to the county. When their term expires the same process of commitment is repeated at a cost to the county of about $8 for each commitment. To keep this army in good health, the Supervisors of the county provide crude rock for them to break into fragments, suitable for builders or roadmakers' uses, which, when duly prepared, is sold for a less sum per cubic yard than the crude rock cost the county delivered at the yard.

Third — In view of the fact that this county is now taxed heavily for the purpose of building new roads and repairing those already constructed; also for building and repairing the various county institutions, and the average taxpayer has to labor hard and practice the closest economy to meet this tax, while these lazy drones are reposing in this public hive in idleness, it is the opinion of this body that the board of Supervisors should devise some measures to correct this growing evil, and to provide some employment whereby vagrants may be made to contribute to their own support, and benefit the county, and if not within their powers to do so, to try and devise some legislation that would cover the ground, clear this county of this horde of tramps, who terrorize the inhabitants during the summer months, and then have to be supported by this county during the winter months in idleness.

JAMES MALCOLM, Foreman.
JOHN T. WOOLLEY, Clerk.

What the Grand Jury say about the stone breaking abuse is precisely what THE FARMER said several weeks ago. The Grand Jury might have gone farther and stated that very much of the broken stone was stolen from the county. Contractors who got the stone said they had paid certain Supervisors for it. The Supervisors denied it. The county never got a dollar for the stone.

At the last meeting of the board of Supervisors a bill was presented for audit for making Deputy Sheriffs' badges. The county has no right to pay such a bill. Sheriff Doht sells badges to Deputy Sheriffs at $5 apiece and puts the money in his pocket. If the county must pay for making the badges, then the profits, about $4.60 on each badge, should accrue to the county. No other sheriff ever sought to make the county pay for his badges. The bill should be thrown out.

If the badges were needed for the tramps who were made policemen, the county should not pay the bill. The Sheriff charged the county $3 per day for the services of these convicts, therefore the Sheriff should pay the badge bill.

Sheriff Doht has had a bill audited in his favor for $3,000 for the services of deputies at Ridgewood and Maspeth during a part of the strike on the city railroads. If some tax-payer would bring an action to restrain the payment of this bill the court would knock a big chunk out of it. The sum of $3 per day is charged for the service of these deputies. It is a notorious fact that most of them received but $2.50 a day. The sheriff is not entitled to a profit of 50 cents a day on each deputy. He is simply entitled to have what he pays out returned to him, and to be personally compensated for his services.

In another matter the county was made to pay $194 for services to the sheriff that the county was not liable for at all. The sheriff got the benefit of it personally. The tax-payers are being imposed upon unlawfully and unreasonably, and the Supervisors should make a stand against it.

We see it stated in the Long Island City Star that the Sheriff wants the board of Supervisors to pay out of the public treasury for an inside watchman, an outside watchman, and a jail keeper. There is not a jail in the state of New York where the Sheriff does not pay these expenses himself. In Mr. Norton's time two watchmen were employed for a time, and later but one, and the county paid them, but it was all wrong, and THE FARMER said so at the time. Sheriff Norton did not ask the county to pay his jail keeper, nor has any other Sheriff ever asked such a favor. As well might the county pay the Under Sheriff, and the Chief Clerk, and it may come to that, under Mr. Doht.

The board of Supervisors should stand as a barrier between the tax-payers and the greed of the Sheriff's office.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, NY, Feb. 8, 1895, p. 1.

Smithtown's Strange Doings

New York, 1895

A Deserted House in Which Mysterious Lights Go Bobbing About.

There is an unoccupied house on the banks of the Nissequogue river in Smithtown, which is said to be haunted. The place is owned by Miss Fannie Darling, who, for some cause, suddenly removed from the place, leaving behind her furniture. Recently a mysterious light has been seen in the house. It was surmised at first that burglars were looting the house, but an investigation disproved this theory. A man was set to guard the place. He avers that the light began to wander about the house at a certain hour. He searched from cellar to garret but found everything in its place and nothing to explain the illumination.

A few nights ago several men set out to watch the place. A light snow was falling when they went on guard. A cordon was established around the house to see that no one entered unobserved. When the light began to show they all made a rush for the place and doors and windows were watched. Another search through the house failed to explain the mystery and no traces of strange footprints were found in the snow. Many of the villagers profess to laugh at the scare, but the house is avoided after nightfall.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, NY, Feb. 8, 1895, p. 1.

Shot By His Old Rival

New York, 1895

Giaginto's Unrelenting Hate for the Man Who Won his Sweetheart.

With a bullet hole in the left breast of his overcoat and a battered leaden pellet in his pocket, Joseph Schiavello, of Astoria, appeared before Justice Duffy in the Long Island City police court on Friday and asked for a warrant for the arrest of Carnetto Giaginto. The hostile feeling between the two men, according to Schiavello, dates back eight years, when he married Giaginto's sweetheart in Italy and came to this country. Giaginto, who swore he would be revenged, followed them.

The two men met in New York, and Schiavello asserts that Giaginto attempted to shoot him, and spent six months in jail in consequence. The two men met again in Astoria Thursday night. Giaginto whipped out his pistol and blazed away at his rival. The bullet cut a hole through his coat, and glancing along one of his ribs, came out at the breast bone. The wound is not dangerous. Giaginto has escaped, but a warrant has been issued for his arrest.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, NY, Feb. 1, 1895, p. 12.

Tramps As Policemen

New York, 1895

The Sheriff Throws Open the Doors of the County Jail.

THE FARMER has received information of a serious kind respecting Sheriff Doht. It is to the effect that after the Deputy Sheriffs went on strike for $3 a day, Sheriff Doht took a number of tramps out of their cells in the County jail, made them Deputy Sheriffs, and sent them to do duty as officers at Maspeth and Ridgewood. THE FARMER prints the information for what it is worth.


(From Tuesday's Brooklyn Eagle.)

The strike for more pay by Sheriff Doht's special deputies, who were appointed for service in protecting the trolley cars in Queens county and were detailed to duty at Ridgewood takes a ridiculous turn when it is asserted that the sheriff is selecting men from the vagrant cells in the jail to act as deputies. Three men who took a train for the field of action wearing deputy sheriff badges were recognized as vagrants who had recently been sent to jail by Judge Wallace of Rockville Centre. The fellows, who were thinly clad, were heard to remark that it would be necessary for them to fight to keep warm.


(From the New York Sun.)

The deputy sheriffs employed by Sheriff Doht of Queens county to protect the Ridgewood power house and depot of the Brooklyn, Queens County and Suburban road joined the strikers last night and took their night sticks with them. The regular pay of a deputy sheriff is $3 a day.

The railroad company paid the men yesterday and gave them only $2 a day. The day force quit, and when the night force under Capt. Baker heard of it they said they'd quit too. Sheriff Doht read the riot act to them without avail.


(From Tuesday's Brooklyn Times.)

Yesterday afternoon forty of the special deputies on duty at the Maspeth stables on Grand street decided to go out. They marched to the County Court House in Long Island City and presented their grievances before the sheriff, complaining that the pay was too small for the number of hours' work. The men were getting $2.50 per day. They demanded $5 for every day and night they were on duty. The men said they had been kept on duty twenty-four hours at a time, and wanted pay for that time.

Sheriff Doht declined to accede to the men's demands, and stripped them of their clubs and badges of authority. Some refused to give up the badges until they were paid for the work already done, and were unmoved by the sheriff's threats to imprison them.

Officer Gildersleeve was around Hempstead village last night in search of twenty deputies to fill the places of those who struck for $5 a day at Maspeth. He had numerous applications, but when they learned of the mission only six were willing to take the positions. The amount offered was $2.50 per day and meals.

If it is true that the tramps in the county jail were taken out, invested with police authority, and sent to Maspeth to preserve the peace, it is easy to understand why the officers showed so much sympathy with the strikers that the railroad company notified Sheriff Doht that he would be held personally accountable for damage to the company's property.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, NY, Feb. 1, 1895, p. 12.

Tried To Kill Her Child

New York, 1895

Mrs. Haines Goes Suddenly Crazy — Ropes With Nooses in the Cellar.

Mrs. Nathaniel Haines, 29 years old, wife of a carpenter residing in Oyster Bay, attempted to drown her youngest child in a tub of water on Tuesday. She has been subject to attacks of insanity, and has been acting strangely for several days. On Sunday afternoon she cut off her hair and burned it, and Monday afternoon she threw $85 in bank notes into the fire. She appeared to be herself again Tuesday morning, and her husband left her at home with their two boys, aged 2 and 6 years respectively.

In the afternoon when Mrs. Haines ran from her house only partly clad and with a child almost naked in her arms no one saw her. Arriving at a part of the town known as Fort Hill, she ran into the cellar of a house occupied by a family named Gould and threw the child into a tub full of water in the cellar.

While she was trying to drown the child Mr. Gould appeared. He grabbed the boy. The woman holding the child with one hand tried to stab Mr. Gould with a carving knife which she held in the other hand. He dodged each lunge made at him, all the time holding on to the child. Mrs. Gould's screams brought neighbors, and the child was rescued.

Mr. Haines said that afternoon on going into the cellar he discovered three ropes with a loop in the end of each, hanging from beams. He believes that the nooses were prepared by his wife with the intention of hanging herself and both of her children.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, NY, Feb. 1, 1895, p. 12.

Broadway Glacier

1895

A FAMOUS OLD HOTEL AND THEATER SUCCUMB TO IT.

Memories of the Glorious Career of the Old Metropolitan and Niblo's Garden. Reminiscences That Will Interest Others Besides New Yorkers.

Thirty years ago the Metropolitan hotel was the focus of the town. The gilded youth went there for late suppers. The most noted politicians of the Tweed ring poured out champagne there. Its birds were always well cooked, its steaks were marrowed to a turn, its oysters had the call, and its whisky was famous.

It was the plaza for the actors until long after the war. They stood in clusters all round its steps and held council in its vestibule, for all the noted chophouses were in the neighborhood.

Round the corner, in Houston street, were the House of Lords and Clifton's, and up on the other end of the block was the Revere House. From that corner down you could meet on a pleasant day all the famous actors in town — E. L. Davenport, Tom Placide, Burton, Dion Boucicault, James W. Wallack, Charles Fisher, John Brougham, Rufus Blake and a double score of others. If any of them got up as far as the Metropolitan Opera House, it was behind a fast team, and they found themselves in the country.

When the Metropolitan was opened in 1852, it was the town talk. It was inaugurated with a stupendous banquet. Stephen A. Douglas and Tom Benton and Sam Houston were there. Voluminous descriptions of the hotel appeared in the newspapers of that date. People stood in crowds and looked up at it from the other side of the street. It was thought by conservative people to be a most unwarranted piece of extravagance. But the Metropolitan became at once one of the most popular hotels in the city. And its complement of 1,000 guests did not fall off while the Lelands had charge of it.

Before and during the war it was customary for the reporters to go to the Metropolitan every night to get the news. It was jammed with people on the night of the cable celebration and on the day that Sumter was fired on. There was, in fact, no such center above it on Broadway, and its walls must have rung with the voices of many great captains and celebrated beauties.

There are people in New York who can remember when Niblo had a garden there. There are many more who can remember the first theater which went by the name of the garden, and how the American institute was wont to hold its fairs there, and the original Christy minstrels, before they got into Mechanics' hall, really caught the small town there, and how for several seasons the concert hall was the resort of our small musical population.

Then later the theater spread out into a great auditorium, and Mr. A. T. Stewart bought the property and had a private box connected with a parlor, and finally came Jarrett and Palmer to take the management, and then bloomed upon the world the "Black Crook" and the "White Fawn," spectacles whose like had never been seen, and which rolled up fortunes for everybody connected with them.

But at this time the theater was in the full swing of popular success. The enormous success of the "Black Crook" had secured all the commercial visitors in town. It was denounced by the pulpit, but never waned in attractiveness for years. Agents were kept in Europe to snap up every specialty they could find, and such was the pliability and capacity of the performance that it swallowed up everything, from a performing goat to a prima ballerina assoluta.

Bonfanti was then in her prime and became the rage of the town. Pauline Markham was in full girth of glory and led the Amazons.

If some one will lay hold of the still virile beard of the venerable Commodore Tooker, he will reminisce for an hour on the palmy days of Niblo's. All the historic Thespians of the pave will tell of the days of William Wheatley and the production of the "Duke's Motto," a play which made the most extraordinary kind of a hit, and how after that Forrest came with the "Broker of Bogota," one of the best original American dramas of its era.

When Jarrett and Palmer took hold of Niblo's Garden, a change came over the house. Then opened the era of Terpsichore, and for years the place was given over to a voluptuous orgie of bacchantes and spectacle. There were long rows of the handsomest women in the world in the corridors on Tuesday mornings to draw their salary.

After the "Black Crook" wore itself out there were spasmodic efforts to call back the old dramatic prestige of the house. Charles Fechter made his American debut there, playing Hamlet in a blond wig and failing to please the public. It was there that Boucicault brought his "Formosa" from London after declaring that he was going to open "a new path for the drama through the sewers," and the play was damned on the first night.

The Metropolitan has succumbed to the inevitable. Broadway is a glacier, not a rock. It moves slowly north with all its gayety, its groups, its centers. Everything historic melts and vanishes. Every old stager has marked the shifting of the centers. Thirty years ago the focus of Vanity Fair was there between Houston and Prince streets. When Rachel came to this country, she got no higher than Houston street. And when the war was over the meeting place of all the lions, the swells, the flaneurs, was between the St. Nicholas and the Metropolitan.

Those blocks thundered and palpitated with the life that has gone up to Thirty-ninth street. First the crowd jumped to Union square, then it went to the Fifth Avenue hotel, then to the Hoffman House, then to the Coleman, then to the Grand, then to — well, you will have to take a cable car to find it now. — Nym Crinkle in New York World.

Kissed Her Lover in Court

New York, 1895

The scene was affecting in the court room Thursday afternoon when the jury returned a verdict of not guilty in the case of John Alt, a farmer of Bayside, who had been on trial for his life for three days for the killing of Warren Frost, a colored farmhand, near Obermeyer's hotel, Creedmoor, on July 29 last. Alt seemed dazed for a moment. In an instant his eyes filled with tears and he was embraced by Miss Della Wench, his sweetheart, who attended court faithfully and sat by her lover's side during his long suspense. Justice Bartlett immediately discharged Alt from custody. Henry A. Monfort, who defended Alt, occupied nearly two hours in addressing the jury. The defense admitted the killing and contended that the shooting was justifiable.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, NY, Jan. 25, 1895, p. 12.

U.S. Dental Association (1895 Advertisement)

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, NY, Jan. 25, 1895, p. 3.

Dukes Mixture Tobacco (1895 Advertisement)

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, NY, Jan. 25, 1895, p. 3.

Mechanical Music

1895

The Wail of a Professor Who Declares That Learning Is a Lost Art.

"What for I look blue?" said the professor. "I will tell you. I look blue because my beezness is being — what you call him? — keeked out. No — ah, yes — knocked out by the maker of those stupid mechanique instruments of music. There is no longer any need to learn the piano, for, see, all you do now is bring in the telegraphique wires from the street, and the piano will play itself. Organ — no. Buy some rolls of papaire and put him in the organ and turn the crank, so, and out will come anything you wish from Strauss to Cherubini. Mandolin — no. For some much too clever Yankee has make another something which you shall button to the piano, and there, my faith, you have your mandolin. Zither — no. For there are the zithers now that you play with a steek. Chord of F, press this steek; cord of B, press that steek, and so on. There is no more need to learn anything.

"Mademoiselle say to me, 'Ah, professor, why should I practice any more when Mees So-and-so, who nevaire took the lesson in her life, has an electrique piano which can play everything as well as you do when she press a leedle button?' And I say, 'Why, indeed?' Then madame say to me, 'Ah, professor, I shall geeve up the mandolin, for I can put a leedle thing to the piano and make it play like the mandolin weeth two fingers.' And I say, `Ah, so?' Then monsieur say, 'Professor, I guess I give up the organ and buy one of those windyphones like Billee Sweetzer have, where all you have to do is to move the feet, and the music come out joost as good as you play,' and I say, 'Was that so?'

'And it ees so. The mechanique music have knocked me out. There is no heart any more to learn anything that take time and patience when you can have all the good music that you like by pressing the leedle button and moving the feet. It ees not the music of the soul, to be sure; maybe it ees not the music of the expression; maybe it ees not music at all. Bah! Who cares? All you want is the tune, just like the organ man and piano woman on the street. Arteest be dam. Vive la mechanique! I am going home to invent a violin electrique and an automatique flute that you shall play with your knees." — New York Sun.

Encouragement

1895

"Swiggles' books are very well spoken of, are they not?" asked the timid looking man.
"Yes, sir," replied the bookseller. "Some of the critics praise them highly."
"And I suppose there will be a pretty active demand for them in time?"
"Oh, yes, " said the dealer. "After Swiggles is dead everybody will be wanting to read them."
The timid looking man went softly away. He was Swiggles. — Chicago Tribune.


"We Call It the Gym"

The Vassar girl was home on a visit.
"Dorothy," queried Aunt Minerva in a tone freighted with earnest purpose, "which do you say at Vassar — 'gymnaysium' or 'gymnawsium?' "
And Dorothy promptly answered, "We call it the gym. " — Philadelphia Times.


Murder Will Out

The maxim, "Murder will out," is disproved by statistics. In the ten years ending with 1886 there were 1,766 murders committed in England and Wales, and in 1,094 of these cases no trace of the criminal was ever found that led to his apprehension


Scorpions

In many tropical countries the scorpion grows to the length of a foot.

Encke's Comet

1895

A Little Visitor That Travels by a Curiously Regular Time Table.

Encke's comet is one of the best known of the Jupiter group of comets. This group, so far as known, consists of 19 objects, all of which are members of our solar system and are revolving about our sun in orbits of from three and a half years to double that time. The group is so called because there is every reason to believe that these wanderers were intercepted in their path through space by the giant planet Jupiter and perturbed into orbits about the sun, the distant end of which lies in the neighborhood of the orbit of this planet.

Encke's comet is the most noted of this group, having been known to astronomers for upward of a century and having been sufficiently well observed to conform very closely to its computated path. It was first seen by Mechain of Paris on Jan. 17, 1786, and was again discovered by Miss Caroline Herschel in November, 1795, and after a few days by other astronomers. It was again observed in 1805, but none of the astronomers at the time knew of the identity of the objects which they saw. In the winter of 1818-9 it was visible for some seven weeks, and Encke busied himself with the computation of its orbit. In a remarkably short time he had his computations finished and was able to show that it was moving in an orbit of three and a half years period; that the comets above enumerated were identical with it, and that it had approached the sun 18 times in the intervals unobserved.

Encke next computed the time of its return, announcing this date as May 24, 1822, having been delayed on the way some nine days by the attraction of Jupiter, and according to this time table the object was again observed on its return. This computation of Encke's was a most remarkable one, involving as it did some of the most intricate and laborious problems known by the astronomers of the time. — Boston Transcript.

Insisted Upon Going To Jail

New York, 1895

Pyles Accused Himself in Order to Spend Two Months in Prison.

John Pyles, a boy vagrant, was arraigned before Justice MacKenna at Whitestone on Friday by Police Captain Carll. The judge was about to impose the usual ten days' sentence when the lad objected.

"I'd like ter hev jes two months; no more en no less," he said.

Pyles then called the judge's attention to the fact that the last time he was in the village he had stolen $5 in money, a watch and chain, and other articles from Mrs. Charles McCall for whom he was working at that time.

He asked the court to send for Mrs. McCall and see if she would not make a charge against him. An officer was despatched to Mrs. McCall's house. She said it was true that Pyles had stolen the articles he named about a year ago, but she refused to make a charge against him.

When the judge heard this he said: "Well, Pyles, I charge you with the theft. Are you guilty or not guilty?"

"Guilty, yer Honor, guilty," shouted the lad.

"Sixty days in the county jail," said the judge. The lad left the court room with a smile of evident joy.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, N.Y., Jan. 11, 1895, p. 12.

Why Beverly Was Called Beantown

1895

The town of Beverly was set off from the town of Salem more than 200 years ago. About that time, it is said, a schooner with a full cargo of beans entered that port. This supplied the whole town with beans; hence the name given to the inhabitants, "Beverly Beaners." In 1687 the town of Beverly voted to impose a tax of 10 shillings on all future absentees from town meetings. In 1754 28 slaves were owned in the town. The first Sunday school in America was established in Beverly in 1810, and the fiftieth anniversary was celebrated in that place in 1860. In 1824 General Lafayette visited Beverly, and the writer of this saw him as he rode through on horseback. We are told that up to this day those in the vicinity of Beverly call it "the bean town." — Boston Transcript.

Shot at Miss Abbott

New York, 1895

Miss Annie Abbott, who lives with her widowed mother in Farmingdale, had a narrow escape from injury Friday evening. She took a lighted lamp into the front room and was drawing the window shades when there was a report of a pistol and a bullet crashed through the window above her head. Only one shot was fired.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, N.Y., Jan. 11, 1895, p. 1.

Duplex's Last Desertion

New York, 1895

Private Thomas Duplex of Company C, United States engineers, at Willet's Point, who had gained considerable notoriety through his repeated desertions, has been finally dropped form the service by means of a dishonorable discharge. During the last five years he has deserted five times. Each time he has surrendered himself after an absence of about three months.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, N.Y., Jan. 11, 1895, p. 1.

Women In Italy

1895

In Italy, writes a correspondent, we have seen women not only working in the fields, but carrying bricks and stone and mortar up ladders for the construction of buildings. On the railroad from Brindisi to Naples, in southern Italy, where a tunnel was being repaired, we saw some 40 girls carrying on their heads bushel baskets of mortar and stone from a valley on one side of the track up a steep stairway above the tunnel on the other side. The baskets were filled by men and lifted upon the heads of the girls, who thus had by far the heavier task of carrying the loads up an ascent of 60 feet. Their feet and arms were bare, their faces brown, but they looked cheerful, at least those did who paused in their work to stare at the passing train. Near Paestum "gangs of women were at field work, with a man to oversee them, cracking a long hunting whip."

At Amalfi we saw old women carrying on their backs loads of wood up the long, rocky stairways leading to the Cappuccini Monastery hotel. The wood was 4 feet long, and to all appearances there was nearly a quarter of a cord on each woman's back. In several places in southern Italy we witnessed this almost brutal scene of women bent and staggering beneath loads of wood which they were carrying up the hills. The first feeling one has on seeing women thus employed is of resentment against some one who has forced them to it, but evidently the rough out of door toil is voluntarily assumed, or at least accepted as inevitable.

Disappearance of Mrs. Ketcham

New York, 1895

Mrs. George W. Ketcham, Jr., is missing from her home in Northport. She left late on Wednesday night of last week. Her departure was premeditated, for she took with her all of her clothing, wedding presents, silverware, linen, and everything that she could in any way lay claim to.

George Rainney, a baker, has also disappeared from the village.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, N.Y., Jan. 11, 1895, p. 1.