The Jockey's Bogy

1901

"The bogy of a jockey's life is taking on flesh," says Ainslee's. "He dreads this as a beauty dreads to lose her charms, and his whole thought from the age of 16 to 25 is to avoid the catastrophe. This is the pernicious feature of the life and distinguishes as a healthful sport from boxing or from football, in which the physical being is developed according to the laws of nature and is not outraged or balked. In order to reduce his weight nine pounds Monk Overton once remained in a Turkish bath from 10 p.m. one day until 2 p.m. the next, with no nourishment except a cup of tea and some toast.

"Again, Mike Bergen, mounted on a favorite, rode such a poor race that the stewards came to the paddock to investigate and punish him for fraudulent riding. They forgave the performance, however, when they found him collapsed and unable to speak. Knowing that he had to ride at a certain weight, Bergen had spent 48 hours in a Turkish bath, eating nothing whatever. When he reached the track, he was so weak that a stimulant was necessary. The one drink of whisky he took so demoralized his faculties that he could scarcely keep his seat in the saddle.

"Such a violation of physical development at the age when a boy should be most rapidly maturing makes it difficult for a jockey ever to become robust. Moreover, the mere riding of a race is a terrible drain on the nerve force of a jockey. A boy may lose a pound of weight in a hard race."

Loading Up Chickens

1920

Some twenty-five tons of real estate in the form of sand and gravel and masquerading as 30 cents a pound chicken almost got into the New York market this week to be sold to the ultimate consumer — or goat, notes the Hamilton (Ont.) Times. The 60,000 pounds of sand and gravel reposed in the crops of 50,000 live chickens which reached the Jersey City yards in eight carloads. They were detected in time. Is this a new or an old wrinkle?

Economy in Small Ways

1896

The little leaks in the household expenses, says the Jenness-Miller Monthly, are the most mischievous. The big ones are prominent enough to compel attention. Do you not, for example, trust all your tradespeople implicitly? You can't afford to do so.

The head servants in the Vanderbilt and Astor, and other wealthy families have among their chief duties that of weighing the household supplies. Dry goods measurements in the large shops are generally very accurate because the employes are under strict orders to be exact. But grocers and butchers will bear watching. Get for yourself or your kitchen priestess a set of measures and some scales, and after you and she have learned to use them, you will be amazed to see how much you have been paying for that you haven't had.

Even in the most reliable shops — so called — the weighing is very lax. Butchers claim that the deficiencies in their weights are all due to the waste in trimming. Very well, order the meat sent untrimmed. You will get fresher meat, and what you trim off will often give you nice bits for the stock pot, suet, etc. Try it and be convinced.

A quick-witted housekeeper says she has earned many a dollar in plumbers' bills by buying a force cup and learning to handle a wrench. Despite washing soda and potash, now and then something unmeltable slips through the sink strainer and clogs the pipe. All the more modern plumbing has a nut at the bottom of the "goose-neck," just below the sink. By setting a pan beneath this, and with a wrench loosening and then removing the cap, the obstruction will generally be found right there. Sometimes the force-cap applied over the strainer in the sink will be sufficient to clear the pipe without taking the cap off the gooseneck. If both fail, no harm will have been done, but one or the other, or both, succeeds often enough to make it worth while to exercise one's ingenuity a bit.