THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT.

Press, Volume VII, Issue 690, 14 January 1865, Page 5

THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT.

m The following letter, signed "No Conjttwr, n appeared in the Times of Oct. 17 -—

Tbe authorised employment of a long list of respectable names gives to a letter re- ] certShrpnbKahed on this subject an import- i •868 which might not otherwise attach to it,! --"P-waßy a« it appears the gentlemen agreed, on the suggestion of Lord B*xj t to a joint declaration of opinion that a no trace of trickery in any form," •■-* cwbanlv "neither confederates nor Moat this time last year I accompanied *p*rty to the entertainments offered by an **I--K>Bfeaan troupe in a tent pitched on a piece of ground near Bnyl in Flint■ffla. In the interval between thenarsenaaship a man presented himself with a coil of rope and a chair, in. which he requested to be tied. J volunteered for the service, with ainemi, a very powerful man. We exerted *"* our stzengm and ingenuity to tie the Jjsftnner tight; eachleg and arm was •wned by a separate knot, Derides a coil -Wok. bis seek. A Large kind of canvass or

I pasteboard extinguisher was then placed over him in the very centre of the ring upon the grass. In less than a minute it was removed, and displayed him with the ropes unbound at his feet. . He had no guitars nor tambourines under the extinguisher with him, or I have no doubt he could have made any required amount of noise; or he might have contrived, with little exertion of ingenuity, to display a hand at an opening, or even to flourish one stuck on a wire in the air. Wow, I have not the slightest notion how he got clear of the ropes. But am I therefore justified in certifying that there was no trace of a trick ? I)o Lord Bury and his friends wish us to understand that in their opinion there was no mechanical or physical cause for what they saw, or that the Messrs. Davenport could not explain the whole seeming mystery if they thought fit ? The Sroposed explanation as to their fondness for arkness is an insult to the common sense of the community. j The art of conjuring consists in con- j veying false or unfounded impressions through the medium of the senses. Yet, according to this new mode of reasoning, whenever a successful deception —that is, one I cannot detect—is put upon mc, lam bound to believe in the agency of disembodied spirits who, to complicate the absurdity, act frequently with visible and sensibly felt hands.

! The Pickets before Pbtebsbubg.—The special correspondent of the New York Tribune, writing j from " in front of Petersburg," on the sth ult, says: !—" Knowing perfectly their own resources and strength, our army can afford to dally, in a measure with the enemy. Hence the more than usual sociability, at the present time of the opposing pickets On the right, I understand, they sit on the opposite ends of the same log and discuss the peace and war question. Some are not quite so sociable. The other day one of our officers, in stationing his pickets, said to one of them, ' Well, sit down on the end of that log there for the present, until you get the lay of the land a little, and see what is going on,' and then went on stationing his detail. Presently tbe seated picket heard a rustling through the bushes at the other end of the log, and a voice at the same time asking, -Is that you, Yank ? * On being answered affirmatively, that it was 'nobody else,' Reb replied, * Well, I guess we are getting a little too close together ; I will withdraw a little,' suiting the action to the word. On another occasion two cooks in Colonel Steven's Brigade, 18th Army Corps, in taking dinner to their comrades in the tranches, took the wrong by-path and brought up in the camp of the enemy. They were relieved of the dinner and sent to Richmond, and word sent back to our pickets by the dinner-eaters that they would be very much obliged for another such meal. The other evening word was given out to our picketby the Rebs that some ladies had come down from Richmond, and that there was to be a prayermeeting in the rebel camp, and some of our boys were invited over, but they failed to ' see it." On this part of the line in some places the opposing forces get water out of the same springs, and the pickets traffic more or less in newspapers and other commodities. This intercourse and traffic seems to be carried on perhaps even more persistently and extensively, though a little differently, at some places on the left. The pickets have an agreement not to fire on each other without due notic, but it is understood that all captures by main strength or superior numbers are legitimate. This makes the pickets somewhat shy of each other, and consequently the most of their traffic is carried on in writing. They have a neutral post between their lines —a stump, for instance—where notes of negotiation and commodi-. ties of exchange are mutually left. A note or two of the rebel pickets that I have seen will more fully explain the modus operandi :— * Please leave the worth of this (a plug of tobacco) in writing paper, with two envelopes. I will give you two plugs of tobacco for the knife.' 'Please mail this letter (an open letter) to my mother, in Kentucky. Put on .one of your stamps, and here is one of ours and a piece of tobacco in return. What's the chance to get some coffee of you ?' These notes, with or without the article referred to, as the case may be, are left at the nearest post, while the person leaving them retires, and the other person comes up and examines them and replies; and so the traffic goes on. Sometimes the bargain and exchange are made in person, with- | out the trouble of notes. One of the pickets told 'mc that daring one of the fiercest of the Weldon Railroad fights the pickets on a portion of the lines nearby, not immediately engaged, were driving a brisk trade in tobacco, note-paper, kc. Besides this petty trafficking, not a little frank conversation on the state of affairs is known to be carried on between the more intelligent soldiers on picket. An atmospheric steam -hammer is now being exhibited at Birmingham, under the supervision of the patentee, Mr. Grimshaw. It is described in the Journal of the Society of Arts. We give the chief points :—An air-pump, worked by a band from a shaft, forces air into a reservoir, wliich is the framework »f the machine. The reservoir communicates with a cylinder, in which a piston works, with little friction ; this piston is the hammer, as to it may be fitted a head varying in form. By means of a wheel and screw or lever the operator is enabled to regulate the speed of the hammer; and the reservoir is so constructed as to be able to store up, so to _ speak, a large amount of power and to give smashing blows when wanted. This hammer, it is said, will cost much less to keep in repair than other steam-1 hammers.