SOME TELEGRAPH FLASHES.

Press, Volume XLVIII, Issue 7862, 13 May 1891, Page 2

SOME TELEGRAPH FLASHES.

Bt U. B. Quick.

Weekly Prese.

Telegraph people, as a whole, undergo some queer experiences, and those of the messengers are not the least peculiar. Some of them would hardly bear publication, and others would need the peu of an abler man than Ito describe them. Telegraph messengers are citizens of the world ; have the entree everywhere, and at all hours of the day and night can be seen quietly pursuing their way to the highest aud to the lowest houses alike, at one hour into the backslums of the city and at another to the stylish suburban and are the equal servants of all. About late at night they see sights not generally seen, and being so well known things are done before them which would nor. be done before Che ordinary night wayfarer. They see the policeman, who has not a very happy lot, having a quiet smoke, aye, and sometimes a snooze, in the friendly .shelter of a deep doorway; and in one place the cook's friend used to lay his weary limbs on the marble slab which adorned the front of a large butcher's shop. One, a very stout sergeant, long since gathered to his forefathers, would almost nightly take advantage of this hard bed, and seeing him reclining at full length so often aud so comfortably roused the latent mischief in the boys, and they determined to play oiF a joke on him. Two or three of the bolder spirits were told off for the work, and they stayed about the office till the news was brought in that he was nicely asleep. Out they went, and stealiug round in slippers past where he lay one of them drove a formidable bonnet-pin into the sof te*t part of his anatomy. Tne deed Was done quietly, and before he was well awake or could make out what was the matter the boys had reached the newspaper office a few steps further on, and going iv as if on business, slipped over the back fence and into the ealeyards, through which they gained the next street, from whence they walked back to see how their victim fared. They found him standing close to his bed place and grumbling and mumbling to himself. The boys stopped as usual for a moment's chat, when he told them how he had been woKe with an intense, sharp pain, as if he had been stabbed, and was afraid that some speller had seized the opportunity, while he was usleep, to give him a poltogue in once;" yet he could find no wound nor blood, and so concluded that it must be " that bothering lumbago again." The boye, hardly able to control their laughter, sympathised with him, and proceeded as if to deliver press messages, and this time went right round the block co that they might ftive full vent to their spirits. Another gentleman on whom the boys used to play tricks was a cheap draper, who always bad large advertising streamers hanging on his shop fronc and across the footpath under the verandah. These the boys, mischievous as boys always are, delighted to tear iv pieces. The shopkeeper stood it for some time without attempting anything, but at last paid them out in their own coin. Instead of the usual flimsy notices, he put up thin boards cohered with paper, round the edges of which were driven tacka, with about an eighth of an inch of the point protruding on either side. When the boys made a jump and a grab at the placards, as they thought of paper, they scratched their hands in little, deep gutters from the wrist to the tips of the fingers. Each boy who was " had " let the next one who went round get had too, ana the lesson was such as to prevent a recurrence of such acts for some considerable time. Two of the boys, while going home early one morning, actually saw through a crack in the shop shutters a would-be defrauder of an insurance company starting a fire in a small box on the floor, which was quickly put out when they rapped on the shutters with a ecick. The shop is still standing, so I presume the incendiary thought better of ib, as he, of course, did not know who had seen him, for the boys made off at once. One of the messengers .could imitate the crowing of a cock most expertly, and when on late duty and having to pass the house of a gentleman who kept a large number of fowls he would stand close to the fence each time he passed and crow shrilly. In a few seconds would come the answering crow of the lord of the harem within, which would be taken up by all the others. Thi<* performance would be gone through every time he passed the house, aboat once each quarter of an hour, and the proprietor, a light sleeper, was at last compelled to report the matter to the officer in charge, who laughed heartily while receiving the complaint, but cautioned the boy with proper official severity? against repeating " the, offence.

A messenger with messages to " deliver personally " gets into places where few would.be admitted on any plea. One of them had occasion to deliver such a message for a popular star actress, who, behind the scenes, indulged her weakness for the mountain dew rather freely, and while in that state had a demon of a temper. The boy to—l the servant tkai he must see lier zni»cress, told t;_a.C lizo could nob. He said tie mast deliver —tie tnessage i^eiiMennsiiiiMiiuiiH see ber, tmt was again told that- —icb a thing was impossible. The boy persisted, much to his after regret, for while he was talking, out rushed tbe actress, brandishing; a long plated -candlestick over her _e-4, wUk wklek _k& ckfie- Mm *•____ and round the yarded, till her. Attention was called away by her husband, who spoke to her; when she turned to answer him the boy dropped the message on the ground- and hopped over tbe fence into the street. No receipt was obtained ; but th<j boy could not be persuaded to go near the house again on any consideration. Another day a message was received for a concert singer, who bad tbe misfortune to bave lost part of one arm, » fact well known to his friends but to few of the public. On calling at the hotel the boy was sent up to his room, where he found the singer sitting at the window reading, with a neatly gloved hand resting beside the book. On handing him the telegram and asking for a receipt, imagine the dismay of the boy when the gentleman for some reason unscrewed his arm and laid it on the chair beside him. I have frequently heard this gentleman sing, and at intervals, when the expression of the song required it, he would give his dummy arm a slight push with the other hand and make it swing naturally. {To ha continued).