University of South Carolina Libraries
P? ' ' V- / A PIED PIPER IN REAL LIFE. .. Rat-catcher of London Has Method of Luring the Rodents. ; It is a few years ago now since the adeventure happened to me, but the ^ hero of it still goes about his work, 1 and the memory of it is still vivid in my mind. The scare of plague recalls | the man and his business. | v - I met him, by chance, in one of those little old-fashioned streets, of | .Jfcueen Anne And Georgian houses, ? rwhich still remain on the slum side of Westminster Abbey. Outside one pf them was a high dogcart, a large ^jtack (propped up against a wall) and the man. It was the sack which first caught my eye. It was a most peculiar sack, or, rather, it was an ordinary sack behaving in a most peculiar way. I can only describe it by saying that it heaved, and wobbled, and squirmed. I stopped abruptly and said, "Hullo! What the deuce is inside that sack.?" Then I saw the" man. He was a jlf toll fellow, respectably dressed, with lb ft pale, thin face, a long nose and M greenish eyes. He smiled in answer || to my expression of surprise, and it H was then that I noticed the greenish glint in his eyes. "What's in the sack?" he said, p; Well, take a look!" Ife \ He went to the sack, untied the p v piece of string and ojffened the mouth H ^ of the sack, very cautiously, as I 111^ peered over it. H? "Good Lord!" 1 said '"You don't ||V: \ say so!" Bp. As a matter of fact, he had said nothing, but the sight he showed me Pf was astonishing. Inside that sack 8j| was a heap of live rats, ^rithing, ' clawing, kicking, struggling and bitIll lug. Ugh! that bagful- of vermin p: was a beastly thing to see. g|?'. The man with the greenish eyes |R' thrust his hand down and drew out, S&F" " with a sharp jerk, one of the gray | rats. He had got his head encircled ' by his thumb and forefinger and its p| legs were kicking furiously. v . 'That's a fair size!" said the man. S|: Then he dropped it back into the bag jfe and tied up the string again. |||j| "There are 300 of 'em inside ^ there," he said. "Not bad for one night's catch." 'Three huddred!" I cried. "Where on earth did you get them?" He told me that he had caught QrV'' vtbem in a city warehouse down by $|?>' the river. He also told me that he Wsm exnected to get '"a good few" in a Icily restaurant that very night. Meanwhile he was going to sell the sackful to 86m e fancy gentlemen down Mitcham way, who liked to give their dogs a bit of fun on a Sunday morning. He hoisted the sack into the dogcart, and with a "good morning to you," put his foot on the step. "Look here," I said, "I should be sorry not to meet you again. Do you mind giving me your name and address?". "Why, -certainly," said the man, and taking out a neat little case he fh&nded me his card. Underneath his name, which was an ordinary one, was an extraordinary title. It was nothing less than "Ratcatcher to the City of London." f; "I am the only man of my trade in the London Directory," said my new friend, with a touch of pride. "If you ever want my services?" * It is needless to say that from the moment he handed me his card I was consumed with a desire to know more of the man and his methods. If was only a night or two later when I met him outside a city restaurant Aivnm a sidft street less than a half jpff mile from Ludgate Circus. It was 9 o'clock. I recognized my H man in the dark doorway of the res-% taurant, which had been closed for ' an hour. In the flickering light of p a street lamp his thin face, with its long nose, looked whiter than when I first met him in Westminster, and v. there was the same strange, greenish glint in his eyes. Two steel '' cages about a foot high were on the ground beside him. He carried a roll of white cloth under his arm, and in his right hand a bull's-eye ; lantern and a long, white wand. "Any ferrets or dogs?" I asked. "Not much!" was the answer. "Do you put poison down?" I said. "Pl'son!" The man repeated the word savMf. agely. "I'm not a p'ague merchant," yr' he said. "Every rat I take is a live rat, and I leave no dead 'uns." He told me that he had already ||fe been inside the restaurant just as it had shut up for the night. He had |p * seen that there were plenty of crumbs and bits of food about the floor, and had fixed up nets?poachers' nets, he explained?across tne passages and doorways. There was nothing & to do now but get inside, and wait a bit until the beasts came out of Bf&j their hiding places. Inside the long dining room on ?the' ground floor of the city restaurant there was absolute darkness, and the stale, fetid smell of warm dinners that had been cooked and eaten, of cigarettes and beer dregs and wine dregs, of cheese and the refuse of a restaurant at night. In the J -r' . '* ' ' * \ darkness, not relieved by even the faint glimmer of a candle, but with a glint of light twinkling through the rim of the lantern with its bull'seye closed, the rat catcher stood motionless at one corner of the room. For an hour he stood there without budging or any sign of restlessness. Only his breath stole through the silence with rhythmic whisper as a a clock on the wall beats out the time with a steady tick-tack. Presently there was another sound. It came very faintly at first, like the rustling of dead leaves down a pathway. Then there came queer little noises?tiny voices, piping and squeaking, tiny feet, pattering, running, frisking along the ground floor dining room of the city restaurant. These sounds of little footsteps came from one direction only at first. men irom oiner pans 01 me roum they twittered and pattered, and there were creakings down the old wainscoating of the walls, and little rushes and dashes along bare boards, and little thumps and humps against wooden partitions, and a geperal hurrying and scurrying and chivying and scampering. The room was alive! Then for the first time the silent man in the corner moved. He, too, came to life again. He opened the bull's-eye of his lantern and the light flashed like a sword through the darkness. It lighted up his face, in which his eyes blazed like a cat's eyes at night. It lighted up the white willow wand with which he bfegan to beat the floor so that it made a noise like pistol shots. It lighted up a swarm of rats on the restaurant floor, on the chairs and tables, on the ledges round the walls. Rats! Gray rats, black rats, brown rats, big old fellows with full grown whiskers, fat old. females and youngsters from the rat nurseries. The noise of the white willow wand whipping the floor filled the swarming mass of vermin with the ecstacy of fear, and to add to their terror the man, who was in the midst of them now, was making a peculiar noise, most startling as it rang out in that restaurant. It was a strange, beast-like cry in his throat?a kind of jodel, high and shrill. It put a panic fear into those beasts. They hurled themselves from the marbletopped tables where they had been nosing for bits. They tumbled off chairs. They rushed wildly toward the passages and the wainscoating squeaking, clawing and tearing, jostling and scrimmaging, with the ferocious little eyes glinting in the half darkness. But their swift mad rush was barred by the nets' which had been put across the doorways, and round the room, and as they toppled against these webs they were caught in the toils. Like poachers' nets for trapping rabbits and hares, these had pockets, from which there ^is no escape. The rat catcher now dropped his wand, and the strange cry in his throat was silent. On the floor were the two steel cages, and into them he thrust the victims Of his night attack. Then he covered them over with white cloths, and in a little while he closed his bull's-eye lantern again, stood motionless for another hour, until hunger brought out another horde of rats, and the same method of capture was repeated. In the early morning, when the dawn was coming with its pale gray light into London streets, the rat catcher left the City Restaurant, and in his cages were 80 of those horrid small beasts, which the fancy gentlemen of Mitcham, and other suburbs, go hunting with their terriers on a Sunday. This is no fairy tale. The rat catcher to the city of London is re ally in the directory, and he does his work exactly as I have described. I have examined his books, and I have seen that in some city restaurants, and restaurants further west, along the line of the river, he has caught as many as 100 rats in one night and in some city warehouses as many as 300 at a time. Londoners do not realize what vast hordes of rats are swarming in the cellars and underground hiding places of old streets and wharves. In London there are scores of thousands of rats which hide by day and come out only in the night. When the offices are deserted and the warehouses locked, and the last tram car has gone home to the suburbs there is a greater population of these verminous creatures along certain lines of the city than of human beings. The hungry rats have a happy hunting ground among the rubbish and heaps and the refuse of a great city. It would be a bad thing for London if its rats became infested witn plague. me danger of it makes one shudder!?London Ends Winter's Troubles. To many, winter is a season of trouble. The frost.bitten toes and fingers, chapped hands and lips, chilblains, cold sores, red and rough skins, prove this. But such troubles fly before Bucklen's Arnica Salve. A trial convinces. Greatest healer of burns, boils, piles, cuts, sores, eczema and sprains. Only 25c at People's Drug Co., Bamberg, S. C . Send The Herald to a friend next year and make that friend happy. ^^s? RACE PREJUDICE NORTH. Exclusion of Negroes from Whit Neighborhoods Becoming General. Residents in one of the outlyinj districts have banded themselves t prevent the entrance into their vi cinity of negroes as property owner and tenants, basing their action upoi consideration of public order as wel as upon the necessity of preventini n HotoHnrntinn in rpnl AstafA valiiAfi This movement reflects an experienc which has come to most cities wher< the increase of the negro populatioi has been sufficiently great to empha size the inevitable antagonism o races but it also brings into vivid re lief one of the more serious aspect of the problem of the right adjust ment of the relations between th< white and the black elements of ou country. It illustrates the justnes of the complaint made by negroei themselves that insuperable obstacle: are placed in the way of their rac< whenever the effort is made to lift th< individual out of squalid surround ings and afford him the opportunity to reap the benefit of hard-won im provement in his mental and materia condition. Harlem may find it impossible t< prevent the purchase of real estat< by negroes if any considerable num ber of them should determine to occu py that locality, but it is useless t< blink the fact that the majority o the j white people of the North wil sympathize with the desire to ex elude them as near neighbors. Thii is a feeling which cannot be defend ed or argued about; it is merely '< fact of humap nature, misguided an< mistaken, but one that has to b< reckoned with. The white man wh< has invested his all in a home canno be expected to contemplate witl equanimity a change in his socia surroundings which means for him i decline in the value of his investmen and intimate association with per sons personally repugnant to him. The feeling of the Oriental towan the Western "barbarian" is not mor< a matter of reason than is the unwill ingness of the average American t< "mix" races radically different in ex ternal appearance and training fron himself. On the other hand, the con dition thus created is in the highes degree tragic for the ostracised mi nority. They are compelled to liv< /\K?Mirn onH rnimnitftrr neiehbor *** WMOVU.V ~ < ? hoods, are refused the elevating an< improving influences of a social pub lie opinion that demands high stand ards of cleanliness and comfort, an< yet are held accountable for failur< and retrogression. Vow the negro is going to be help ed rise under these circumstances i one of the inscrutable problems o our time and gefieration.?Philadel phia Ledger. Total Cotton Crop. Washington, Dec.' 9.?The tota production of cotton in the Unite States for 1910-'11 will amount t 5,464,597,000 pounds (not includin, linters,) which is equivalent to 11, 426,000 bales of 500^ pounds, gros weight, according to the estimate o the crop reporting board of th United States department of agricul ture, issued to-day. The 1909 cro was 10,004,949 bales and the 190 crop, 13,587,306 bales. The estimated production by State follows: Virginia, 13,000. North Carolina, 675,000. South Carolina, 1,116,000. Georgia, 1,750,000. Florida, 58,000. Alabama, 1,174,000. Mississippi, 1,160,000. Louisiana, 260,000. Texas, 3,140,000. Arkansas, 815,000. Tennessee, 305,000. Missouri, 48,000. Oklahoma, 900,000. California, 12,000. Telephone Engineer Dead. Spartanburg, Dec. 9.?C. E. Stii son, of Buffalo, the telephone engii eer, who was recently employed b the chamber of commerce to appraU the plant of the Southern Bell Teh phone company, with a view to test fying before the State railroad con mission in a complaint against tb company, was found dead in bed i the Hotel Finch to-day. Dr. Defoix Wilson said that deat was due to alcoholism. Mr. Stinso called Dr. Wilson yesterday. He wz highly nervous but Dr. Wilson foun nothing alarming in his conditio and left, after prescribing a sed; tive. j John Wood, secretary of the char I ber of commerce, will leave for Bu falo with the body to-morrow mori ing. As a result of Mr. Stinson's deat the plans of the chamber of cor j morce with reference to the telephor i situation will temporarily be held i abeyance. The Herald Book Store has ju received a line of Conklin's self fil ing fountain pens. They are abs Jutely guaranteed. Prices $3.0 $3.50, and $4.00. TAX NOTICE. ' The treasurer's office will be open e for the collection of State, county, i school and all other taxes from the 15th day of October, 1910, until the loth day of March, 1911, inclusive. I From the 1st day of January, 5 1911, until the 31st day of January, 1911, a penalty of one per cent will be added to all unpaid taxes. From s the 1st day of February, 1911, until a the 28th day of February, 1911, a j penalty of 2 per cent will be added to an unpaid taxes. From tne 1st ? day of March, 1911, until the 15th > day of March, 1911, a penalty of 7 e per cent, will be added to all unpaid e taxes. THE LEVY. * or State purposes 5 3-4 mills " For County purposes 5 1-2 mills f Constitutional school tax.... 5 mills Total 14 1-4 mills 8 SPECIAL SCHOOL LEVIES. - Bamberg, No. 14 9 mills e Binnakers, No. 12 3 mills r Buford's Bridge, No. 7 2 mills _ Clear Pond, No. 19 2 mills B Colston, No. 18 I 2 mills 8 Cuffle Creek, No; 17 2 mills b Denmark, No. 21 6 1-2 mills s Ehrhardt, No. 22 4 mills Govan, No. 11 .. 4 mills Hutto, No. 6 2 mills " Hampton, No. 3 2 mills |r Heyward, No. 24 : , 2 mills . Hopewell, No. 1 3 mills , Hunter's Chapel, No. 1 3 mills Hunter's Chapel, No. 16 1 mill Lees, No. 23 4 mills 3 Midway, No. 2 2 mills e Oak Grove, No. 20 2 mills Olar, No. 8 4 mills Sc. John's, No. 10 2 mills * Salem, No. 9 -3 mills 3 Three Mile, No. 4 2 mills f All persons between the ages of , twenty-one and sixty years of age, except Confederate soldiers and sail' ers, who are exempt at 50 years of s age are liable to a poll tax of one - dollar. Capitation dog tax 50 cents. All persons who are twenty-one years of age on or before the 1st day ^ of. January, 1910, are liable to a 3 poll tax of one dollar, and all pert sons who have not made returns to the Auditor, are requested to do 1 so on or before the 1st of January, 1 1911, and thereby save the penalty i and costs. t I will receive the commutation road tax of two ($2,000 dollars from the 15th day of October, 1910, until the .1st day of March, 1911. i JOHN F. FOLK, a Treasurer Bamberg County. ; FOR FRESH MEATS such as beef, pork, dressed chick* ens, and the like, yon will do justice to both your appetite and to t your pocket to hunt for the market opposite * the , artesian well, second door to Copeland's * warehouse. We only handle the . best meats that money can buy. 1 We also pay the highest prices for beef cattle, pork hogs, chickens and eggs. Restaurant in connection, where you can get hot 1 meals at all times. ^ ( 9 A. W. BRONSON, BAMBERG, S. C. rtreiyMenfhl j writes Lola P. Roberts, of I i II Vienna, Mo., "I used to be o I sick most of the time and e sufferedwith backache and ~ | headache. My Mother, who f had been greatly neipeaoy e the use of Cardui, got me I i- I two bottles, and I have p been well ever since." | The Woman's Tonic I Carduj Js a gentle tonic I I for young and old women. I |t relieves arid prevents I I pain. It builds strength. It H feeds the nerves. It helps M the whole system. II Made from hornless II roots and herbs, it has no II D bad after-effects, does not II Interfere with the use of ^ I any ofher medicine and can I x_ I do you nothing but good. y TryCarduL It will help I >e I you. Your dealer sells it I mm i- IbHHIHHIHHI >_ ,'e 1 Improved Saw Mills. 3-FRICTION FEED. aad^Reliablc. f- jX-est material and workmanship, light a- 'running, requires little power; simp^ {easy to .andie. Are made in several [sizes and are good, substantial money! making machines down to the smallest n_ jsize. Write for catalog showing Enle igines, Boilers and all Saw Mill supplies, in | Lombard iron Works & Supply Co., ) -I, AUGUSTA, OA. PUBLIC NOTICE. st I positively forbid anybody hunt 11- or trespassing in any way on my land o- If any one should be caught doin* ^ what is hereby forbidden, he will b< ' punished by the full extent of th< law. MRS. P. W. SANDIPER. 1A New Car Load 1 |igg We have just received a car load n ? X of Horses and Mules direct from the n , ^ lowest. This is an exceptionally nice gj load, being selected in person by our' S Mr. W. P. Jones. See them. n O # 0 H' * I ' .11 Buggies & Harness 11 We also have a mighty nice lot of \ I ; Buggies and Harness, and can equip , B you with a stylish turnout complete. MX Let us serve you. Ton will find us r liberal as to prices and dealings. K g JONES BROS., I IJ BAMBERG, S. C. ftfl EHRHARDT BANKING COMPANY. I rig Ehrhardt, S. C. I ^ CAPITAL STOCK $20,000.00. I ^ We do a general banking business, and solicit your account K|9B We are backed by a strong board of directors, insuring you :|;^|B| every safety. We allow you 4 per cent, on deposits in our sav- I ings department. We extend to our customers every courtesy consistent with good banking. We receive accounts of individuals, firms, and corporations on favorable terms, and shall be pleased to meet or correspond with those who contemplate mak- ; ing changes or opening new accounts. # -\W&mR / * * I J. L. COPELAND, J. C. KTNARD, A. F. HENDERSON, '-W^M President Vice-President Cashier. .'K|jfr8 m. WBME Telephone and find Out! | Y jM When is the meeting ? j| The telephone answers these quesj^M tions for thousands of Farmers every day. Jl It will do this and more for you. The i r^( o fplpnlinnp nn vour Farm 'small; the saving is great : ' Our free booklet tells you all abouaB it Write for it today. Address Farmers Line Department :Sl SOUTHERN BELL TELEPHONE ffl j & TELEGRAPH COMPANY Sonth Pryor St. Atlanta. Ca. I is Here 11 ? We have just received a fresh tine of / ? Jpj @ Raisins, Currants, Citron, Figs and p|9 @ Dates, Nuts, and all kind of Fruits, j^ffi ] @ Prompt Delivery to Any Part of City. A j S share of your patronage will be appreciated A IE. L. PRICE, JR. 4 C0.ll & BAMBERG, S. C. ?j M lywYAynyiyAyjwvfflWAMlW^^^q^^M^HYwyWY^roCTSw^^^Wg ': .?? j When in need of any kind of printing, no matter ^^i s what it may be, it will certainly be to your advan-ia * * A ?1??? ? ? J LaIa?a 1?nrlmr It rlniiin '^mwI | tage 10 get our