Nashville (Tenn.), April 29.—“At a blind tiger on Knott Creek, Kentucky, Henry Pratt, a thirteen-year-old schoolboy, shot and killed Howard Maunds, also aged thirteen. The boys were intoxicated, and the killing followed a game of cards.”
During the days I was in Atlanta, five blind-tiger keepers were prosecuted and “bound over under bonds to the city court,” one in the sum of £200, the rest in sums of £100. What this “binding over” precisely means I cannot say, but it seems to be a painful process to the animals in question, for I read that “their howls filled the court.”
One of the persons “bound over” was a doctor. It was noticed that his practice had of late increased enormously. A stream of patients resorted to his office at all hours of the day, till at last a plain-clothes officer joined the stream. The doctor told him that he was out of whisky, but could fix up a good substitute, which proved to be some form of alcohol, tinctured with syrup, to take away the crude taste. Of this beverage the officer purchased two half-pints at two different times, and then ungratefully arrested his benefactor.
On another occasion a plain-clothes officer was told off to watch a house where it was suspected that an illicit trade was carried on. Near it he came upon a negro lounging against a fence.
“Nager,” said the constable, “do you know where a fellow can get a quart of good whisky?”
“Naw, sir, I don’t; but mebbe I kin find some,” was the reply.
The constable handed him a dollar and a half, and told him to see what he could do.
“Yessir,” said the negro. “Just you hold this shoe-box for me while I step down the street a piece.”
The policeman held the carefully wrapped shoe-box, while his emissary disappeared round the corner. For half an hour he waited in vain, then searched the neighbourhood up and down, and returned to the station enraged at having let himself be victimized. But when he investigated the shoe-box, expecting to find it full of rubbish, behold! it contained a quart bottle of whisky.
Such are the dodges to which the liquor-trade is reduced. But however manifold and ingenious its sleights, I cannot be persuaded that it is so easy to get drunk in Atlanta as it is in New Orleans, with its 2000 open saloons—to say nothing of cities nearer home.