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 Rh At the last annual meeting of the Colorado Bar Association, William Travis Jerome, of New York, who delivered the Annual Address, told, in the course of it, the following stories: I went up to Litchfield County, in Connecti cut, to attend a meeting of the University Club there, and was called on to speak of conditions in New York, and I said they were very bad, and I wanted to illustrate how blackmail was levied. This was a case that I had evolved entirely from my inner conscience. It was purely an imaginary one. I described how there was a shortage of lemons in New York, and how some merchant who had exceptional wisdom had cabled through London to Mediter ranean ports and had secured freight for three or four thousand boxes of lemons on a fast steamer which came in twenty-four hours ahead of some of the slow steamers that were bringing lemons, and he was enabled to make by his foresight a dollar a box. He went up to the custom house to enter his goods, and when he went back on the wharf a fellow greeted him and said, " Are you Mr. So-and-so; are those your lemons?" "Yes," said the merchant. "I am the health inspector," said the man, "and I think those lemons will have to be handpicked." Hand-picked meant thirty-six hours' delay, the incoming of the lemons on the other ships, the loss of his extra expenses, freight and everything. " What fixes it? " said the mer chant. " Two hundred and fifty," said the in spector. " It goes," said the merchant. It was mere imagination, and yet so absolutely corrupt had become our public service that you could not imagine anything too bad. When I got back to the city next day a friend of mine, a fruit inspector, came into my chambers and sat around for awhile — it was after court adjourned — and finally he said, " I might as well have it out; the Health Commissioner sent me down to find out how you got onto that lemon story." There was an old fellow up in my region by the name of Uncle Harvey. He was one of the shrewd old farmers up in that vicinity. There came along a bright, breezy young man selling incubators. There was not another such incubator to be found, according to his story, and he tackled Uncle Harvey on the subject one day, quoted his prices, etc. Uncle Harvey was very touchy to people he did not know, and

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he didn't seem to respond very much, and as the time went by and the young man talked himself to a standstill, he finally said to Uncle Harvey, " You don't seem to appreciate these in cubators."- " No," said Uncle Harvey. " But," said the young man, "just think of the time they will save." " Well," said Uncle Harvey, "what the hell do I care for a hen's time?" There was a gentleman who was chief chemist of the Board of Health in the City of New York and is now Health Commissioner — an honor able, noble man, none finer in this country. He had no power of determining what sums should be expended for particular articles or what the price should be. His functions were limited to putting in a request, and, when the bill was returned, to "O.K.'ing" it as to quantity and quality, but not as to price. It was of course put through one of those ordinary rail road construction supply companies, or some thing of that kind, in the City of New York, that supply everything from a needle to an anchor, and he had made a requisition for five pounds of sponges. It came in on the requisi tion, " five pounds of sponges." He was a con scientious fellow and he always took these dif ferent articles that came in, went through them himself and had them called out and checked by his clerk. He said, " John, where are those sponges? " John produced a lot of sponges and said, " Here they are, Doctor." He said, "There's no five pounds of sponges there; put them on the scales." They put them on the scales and they weighed just four ounces. A day or two afterward around came- the agent of the railroad construction supply company. "Hello, Doc," he said, " have you O. K.'d our bill? " " No," said the doctor, " you have either got to strike these sponges out or make good." "What's the matter with the sponges?" "Why," said he, " you have charged for five pounds while there is only four ounces." Pardon the language, but it is characteristic of the type of the individual — " Hell, Doctor," said the agent, "did you weigh them dry?" You know there is always in a New England town some simple-minded gentleman, not much given to labor, one who would rather be follow ing the horses and working in a ring at the county fair than anything else in the world; and there was one such in the town I have in