STRANGE OCCUPATIONS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 3657, 19 October 1912, Page 15

STRANGE OCCUPATIONS.

SNAKE - MERCHANTS AND CRIPPLE-CHASERS.

According to a writer in the Scientific American,” the thirteenth census taken in the United States is ot a much more exhaustive character than any of its predecessors. Each individual must state exactly the nature of the work bv which lie earns his livelihood. This is the case with a “snake merchant,” who keeps a snake ranch in Texas, seems to be doing very welt in his strange business. In the year 1010 lie sold more than 1.50,000 rattlesnakes and black snakes at prices between a couple of dollars and the modest threepenny-bit, or its American equivalent. If you are engaged in making boots and shoes you lie, it appears, sub-classed in any one of the following .categories: Judgers, fakers, ployers, sluggers, bustersout, cripple-chasers, or pancake-mak-ers. One enterprising gentleman living in a Kansas City describes himself as a bottler of the smoke from burning hickory logs. The bottle of smoke is solemnly uncorked in a room hung around with joints of meat, and the result is said to be quite as satisfactory as in the case of meat that is cured in the more customary fashion. And what in the world is a goat? She is in the first place a lady. A customer goes out shopping, and is treated, as.she considers, in a- discourteous or inconsiderate manner by one of the employees. The person in charge of the particular department is summoned bv the manager to the presence of the irate customer, .is soundly rated, and dismissed there and then from her employment. The sentence is received in tears, the customer goes on her way rejoicing, and the “goat return's to her work in the sop, havperformed Tier partiUuiliir a unctions, perhaps, for the tenth time that day. .