Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 December 1889 — HOW JAMRACH WAS FOOLED. [ARTICLE]

HOW JAMRACH WAS FOOLED.

Thought He Was Buying the Greatest Curiosity That Ever Live-'. Jamrach, the celebrated London dealer in strange animals, picks up many bargains from the mates and stewards of the vast fleet that sails or steams into the Thames on every tide from the four quarters of the globe. But sometimes he gets picked up himself. A few years ago he bought for a few shillings a very rare and therefore valuable animal from a mate, just in from, say, New Guinea. Presently the mate saw his venture in the ■ ‘Zoo” with a great gaping crowd about its cage, and learned that the society had paid a small fortune for the curiosity. “I’ll fix him,” says the mate. So the next voyage: He returned with the very rarest curiosity ever seen in or out of London dbeks. “Hullo,” says Jamrach, fairly excited, “what do you call that now?” “Dunno,” says the mate, indifferently. “Looks like a bald squirrel,” says Jamrach, and the mate said him not nay, for certainly it did look like the baldest possible squirrel, and of the queerest color, too, “sort of no color at all,” as Jamrach put it. Well in three minutes Jamrach had bought that rare animal for 50 guineas down, and in three hours he was back on the dock raging at the mate laughing loud a’ the far end of a long hawser. “You’ve sold me a ehaved rat,” shouted Jamrach. “I just have, ” laughed the mate. * ‘Ship’s doctor chloroformed him for fun and ship’s barber shaved him for a glass of beer. Anything else in our line th if morning P”