Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 June 1893 — An Odd Trade in Paris. [ARTICLE]

An Odd Trade in Paris.

'The mneehabcc men, or fishers of dead bodies, who ply their doleful trade on the Seine, between the Auteuil Viaduct and the Billancourt Bridge, threaten to go on strike owing to the slowness with which their money premiums aye paid. Pere Joseph, the senior member of the profession of ecumers, or scavengers on the Seine, has been fishing for macchabees for the past twenty-live years, but he is now idle with his companions, as he has n»t been paid for the last batch of corpses sent to the morgue. Joseph, by the way,sent forty-two macchabees to the city dead-house last year, and was paid th’g-e dollars each for them, his total gams for the twelve months being a little over $125. This year the trade againseemed to be improving; the morgue was literally overflowing with bodies taken out of the river of late, and in one day Pere Joseph made sl2. That money, however, has not yet been received, although it has been due for a fortnight, and hence he has laid down his hooks and grappling-irons until the city officials, whose duty it is to remunerate him and his companions for their services, shall see their wayr to organizing more expedition in their pay department.—[Paris Letter. It would be interesting to know how the word “key,” which is the characteristic name .of many small islands in the Spanish-American waters, should have crept so far north as the coast of New Jersey, where it is found in Key East and Key West The word is from the same root as quay, and it appears some Hundreds of times between Florida and the coast of Sooth America.