Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 June 1896 — A Cannon Used as a Spile. [ARTICLE]

A Cannon Used as a Spile.

In some towns along the coast and in inland towns, too, one may still see planted at street corners cannon; relics of the revolutionary war, or of the war 1812, or, perhaps, the Mexican war. In navy yards one sometimes sees condemned cannon put to use as spiles, to make vessel’s lines fast to. There Is such a gun, planted at Governor’s Island ferry landing, at the foot of Whitehall street in New York. The building out of an adjoining wharf seaward to which boats now fie up, has left this gun no further use as a spile, but it remains a picturesque object and one quite appropriate to the landing of a ferry or military post. When a woman whitewashes her cellar she Is said to look worse than when she cleans house.