AMERICANS ABROAD.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 234, 10 March 1875, Page 3

AMERICANS ABROAD.

{From the New York Tribune. ) He said that he was an American citizen, and that his name was Hiram Thomson, when Mr Flowers, the London magistrate at Bow street, asked him what he meant by such conduct. Mr Thompson, it appears, thought fit to attend the performances at the Covent Garden Theatre, after the manner of his dear native land, with a sextuple shooter in his pocket, and possibly with several cocktails of his country in his stomach. In the temple of evening pleasure he meandered with the gay revellers of the promenade, and while music arose with its voluptuous swell Mr Thompson contributed an obligato, reminding one of some of Mr Mr Gilmore’s Coliseum pieces, by letting off' one barrel of his revolver. Police-sergeant Marlowe 5 E,R., had the Columbian by the collar in a minute, and within ten minutes had him locked up, with the revolver impounded, After a night spent in a gloomy dungeon, the ill-fated Hiram was haled before the tribunal and asked to explain himself. Mr Abrams, in liis behalf, observed

to the Court that his client in America was in the habit of carrying a revolver, and intimated that this was the general custom of all our free and enlightened citizens. In drawing his pocket handkerchief Mr Thompson had accidentally discharged the revolver. The judge sagaciously shook his head, and said he didn’t know. He was somewhat inclined to believe the affair an accident. A hole in the prisoner’s pocket—of course at the wrong end of it—was rather suspicious, for he, the magistrate, had heard that “ Americans sometimes fired through their pockets at an adversary.” After relieving his mind of this tremendous piece of foreign intelligence, Mr Flowers proceeded to order Mr Hiram Thompson to enter into his own recognisance in the sum of £4O, with one surety in £2O, for his future good behaviour. A stranger in a strange land, we trust that Mr Thompson found surety without bothering the American Embassy ; and that he will, while he remains abroad, in future sternly refrain from the American practice of firing at an adversary through the pocket.