A YANKEE MARKSMAN.

Patea Mail, Volume II, Issue 110, 29 April 1876, Page 2

A YANKEE MARKSMAN.

An elderly man named Beckwith, reefding in one of the Peninsular counties of Virginia, recently came to Richmond on business. He brought with him an old-fashioned flint-lock rifle to have a stock and lock put on. On the cars he fell into conversation with a party of three gentlemen from Richmond, when one of them, to test the reality of some of the extraordinary feats of markmanship lie boasted of, offered him 10 dols.to repeat some of them, to which the other two added 5 dols. between them. The trial came off in a field, half a mile below Rocketts, and was -witnessed by about a dozen persons. The old flintlock was fired seven times, and only once missed its aim. The old gentleman, after making shots at small objects tc*

tine side, to get his hands steady, as he said, handed his son a potatoe, and stationed him at 50 yards distance, holding the potatoe between his thumb and forefinger. The rifle cracked, and the potatoe fell cloven in three or four pieces. One of the larger pieces was then thrown in the air, the marksman keeping at the same distance, and again the shot told. An inch and a halt augur was then produced, and a hole bored in the fence, behind which was fastened a piece of white paper. At a distance of GO yards the marksman sent a ball clean through the aperture, piercing the paper. At the fourth shot, from GO yards distance, the bowl of a pipe, which the son was smoking, was crashed. At the fifth shot a copper cent was thrown into the air and hit. The sixth and seventh shots were delivered at a blackened five-ccnt nickel piece thrown up by the son, standing about 30 yards off. At the first attempt the shot missed. The old gentleman showed considerable mortification, and laid the blame upon a bystander, who at the critical moment sneezed loudly. The next attempt, however, was an entire success. The old man declined any further trials of his skill, and when offered a sum of money to repeat his first feat of shooting a potatoe from his son’s baud he refused, saying he didn’t care to try such experiments unless his weapon was cleaned. The exhibition was the ihore remarkable from the fact that the marksman was an old man at least 50. His eye, however, is a clear bright gray, Ids appearance that of a poor farmer. The young man showed not the least tremor or anxiety during the dangerous experiment upon himself. The old man referring to his son, said: “ Bob can shoot just as well as I can.”—Richmond Whig.

MURDER IN NEW YORK. A New York correspondent of the “San Francisco Chronicle” writes;—■ “ The latest murder, that of 'Sarah Alexander, whoso body was discovered in a corn field at East New York, must attract general attention through similarity in her fate to that of Miss Cornell, murdered some years back, and as was believed, by the Rev. Ephraim K. Avery. In both instances the alleged culprits were men of great religions pretensions ; hence the arrest of Pcsach Rnbenstein creates intense excitement among a community whose existence and extensive numbers are scarcely known to the metropolis at large. The girl was a cousin of her suspected assassin, residing in his father’s family, and destroyed to conceal traces of illicit affection. There is no more desolate locality within a circuit of thirty miles than the theatre of the tragedy, sparsely populated by German immigrants, while the fact that all concerned in the case speak a language unintelligible to their neighbors makes the detection of the crime almost miraculous. The discovery of a peculiar knife, blood-stained, and hidden in the corner of the corn field, is the only duo, as yet, possessed by the authorities whereby to press for a conviction, and still tins lias been traced so directly to the prisoner, and in so unexpected a manner, that no doubt can bo entertained as to his being the actual murderer. The motive for the crime is apparent from discovery of the pregnancy and the anticipated arrival of Rubeustein’s wife ami children from Poland, when lie would undoubtedly be compelled to put away his mistress or suffer the consequences of her seduction. The man is a prominent leader among the Polish Jews, and as all his correspondence is in the Rabbinicial Hebrew—which is the common language of the curious and isolated people—light will be thrown upon the manners and habits of a race essentially foreign in our midst.”