The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-04-06

ton which does not protect in its shade the poor
man and his family.
Would you believe IL 2-the New Workers are
talking seriously of initiating the Philadelphia
fashion of numbering the streets. The mode of
designating them here hitherto, has been as hea-
thenish as the architecture of the Post Office and
the market-houses. hope that Common Coun-
ellis will be struck with the new idea, 30 old to
Philadelphians. The division of the city into
east and west would indeed necessitate the pre-
fixing of the adjective east to the numbers of
streets crossing avenues A, B, G, and ID. Awk-
ward as this would be, it would be preferable to
the present arrangement, and the awkwardness
would be removed altogether by changing the
names of all the avenues, calling avenue ID First
avenue, avenue G Second avenue, avenue B
Third avenue, and so on, until all the
avenues lying between the two rivers
were included. Only, in that case, our glorious
Fifth avenue would lose its identity, and what
pity that would be! and, indeed, with respect to
Fifth avenue the question constantly being
urged with increasing intensity is, Whether ele-
gance and beauty shall give way to use? Shall
heirlooms homesteads, inheritance, family pride,
the aristocratic idea, exclusiveism-shal these
yield to the progress of the haberdasher and the
warehousekeeper? Shall the palace be pulled
uOWu 30 tudl tuC hliOp may DC luh up' ph"ti
'blood" make way for business? Must the pa
trician be ousted by the paruenu' Are the elite
to be made to dance to the piping of the cdndtue?
i fear so. You have to live good way up Fifth
avenue before your mind is able to completely
discard the frightful idea (with which the mind
of Mrs Potiphar is slow in becoming familiar)
that you will soon be dwelling among the stores.
Extremes suggest one another, and Fifth ave-
b.. oDtitbasie arUo thp
hundreds of thousands of wretched inhabitants of
tenements. The hundreds of thousands, say,
because it is not improbable that half million of
souls support the tenement system. By far the
worst features in this system are the cellar tene
ments, which comprise the dregs of the dregs of
all the mseries endured by inhabitants of tene-
ment houses. All the physical and moral dis
eases, all the dirt, starvation, want, nakedness,
and vice which make tenement-houses hells on
earth seemed to have oozed down to
their rankest corruption in these cellar
tenements. The houses themselves are
corrupt, and foul enough, but the Gel
lars, 80 to speak, are composed of nothing but
the green scurf, the clotted poison which has
been slowly creeping down the dank foundation
walls for years. AS far back as two years ago,
tenement-house act was passed, in virtue OF
which il was declared unlawful to occupy or let,
without special permit, u cellar or underground
room, unless the room were at~least seven feet
high with one foot of this height above the sur
face of the street, and an area of thirty inches
breath in front. Another condition was that it
should be drained, and ventilated by nine super
fetal feet of window, and that the word cellar
should mean any underground room one-half of
whose height was below the surface of the street.
Hitherto the Board of Health has acted as though
no such act had been in existence, although the
city swarms with cellars which come under the
ban of the law in question. The proposition now
is to empty these dens summarily, by force, and
turn the population into the streets. This would
be extremely interesting to the turned-out fami-
lies, and 1 am afraid to guess by how many
thousands the floating population would be i'll
creased.
The rush from this port to Europe promises
to be greater than ever this summer. Good
heavens whence do the people get the money ?
For it is not only the nouoedur riches who are
going. / met Pumpkin on the street yesterday
He was riding bicycle, and looking beamingly
When last saw Pumpkin he dressed shabbily,
and he did not ride bicycles. Now it seems he is
going to Europe the latter part of this month, to
be gone two years, and extend his tours north
as far as Norway and south beyond Egypt. L
suppose he intends paying for it, and | am glad
he can afford it. Perhaps he is going as secre-
tary of legaton--but then do secretaries of lega-
ton do SO much travel ?-and perhaps as news
paper correspondent. 1t is as difficult to find
outas it is to discover whether the Paris fashions
correspondence of the Herald is indited
abroad or in the editorial rooms of the Herald.
1t is too spicy to be written outside the Herald
buildings, and too truthful to be written in.
The opera bot.fe companies run by Mr.. Fisk,
and managed by Mr. Birgfeld, opened the season
last eySning at the gilded cage in Twenty-fourth
street. This theatre which is literally papered
with loolting-glasses, will make very charming
home for Irma, Tostee, Aujac and all the rest of
them. There will be seven performances a
week, with the prime donne on alternate nights,
and Aujac almost every evening. Mr.. Brougham
very naturally mourns the loss of very brilliant
little place, one which he hoped to remain at
home in for many month, at any rate. He was
consoled, as much as "A gentleman of his repres-
sible temperament is capable of, by IA triumphant
dinner on Sunday evening at the Astor House.
| At Booths, Romeo and Juliet will be performed
only during the present week. Oa,elto will be
produced next week, with Edwin Booth and
Edwin Adams exchanging roles upon
certain specified evenings. Mr. Booth
by-the-by, treats Mr.. Adams in the mos
| generous and liberal manner. Besides
the exceedingly handsome salary which he gives
| him, he allows him one evening week for his
| own. Throughout those scenes of the play
also, in which they appear together, he extends
| to him all those courtesies which are usually
| only extended to stars, and are indeed monopo
| lized by them. For instance, when the juxta
| position of events in the scene makes Mr.. Adams
for the time the principal figure Mr. BoOtl