The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-10-14

From Our opn c, rrespondsn.


of Mammon," George Augustus sala devotes
considerable space TO describing the adventures
of Florence Armytage," his wicked heroine.
Other feminine characters there are in his book,
but "Florence Armytage" is his heroine -in-chief,
and very wicked heroine she Is. She is liar,
thief, swindler, and forger, and it is intimated
that she has even murdered She dies in prison,
to which she has been sentenced, at hard labor,
for twenty years, and her career, as indcatedby
Mr.. Salas most inchoate and erratic volume, Is
strung as full of crimes and ignominies as a
necklace Is with beads. She is very beautiful
withal, and wins the love of iunumerable men,
with none Of whom she keeps faith, although
the novelist does claim for her that the one
virtue with which she links together her thou
sand crimes is personal chastity.
Perhaps none of us have ever met "Florence
Armytage.' The category OF our experience
may not include any monstrosity at once so
lovely and so detestable as Mr. Saa's all but i'm
possible heroi1e is. But many of us may have
met human beings, fair, feminine creatures who
made some approach to her in their union of
wickedness and beauty, fairness of face with
utter falseness of heart More than one of us
may sometimes have met nature syren, whose
charms were we'll preserved, and WHO at thirty
five united the dove-like innocence of seventeen
ESQ far as appearance was to be trusted) to the
serpentine wisdom Of the devil himself. For
the time being we have been quite entranced by
the baleful wtcheries of that reckless beauty
have believed all her self-glorifyug lies, and
have regarded her with a sort Of intellectual
strabismus which was wilfully at cross-purposes
with itself
Upon q perfect specimen of such womauhood
as this an inquest was held to-day. In slang
language, she was first-class fraud-1rst-class
not only with respect to her impostures, but
ol.xxs -. o-I e II.
which she accomplished them. New York has
been her favorite field of operations for the past
two and half years. So we'll organized were
her projects that the erraticism of the Princess
Edith seems, when compared with them, like
the contemplate caprice of crazy creature
rather than the well-reasoned-out duplicity of
woman of brains. The real name of the dead
|'confdence woman" it is hard to get at. She
figured 'variously as Mrs. Jones' Mrs. Patterson,
Mrs. Warren, Mrs. Ingram, Mrs. Allen, and Mrs.
Smith, and heaven only knows what aliases
besides these, she has adopted in her
day. Her swindliDgs are too numerous to be
specified in detail here. Her favorite fiction for
working under consisted in giving out in that
plausible manner which is natural to some
people, and which no amount of practice can of
itself impart that she was heir to enormous
wealth, some of which she desired to invest in
real estate. The number of real estate brokers
whom she called upon is incredible, and the
number of businessmen and women whom she
gulled by her genteel loquacity is not easily to
be summed up. She was probably familiar with
all the variations of swindlng from that of the
eak-thief to that Of the intriguing lobbyist Her
death was precipitated by the fact that her evil
acts were suddenly blazoned in the newspapers
and great DEAL which she supposed known
only to herself, was laid out naked to the view
A. II o.. H.. L.. 1t~oL
came impressed with the fact that the detectives
were on her track, and that she could not hope
to much longer elude their vigilance. On Tues
day morning, therefore, a couple of hours after
midnight, she took some subtle poison, in pow
der and was found in the agonies of death by
the keeper of the boarding house where she was
staying, in Grand street, Williamsburg. She
deserves q little more than ordinary mention,
because of her beauty, her plausibility, the
wonderful art and adroitness with which her
impositions were effected and the insane indus
try with which. year after year, she toiled in
carrying ont the suggestions of an exceedingly
deprayed nature.
superint endent Jourdnu's Funeral.
About ten o'clock this morning portions of
Broadway were impossible because of the
funeral procession of the late Superintendent
Jourdan, Chief of Police. The funeral services
took place at st. Patrick's Cathedral, where
solemn high mass was sung and where the Very
Rev. VIM. STAIRS, ID. d., V. g., the Rev. DR..
McSweeney. and the Rev. Father Mclean Off
eated. The singing and the music at the SER
vices were beautiful. There were treble quar-
tette, a chorus of one hundred voices, an organ,
and full orchestra.
Superintendent Jourdan had been acting as
Chief of Police for but a comparatively short
time. The murder of Mr.. Nathan, and the vain
efforts that were made to find clue to the assas-
sin or assassins, had brought the Superintendent
before the public more prominently than any
other facts in his life had Some time before
that murder occurred, Jourdan had requested
the Police Commissioners to accept his resigna-
tion. Those gentlemen refused to do so, and
Jourdan remained in his position, working very
hard and bringing all the conscience with which
he was naturally endowed, and all the experience
that was the result of an active life, to bear
upon the duties of his calling. 1t is not too
much to say that his excessive labor was the cause
of his death. Like many other prominent men
he made enemies, and those enemies said rough
things OF him during his lfe 1t is pleasant to
be able to say that their mouths are silent now,
however and that there is a oneness of belief in
his having been thorough worker and a con-
scentious officer.
Driving and RIding.
One of the noticeable features of the period is
that we do not ride horseback great DEAL but
that we do drive most elaborately, laboriously,
and necessarily, We erect driving into a science
and an art to the almost entire neglect of the
saddle. And l presume what is true of New
York in this respect is equally true of Philadel-
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