The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-01-20

From Our otrn Correspondent
NM Yam -Inn On 1Qr


tistically upon the readers of THE EVENING
TELEGRAPH, but occasionally something hap
pens to me that fOrcibly reminds me that l am
living in New York, in the very centre OF a re-
fined heathendom. Something happened in this
way the other day, being nothing less than my
experience in search of rooms. / am not
ashamed to say that / consulted a morning
newspaper, which, like any other newspaper
in New York, has a 'larger circulation than
all the other dailies combined"-and / am
not ashamed to avow that having consulted
it., 1 chose locality designated in
the advertisements as not hundred
miles from the Academy of Music and Irving
Hail. The situation was eminently respectable.
The street was quiet the oyerhanging shadows
of the surrounding brownstones were solemn
and decorous, the name sounded slightly inn
posing. Backed with these impressions rang
the bell of sparlllingy white door, and was
shown by colored servant into small but
prettily furnished parlor, where / was presently
waited upon by the lady of the house,
goaheadtlve-looking woman of about thirty
three with blue merino dress, green eyes,
which might have been merino, too, from any
expression they had, and quantity Of lace
trihng about the neck. She talked gllby and
just little too glowingly, of her own table, and
the furniture and appointments of her
establishment. She said that you couldn't
"mix" people at place where the
comforts Of home were desired,
and agreed with her that you couldn't 'mix"
them any more than you can mix drinks with
impunity. Then she showed me the rooms
chattering all the time about the ladies and gem
tlemen who at present composed her family, and
to whom had no manner of objection, except
that they all appeared to have titles. Wander
oud Go pJ
sich" fell honily from her lips, and l was
assured that she had taken the creme de la creme
of society and quintessenced it into kind of
condensed mucilage, with which, fgurativcly
she spread her daily bread. Then the rooms
were shown-bright, cosy, cheerful, and mode
rate in terms. There was no denying that. ]
allowed those advantages to prepon6erate and
against my better judgment, gave her reason to
believe that my final answer, to be given her on
the morrow would be favorable.
The morrow came.
Now 1t is not once in six months that pick
pu a newspaper dealing largely or wholly in
criminal news. Providentially l did so that
morning, and the first paragraph that struck my
eye was q rehash of q recent police court scene,
in which the words fashionable boarding
house" figured. glance was sufficient. The
street. and "Place," and number were the same
as those of the house | had been so compla-
Gently contemplating. The counts, colonies,
and generals with whom l had been destined to
sit tete-d-tete or Us-a-riS melted into the thin
nest of all ar-that in which individuals who
are sold" breathe-and since then have exer-
ci5ed the wariest wisdom in my selection of
boarding-houses, and have not even trusted to
1t then. The syren that had gulled me was a
first-class fraud and tho history of her boarders
was history of assaults, batteries, and imposi-
tions, whose sequel was the Tombs or Jefferson
Market Police Court.
Artistic Amusements.
Mr.. Barnum was the great pioneer of artistic
advertisements, and set an example in that re-
spect which has been extensively followed not
only in this city but all over the Union. The
system has invaded all professions but mostly
that branch of the medical which cannot be said
to belong to vile quackery on the one hand or to
publications by members of the regular faculty
on the other. The readers of New York papers
In city and country have their attention often
attracted not merely by the local and foreign
news, the editorials, the literary reviews the
theatrical criticisms of the journals in question
but often by the singularly able manner in which
these medical advertisements of the better sort
are written. And so they ought to be, for they
are, for the most part, written by men who have
spent most of their lives at that sort of thing,
and know how to express the ideas of their prin-
cipals--men who generally, could not write six
consecutive sentences grammatically-to hair.
This branch of literature, low it is, is ex-
tremely well paid for, much better than those
branches in which genius or talent is required,
and is mOnopolized, as before limited, by one
or two men. II you send short poem to a
a magazine you will not, as rule, get more
than ten dollars for it, unless your name Is sufii-
ciently well known in itself to render the poem
attractive. Yet these advertisement-w will
not set pen to paper unless they get at least half
that amount per foolscsp page, and there is at
least one man in this city who makes thousands
of dollars year in this branch of literature
alone.
Fugitive Authors.
Poems are sometimes spoken of as fugitive;
why should not authors be spoken of 80, too,
especially those poor plaintive creatures who,
having gained q provincial suspicion of fame
somewhere West or South, come to New York,
imag lining that Carleton or some other spicy
publisher will snap them up, or that the New
York Sunday Mercury will pay them several
thousand dollars per novelette, in the same way
as it used to pay the author of the "Pillar of
Fire." when he wrote for its pages! The author
of the 'Pillar of Fire" by-the-by (his name has
slipped my memory for the moment) was what
is called "a rusher" When he was engaged on
a new novelette, and he deserves to be called
New Yorkism of the utmost originality-he used
to shut himself up in seclusion similar to that
of Balzac, and never leave his apartment until
the work was completed. AS George Francis
Train or Mrs. Partington would say, he had ''all