The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1875-02-20

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dered still more repugnant as they swallow
the fiery fluid. Behind the bar stands a
female, or at least some human form that
has all the resemblance of female. She
wears the dress and the trin!lets and the
attire of female. Her countenance is
swollen, her eyes are dull and heavy, her
arms and breast, which are nude, are fat
and red; her face is besmeared, bedaubed,
and painted to an excruciatingly disgust
ing degree. Her voice is coarse, rough and
harsh as any of the reeling customers she
supplies with liquor. She is the presiding
genius or demon of this establishment, as
may be gathered from the manner in which
she orders the inmates around. In answer
to question she says she is twenty-five
years old. Her face says she lies, that she is
full half a century. A half dozen drunken
men and women reel up to the bar. She is
anxious for the paltry sum it places in the
till, and waits on them. The women seize
the bottles and pour out their drinks like
men, tip glasses like men, swear like men,
and gulp down the bad whisky like bad
men. The interior apartment is filled with
hot, sitting air, tobacco smoke and stencil
of liquors and perspi-ation. Through this
cloud can be seen crowd of dancers at the
further end, wild with excitement, and
going through the figures of cotillion.
Around the room sit some forty or fifty
men and women in all stages of inebrety.
They all bear marks of dissipation. The
men are nearly all poorly clad, some border
ing on the ragged. The women are, for
the most part, dressed in flaming colors,
yellow and bright-red calico being in the
ascendency. The breasts and arms of most
are bare. Some few are dressed in high
necked dresses, whether to hide charms or
skinny hideousness may be conjectured.
They nearly all bear the marks of years
misspent in degradation. In vain they
bedaub themselves with paint and powder,
for beneath the thick layer of carmine and
lily white you can almost see the grinning
skull. The massive pinchbe beck chain and
locket that hangs loosely around the neck
does not relieve the skinny, attenuated
appearance of the neck and breast. Some
canary birds hang round the room in cages,
but they have long since ceased to sing.
They are dropping little prisoners, and do
not seem to thrive in such an atmosphere.
There are few plants also to be seen here,
but they are limp, ragged, withered look
ing. Nothing in nature seems to live and
prosper in such polluted locality.
The music continues, the dance goes on,
the black bottle is brought into requisition
very often, the old fiddler saws away, his
eyes closed, either drunk or half asleep, or
probably both, but obliyious to every thing
but his music. The men swear, shout and
drink, SO do the women, and SO passes the
night until exhausted nature asserts ITSELF
and the party sink to slumber.
Enter some half dozen of these houses,
and the same disgusting scene presents
itself. Some of the female inmates are
quite young in years, fifteen or eigh
teen at the most, but with hardened
countenances and old in sin, sinking con-
seriousness and conscience, if it is possible,
III lnc Heii VI uCo!uSueiS III WHICH thes
move, for in a short time pauper coffin
and pauper grave in Potter's field, will
contain all the nastiness which was origin
ally made in the shape and after the like
ness of God himself. They are generally
attached to some useless vagabond who
claims to be a man, and who lives off the
wages of their prostitution. Some of them
asked the cause, merely answered, Billy
or Johnny got jealous of ME and punched
me in the snootr' C. F. w.