Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1880-09-26
BETWEEN OURSELVES.


crookedness where bubble succeeds bubble,
and it is mostly an outcome Of double dealing
| quite battling to common comprehension. For
instance, there is decision of the supreme
court concerning prostitution which would
seem to fix the business for the State at large.
But ever and anon we have the spectacle of the
city bringing up lots of lewd women, and after
levying certain fines and putting the money
into the municipal pocket, there is tacit in
junction to them that they shall so and do 80
some more, because it is profitable to the
authorities, pleasurable to the seq, and con-
nived at necessity all round. So the plucked
unfortunates go, either with curse, or with
bawdy bravado, to fine their prey, and they in
turn have the prey fine them, being in reality
only human projectiles from one set of men to
another.
It's all muddle as Stephen
Blackpool said and it would take
the genius of Dickens to depict as
he did the miseries of Chancery in Bleak
House, the iniquities of process, beginning
with human frailty, and becoming complicated
in the tortueus methods of litigation, until
we have the ennobling spectacle of one end of
fixed the penalty thus and so, while the other
end brings in the the women, and quietly gets
the money-and each end is backed by count
less authorities.
Lewd women in lots paying their fines are
the same reckless, well-known old crowds
sure to como again, and anain ours
ing and defiant. But the evil
goes on unrecked, unchecked, even by
such farcical estoppel as the city is given to
spasmodieally, and in more formidable shape,
which ought to prod the city fathers, because
while they are mostly cognizant of the priva-
teering. it is conducted in such a way, and the
buildings are owned by such respectable,
and even pious men, that it would
never do to NEEDLE with them,
albeit the municipal revenue from fines Judi
ciously levied would bs SO considerably in
creased that it is narrowing to think of the
loss.
In few instances-very few of verity-the
owners of these buildings, or blocks, as they
are called, are ignorant of the ways that are
dark followed by their tenants; and we all
know that once in and nesled, rather ''nest-
hiding" it is troublesome and dilatory task
to dislodge obnoxious occupants.
But oftener the morals of their tenants are
of no sort Of consequence to the Inoney-making
landlord. All he wants is the cash, interest
and return, from his investment, and if that be
forthcoming with satisfactory promptness
each month, the rest, when it takes the form
of neighborhood complaint is only matter
of old-fashioned prejudice.
He is irritated when people are SO squeam-
ish that they prefer neighbors whose visitors
arrive before IL and l O'Clock at night, rather
than after, and who. once admitted, are prone
to fighting, perhaps, as to precedence, or right
of conquest or something.
People get habituated to sleeping in mills
going full blast, and in railway coaches, and
Caudle lectures. Women in the throes of
row in the night is rousing, and worse than
Macbeth for numbering sleep. That, in ''our
neighborhood, which isn't at ell like the one
Miss Milford immortalized, is matter that is
always handy.
The premonitory symptoms are the success.
i've arrivals of three or four hacks. By way of
an iuterlude, half of the immortality and de-
pravity of st. Paul is transacted and managed
on wheels. William Black wrote the ''Strange
Adventures Of Phaeton," but, pom my word,
lola or Flaubert could never wish for a more
promising field of description than a memoir
able liaison which was carried on in a buggy
in the watches of the night on the breezy up
lands of the town, aye, and carried very SUI
perhuouslY into mstrimony, too. Venus
Scotia in buggy or hack, belongs to modern
mythology.
Well the hacks are emptied in the house, and
after while there is a connection, which is
occasionally emphasized by the breaking of
window glass. Then the malcontents scuffe
the fun is fast and furious.
Sometimes policeman happens along, and
when he discovers the most intoxicated and
roughly handled under chap in the fight to be
one of st. Paul's aristoorats, he righteously
arrests the quarrelsome ''commoners" and let's
the snob stagger home as best he can.
This is as it should be-the line of arrest
must be drawn at gentlemen with money;
the others? Gather them in, of course-that's
brothels profitable.
What of the Ladies' (God bless them) who
are joint actors in the social evil dramas as
presented in this neighborhood? There are
always relays Of them. As one set goes ont an
other comes in. Sometimes, after lapse of
two or three months few of the old faces
are visible for brief space, and then comes
another fitting. For awhile they look fresh,
but ere long there is a wanness, and peculiar
yellow hue suggestive of new cheese, which all
the cosmetics in the world can poorly disguise.
The business looks out of them not alone in
sunken outlines, faded tints and challenging
garb, but in an indefnable predatory expression,
which becomes aggressive as the chances of
gain diminish with waning charms.
There are carpet baggers in prostitution, as
we'll as in politics. To one who rises very
early there is the spectacle of women coming
from rooms in the different blocks along Third
street, carrying small satchels, which contain
the vesture and toilet appurtenances necessary
to the votaries of Venus Pandemoss.
Where are the missionaries, such as worthy
Parson McKibben, when he denounced the play
ers and their craft for monopoly and propa-
cation of these sins? Has the whole popula-
ton dramatic bent in this direction, as it has
in elocution?