The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1883-07-14
METROPOLITAN MIDSUMMER
How the Dog-Days Are Spent on Muir
ray Hill and at the Five Points.
Pitiful Tales of Death Among the Little Ones
CLOSED Mansions on the Avenue-
~ Diversions of the Multitude.
correspondents of the Indianapolis Journal.

correspondents OF the Indianapolis Journal.
NEW York, July 12.-All last week there
were almost constant professions, each con-
sstng OF from two to a dozen carriages pass
ing over the bridge and across the ferries,
bound for the suburbs of Brooklyn. And
each was headed by that most pitiful of
vehicles, a little white hearse. For six days
the sun beat down with increasing fury, and
the breeze was still. For six nights the
darkness brought no cooling, and the dusky
air was stagnant And from all the city a
lamentation arose. and scraps of white Grape
hung at the doors, and each day six score
tiny mounds of earth were made amid the
cool green grass and glinting shadows of the
silent cities on the Long Island hills.
There is something appalling in the state
ment that there have been considerably more
than hundred deaths a day in this city
among children OF less than six years of age.
But tour through the districts where the
vast majority of them occur only makes one
wonder that the list is not longer. The
great West Side'' of New York, tenanted by
$4,000 persons, is the most densely popu-
lated spot on the surface of the globe. There
are single houses, twenty to twenty-five feet
hundred persons. Such house is six stories
high, and there are at least two families on
each floor The outer walls are brick The
floors and inner walls are wood, and there is
only single narrow, steep wooden stairway
running from cellar to roof. Arrangements
for ventilation there are none. Plumbing
and all sanitary arrangements are of the
most primitive character. And there are
whole blocks and whole streets built solid
with just such houses.
All day long the narrow streets-scarcely
as wide as the buildings are tall-blister and
tester in the sun. Garbage and Stops accum-
ulate in ruts and holes in the irregular cob
BILE pavement, and send up pestilent
stenches. The breezes that now and then
languidly sweep over the housetops, but
never stir the fetid malaria of the lower
stories and street. are hot from travel over
miles of city, and choking with smoke and
fumes from 10000 chimneys The elder
members of the family work-half naked
and drinking copious draughts of beer The
boys and girls go to the riverside and swim
about the docks. The babies stay at home
and die. When evening comes the entire
swelterng rows along the sidewalk and road
way. So thick they lie-men, women and
children-that travel is well-nigh impossible
without treading upon them. The air is hot
and close, but the stones of the street are
cool, and along the gutter at each side
trickles tiny rivulet of croton from the
open faucets of the houses. In this they lave
their feet, and with it moisten the stony
street for GOODNESS. A tired, worn and fag-
ged-out crowd it is but withal good-na-
tured one. Perhaps they are too tired and
hot to quarrel. They throng the street till
midnight, and often regale the hours with
musc-rude choruses, or the strains of a
well-worn fiddle or the rafting, rollicking
notes of a barrel organ. There are many
here from the Fatherland, and many from
Erin, and not few from sunny Italy
There are representatives of every nation on
the globe And they all live and labor and
swelter and die together, huge, enormous
cosmopolitan cauldron of seething humanity
into which each west-bound steamer pours
new stream, while day by day other streams
trckle out and seek the still more cosmo-
politan realm beneath the sod
MIDSuMMEk On MURRAY HILL.
From reeking Second avenue to regal
Fifth avenue is only a ten minutes walk,
through stately side streets of brown stone
and marble. Half of the houses have doors
and windows tightly closed. Their owners
are out of town for the summer. The fronts
of the others are covered with awnings be-
meath whose grateful shade the ladies sit in
robes of airy muslin. But all along the
broad streets and broader avenues the sun
glares down like furnace breath, with
never a tree to shade the passer-by. This is
New Yorks great defect-lack of shade. You
may travel for miles through stately up
town streets without seeing a single tree
In Brooklyn every residential street is we'll
shaded, and along the fine avenues rows of
stately elms, naples and lindens COM
pletely arch the roadway and embower the
entire thoroughfare in forest-like shade.
Fifth avenue in July and August is a will
derness-a brown-stone wilderness of utter
emptiness, dreariness and desolation. The
footsteps of the traveller echo strangely from
facade to facade Doors and windows are
closed and barred
"No face looks forth from door or open case
ment.
No creature stirs; there is no sign of life
From parapet to basement"
The life and glory of the avenue are gone
to make the life and glory of the beach and
the mountains and the springs. Yet with
the nighttime tokens of life appear, but
strangely at variance with the scene From
the basement come forth the hapless domes-
tics who were left in charge of the house
They boldly seat themselves upon the broad
steps and IN the stately doorway, and there
oft-times entertain numerous cousins from
less aristocratic purlieus. Many a time, too
Is heavy tribute levied on the wirte-ce-
lar, and the owner on his return from New
port will find his store of "Pommery Sec."
strangely depleted. The foreigner passing
down the avenue at night Mnnld wonder to