The Evening critic., 1883-01-26
About Washers.

Rcspecting the class of animals which
now infest every city, town and village in
this country, the St. Louis Spectator very
truthfully says: Squeamish people object to
the words "mash" and ''mashers," and we
heartily wish that we could get along with
out them. But as they represent real
things, unpleasant actualities of modern
life, it is rather silly to object to the name
when we are unable to suppress the thing
the name, indeed, although an odious
neolOgism representing rather less otien-
sive term than the expressive mono
syllable by which these gentry Were called
in the rude speech of former times. The
masher is not exactly the same kind
of a wild beast that his congeper has been
since the days of Sir Pandarus of Troy his
objects and his methods of obtaining them
arc perhaps, a little bit different, but as he
plies his trade more openly. and through
tolerance increases more rapidly, he has
become more offensive pest to society,
which has endured in silence the shame OF
his presence until at last it is forced to call
for his immediate and violent suppression.
This type of the lowest degradation which
modern humanity knows is only too
familiar to those whom choice or clrcum-
stance has made students of the
black side of human nature. The police
know him, lawyers and editors, and doc
tors and men about town, merchants and
business men generally know him, but the
women, who are the chief sufferers from his
foulncss seldom realize his existence until,
perchance they feel the hot breath Of his
insults pollute the air they breathe. Even
then they do not recognize him, but merely
hurry on with burning eyes and cheeks,
and with pain in their hearts, as If the
brightness of Gods sunshine had somehow
been defed by the fumes of the pit. One
ha., IN fIn rnrV nj
degradations of ancient Rome, to the warn
ings of Cicero and the satires of Juve.
nal and the shamelessness of the de-
| clining Empire, TO find creatures exactly
| counterpart of the gaudy pests that feed
and fatten and swarm around the corrup-
| ton and putrescence of our rich civilization.
| Now, as then, they haunt the resorts OF
| wealth and fashion, conspicuous now, as
then, by unmanly ioppishness of apparel,
by the affected gait, the silly simper, the
| staggering impudence that halts in dread
of well.earncd punishment, the leering eye
| that daIos not look an honest man in the
| face. No need to describe them, nor
| to catalogue them in the papers /;
| they arc branded and marked by the
| evil one, anointed by his slime, and
| trained by him for his foul work. Shall
the pest flourish when the remedy is so
near at hand? What is the remedy? A
revision of an insufficient ordinance, and
the substitution Of the rock.pile, the ball
and chain for the petty fine which is never
enforced. Lynch law is good, and the
hoIsowhip, vigorously applied by stout
and willing hands, cures that particular
case but what is needed is the omnipres
ent law administered by the hand of justice
Exposure, degradation and hard work arr
the remedies for the pest Of the " masher,
and after a few applications of these thu
whole brood would disappear, and the de
cent people who walk our streets woulC
breathe purer air.
I'VE have the genus "masher" in Wash
ington, and the public generally will recog
ni2e the force of the above article. En-
| Critic