The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1885-09-24
LIoe Howard in Boston Globe

annoyance and positive suffered endured
by scores Of thousands Of people, to whom
a second room would be an extravaganza
and an individual room q luxury. OF
New York's 1000, 900 a large estimate
sends 250, 600 out of town, leaving at a
modest point 500, 900 in the sitting city
OF these, scores Of thousands cannot sleep
at all at night, and other scores of thou
sands steal their forty winks at a time "
ing on the sidewalk, sitting on the stoop,
resting against garbage boxes OF utilizing
wagons; but more unique bed-chamber
than any of these are the roofs of houses,
where, if we can credit the police for a
general estimate and a personal observa-
ton for incidental discoveries. not less
than so, 900 men, women children seek
the repose that is denied them in their
overheated and utterly uncomfortable
apartments.
There are three kinds of roof sleepers-
the palatial, the comfortable, and the
Wretched Certain sections of the me
tropolis are occupied almost exclusively
by huge warehouses, which stand solitary
in their stupendous proportions, their iron
doors barred, their iron windows close
shut and locked, and silence. so OPP
pressive that it can almost be felt reigns
from early in the evening until stirring
hour on the following morning. These
warehouses like the tremendous build
also silent as the tomb at night, are
guarded by watchmen or janitors, well
paid, honest men, who, with their
families, occupy the upper portions of
the buildings. These families are what
may be called the palatial roof sleepers.
They may be seen in the early evening,
and indeed far into the middle of the
night, sitting comfortably in chairs on
the vast tin covered roofs of these mag
niicent architectural successes, smoking
drinking beer, chatting with friends and
neighbors, chatting with neighbors on adj
jacent roofs. the children playing about in
neglige costume, while on the very hot
test of hot nights healthful, invigoratng,
delightful breeze fans their fevered brOws
and cools their heated blood Extempor-
aneOus beds are prepared there-a
simple mattress, with covering; some
times nothing but a pillow, and often
times easily handled cots-but always in
excessively warm weather these people
are more comfortable than those who own
the buildings on the top of which they
sleep.
The second class, the comfortable, "
are so only by comparison. They are the
occupants of houses divided into fats,
where from five to ten families occupy one
building. Persons living in flats are fam
liar with the fact that while the occu-
pant of the first floor has exclusive pos
session of the yard, the roof is common
property. Sometimes the roof is utilized
for drying clothes, but the better grade of
medium flats use pulley-ropes, while the
more expensive apartment houses have
regular drying rooms attached to the
laundry. 1t is obvious that eight or ten
families, averaging five persons in fam
lily, could very easily kick up gay and
festive disturbance on roof when every
member of each family is disgruntled I'M
comfortable, uneasy and in torments for
want of sleep, so that rare diplomacy and
perfect good feeling are essentials to this
comfortable class of roof-sleepers.
Oftentimes in one of these fat-houses
there will be families who could not be
persuaded to go upon the roof under any
circumstances, but there are tens of thou
sands of people living in that style of
house-the house not being originally in
tended for fats-who make common
cause each with the other and divide the
roof equitably, so that all can be compare
lively comfortable The police regard 1t
as one of the marvels of life that even in
this class of perfectly reputable and we'll"
meaning citizens so few accidents occur
by reason of night exposure At all events
there they are. each roof having from
twenty to thirty of the forty or fifty peo-
pie in the house sleeping there night after
night, with the full moon shining as their
own light
But the most interesting class, the most
complicated, are the third-the wretched
class of roof-sleepers. The people occupy
the lowest grade of tenement houses,
where not only scores but hundreds are
huddled together as sheep were formerly
huddled on cars and wagons before Mr..
Berghs interference made such outrages
to four footed animals impossible. There
are tenement houses within quarter of
miles radius of the city hall whose every
room accommodates from one to three
families; where men and women die and
children are born; where beds are hud-
died, meals are cooked, clothes are
washed, dried and ironed. There the
sick toss upon their cots. the young play
the old drink and smoke, and the whole
panorama of existence, from the first
breath of puny babyhood to the final gur-
gle of dying old age, is unveiled in the
presence of Indifferent spectators of diff
ferent ages. nationalities and sexes
These places are bad enough in the
winter. In the summer, leaving aside all
question of health, decency and morals,
the utter wretchedness physical is some
thing utterly and absolutely beyond
description or conception to those who
have not been an eyewitness to it That
these people should swarm upon the side
walks, sit upon the curbstones or walk
the streets is not strange, Who, then,
can wonder that they multitudinously
rush in hot haste for choice places on the
roof The roof of tenement house in
which hundreds swarm is no larger and
can hold no more people than the roof of
a house in which one family decorously
lives, or half dozen comfortably reside.
Nightly squabbles. fights and disturb
ances occur, and why it is the children
are not precipitated to the pavement. and
that drunken brawlers don't hurl one or
the other over the gutter, or that brutal
assaults, more easily imagined than de-
scribed, are not nightly occurrences is one
of the mysteries of this peculiar misery.
Every night during the week these popu
Ious districts were noisy with the people
In the streets and noisy with the people
on the roofs 1t is fortunate thing for
New York that in the very hottest nights
there are spots were some kind of breeze
can be obtained, and these roofs are those
happy places
The Destruction of the Temple.
lTimes-Star.l
very Decu1iar condolences and which