The Arkansaw traveler., 1885-12-05
SO MUCH FOR so LITTLE.
TPeck's Sun.1

The season is approaching when a great many men are going to be cold and hungry, the house of correction is going to be full, and yet there will be plenty oi tramps outside who will suffer if not provided for. Good people who do not want to see those who are destitute going to saloons, will wonder what they can do to help the poor. It is very singular, but a saloon is the best friend poor tramp can find on cold day. With thousands of wealthy and noble-hearted people, will ing to give freely to any deserving charity, person with only nickel in his pocket can get more to warm himself in saloon than anywhere else. How it is done, the good Lord only knows, but if man can raise a nickel to buy glass of beer, he can stand up to free lunch counter and eat all he wants. It would be good thing for some reformer to go into saloon some cold day, at about ten o'clock in the morning, and see the lay out on a free lunch counter. There are often cold baked beans, potato salad, sausage, head cheese and mustard plenty. A man buys glass of beer and all the Siands are as free to him as salvation, and he can fill up so he need not be hun gry till the next day. A swallow or two of beer, and then a couple of pink-edge wads of sausage, some bread, another swallow of beer, a slug of head cheese, beer, bread, mustard and plenty more sausage and salad, will bank up the stomach of poor tramp SO he can go out in the cold after warming himself clear through by the saloon stove, and he will feel happier than the average million aire filled with terrapin and champagne. One of the most interesting sights to be seen is couple of tramps with ten cents each. They will ssunter into a saloon and walk up the counter as though trying to think what sort of drink they will order, and one will say, "Pard, what will it be9" The other will say, "Oh, beer, of course. am tired of mixed drinks. That wine we drank this morn- ing has given me headache. There is nothing like beer, and blessed be the man who invented it" This will please the German saloon keep CT. and when the tramps blow the foam off the glass and take swallow, no one would think they came in almost on purpose to eat. They turn their backs to the lunch counter, as though they did not know such thing existed. Finally they take their glasses of beer and edge along to the lunch, and one of them is telling a story to the other, and the other takes a piece of bread and tastes of it, as though it were mere matter of form, and the other does the same, and 6n- ally they drift into the sausage, and be, hot at all they will be full clear to the top If the bar tender seems to b watching them, or acts as if they were over. doing the thing, the other one will say, Jim, drink up your beer and have another
 Bismarck, two more beers." That set. ties it, and Bismarck draws two more beers for them, and they eat as long as they can, pay ten cents apiece and go away with forty cents worth of eatables concealed about their persons, at restaurant rates. No one seems to be able to provide cheap meals for the poor as successfully as the saloon keepers, and the poor know it very we'll. Let any. body start free soup house, or cheap soup house, not connected with saloon, and it does not take, even with these same tramps. Somehow there is an idea that the soup is too cheap, or it is with. out the flavor that glass of beer gives to everything. How the saloon keeper gives so much that braces hungry man up, for five cents is mystery. There are thousands of men who would give dollar to man who was needy, if they knew he would not go to saloon, who would not give nickel to a man that they knew would go and buy a glass of beer and have a good meal thro~n in. What shall we do to keep these poo, people from going and buying glass of beer, and eating all they want for five cents2 May be we better start saloon and give them the beer and the sausage. That would not be doing a very bad act, as one glass of beer day, with plenty of sausage to back it, won't hurt a man very much. However, as long as nickel will keep man from starving, nobody ought to be allowed to starve in this country.
 The Great Southwestern Music House.