The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1885-05-10
A Reminiscence Of Parepa
Rosa.
NEWS OF ct,v,Nc ATTRACTIONS.
Lucille Western Parepa's o.
Heartedness-O. X. G. Music
Ada Rehan-Aimee.
"Giddy Gusher."


Mirror, indites some well written anC
particularly interesting chats to he
paper. Her column this week is all O.
old songs and familiar artistes, anC
from it we make the following selections
which we are certain will be of Interest
to the Salt Lake readers.
"Shells of the ocean," Dear dead
Lucille Western, with her hair done uI
in big hair doughnut on her forehead
l can see her with her guitar, tootline
away at her favorite songs in the early
days, when she and Helen, the beautl-
full sister, were the idols of the dudes.
I'm lonely tonight in my sad little
chamber" sang Lucille, and "If he
would come once more" Unfortunate
ly for Lucille, he did come, and he had
much the best of it.
And here is the noted funeral melody,
Angels ever bright and fair" hon
estly believe 1 have told you the story
before, but it's so wonderful an incident
it will bear repeating, and 1 associate
that afternoon and that composition
together as naturally as l do the sun
and moon.
1t was dark winters day, years ago,
when Parepa-RoSa, most magnificent of
singers and noblest of women, climbed
round in a coupe from the Belvidere
House to spend the afternoon with the
Gusher. What with sleet and snow and
frozen rain, it was an awful day. No
one could carry an umbrella or protect
cQlx bo
that beat in from all parts of the COM
pass.
Parepa wore about her precious throat
white tippets of boa-constrictor length.
She had hardly unwound herself and
settled down for a snug chat when
messenger ARR, ID from a home into
which Death had entered.
For many months a poor seamstress
had labored for several of my friends
early and late to procure food and
medicine for an unfortunate diving
daughter. One of her expressed wishes
had been that her few friends might at
tend the funeral, and l had promised
positively to be there.
There's no help for it, my dear"
said 1 make yourself easy and con-
tent; / will not be away more than an !
hour. The poor thing is to be buried
to-day; must CO."
II shall go with you" said Parepa,
beginning to tie up her throat, So to-
gether we set off for the abode of poverty
and sorrow.
l have no words to depict the empti-
ness and wretchedness of that place.
All that had made it home for poor,
toiling mother lay with upturned,
wasted face in dreadful stalned-pine
coffin. 1t was twenty-five dollar
funeral; and if there is anything worse
than death, it seems to me it's a twenty
five dollar funeral. The undertakes
advertise them as inducements to die
but if any one contemplating the great
change will take a hack at that black
alpaca 1hearse, red-pine coffin. with
scalloped paper muslin lining, with two
night-hawk derricks and parson, be-
longing by every Outward sign and in
ward token, to Jake Hess poorhouse on
the island, they will hang on to this
wicked world and take no stock in an
other that has to be reached by such
horrible means.
Well, this sorrow stricken mother,
when we got there, was paying a man
with CHASTITY screw-driver in his hand
the twenty-five dollars in small change
money that had been earned bv
months of toll. Parepa uncoiled her
self and sat down amid a few humble
friends of the poor mother, and we
waited further developments.
The undertaker's bill was settled at
last, and the poorhouse parson got in
his fine work 1 never listened to SO
empty a service. 1t fairly ratified all
the horrors OF the grave. Its sitting
darkness, its eternal loneliness and DESC
lation, its earthly companionship of de-
teStable creeping things came over US as
we listened TO the heartless ceremony
incidental to twenty-fve-dollar funer-
al. eA
Some way, when it was over, and the
parson picked up his rusty hat and cot
ton umbrella, and the undertaken re-
Sumed his screR-driver, there came
over us all a sense of misery and the
dissatisfaction of living as we'll as dying,
L knoU5I never had so little heart as
when glanced at the big, splendid
creature who had shared my pilgrimage
to the shrine of suffering and squalor
She was slowly drawing off the thick
gloves she wore. She held the snuffy
undertaken with compelling eyes as she
advanced, and he fell back from the
coffin. She laid her large white hand.
Hike smaterialized prayer, on the yellow
forehead of the dead girl. She raised
her eyes, full of loving human kindness,
to heaven, and that wondrous voice
sang out, as never it did before,
Angels ever bright and fair, Take, oh.
take her to your care"
There were hundreds beneath that
crowded tenement roof In an instant
the stairs and halls were crowded with
that song-loving people. the Germans,
and the pearly gates swung wide for
soul ushered past them by service of
devotional melody worthy an empress.
All, my beautiful darling, with the
voice of an angel. for many, many years
you have swelled the chorus in which
the stars are supposed to sing and you
know now how that act of yours stirred
the pulses of the saints. But felt
then, as l fell upon her neck, like one
who falls upon those altar stairs that
lead through darkness up to God"
She made light of the impulse and her
noble act, but 1t did much to make a
good Christian out of your
GlDDY GUsHER.