Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1889-01-31
QUEER CONTRAST.


Both burfed on the Same Day.
From the Brooklyn Eagle
There are some queer contrasts in this big
city. At the same hour that the pinned hearse
was carrying Mrs. Gould away to be laid in q
tomb that cost 900, leaving behind her in
the home she had forever vacated securities
valued at twenty times that sum, the dead
wagon was carrying to the morgue the body of
another woman whom no one recognized and
who seventy-two hours later was transported
to Harris Island with some twenty more stiffs
of both sexes and buried in the common
grave. These graves are long rows, with room
for $50 bodies, buried three deep. Nobody
claimed her or knew her. and after
taking her photograph they bundled her in
with the other nnknowns and sent her away to
oblivion. / didn't see the body of this woman, but
/ saw her photograph later, and. despite the
ravages of sin, disease and age, 1 recognized
her. No one except j ever had in this world
such another spiritual brow, such Madonna
lidded eyes, the same meek mouth, with its
queer little turns in the corners which CONTRA
dicted all the story told by the rest of her mild,
pure face. There are Jekylls and Hydes in the
world of women as well as that of men, only
the female Hyde generally commits her worst
crimes against herself. Tho woman in the dead
wagon had known the woman in the plumed
hearse, and that they should both have passed
away Oh tne same CAV was one OF the curious
condolences which encourage and excuse the
makers of fiction. Mrs. Gould was the daugh-
ter of one of our rich wholesale grocers. She
was sent to a fashionable school to be educated,
where she met
THE WOMAN OF THE MoRGUE,
Mile. Jekyll then, a sensitive, high-bred girl,
with en- aristocratic face and tendency to the
dreamy and mystical emotions of High Church
EpiscopaliaDism. The two were friends in a
way; as much so as the young aristocrat could
permit herself to be with the simple honest
somewhat narrow daughter Of the rich grocer
They driftcd apart later, the one to marry the
hard-working little hayseed who had tried his
hand at everything and had gained q compe-
tence before he offered the plain, gentle little
heiress his toil-worn hand, which later should
grip the earth's gold with resistless and all
embracing clutch. Mile. Jekyll made her ap-
pearance in society. was greatly admired, but
was held to be slightly ascetic and somewhat
over-prone to church and mission work.
Suddenly, at the end of two years,
she disappeared. The family was aghast,
but they made no scandal. They an
nounced that the tendency to asceticism had
conquered and that to escape remonstrance
she had-unannounced-im herself in a
Canadian convent Then they set the detectives
to privately hunt for her. She was living with
jockey. They supposed she must have met
him while doing mission work. He had not
married her, nor did she appear to desire it,
He was coarse, brutal, dirty and drunken. and
he periodically beat her. But she stuck to him
and apparently adored him. submitting without
apang to their fashy, squalid life. The Hyde
had been suddenly born m her with all its
teeth. This went on for three years. Then he
imported another woman into his abiding
place, and literally kicked her out. She went
deeper and deeper to the bad. She drank, she
hit the pipe, she plunged
INTO EVERY IMAGINABLE DEBAUCHERY
no in ahaco 3ol,o
troubled her people. She went every Sunday
morning 20 the early service in a little mission
chapel down town, and she was very good to
the sick and poor in the tenements. Once
when she was taken to the hospital battered
from rough brawls and sodden with debauch
Mrs. Gould met her, she being in the process
of her rounds among her especial proteges.
The recognition was mutual. No one could
ever forget that face having once seen it.
j! yOuf' cried the millionaire's wife.
.'Yes, it is l." said the patient with one of her
little naughty smiles. Il hear you have done
well; that your husband Mas grown very rich. 1
am pleased to know you are so prosperous" all
IN tone of gentle condescension. Upon
which she closed her eyes and signified by
her manner that the interview was at an
end, and the millionaire's wife went palely
away without another word. When she
was lying dying. surrounded with every
device of luxury and tenderness to make
the path easy, the Hyde woman was getting
lower and lower. No one knew her name; they
called her Drunken Mary" One morning
bloated. sodden woman was found dead from
the cold and exposure on the end Of pile of
lumber on one of the docks. 1t was long dis
lance from her usual haunts, and no one knew
her there, or did one soul come to inquire
about her, though she had many rich and infill-
entail kinsfolk uptown. They didn't know but
that she had been dead for years. So the
morgue wagon took her away, and she lay there
for three days. Her photograph was taken,
and the body-in which Hyde had suddenly
risen up and, taking Jekyll by the throat,
at times-was carried away to the grave of the
''unrecognized." l called at the morgue on
other business, and saw this photograph, and
so was prompted to tell this strange story,
which may not be made more explicit out of
consideration for the living and respectable
kinsfolk.