Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1889-02-16
FROM NEW YORK.
How the Metropolis May Equal London
in Size in Thirty Years.

A PROPOSED PLAN TO CONSOLIDATE NEW YORK
AND BRooKLYN-No GAYETY AT THE GAY BALLS
THIS YEAI-NAToR GRANT AND THE DIVES
.f BROADWAY AND OTHER GAMBLING HOUSES.
Correspondence of THE EvE.,I,G srAr
s,v NEW YonK, Feb. Is.
Every winter for I don't know how many
years there has been bitter war going on in
this town which hasn't filed the newspapers
with awful accounts of its battles perhaps but
which has nevertheless had some hard fought
ii bloodless struggles distinguished for shrewd
Seneralship and many strategic and valiant
maneuvers. The war il a purely social one,
and has been a ''petticoat fight throughout.
the men rarely taking any active part in it.
This season the war between the young maidens
and the young matrons has been won by the
misses, for the first time in the annals
OF social beiligerency. Heretofore the
bellies OF all the great balls have been
the young married women. They have monopo-
lied all the best beauX, they have got them
selves talked about the most. have grabbed at
and secured all the most prominent positions
and have generally shown their social SUI
9renhacy over the debutantes and the buds of
the season. This year the tables have been
turned. The rosebud girls have become the
rage. The young matrons have piled all their
NtdpOils vi NeilttiEtscllH DOiuncSS, aggressive
gayety and frisky daring, but simple modest
beauty and freshness have won the dav. and
the married bellies are inconsolable. At
the first Patriarchs' they felt some chagrin
at the manifest preference for youth
rather than experience, but the men
there were young, and they laid it to the
salad period of the knights andawaited other
and better discriminating balls. But at the
Charity and the following famous balls the
same prediction for innocence and fresh
beauty was exhibited, and there can no longer
be any doubt of the conquest made by the
maidens. 1t is rough on the young married
women. To sit as wal-fower and be com =.
PEELED to whistle for attention or fall back for
1t upon ones husband is the most dreary and
discouraging thing imaginable.
There is no more fun at the big masked balls
in New York. The town is growing altogether
too prim and puritanical. 1 went to the
great French ball to rollick in mad Partisan
can-cans and things as formerly, and
after yawning and nodding for four mortal
hours in a box waiting for something to hap
pen. l followed the last crowd of grumbling
FOUNDERS out into Broadway at 3 o'clock in the
morning. wondering whether this was New
York really and truly. or whether, perchance
/ mightnt have got into Dorchester, Massa-
chusetts, or Laconia. New Hampshire. where
they ring curfew every night at = O'Clock
and where it is ground for divorce if
a luckless husband or wife STAYS out o'doors
after nine. In former years dress-coated gal
lants and tight-trim ladies fair had burst out
OF the French ball at five or six in the morn
ing, with eyes brilliant and cheeks rosy and
lungs lusty with laughter and shout: this
time they actually sneaked out as if ashamed
at two and three o'clock. sour-visaged surlv,
sullen swells muttering impotent oaths, ac-
companied by an occasional audible ID"
from the ladies'
mo wine after / o'clock is what did it.
When you go to ball at IL O'clock the hour
of arrival affected by the thoroughbreds of the
town, you can't get frisky enough by l to last
you till morning. if your life depended on it,
1t takes a remittent but faithful application to
the champagne basket for two or three hours
at least, to get you into the proper mood for
the can-can and for fraternizing and making
free with everybody else as if yOu'd loved them
all your life. And when big policemen stalk
about with clubs rampant and clubs pendant
and arrest you If You SO much as attempt TO
chuck pretty gypsy under the chin (when
you know she wants to be chucked, tool, YOU
might as well go to a missionary society's con-
vention to have fun.
At the Leiderkranz masquerade things were
as bad as at the French ball in this respect
and that society was consequently behind sew
eral hundred dollars. The members of the
latter OrganizatiOn-some of the richest and
most influential Germans in New York-are so
mad about the police interference that thew
are going to make big fuss about it. If the
police restriction OF fun and frolic endures
another year neither the Cercle de Harmonic
nor the Leiderhranz will give another ball.
The Arion. whose masked ball is yet to come.
threatens to hold it over in Jersey or on q
floating pontoon of barges out at sea, if the
police orders against selling wine are not
resclnded.
Very likely by another St. Valentines day the
two greatest cities of this country, New York
and Brooklyn, will be under one municipal
government. bill will be introduced with
this end in view in the state senate next week.
and the measure will receive such support,
am assured, as will make it a law. The real
motive at the bottom of this movement has not
yet been made public. For many years there
have been millions of dollars lost to the cities
of New York and Brooklyn by the non-payment
of personal taxes. A resident of Brooklyn by
night who does business in New York by day
never pays any personal tax, the officials saw
in either city. 1t is easy to tell the
assessor in either city that You taxed for all
your personal property in the other town. and
it is difficult to punish you for thus evading
taxes in both cities. This habit has become
such confirmed one among New York business
men living in Brooklyn that the tax and other
officials put their heads together over it. and
in seeking q method of doing away with this
evil they hit upon the scheme of uniting New
York county and Kings county into one. The
plan was quietly talked over with leading poll
ticians and its advantages were made SO promi-
nent that the bill was prepared for submits
sion to the present legislature, and As
semblyman Dreamer was chosen to introduce
it. New York has grown about as far as it can
in northerly direction with present conyen-
fences for transit, and it is doubling its pom
ulation now every quarter of century it is
evident that Brooklyn will ere long become a
formidable rival of the metropolis in size.
Within very short time to come there will be
a new bridge connecting New York and Brook
lyn at Blackwelfs Island, and one or more tun-
nels will soon pierce the bed of the East river.
Brooklyn has now an excellent system
of rapid transit with its two ele-
waited railroads and the many ramifica-
tions Of the Long Island railroad, reaching
all points of its present suburbs from the East
river in from twenty to thirty minutes while
the distance from New York's city hall to it's
real suburbs in Morrsania, Fordham, Williams
bridge and other northern points can not be
covered with our system Of transit in less than
an hours time, at the least. Hence the de-
velopment of population for the next thirty
years will in al probability be in the direction
of Long Island. If the scheme of unification
goes through, an excellent move is contem-
plated in making the whole ocean shore between
Manhattan Beach and Norton's Point. COM
prising what are now known as Manhattan