Wichita eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1886-1890, 1890-02-01
The aaha 1aiu Eagle: Saturday. goimg Eebrnaru 11eeo

Familiarity known au1ong the medical students
as '~St. Darts."
With pasim. thought that a saint xho
was layed aliYs IS a very appropriate pearon
for district wyrere so many persons are
daily skinned By tie sharp practace OF tns
business men WHO nlhahit It, cross the road
way to examine another relic OF the past,
more curious STILL
Squeezed up between two huge, pretentlous
looking houses of smoky brick (Which elbow
it so closely that q careless observer might
easily lass 1T unnoticed) stands splendid
Norman arcf way, the noble outline of which,
hernn,e1 in by the gaulit, grimy, modern
ugliness around it, might suggest the thought
of some grand old French marquis amid the
tatte1,9d. bowling, filthy rabble OF the Reign
of Terror. It's sculptUred cornices have ut
terly persisted, and the fine antique pillars
that once supported it have long since mold
cred avail, but the magnificent groined arch
itself still stands forth defiantly between
these dnlgy masses of brickwork, and just
above it, in rheumatic letters of twisted iron,
is the IL Scriptlon:
ST BARTHOLOMEW THE GREAT
asst. Bartholomew the Crate would be
nearer the mark" thought l, glancing at the
rusty iron bars of the gate that now closes
the narrow archway.
I was unconscious Of having spoken my
thou ght aloud, till a hoarse chuckle at my
elbow apprised me that some one else was
,hing the joke more highly than 1t de-
serves, and, turning quickly, l find myself
face to face with a stalwart policeman, over
whose hard, wooden, official vLsage HickerS
plaam of very unwOnted mirth.
""You're Just about right there, SIR" says
he, land as you seem to be ON the lookout
for curios, would you just tell mo did you
ever happen to smiths forge at work In
the middle OF church!"
''Not that [ know of, my man. Out in the
east I've seen cavalry horses stabbed in a Tar
tar tomb by the Cossacks and queer sight
it was; but blacksmith's forge in a church
is something new to me- Where is such a
thing to be seens'
''WeN, all you've got to do is just to walk
slap in through this here gate and you'll see
it fast enough-leastways you'll see the
church, for the forge has been took away.
But it's grim sort O place in there, and if /
was anyway narvous shouldn't like to be in
it at night all alone, that's a fact, with all
them dead men about. Folks do say" he
adds, in ghostly whisper, shat the chap as
built that church buried alive his only child
under the pavement OF tho chancel for sort
of a h'offering like, to bring good to the
work: and, sure enough, when they begun
restorin' the old place t'other day and took
up that ere pavement they did find some
bones underneath, but whether twas the
child or not nobody knows"
My curiosity is aroused and in 60.
- IL.
broad daylight and deep urslackening roar
outside to the tomb like silence and twilight
within, that the policeman's CHASTITY legend
is EardIy needed to heighten its chilling
effect Dickens himself, with all his terrible
power of describing the human dens Of Lon
don, would have failed to do justice to the
horrible pit of Bartholomew court, damp
and dark and foul as disused well, and shut
out from the very daylight by the gaunt
blacl; chimneys and grimy walls that almost
meet overhead.
Nearly the whole area of this evil place il
fifty occupied by one Of those frightful burial
grounds familiar to all readers of "Bleak
He use" and ga Christmas Carol" every foot
of which, even to the rusty, tumble down
iron ratings around it, and the narrow strip
of broken, muddy pavement outside, is rank
with foulness and decay. So high above the
ground is this mass of putrefaction
piled up that / actually look up to
the graves instead of looking down upon
chem, and the green, Shiny, moldering
tombstones stare into the lowest windows
of the houses, SO that the living seem to be
eating and sleeping in the actual presence Of
the dead. If ever any place on earth was
haunted, this spot certainly ought to be so;
and, in truth, no risen corpse could look more
hideous and unearthly than these defol med,
diseased, skeleton monsters with no sign of
childhood save their diminutive size) who
start up at my approach, with an impish
yell, from among the tombs, which are their
only playground. Such children might well
seem born of no earthly mother, but pro-
duced spontaneously, like poisonous fungi,
from the fostering mass Of rottennesS below
Far back in the innermost corner of this
foul den, whore the shadows fall deepest and
DARKEST the grand old Norman church of St
Bartholomew the Great rears its square, mas
sive tower proudly against the gray, sullen
sky above all the loathSomenesS and horror
around it, like great soul bearing up against
undess rived misfortunes. Though deformed
alike by the ravages of time and by that
wholesale DETACHMENT facetiously called res
toraton,H it still retains such traces of its an
Gent splendor as may have fingered around
some gallant English cavalier, who. even when
beggared and banished and sunk into the COM
rade of pirates and bandits, stiN preserved the
nameleSS impress of what he had once been.
But its rich antique holdings have long since
crumbled to ruin, its heraldic escutcheons
and Norman monuments are obliterated like
the memory of thOsa whose renown thev
were meant TO preserve, and although the
sacrilesious ''blacllslniths forge" is no longer
there, it has left behind it many an unsightiy
token of its presence.
| afterwards learned that the spot on which
the forge had stood in the interior of the
church had been formally leased TO the in
genious smith, and that when the restoration
Of the building was set on foot, this master
of irony" fatty refused TO vacate the place
till he had received full compensation for
being deprived of his consecrated workshop.
Oh which occasion a small local wit spitefulv
observed that lit was not the first time that
the protecting shadow of the church had been
cast over system of deliberate forgery
Altogether, it was certainly one of the
strangest sights that l have ever behekd al
though not whit stranger than what | ex-
pect TO see three or four months hence among
the ruins of the ancient temples that lie hid
In the depths of the forests of Java
DAVID KER.
Bookmakers and the Payi-Mutuel in Paris.
II. Daunas, municipal councillor of Paris,
is about to bring before his colleagues in the
name Of the Assistance Pubhque a report on