The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1890-04-13

specialist rather than crank She ranks
In the same class with Susan B. Anthony,
and is doing what shecan to benefit women.
She wants the wages Of the women of the
various departments raised and she pushes
all bills in favor of women'S work. The
Witch OF Endor is a crazy woman. six feet
tall, and about eighteen inches across the
shoulders. She makes me think of the
woman in White'' of Wi1kie Collins, and
she is frightfully ugly. She wears huge
poke bonnet covered with ribbons the color
OF which swear at each other, and her long
drawn out figure is half concealed by a
long gray dress which falls straight from
her shoulders to her feet like mother
hubbard without its fullness. She some
times wears green silk shawl and out of
her poke bonnet fringed with frowsy gray
hair is skull-like face covered with sal
low skin. Her eyes are gray and the lids
are as red as though she had been crying
since the day she was born. She wears
heavy arctic overshoes and she glides along
so quietly that you are always scared when
you see her and imagine that one of the
capitol ghosts is after you. She is harm
less, however, and no one pays any atten-
ton to her.
THE BUSINESS WOMEN OF THE CAPITOL.
There are a number OF women who make
their living in the capitol building There
is pretty telephone girl connected with
the Senate who will ''hello' for you to any
part of Washington and who has to do this
service fer many Senator. There is
mlddleaged typewriter just off the corridor
n 1x-hn oil in,
Spouse to the dictation of many Congress
man. There are lunch stands in many
parts OF the corridors presided over by
women and the little old appiewoman who
sits IN the window recess near the main
door of the House has many customers.
She is very poor woman and her face
bears the lines of hardship. Promptly at
the opening of the House every day she
squatS down here on the floor with her
apples, her basket beside her, aud peddles
them out at the rate of three for five cents
TO ali corners. Many of the leading Con-
gressmen are great apple eaters and she
often sells to Tom Reed, Ben Butterworth
and Joe Cannon. The lunch stand at the
side of Statuary Hall is largely patronized
by the newspaper correspondents and you
may see Congressman and journalists buy
ing of this old lady here. Her stock con-
sists of sandwiches and pie and she furn-
ishes the best of milk to wash down the
solids. Further on ia
AUNT CLARA, THE NOTED FRENCH WOMAN
of the capitol. She has been here for forty
years and she has not grown day older in
tie last two decades. She does the biggest
business OF any woman in the capitol and
she sells photographs of public men, souv-
enirs made of the pulp of mashed green
backs, guide books ana relics. She is as
q ryvi CT J,1i hot oh,
must be in her seventies. Her hair is still
brown and her cheeks are as rosy as those
of the capitol brides who buy of her She
knows all the statesmen Of the capitol well,
and at the opening of each session she
greets such men as Hoar, Sherman and
Edmunds with a serni-embrace putting out
both her hands and shaking theirs cordi-
ally. She has been here longer than any of
them. and the only person in the capitol
who can compare with her in term of ser
vice is old Messenger Basset who began
as page in the Senate and who is here
yet. Aunt Clara knew Clay and Webster.
and she has talked with John c., Calhoun
and Jefferson Davis. She was a strong
Union women and during the war she used
to so over to the Senate and wave silk
flag whenever Union speech was made.
1t was Charles Sumner who helped her
hold her place in this corridor and she will
continue to stay here as long as she lives.
She has made money outof her sales and it
is said that she has sent her boy through
Yale College and given her daughter
European education. Aunt Clara knew
General Grant, and Grant wrote her an
autograph letter from Mount McGregor in
response to one she sent asking for his au-
tograph and saying she hoped he would
recover.
THE ROMANCE OF gHE CAPITOL.
Washington is packed full of brides this
spring and you cannot throw a stone from
any corner without striking strange bride
and groom. One OF the hotels here makes
present of bouquet to each bridal
couple that stops at it, and its flower
bill this season is enormous. These
bridal couples haunt the Capitol
and you see many little love passes IN the
embrasures Of the windows and in the
dark passages of the basement. The
guides know the new brides at a glance
and in taking the neWly married pairs up
to the dome they always maintain a re
spectful distance to the front or the
rear. The brides are delighted with the
whispering gallery and the grooms can
stand on one side of the rotunda and say
sweet nothings to their loved ones thirty
yards away on the other side of the
gallery. Now and then couple from the
rural districts comes in and they go from
the House to the Senate holding each
others hands and swapping bites from the
same apple. These couple never want any
one to show them about and they are some
time caught kissing as they slowly slip up
the dome by the winding stairways. The
better class of bridal couples made the fortu-
mes of the guides, and it is a poor groom who
won't give dollar an hour for being shown
around.
THE GALLERY GIRLS
The galleries of the Senate will hold
over a thousand spectators and you can seat
$500 in those of the House. About
half of the habitues of these galleries are
women, and they form the chief inspiration
for our statsmen during a big speech.
The senators and members address the
President and the Speaker but they
look at the galleries and the fuller the latter
are the louder they talk and the more vio-
lently they gesture. Not few of the
members pose for the galleries and Senator
Matt Ransom of North Carolina lives in fear
that some woman above him may not see
that he wears white linen cuffs. and he is
forever pulling them down out of his
sleeves. Senator Jones of Florida was
made crazy by these gallery girls and he
posed and thought and thought and posed
for them until the machinery of his brain
got out of order and it only required the
concentrated beauty Of Detroit girl to
drive him entirely crazy. Ben Lefere of
Ohio was always posing to the galleries
of the House. He weighed $50 pounds
and he thought that every pound of it was
beautiful. 1t is the same with other mem
bers of the House to-day, and / venture
al -