Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-03-16

| With its freedom and heart:ness and
| elasticity of conventional standards there
| Is no rawness-none of the wildness and
"wooliness" which Eastern people gener-
ally associate with the word "W estern."
ALL KINDS OF PEOPLE LIKE US.
II you are personally all right YOU can
take your place in Pittsburg without having
to show a diagram of your social status.
And on the other hand, if you are person.
ally all right you can take your place in
Pittsburg without having to show diagram
of your bank account. Both Eastern people
and Western people find these facts pleas
ant when they become little accustomed to
them. And therefore it is that strangers as
well as Pittsburgers like old Pittsburg.
And vet, after all has been said and done,
I have sympathy with the old-timers who
look regretfully backward. One would
suppose that if any earthly being would re-
joice with exceeding great joy over the in
PRODUCTION of natural gas for domestic pur-
poses it would be the housewife. Most of
them do so rejoice; but there was one
who spoke to me repiningly; and she repre-
sented class. All her lie she had kept
house in Pittsburg, using bituminous coal.
Suddenly she had been emancipated from
all the labors and annoyances implied In
that statement; and she did not relish her
emancipation. The old routine had been
broken up.
There's so much make-believe aboutp'
sshe said plaintively. 'You sit down before
CRATE full of frebricks and try to think
they're Jumps of coal. Of course that is i'm
possible. Then there's so little to do. You
can't educate girl to do housework properly
with that kind of fire. I've almost forgot
ten already how to dust thoroughly. And
then there's no comfort in managing it. 1
did use to enjoy Stacking down u coal fire
for the nightp'
THE NEW LIBRARY PROJECT.
Progress does have to be paid for with
price.
'There's to be new library in Pitts
burg" says retrospective man of middle
age. well, 1 remember when the Mercan-
tile Library was opened, and that was fine
event g! Everybody was there, and we were
all very proud OF the handsome new place.
1 found young minister sitting on win
dow SILL looking down on the stage OF Trim
ble's Varieties next door. 1t was the first
variety show he had ever seen, and he en-
joyed it immensely-until caught him at
it."
In these days the young minister might
have gone in through the door and have
made sermon about the show afterward.
There has not been very much good
skating this past winter; but that does not
prevent recollections of skating frolics long
ago. And more than one old citizen has
had thoughts of the boyhood winters when
he used to skate through the tunnel through
which the Panhandle Railroad now passes.
1t was canal tunnel then. In summer
canal boats passed by means of it and the
locks beyond it, out into the Monongahels
river.
THE CANAL IN THE TUNNEL.
That tunnel was a great engineering won
der in those days, and commanded as much
admiration as the new Court House does
now. And the arrival and departure of
passenger packets on the canal was far
more momentous event than the arrival and
departure of any number of limited express
trains is to-day.
And yet the Pittsburger who skated IN
the canal tunnel, and who has told me de-
lightful things about those old times, is not
vet an old man. Verify, whether "the sun
do move" or not, Pittsburg does. And it
keeps lot OF us, who are not so young as
younger people, busy taking note of the
changes that come to pass. May it be long,
very long, before we have to note any change
in the old characteristics that make Pitts
burgers fond of Pittsburgh
JAMES q PT7Pnv