The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-02-08
The Incarnation of the City
Among the SHAMELESS.
POLITICS AND PiG-kILLiNe.
streets without Color or Beauty-An
Aucffoneer In the Pulpit-Misery
Of the People.
know thy cunning and thy greed,
Thy hard high lust and wilfuI deed,
And all thy glory loves to tell
OF suecious gifts material.

lue Otner places DO not count. San
francisco was pieasure-resort as well as
scity and Salt Lake was a phenomenon.
This place is the first American city
have encountered. 1t holds rather more
than million people with bodies and
stands on the same sort of soil as Calcutta.
Having seen it urgently desire never to
see it again. 1t is inhabited by savages.
Its water is the water of the Hughli, and
lis air is dirt. Also it says that it is the
aboss', town of America.
LIDO not believe that it has anything to
lis country. They told me to go
ar house, which is overmuch
mirrored, and there found a
81 OF tesselated marble crammed
Sfsople talking about money and spit
Rg everywhere. Other barbarians
charged in and out of this inferno with let
! ters and kilograms in their hands, and yet
others shouted at each other. A man who
had drunk quite as much as was good for
him told me that this was ''the finest hotel
in the finest city on God Almighty's
earth" By the way, when an American
wishes to indicate the next country or
date, he says, God A'mighty's earth"
This prevents discussion and hatters his
vanity.
Then went out into the streets, which
are long and Tat and without end And
verify, it is not good thing to live in the
4 East for any length of time. Your ideas
pow TO clash with those held by every
Matchmaking man. / looked down in
terminable vistas fanked with nine, ten,
aud fifteen storied houses, and crowded
With men and women, and the show i'm
u pressed me with a great horror.
4 Except in London-and have forgotten
What London was like--I had never seen
% many white people together and never
sueh collection of miserables. There
was no color in the street and no beauty
/ only maze of wire ropes overhead and
dirty stone tagging under foot.
II THROUGH CAB DRIVERS LENS.
/ A cab driver volunteered to show me the
glory of the town for so much an hour,
md with him / wandered far. He con-
ceived that al, this turmoil and squash
was thing to be reverently admired, that
twas good to hnddle men together in ff-
teen layers, one atop of the other, and to
dig holes in the ground for Offices.
He said that Chicago was live town
md that all the creatures hurrying by me
Il we're engaged in business. That is to say,
hey were trying to make some money
that they might not die through lack of
bod to put into their bellies. He took me
10 canals black as ink, and filled with I'M
1 told examinations, and babe me watch the
Iiream of traffic across the bridges.
MI He then took me into saloon, and,
While drank, made me note that the ioor
vas covered with coins sunk in cement A
Hottentot would not have been guilty of
his sort OF barbarism. The coins made an
fleet pretty enough. but the man who put
mem there mad no thought to beauty and
therefore he was a savage.
Al Then my cab driver showed me business
z bocks, gay with signs and studded with
Fantastic and absurd advertisements of
3ecods. and looking down the long street so
~ horned il was as though each vendor
sood at his door howling:-
For the sake of money employ or buy
me, and me onlyi"
Have you ever seen q crowd at famine
riief distribution2 You know then how
21 we men leap into the air, stretching out
!neir arms above the crowd in the hope of
ceng seen: while the women dolurously
al nap the stomachs of their children and
III shmper. had sooner watch famine re-
= ffi than the hite man engaged in what
~ se calls legitimate competition. The one
understand. The other makes me ill.
and the cabman said that these things
we're the proof of progress, and by that
Knew he had been reading his newspaper
.1jss every intelligent American should.
s. he papers tell their clientele in language
lifted TO their comprehension that the
jmaring together of telegraph wires, the
1neaving up of houses and the making of
money is progress.
III DONE IN TEN HOURS.
ispent ten hours in that huge wilder
mess, wandering through scores of miles OF
Ehese terrible streets and jostling some few
3nundred thousand of these terrible people
sno talked paisa bat through their noses
The cabman left me; but after q while
aeKed up another man who was full of
gures, and into my ears he poured them
~ occasion required or the big blank
,sc'ories suggested. Here they turn out so
Hany hundred thousand dollars worth of
ueh and such an article; there so many
IN. lllion other things; this house was worth
many million dollars; that one so many
inon more or less. 1t was like listening
- cnlld babbling of its hoard of shells.
was IKE watching a fool playing with
y. xaltons. But | was expected 10 do more
sn TO listen or watch. He demanded
~ IA should admire; and the utmost
/ ula say was: Are these things So
4heh l am very sorry for you" That
aae him angry and he said that insular
~ Tfy made me unresponsiye. So YOU see
I'LL ieouid not make him understand
ABOUT four and a half hours after Adam
turned out of the Garden of Eden he
- hungry, and so, bidding Eve take care
~ ner head was not broken by the de-
Tuuing irult, Skinned up cocoanut
" I'm. That hurt his legs, cut his breast
II made him breathe heavily, and Eve
tormented With fear lest her lord
Soula miss his foothold and so bring the
Eseay OF this world TO an end ere the
laaih had fairy risen. Had | met Adam
should have been sorry for him.
- uay nnd eleven hundred thousand of
sons Just as far advanced as their
.ner Ia the art of getting food. and i'm
Isnrabiy inferior TO him in that they
aS mat their palm trees lead straight to
SKIES. Consequently | am sorry in
- # than million different WAYS.
INK the East bread comes naturally even
sae poorest by little scratching or the
VI Trend not quite SO poor. In less
1e9 countries one is apt 10 forget
In ! went TO bed. And that was on
'arday night.
CHICAGO PREACHING.
anday brought me 10 the queerest ex-
ehees OF ala revelation of barharism
pete found a place that was off,
n described as a church II was
sus really, but that the worshipers did
Know. There were bowers ali about
building, which was fitted up with
ash and stained oak and much luxury.
.aoing twisted brass Candlesticks Of
n ssesi Gothic design.
q lhese things and a congregation of
~ SO entered suddenly a wonderful man
80 IN the confidence of their God,
Ne. n Iaey treated colloquially and ex-
I 49, very much as a newspaper reporter
~ exploit foreign potentate. Bat