Wheeling Sunday register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1882-1934, 1891-05-17
Garden ball.

This creature turned her face east
ward, and was presently stumbling and
muttering along Hester street. she
stopped at Allen street and crossed TO
the northeast corner. There stood
low, dirty building, with an entrnnce
across its corner. From above ana De-
meath the swinging green doors came
light, the scraping sound OF BAD Vio-
lin in unSkillful hands, a smell OF poor
LIQUOR to help on the general foulness
of the odor of the street. The old
woman pushed one swinging door part
ly open, peered in, then entered and SAT
down.
1t is often asked of such as the girl
at the ball what becomes of them and
where do they live when youth and
beauty are gone? The old woman an
Swers both questions. Sometimes the
steps are slow and easy. Sometimes
they are swift and breathlesS. But
these women do not all die. They come
here finally. This is the end-the very
lend-and then comes the long wait for
death. For death does not come quick
llv. These terrible liquors tear and cut
for few years, then they begin to pre-
serve. The life in the bathrooms and
the rest Of it, is short. The life in the
low east side dives is long, so long that
the other is only minute in hundred
years beside it.
This place at the northwest corner OF
Hester and Allen streets is representa-
tive. There is none lower. There are
many such to the south, where the
haunts of the woman killed in the East
River Hotel lay. The reason there are
so many is because so many of these
women must have some place to drink
and wait for the death of the gutter or
of violence.
If you had pushed in behind the old
woman as the writer did, you would
have seen place to remember. The
whole room. part of which was separat-
ed from the rest by a low partition, was
not more than twenty-five feet by
twelve. The part to the front of the
partition-and this part would have been
all YOU would see at tirSt-waS not more
than eighteen by twelve. Yet see what
was crowded between these close, filthy
walls. under low, smoke-stained cell
| ing. Along one side ran bar, and at
the far end of was great ice chest.
These two things took up fourth or
the room. On the other side, leaving a
narrow space between, was a row of
big whisky barrels with single line of
rickety chairs in front. These took up
another fourth. To the back were
three beer tables and lot more chairs.
In the remaining space, on the chairs,
against the bar, on the tables, packed
i'm the paSSageway, between barrels and
bar were old women, utter women. utter
wrecks all, miserable, stopped, wrinkled,
lettering, almost imbecile.
1t is hard to give the degree of squalor
and decay of the furnishings and the
room. The remnants of humanity which
occupied it made you forget everything
else. If you remembered, you thought
the picture was properly framed.
Behind the bar was long, narrow
table, hardly Sideboard, on which
were piled bottles and glasses and a lot
of little kegs, one atop another, each
with faucet in it. On each keg was
painted the name of a liqueur-Kum-
mel, bitterS, lemon, orange and so on.
The contents of the kegs were the same
"a horrible kind of spirits of brain
softening nature.
The Apr priateness of the name lay
in the flavoring. Behind the bar there
were two persons; one was fat, mid
dle-aged woman, with curling black
hair. She had both elbows on the bar,
and was watching the crowd of old wo-
u en- with a smile that was more OF n
sheer. The other was a young man
with eyes close together. He was in
his shirt sleeves, and was to busy TO
watch the old women. Sometimes he
was so busy that the fat woman TO help
him. Drinks were served in big glasses
They gave plenty of beer for five cents
beer that can be drunk only after
long acquaintance. When there was a
call for whisky a large glass was set
out. The young man poured from the
bottle into a half-pint tin cut, then
emptied this cup into their glass.
There were four men in the crowd
two who looked like murdererS, third
with a gray beard worn ut the ends
from constant rubbing of the violin he
was playing, a fourth who deserves sep
arate mention. He sat in a chair against
the whisky barrels and nearest the door
He was small originally, but now seemed
almost nothing, so fallen in was he.