Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1892-02-21
CHICAGO'S BIG BLOW.
Its Vainglorious Citizens
Fairly TakeANay an East
ern Mans Breath.
THINK THEY ARE GREAT,
But the Visitors to the Big Fair Will
Be Disappointed.
STOCK-YARD FLAVOR OF HOTELS.
Highway RObberies in Daylight and De-
pravity Everywhere.
rrcrrnn
THINK THEY ARE GREAT,
FLAVOR OF HOTELS.
how THE TOWN STRIKES A VISITOR
rrRor A STAFF CORRESPONDENT |


CHICAGO, Feb 19.-There is q stock
yard flavor about big Chicago hotel that is
depressing in the extreme. From what
have seen I infer that this applies only to
those who are accustomed to the select,
clean. quiet hostelries of Eastern cities.
The large body of natives and the greater
proportion, perhaps, of the Western trav-
cling commercial people like it. They re-
vel in it They crowd the corridors and
stand around the rotundas in biny-goat
whiskers, box coats and slouched hats and
muddy boots, and expectorate tobacco sa-
liva and talk hour after hour, day and
night, by the scores and hundreds.
Perhaps these corridors and rotundas are
scrubbed down at night don't know. I
never sat up late enough or got up early
enough to see. To me they are always
filthy and crowded, and the air is always
reeking with stale tobacco smoke and the
fetid breath of sweaty rabble who have
apparently never used toothbrush or a
bath 1t is not the fault of the hotels-it is
the situation. The unceasing rush of feet,
the eternal scramble after trains and rooms
and KEYS and mail and something to eat is
vearisome l would not live in such an
atmosphere the rest of my life, short or
long for a brown stone front on a corner
lot on Wabash avenue. To be always dirty,
to walk around in filth, to breathe dirt, to
come in continual and necessary contact
with dirty people, until the soul becomes
calloused and you cease longer to even wish
to be clean-that is the state of the Chi
cagoan.
a Shock for Continental Visitors.
wonder what the continental traveller
Will say when he comes to Chicago in '93 to
visit the great fairl Then the Chicago hotels
will be fuller and dirtier and more repulslve
than ever they were. The spotless marbles
of beautiful Florence, the noiseless temples
Of entertainment of lovely Lucerne and the
German Spas thousand quiet hostelries
from ancient Rome to the German Capital,
where spittoons and chewing tobacco are
unknowu-how they will cry out against this
horrible pollution! I wonder what those
accustomed to the clean continental hotels
viii think when they stand in line in one of
these reeking human stockyards waiting for
an opportunity to register, or to get room
key, or to obtain bit Of note paper, or to
ask question.
And I wonder how such man will feel
to have the register ierked out of his hands
at the critical moment, or to have his room
KEY slammed at him by an insolent satrap
IN baggy trousers and red necktie, or be
snubbed for his ignorance of stockyard Gus
toms. And, further, wonder what he will
say when he comes in TO wash the black
CRIME from face and hands and change his
collar and cuffs several times a day, and
coughs and sneezes black ooze in the early
morning and dares not wear white linen ex-
posed to the sootT air, and finally realizes
fully that every man, woman and child in
this great city is quite as dirty as he is and
has long since ceased to struggle against it!
They Live in High Temperatures.
The most remarkable thing to the observ-
ant Eastern man up in the Northwest in
winter is the extraordinary heat found en-
Joyable and necessary by the inhabitants of
that cold climate. The hotel rooms are
close and sitting on an ordinary day. Every
window is made double like the windows OF
q Pullman car, and every crack is plugged
as tight as drumhead. The atmosphere,
dry by nature, is still further rarifed by
artificial heat Even the great rotunda of
the West, Minneapolis, is always super
heated in ordinary weather and every time
a door opens the cold air rushes into the
vacuum in a way to strike terror to the un-
accustomed. The newcomer suffers with
continual headache indoors The air is so
dry it Is almost impossible to keep lather
on the face long enough to shave. The
ky.+a1 A,~1 Il |,
at the finish and looks pityingly at you
when you demonstrate.
Men sit about the rotunda and stand
about the barrooms In great bearskin, COON
skin, fo1skin, sealsk1n and buffalo skin
overcoats without apparent discomfort
One Of these coats will weigh % pounds or
more. When the fur gets wet 1t will weigh
90 Hundreds of men are thus dressed on
the streets of Minneapolis when spring
overcoat would be comfortable to a Pitts
burger / don't know whether they sleep
In them or not, but the man who goes about
in 25-pound overcoat with the mercury at
300 above zero and can sit around hotel
with the mercury at IS must require a good
deal of extra covering at night
when you put on such coat in the
fall, " said hotel clerk, ''you can't take it
of till spring. You'd catch cold They
get used to it.
That's the only way they bathe," ex-
planned New York drummer. "a man
enjoys a Turkish bath all dav. and is
rubbed down by bis wife with mop every
night.
A Chicago Hotel Picture,
A barkeeper is making wonderful con-
eoction with q maraschinoed cherry in the
glass which he calls q Manhattan cocktail
and as he shakes it up as if it were lem,
onsde-
Two young men in dirty lavender ties
and soiied cuffs, with the appearances of
having been up all night, are PLAYING a
gEme Of billiards at 500 game, assisted by
sour mash and soda on the outside and a
crowd of gawky country looking loungers,
while
Five stalwart bootblacks are polishing off
some of the biggest feet ever saw, just
outside the door, and
The sonorous but irregular notes of the
caller in the great ginger-bread-work bar
Der shop beyond crying ''Sev-en-ty-onel
6ev-en-ty-twol Sev-en-ty-threeI"
rise on the stuffy air and indicate the num-
Der of human cattle coming in turn under
the morning razor, pending all of which
At leas: four score of gentlemen (here
called ''gents''). with commercial and un-
commercial noses, can be seen under the
electric lights of the big and dirty rotuuds
discussing variety of cigars and business,
contributing TO the confusion and cuspidors,
Bitsing grimIy Ia the dark corners, reading
the morning papers in the light ones, and
R1s1rg over 81 and permestirg the Hoods