Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1892-06-24
CHICAGO AS SHE IS.
A Graphic Description of One of the
Windy City's June Days.
WEATHER THAT COULD BEAT NOAH
The Builder of the Ark Would Have Been
Knocked Out if He Had
ATTEMPTED his WORK IN THE BIG CITY
ESPECIAL TELEGRAM TO THE DIsPArCH.l

ESPECIAL TELEGRAM TO THE prsPArcH.l
CHICAGO, June 23-As a Southern dele
gate walked out of the cold-storage Wig
wam, this afternoon, into the inky black
ness of Michigan avenue, he said to big
policeman: 'tFor Gawd's sake, tell me, are
we in Chicago or in Hades?'
His uncertainty is not surprising, for dur
ing the past week Chicagos has been an un.
canny, unearthly, rain-deluged, cloud-dark.
ened, thunder-pounded, lightning ng-stricken,
dirty, sodden, slimt, sickly, frightful con-
glomeration of massive buildings and ex
cited, woe-begone, hopeless citizens.
Banks of dense fog cork up every smoky
grimed street with their helpless, smoky
| grimed inhabitants. From morning until
night, no less than three times daily, abso-
lutte deluges fall upon the panic-stricken
people, bolts of supernaturally vivid light
ming zigzag through the sky, demolish
monuments, Worlds Fair buildings and
21-story business blocks, human beings and
| animals, without regard to time, place or
condition.
This is in no sense exaggeration or at
tempted humor. 1t is solid fact, although
the hapless citizens knocked down by the
lightning bolts are far beyond the con-
dition of being able to prove it.
Pittsburgers Can't Understand l..
No Pittsburger can at all conceive what
THE DISPATCH here attempts to portray.
In Justice it is to be hoped that no other kind
of man can conceive it. The Chicago peo-
pie themselves say that even they, living in
this womb of the elements, never conceived
of such disturbances as now whack down
upon them every few hours It rained
here solidly 27 days in May. 1t has rained
even more steadily all of June. Noah
never could have built his ark if he had
lived here, for his workmen would have
been washed away in the attempt
But Noah was not in it anyway. for there
is no record that he grew athletic like these
Chicago people in lodging thunderbolts.
They are so practiced that they think moth
ing now of slipping between the jagged
bolts that rain upon them, and even the
lady visitors to the convention are getting
so case-hardened against the most violent
disturbances of nature that the lily-like
daughter of one of the chiefs OF Democracy
told THE DISPATCH Yesterday that she
used to be so afraid of lightning that she
had spent fraction of her life between
feather mattresses, but now she cared no
more for the forked missiles of Vulcan than
if they were SO many peanuts
All Days Alike This Week.
Every day that the convention has been
in session this awful state of things has con-
tinued. Two days before the great gather
ing of Democrats assembled here one of
these unheard-of and internal upheavals of
nature lifted the roof from the vast ware
house and carried it into the lake, where it
was taken up by a whirlwind and disap-
peared forever. The substitute provided
served to shut out the sky from the eyes of
delegates, but as protection from the
crazy elements it was an unmitigated and
absurd failure.
Morning. noon and night during the days
that the convention was assembled the
thunders roared above and drowned the
voices of the Cleveland mob, the lightning
played about the heads of the presiding Off
GERS and the delegates, and the rain came
down upon them as though they were sitting
in the open air. But so used had these peo-
pie become to state of things unheard of
before that they sat in their seats with the
calmness of despair. wondering what would
happen next, and firm in the conviction
that there could be nothing worse in store
for them.
reached to-day while the convention was in
session choosing tail to the Cleveland
ticket. While the Hon. John Evergreen
Lamb, of Indiana, was for the thousandth
time mailing the banner to the mast, dark
ness suddenly came upon the vast assem-
blage.
A symphony OF SickIy Green.
The faces of the 10000 spectators in the
great hall became merged into one SYM
phony of sickly, jaundiced green. Roars
of thunder that almost froze ones blood
bombarded the sky and shook the buildings
down to the wobbling blanket of clay on 4
which all Chicago buildings are founded
The noise of this battle in the clouds was
so overpowering and SO mighty that the
roaring, appIauding, shouting multitude be-
meath the,leaking roof would have been but
childish prattle compared with it. But that
the multitude had been baptized three times
daily in this frightful carnage, it would
have been awe-stricken in the crush of its
own wild stampede for safety. As it was,
its carelessness and its experience of the
past week taught it to know that this awful |
roar and rumble, dazzle and din were but the |
childish prattle of the natural light artillery |
of the air, the only part of the surrounding |
earth that is not incorporated in Chicago.
But if the thunder was appalling the |
was ludSuluCcHl. Gne |
few open doors of the cold storage box in |
which the thousands of sweating Democrats |
had been confined, in the blackness of storm |
and over their heads could be had an occa-
sIonal glimpse of the horizon. First it was
green; in q moment it became black, and |
then, quicker than the eye could follow it,
it was lighted up by sheets of flame, and |
the electric bolts came with such startling |
swiftness that danger was gone before it
was realized.
All Glad They Were Alive.
Each flash tore its way along the rafters
Of the building, to disappear again through
the chinks of the sieve-like roof and was
followed by a crash of rock-ribbed thunder
of in the widest Imagination
and unheard of before in the remotest cor
pie beneath this. so-ca1led roof that stood
between them and the hades above consid-
cred themselves fortunate that the thunder
did not freeze md awe their hearts into
stone and the lightning did not strike them
dead where they sat. They escaped OBJ
livion, it is true, only to find themselves
floating and struggling in the vortex of
second deluge.
Scripture says that Noah was furnished
with an ark in which to escape from the
foods that fell upon the wicked world, but
bhe lghtnlng-stlnened, storm-petrlhed spec
tators in this floating cyclorama had no es-
,ape. There never was such rain as this in
ali the world. 1t was as if the once clear
waters of the vast inland sea that washed
he borders of the great city were lifted up
,y an unseen power and dropped in one
vast mass upon the heads of the unfortu-
late people. But there they sat, statue
ike in their immovability, shielding them
elves from baptism of fire, cloud and
Fater as if they were receiving only that