The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1893-06-11
SWEET RUIN IN A HOTEL.
How a Lot Of People Were BedCviled
and HypnOtiled by a Girl.

Trouble-The Newsdealer Was the
First and Last to Suffer.
Copyright. 1887
New York, June lO.-Thoro Is an up
town hotel with one face on Broadway
Itds, and has been for several years, a
public rendezvous for politicians, actors,
sports and men about town. Its ample
corridors are sort of social bourse from
to $3.50. It's capacious barroom IS the
meeting place of good fellows; its cafe is
noted for its potage, its black coffee and
its civilized waters.
e. Obviously the proprietor is a good fell
low himself and so are his clerks, attaches
and messengers, and even his bouncer
puts on gloves and uses moral suasion.
There is, of course, a great big news
stand where the daily papers melt like the
dow Of Hermon in the morning and Mary
Jane Libby and others of her kind disport
themselves all through the hours for tie
unsuspecting merchant from up country.
Then there are leather padded settles on
the marble floor whore good fellows can
wait for hours for their friends to keep an
appointment, and over by the grand stair
case is a mobile mountain of trunks that
are forever coming in and going out
This place is busy sluceway, where
the fever of Broadway drifts in continu-
ally and anxious men come and go and
comfortable men watch the tide, and
actors hobnob and gamblers consult and
city officials meet their friends and man
ayers set up the drinks and the country
buyers look on and feel that they are in
the swim.
One day there was a strange, soft odor
of violets in the place that nobody had
ever detected before. This subtle, invisi-
BILE atmosphere settled down graciously
around the leathern settees, fOated side
wise over Mary Jane Libby and drifted
into the open doors of the cafe and bar
room. 1t was so gentle that while nobody
spoke of it, everybody was conscious of it.
1t WIS the new telegraph girl in her
cage at the end of the big bOOkstand. She
perColated in a most extraordinary man
ner through thenetworlI of her inClosure :;
strcamed out, so to speak, through her
wicket, really waited herself all over the
place, so that the blase Jim Meade took
to one leathern chair where he could
watch it, ana Henry Abbey took to stand
ing in the draught of it, and Jimmy KEEL
ley tried to catch it on his sleeve cuff
with pencil and all the walters in the
cafe turned Their heads toward it as they
passed the open door and spilled their
coffee and soup.
You see the apparition was not at all
credible We had read of such things
but we never expected to see them me
thodically planted there in the swim like
a bunch of amaranths in a watering cart.
All jim Meade could do was to sit in
that leathern chair and try and coax him
self by sticking his scarfpin into his gull
let that he wasn't dreaming. Certainly
there never was in any business pen any
thing quite like that or quite so uncon-
scious of it. | noticed that most of the
good fellows who had to go from one end
of the vestibule to the other and cross the
outlook from that wicket, got their UNI
brellas between their legs or trod on q bit
of orange peel or ran against somebody
in the most idiotic manner, and Harry
Lee, who once killed an original 4-act so
cial drama by sitting down on his hat in
the first actor rather had it killed by a
boy in the gallery who promptly shouted
out Pop Goes the Weasel"-Ha Lee
told me that when he trod on that or
ange peel and made a sudden decent
from dignity to anthropoid absurdity, he
was sure he heard u silver gurgle like a
chime going up from that wicket.
The fact is that in less than a week, in
stead of that telegraph stand being run
for the house, the house was beginning to
run itself for the stand according to some
unwritten law
There was some difference of opinion in
confidential circles as to whether il was
the hair or the eyes or the curve or the
neck or the mouth
My own private opinion is that these
things were so CO-ordinated that it was
the hight of absurdity to specify them
They just melted evasively into a general
concept of girl.
It's a funny thing, but everybody down
to waiter who spills potage has in his
soul an ideal of girl, that never was on
land or sea, and when he suddenly finds
her on deck he hardly believes the evil
dences eff his senses. As Harry Lee OBJ
serves aud he has had an extensive
eXperience-"a real girl is always too
good to be true
Well, this telegraph operator, in plain
black dress, began to melt the founda-
tions of the hotel as sunbeam melts an
iceberg. She demoralized the hotel basis
of things. jim Meade wouldn't take any
more drinks because he had an infatuated
notion that her eye was on him Some
of the young fellows who promenaded
into the barroom regularly built up an
absurd theory that she counted the trips
All the old fellows who used to stand
with their backs to the telegraph wicket
and tell funny stories fell away, for there
was sure to come somebody and motion
them that there was a girl on the other
side who could hear them. Then they
always got red in the face and moved
away and never by any possibility got up
courage enough to do their telegraphing
there afterward.
The bookstand was the first to suffer.
Men who wanted to purchase Mary Jane
Libby looked at the pure face behind the
wicket, changed their minds, and asked
for Canon Farrar or Talmage. The sale
of fash papers fell off. Somehow the
pictures were not as fascinating as usual.
The joyous tone of the loungers was
subdued Some of the jocund ''damns"
mysteriously disappeared. An air of re-
spectful suppression fell upon the place,
and even the pOrters began to suspect
that the trunks might have dynamite in
them.
1t was not long before the prop rietor be-
gan to perceive that some kind of a holy
blight was settling o. his corridor, but it
was good while Before he got at the
ause of it,
Meanwhile all sorts of attempts by rash
youth had been made to break down the
exclusiveness of the wicket. Cholly had
plunged at it in his self-confdent wav:
"Now, then, my dear, rush that off, don {
youknOw, that's a good girl and he had
been struck by 'sir!" that sounded like
a buzz saw.
Freddy had leaned on the stand for an
interview and respectfully asked her some
questions about the hotel and she had re-
ferred him to the desk without looking
round until he hacked ont. tlo, che