The weekly intelligencer. [volume] (Lexington, Mo.) 1891-1901, 1894-11-17
ITS DARK SIDE.
Some of the shadows In the Picture OF How
York Life.

ITS DARK SIDE.
Some of the shadows In the Picture OF How
York Life.
The visitors were in a foreign city.
The shop signs were in foreign tongues;
in some streets all Hebrew. On chance
news-stands were displayed newspapers
in Russian, Bohemian, Arabic. Italian,
Hebrew, Polish, German-none in En-
glish. The theater bills were in He
brew and other unreadable type. The
sidewalks and the streets swarmed
with noisy dealers in every sort of sec
ond-hand ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS that
had seen n better day. fish in shoals.
1t was not easy to make ones way
through the stands and p~ush-carts and
the noisy dickering buyers and sellers,
who haggled over trifies and chaffed
good-naturedly and We're strictly in
tent on their own affairs. No part of
the town is more crowded, or more in
dustrious. If youth is the hope of the
country, the sight was encouraging,
for children were in the cutters, on
the house steps, at all the windows.
The houses seemed bursting with hui
oho ~ cur SNCIy iooih VI Viz
packed tenements, whether the inmates
were sick or hungry, some sort of indus
try was carried on. In the damp base
ments were junk dealers, rag-pickers,
goose-pickers. In one noisome cellar,
off an alley, among those sorting rags,
was an old woman of eighty-twO, who
could reply TO questions only in a jar
gon, too proud to beg, clinging to life,
earning a few cents a day in this foul
occupation. But life is swee even
with poverty and rheumatism and
eighty years. Did her dull eyes. turn
ing upward, see the Carpathian Hills,
a free girlhood in village drudgery and
village sports, then a of love,
children, hard work, discomfort, emf
grafton to a new world of promise?
And now a cellar by day, the occupa-
patton of cutting rags for carpets, and
at night in u corner In a close and
crowded room on a flock bed not fit
for a dog. And this was a woman's
life.
Picturesque foreign going
about with shawls over their heads and
usually a bit of bright color some
where, children at their games, hawk
ers loudly crying their stale wares, the
click of sewing machines heard through
a broken window, everywhere anima-
ton, life, exchange of rough OF kindly
banter. Was it altogether so melan-
choly as it might seem? Not every
body was hopelessly poor. for here was
lawyers signs and doctors signs-doc-
tors in whom the inhabitants had con-
fdence because they charged all they
could get for their services-and thriv-
ing pawnbrokers' shops. There were
parish schools also-perhaps others;
and OF some dark alley, in a room on
the ground floor, could he heard the
strident noise of education going on in
high voiced study and recitation. Nor
were amusements lacking-notices of
balls, dancing this evening, and ten
and deformity.
1t was a r~elenting day in March;
patches of blue sky overhead, and the
sun had some quality in its shining.
The children and the Gagged birds at
the open windows felt it-and there
were notes of music here and there
above the traffic and the clamor. Turn
ing down a narrow alley, with a gutter
in the center, attracted by festive
sounds, the visitor came into a small
stone-peved court with a hydrant in
the center, surrounded by tall tene-
ment-houses, in the windows of which
were stuffed the garments that would
no longer hold together to adorn the
person. Here an Italian girl and boy,
with a guitar and violin, were
recalling la belle Napoli and
q couple of pretty girls from the
court were footing it as merrily as If il
were the grape harvest. A woman
called to one of the dancing girls TO
come in, when Edith and the doctor ap-
peared at the bottom of the alley; but
her tone changed when she recognized
the doctor, and she said, by way of
apology, that she didn't like her
daughter to dance before strangers.
So the music and the dance went on,
ever little dots of girls and boys shuf-
fling about in q ~stiff-legged fashion,
with applause from all the windows,
and at last a largess of pennies-as
many as five altogether-for the musi-
clans. And the sun fell lovingly upon
the pretty scene.
But men there were the sweaters
dens, and the private rooms where ha I
q dozen pale-faced tailors stitched and
pressed fourteen and sometimes sixteen
hours q day; sitting rooms, smelling
of the hot goose and steaming cloth;
rooms where they worked, where the
cooking was done, where they ate, and
late at night, when o~verpowered with
WEAKNESS, lay down to sleep. Strug.
gle for life everywhere, and perhaps
no more discomfort and heart-burning
and certainly less enuui than in the
palaces on the avenues.-Charles bud.
ley Warner. in Harper's Magazine.
The Eskimo and the Walrus.
To the Eskimo the walrus is the same
all-in-all hat the buffalo was to the
Indian, that the camel is to the Arab,
and the reindeer to the Korak. Its
fiesh feeds him; its tough hide covers
his boats, his shell-like kayak, and his
big, clumsy bidarrah. and cut into
strips 1t makes his harpoon lines and
dog-harness; its oil furnishes him light
and fire, its ivory tusks are legal ten
der for all sorts of civilized Injuries,
such as iron and steel for s~pear-heads,
knives, and v guns; certain tissues
make good mackintoshes for Mr.. any
Mrs Innuit, and the fipper-bottoms of