The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1895-07-16
appears, and Kicking the goat Into the ten
efnenf rsaSforas order


Around In Bayard street the scene
changes abruptly. Every store there /:
kept by Hebrew, and some of the room.
up stairs are filled with them also, or were
until recently. Now many of them ar
empty. These people, more forebanded
than the Italians, have already found other
| quarters In one of these houses the police
| found once on their midnight inspection
rounds - persons sleeping in a room big
enough for two.
! Some OF them were lodgers-always an
| important clement in population where
| rents are as outrageous as in these rock.
erics-and slept there for ''5 cents a Dot. ~
| OF beds there was no pretense. The floor
| and bag Of straw were all the 5 cents
| fetched.
Here is Bottle alley lat 49). concerning
which years ago it was said that the news
| papers kept this heading standing: bot
| tie Alley Bathed In Blood" 1t has re-
formed lately. Nothing worse than vile &C
cumuiatlons OF rags and old paper, gaunt
| cats and ramshackle rookeries, ready to
tumble down if you look at them, are there
now. What is TO become Of all those cats is
question that arises whenever one squints
into one of those back yards.
Here is door that leads downward and
back to kind of arch formed by knocking
out the ground story Of the first rear tene-
ment. There is another behind it. Up
that light OF crooked, rickety stairs to the
top floor went Vincenzo Nino, the barber,
only few short weeks ago to murder his
Woodworking, long suffering wife in the
sight OF her helpless children. 1t was the
latest and it was the most horrible deed of
lnDd rx-x.,, ~ 81 4
1t rose In madness of anger and battered
down the door behind which the murderer
covered just as the police came in time to
save his miserable life They had to clear
way to the Tombs with their clubs
through the angry crowd.
The house has been vacant since It is
haunted, the neighbors say. The great
splashes of blood are yet on the floor and
on the calcimined walls of the room where
the woman was slaughtered by the man
who had sworn to cherish and protect her.
The efforts made to wipe them out have
been vain. They are there as plain as the
day the murder was done, and SO is the
broken door, witness to the fury of the
crowd and the narrow escape Of the muir
derer
In Bottle alley Antonio Ricanio Drained
his wife with fiatiron, but he was crazy
and imagined she was going to roast their
children at the range. Michael Cettaccio
was stabbed and killed in the alley by An
tonic Erico over a game of cards, and
across the way gambler killed his victim
with a club. John Zacarelli was shot in
the stomach by rival, but all these were
human crimes compared to Nino's foul
deed. Even the bend denounced him as q
fiend incarnate. Perhaps the fact that he
did his murder on a weekday had some
thing to do with 1t. BY a sort of common
consent such things are relegated to Sun
day in the bend. 1t is the day of idlcness,
of card playing and consequently of fight
ing there.
In a cross alley behind 40 Baxter street
ball game is in progress. The alley is too
narrow to allow of the prctense of "dia-
mond" or bases, but the dozen young
roughs who take a hand in the game get
along somehow, even to sliding on their
stomachs in the filth They do not mind
it, and their clothes suffer no injury by 1t.
They are long past that. AT 81 one eyed
tenant is discovered, with the claim of be-
ing the last Irishman in the block.
His name is Hugh Foley, and he has
lived there 10 years, in the one house and
the one room, he says. When he came
there, ell the tenants were Irish. Now ne
is alone. The last moved three weeks
ago. Mr.. Foley seems to think that he is
entitled to some consideration as the origi-
nal inhabitant The suggestion that he
might be made the keeper of the new park
finds favor with him.
The bend has its hurlor, its lovemaking
and its human ways generally, like other |
places. Even the slum is human, and that |
Is the Indictment against it and the reason |
why the evil has to go. When it is gone,
there Will be so much more of a chance for |
the purely human qualities 10 expand, !
which the rottenness, the wickcdness and |
the devilishness generally of the slum are
now choking and smOthering every hour.
That is TO be the mission of the new Null |
berry park that is TO let light into the |
bend. If it is laid out with grass and as
phalt in the proper proportions, it will fur |
nish an uneqUaled playground for the chill |
dren in the big new school on the opposite |
corner, at Mulberry and Bayard streets, one |
of the finest in the city, and SO il will have |
begun in the best of ell ways to atone for |
some of the mischief done by the bend by |
setting an object lesson in practical mis-
sionary work To the children of the good !
for all generations.
1t is quite safe 10 say that the 81, $780,
600 the Mulberry park has cost the city |
will prove to be one of the very best invest
mcntS il has ever made.-New York sun.