The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1897-06-13
CARBOHYDRATES ITSELF.
An English Paper Glad That London
Is Not Like New York.

London Daily Mail.
The average LonGoner may thank his
lucky stars that London is not like New
York. For il is conceded, even by the New
Workers themselves that the first city OF
the United States is very nice place TO
live out of.
To begin with. everybody in New York is
in q perpetual hurry. To transform London
into even q assable imitation of New York
we should have, first of all, to make every
street into a sort of pocket edition of the
course at Epson Immediately after the run
ming of the Derby, with every individual
man and woman racing for dear life to
catch a train, and every individual police
man doing his level best to stop him or her,
as the case might be.
For the New York policeman is, as a
rule, averse TO hurry. In fact, he is averse,
on principle, to everything the New Yorker
likes. Moreover, in New York the force
consists of big men armed with clubs, and
they are apt upon the slightest provoca-
ton. and very often upon none al all, to
translate the abstract dislike into concrete
and exceedingly active hostility. In short
the average New York policeman holds it a
sacred duty to suppress the average New
York citizen.
The chief means of transit open to the
New Yorker are the elevated railways,
commonly known as the IL" roads, Imag-
ine a double row of huge lamp-posts down
the middle of oxford street, and bearing
aloft an open trestle-work track upon
which every few minutes thunderS a train
of cars drawn by a smoke and dirt-dis-
tributing locomotive and you have a very
fair idea of an Il road in active opera
ton. or course the roadway ana paVementS
beneath are kept constantly sprinkled with
showers of fine ashes. like a modern Pom
peii under an eternally eruptive VesuviuS.
But all this matters little when you can
get from the Battery to Northumberland
sixty-fourth street-that is to say, from
Bow to Shepherds bush-in half an hour.
In other words you have rapid transit.
What more can you want? Besides, if you
are a passenger, you nave the supreme sat
isfaction of being able to look right into
the living and sleeping apartments of all
the houses enroute. And then think of the
money that has been made out of this
unique railway. The late lamented Jay
Gould pocketed ten millions of pounds ster-
ling for engineering the Job through
Congress- and the city fathers backed
by the notorious "Tammany Ring" divided
between them as much more.
The New Workers have no underground
railway and no bridges either, except the
gigantic Brooklyn suspension bridge,
which cost three millions sterling to build,
and over which ordinary trains dash all
day long, bearing passengers from one end
to the other for cents a head. But every
body does not live in Brooklyn-much to
their delight-and therefore the business
man having his domicle in the wilds of
New Jersey-New York itself is on an
islands conveyed across the river Hud-
son night and morning in huge floating
contrivance, playfully termed a ferryboat.
1T has the distinction of being utterly I'M
like any boat ever conceived. invented, or
produced by any human being-outside
America To make London resemble New
York so far as the river is concerned, we
Thames; move the Tower bridge. height
ened and heightened proportonately. to
about opposite the Hotel Cecil; knock down
or blow up Westminster. Waterloo, Black
friars Southwark and London bridges; and
then fill the river chOck full with a colleC-
ton of ferryboats and floating steam-driv-
en- Liverpool landing stages.
''Sky-scrape rs''-by which is meant build
ings of from fifteen to twenty stories-are.
of course. as common in New York as are
primroses in an English copse in spring,
and proprietors of daily newspapers spe-
cially affect this style of architecture. Con-
sequently the Daily Mail building would
have to be increased to. four or five times
its present height and whole streets of
Queen Anne'S mansions would be run up
all over the West End
Our Strand would make a very good
Broadway If we would extend it six miles
or so at either end. heighten the buildings
as before said. making every terth one a
hotel, towering above its next door neigh
bors. allow the shops in the majority of
cases to be tenanted only by persons with
Hebrew names. and in the middle of the
thoroughfare run a continuous line of cable
cars all day long at something like thirteen
miles an hour.
That would give us a very fair Broadway.
"quick lunch courters; but somewhere in
tbs city we should need a Dead Mans
the spot in New York where the cable cars
put in their best work In London we might
locate it at the bank. and might reckon to
lose a life almost every week there.
Then we should need a statue of liberty
and this would look hest down the river
just where London ends and the country
beginS-or even at the entrance to the
Thames, for London may possibly begin
there some day. Next we should number all
our residential streets, instead of naming
them.
Jasamin Lodge. Ivy Walk Baywater
look we'll enough upon your note paper
now: how would YOU like to receive letters
addressed to No. 2S Observation-Disclosures
ty-ninth street. as il would become under
the new order of things? To make London
still more like New York we should have to
drop a few more negroes about the streets
and employ some of them in restaurants
here and there.
The change would affect the interiors Of
our homes considerably. More of us would
live in boarding houses to begin with.
Open CRATES would disappear and stoves
coupled with elaborate systems of hot
water pipes. would take their placeS We
should never refer to the servants as such:
they would become helps" Then theater-
goers. on reaching the Lyceum or Drury
Lane, would find both nit and stalls gone,
and their places occupied by an arrange
ment known as the 'parterre." For one of
these really comfortable and nicely uphol-
stored seats, however he would only have
TO pay is. Music halls would not be so
plentiful as at present, but along the tops
of the houses lining the Strand and Picca-
Oily there would be numbers of roof gar
dens, where a similar kind of entertain
ment would be provided. In the lower quar-
ters of the metamorphosed city, too would
be situated scores and scores of dives
low 'free-and-easies' -each with its bevy
of painted ''waitresses:" and in the river
side districts below bridge. Rotherhithe
Shadwell and Mapping, would be dozens of
dance houses" where female dancers,
hired by the hour. would do their work ev-
ening after evening with the mechanical
precision of automatons. All this sounds
bad, but the moralist might console him
self with the reflection that the eighty
thousand barmaids of London-turned-New
York would be summarily dismissed their.
places being taken by similar number of
male 'bartenders each with his hair
parted in the middle, much after the style
Of a class of the present community
Finally. If London were New York the
heat in the summer would be terrific and
the cold I'm winter awful-to our minds In
all proba hility the Daily Mail following the
lead Of The New York Herald. would dur
ing the summer months, give away blocks
OF ice to the poor every morning.
Human skill and the perfection of appH-