The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1898-12-03

Hau you been In Havana in the weeks
between the murder of the Maine and the
first shot of the war, says the Philadelphia
Times, you would have seen two boys and
two girls day after day begging in the
gayest portions of the city. Ono of the
boys moved about on tsall tours, frisiking,
jumping, trotting, lying down and rolling
like a dog. With him was q little girl,
who did nothing but crow like a cock.
Every time the dog boy finished a series
of antics the girl would set up q am
Gus growing like o rooster on a barnyard
fence. Every day at breakfast timo these
W performed in front of the Inglaterra
cafe. While the girl crowed the dog boy
would trot from window to window, hold
up his hand, or rather his forepaw, and
bark his request for aims. He would
whine like a pup, growl like a ferocious
hound or howl like q prairie wolf. At
the sight Of him real dogs fed.
Then there was another boy whose every
joint seemed to have been dis1ocated. In
deed you would say that he had been
boned. He appeared to have no frame.
He seemed simply q lump OF flesh. He
never walked; he eumbled. Hewould tum-
BILE up the Prado all the way from the
Hotel Pasaje to the Inglaterra without a
stop. Then he would stand on his head
or walk around on his hands, collecting
pennies with toes, which served as fingers.
The fourth and last of these beggar chill
dren was the favorite. She was a little
girl who made her liying-and probably a
living for o~thers-not with her hands, but
having no hands,. Not over 10 years old,
she had the face of an unhappy woman of
40-a face haggard and hopeless, and in
which there was a permanent expression
of ~reproach. At sight Of her arose an in
clination to laugh. but it was that pecal-
lar laughter which chokes and turns to
tears, for this beggar girl, unable to re-
ceive pennies like an ordinary mortal, had
her mouth propped wide open, and into
this forever yawning jaw one put his PEN
MES. Few could resist her horrible appeal.
Near her an old woman, a crone, always
lowered.
To give tho individual history, the trag-
ic circumstances, Of these young lives is
impossible. Even the little beggars them
selves remember nothing. When question
ed, they told all they knew-that is, thai
once they were put to sleep, that they
woke up and then-that they were cured.
Cured of what? They did not know. But
we knew TINT at least the four monstros-
tiles just described were masterpieces of
the diabolical art of Cuba's comprachicos.
That little boy crawling around on ell
four was not born with paws, but with
feet ard hands. He, d child, had been re-
cast in the mold of an animal. Moreover,
he was born with a human voice. In in
fancy his pharynx had been operated up
on, and now listen-instead of speech, a
bark; instead of a human voice, a whine
or a growl.
That little girl who crowed like a barn
yard fowi-sha, too, in infancy had under
gone an operation Of the pharynx. The
other boy who never walked and always
tumbled-how artfuily his joints had been
dislocated in order that he might amuse,
excite pity and gather aims.
How did the child s~tealers produce these
fiendish efects-these effects as Of the
transnigration in life of a child into an
animal, this metamorphosis of a human
being into q monstrosity, this changing of
She beautiful into tho hideous? The tech
niq1se of such an art is too revolving, too
horrible, to set down here. Simply there is
the child in the clutches of the bard OF
fiends, the artists; there is a sudden ap-
plication of chloroforln, d quick but cara
fully studied burning with sulphur, a
skillfel incision with a hot iron, a short
turn of hat instrument of the inqnisition
invented by the Spanish and called a rack
and there Is still plenty left fer you To
imagine. No one who has taken the trou-
bic to learn the local history Of the COM
prachicos Of Cuba can look upon the little
deformsd beggars in Havana and still
doubt that they arc the products of enc Of
the dreadful processes or of one Of the in
fernal machines just mentioned.
When Americans assume control In Gu
ba, the child steaiers win be dragged forth,
and then will we behold new and horrible
tgcce Ct tho criminal class. La the cnsn-
pracniGos' crime VIII be discovered q long
lost art-the art Of scnlpturing human
flesh These child manglers know how to
disfigure a child SO that its own mother
cannot recognize il. They mold auow the
human form; they give a child a new face,
they change q -countenance until the face
itself is % a mask where God has put a
look their art puts a squirt; they take q
perfect being and mako an abortion. Be-
hold tho fesult-a child monster, a mis-
ehapen thing, all uglincss.
The coinpraobicos hnye thrived in Cuba
all thToGal this century. though as q tribe