The Anaconda standard. [volume] (Anaconda, Mont.) 1889-1970, 1899-03-25
SHE Halls FROM BUTTE
A Stout Blonde Lady With Green
Stage Stockings.
SHE WAS DISC0NSOLATE
Cast Down Because There We're No
Dance Halls in New York-Noth-
ing Like Box Rustllng
in the West.

A stout blonde lady from Butte with
a pink shirt waist and green stage
stockings sat quite disconsuate in the
crowded ante-room of New York
vaudeville agency, whites THE
Man About Town in the New York
Telegraph.
she had come from the great breezy,
busting Northwest to begin life anew
amid the older civilizatiou # the e.
fete and enervated East, and vac much
cast down in spirit upon discovering
that there were no dane nails here
where a lady could make an h,nest ,iv-
ing at a 40 per cent. commission on
% cent short drinks or beer at a dol
lar bottle.
~ can sing little and dance a IL
tie" she explained to sympathetic
journalist, but my best graft is box
russlin' and I've made as high as $50
a week and board ia Spokane when
things We're coming my way
BOX rustling is an industry That IS
comparatively unknown IN This more
effete era of New York's civiliZation,'
ventured the journalist, although We
have some new and improved forms
of vice that will doubtless interest you
For example, there are the social clubs
and Oriental smoking parnrs.
mot a bit like It," shifted the stout
lady, contemptuously Give me the
little old Western dance hall and Va
riety show. with sawdust on the floor
and red-curtained boxes, patr0nlZed by
noble, free-hearted class of men too
drunk to take notice when an artist
holds out on the change from a $40 gold
piece You New Workers think you are
pretty fly. but you don't know what
real life is"
7 should think" hazarded the jour
nalist cautiously, that the nurVeylnG
of intoxicants to inehrated men. with
the consequent breaking down of the
barriers separating the sexes, would be
| intolerable to a lady OF your evident
| fine susceptibilities."
| so it is-so it is, sometimes acqui-
esced the stout lady With a sigh. Il
used to think when I was a little girl
| what a he-u-tiful thing it would be to
| be a female reporter, but ! came to
realize that reporting amt no respect
| able business for a decent girl, and so
| went to box rustlin'.'
What are your chief objections to a
| journalistic career?'
you've got no independence if you're
a reporter" replied the stout lady. de-
|
per says to roast a person, you've go1
to roast or get fired. Why. one of the
| best gentlemen friends | ever had il
| Butte City was a reporter, and wheI
was raided he had to put the awful
lest piece in the parer you ever read
He had to do it or lose his job. | wa:
worried almost sick for fear somebody
, send it to my folks in Tucson.
You see," continued the box rustic.
meditatively. Il spose reporters is {
good deal like burglars They &c
started in the business when they ar
| young and have loved ones to supper
and there's no help for it. Some of tn
incest men l know is burglars and re
porters. and they have theft homes
longings. but it's too late to reform.
The stout lady scratched one of he
green stockings retiectively for mo
2 ment and then with a little sigh aros
to depart
LAS there don't seem to be anythin
doing" she remarked sadly at partin'
Il guess I'll go down to McGurk's an
look the place over. 1t may kind G
drive away that homesick feeling"