Wheeling register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1878-1935, 1899-05-12
|lIRIEQ|| / PANIC
Resultof Morris Goldsmith's Announce
ment That He Would Marry.
SCOLDED BY HIS PARENTS 9TH
Err OCCUPANTS OF THE TENE-
MENT STAMPEDED. THINKING
THE HOUSE WAS BURNING.
SODA WATER MAN SENT IN AN
ALARM AND WAS THRASHED
BY DECEIVED FIREMEN.

New York, May 11-Abe Goldsmith,
the old clothes man, has lived SO long
on the top floor of the double decker
tenement, 14S Ludlow street, with his
wife tina. it has come to be understood
in vague and general sort OF way that
they were there before it was built.
says the Sun. Very old the couple have
grown, and what with his being partly
crippled and her being bedridden all
the time, the old clothes business has
shrunk so that there would not be
enough left of it to pay the rent, let
alone the keep for the old pair, were
it not for their son Morris, who has
been their mainstay and support all
through this trying time, stitching
away at the familys ragged fortunes,
and intending them always in time for
rent day.
Morris is tailor and very indus
trious one In the tenement he ranked
as a model son, until lately the rumor
was carried in from Stanton street that
he was going to be married and move
over there. The story mounted the
stairs slowly, for there was much COM
passion for the old pair ION the top"
but it got up there at last, and with it
came desolatfon. Who now was to
care for them? Who pay the rent?
Morris, with wife and a home of his
own, would have his hands full and
nothing to spare. Life in Ludlow
street is intensely practical in it's view
of economic problems. 1t has to be.
1t is all practice there, no theory.
In the middle of the grief and per-
plexity concerning Morris, he arrived
home abruptly, with the announcement
that he was going to take his trunk, as
first move toward taking a wife, The
situation forthwith became acute. The
father walled and the bedridden mother
wept, as though Morris were to be
hanged insead of married to the girl
Of his choice. He tugged at his trunk,
obdurate. He is 81, and thinks he
knows when it is good for him to get
married.
The old man, seeing this, from tear
full grew abusive. His voice, erstwhile
lifted in lamentation, was raised in
reproaches bitter and deep; the Old
woman joined in. Morris, goaded to
madness, paused, and keeping a grip
on the trunk, recounted with scorn
the unrewarded labors in which he had
worn away his young life, unrewarded
save in the gratitude and loyalty of his
parents, who had turned against him
now and were obstructing his happi-
ness.
At the conclusion of his speech he
fell to dragging his trunk across the
floor. Then the listening neighbors
heard prayers and reproaches merge
into shrieks that suddenly-no one
knew how or on which side of the door
it happened-grew into a shrek of
"Fire!" Instantly the tenement took
to flight. There is ore cry it under
stands even better and fears more than
the cry of bitter poverty, and that was
the one.
The whole of the twenty families in
the double-decker took to fight at once.
1t began at the top, but before the ten
ants up there reached the fourth floor
in their flight the whole house was
pouring itself into the street. Vainly
did the janitors block the stairs and
the way, piping at the top of her shrill
vioce that it was not fire but fight.
The human avalanche swept past her,
over her, silencing her cutlery, and
gained the street, where it promptly
caused congestion of the block and
symptoms of panic extended both
ways.
At the head of the stampeded col
umn sprinted little Bonnie Silverman.