Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1900-12-08
new YORK GOSSIP
How Two Ex-Convicts Viewed the
City After Many Years.
LIKE ENTERING 4 new WORLD
Women Do Not Like It When
Their Idols Get Married.
QUEER STATE OF THINGS
Special Correspondence of The Evening Star.


NEW YORK December g. 1900.
The New York newspapers have made
good deal Of the release from Sing Sing last
week, on the governors pardon, of Old
''lifer' named Vincent Cody, who had served
thirty-three years for murder. The old man
who went into the prison when he was only
twenty-nine years old-was escorted down
to the city from Sing Sing by the warden of
the institution and a crowd of newspaper
men, the purpose of the latter being to
CLEAN the first impressions of the pardoned
convict on the New York which he had not
looked upon for a generation. The old fei-
low was tagged after for a number of days,
and his amazement over the trolley cars,
and the Brooklyn bridge, and the teie-
phones and the monographs. and the ele-
waited trains. and the electric lights. and
the change trolleys In the big stores. and
a thousand and one improvements that have
come into existence since his confinement,
was set down at great length and with
many pathetic up-stage slow-music trim
ningS.
Now. if all Of these modern improvements
really did surprise old Cody and If he was
not gently .'strnging'' his conveying staff
of space-grabbing newspaper men in his
neutrality-suspicious. exhibition OF amaze
ment, then the aged eX-convict must have
deliberately deprived himself of the pleas
books during his long confinement, and he
was assuredly entirely different from an
other hoary "lfer" who was turned loose
from Sing Sing eight or nine years ago.
Expected Great Things.
This old man was named O'Neil, and when
he was released on pardon he had served
an even longer Stretch" as convicts term
their period of confinement. than Cody.
When it was announced that he was to be
VII otp 6ov Of Ia
Sing officials clipped off, the city editors
of all the New York newspapers. with the
result that when old man ONel stepped
into the open from the prison that had held
him for long there were about twenty
newspaper men, with large Wads or copy
paper and many pencils sharpened, waiting
to accompany him to New York and around
New York after he got here. The writer
hereof was one of that eager number.
1t was looked upon as certainty that
great stuff when he began to clap his
dimmed old eyes upon the manifestations
of the way the world had been rolling
around since he was removed from it.
man who had been virtually dead and
buried for matter only a little under
four decades could not fall to evince al
most the establishment Of child or better.
OF an aborigine straight from the prlmeVal
forest over the wonders which science had
accomplished during his long incarceration.
This was the firm conviction of the men
with the unusually heavy punches OF copy
paper and the numerous Sharpened pencils
But, alas! they were doomed to a sad
awakening, the emotional authoress of
"Wilful Pansy'' would say.
A Sad Disappointment.
Old man O'Neil was a pretty shrewd old
LAG" as convicts call each other, and he
was, in addition. a man of excellent educa-
ton When he emerged from the prison
he expressed himself as grateful for the
escort, but 1t soon became obvious that he
had no intention whatever of jollying the
escort along. He wasn't surprised a little
bit at anything that he saw, and SO he
didn't express any surprise. He didn't clap
his hands in childish glee when he saw
cable car for the first time, upon the par
tvs arrival in New York. The l. trains
didn't elicit much as a cheep from him.
The Brooklyn bridge extracted nary gasp
of astonishment from him. He quietly re-
marked, when he stood upon the bridge
that he had always understood that it was
a fine Dit OF engineering. and he was glad
to perceive that the reports as to Its i'm
pressiveness had not been exaggerated. One
of his conductors started to tell the old
man some details as to the bridges con-
struction. but he soon found out that old
man ONeil knew more about it's method
of construction than he did himself. The
old man had read the published reports.
with all Of their technical details, of the
bridges construction. as they were set
forth in the scientific journals which reach
ed him in Sing Sing. and he had seen the
bridge pictured in newspapers and maya
zines SO many times that the sight of 1t
didn't fabbergast him any whatsoever.
Had Kept Up With Things.
He knew all about the trolley cars-had
read Of 'em and seen 'em pictured since
the very beginning Of the trolley idea. The
telephone didn't get him going at all, nor
did the photograph, nor the electric light,
arc or incandescent He had studied those
ideas carefully during his confinement. The
enormous sky-scrapers didn't feaze O'Neil.
He remarked that he'd expected them to
look just about they did from the pic
lures he had seen of them. And thus on.
The old man wasn't In the slightest sense
boastful of the manner with which he had
kept up with current advancement during
his tremendous period Of isolation, and he
really didn't know that he was disappoint-
ing the newspaper men dreadfully by his
Indifference" some of them were unreal
sonably pleased to call his self-possession.
They fell away from him like autumn
leaves from a wind-tossed tree before half
of the tour originally mapped out was
completed. AMI most Of them reported
nothing doing" or something like that.