Evening star., 1902-08-02
NEW YORK GOSSIP
Metropolis is Cool Enough
This Summer. for Anybody.
STREET MUSICI ANS
MOTHERS AND FATHERS MAX
ING CHILDREN DRUNKARDs.
Where Stage Folks Drop All Their
Artificialities and Enjoy Their
Real Selves
MUSICI AN s
Special Core spondence of The Evening Star.


NEW YORK, August 1. 1902.
Experts connected with the passenger
traffic of railroad and steamship lines esti-
mate that the exodus from New York has
been from one-third to one-half smaller this
summer than during any vacation season
within the past ten or dozen years. The
abnormally cool temperature which has
prevailed here without a break since the
beginning of the season of course accounts
for the great number of stay-at-homes. The
railroad and steamship people have little
hope that the long-overdue hot wave will
serve to drive the stay-at-homes to the
beaches and the noun tains. They reason,
not without logic, that the folks who have
got through thus far in town without be-
ing compelled to run from heat will be will
ing to endure one or two hot spells with
equanimity for the sake of the greater COM
fort of their homes Some of them, indeed,
go SO far as to claim that many thousands
of New Workers well able, from the finan-
cial viewpoint, to travel, are rapidly aban-
GonlnS the notion that it is absolutely
necessary for them to put the boards up
and flee from their homes during the
mer season. Ones observation would seem
to support this contention. The residential
districts Cf New York used to afford a desc
late picture to the pedestrian, with their
squares after squares of tightly boarded-up
doors and windows, and their glass plaques
hanging at the secOnd-stOTy windows to in
dicate to burglars that the houses were all
wired throughout with burglar alarms. The
bogrded-up houses this summer are actual
ly in distinct minority in the SWEETEST
regions of the town. 1t may perhaps be
reasonably argued from this that New
Workers with homes are at length arriving
al an appre citation of home life which many
of them were not thought to possess until
quite recently. Just why family living in
a fine, cOollyfurnished home situated on a
wide street on an island surrounded by salt
water and pretty generally swept by ocean
breezes, should feel it incumbent upon
them to rush to summer resorts, where
they know they will have to endure COM
paratively cramped quarters, not to speak
of the discomforts of constant dressing, of
sacrificing their home cooking, of involun-
tary late hours and other little disspations
that seem to come quite natural at summer
resorts and of feeling compelled to make
themselves agreeable to persons in whom
they have little actual interest during all of
their waking hours, is something not easy
to explain. The stay-at-homes have unde-
niably taken this view Of the summer
exodus by the thousands this year, with
the result that New York is about as lively
now at the beginning of the dog days as it
is during the rest of the year. The chilly
weather in the Catskills and the Adiron-
dacks and the Berkshire Hills and the
White Mountains has already driven crowds
of New Workers who early in the season
went to the lofty districts to seek moderate
coolness, back to town, and they speak dis
gUstedly of how they had to hudde up to
the CRATE fires of their mountain hotels and
boarding houses during their absence The
old saw about St. Swithin's day, which con-
tends that if ii rains that day it is bound
to rain every day for forty days thereafter,
bids fair to be vindicatCd so far as the
eastern mountains are concerned.
Street Musicians
Some novelties in the way of street muse
recently introduced over here bid fair to
put the organ grinder out of business at no
very distant date. About month ago the
residents of Harlem We're treated to a very
unusual spectacle. 1t was a man playing a
piano that was fastened to the bottom of
a wagon hauled through the streets by a
pair Of calico ponies. The driver of the
wagon pulls up in front of the houses that
look promising, and the pianist, a black
bearded chap, begins his performance on
the piano, which is an upright of fine tone
Inc man is really admirable player and
he plays nothing but high-grad music de-
voting himself chiefly to compositions of a
pyrotechnical character that give him an
opportunity to display his proficiency as an
exponent of what might be termed the fire
works branch of the piano-playing art He
does most of his touring in this manner
along toward evening, when folks are sit
ting at their front windows or on their
front steps, and his music is genuinely an
pfeclated- The driver of the calico ponies
hops from his seat and does the Collecting
When the performance is over The Dlayer
usually renders a least two compositions
before the driver does the collecting, and
the collections are always large. The listen