Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1903-05-30
Advice to the Curious Who
Visit New York.
TAKING IN CHINATOWN
MANIFOLD ARE SCHEMES PRAC-
TICED BY GUIDES.
To Make the Unsophisticated Think he
is Getting Worth of Money
Cullen's Letter.
Special Correspondence of The Evening Star.


NEW YORK, May %, 1903.
Advice to New York visitors who expert
ence the hankering to go slumming-don't
The advice is not volunteered with any
idea that it will be accepted. for, as has
been well said by the acute Chuck Con-
ners, mayor of Chinatown" and chief Of
the Chinatown Summing guides. "deres a
easy mark born wit ev'ry tick O. de clock.
an all O ems got jug o de elixir
life-dey never croaks" Inasmuch as Mr..
Corners derives his livelihood by convoy
ing credulous summers, he ought to know
whereof he speaks. The advice is not OF
fered. either on the ground of the inutile
futility, not to say the hopeless imbeciilty,
of Summing. as the same is practiced by
visitors in and residents of New York IL
is idle to ask: What's the use of SUM
ming anyhow? The curious will slum as
long as slums exist. Sums and summers
always were. Summing parties were
caught and overwhelmed by the eruption
in the SlumS of POmpeii, say the scientists
Our old friend, Haroun-al-Raschid, was a
summer from away back. Nero and many
of his successors to the purple were hab-
ituaI slummers-they took to their natural
environment like Dutch carp to smelt bait
Instances of summers multiply. Bluff
Prince Hal liked the StewS of London more
than he did the wine and whites of West
minister. MeSsalina was, perhaps, the
original female summer, and Zenobfa. the
historians say, slummed-was 1T not IN
Palmyra? If one had the time, and the
inclination, it would be possible to trace a
distinguished line Of summers right down
to the period of Parkhurst-the glowing
and potential present
But the New York summers of today do
not get their moneys worth. They are
merciessly faxed. They are made good
t'ings' of by the Summing guides; Time
IL, t., VAyIy
shown the real thing. OF late years, how
ever, the jewellers in New York's slums
have taken a stand for their privacy. For
lucre. however, the inhabitants of the
show places of the New York slums are
willing enough to frame up counterfeit
presentments of the real Enthusiastically
rehearsed tableaux vivants. as it We're.
Rubber Necking is Pert---bing.
Thus 1t comes to pass that the foolish
persons who hand over large backsheesh
in the shape of paper currency to the
Chinatown guides, for example, never really
see the Mongols and their Caucasian pa
irons in the enjoyment of the opium pipe
Hitting the pipe" as all of those addicted
to the poppy testify is one of those chaste
diversions of the POLITICALLY inclined requir-
ing serenity of surroundings-the rubber
ing of rank outsiders. it would SEEM has
a harsh and disturbing effect upon the
manipulators of the yen-hok. The China
town summers, consequently, are taken to
opium smoking denS' the walls of which
have really never been laved by the pun
gent drab smoke of the hop" pipes. They
permitted to peek in al a motley col
lection of orientalS and occidentalS, who,
having received the guides tip in advance,
have stretched themselves out on hop
hitting hunks sufficiently like the genuine
article to deceive those who have never
seen the real thing. But the occupants of
the hunks roll ''phony'' pills-as the astute
Mr.. Corners phrases it in confidence to his
intmates-over the little lamps. and the
stuff that they smoke while under the gaze
of the summers is not hop at all, but
only an infiammable composition invented
for the summers. The poseurs on the
hunks are all opium smokers. all right, but
they do not care to smoke for the edifica-
ton of the slummers-they enjoy the genu-
inc poppy inhalations later on, after the
guide with the party of summers has set
tied with them for their skillful posing.
Manifold are the schemes cooked up by
the Summing guides to make the summers
believe in their souls that they are getting
the worth of their money. The white wife
of Chinaman used to commit suicide every
night for the summers. for instance. The
summers. under the convoy of the guide,
would be peering through her Mott street
home. when she would suddenly pick up a
bottle that looked as if it might contain
carbolic acid, murmur, agonizedly, ooh,
what's the use? / am tired of living"
swallow big gulp of the sinister-looking
tip-top backfall onto a couch. while the
summers. utterng Mortified shrieks would
bolt for it in order to not be Summoned as
witnesses of the wOman's suicide-Mr.
Corners says that he always had immense
difficulty in refraining from "chucklin an
givin' de skin snap away when his
punches of summers did this. The China
mans white wife well paid by the
Chinktown guides for her nightly suicide
sometimes in fact. she went through the
motions of shuffling off the mortal coil sew
eral times in the course of night-but the
police got after her and put her out of bust
ness: the cops demanded their bit" out of
the proceeds of the suicides. 1t is under
stood and the woman with the pat back
fall declined to be "shook down"
In the Italian Quarter.
Down on Mulberry street. in the Italian
quarter-where those lone hundred smells
of Naples are made to seem. by COMPARE
son. like the aroma of altar of roses-a
swart Sicilian used to poniard his wife
every night. too-while the summers were
looking. She was a pretty girl and it
seemed such a sin and a shame. so it did!
Time after time he would plunge the knife
into her frame leaving her an inert mass
on the foot of the tenement, and then
scamper down the stairs three steps at a
clip-but he was never any swifter on the
scamper than the shocked summers. eager
to get away so as not to be Summoned as
witnesses. Inc summers would be amaZ-
ed not to find any account of the Crime
in the papers. and plenty of the summers
who witnessed the enactment of that
"crime" are probably still going up and
down the world bowed under what they
perhaps still believe to be the guilty knowi-
edge of a murder never reported to the po-
lice The Sicilian and his wife, with com
potency easily derived. Joined the lazzeroni
of the uuays in their native land last wear.
An Infatuated Magyar occupying ton
tenement with his family in the Hungarian
| quarter, has a stunt which fetches him
| quite a tidy little income when there are
| lots of Summers about. He picks up what
| looks to be one of his babies, and, while
| his clever actress of a wife wrings her
| hands and implores him to desist he de-
| liberately hurls it out of the window The
baby is well-made dummy which drons
| into netting stretched outside a window
J of the floor below. but yersimilitude is civ.
| en- to the dodge by the fact that hair a
dozen shock-headed Magyar young ones
| are lollng around the floor of the tenement
| when the occurrence takes place
These are only samples. and the ton
dressing of the samples. at that of the
scientific 'frameups'' whereby the Stun
ming guides befool the perpetual stream.
| of summers. The Summing guides make
| money. They stand-in" with the hotel
! clerks all over New York and cut the
proceeds of their convoyings with the chaps
| with the headlights in return for the
| da' be clerks nicJ, 10