Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-08-23
PORTSMOUTH PHASES
Amusing Snapshots Of Life
About the Hotel
NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS.
SOMETHING ABOUT THE RETINUE
OF JAPANESE SERVANTS.
Gypsy Fortune-Teller's Meet Com
petition - The Slautish Middle
Aged Man-Wentworth Skipper.


Special Dispatch to The Star.
HOTEL WENTWORTH. NEWCASTLE.
N. H.. August 23.-Here is something which,
along with the Sato smile and the Komura
silence, goes to SHOW innately how secretive
the Japanese people are. Attached to the
Japanese suite are about ten men servants
and petty clerks and account keepers
They have rooms in the hotel proper, a
short distance from the rooms of the men
whom they serve, but hardly a dozen per-
sons outside of the hotel attaches know
that they are in existence.
They dine in a private room In the wing
set aside for the employees. and when they
through their duties stick closely to
their own apartments. Occasionally, If you
happen to be on their floor, you see one of
them slipping noiselessly and rapidly
through the hall like small brown shadow
Late at night they go for strolls. That and
flirting on the sly with Donega chamber
maids seem to be their only diversions, I'M
less one includes the time they spend in
dressing up their rooms with wild flowers
and newspaper clippings.
Returning from their evening rambles the
Japanese servants bring great bundles of
goldenrod, sprays of sumac and clusters of
thistle blossoms, and convert the quarters
they occupy into bowers. They have a
penchant for colored pictures of the sort
that go along with colored supplements,
and these they display most artistically
about the walls
Striking characteristics.
1t seems a characteristic of their race
that not a single one of them has been
seen at any hour on the piazzas idling
about the corridors, doing anything SO
far outsiders tell, except attend his
work. They resemble prairie dogs in more
repccts than looks. Both have the habit
of diving out of sight suddenly and staying
out of sight a good while.
It's always the way that when q man or
woman gets good thing going right oppo-
siton develops. Not over forty-eight hours
ago the gypsy family at the cross roads
struck paying business telling fortunes
for the Wentworth guests and now they
have rival. A prim-looking young woman
hit this place today. At first glance she
seemed typical New England school marin
out for two weeks vacation If you
looked the second time you said she only
needed a blue poke bonnet and a bundle of
War Cries to be Salvation Army girl
There was not thing about her anywhere
to suggest a fortune teller, but she passed
around cards which read like this DR..
Marie Curtis Palmist. Readings, one dol
lar"
Later DIR. Curtis decided to cut rates when
she found that the gypsy lady in the tent
at the forks of the road promised dandy
fortune with many fancy frills thrown in
for fifty cents.
italian Name With Yiddish Accent.
The psychologist with an Italian name
and Yiddish accent, Signor Zanoni, who
performed a lot of stunts in the hotel par
lor last night, had a small audience. The
crowd was big enough to make up about
four tables at progressive euehre, providing
everybody knew the game. But those pres
ent were remarkably well behaved and they
applauded the hard-worked sgnor In a very
orderly manner. He took up a collection
at the close Of the performance, doing very
well considering the size of the house. At
least two men contributed bills. The signor's
dress suit attracted much favorable COM
ment. 1t fitted him as well as If it had
been made for him.
Up the Newcastle road a little way is an
overgrown mole HILL all granite and rocky
angles. Half way up one side is a mineral
spring, making a red, raw wound in the
bony cheek of the slope. Here beside the
spring slantish, middle-aged man may be
found at almost any daylight hour sitting
on big boulder as motionless as a creek
crane watching for minnow. The man is
Prof Martens, the international law ex-
pert, who is barred from the sittings of the
ENJOYS because the japanese would not adj
NIT him as a plenpotentiary and his rank
would not permit him serving mere sec
rotary. He goes to the sterile hill because
he can be alone, and there he stays half a
day at time
A Desire for Solitude.
A chunky, full-fieshed picture of an edu-
Gated Russian, he seems to have no init
mates among the other Europeans. Maybe
the alleged GOODNESS that exists between
him and White has something to do with
Martens desire for solitude, too; or maybe
the things which make the head of his i'm
perial master, the car, lie so uneasy give
him cause for brooding
The skipper of the Wentworth is a enarl
ed Dutchman, sixty-eight years old, but as
sturdy as the piling to which he bitches his
naphtha launch. He left his home IN Hol-
land ffty-four years ago TO ship as cabin
boy on sailing vessel, and the brine has
given him his living ever since. II been
gtttin little bit along in life" he tells
you. so I don't think I work hard any
more. Summer l works for the hotel and
takes out people in mein boat and sell bait
and dig clans and catch driftwood and set
forty, fifty lobster traps and leetle t'tnps
like dot. In winters don't do not'ings but
fish and put up ice for the hotel" His talk
is cross between that of a down east Yam
kee and rotterdam migrant, full Of
surprising kinks In accent and infection
Often the listener almost thinks two men
are talking at once, anthem fashion
For two days very small. very quiet
little man with spectacles and made tie
and nursing an incipient mustache, has been
sitting about the lobby, modestly hiding
himself behind the bulk of larger man
when there CHANGED to be something going
on. Two OF the reporters. sizing him up,
decided he was probably the local staff of
a country weekly over in Maine and ar
ranged among themselves to take the
small stranger in tow and teach him few
things about the game.
Revealed in the Nick of Time.
In the nick of time they learned he
was correspondent from the far east for
one of the biggest Of the English news
papers, man who has turned out novels
and magazine articles that are read all
over the world, and whose graphic descrip-
lions of the war in Manchuria are classics
of contemporary writing You can't al
WAYS tell by appearances