Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1907-09-14
Weird and Marvellous Tales Of Ma
tional Capital.
POCKET EDITION OF BABYLON
Wickedness Of All Degrees of Horrid-
ness Rampant Here, According to
Gotham's Rabid Press.

\
| isn't never was and never will be. just read
| the New York ochresque dailies. sometimes
| adverted to as Saffronillas, sepias or yell
| lows. They'll tell you. with Blind Tom
! improvisa lions and variations. New York
! ers are naturally credulous. They are the
real American provincials. The great bulk
| of them never. by any chance. get any
farther away from Moo Yawk than Coney'
His Island 1t is perfectly safe assump-
! ton that not more than one New Yorker
out of a hundred, including all classes OF
en-. has ever visited Washington. SO that.
! only knowing Washington from what they
| read about It in the saffronllas. this Iopu-
| lace assuredly picks up some strange no
lions Of the serenely. beautiful capital down
| yonder by the purlng Potomac
Not to put too fine a point upon IT, the
| hogwash printed In New lorks lemon huta
! sheets about happenings in washington Is
J nothing short of benumbing, When IL Is not
! merely amusing, for its weirdiy extraoToi-
nary deviation from the probabie. much =, less tSs
| the possible. The Sunday editions OF the
! sepin -tinged publications Of this town par
| ticularly teem-especially during the DOG
| days and other intermediate seasons VIZ
! the regular run of bug" stories are scaIceu
| with these crazy yarns of suppositi'ious
they portray Washington as a sort of
| un0edseh Babylon. or a cross between fofl
! Said-the worlds chlefest slnk-ano
fenced-in park for paretics They people
| Washington-wh:ch. after you look them
all over. you easily find to be the best De
| baved capital in the world-w tn fools.
| criminals and libertines. They sheer at me
| probity of nearly all of Washingtons ON
| cial class and bite their thumbs at the VIZ
! tue of Washington women they S,iIe
upon the most minor happen ng that Is not
! of an everyday nature in Washington ana
| magnify it till 1t looks like an eruption OF
Mauna I1oa. They print gloatfully saia-
/ c!ous details of scandals" breaking out In
VI ,.,l~;, hat nyn
! heard of by the people OF washington
They top all of this off by printing ludi-
crous (but offensive for all thao fake pic
| tures'' of Washington persons and places
| to illustrate these gnome narratives
On the Bradley Case.
| When. a while back the unfortunate little
| Bradley woman shot the former senator
! from Utah, in Washington. the New York
! saffronillas not only heaped up page upon
| page of everlastingly unheard-of moon
| shine about that not extraordinary ahair,
! but some of them intimated that the
streets of Wash ngton were fairly cluttercd
! with similarly mistreated women who were
proving about with .45-caliber guns hidden
! beneath their cloaks waiting for the
! chance to pot the senator's and representa-
tives and .'other high governmental oH-
cIaIs'' who had abused them. Now, women
are shooting men in New York all the
time. For tie matter of that. you've got to
be almighty careful In these crime waving
days In New York in seeing to it that some
female person you never saw or heard Of
before doesn't push you over the edge OF
the big divide or get you ralroaded to
states prison or something.
| But Just because this shooting thing &C.
! Cured in Westinghouse it might just as
| we'll have happened in Three Rivers, Mich.
| or Ossamatomie. kans.-the New York
| ochresuues bounced upon 1t as something
/ rich, and the stuff they printed about Ii and
| the pictures they published presumably of
| women who'd be cunning senators and
! such like into the next world little later
! on) would haze been diverting In way
| had the case not been of such a tragical
| character. They printed. for example, a
| "cut" of the hotel in which that shooting
| occurred. Some of these pictures bore a
| striking resemblance to that old eating
| house that used to stand out at Cabin
| john others looked suspiciously like the
| Ogle Tayloe mansion. and still others strik-
| ingly suggested the Peterhof palace at St.
! Petersburg.
| while back when a Washington police
| official eloped with some money that didn' t
| belong to him. these same yellow papers
| took UP 1.-The dishonesty of the men run
| ming the administrative system of the ma
| TONS capital" and when they got through
| with innuendo and side-walloping along this
| line there wasn't money-handling official
! in Washington who wasn't due to stun
suit case full of en-thouSand-dollar bills
| at almost anv minute and strike out for
| British Honduras at a dead canter. They
| limited that numerous other highly placed
| governmental officials involved in the alb
struction of government funds" were trem-
| bling in their boots over the investigation of
| the whole shooting match that was about
| to begin and then. for the miilionth time,
| as illustrating the depraYity OF Washing
| ton and the lack of common honesty on
| the part of its most exalted citizens, they
| rehashed those old, old, frazzied, moth
| eaten stories of the flight of Capt How
| gate and the absconder Siicott.
On the G.. P. o.
| These yellow newspapers of New York
rarely or never aIlude to the subject of
! the female employees in the Washington
governmental departments without sneering.
! The spotlight posturing of the entertain
| ing Stillings reminded some of them while
| back that there Is some such institution
as a government printing office, where a
! great many women are employed, and
| straightway they slapped together Sun
| day stories of what an infamous inStitu-
| ton that establishment, with its personnel
| OF hard-working and poorly paid women
was. Ito be saddied upon the federal tax
| payers"
These same newspapers rarely or never
| advert to any OF the clerks in the Wash
| ington departmental service. men wom-
| en-, without calmly calling them (bulkng all
| hands toge ther) an outfit of lazy, vicious
| no-account ha.4-witted shrkers and bilks.
They picture the chiefs of bureaus as dead
game Sports, VINO Spenu the major portion
OF their time between in the morning and
knockout time in making their addre sses TO
the more attractive among the women
clerks.
OF the Hellogabalian dongs that they
infinitely portray taking place beneath
the dome of the Capitol during sessions OF
the Congress it is hardly necessary to write
Washing tonians know all about these fam
tastic hasheeSh yarns and have known
about them for a good many decades But
to learn about them, they've got to CLEAN
the details mainly from the columns or the
New York yel.ows. Al! of this unspeaka-
BILE iniquity of Washington is manutac-
tured out and out. People who have lived
all of their lives in Washington never hear
of these things at home. for the beautifully
. obvious reason that they don't exist.
1t is when these New York saffronlIas
tackle the social life of Washington, how
ever. that they blunder into the domain OF
the burlesque.
For example, last autumn a couple of
brilliant and distinguished women of New
York, both of whom had figured and still
figure near the top of the social ladder over
here, established themselves in Washington
for the season. Immediately they received
the attention that their social status, as
we'll as the literary talent of at least one Of
them called for and merited. But New