The Donaldsonville chief. [volume] (Donaldsonville, La.) 1871-current, 1907-02-02
AMERICAS METROPOLIS.
of New York characteristics
ofthe People-The Subway, skyscrap-
ers and Notwithstanding the
Race of Life at Too
High Speed.

State Department at Washington
writes interestingly to his home paper
the Owens boro, KY, News-Herald de-
scriptive of some of the Impressions
which he derived from recent visit
to New York city, and we take pleas
ure in reproducing the letter herewith
DR.. Dorman spent year in New Or
leans, having made a temporary ex
change of positions with Major L
Valcour Landry, capable clerk il
the United States customs service a.
that port, and the many friends the
accomplished young Kentuckian made
during his sojourn in the Louisiana
metropolis will read his letter with
additional interest because of their
acquaintance with and esteem for the
writer:
'There is a modest city in Spain
whose proud citizens quote to strangers
the patriotic proverb:
Qnisn no ha vista Sevilla
No has vista maravilla.
Whoever has not seen Seville has
not seen the marvellous.
'The New Yorker might with par.
donable pride adopt an adage similar
to the Castilian and say Whoever
has not seen the great wonderland oil
effort, New York, has not beheld the
marvellous.
In order to sufficiently grasp the
wonders of this great metropolis, one
must have very much the same imagi-
nary conception of Swift when in his
Gulliver's Travels he describes the
tabled region of Brobdignag. Every
thing in New York is on vast and
Unreasonable scale. No metes and
bounds can be set above or under the
surface. It's growth and progress are
so rapid that no Inner of fancy dares
attempt to foretell its future or fix its
limitations. New York is city that
battles prophecy, discounts the widest
dreams, and discourages the most
utopian illusions. Incomprehensible
as its busting and complex life may
be, heterogeneous its population, cal
lous, unsympathetic and money-mad
it's people, all must admire the ner-
vous energy, untiring industry and
bulldog tenaeity of the New Yorker
whose capacity for work is no less
great than that for play and amuse-
ment.
In the nerve-wreeking, busy swirl
and rush of New York may be found
more phases of life, it is said, than in
any city in the world. There are greater
evidences of success and happiness,
disappointed hopes and failure, ro-
nance, comedy, drama, and tragedy
than have ever come under my obser-
walton. New York is city of Earring
extremes. The unfair distribution OF
fortune is impressed upon one more
forcibly there than elsewhere. 1t is
only a step from fashionable Fifth
avenue, where dwell the stated rich,
leading life of ignobIe ease and lux
ury in palaces fit for kings, to the
crowded tenement houses of squalid,
hopeless poverty. But let US turn
from the sociological aspect and dis
cuss the industrial side of New York.
''Of all the systems OF transit which
the ingenuity of man has created for
the convenience and accommoda tion
of congested traffic, the subway, in
the parlance of slang, has got them
all tied to the third rail. The UNDER
ground or sub-city, as it is commonly
called, is the most bewildering and
awe-inspiring feature of New York.
1t presents one endless maze, honey
combed and riddled with tunnels and
network, bringing the once distant
Harlem within easy reach of the busy
section at City Hall, linking uptown
with downtown, the outskirts with cen.
trail, defying obstacles of space and
time, we'll nigh placing a boycott on
the sloW-moving caravan, the elevated
and surface cars, especially for long
distances. The New York subway
looks like the average union station
in the smaller cities. Four tracks
with local and fast express trains
coming and going every three minutes.
To demonstrate its advantages, re-
Gently while at the Hotel Astcr, Forty
fourth and Broadway, / received a
phone call to meet a friend on Wall
street. | hurried to the Times build
ing substation, entered, took a local
train to the next station, Grand Gen.
trail, changed to a fast express and
was landed at Fulton street within one
block of Wall street eighteen minutes
after I started. Before the subway
was built this distance would have
required at least forty-fve minutes
iravel.
"1n a su5-station you can find any
hing from barber shop TO drug
store, and I may take the chance of
being discredited or tax your credu-
ity when make the statement that I
ound in one of the downtown stations
\ department. store with hundreds of
There are now so MANY