The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-12-20
From the New York Telegra,

From the New York Telegraph.
 @HERE are not very many places
 tVp left in New York where the
 "coke fend." or Journey blow er," can go to procure his stimulant, for the police have managed to gather in. one by one the sellers of the insidious white flake"
 Down in the very gutter of the lower East Side, the region which has for so many years been regarded as the sum total and the epitome of cheap and squal- i'd misery, the "coke iend' and the bur ney blower still find their only com- fort and their sole remaining solace from Restitution and utter suffering. There are six places to which the man who has a. s'coke" habit can resort If he has tho small sum needed for the purchase, and the process of obtaining the stuff is easy, yet strikingly clever.
 Just of of the extreme south end of the Bowery, where that famous old street meets Chatham Square, there Is base ment which can be accepted as good type of the cocaine lovers headquarters. Never mind the exact number-for one thing, what's the use of bothering the poor fellows, and, for another there isn't any number on that basement anyway It is a dark, dismal place. the kind of den into which man goes with shivery, creepy feelings, if he isn't "coke fiend.' If he is, he doesn't mind the appearance of the place, and wouldn't be annoyed if 1t were two feet deep in water, with green snakes coiling round the walls. You don't mind little things like that if you have the habit
 It isn't so easy to get into this place if you are well dressed and look like ready money, wherein the ordinary laws of human nature are sharply reversed. In most places good clothes and pros porous air are immediate passports, and the man of rags and haggard face Is barred. In "Cokeland" all things are turned around. A ghostly gray skin, @ huddle of cast-off clothes. are the re- ouirements of social standing. If you are well attired, you are. to them, either a plainclothes copper or pigeon"
 Opium fiends are, oftener than not a be-diamoned and dressy set, but the ''coke fiend" is the crystallized acme of desolation and destitution.
 Still, if you know the way, if you know any one whom they know. and can thus show that you are neither ''an elbow" or a ''snitch," you can break pass the barrier.
 Once inside, examining few hy-specked pictures on the dingy walls, and staring at a semi-black back room which may extend indefinite distances into the realms of cobwebs, dirt and nowhere, you will soon be accosted by sharp-eyed eager folk anxious to know whence and why. If you cannot show them, even after you have slipped past the portals, that you are free from suspicion, they will freeze you out by negatives and a mask of ig- norance. No they don't know when that fellow that sells flake will be round, Nav; he doesn't come here, anyway. Him? No. None of that sort of thing around here. /, No chance at all
 Ragged men with ghastly gray faces come and go. Some transaction, of some kind. must be going on. as there seems no definite excuse for anyone caring to ] even visit this rocky cellar. You con- vince the particular gray wrath to whom | you talk that you are all right; that you know Jimmy and Harry, and Corkey, who is over in the Tombs now, and that no harm Is meant for anybody The gray wrath grows polite; so do others in the cellar, and you are astounded to find that | these broken, ghostly apparitions, the 1 odds and ends of the Bowery. where the ragtag of the world Is supposed to gather, have the courtesy and graceful ways of polished gentlemen. Gentle and clean | in speech, seldom erring even as to gram mar, deferentisi and thoroughly friendly | but still the ragged clothing, the gray faces, and the broken. low-stooping ng-