The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-02-21

"I had to llck my Doyi Mdrty' tON"9' said the House Detective of the St. Reck- less.
 whats Marty been doing now?" asked the Hotel Clerk.
 "Readin them foolish nickel libraries" said the House Detective. "I ketched him with one called Young Kit Badger, The Boy Trapper.' If he wants to read somethin' about Young Kid Broad, The Boy Scrapper, that'll improve his mind and learn him somethin' about usin his docks, all well and good. But not them Wild and Woolly West stories for son of mine. Next thing he'll be wantin' to run away to Kansas City and shoot buff faloes"
 Tell him not to do 1t" said the Hotel Clerk. "A friend of mine that sells neck wear on the road just got back yesterday from his first trip to the coast and he was in here last night nursing a bunch of disillusions the size of a baby grand. He said the only man he saw wearing long hair and leather pants with che nile fringes on 'em was travelling with & medicine show from Portland, Maine, and the only real wild and woody thing he got up against was a flannel union suit he bought in Butte. The union suit was woody and 1t made him wild to wear it.
 You tell Marty to stay right here if he's looking for the real frontier life. I can show him more Indians on Broad way every night than he'd find the Rosebud reservation in month. And when it comes to scalping the pale-face stranger we've got few ticket specula- tors and all-night cabmen in our midst that would make old Sitting Bull in his scalpingest days look like a green hired girl trying to slice ham with a safety razor.
 Old Ephraim, the original fierce and un- tamable grizzly bear with the long black nails, doesn't reside in the heart of the Sierras any more. He takes square meal every night at the table right next to mine. 1 know it must be a square meal because the corners scratch his tender places going down and then he growls at the waiter in the manner peculiar to griz- zy bears dining out. When he takes his soup it reminds you of an obstruction in the mouth of a sewer, and his way of eating asparagus on the hoof would be worth three columns alone to Ernest Thompson-Seton- n-and-repeat-the- Thomp- son.
 
 a bit older if he hasn't already found it out, that there's a blame sight more warpaint used the female face divine in a chorus than there Is at a Siwash squaw- dance, although possibly not so ar tistically done. And as for the feathers and belts and jingle bells and other adornments of the barbarian, that's where the Fifth Avenue promenader puts it all over the brick-dusky sister down in the Territory. Little Juanita Water the-knee, bewitchfng daughter of Chief John Bright's disease, tribal head of the Punk Rivers, is moren likely these days to be running the leading dress-making establishment of Wichita Falls with her hair slicked back and her mouth full of pins and a diploma from Carlisle framed on the wall. But the patrician member of some proud old coal and coke, or street railway family of New York and Pitts burgh, goes swirling through the Waldorf any afternoon with one of those self made complexions, done in a white and red color scheme, and form-fitti gar ment that seems to fasten with one large button, like a hen house door, and rat ting with curtain rings and gold trace chains, like a brewery horse, and touched up hither and yon with mink scalps and bird heads and ermine skins, until you get to thinking she must have escaped from the taXidermist before he had fin- ished. Why one good look at her would make the last surviving widow of the late Spotted Tail strip off her cheap neck lace of salmon cans in a frenzy of jeal- ous rage and seek boiled suicides grave in a hot geyser. You tell Marty, for me, to stick around for a while. A couple of years from now he can get more thrills Joining the Eagles than he could pursu- Ing the wild-loping Rocky Mountain chamois, which there isn't any, to Its lofty snow-capped lair, which it hasn't any. kid that's been raised in a great city isn't intended by nature and environ ment for the chase, unless it's being chased by cop, and anyway, he can stay right home and get some real big game hunting if he only knows where to look for It."
 T guess you ain't very strong for them strenuous outdoor sports,'' said the House Detective.
 "Oh, you bet your life I am," said the Hotel Clerk. I'm strong for all forms of sport in their proper places, which is the newspaper l can get all the excitement my nature craves out of the active sport ing life just from reading about it. Take fox hunting for example. For one cent I can enjoy a spirited account of the an nual hunt of the Meadowbrooks, consist ing of two columns about the prominent people present and an inch and a half touching on the last hours of the fox But to actually accomplish the destruction of this ferocious brute in the prescribed manner must take lot of trouble. Be- fore you can go about the work of prop ery eradicating the ravaging creature known as the red fox you have to get to- gether a flock of bay-voiced hounds and a troupe of short tailed horses and a mas ter of the hunt and an extra drink mix CT on duty all the night before at the clubhouse bar. and lot of society gentle men In pink pill coats and half Morocco pants and bevy of society ladies in der by hats and stock collars. The ladies have