Daily Arizona silver belt., 1910-04-03
Stray Topics from
 Little Old New York

NEW YORK, March 26.-For many years Gotham has been in ill repute throughout the country. By those who spoke about the great metropolis on the Hudson and by those who wrote books or articles upon the subject, New York was always represented as cess pool of iniquity, thoroughly corrupt re- ligiOusly morally, domestically, hnaA- cially, politically and every other way. Once upon time there may have been good reasons for such an estimate, but conditions must have changed a great deal since then. Now the city has re- form mayor at the head of it's govern ment, who even frowns upon policemen who indulge in too vigorous exercise . with their clubs and who was chosen at an election over which Purity her self, in the shape of a heroic-slzed statue on Times square presided. From time to time there have been other evi- denees of ethical regeneration and re- form in Gotham, but all of them were insignificant compared with the latest proof One of the leaders of the select circles of society has actually started a Bible class for women and, according to trustworthy reports these meetings are patronized by about fifty of the most prominent society women of the city. The leader of the movement has engaged a minister to instruct the Bible class and, to make things pleasant, she has tea served to the members of the class after meetings If that does not convince the world that New York has been slandered, nothing will.
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 Now that New York has been en- gulfed by a wave of reform, profanity has become an expensive luxury. It costs more than coal, ice or even beef The other day some reform advocate had man arrested for swearing on a subway train. The offender was ar raigned in court and upon the testimony of the reform advocate, that he had sworn four times between two stations, and had become "sassy" when re- buked, he was fined $l0, which he paid without murmur. That makes $2.5O "swear,' price high enough to dis courage the practice.
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 A young Yale student, the son ot a prominent business man of Brooklyn, slipped away to Saugutuck, Conn.,, the other day and was married to his best girl by the town clerk. Of course, the young man and the girl wished the marriage to remain profound secret, at least for some time to come. Their dismay was great, therefore, when they found an account of their marriage in every newspaper published in the east. At first they could not understand how h,,t n ny the young man aseertained that the pre- mature publication of his marriage was due to his own lack of circumspection. When the town clerk informed him that witness had to be present at the cere- mony, the groom had picked up the first stranger he met in the corridor of the city hall. As it happened the man se- lected was reporter and newspaper correspondent. The stranger, naturally, gave no hint of his profession and, inn mediately after the weding made the wires hum sending out an account of the wedding, names and all, to every newspaper within a radius of three hun dred miles.
 1t has long been accepted as fact that hunger, craving for liquor or cer- tain drugs and animal passions respect no law or rule of ethics. It seems, how ever, that the list of irresistible i'm pulses to law-breaking is not complete, without adding to it's feminine vanity. A woman was arrested the other day on the charge of having stolen funeral crapes from the doors of houses in which death had occurred. At the preliminary hearing before the magistrate the wo- man admitted her guilt and explained that she had used the crepe to make for herself automobile wells after the latest fashion, The fact that the woman is extremely poor and has not even a faint prospect of ever rialng in an automobile. did not seem to disturb her