Western Kansas world. [volume] (WaKeeney, Kan.) 1885-current, 1911-07-29

peared, with every single ingot of gold
on the premises. Since then Cossacks
have been looked upon in Irkutsk
minds in the same way as vigilance
committees are regarded
Discourasing Burglars.
For the last year the city has had
street-lighting system, but the resi-
Dental thoroughfares a stones throw
from the main shopping streets are
left in pitchy darkness. When there is
nothing better doing the adventurous
element of the population passes the
evening in the quieter streets, beating
up belated householders returning
from carousals in the restaurants after
an unwise degree of internal lHbrica-
ton and trying ground floor windows.
Not infrequently, as you are passing
down one of these streets late at
night you'll be startled by an explo-
sion over your head and the whistle
of spreading bird-shot past your ears
Timid householders, without any OBJ
lection being raised by the police, fire
shotgun from the window before
turning in to bed, to show lurking
burglars that there is a gun in the
house.
The policing is done partly by mu-
nfcipal, partly by private patrolmen.
the latter employed by property own
ers. The private patrolmen deserve
an honored place in the annals of
twentieth century philosophy. The
American idea of night patrolman is
a keen-eyed, stealthy, gum-shoe man
in blue, leaving what the Chinese eu-
phoniously term 1.-The piece stealee
men to play first and then taking the
trick. The Irkutsk patrolman, with
the high-souled idea of warning pro
| spective burglars of his approach and
| causing them to abstain from shining,
makes the night hideous by perpetual
ly Gathering a powerful wooden rat
| tie. He grasps it firmly in the hand
| and parades the streets, whirlfng it
round and round at every few PAGES.
Lying half asleep in the early hours
of the morning you might imagine
yourself in a Pittsburg boiler factory.
Ex-convicts as Servants,
Many of the servants here are ex
convicts who decided to settle down
| In the east For instance, that tall
portly head waiter with the restless
eye and the big bifurcated Slavonic
beard, who will be recollected by the
traveller who has visited the Hotel
1 Rossia at Tomsk, slew his wife and
her friend and has served a long term
1 of Imprisonment in a barracks of the
frozen north. Three murderers are on
the waiting star of the Hotel Central
here in Irkutsk, and one in our very
hotel, the Metropole.
Irkutsk is pretty gay at nights now
but the citizens look back enviously
| to the zenith of IT'S career to the days
of the recent Japanese war. Their
champagne and wines were often eau
tiously transported free of freight
| charges from St Petersburg and Mos
COW in steel cars labelled Powder
cars militant with painted imperia
eagles and Cossack guards. At Irkutsl
the powder cars were shunted of
along the barrack sfdings and found
final resting place at the end of the
| rails entering the officers mess store
shed in the barracks west of the bis
girder bridge over the Irkut river. 4
colonel of one regiment openly boast
ed in the Metropole restaurant tn,
other night that more champagne wa.
drunk in Irkutsk in one month during
the japanese war than is sold OF
Broadway, New York. in half a year.
The fun at Irkutsk starts at mid
night; the city is as dead as a Sunda.
an hour before Then the moving
picture shows, of which there ar