Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1912-02-25

= Down Pennsylvania avenue there Is a
side street of close jumbled buildings,
mostly stores and laundries.
The stores sell tea in little faggots tied
with silk and packed in glass-topped
boxes. and lacquered things, and china
decorated with pagodas, and junks and
curious maidens who have no existence
, outside of dish rims-unless they are on
visiting terms with the ladies who in
!. habit French fans and coquerte with min
net cavaliers on screens But that of
course. is too deeply serious a problem
for amateur discussion. There is no need
to mention the laundries, because abso-
lutely everybody knows how a laundry
looks. And smells. And of how tireless-
ly the small yellow man in charge irons
and irons and irons.
Nobody bothers about the 1umbledy
buildings above the stores, because they
are just one shabby upstairs after an
other: time-eaten frames and senile
bricks that sag against each other for
mutual upholdings, or for the somber
comfort twho knows?) Of reminding each
other of the good old days before-before
they were laundries and stores
One woman. In passing. however, al
ways looks up at a certain house. be-
cause of handed-down memory of
laughter and tears. But the old house
has always kept its eyes closed and took
no notice-until Tuesday
tuesday afternoon 1t was celebrating
with wide open shutters and waving
flags.
And down on the pavement a group of
small yellow men were looking up at one
of the hags-the strange, new one-and
talking all together. like Babel coma
again.
And as near as the woman could trans
late Babel, they We're saying to each
other:
The flag is dragons blood red, because
it was dipped in the blood of the dragon
we have slain. And the sunrise typified
the dawn of China's freedom"
OF course. they might not have been
saying all that. Then. again, they might.
But. anyhow-and there's no disputing
thistle old house said to the woman,
as plain as any old house could say:
My dear, Il went out with the old
regime. but you see I'm figuring In new
one"
And jolly fellow who came breezing
along flared his hands socially toward
out:
Hello boys, Your new flags dandy"
He didn't say Chinks.
brown that is poverty's national color
And he was trying to pick up a pin.
The pin lay on the tagging in front of
the Treasury. 1t was a ladylike pin
one idea in it. anyhow, judging by the
vixenish pleasure it took in keeping out
of the old mans reach. You see. when
Your fingers are stiff and your eyes are
dim and your poor old joints rheumatic,
YOU don't Rave a fair show with a pin
like that, So
A young man who was passing stopped
10 say in the nice way young men have:
Allow me-"
But the old man would not allow him.
He kept on fumbling and granting at
the pin until at last victory perched on
Whatever 1T Is that victory does perch on
and he Strengthened up with the slow
righteousness that comes of joints and
cricks and things:
Much obleeged to you. young Teller,
but If / had let you pick up this pin for
me it would turned my luck. It's a sure
sign of good luck to pick up a pin, but
you have got to do it your own self.
amt ever passed one in my life, as
can remember
Yet he did not look as lucky as a man
ought to who had been picking up pins
for. say, seventy years.
man was marching through a park.
He did not just walk. He marched Per-
haps he had struck the gait that suited
him, because there was no living thing
around except some sparrows and
spinster person who was feeding them
And spinster persons do not count. Fer
haps, again.
Anyhow, he was marching through the
park, and holding before him jonquil
with sappy green stem. He must nave
seen in the blossom something more than
an everyday, five-cents-apiece jonqufl, for
altar boy holds a blessed candle. And
as two skittish girl-women turned the
path he apparently failed to hear one OF
them chirp out for his benefit:
Catch on to the spring opening"
He needed them no more than ne