The Cordova daily times., 1923-03-31
The Dragon and It's Day
 By KATHERINE WILSON
By KATHERINE WILSON

] There are ghosts in the shadowy corners of the Red Dragon. I saw them the other day as I sat before the glowing embers of the wood-fire on the wide and hospitable hearth and recollections conjured up by the rec
 tor of St. Georges, as he told me the story of the place. They are friendly ghosts. though some are ragged and unkempt, with eyes bleared from too much looking upon the wine when it was red; and some are gaunt from hunger; and some are bearded giants whose lips hang loose with curses while their hands clench ready for blows Friendly all, these ghosts, for none ever came into the warmth and light of the Dragon but he was seek i ing company and cheer. In the old days they fingered there to sleep, to wrangle, to sing, to pray, to fight, while the fire crackled on the hearth and the smoke from hundred pipes curled into the rough-hewn rafters. Today they finger still, profane and gentle, rugged and weak, proud, ab- ject and alien, in the smooth-ceiled angles of the mellowed room. One glimpses them lurking behind the neat chintz curtains at the windows. One finds hints of them beneath the or derly array of magazines on the great reading table, the scars in whose grain bespeak their lasting presences. One sees them in the splotches on the pol ished floor, faint figures grimly elo- fistic victories. While at the place where on Sundays the altar was wont to rest, let down by block and tackle from the joists above, pale figures waver in the falling twilight, dim spec tres of thoughts and dreams and happy memories once brought in honor rare and motley company!
 Other times and other manners! The day is past when the Red Dragon, as frontier mission of the Episcopal Church, served as the amusement ren- dezvous for as rough and lawless a band as ever filled a beermug with twentydollar pieces for a sky-pilot The building of the Copper River and Northwestern Railway, which brought Cordova into existence, and in it's train three thousand pick-and-shovel men, lumber-jacks, engineers, dyna' miters, surveyors clerks, adventur- CTS and what-not, has long since been completed. The twenty-six saloons that graced the business street of the town have given way to ladies' spe- cialty shops and fancy groceries. To share the honors with the Red Dragon as social gathering place have come Il the Elks', Eagles and Masonic Halls, the Northland Club and the Empress Cabaret, not to mention the movie! There is no longer any lack of a de- cent place for men to gather. There are no longer men to fill such place. The three thousand workers that float. ed in with the ties and rails have floated out again, or remained to set tie down in homes of their own. The ubiquitous photograph has vanquished the town piano. And three churches have grown up where none had grown before. The old day of the Dragon is gone. With it's crew of wastrels and gentlemen, workers and strays, In. dians and dogs, its original mission has passed. Where once hundred wayfarers sat in murk of tobacco smoke over poker and billiard games, today dozen young fellows from the railroad offices and few of the elders about town play chess or solo and !, read the late magazines. Evenings that once gave occasion to pugilistic bouts and verbal combats, now serve for sociables by the Women's Guild
 The Outlook has supplanted the Pc. lice Gazette for popular reading, and contributions to the Dragons support are rendered by personal check on local banks instead of by furtive de- posits in the old donation-box.
 Times have changed. We pioneer now by electricity to the accompani- ment of radio concerts. For the stir of the old frontier days we have sub stituted jazz. MT VOlstead and MT. Hays have relieved the missionary of