Life — April 19, 1900 — page 14: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

346 -LIFE- was when the fog froze over, and the town was out skating from Walnut Illll to the Kentucky shore. One has to roll up his trousers to take a drink of the water in Cincinnatt, and from the effects of trying to filter the Ohio there Is # large “ Kop" now where the reservotr used to be, The intense heat or the summers and the wretched cold winters cause such contraction and expansion of real estate that It fs unwise to take for granted that the bulldings are within thelr proper lines, The greatest expense tn building ts the enormous amount expended for labor in removing advertisement sigus from the vacant lots, tt 1s owned by Germany, Austria and Scandinavia, but at tucky has an ese on It for & coaling station. Strangers visiting Cincinnat! are warned not to attempt walking on the Ohlo—although {t looks safe enough, and hardly distngulshable from the firm soll, It 1s dangerous without the use of snowshoes. NEW YORK. ‘The adjective mean comprehends such a wide variety of cussedness that to be entitled to wear the crown as the “ meanest cits‘In the United States" a city must establish Its possession of a vast and varlegated supply. Other cities may each revel In some spectal brand, but for all-around, all-compriaing, pure, unadulterated, all- wool -and-a-yard- wide mean w York Is It, For instance, other citles have basses, New York has Croker; other ett ve politicians, New York has Piatt ; other citles have corruption, New York has Its pollce force ; other citles have re- formers, New York has Anthony Comstock ; other cities have yellow Journals, New York has the World and Jowrnat; other cities have venal theatres, New York has the Theatre Syndicate ; other cities have snobs, New York has tts “ Four Hundred” ; other cittes have hovels, New York has tenements; other cities have citmate, New York has weather ; other cities have hotets, New York has the Waidorf-Astorta ; other cities have poiltical rings, New York has Tammany ; other cttles— But why contin For every kind of meanness developed by any other city, New York fosters an equivalent, usually a super- lative ; and If all the other cittes bunched thelr little local mean. hesses, that bunch, compared with New York's, would look like Often cents’ worth of asparagus beside @ bundle of Roman fasces, SOMERVILL! ‘The meanest city in the spheres ts Sonterville, Mass, Geo- graphically tt isa suburb of Boston ; socially, of the Desert of CONFIDENCES. “T DON'T THINK HE AND I ARE SUITED FOR RACH OTHER.” “tow so?” “ SOMETIMES IE SHOWS EVIDENCE OP MAVING A IND OP TIS OWN." Actually, {t 18 a poor relation, a shoddy connection of Boston and Cambridge, combining the duitness and crankiuess of both, lacking the alcohol of one and the culture of the other, Its streets are solitary and careworn on week days ; on Sundays ts population goes in for sulphurous sermons and eternal vigilance for the Pope of Rome, who 1s hourly expected to enter the city surreptitiously and sack It Its police force ts discouraged ‘and shopworn, lacking the fat of Boston, the Insolence of New York, aud the truculence of Chicago. No liquor saloons exist In this Arcadia ; sudden death, delirium tremens ed _~ and drunkards’ graves effervesce only in drug stores, where Jag mixtures are dispensed to Harveyized stomachs, which range tn vigor and bouquet from rat bane to wood The Grasshopper : VR HEARD POLKS TALK A LOT OP alcohol. THE PLEASURE OP HOLDING ONE'S SWEETHRART ON THEIR Secret socteties Nourish in Somerville rlotously ; there are elght thousand nine hun- KNEE, BUT FOR MY PANT 1 DON’T THINK MUCH OF IT, dred and sixty-seven lodges there, and the prevailing imbectiity 1s the result of an comicbooks.com