Life — May 24, 1900 — page 14: what you’re looking at

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

446 thrown foto the catch-basin, it 1 clear that the idea conveyed Is itself the bint Under the words, Urbs in Horto, 1s & papoose In ashell. The preva- lence of the shell game in Chicago is responsible for that. Chicago ts bulit on most unholy ground — teal estate dealers, who teach Sunday. school on the one day of the week they devote to tracts Instead of ° tracts, have sold from time to time, to the Innocent and godly public that wants to speculate and not work, many & staked enclosure of soil that will not nulse anything ranker than taxes. ‘The winds that blow over these tracts are charged with the aroma of the Union Stock Yards tn July and the crystals of Medicine Hat in January, and the trotley car runs ouce a day. Within the shadow of Chicago's tall buildings her daily tolters either stalk In quagmires of mud or mope in whirlwinds of dust, but they are always ready to exclaim, Great 1s Chicago 1 Woe unto the people of the Des- plaines Valley and the borders of the Illinois River, for the current of Chi cayo’s refuse now runs their way in the big drainage ditch. ‘They will eooner or later discover that they are leeward of something stronger than Hercules’ seventh job. Chicago, the holy land of anar- chista.ryndicated murderers and san- tage vats; the laager of boodiers,beer saloons and election-day asassins ; the manor of Doctor Holmes'castles, shingtonian homes and bad restaurants; the siége central of newspaper trusts, Yerkes street cars and millionaire tax - dodgere—the homing cage of the drab-covered doves of the universe, the vortex of the winds that blow from all the Babylons! Not who, but what, can beat Chicago? William T. osw! On the banks of Lake Ontarlo there squata a tean and palsied Thing whose framework ts composed of weather-beaten bricks and worm: eaten timbers, Limp sinewsof mud and sewage connect the rheumatic Joints of the mass, and along them pass whiskered tnsects bearing seeds of hay from potnt to polnt, ‘The Thing 1s called the City of Oswego. So, at least, reads a label that {8 attached to the abandoned barn where raliroad trains take shelter once a day, This “City of Oswego" is the meanest in the United States, It ts Mean in Itself alone. One doesn’t have to prove It by its Inhabitants, and couldn't, for none ever appear. The Thing called Oswego needs no human ald to demonstrate tts “LIFE « BILLY'S MISTAKE. sy iS ot meanness. It has a deep gash through its middie, and you can't pass from one side to the other without balancing your life on your pate in trusting to either one of the two creaking and sobbing bridges. It 1s as cold and wet and slippery In winter as the deck of an Esquimau dog-sled, Its as hot tn sammer as the inside of an ocean liner. Desert- ed ramshackle grain elevators and blast furnaces make the only breaks 1m the sky-line. There are no spect- mens to be found of the clvilized maces of man. Such Iving creatures 4s appear are scraggly-bearded, quid mouthed, lean-legged, and are covered with a lid that must be the offspring of our Teddy's pet roughswaggertete and the indented Pancake beloved of Willlam of Albany. Their speech ts Darn" and b,” with occastonal reference to the entire supply of hemlock. ‘They drink buttermilk and Deep Rock water, und If you want any- thing else you can go to Minetto, b* gosh. Persons who travel to Bangkok for the sake of novel and unfamillar scenes, can save their money. Go to Oswego, N. ¥., and you will suc- ceed better. But you won't go twice. WL 2. NORTHAMPTON, MASS. If you area woman—and ten to ‘one you are— you will appreciate the awful horrors of the ut-married state when likely to be continued indefinitely. A normal woman Jooks upon matrimony as her in- alienable right; but in Northampton, Maseachurett, she soon learns that spinaterhood Is to be her doom, No city can possets vigor or character unless its citizens ure purposeful men, Northampton has practically no men, Better to dwell in the plague-stricken districts of the Orient, or among the wild tribes of gonia, than exist in such aplace. Northamptoa is the most affilcted, the most hopelessly null, the moet Intolerable city in the United States, for the noblest work of God is almost lacking. ‘The streets of Northampton are choked with spinsters of every variety, Smith College students being an imported injury which it 4s hard for the original sufferers toendure, There is no virility in the atmosphere ; heroic conditions do not exist; everywhere is a sickening safety. Malden dreams are never dis- turbed by the intrusion of a Don Juan. No obliging band of brig- ands ever drops into town with intent to abduct. There is no chance of belng appropriated like those fortunate Sabine women; comicbooks.com