Life — August 21, 1913 — page 14: what you’re looking at

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

@ees and taxis in a tangle, Baggage smashers in a wrangle, Newsboys in a howling chorus, Screaming out the last divorces, Depot jammed to suffocation By the brewers of the nation, Country parties in a muddle, Honeymooners, on the cuddle, Chorus girls, with ancient fogies, College boys, with cabbage. stogies, Babies, poodles, actors, donkeys, Dago organmen with monkeys, Widows cured by first intention, SERRE: Atlantic City Spinsters at their June convention, Pigeons chaperoned by hawk, Rubes from “little old N'Yawk.” Pious gents with voices raucous Hold interminable caucus, Suffragettes, and bottle-breakers, New-thought lights and old-thought shakers, Mediums and seers clairvoyant, Christian Science healers buoyant, Little bugs, and bugs with missions, Bugs with up-to-date additions. Bugs of all the varied degrees Upcast by all the Seven Seas. Shifty crooks alert to skin ’em, Bathing suits and little in ’em, Megaphones and pianolas, Sideshows, Filipines and bolos, All the fakes from Maine to Yuma Pry you loose from your mazguma; Sleeping is an art forgotten, At the price the grub is rotten. Should an evil fate attend you And to this Inferno send you, Heed the warning of my ditty— Beat it from Atlantic City. The Last Resort ORTS are places where, if I mistake not, Men eat, drink, merry are, to-morrow wake not Then, if, being wise, the best we take in first, The last resort will surely be the worst. For, thanks to time, faint grows the memory Of festive board supplied the festive flea, And how, long since, of feverish days and nights We fed ourselves naught but mosquito bit How, morns, we asked the coffee pale of face If it felt better, stronger, said our grace Beneath our breath, swore softly as who cuss Butter comparatively odorous, The last resort is worst, for, without f Full fresh the memory of eggs full stale, Of doubtful linen, at the highest cost, Of how you played to heav’n knows what the host. How well you mind the place you last Septembered— How tough the chicken was; the toast, how embered; Worst out! But why? Because 'tis best. remembered. And when the skies once more are overcast, I'll hear you swear—I've heard you in the past— That worst of all resorts is sure the last. Q. D. Harry Cowell. The Worst Summer Resort in the United States ECAUSE I cannot lie in bed in the morning and hear the birds sing ; because I cannot go out and paint with- out being arrested or run over; because I have never been able to live there for less than ten dollars a day; because no form of amusement was worth what it cost to see it; because clerks, shopkeepers, shop employees and other hire- lings act as if I am from the country and poor (as I am); because sociability involves a consumption of too much alcohol ; because one cannot-go to bed early without lying awake and wondeting what else is going on that one has not seen, and because I have never been able to get away without borrowing money—for these reasons I think New York the worst summer resort in the United States. W. P. Reeves. Jas. F. B. Belford. FTER having ‘suspendered and wilted through a 102 Fahr. Gotham day at the office, and yawned your solitary evening way through a delightful, tightful, rag- ful roof garden, in order to uphold the time-honored tradition of “ Poor papa in the hot city,” you turn your steps slowly and pantingly homeward to your own special family-abandoned, linen-draped oven. Then, drawing your sheetless bed before the open window, fan yourself through the remainder of a joyous summer night, soothed by the mellifluous backyard odor of ailanthus trees, lulled by a mingled chorus of belated pianolas, skylarking servants, and ubiquitous felines, idly wondering the while how the wife and children are enjoying their frigid, three-blanket- night existence far, far away in the mountains; and, inci- dentally, who is going to get your breakfast for you. Such, my friends, followed consistently through those July and August weeks, which you had hopefully expected would be utilized for a glorious frappéd vacation, will convince even the most sceptical unmarried salamander that, in a search for a more or less inconvenient summer resort, New York City can show a winning percentage which is surpassed—or even equaled—only by Hade: Kenneth F, H, Underwood.