Violets and Other Tales

								

And do the owners of the faded vests and patched coats hide in dusky
corners while their only garments are receiving the benefit of Old Sol's
cleansing rays? And are the women with the indiscriminate tresses, near
relatives, or only the landladies? It would be something worth knowing
if one could.
Plenty of saloons--great, gorgeous, gaudy places, with pianos and
swift-footed waiters, tables and cards, and men, men, men. The famous
Three Brothers' Saloon occupies a position about midway the alley, and
at its doors, the acme, the culminating point, the superlative degree of
unquietude and discontent is reached. It is the headquarters of nearly
all the great labor organizations in the city. Behind its doors,
swinging as easily between the street and the liquor-fumed halls as the
soul swings between right and wrong, the disturbed minds of the
working-men become clouded, heated, and wrothily ready for deeds of
violence.
Outside on the pavements with hundreds of like-excited men, with angry
discussions and bitter recitals of complaints, the seeds of discord sown
some time since, perhaps, sprout afresh, blossom and bear fruits. Is
there a strike? Then special minions of the law are detailed to this
place, for violence and hatred of employers, insurrection and socialism
find here ready followers. Impromptu mass meetings are common, and
law-breaking schemes find their cradle beneath its glittering lights. It
is always thronged within and without, a veritable nursery of riot and
disorder.
And oh, Bohemia, pipes, indolence and beer! The atmosphere is
impregnated with it, the dust sifts it into your clothes and hair, the
sunlight filters it through your brain, the stray snatches of music now
and then beat it rhythmically into your mind. There are some who work,
yes, and a few places outside of the saloons that seem to be animated
with a business motive. There are even some who push their way briskly
through the aimless bodies of men,--but then there must be an
occasional anomaly to break the monotony, if nothing more.
It is so unlike the ordinary world, this bit of Bohemia, that one feels
a personal grievance when the marble entrance and great, green dome
become positive, solid, architectural facts, standing in all the grim
solemnity of the main entrance of the Hotel Royal on St. Louis Street,
ending, with a sudden return to aristocracy, this stamping ground for
anarchy.

IMPRESSIONS.

  THOUGHT.



    A swift, successive chain of things,

    That flash, kaleidoscope-like, now in, now out,
Now straight, now eddying in wild rings,

    No order, neither law, compels their moves,

    But endless, constant, always swiftly roves.

  HOPE.


Wild seas of tossing, writhing waves,
A wreck half-sinking in the tortuous gloom;
One man clings desperately, while Boreas raves,

    And helps to blot the rays of moon and star,

    Then comes a sudden flash of light, which gleams on shores afar.