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About The Omaha morning bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 1922-1927 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 16, 1924)
“THE GOLDEN BED” By WALLACE IRWIN. Produced aa a Paramount Picture by Cecile B. DeMUIe From a Screen < Adaptation by Jennie Macpheraon. <CoDyrJ*ht. 1924) ■■■ — ■ - . ■ ■ ■■ .. ../ The christening party came along under the tender green trees of Prince’* avenue. There were three victorias, royalistic In appearance; blue-black coachmen held the reins in white gloved hands while thorough bred hackneys stepped high as If to meet the requirements of a state oc casion; silver harness jingled sfter the best traditions of the days when Benjamin Harrison—God re*£ his solid republican bones:—was offending the South with a tariff unpleasantly pro tective. The dignified splendor of thaP»turnout attracted an attention to which It was obviously indifferent. For the Peakes were driving from their fine old house in lnness street to All Souls church where, both as Chris tians and as ancestor worshipers, they owed an important visit. But more Important still, from the angle of life at which we view this story, was the reaction on a certain small boy who had set a heavy market basket in front of his bare toes and was giving himself up utterly to a dream of human greatness. "What folks is those?" asked Admah Holtz, directing his questions at a lanky negro boy of eleven. The boy opened his mouth to a gummy grin. "Whuh you come from?” "frost the River,” replied Admah, quite without resentment at the col ored boy’s tone. "1i reckon ye come a. long ways. How come you don’ know Peakes when you see ’em?” "Jedge Peakes," interposed a stout negress, evidently possessor of the lanky bov. It was said In the voice of an old time Viennese mentioning llapsburgs. "Gosh:" Admah's round eyes were focussed on the church door into which the gay procession was now passing. "All that fuss over a baby. "Dat’s a Peake baby,” the negress informed him in a chiding tone. "Flora Lee Peake is de name she'll be christened by holy sanctum of de church. De fat gelman jes’ passln in wlf ile cane is .ledge Peake. Mis. .ledge Peake is gone in ahald— ’ "It must cost right smart o’ money, hirin’ a church and alt.” A specula tive light, which even at that early date would brighten Admah's sallow face, began to kindle and to burn, America in those days was still pas toral—or so it looks to us in retro spect. True, we were already in the grip of that mad goddess, Llektra, who makes foul magic by wire and cable, over land and over sea But in our modern arrogance we think Yesterday’s Inventions as ",lsa‘"B links in the evolutionary chain; wit ness the high bicycle which bred again and became a "safety,” only to evolve into a four-wheeled monster with gasoline in its belly an* a potential speed of twenty miles an hour. Light t New York --Day by Day / --- By O. O. M’lNTYKE. New York. Dec. 15.—The most expensive Jail in America and prob ably the worst in the Ludlow bt. Jail-home of the famous "Alimony club." Husbands who refuse to pay wives alimony could he boarded at the finest hotel In town cheaper than in the X^udlow. Prisoners in the Eveless Eden are nearly always men of money. They do prteey much as they please even to attending the Broadway theaters with friendly keepers. Lud low is a shabby building hemmed in by beetling and rickety tone ments. The jail was built by Boss T weed in 1861 and as an ironic touch he spent his last days in It for his par ticipation in municipal graft. Ever since a sort of curse has hung over old Ludlow. It has been the target for a hundred probes. Why it has not been torn down remains a mystery. The site is worth more than $300,000. The upkeep costs abuot $50,000 a year. Never at one time are there more than a dozen prisoners there. To minister to these are a warden arid his de puty, eleven keepers, three cleaners, Two engineers, two cooks, a. physi cian. a matron with assistant and a laundress. It used to be that men whose ma rlmoninl barks went, on the rocks and were bludgeoned by courts for big alimony could go to Ludlow and stay six months and all future payments were wiped out. But the law is changed. Those who won’t pay alimony can be returned there indefinitely. for a man with money Ludlow is a fine place for a rest. He has the freedom of the big yard. He can order all the delicacies of the sea son. smoke the best cigars, read all the newspapers and latest, books and even be entertained by the radio. He also has the satisfaction of knowing he is saving Ids weekly alimony. The old Jail is so much of a Joke that it is always the topic of travesty in revues and it has been ridiculed in hundereds of song lyrics and newspaper storjes. Several theatrical producers are waging war on theatrical dancing schools. It is the custom of many of them to give prospective pupils the idea they can be placed in any show they like, if they take the full course of instruction. As a mat ter of fact the number of dancers selected from these schools by pro ducers Is comparatively nil. There are at least 40 of these schools now operating on the fringe of the Bialto district. A few are sincere ItuP most are not. An apartment hotel for bache lor* tried the European system of collecting tips for three months and then abandoned Is because of dlsatis faction. The plan was to add 10 per cent of the amount of the weekly hill to be distributed amoting (lie ser vants. It was found, however that those who gave a few gratutltles on the side got the best service and other patrons complained. They tell of a man leaving a place near the cuslon house tak ing an envelope from his pocket and looking at. something therein. Then he swooned. He had achieved a good passport picture. The famous Kratelllnl the clown brothers of ‘he <’lc(|tie Medrano In Paris are coming to America soon. Each one of the brothers ha children who are being taught the art of mime Their great great grandfathers befote them were clowns. (Ceprrlght. 1424.) een ninety-one sat not simple exact ly. Neither Is the Chinese rice poddy with its man-turned waterwheel, great-great-great grandfather of the six hundred horsepower turbine. Eighteen ninety-one! Good greclous, we hadn't even had our Spanish War and the delightful sip of foreign blood! We were still in the feudal age. dlvld ed mostly between the Commoners who didn't keep a horse, and the Uncommoners who did. Under the last rutlng the Holtzes were Uncommoners. How the high nose of Southern society, which knew not the name of Holtz, would have curled at the thought. Indeed, In that State where the Horse goes forth like the Centaur with gilded hoofs and the right-of-way into a Icing’s pres ence, the Holtz quadruped was no horse at all. He was something that had escaped the poundkeeper's atten tion. a. creature unworthy to work in span with his mulatto brother, the mule. His name was John. His coat was shabby, Ills eyes dull. His life work was to haul the milk of five consumptive cows from the Holtz's scraggly holding and sleep idiotically while the cans were loaded on the river ferry. On the rare occasions when Ma Holtz could afford the lux ury of murdering one of her little auburn hogs, John rambled away to market, Jo Holtz, the elder of two surviving children, dreaming aimlessly on the seat, slack reins between slack fingers. Honesty then insists that the Holtzes, even though they did origi nate on the wrong side of the wide yellow River, kepi their horse and drove their own carriage. John, com monplace in name 'as in character, awoke one morning in Ids latter years to find that he had become Destiny: a browbeaten and managed Destiny, perhaps, but it was behind his swol len knees and mangy tail that a stern-faced woman with her two dis hevelled brats drove slowly across the iron bridge. Adrnah Holtz sat on top of the family treasures, objects anomalous as the faithful John himself. Against an arm of the green plush rocker he braced an elbow : he remembered his father, seated in that chair, a Jug on the floor beside him. one of Robert (5. Jngersoll's forbidden vol umes perched slantingly under square paned spectacles, also aslant. Those wore the weeks when Pa Holtz for sook (,ils work at the quarry, com plaining that the stone dust cut his lungs. Ma nagged and quoted Strip tures; Pa drank and quoted Ingersoll. Adrnah, from the days when he was cradled In a soapbox, knew J’a as an evil liver. Secretly lie was on T’a's side. The free-thinking, stone-cutter, much old er than his wife, rheumatic and pre maturely gray from dissipation, was a man of the world and as such knew his strength. He had drifted South from somewhere in Pennsylvania. In his early youth htf had been one of those old time printers who read and digested the galleys they set. Jn the quarries he dressed stone with the air of a philosopher, the monotonous thump of his mallet giving cadence to his thoughts. Besides being an infidel he was something of a socialist —hut the latter tendency was only imperfectly expressed, never jirac ticed. He despised ignorance; this aversion was the basis upon which Ma and Pa quarreled oftenest. At the age of eight Adrnah Holtz employed an English far more urban than that of his mother or Jo. who was anaemic, pimply and unambi tious. Adrnah was no purist, but his conversation was remarkably free from the rustic drawl of a rural peo ple who have met and Interbred on the neutral border of two uncongenial States. So on the morning they crossed the bridge, drawn by old John. "Adrnah!" The wagon came so sud denly to a stop that the sly dreamer fell to his rightful place, level with the front seat. "Yes. Ma." "Is the gravestone tidin' good?" He peered over an edge of the idle to see six inches of handsome marble slab projecting beyond the tall hoard Tijis mortuary relie. which once had marked the grave of a fallen pioneer, had served its time as a doorstone on the Holtz farm. Later Pa Holtz em ployed the tools of his trade, smoothed away every trace of Its old inscrip tion, polished It and handed It over to Ma as a convenient slab upon whose hard, cold surface doughnuts could lie rolled and home made pep permlnts cooled to the proper con sistency. Like John the horse. thi» unmarked headstone had its share in the game which Ma Holtz was playing with Fate. "It looks rill right to me," decided Admah, after a moment's Inspection. "Gee ap." This from Ma Holtz, to gether with a whack from a willow switch across old John's shabby flank. The wagon Jolted on. Below the Falls the boy could see a yellowish gargle of .water, slow and dangerous. They found Ta Holtz there four days after he disappeared- Everybody had thought it a good thing for Mu; he had been a drag and a drunkard and a free thinker. But Admali had al ways been a little on Pa's side. Corn whisky never made him cross He stood a lot of hammering, just like the surface of a rock quarry that resists silently, then comes down with a crash. ... Admah looked down at the gargling water below the Falls. His eyes filled with tears, as they always did when he thought of Pa for a long time. And this was strange, because Pa t been a bad man. a neglectful husband ami an indifferent father. Ma Holtz had scarce# pet Pa's green rocker opposite the voiceless melodeon in lhe parlor when she laid the gravestone over a kitchen table and began making peppermint drops for the strung* people whom she had so suddenly adopted to be her own. Jo, whom she called her "good boy" because he lacked sufficient initiative to take him far in mischief, she chose to be her assistant. Admah she appointed salesman. A feature of Dutch Hill, second only to the Soap Factory, was the Car Barn. Here a troupe of Jolly rov ers. who In the languors of Spring changed greasy blue coats to d»nim shirts, a tabled their mules at night, and bv day rumbled along the tracks In small yellow bobtail cars, grand fathers of the fabled Toonervllle Trol ley. Kddie Stek, wise In the world s wiles, told remarkable stories of*these oar conductors who, according to Kd die, were piratical by instinct and wealthy to a. man. Bddie him»»lf had witnessed their evil deeds one day when he hid in a sycamore grov* «t the lonely end of the llnr; there he had seen a buccaneer in blue denim , take down the glass money box and 1 shake a handful of nickels into his \ brown straw hat. , (To Be Continued ToirmrofO j THE NEBBS PLEASE BE MERCIFUL. Directed for The Omaha Bee by Sol Hess (Copyright 1*24) /R.UDY. 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