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About Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922 | View Entire Issue (July 19, 1903)
Where and When Flat Dwellers Make Love Tina FAVORITE PLACE FOR THE FAMILY BENEATH TILfl BAND LOVERS NAIVELY HEEDLESS OF THEIR SURROUNDINGS. PAVILION. " ll O j ' -) ! ' v "V--v. ' ''Cits' i -r. , 4 ' i - - . 1 - ',.,'.'. ,-- ' - ' . - i ; . 1. .,,1 " SOLITARY FlGtTRKS WHO LISTEN TO THE Mt'H7t: T JR rtrE TnOUOITr the MAN WHO BQUAT3 DEJEOTKDLY AT THE PARK'S FRINOEL IT BRINGS UP. (Copyrighted, 1903, by Guy T. V. Isknlskki.) JJS THE rain ceased ita gentle fall k I and turned into a slight driule, I two figures emerged out of the "TSl darkness Into the glow of an irwiiJ electric light and walked along the purk path to a bench, whos Dack ground was a clump of fragrant flowered bushes. "Such a perfectly cosy place!" breathed the young woman, as the man took a hand kerchief from a pocket and carefully wiped the water off two s;ats. Then they Bat down with contented sighs; and a few minutes later, when the dwellers of the neighborhood poured Into the square with the peeping out of the first star, they were "two souls with but a single thought." Neither the constant Shuffling of feet on all sides nor the varied prooesrlon before the pair caused them to unloose Interlocked hands, or her to take her head from close proximity to bis shoul der. Their mutual contemplation bespoke Ignorance of the presence of broadly smil ing strangers. It is such scenes as this that makes the mall park of New York City on a sum mer's night an excellent chart of the human heart and mind. Day in the average metro politan perk Is tame and monotonous. Everybody is more or less conventional. Humanity is on its dignity. Even the few children scattered about and the grown idlers on the benches play and doze with a restrained air. But with fall of night the park becomes a board on which the framut of human feelings is run; and much that Is serious and tragic, amusing and comical, and frlvlloua and inane is seen and heard in and beyond the reach of the yellow lights. This Is true of any night when the city gasps for breath, but especially Is it the case when the band plays. Then the peo ple pour out In greater numbers. Then, under the spell of the rollicking notes of the latest ragtime, or the memory-awakening strains of "My Old Kentucky Home" and other old-time favorites, the conver sations usually kept for family or friendly circles take place with refreshing freedom In the open. No one seems to give a thought to the probability that the person seated next on the bench Is unwillingly being taken into heart and home confi dences. The small park of the metropolis on a sunnier night Is always the favorite tryst lng place of the lovers who live there abouts. It is the only place left to them where they can whisper their "sweet noth ings." A flat takes no thoughts of the heyday of youth; the parlor and sitting room Is too often one. But when the bass drum thunders and the trombone's sonor ous notes float over the benches the lovers are legion. Young couples who are timid on other nights and envious of the braver spirits across the path forget all about their surroundings, lose their bashfulness and tenderly clasp hands and draw closer under the mellowing bars of "Aonle Laurie." This is the best time of all for the photograper after studies to get in good work. So Intent will the lovers and the other people be on their affairs that they would not notice the camera pointed in their direction, and when the flashlight goes off they will still remain ignorant of the fact that they have been taken holding hands or wrapped In reverie. The couples a-woolng are not to be found beneath the band pavilion. Thither flock those who love music for the noise it makes the small boy and his sister. There, too, are found the staid married couples and the children's parents, so that the fa vorite place for the family party in the park is marked and made unchangeable by the youngsters. The wooers are found on the outskirting bencbes in company wlUt aoJIUiry figures who listen to the music for the thoughts it brings up, and the homeward-bound workers, who pause for a moment to catch a strain and then tramp on again. Here, as the melodies sound softly from the bandstand, such scraps of conversation as theso are borne on the air for all who happen around to hear: "Ar thur?" very timorously from the seat along the walk underneath the big elm tree. "Yea, dearie," in a heart-mellowed mascu line voice. "Ar thur, do do oh, Ar thur, do you still love mo, after" And a smacking sound tells the wide, wide world that Arthur does. The "Humph!" of a man in overalls as his pIpe-and-muNlc reverie is disturbed, and the "Gee, listen to the damn IJIts!" of a rounder on the same bench, follow. -y . 3r r-f1 -: t. (i M -V-IiV ... V V next rr4.t f 1 . ! T I GLADYS LILIAN M'GINTIE OF WILDER, Neb.. AGED 18 MONTHS AND HER PET PLAYFKLLOW-Pholo by Hure, Wllber. A few minutes later, an a drawling bass voice asks, "Luclndy, reckon it's putty nigh de time us two been glttln married, ain't It, honey?" an urchin scamperlig toward the pavilion calls the park's attention to his discovery: "Eh, (lore's a big black coon makfn' love to a yaller gal back dere!" Whatever the comments of the outside world, they seem to have no effect on the lovers. They are usually as oblivious to them as a well dressed couple, who had come from a private house bordering on the square, were to an old woman who dropped beside them for a few minutes' rest before trudging on agnln with her lndcn basket. They did not loosen hands for an instant, and the girl did not even turn around to look at the woman as she seated herself. Small wonder that the man who squats dejectedly at the park's fringe car ries home with him many a lover's secret when he would far rather go to his bed comforted by the knowledge that on tho morrow he would be at work again. But the lovers, naively heedless of their surroundings, are matched by the fathers and mothers within the glare of the pavilion lights. Even he who walks afar off cannot escape their frank remarks. "Johnny! John ny Rob erts!" screams a mother, holding a struggling child in her arms, to a small boy fast making his way into a crowd of youngsters farther in the park. "If you don't come here this minute I'll give you another whlppln' like last night's!" "Didn't I tell you she treated her chil dren shameful?" triumphantly asks a woman, evidently Johnny's mother's closest neighbor, of her companion. "She's the one that deserves the licking!" "And I says to her" from a pugnacious type of woman farther down the human border of the walk "I says to her, 'Mrs. Brady, I'll break your fare If you steal another one of me petticoats off me clothes line.' I says. And Mrs. Brady, she " "And so that's the baby. Is it?" from a passerby, who has recognized an acquaint ance "The dear little thing and you'va got a new baby carriage for It. too. That's what I'll have to be getting If I have any more the old one's been used so much It's all worn out." Equally as enlightening as the conver sation heard around the bandstand or on the seats that have come to be known as "lovers' nooks" are the attempts at re partee to be overheard on the less crowded portion of the walks leading to the hand stand. Here groups of youth take their first lessons In mashing. "Hello. Mamie!" an overgrown hoy, with a cigarette sticking to his lips, calls seduc tively to a passing girl. "Hey!" breaks In one of his companions, as the girl looks straight ahead, "leave Mamie alone. Can't you see she's a lady?" Then they laugh. But often Marrie, or whatever name she Continued on Page Fifteen.)
