A year before in downtown Chicago the din was an ear-splitting racket of horns, whistles, yells, songs, and exploding cannon.
A year before the downtown streets were filled with hundreds of laughing men and women, roystering parties filling the air with the uproar of tin horns and revolvers.
NOISE SEEMS A SACRILEGE.
That night there were a messenger boy in La Salle street blowing a tin horn and a man at Wabash avenue and Harrison street. The other pedestrians looked at them as if they considered the noise a sacrilege. It was with the same feeling that they heard the blowing of the factory whistles in the few cases where the engineers forgot.
A year before the outlying districts were awakened by the firing of cannon and the shouts of people in noisy celebrations. That dread night there was nothing to keep residents awake except grief.
MAYOR ASKS FOR SILENCE.
To insure this condition, as the only fitting one, Mayor Harrison had issued a proclamation in which he said:
"On each recurring New Year's eve annoyance has been caused the sick and infirm by the indulgence of thoughtless persons in noisy celebrations of the passage of the old year. The city authorities have at all times discouraged this practice, but now, when Chicago lies in the shadow of the greatest disaster in her history for a generation, noisemaking, whether by bells, whistles, cannon, horns or any other means, is particularly objectionable.
"As mayor of Chicago I would, therefore, request all persons to refrain from this indulgence, and I would particularly ask all railway officials and all persons in control of factories, boats, and mills to direct their employes not to blow whistles between the hours of 12 and 1 o'clock tonight."
Persons not reached by this proclamation had seen the lines waiting entrance at the morgues. The few peddlers who had tin horns for sale found no buyers. This market, which in other years has been a profitable one, on Dec. 31, 1903, was dead. The venders slunk up to the building walls and, even in trying to sell, made little noise with their wares.