It happened like this: While entertaining some new found Frisco friends in my room in the St. Francis Hotel, I was pleasantly surprised by the head director of the Jewish Welfare Board, Shea Swartz by name, who requested on behalf of the Board, that my pedigreed bunk be spread on the rocky soil of Alcatraz. The five hundred boys gathered in the barrack auditorium and gave the Whiz Bang a grand and glorious welcome. It was one of the bright lights of a very enjoyable tour of the coast.
Later in the evening, accompanied by George Duffy and G. W. DeLano of the district attorney’s office, we inspected the famous San Francisco morgue. It was a gruesome visit, I’ll admit, but some of the curse was removed by the marvelous furniture and apparatus used in the handling of the unfortunate.
From the morgue we glimpsed a view of the city jail, through the kind offices of Walter C. Schiller, who is bond and warrant clerk in the Hall of Justice.
It was next to Chinatown where we were met by the sergeant in charge of the Chinatown vice squad. Two of his operatives conducted our party through a score or more of Chink gambling and hop joints that had recently been raided. We sincerely thank the squad, but regret not having seen one or two places that had not been raided.
It is the hour of dusk that Chinatown pads to and fro noiselessly. In the little tangle of crooked streets, blue lozenges of lights, sitting gods and queer smells that babble of Oriental talk is incessant at this hour. Women parade in gaudy headdress and beads of jade. The men wear their gaudiest silken robes. There are dried-up men whose faces are old with the age of eastern lore, young women who walk with mincing steps and Oriental grace, cherry-cheeked babies tottering uncertainly.
We passed up Honolulu until later in the year and made a transcontinental jump to New York to try and “Get Gertie’s Garter.” Don’t believe I’ll ever be contented “down on the farm” after all the wonderful people and wonderful sights of the past two months. But here goes for Lil’ Ol’ New Yawk, as seen through the eyes of a farmer.
Blistering Broadway
In the old days we used to hear startling tales of the decadence of the Paris theatre. It is no longer necessary to cross the pond to have one’s aesthetic (?) senses stirred. The New York stage will do it for you this season. Right behind the Broadway footlights you can see everything done in the name of Art from witnessing a young lady actually climb in a bed already occupied by a male to observing a squad of girls play strip poker until—