Omaha Daily Bee Newspaper, August 9, 1903, Page 25

i: Ul OME and see my real roof gar- den,” sald a well known New Yorker to his guests after din- ner one hot summer evening. ‘I flatter myself that it's a new stunt.” Ho took them on the roof of his house and showed them one of the best small gardens to be found anywhere in the city. The flowers and plants were growing in real beds of soil—not In pots and tubs, as {s usual with gardens cultivated on the roofs of houses in large, congested citles. A small fountain played in the center amidst a shrubbery of Japanese dwarf trees, and cosy eeats were provided in shady nooks for young men and maldens who might like to study astronomy to- gether, as young men and maidens hava done ever since roofs were invented. Al- together, the garden was a delightful place. A man could linger there and imagine that he was in a real old-fashioned rustic gar- den Instead of on a roof in the heart of a great city. ‘“What do you think of it?" asked the host. ““Isn’t it really a new stunt? Doesn't it beat everything in the ‘rus in urbe’' line ever attempted?” “Well, hardly,” said one of the guests. “Wasn’'t there a Babylonian king who did the same thing some thousands of years ago? He took a countiry girl for his queen, and nothing was too good for her, in his estimation. He loaded her with gifts, as only a Babylonian king could. “But still she wasn't happy. She didn't like f{he city life, and she wanted her old garden. “‘My love, we are rather crowded here,’ said the king, ‘but we will do our best for Real Castles in the Air e THE WOMEN GOSSIP OUT OF DOORS THE CHILDREN ARE ALWAYS OUT ON THE STREET. you." So he sent for his palace chamberlain and ordered a garden as you would order a lunch. “'0 King!" said the chamberlain, ‘un- doubtedly you are the greatest monarch that ever lived, but I don't quite see how you can have a garden. We are too crowded here. There's no room anywhere on the ground.’ ‘“ “Then make one on the roofs,’ said the king, and thus it was that the hanging gardens of Babylon became one of the scven wonders of the world. They were the original roof gardens, and none of our American imitations is ever likely to equal them." Nevertheless, New York manages to get a great deal of pleasure out of its roof life, even though it is way behind Babylon, In other crowded American cities, life on the roof is a great institution, but no- where else is it so much practiced as in New York. ““New Yorkers,” says a wid:ly- traveled man, ‘dwell on their rooftops far mo%: than the Orientals, about whose roof life so much has been written.” When the ‘“good old summer time' spreads its hot hand over the city, life is not pleasant even in a fashionable and spacious apartment house, Parties given on the roof are always far more popular than those given in the room below. “I have noticed,” remarked a confirmed diner-out, ‘“‘that if the hostess leads the way to the drawing room after dinner during the hot spe!l the function is always & fallure. The guests sit around limply in easy chairs, mop their heated brows amnd are as dull as ditchwater, They talk about nothing but the weather. Nobody is in- clined to play, or sing, or do anything entertaining. “But If the hostess says, ‘Shall we go on the roof? everybody becomes alert and Jovial at once. Cushions and light chalrs are taken up, the banjo and the guitar are produced, everybody remembers a coon song which his negro ‘mammy’ taught him in his childhood and the guests don’'t want to go home until long after midnight—so delightful is it to sit out under the stars and enjoy the cool night breezes with the humming city far beneath you.” To wealthy people who remain in the city during the summer, roof life is a luxury, but to the poor folk in the tenement districts it is a stern necessity. When the mercury in the thermometer is mounting steadily upwards to the heat prostration point, life in their boxed-in, ill-ventilated cubicles becomes unendurable. The very roofs themselves are often hot to the touch long after the sun has gone down, but at least one can get fresh air on them, and an occasional whiff of cool breeze. “Rich people often come dowu here and pity the poor tenement dwellers because they have to stay in such small, stuffy rooms,” sald the janitor of an East Side tenement house; “but, as a matter of fact, I don't suppose there are any people in the world who live more in the open alr, “The children are always out In the streets all through the summer days. They romp about, lightly clad, and don't seem to feel the heat. The women spend a great deal of the day gossiping out-of-doors, or sitting on their ‘stoops,’ or at their open windows. And as soon as the sun goes down they gather on the roof to spend the evening. Very often whole families sleep there, dragging their mattresses and pil- lows upstairs. “I don’'t supose a summer ever passes without some people falling off these roofs and being killed on the sidewalk. It is the commonest of East Side tragedles Sometimes a man simply rolls off in his sleep, sometimes he gets sleep-walking and tumbles off. ‘““The children and young men scramble about the roofs and jump from one roof to another in the most reck- less manner. SBome of the roofs are divided from each other by high spikes, which are curved so as to project several feet over the streets. Do you think that stops the youngsters. Not a bit of it. They swing themselves around the splkes like cats, hanging seven stories above the side- walk. It makes a man’'s blood run cold to see them sometimes; but they very seldom, if ever, fall. Accidents don't hap- pen to the adventurous; they happen to the people who just lle down quietly on the roof until they fall over some night in their sleep.” “Isn’t the roof rather small sometimes for all the people who want to use it?" the Janitor was asked. “Yes, It 1s—and that's our greatest trouble. The roof causes more quarrels in a tenement house than anything else, On very hot evenings you can see them lying there packed almost as close as sardires in a box. One man walks over another who is sleeping, and wakes him up, as cross as a bear with a sore head. Or, perhays, a baby insists on crying and keeping every- one awake, until they all turn on the un- fortunate mother and try to make her take it down to her rooms, Then the father offers to fight, and there's a ‘rough house.’ “‘Sometimes the people who live on the top floor don't care to go on the roof them- selves and object to other people doing so. They say the noise keeps them awake. I have known them to block up the passage to the roof and defy anybody to try to get up. Then, of course, there are quar- rels and fights, appeals to the landlord and complaints to the Board of Health, Ard the poor janitor has to mix up in the squabble until his life isn't worth lving.* In many of the New York tenements pigeons, fowls and other live stock are kept on the roofs. Quarrels often rise through one man stealing another's pigeons, This has been reduced to a fine art. Some East Siders train tumbler pigeons to attract the ordinary pigeons to their coops by their queer antics in the air. When the strange pigeons are safely Inside the coop is closed and they are kept prisoners for a few days until they regard the new coop as thelr home. Other thieves attract the pigeons by smearing anis seed, which all pigcons love, on the coop. The roof life of New York Is full of human interest, as it must needs be when many thousands of people spend the greater part of their life all summer in these castles in the air. They love and quarrel, fight and sleep, steal and murder on the roof, Just as other people do in the streets or in thelir houses. : Patrolmen who do duty on the KEast Side tell you that a “tough,” when chased by the police, nearly always 'r!e:s to get away over the roofs rather than along the streets. The average “tough’” knows the maze of tenements, flre escapes and roofs far better than the ordinary man knows the streets. It needs a bold and active policeman to catch him when he is once on the roofs, for he will jump from one to the other with incredible daring, and then slide down a fire escape and be on the roofs across the street before the “cop” realizes he is gone. The annals of the New York police record many a des- perate battle fought in this strange ter- ritory. Murder has been done there more than once or twice. But the romance of New York roof life centers mostly around its multitudinous love affairs. In the tenement districts the roof is Romeo's and Juliet's favorite haunt. 014 janitors say that nearly all the lead- ing Tammany politiclans woed and won their brides on a tenement roof before the magic world of “graft’” bhad thrown its doors wide open to them, The lucklest owners of real castles In the air are the janitors of skyscrapers In New York, Chicago, S8an Francisco, Phila- delphia, Buffalo and other commercial cities, As a rule, these janitors and their familles live in little houses built on the skyscraper's roof. It is an ideal location for a man who wants to be out of the busy whirl of the city., The quarters are generally good, and no cooler place could be found in the heat of summer, Sometimes people dwell In these alr castles for weeks at a time without going down to mingle with the wunder world. There is generally a rule against the jani- tor's family using the elevators during the daytime, and, rather than walk down twenty storles, they stay In their eyrie, Had the Papers A few bold spirits determined to prevent the new lady agitator from Kansas from speaking. “Where is your lecture license?’ they de- manded. With a glance of withering scorn, min- gled with triumph, she opened her grip, ex- tracted therefrom a paper, and waved it in their faces “Here it Is!" she shouted vindictively. It was her marriage certificate. Even then there was one man oun the committee of protestors who could not understand why his assoclates acknowledged their de~ feat so readily. He was single.—Judge.