The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, April 6, 1902, Page 5

droop and drow 0 their p from the big bel the city pr.son, are a ady deep hase the light of day f the courtyard. The rgue turns slowly into blends well with the is before the en- us hush of the a cold, siow m good to me as of the watch”—it but I am to bear driver, company f it, and into the that will goes bring the big eye that marks from the way ght of “Well here all n maybe yc - and when we send for the Coroner— mes we are on hand for and the man dies in e can get to the hos- € in it, but some- in the thick of it ’ there is the muf- elephone bell, a quick sharp rings of the gong office, a call “Wagon! jo streets”; an officer inte the wagon and the nger drowsy, clatter out beneath the 1 of Justice, and into he gong sounding 2 8. riosity from the mot- street as we g0 ft pace to the streets rter. We scatter the swarm over the cobble- aw up with a last warning e door of a little tobacco T the rear. The light nes over a crowd rious, many full ol wagon _enters ence. It holds the rama e sidewalk makes 2 n and the offi- with him. A wd makes a The officers through an en them hatless, d the clear ng more for Harbor Hospital,” and = headlight of the wag- or and the nurse are waiting, d the light and Italian boy who uns in, and the man, ved, is helped in, cerying that art *" The doctor ex- a_cordial, says epileptic fits and The man insists with everybody ds ’ r and makes for the with the Italian boy, the friend m. horses, says it be somethin’ doin’ e roll along among the into the pleasure- 11 Market street, alley from Merchant ons, that leads to the relief to get into the ith its resounding stoné t from the sergeant’s ironically, it would or assembly room.” men on office duty sit but the patrol wagon's und-up has begun. goes the brass-throat- g and in a few moments more the t e idling along in little fter us as we make sers of the Barbary Coast. t a plain drunk—a mi: i working man whom the police- s holding against a_telegraph pole 3 from falling. He is quiet and h e pipe which he is smoking, though it threatens to make of him In- stantaneous combustion. He has to be lifted into his equipage, and when th officer goes to ring in to the office, as is always done, the answer comes to go and pick up a man who has fallen and frac- tured his skull at Montgomery and Sac- remento streets, and to see what is the trouble at Kearny and Bush streets. The night shadows seem darker after Kearny street, as we whirl to the corner described, to find that a man had fallen there, but was taken into a hotel by friends—so an aged man tells us who is about the corner. The horses get a sharp cut as they shy at a broken-down wagon that peers out of the darkness like 2n evil monster, and we head for the cor- ner of Pine and Kearny streets. Here a crowd is assembled around four diminu- tive Japanese, arrested by an officer in citizen's clothes for disturbing the peace. Whisky seems to be at the bottom of their trouble, and their friends of the same race surge excitedly to the very step§ of the patrol wagon as the offenders climb re- iuctantly in. They huddle together, and the drunken man with the pipe looks at them with a lofty air, By the time we reach the station several Japs have arrived, -with no money, but with futile plans for saving the offenders from the wrath to come. They hover around the place all night, but the offenders sleep there. As I stand in the doorway of the court I see a procession of walking delegates, sodden and weary, telling the story of the other half that lives as it can, march- ed by an officer toward the big doors that lead upward to—a night's sleép, or many of them, in prison. Sound sleep, it is, too. They are past regrets, and the stones of the streets are hard. Turning to speak to the driver, I hear a grating noise, and a sudden light flashes in the dim court- yard. It is the door of the Morgue open- ing for another horror. Out of the black wagon a grisly, gratifig sométhing is slowly taking shape. There is a little knot of boys and men watching it. It forces their gaze, as it does mine. Jjust as the gravelike shape of the thing is blackly de- fined against the white marble floor of the Morgue one of the horses of the pa- trol gives a plaintive whinny. It is for Jack, and I see his face in a circle of He beckons, and I stumble in after grewsome thing. The Coroner is there, and some one whispers “‘Suicide!"™ There is a- ghastly sound of turning screws, and the lid comes off. Set in black and gold is a dead girl's distorted face, The gold is her hair, which falls in great THE SUNDAY CALL. DIEREIUICy BROUGHT [N By THE WAGON Sweeping masses over the DIACK -dress of cheap cotton. A kindly handkerchief tied around the jaws hides in part the cruel burns made by carbolic acid, but renders the face scarcely less ghastly than the still lines of the sheeted bodies upon the slabs beyond. One man takes hold of the poor, limpl; crossed hands, another clutches the feet, and the golden hair sweeps the floor as they lay her on a stretcher, which they raise to the vacant marble slab, No lovers will disturb her disappointed heart now. Even the reporters and officers are si- lent as we fcv out from the pity of it all. The doors close and the courtyard is dark again. The sounds of the street are stilled. The hands of the clock mark twenty min- utes to 12—the time for the chpn’b of the Ranks of officers march into the watch. assembly room, the roll is called and the stone floor echoes as they march out by twos to their different beats, There is a fumble in the courtyard and the City Hall fefitml ‘wagon rolls in with a motley col- ction of vagrants and drunks for the main city hotel. They are of all types, from the two men handcuffed together to the woman who heads the procession. She has a red face, a little straw sailor hat with the rim almost gone and the remnants of a white vell, through which her_distorted features peer gro- tesquely. I follow them to the elevator, where one of the drunken men “After you, sir,” when the; cer is strug- him in. At the door an of gling with a drunken, and, as it turns out, crazy negro, that another patrol ‘wagon has just brought in. When he gets upstairs before the sergeant he gives a shriek, breaks from the officer and jumps over the counter, He s caught in a mo- ment, an stairs. It is the earnest now as we rush through the sil houetted darkness of the strests to t! Emnr{.noy Hospital. When we “ring in’”* from there there are orders for two runs. One takes us down toward Pacific and Battery, where the streets are like black slits in a gray curtaln. For me the mys- tery of the night makes crime lurk in every alley. Not so the driver. He only believes in what he sees, and he shouts at a stray little Chinawoman toddling across the street in a voice that saves her from the iminent danger of being ground be- neath %‘ ‘wheels of the juggernaut of the law. ‘e turn into an 6y 80 narrow and black that the light of heaven's stars cannot reach it, The officer on the wagon .disappears with the other in the d[loom. 1 hear a muttered exclamation and jump down to lxzvmtll‘uk Against the wall on the narrow sidewall & man’s body, 1ifeless. It has no move- ment as slide it into the wagon. Boon we get a strange odor. The driver says: “D'ye smell that wine bum? They are the worst kind. He's just soaked in Chinese rum. Almost as bad as a dope flend, and we don’t pick up as many of them nowadays as we used to.” And so were my thoughts of a grewsome mid- night tragedy shattered. . .’ult as they lift the living case of Chi- nese rum into the clutches of the City Prison the gong in the sergeant’s office rings furiously and the officer who has been getting forty winks on a settee rushes out. It is a “hurry call”—a man is shot in a saloon brawl, and I clutch the ‘wagon rl."lg with a feeling that now o the spell of night has begun to work earnest. The sparks fly from the cobblestones and we scatter the wicked as we rush on- ward. We see the glimmer of a red cross on an ambulance as it flashes by, doing extra duty on one of our runs, bearing & man with a broken leg. As we g0 through Pacific street where the rickety Baloon pianos are still tinkling the khakl uniforms of.soldiers are numerous. They are the cause of the run we find as we clang the gong in front of a saloon full of them. The officer of the wagon runs in. Between the screening doors we can hear and see that a free-for-all fight is in rogress. There are some negroes, and ust as the officers are bringing out a soldier with a blood-stained uniform and a battered head one of them throws a chair, and a shot rings out. The sound of police whistles! and in the next few moments thers are lively times. Three [more men are put in the wagon. I am in there, too? The wounded man is still and stark In the bottom of the wagon. The lights dance as we speed for the mergency Hospital. Vice nor Justice annot -stop us, for a human life is at stake. Tenderly the wounded man is lifted out and left to the ministrations of those 0 whom such is a dally business. Thers s & message for us from the office to stop again on the Barbary Coast for more trouble. But we fly back to the prison with our three prisoners. The ser- geant meets us. “The man at the hospi- tal died just after you left. The message Just came,” he said. ““There ain’'t so man; again. When we start back we a passenger a middle-aged woman clad in poor co with & rusty cape and hat, She is “happy dru 80 Jack says, and she leers in a maudlin “Y; at the officer as he hands her in. At the grlson I go upstairs with her into the brightly lighted room, with a side view of adjoining cor- ridors, vistas of steel ba and fages pressed against them. e M says the sergeant before she can tell her name. Forty-nine years she confesses to, and born in New Hampshire. “She is an old-timer; and good for six months as a vagrant on Monday,” the driver tells me. They all have a horror of hearing the words “one vag” shouted to the n eant as the officer brings them runkenness usually means discharge in the memlnfi, but vagrancy means time- serving. Though for a wonder we have not been called to a murder in Chinatown, The wagon is busy for the next hour, and the prisoners vary from a smooth- faced young clerk, drunk to sottishness, to a little gray-bearded old man who says at the station, wish you to understan’ (hic) shentlemen, that I am not (hic) drunk at all.” Another trip bripgs in a middle-aged artist, who 'is swearing drunk, but who clings to a photo button picture of a child on his coat when they take his valuables at the office. There is another woman, too, a young one who kicks and Screams in a drunken frenz all the way from the saloon from whicl she is taken. Once in the sleepy lull just after 1 a. m. another patrol wagon brings in a swell-looking young man and a pretty young girl. There is a long con- sultation with the lleutenant, and then an officer takes the girl to her home and the young man i about his busin the police department world does not wears on. T frequent, and J office duty snore benche: do my eves I see 1 and by in the' courty throug}; the window i t is th r r mist of dows oppos more and more flicker out. Sudd rushes into the ec come. Out in the open a blue sky seems truly the vault of heaven after a night on the p Wife and Mothe in the Home. Continued From Page Four. trol wagon. +* » gone from it, it is imp loss or fi of mother earth. gitt to Jod_thought to give the sweetest thing almig r er of mother’s in the position to wh world exalts her—queen of Bigelow, w f German Emperor enthusiasm, Il boys sha > Empress, th M Bigelow soon_aftel the canoe, listened to his lescrip £ shooting down a s through foaming rap gerous rocks, and when he had finis she said: * ! That is too danger- allow my child * said she, with her vand. “He , but I am Emperor of th The fact is, father may the hom pe cradle rules this to be a gr speak with pow s the influel and bred seulptc f th make on the de patriots, scholars, ceive their lence and mothers. Bec their mothers est of all affe woman must 2lwa the the history of The mother, in her Of the soul; and she Of character, and makes Who would be a savage 4 But for her gentle care, a Christian man.” It is not a question whether a mother will influence her children or not, but how she will influence them. Her influence is potent whatever it may be. 1t was poleon, who ever recognized the of mothers’ influence, who sald: “T! ture good or bud CONGuct pends entirely on the mother rather a strong statement, and | to underraje the influence of the for good of evil. “But s mains,” as Dr. Theodore Cuyler says, “that it is mainiy the mother who shapes its the home Influence and imparts to prevailing atmosphere; for the fhos portant part of moral education mospheric. The purity or impurity. tonic or the demgraiizing qualit that atmosphere of the home depend, the most part, on_the mother, as sovereign of the home. There is throne; there is her sway; there she can make or mar the destiny of the immortal soul beyond any ome this side of the throne of God. The mother's influence over her chil- dren being so powerful and permanent, she plays no small part in shaping great national ends. All great legislators have felt this and acknowledged this. Scotland, in her high reverence for motherhood, insists that “an ounce of mother is worth more than @ pound of clergy.” Napoleon, who cherished a high con- ception of a mother’'s power, when asked which wers the best training-places for recrufts, replied, “The nurseries.” He believed that the mothers of the land could shape the destinies of France, and be. said, “The great need of France Is mothers.” It is sald, to them he looked for help in inspiring those traditions of lory which enabled his raw and half- it t 1 led_soldlers to sweep away from battle- field after battle-fleld the chivairy of Bu- rope. An anclent orator, referring to the pow- ers of Roman mothe; , “The em- pire is at the fireside. What a_memorable example is furnish- ed us in Spartan history of the mfluence of mothers in shaping nationa: ends. It is sald the Spartan nation had no walls to its capital except the breasts of its nobie defenders. That being the case wes can readily see why the mothers and the whole nation should desire beyond ail things else_that thelr boys should be “herolcally brave and indomitably hardy in the endurance of pain.” A Spartan mother replied to her boy when he com- plained to her that his sword was too short, “Add a step to it.” Another Spar- tan mother as she gave to her son a shield, sald, “This, or on it,” meaning either to bring it back or be brought back upon it dead. The nation that doesn't revers woman as wife and mother retards its own best development. Those nations which have kept womanhood in a condition of servi- tude have lived long enough to rue their folly. What hope can any people have whose women are in such a conditfon that they pray, as the women are said to have once dome in Hindoostan, “Oh, Vishnu, let not my child be a girl, for very sad is the life of woman!"” If the mothers of this land could but realize that they hold the secret of true reform and the making of the future of this great country largely in their own keeping and wouid live In keeping with this great truth, casting aside all the weakening follles of fashion and soul famine and rising to the high plane where God intends they should live, then would our hcmes become schools of politeness, Godliness, tender affection and sturdy patriotism. Many in all walks of life are striving for the crown of greatest joy and of chiel honor. Who performs a higher task, a nobler work than the queen of the home kingdom, who brings up a family of chil- dren in & proper manner? Her work un- der the most favorable circumstances ls most_difficult and a great work. Whers can be found a finer instance of heroism than that of a mother training, develop- ing, educating the immortal souls com- mitted as a sacred trust to her keeping? She fits thém to bless the world and to be forever blessed in eternity. “The mother element,” says Elisabeth Harrison, “has brooded over all institu- tlons of learning, has kept alive all acad- ::m.otmud preserved and cheristed em.