The evening world. Newspaper, June 15, 1918, Page 11

: SATURDAY, JUNE 15, 1918 Now That New York’s Dark aybe We'll See Once More , - City’s Famous Old Ghosts! Verona’s Hessian Shade Recalls Spirit Visitors That Have + ' Woven Their Strange Doings Into New York’s Ghost Legends—Ghosts Far More In- teresting Than Verona’s. By Robert Welles Ritchie ghost of the Hessian officer who has Mved, rent free, for cumber- vine Jess years in the old hermitage at Verona, N. J., has given ap chain i ts no harpsichord tn fhe anctent Colonial mansion, untenanted the persistent Hessian these many years; but musical sharps of town tnsist that what they hear o’ nights is not piano music the dulcet grace notes of the accordion. It is the liquid lisping of harpsichord that causes their hair to rise. Go one is constrained det tt go at that. : i ‘Which lead» naturally to the statement that right here in New York wwe had far more interesting ghosts than a harpsichord playing Hes (Hessian ghosts should be barred, anyway, by the Mayor's Commit- on National Defense.) For a great city, New York has as complete a oft ghost legend as any witch village of New England; this despite ‘Gar akyecrapers, subways and aeroplane night patrols. “Were are a few of New York's ‘ ‘Who tn the Spirit World” Mat need introduction to a new gen- Bahand, wt presents Its battered front go the polson bearing winds from Constadic Hook, stands the Randolph Tt was built by john Ran- of Baton Rouge, La, a wealthy ” planter who used to bring his on Zobp Randolph installed in the yard tris summer home an old fashioned smpergenoy. ‘On the night of Juty 17, 1859, the Wend alarm of this plantation bell c neighbors for @ mile about. eame running to find John Ran- dead in his bed, a long bladed i Stern through tie throat. His | “iamdly sold the house. The murdere: $@ever was caught. Randolph's m: stem became listed in the gristy roll "Ge Mhaanted.” grant and his large brood moved the tumble-down house, The householder’s aged mother wes bed- | siden and a little childish. She had ] wot been long tn one of the high cell- | tnged chambers when she complained Le terror of hearing the sound of a Bell at nights. Her son and daugh- fer-in-law laughed at her fears. —One night—it was July 17—the *@amily was roused by terrific scream- fag from the sick woman's room, “The dell—the dell!” she cried tn , “wp folly of terror and #he died in de- / Brium before morning. The family ’ the bell, that night—a thin, (ghostly tinkling coming now from » the walls, now from beneath the floor. J“, Here is the strange solution of va mystery, no less eerle than the { ,physical hypothesis: A hard headed ypoliceman from Richmond set a trap fm that haunted house and caught a oF, about whose neck was wired a pehild’s sleigh bell. Who belled the rat—and why? (Now hear the story of the White “Woman of Greenwich Street and how whe cursed every watchman of the grarehouse at Nos. 37-39 on that fhoroughfare: @ great many years ago—so the tale runs—a young girl who lived in j tide then fashionable house at No. 13 Greenwich Street, whose marble pil- lage still can be seen, hanged herself om the attic when word came that er lover had been drowned in tho hina Sea. Her old home became the Wnited States Hotel, then degener- «ated into a tenement. One night in 1916 John Palmer, a jerk in an express office located in the adjacent warehouse, and Tom ‘Whaten, the watchman for the ware- ‘fhouse, heard a woman's shriek com tng from that part of the warehouse ¢“pearest to the ancient building at “No, 13. Both passed through a door “fpto a far, dim chamber and saw a “wraith of white vanish through the (polid brick wall, Whalen died within two weeks. «he next watchman to be disturbed ‘by the White Woman put a ladder ‘$0 « side wall, climbed it and peered through a window whence he had geen a pale fight issuing. He saw a «shadowy girl sitting before the dim t 8 of an old walnut dressing Nefabie and combing her ha'r, This ‘"qaichman was removed to Bellevue's psychopathic ward three weeks later @p4 died in an asylum, McLaughlin, wi succeeded him, found vis ble hand throwing stones at him dur- tng his rounds of the dark building; be quit his job, One other man fel cold thing touch his check and dis- covered when he came to light that a dash of green paint was smeared Pie | “gwetve years. ‘gba China Bea. *ockaway hae its ghost no less Luan ) ; an ‘the White Woman of Greenwich reet has not been heard from for Perhaps she haunts »| beds, there being no helrs to contest Wot many years ago a Furopean| Greenwich Street. This is “Old Uncle Tow/* the oysterman who lived | im @ shack on piles off what is now) Benson Avenua A crusty old cove! tm life, Peter McBride, who was known to the baymen thereabouts dy the more descriptive cognomen be- | cause of his white thatch and beard, | appears to have carried his grouch into the nether world of spirits with him ‘ | After “OM Uncle Tow” died two brother eystermen jumped his oyster | thelr larceny. They spent a night in| the bleak shack where a fow weeks before the body of the recluse had been found guarded by a gaunt New- foundiand dog. Then the spirit grouch wreaked his vengeance upon these two oyster equatters, ‘The lamp suddenty went out, thoush | there was no wimd stirring; ghostly finger nafls rapped on the single smeared window pane; a gutteral chuckle sounded from the rafters. There was @ thump-thump-thumping, “just like @ dog scratching fleas.” as one of the adventurers afterward de- scribed the noise. Both fied. } After the report of “Uncle Tow's aunt” had become common a party of young men thought the best finish | to a wild night in Rockaway beer halls | | would pe an adjournment to the | haunted oysterman’s cabin. They |went there. But they came away more nearly sober than any had been in weeks and a temperance revivalist who happened to be holding forth in Rockaway at that time made a prom- ising gieaning of brands from the burning. All of which recalls the haunted ‘Drewery which used to stand at Georgia and Liberty Avenues, in Brooklyn. These were German ghosts, no less; more dangerous than other kinds because of their peculiar meth- ods of frightfulness, -Begifining with a German count who opened his veins in & back room of the brewery, there was a succession of German sutcides, including the proprietor, which clut- tered the place with wailing Teutonic shosta The accursed building was torn down several years ago. ‘True to the city’s cosmopolitan pop- ulation, the ghosuly census includes a Chinese girl. Of Bow Kum, the plum blossom, lobbygows and “snow boys” in the city’s yellow triangle still do talk, though she was murdered ten years ago. Bow Kum had the misfortune to find herself the prize for which rival tongs elected to fight i out in the last real Chinatown serap on record. She was ® Slave girl and beautiful, ac- cording to the standards of Kwang- tung. She died with a knife in her heart one night up on Pell Street. Now of SUN nights the ghosliy tin- kle of her three-stringed guitar float: over the huddled roofs of the Coles. uals, and they who hear hasten to set out rice cups and smoking punks be- | fore @ neglected joss, ——— SLOW BUT SURE. TE telegraph messengegigt Ash- land, Ky. Gerald says the Western Union News, is fa- millar with the principle embodied in Elbert Hubbard's story, “A Message to Garcia,” although this will Probably be his first intimation that such @ story was ever written. A local confectioner called for a mes- senger to go out to a farmhouse for |two dozen eggs. Gerald was detailed | for the errand, which ordinarily would | consume thirty minutes, At the end of | three hours he returned with the eggs | and was promptly called on the carpet | by the manager to explain his long ab- | sence from the office, In a round Irish |brogue Gerald explained that the |farmer had only twenty-three oggs, and ne had waited two and one-half | hours for a Plymouth Rock | other ess. to lay the | Gerald refused to aa ose for his photo- ——— | THE BEAUTY OF IT. “Beauty is only skin deep,” quoted |* the Wise Guy. “Yes, that's the beauty ' of tt." added the Simple Mug.—Phila- aowpitia dseourd, ; \ay N A \ » With the American Army in France THIRD OF A SERIES OF SKETCHES DRAWN “OVER THERE” BY PAUL D. BROWN, U, S. A. Washin prem, 18, Prem Pewishing OOH. Bening Wert Pe PP SOC. ni REBiAS . Taxing the Goof Who Wears Both Belt and Suspenders at the Same Time Is Fair Enough During War Times, but the Way the Barbers Are Taxing Is Bar- berous—Landscaping Rates for Toupee Mowing, Chin Lawn Cutting and Hedge Trimming Will Have No Friends but the Human Egg—But Wait Till They Tax Phonographs, Then the Barber Will Get His! BY ARTHUR (“BUGS”) BAER. Copyright, 1918, by the Press Publishing Co. (The New York Evening World). KBHRBOOTCH! Which ts a ifberal translation of the Eskimo S (that 1s, if any Eskimo was ever liberal) expression jazzbo, meaning to grab two tens for a five. It looks as if old George Public is scheduled to be skerbootched again. Ain't been so much agitation since Hank’s peace boat turned out to be a flivver. A Har vard professor earomed into Congress and barked louder than one of those Skoda guns. The old boy wants to bilk Congress into smearing war taxes on gasoline when drunk for pleasure purposes, high silk hats on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, pet goidiish kept in equartums with wheelbases over 120 inches and imitation sealskin earmuffs. The Harvard dird also thinks there should be a battle tax on wives and other non-ssentials. Fair enough. Even a Harvard pro fessor can't guess wrong all the time. ‘Whattzmore, the old Harvard goof aims to toss a skirmish tax on afl plump gentlemen who wear both suspenders and a belt. He chirps that any fat rascal who can afford to wear galluses and a belt at the same time can also afford to cough up a battle tax. ‘That's the second time the Harvard lad swatted the Holstein in the eye. Gallu a bolt at the same time are extravagance during war times pants deserves that luxury. Don’t pamper your trousers Nation is at war, But, whe some portion of the war tax menu is fair enough, there tsm’t much nutrition in the rest of it. Everything has gone up like 4 @hermometer in Hades. Even the whistle on a peanut stand is consid ered a luxurious noise. Celluloid villains are being slaughtered in six episodes. Before the war busted out, the movie villains never croaked under fourteen episodes at the same price we now pay for six There are now three omelettes to every egg. ‘The tal) prices are flat tening appetites and the dyspeptic birds are having al! the fun. They can’t spoil your appetite if you haven't any. ‘The tonsorial department of the strategy board has flat-wheeled ‘nto the tax line. No more excursion rates for journeys in the old ewtvel chair. Barber refuses to scald your face with an Incandescent towel for less than a smooth dime piece. Before the war, if you can remember that far back, the chin butchers used to burn your mug gratis. In the good old days your barber used to remove moles, warts, ears and other superfluous growths free of chai tostons Sepamenaied Game* Gale team Couey glorious Jorspengied daye? Only to ps and body's while ge. Do you remember J memory that far is that it ts liable to fly back and knock you loose from your hat. If the barbers have their way, and they will, it wfll cost half an iron man to have your toupee mowed. And two bits to have your chin lawn clipped. That's two bits a ohin, which t@ tough on Bill ‘Taft and the other multiple chinned gents, If you have any extra hedges running from your ears to your collar button they will be taxed extra, Rough work on the backs of necks will be slightly cheaper, and Adam's apples will be knocked off for a dollar a dozen, The old dish hair cut, which consisted of slapping a vacant soup tureen on your skull and then barraging the result with oyster shells, will be jumped to the orthodox Interstate Commerce rates of 3 cents a mile for commuters and 4 cents for citizens. The Swampoodle or broken bottle hair trim will be erased from the almanac. The Swampoodle wool clip originated about the same time as the marriage ceremony, owing to cave wives’ quaint custom of starting a cave argument by grabbing thelr cave husbands by the hair and tossing em for a goal, A facial massage under straight Marquis of Queensberry rules will ‘be hopped 10 per cent., and tonte will be assessed a jitney extra. Figuring on the new battle prices, a workingman will be able to latter past the old red and white pole about once every Halley's comet. Anybody with a borrowed grass cutter ought to pick up a corpulent living golng around « ng his neighbor's skulls, Kuss that Kaiser, anyway! With haircuts fifty seeds a throw and shavepteces twenty-five megs a copy, the only tonic we will be able to afford ts a little ether with the check, Next! Feast of St. Vitus. 1 NE brings the feast day of St./ing gifts to his tmage an! dancing Vitus, whose name is popularly | before It on June 18, The intercessivr sociated with the nervous or/of St. Vitus was thought to be erical affection which impels the | pectatiy valuable in cases of hysteri ns to violent motion. A chapel|among young girls and women, at Vitns, | the dance of St. Vitus became é orgy of religious frenzy. ‘I Haey vod health | oricin of the malady called st tet eS be esi ny ee eae ir Ulm was dedicated 1 t was believed that Vitus ole of packets of chocolate and cigarettes | to do-—arranged a “party” for a war | I think Mrs. Mary Smith Churchill ts a pretty good soldier, rather satisfactory uptolfer of the splendid — traditions of dur Revolutionary women, our wives and mothers of Civil | War days. In her | book of spontaneous, close packed letters, bome from two years in tho war sone, which she has called |*You Who Can Help,” she makes a distinct appeal to American — women. both in what she asks of them direct- ly for winning the war and through the example of her own busy, cheerful, gen- erous war service womewhere in France for a yeoar and a half, “I pay my debt for Lafayette and Ro- chambeau,"satd Kif- fin Rockwell, goul of the Lafayette Exca- drille, Light-heart- edly smiling at dis- comfort, workimg in- cessantly at a bun- (dred tasks, burying anxioQs forpsbodings in the bravé heart of | soldier’s wife, Mrs, Churchill has | paid and is paying her debt, Her most extensive war service in ‘aris, where she went in August, 1916, to Join her husband who was de- tailed there, has been done with the American Fund for French Wounded, in which Miss Anne Morgan bas in- terested go many New York women, Hut one of the most delightful inci- dents described in “You Who Can Help,” and perhaps the most unique “war bit’ of any American girl, is little Mollie Churobtll'’s adoption of & good-looking, twenty-six-year-old French poliu, Poulain Leon of the 106th Regiment of Artillery, Mollie, in her pictures, is @ slender, frank- looking Lite person, perhaps twelve years old. Mollie's godson was recommended by the Caplain of bis company, and whe Wok him under her wing before she had been in Paris @ month, with her mother’s cordial appropation. He was a native of the invaced district, and “he bas not been able to hear one began,” Mrs, Churchill writes, “He wanted to hear from somebody some- where, as he has practically lived in the trenches for two years, So at the ouvroir Moll is very much interested and is very faithful in loosing after him, and she realizes that she is the one person he has to do anything for him.” in bis first free minute after the Battle of Verdun he sat down and wrote to the little American girl that he was all right. And the first thing he did when he arrived in Paris on his furlough was to call on her, and the two talked steadily for four hours, “He had tea with her,” chronicies Mollie's mother, “Although she had cakes, she asked him if he would like some bread and butter, This had Jeased him to death, and Mollie said, other, | guess there isa’t any more “i butter in the nouse, for he ‘t had butter since 1914," M (Molie's father) found him very well informed and in- teresting, and we were both delighted with his most courteous manners, yet | how could he have them when he ha |neen living im the trenches for two years and a half? “He was so gratoful for what Mollie } had done for bim, and ste had made him tell her what he liked and needed da d him what he rough most, and i SATURDAY, JUNE 15, 1918 Her Father U.S. Staff Officer, Her Mother a War Worker, So Mollie Adopted a Poilu How Twelve-Year-Old American Girl in France, Where Her Parents Are Both Serving U. S. Flag, Became God- mother of Twenty-Six-Year-Old French Sol- dier, Told in Book by Her Mother. By Marguerite Mooers Marshall HE ts the wife of Lieut Col. Marlborough Churchill, staff officer for Gen. Pershing and Inter on Gen. March's staff as Chief of Artillery Operations But she was in Paris—and in the war—nine months defore America. Her little daughter Mollie became the war godmother Of a French poila. She herself gave one of the only two suits in her war wardrobe to a sixteen-year-old French refugee. She lived through a year of Zeppelin raids in Parts, She went where shells were bursting so near to St Quem Un that she “could almost eee the color of the eyes” of the 45,000 Germans occupying it. In order to keep her eelf and her daughter warm she had to make a fire of the emptied packing boxes sent her from America with supplies for the French wounded. She loaded camions with supplies for refugee villages, gave live rabbits and goats to wartavaged French peasants, personally dis tributed to long trainionds of French soldiers thousands MOLLIE CHURCHILL AND FRENCH POILD word from his family since the war! and—whenever she had nothing else hospital or canteen. And after two years in an invaded country she watched her husband go to a dangerous ; and important post on the American front with the courageous philosophy, | “The only idea for us all to have at present to to beat the Boche.”* SHE “ADOPTED.” |that he wanted to get the three sam | vice stripes for his two and a half years at the front put on his new unt form, so Mollie said, ‘I told him to ket it done and I would pay for it, end it made him so happy.’ “The French soldiers." Mra Churchill adds explanatorily, “are paid 4 sous, or 4 cents a day, 60 ane }less they have famflies to do things | for them, their marraines are a god send. He looks upon Mollies as @ fairy godmother.” They took him to the moving pie tures and to Luna Park, to a “Fate pour le Soldat,” “and Moll enjoyed @ as much as he did,” records Mrw, Churchill. And she bought bim em electric pocket Nght which made him perfectly happy. When he left she gave him a pacquet to take back with him, with socks, tobacco, cigarettes, crackers, jam and conserves, I hated to have him go back.” ‘The charming, unusual relationship persisted, Hand knit American socks, pink p ors, cigarettes ud oited led regutasty |from the little American girl to ber fileul in the trenches. And though be went to the hospital, was gassed, end had three eye operations, he came back safely for another furlough Inet January to play checkers with his Hit. tle Amertcan fairy godmother, Tt isa pretty story of the new, tender and generous relationships created by the war, Mrs, Churchill offers one espectally sage bit of counsel in “You Who Can Help." ‘The paragraphs I am about to quote might be headed *you who can't help.” “All the women and girls I know at home, who are not over here, bave written asking me to send for them,” he says. “They'd better stay where they are, and keep up their gpod work at that end, and prepare for what is before them, in caring for our convalescent, blind and mutt. ‘That has got to come, and the work of that kind will not all be here in France, They'd best leave ther hare Of food here for some man whe has +o be here. “Phousands of women are ar iving, und a collection, Many have never 8 1 from thetr home towns efore, and Lt think it is @ ertme the Way ail these young girls are flocking yver here, What their parents age thinking of I don't know.” “You Who Can Help" ts publistagd 2 Maynard & Co, own lated. such 4 ’ — EE