NEW YORK SKYLINES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 288, 5 December 1931, Page 11

NEW YORK SKYLINES.

MAYOR WALKER'S EUROPEAN PROGRESS.

BROADWAY'S SUMMER

FASHIONS

POLICEMEN AND BANDITS

(By A Special Correspondent.)

NEW YORK, October 10. There has been a strange lack of resentment on the part of the proletariat

at the social doings of Mayor Jimmy

Walker on his European tour. He has

been feted by people who repreeented

kings, and has obviously had just about

the time of his life

When it was reported that he had lost 2000 dollars in a baccarat gambling

hall, New Yorkers thought it was too bad that he hadn't won 2000 dollars.

The Europeans seem to think that Jimmy is a swell person, with the phrase couched in the more delicate terms of their various languages, and this city is rather pleased. Walker's European tour readied its high-water mark, though there doesn't seem to have been much, water when Dudley Field Malone, "New York lawyer," according to the dispatches, introduced him at the American Club in London. We remember, from yqars ago, Mr. Malone's appearance in a minor case in Jefferson Market Court on behalf of an important client who had gotten into some kind of trouble.

"Mr. Malouc," inquired a reporter who had just heard the famous attorney's name during the hearing before the magistrate, "what are your initials?"

"I have none," eaid Mr. Malone. "I am Dudley Field Malone."

A Hot Time in the Old Town. New York is just coming to after the hottest spell since 1894, or was it 1849? Just try riding in a new subway car, reeking with the smell of wet paint and varnish and characteristic New York aromas on a stifling September Day, if you really want to know what a heat wave is like.

Over in a very ritzy section of Long Island the 20-year-old son of a wealthy family was arrested one very warm day laet week for strolling down the street clad in his \mderwear, and dad had to pay the fine.

We have noticed with approval this summer that the ladies are showing more sense in their warm weather attire. A few years ago no woman would dare appear on Broadway or Fifth Avenue in the summer unless she wore a dark

dress or suit, and, most likely, summer furs. Last summer, which was frigid compared with this one, the girls wore thin chiffon dresses, a pair of shoes and very little else. ' This summer they were practically unanimous in choosing white or pastel sleeveless sports dresses, a great improvement over the flowered chiffons, wo think. Open Holsters and Closed Fists. Edward P. Mulrooney is still a''cop, even if he is Police Commissioner of New York. <

For years, he has chafed under the pressure of the politician and the sentimentalists, but had sense enough to keep his thoughts to himself until the time came when he could practise what he wanted to preach. As sergeant, lieutenant, captain and inspector, he knows the stories of his dead men in blue that steel slugs have taken from him. He has, by the way, dodged plenty of bullets himself, and has a natural disaffection towards them. But the cops couldn't kick; it was part of the job. Suddenly, juvenile bandits with filled cartridge belts add a new angle. They kill two policemen and several civilians, including the small daughter, of a city fireman, himself badly wounded.

Commissioner Mulrooney's cold eyes were slits, and his chin was stuck out, when he addressed an anti-bandit meet-

ing in Madison Square Garden this week

and, figuratively speaking, removed the flap from the policeman's revolver holster.

Thinking of those open holsters and closed fists bring back a story twelve years old, when the writer was covering the Essex Market Court, on the east side, the centre of New York's toughest territory. A man had been killed a block away. His body was lying on the sidewalk, and the murderer had just ducked into a dark cellar. He had fired but two shots, so the natural conclusion was that he

still had several others left in hie revolver.

The patrolman on that beat came around the corner on the run. He wae kno>vn to all of us. He was a married man, the father of two ,, 'children. He looked the situation over and remarked, grimly: "This looks like a workout." Then he removed his coat, went into the cellar and in a few minutes came out with a sorry-looking prisoner whose nose was broken and whose eyes were ringed with red welts. The policeman had undertaken to subdue the man with his fists—and had succeeded. The next day a police court lawyer in the Magistrate's Court attempted to make much of the prisoner's condition, but the judge took another view. He : commended the leniency of the policemau in arresting an armed murderer when he could have shot him in the dark. Now that so many policemen have been slain the disposition ie to give the cop an even chance and not insistthat he wait for an armed gunman, with a known record for killings, to fire first. Bronx Snake Charmer. Dr. Raymond L. Ditmars is back with us, to resume charge of the Bronx Zoo, with an affectionate eye towards the reptilian, inmates. This time he has been down in Central America to study the idiosyncrasies of snakes. It is not the fault of the snakes, he reports, but a matter of diet, if they are poisonous. Water gives them no end of pep and poison, and if this is eliminated to some extent, the bad snakes become less vicious. New York seems a strange place for snake research, but Dr. Ditmars is fretquently called upon for serum needed by snake-bitten hunters in the Catskills and Adirondack s. Up at the Bronx Zoo they tell a story about him, which may or may not be true. A python ranging around 15 feet was presumed to be comatose after a feeding of rabbits, etc., and was left in a box outside Dr. Ditmars' office. The doctor is alleged to have been disturbed by a knocking at the door whilst lie was in deep study. On answerin «r the knock, he found the python ready to enter, and thereupon left by a. nearby window. Our own version is that he told the python to go back- to sleep.—(N.A.N.A.)