Broadbrim’s New York Letter.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 889, 15 March 1889, Page 10

Broadbrim’s New York Letter.

New Year is over, thank Providence, and Christmas too, which is irreverently called a ‘ chestnut.’ We oan now safely sit down to oount the coat, foot the bills and gaze upon the ruins. Had a good time ? Oh, yes, firstrate time aud no mistake ; splendid time, haven’t had such a Christmas for years. What did you get ? Oh, lots of things.. Aunt Phcebe sent me a pen-wiper, and Cousin Mary a pillow-case full of dried apples, aud Uncle Joe a borße-shoe tied with ribbons that he took off Aunt Jane’s old summer bonnet ; Mrs Filkin’s sent me a tidy, and our minister’s wife sent mo a Christmas card, and my neice sent me a nice plated thimble—oh, I can’t tell you all I got. Did you make any presents this year ? Well, yes ; we had to. You see you can’t help it, when folks remember you. Aunt Phcebe said they didn’t expect anything from us this year as we had so many to give to ; but if wo did send any. thing, Susie would like a new silk dress, but she hoped that we wouldn’t get anything expensive; and that Johnny hadn’t had a new suit of clothes for over a year, and if it was not asking too much we might just throw in an overcoat and a pair of rubber boots. Aunt Phcebe said that she didn’t want anything for herself or Uncle William, but her wrap wa3 looking so awful shabby that she felt quite ashamed to call on us. And Uncle William hadn’t had a new overcoat since our centennial. The minister’s wife thought’ that if we sent anything for her husband, a handsome rug or rocking chair would be better than a dressing-gown or slippers, as he had not worn several of those which ho had got last year. Everybody had to get something. Mercy on us 1 I can’t tell where all the money went to. The week before Christmas John drew a hundred dollars out of the Savings’ Bank aud by Monday, Christmas Eve, every cent of it was gone, and he had to go down and get forty more to make the thing go round. It’s fearfully expensive, but I’m awfully glad it’s all over.

Eaoh year the necessities forced upon ns by these holidays become more oppressive and burdensome. No one desires to be considered mean or penurious, especially at such a joyous holiday time, and it really seems as though a conspiracy had been entered into by all sorts of dealers and manufacturers to take advantage of the generous impulses that stir our hearts at Christmas aud New Year. If it brought no punishment, it would be hard enough, but it does. In the kindness of their hearts every body feels under an obligation to send the children candy, and the consequence is that they stuff themselves full, and in addition to the depletion of his bank accounts by presents, papa is bounced out of bed iD the middle of the night. Willie and Minnie have the b ly ache. It’s snowing like Sam Hill, but the children will die if you don’t hurry up ; and when you get down to the doctor’s he is not at home, he had just gone down to Dusenburys; six of his children were all down with the same complaint. Now, 1 am not complaiaing of the money ; that would go anyhow ; but it’s the anxiety of the parents ana the suffering of the children. Is the game worth the powder, and would it not be better to put the money in the savings’ bank for the little ones, or put these Christmas gifts in some substantial and useful form that would do them good for all the year? A few illuminated Christmas books will coat as much as a moderately useful library—and some of the most expensive dolls have wardrobes that cost as as much as a young lady’s fit out for boarding-school. There is scarcely a house in the land that is not a scene of ruin when these two glad holidays are past. Broken dolls, rained arks, disjointed horses, elephants without their baggage, marbles, balls, tops, shuttlecocks, putty blowers, dancing jacks, miniature theatres, and all of those juvenile marvels that make up a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. But I suppose it is no use to moralize, a feather might as well try to stem the torrent of Niagara. Candies will be made. I will try and interview old Santa Claus between now and next December, and see if the old saint won’t make some amendments in hib Christmas gifts. A novel case occurred here this week in the discovery of a blooming damsel of eighteen who has three loving husbands, and all of them lawfully married to her, and today she could lawfully sue every one of them for non-support, and if they had any money she could make them pay the piper. She met her first fate in Brooklyn, while she was sorting rags on an old ash-dump, and her Cupid was a peddlar in the rag business.

When he saw how deftly she did her work, ho saw visions of prospective wealth in the alliance, and he offered her his hand and cart. She accepted. A new fivo.cent calico completed the wedding trosseau and repairing at once to the Rev. Mr White who is the youthful lover’s friend, and who takes anything from a ham sandwich to a postage stamp for tying the nuptial knot, Mr White iu less time than it takes to record it, had made two one as fast as bell, book, and candle could do it, minus the bell aud candle. Three days of wedded bliss satisfied Mr Frederick Weisse that he had made a slight mistake, so he gave Mrs Frederick Weisse a lambasting and left her ; she thou went to Connecticut and there she found her second flame; he was only eighteen years of age, and of no particular account at that. A week sufficed for the courtship, and she entered into the proprietorship of husband number two. .After a month of unqualified happiness, except that he used to beat her every night and sometimes iu the mornings and afternoons, he, too, fled and returned no more. She was not inconsolable, for she was young aud good-looking, not yet being quite eighteen. She returned to her mother's borne in Brooklyn, and soon met number three. She frankly told him of her two other unfortunate ventures, but he said if she would skip over to Jersey he’d take her for better or worse. So to Jersey they repaired, and for the third time she changed her name. Number three worried out for nearly four months, when he, too, succumbed to fate. And now comes the wonderful part of the story. This girl, born and brought up in Brooklyn, reaching tho age of eighteen years, never knew or thought there was anything wrong in taking as many husbands as she pleased. She could neither read nor write ; she did not know a letter in the alphabet, or a number in the calendar. From her childhood she had been forced on the streets by dissolute parents, and she grew to womanhood, scarcely ever hearing the name of God except it were uttered profanely. What chance had -she in life? what wonder that she fell ? Only the other day we sent off twelve missionaries to the Congo ; why not save our own benighted heatheu here ? Fortunately for her she has committed no offence against our laws here, for she only married one husband in New York ; and she committed no breach of the law in New Jersey, for she only married one thore, and the samo in Connecticut. Queer case, isn’t it ? Eighteen, three husbands ! all 0. K. —nuff sed. Doctor McDonald, one of the beat.known physicians in New York, who for the past twenty years has been in charge of the insane asylum on Ward’s Island, has been declared insane himself, and is now under the care of his former assistants in that institution. No sadder case of intellectual ruin have I had to record for many a day. Dr McDonald was considered one of the foremost experts in insanity iu the United States. On the Giteau trial he was one of the experts on behalf of the United States who gave an opinion as to the prisoner’s sauity. It is no sudden calamity. It has been coming on for years, and it is with grief unspeakable that his numerous friends have noted for years his gradual decay, till at last he is confined in the asylum of which lor twenty years he was the supreme director. This week Paul Bauer died at tho Bloomingdale Asylum, who was the of the great Casino at Coney Island. Arriving in the country some years ago penniless, he became a waiter in a low saloon. At the outbreak of the war he entered the army and served in the dragoons. The war being ended he again became a waiter, and eventually started a cheap restaurant of his own. He tried a venture iu low concert halls and made money. At last he reached Coney Island just as that summer resort of _ the million was blossoming into its new life ; wealth rolled in upon him, and in addition to bis other ventures he became partner in a racecourse and a gambling-house. He _ was warned to stop gambling on his premises ; but he was rich, he had a strong political pull and he defied the law. To his great surprise he was arrested one day in his magnificent hotel, dragged into Court, tried by men who bad hobnobbed with him at his bar, and sentenced to the penitentiary by a judge who had drunk his lager and chain, pagne, smoked his finest cigars and feasted on his Frankfurt sausages and Switzer Kase. They took him to prison, cropped his head, dressed him in bed ticking and set him to sweeping out the prison yard. The strain was too much for him, his mind broke, and shortly after his counsel secured an appeal and he came out of prison on bail. He was never again tried, but his mind was gone. He possessed at the time of his discharge about two hundred thousand dollars. In les3 than six months he had got rid of a hundred thousand, then at the request of his friends the Courts intervened and he was placed in the Bloomingdale Asylum, aud last week his eventful life was brought to a dark and sorrowful close. He was a fair example of tho possibilities of our country ; coming here in poverty, he rose to affluence and power beyond his wildest dream, but instead of being grateful to the land which had helped him from his low estate he became a persistent violator of the law, and trnsted to his money to secure him immunity from punishment. He counted without his host, he mistook the institutions and tho people among whom he was living ; in seeking to evade the law he effected his own ruin, and at an age when most men are enjoying the success of life, he perishes miserably in a mad-house, the victim of his own ill-directed ambition and folly. The beautiful weather of the past ten days has been phenomenal, but remembering the March blizzard of last year, we are now laying in extra stocks of fuel and provisions, and are getting our snow-shoes ready. Truly yours, Broadbrim.