A KANSAS CITY ARISTOCRAT.
I SOMETIMES rejoice with an exceeding great joy and take
something on myself that the ICONOCLAST is read by a
million truth-loving Americans, as I am thereby enabled
not only to make it uncomfortable for frauds and fakes,
but to hold an occasional bypedal puppy up by the
subsequent end that Scorn may sight him and stick her cold
and clammy finger so far through his miserable carcass
that Goliah might hang his helmet on the protruding
point. Sometime ago I found America's meanest man in
Massachusetts: I have just discovered the most contemptible
of all God's creatures in Kansas City. Some may suppose
that the first discovery excludes the last; but such
forget that there is the same difference between cussedness
and contemptibility that exists between the leopard and
the louse, between a Cuban hurricane and the crapulous
eructations of a chronic hoodlum. I want the world to
take an attentive look at one Walter S. Halliwell, to
make a labored perscrutation of this priorient social
pewee, this arbiter eligantarium of corn-fed aristocracy,
this Beau Brummel of the border, for though Argus had a
compound microscope glued to his every eye he might
never look upon the like again. He resembles a pigmy
statue of Priapus carved out of a guano bed with a
muck rake and smells like a maison d'joie after an Orange
Society celebration of the Battle of the Boyne. Mr.
Halliwell evidently has an idea rumbling round in his
otherwise tenantless atticroom that he's a Brahmin of the
Brahmins, an aristocrat dead right, a goo-goo for your
Klondyke galways, a Lady Vere de Vere in plug hat and
"pants." He's the Ward McAllister of Kay-See, the
model of the chappies, and traces his haughty lineage
back in an unbroken line to the primordial anthropoid
swinging by his prehensile tail to a limb of the Ash tree
Ygdrasyl and playfully scratching the back of the hungry
behemoth with the jawbone of an erstwhile ichthyosaurian.
Walter S. Halliwell was born when quite young, where or
why deponent saith not, and had gotten thus far on life's
tow-path, absorbing such provender as he could come at,
before I chanced to hear of him. As there be tides in the
affairs of men which taken at the flood lead on to fortune,
so there be waves which straddled at the proper time will
bear a Halliwell on their niveous crest to the dizzy heights
of fame, quicker'n the nictitation of a thomas-cat.
Walter made connection with the climbing wave, and here
he is, bumping the macrencephalic end of himself against
the milky-way and affrighting the gibbous moon. His
opportunity to make an immortal ass of himself, to earn
catasterism and be placed among the stars as an equine
udder, thus happened to hap: Kay-See was to have a
"Karnival" modeled upon the pinchbeck rake with which
Waco worked the gullible country folk once upon a time
—when she so far forgot herself as to trade on womanly
beauty to make it a bunco-steerer for her stores. The
chief attraction wass to be a "Kween Karnation" and
her maids of honor, the latter consisting of the
most beautiful young ladies of the various Missouri
towns. I presume that these fair blossoms were (or will
be, for I know not the date of the brummagen blowout)
paraded through the streets bedized in royal frippery to
make a hoodlum holiday while the megalophanous huckster
worked the perspiring mob with peanuts and soda pop,
and the thrifty merchant marked his shopworn wares up
60 per cent, and sold them to confiding country men "at
a tremendous sacrifice." I infer from the dispatches that
Halliwell was made lord high executioner of the "Karnival"—
at least accorded ample space in which to wildly
wave his asinine ears. Miss Edna Whitney, described as
being "one of the most beautiful young ladies of Chillicothe,"
was put forward by her friends as a candidate
for the honor of representing that city at the royal court
of "Kween Karnation," the citizens to determine the
matter by a voting contest. Now Miss Whitney, while
dowered with great beauty, popular and of good repute, is
a working girl instead of a fashionable butterfly, being
employed in a cigar factory. When it appeared certain
that she would bear off the honor, the snobocracy of
Chillicothe, furious at being "trun down" by a working girl,
appealed to Halliwell to exclude her from the contest,
and this miserable parody of God's masterpiece promptly
wired that her business occupation was an insuperable
barrier. How's that for a country boasting of "Liberty,
Equality and Fraternity"—its press and politicians ever
prating of "the dignity of labor"! The contest, I'm told,
was open to all "respectable young women"; but a working
girl, though pure as the lily and fair as the rose, is not
considered "respectable" by the would-be patricians of
Corncob Corners and the grand panjandrum of the Kay-See Karnival! Working girls must not presume to be
pretty or popular or enter into contests for holiday honors
with the high-born daughters of successful swindlers, but
will be kindly permitted by the lordly Halliwell to stand
on the curb and see beauts who are only by the grace of
boodle, roll by like triumphant Sylla on Fortune's bike.
During the Saturnalia in ancient Rome the master
acknowledged the brotherhood of man by ministering to his
slave; but Kansas City, thanks to the omnipotent Halliwell,
has cut the working class off from mankind—the
hewers of wood and drawers of water are no longer
considered human! Surely we are making rapid "progress"
—are nearing that point in time when the working people
will enter a protest against insult added to injury by tying
a few bow-knots in the rubber necks of presumptuous
parvenues. If it be a disgrace for a woman to work then is
this nation in a very bad way, for few of us are the sons
or daughters "of an hundred earls"—can go back more
than a generation or two without finding a maternal
ancestor blithely swinging the useful sad-iron or taking a
vigorous fall out of the wash-tub. The parents of some
of the wealthiest people of Kansas City, the bon-ton of
the town, smelled of laundry soap, the curry-comb or
night-soil cart. Some made themselves useful as hash-slingers in cheap boarding houses or chambermaids in
livery stables, nursery maids or barbers, while others kept
gambling dens, boozing-kens or even run variety dives.
There is now a bright young woman working for a wealthy
man in Kansas City for six dollars a week. The wife of
her employer was once her mother's servant and laundered
her infantile linen. The ex-servant, scarce able to read
or write, ugly by nature and gross by instinct, is now a
glorious star in Fashion's galaxy, while the child whose
diapers she used to deodorize, compelled by poverty to
accept employment, is socially ostracized. People of
gentle blood—those who for many generations back have
been educated men and cultured women, do not act as do
Halliwell and the snobocrats of Chillicothe. These are
giving a very exact imitation of people who lately came
up from the social gutter, and it were interesting to know
how far we would have to trace their "genealogical tree"
before finding something much worse than a working
woman. It is said that "three generations make a gentleman";
and if that be true there is some hope of Halliwell's
great-grandsons—granting, of course, that the
pusillanimous prig is not too epicene to provide himself
with posterity. Day by day it becomes more evident that
the purse-proud snobocracy of New York's old rat-catchers and sprat peddlers is fast getting a foothold in
the West, that the social gulf between the House of Have
and that of Have-Not, is steadily widening and deepening
—that we have reached that point in national decay where
gold suffices to "gild the straitened forehead of the fool,"
where
wealth instead of
worth"
makes the man and want
of it the fellow." Of course it is not to be expected that
working girls, however worthy, will be generally carried
on the visiting list of wealthy women, that their society
will be sought by the followers of Fashion. None expect
this, and few desire it. King Cophetua's beggar maid
would have cut a sorry figure at court ere his favor raised
her to fortune. For Cinderella to attend the Bradley
Martin ball clothed in rags would be embarrassing both
to herself and the company. The woman who must work
for a living has little time for the diversions of the
wealthy; and is usually too proud to accept costly social
courtesies which she cannot repay in kind. Society divides
naturally into classes, diletantism and pococurantism
dawdling luxuriously here, labor at hand-grip with Destiny
there. "Birds of a feather flock together," say the
old copy-books, and Fortune gives to each such plumage
as she pleases. Still, boodle does not map out all the social
metes and bounds. It was said of old that every door
opens to a golden key, but this is not altogether true.
The honest working girl shuns the society of the wealthy
wanton, and the stupid ignoramus, whatsoever his fortune,
is accorded no seat at the symposiac—is blackballed by
the brotherhood of brains. Imagine Goethe giving Richter
the "marble heart" or Byron snubbing Burns because
of his lowly birth! The world would be quick to rebuke
their arrogance, would assure them that a singer was not
esteemed for his siller, but for his song. In the carnival
case it was a question of beauty not of boodle, of
popularity instead of purses, and to exclude from the contest
a candidate of the working class was to acknowledge her
superiority and avenge defeat with brutal insult that would
shame the crassest boor. The King of Syracuse was not
ashamed to contend with the humblest for Olympian
honors, nor the Emperor of Rome to measure swords with
Thracian gladiators to prove his skill at arms. Ever
does genius sympathize with folly and the truly learned
with the unlettered; but Mammon "least erect of all
the angelic host that fell from heaven," puts the mark
of the beast on the brazen foreheads of all who bow down
to his abominations. When working-girls are treated
thus, what wonder that some of them become imbittered,
discouraged, and go head-long to the devil—affording the
wretched pharisees whose brutality wrought their ruin, an
opportunity to "rescue" them and pose before the world
as Christian philanthropists! What inducement has a
young and beautiful woman to toil early and late for
an honest livelihood when by so doing she forfeits the
right to be called respectable—is flouted by even the
paltry plutocracy of a country town and proclaimed a
social pariah by such a headless phthirius pubis as Halliwell!
If labor be no longer respectable wherein are our
thousands of virtuous working girls superior to prostitutes?
Clearly if the dictum of Halliwell be correct it
were better for the daughter of poverty to regard her
face as her fortune and hasten to sell herself—with
approval of law and blessings of holy church—to some old
duffer with ducats and be welcomed by the "hupper sukkle"
as a bright and shining ornament. Or if no beducated
old duffer can be come at, she might marry the first
shiftless he-thing that offers itself and pick up a luxurious
livelihood for her family among her gentlemen friends,
as so many enterprising society women now do, and be
"respectable" to her heart's content—even a devout
church member and prominent in "rescue" work among
fallen women. Somehow I cannot help wondering whether
Halliwell's respectability be not due to some ancestor who
was too lazy to work and too cowardly to steal. To the
grand army of working women I would say, Be not
discouraged by such gross affronts, prompted by splenetic
hearts and spewed forth by empty heads. You may be
flouted on the one hand by a few purse-proud parvenues
and pitied on the other hand by bedizened prostitutes, but
the great world, which learned long ago that the reptile
as well as the eagle can reach the apex of the pyramid,
estimates you at your true worth and binds upon your
pure brows the victor's wreath, while ringing ever in your
ears like a heavenly anthem are the words of Israel's
wisest—"A good name is more precious than fine gold."
P.S.—Since the foregoing was put in print I have
received Kansas City papers giving a fuller account of the
affair, and it is in every way more miserable than I had
imagined. Halliwell, who is bossee of the whole business,
says he sent the telegram at the request of the board of
lady managers of the flower parade—in other words,
that, at the solicitation of a lot of snobby old females, he
made even a greater ass of himself than nature had originally
intended. Mrs. J. K. Cravens, chairman of the
aforesaid board, denies that the ladies had anything to do
with the matter, then flies into a towering passion "cusses
out" the newspapers, figuratively speaking, rips her silk
lingerie to ribbons, and otherwise conducts herself like a
woman educated in a logging camp. I shall not attempt to
decide the question of veracity between Halliwell and Mrs.
Cravens, but that one is a mental vacuum and the other
a ripsnortin' old virago is established beyond the
peradventure of a doubt. Everybody connected with the
Karnival is doing the Artful Dodger act to escape the
withering storm of indignation which the pitiful episode
called forth from the American people. The most
encouraging feature of the whole affair is the withdrawal
of several of Chillicothe's society girls from the contest
because of the gratuitous insult tendered Miss Whitney
in the Halliwell telegram, thus indicating that the old
town's upper ten is not composed exclusively of pudding
heads and parvenues.
