The Chattanooga News

(Special Correspondent of The Chattanooga News.)

New York, Sept. 14.--A page from the diary of a modern Samuel Pepys:

Up betimes and about my papers, having misplaced a cheque, and in a great pet all the morning. F. P. A. in the public prints this day praised the name I gave to him for his forthcoming book of poetry, it being "Something Else Again," and he will use it.

The news is that the tenement dwellers have gone on strike and posting up huge signs, reading, "This house is on a rent strike." The landlords, it seems, get scant pity. Through the town and saw Mark Sullivan, the editor, and in truth he doth wear turned surtouts, finding them equivalent to a new suit, I vowed to try it.

H. Leon Wilson and Mistress Wilson are in town from California, and he is planning to do a goodly amount of scrivening here. At noon I went away in some haste to see and talk to my Lord, Young Theodore, but was unable to reach his demesne in time. This day my wife engaged a pretty black woman--her name is Mistress Eliza--to do some washing of her soft laces. V. Porter called and is in some pain of the colic, but did eat mightily from my brave basket of pears albeit I held my tongue. Thence with my wife, poor wretch, for a walk around the reservoir and I was so rejoiced in heart at her finding my cheque that we stopped at a dairy shop and I bought two large baskets of whey.

In the evening with F. Kelly, the pamphleteer, who told me of the noble book he has writ, and we stopped on the Broadway and talked with Sir Willie Collier, who had a comical story that doubled us up with laughter; yet I cannot transcribe it in my diary. At a collar store F. paid for a collar each with fair grace. And so home and to bed.

It is a brisk business they are doing at the Little Stock Exchange on the Bowery these days. Since the bootleggers have come to the Bowery--the denizens need more money to appease chronic thirsts. Neat bargains are being driven every few minutes. Then, too, the Bowery almost went broke in one night recently. A slick dude from uptown came down with a suitcase full of what was supposed to be whisky. He had some professional shush-shushers go down in advance and tell of his coming by shushing, smacking their lips and rubbing their stomachs. He sold 500 bottles, which proved to be a cheap cough sirup, and it nearly exhausted the Bowery's financial resources. A few remittance men who live at the lodging house for men--those dreary havens for wasters who have whistled down the wind of fortune the gifts that nature gave--are the only Boweryites who look forward now to a comfortable winter.

Everybody is selling everything they have. Thirds and fourths in knobby straw hats and suits bearing the Klever Kut labels, sewed in by deceitful wearers, and even false teeth are being bartered. Many quarrels have arisen which must be settled by the legal firm of Spivak, Spivak, Spivak, Spivak & Spivak, known as the five little Tafts of the Bowery. The only thing that is bright and shiny on the Bowery these days is the Bowery seal--the three gilt balls.

Twenty or more bartenders were arrested by government agents along the white way, and it looked like prohibition had become a real fact. But only for a day or two and then they sold with the old abandon. If you order sherry now they put ice in it--this is considered a proper dilution. It is said that all the stufty night places have lifted the bans and the knowing may get what they desire.

A New York dime novel publisher declares that Washington, D. C., buys more of his literary treasures than any other city, according to size. He also is authority for the statement--that great lawmakers, judges and the like read these thrillers purely for mental recreation.