Exploits and adventures of a soldier ashore and afloatAdams, William Llewellyn
History
Exploits and adventures of a soldier ashore and afloat
Adams, William Llewellyn
Adams, William Llewellyn; Americans -- Foreign countries; United States. Army -- Military life
Swiss maidens from Geneva presided over stalls of quaint curios from
Switzerland, beer-steins and long tobacco-pipes being the most favored
articles. These Swiss girls were great favorites of the marines; they
were constant visitors at the camp during the entire exposition,
scarcely a tent was lacking in some ornamentation or other from the
booths of this Alpine exhibit, while each girl wore pinned to her
shirt-waist an ornament emblematic of the marines, consisting of the
semisphere, the eagle, and the anchor.
Though not on the grounds, one of the most interesting places of
amusement, and one which without seeing the visitor’s trip to the
“Fair” was incomplete, was “Cheyenne Joe’s Rocky Mountain Inn.” This
famous or infamous resort, as you will have it, had a seating capacity
of more than one thousand people. Tables arranged in squares over a
saw-dust floor were attended by waiters in cowboy costume; in the
centre of this large pavilion a vaudeville performance entertained its
racy patronage; music was continuous, two bands being used for this
purpose; as one ceased playing, the other commenced without interval.
A trained donkey bedecked with ribbons ran from table to table nodding
to the guests. About every twenty minutes, Cheyenne Joe mounted on a
pony would gallop into the scene and cry out, “How much money did we
take in to-day?” In unison the cowboys would yell, “Ten thousand
dollars.” Joe would shout, “Burn half of it up and shoot out the
lights,” whereupon each cowboy drew his gun and banged away, snuffing
out every light in the joint. The lights, of course, were operated
mechanically; darkness ensued for a few moments only, when the light
would be restored. The placards alone were worth a visit to read; but
the mirth and revelry indulged in not only by soldiers, civilians, and
Indians, but hundreds of the fair sex, during the midnight hours in
this Rocky Mountain resort, though lacking in splendor, were akin to
the revels at the feasts of the bacchanalians.
During the wee sma’ hours of the morning the Palm Garden, a rustic
summer dancing pavilion, with its glossy floor and Italian orchestra,
was ablaze with the scintillating flashes of diamonds which glittered
from the smartly clad feminine patrons of the dizzy whirl. Here, to
the music of such selections as, “Any rags, any bones, any bottles
to-day?” a rag two-step is being performed by a marine and a Venus
with a florid style, whose magic spell lends soothing to the blues,
but whose high heels were not made for a minister’s daughter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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