| OCR Text |
Show Tl flilCEJF LIFE" An Idoa of What it Costs to Keep the Fickle and Ephemeral Flame Alive in Zioa, BQUARB MEALS FOR TWO-BITS. The Experiences of a Penniless Wafarer With an Appetite as Huge as Olympus, "Is living high in Zion?" "That depends diet or dwellings?" "Say the former." ' "That's another case of depends. Some people tiro satisfied to eat to live. Others live to eat, while another nourishes nour-ishes tho tickle llamu simply for the existence ex-istence there is in it." r, This was the philosophical dialogue that took place in the rotunda of a leading hotel. The parties to it consisted con-sisted of a tenderfoot and a patriarch who might have answered the question ques-tion with more civility and induced a voyager to locate. . "' i'he cost of living in S;vl je Is (jw-Vp4 (jw-Vp4 hy tho same copJitif.isas those , ; exist iu any otjier city, j It can ft," 'made as cheap or as extravagant" as ii( Vny other city in the union. The identical extremes aro found here as are found in Gotham. To the indigent who has gathered enough in alms to enable him to cater to the ravenous wants of the inner man the sandwich joint and lunch counter offers their their bedrock prices. To tho growling epicure with gtillicient exchequer to indulge in-dulge his appetilo in all its fanciful meanderings there aro tho environments environ-ments anil luxuries, tho prices and tips. L 'iVhat can I get here for 20 cents?" asked a famished guest of tho cash- ier at a second-class restaurant. "Add a nicklo to it and you can get a square meal." "Might's well said a fortune ain't got it." "Then go it anyway." Twenty minutes later the man whose bread basket had been bloated with dense and gnawing emptiness was moving down tho street with the independence in-dependence of a millionaire. Of course if ho had in the robust, corn-fed rhetoric of the epicure' chewed at the same tablo the night before ho might have detected something reminiscent about tho Irish stew he had just emptied into tho abdominal vaults or might have wondered how that cut of roast was effected with any instrument less Diighty than the guillotine, lie had bouillon, the most familiar course in the banquet for U0 cents and ho had lasted af the habitants of the deep now H'omatic with age and a trip from the (eaboard in a refrigerator. Pio, too, he kad with gentle service but it savored inth tho must of antiquity and tradi-,iion. tradi-,iion. "But," pipes the caterer, "how much does a tramp transient with noth- ing but an appetite for luggage want on au excursion rate?" j "Put twenty cents," remarks a bystander, by-stander, "is a hundred per cent more than the imaginary meal down the street. There you get a deck o' bucks , and a cup of couee for 10 cents-. It may ; not run the epicure into a iit of ecstacy but it tills the growing void and does prolong existence, no matter what its universe of misery, it! continent of care. There are meals to be had for even less than the one at which our friend, the j wayfarer, has just regaled himself and ; stimulated his jaded energies. It's the meal that's had for the asking of it. It is served down at the eily jail where Turnkey George Kalloigh supplies the haunting visitor every day with a hand-out and a cup of something warm with which to thaw out the niau on the inside. Added to this is the free lunch cftimes a square meal if not a feast. The tariff hero is the price of a 5-cent schooner of effervescing lager lager at times in fact that is too effervescent effer-vescent to fill the blistering area below. However, the timid creature who has stolen into the chamber has appeased bis gnawing appetite for the moment and the spark of existence again Hares up. "He is not living any more than the life that is day by day wearing iUself away on the cataracts of adv rsity he exists." On tho other hand no market affords' better or more reasonable living to the rnan of averago means or resources than do those of Salt Lake. Solfsus-taining Solfsus-taining in all that necessity or frugality may require, it imposes only the lightest light-est tariff upon the table, and it is doubtful doubt-ful if there are a class of workingmen in any country who are better fed than those who havo hung their fate upon that of the territory. Sunday dinner at tho Saddle Kook. |
