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TERRITORIAL ENTERPRISE

Thursday August 14, 1890

COMSTOCK AMENITIES.

Peculiar Noises Among Sleeping Roomers -- A Long-Winded Alarm Clock -- Sheep-Dip for Nightmare -- A Lively Rescue.

The Douglass building is one of the most popular structures for business and sleeping purposes in this city. What is not occupied for saloon, office or club-room arrangements is fully and completely utilized by a pretty good class of roomers, especially on the second and third floors. The entrances from B street, as well as from C, furnish ample facilities for ingress or egress at all times, and away in the past midnight and dark morning hours somebody is liable to be moving about.

In fact, there are rumors of ghosts with veiled faces and forms having been heard or seen gliding mysteriously through the passages. Yet no one in that comfortable dwelling is afraid of ghosts. Harmonious peace pervades the establishment, and the general rule long since squarely promulgated by the festive proprietor is always carefully respected: "Gentlemen, quarrel in your rooms, if you take a notion, but no fighting in the hallways or on the stairways."

The roomer who gets home after midnight, in compliance with the early-closing law, and plays his banjo or fife awhile before going to bed disturbs nobody but himself, and so long as he don't get into the wrong room he is all right. One roomer who wants to get up early but doesn't wake easily, procured a fine alarm clock six months ago. It makes a peculiar noise, a sort of cross, as it were, between a buzz-saw and a coffee-mill, and it is gauged to run half an hour unless the sleeper reaches out and shuts the racket off by jamming a button or otherwise demoralizing it. But this man has an ear for music, and got to waiting for it to subside or get through, about which time he would get started off into the most refreshing nap of his life. He has lost his job through it, and is now studying out some sort of a scheme to make the thing a perpetual self-winder.

The other night the proprietor, who frequently sleeps in the building, heard a stranger noise than usual, and bounced out of bed to see about it. The noise came from a room near by, and sounded as though somebody was strangling to death or being murdered.

He banged at the door and gently shouted: "What the devil's the matter? Got the death rattles or the jim-jams?"

"Ugh! ugh! Come quick! Ugh, ugh! Ah, wah, wah! Ugh, hoo, oo!"

But your door's locked: where's the key?"

"Ugh! Wow, wow! Ugh, ugh! It's on the inside. Come quick!"

"All right my son, you just keep your key on the inside and go on rasslin' with the devil; I'm going back to bed. Stop that thing now, or I'll raise your rent."

The noise ceased, and next morning they met and explanation were in order.

"No use you telling me about your having a fit of the nightmare. I know what it was, you'd been gorging yourself with 'sheep-dip.' Can't fool me -- not for Joe. Been there and know all about it. 'Sheep-dip' straight, according to the unmistakable symptoms. But young feller you just quit that now, its hung onto you too long. Must have thought yourself an infernal alarm clock."

ALF DOTEN.