Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 242, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 October 1916 — PITTSBURGH ON EDGE OF ASIA [ARTICLE]

PITTSBURGH ON EDGE OF ASIA

In Baku Persian and Tartar Millionalraa Ride in Jewaled Cars. •' . . * -r''- ; I’m afraid that I shall have to tell my great-grandchildren that the Caspian Is very little to look at, at least from Baku, writes H. G. Dwight in the “Century. It has no color and it smells outrageously of kerosene. Baku, however, Is something to look at. (Baku is the Russian trans-Cauca-sian seaport on the Caspian sea.) It Is a kina of Pittsburgh dipped In Asia, and It tickled me beyond measure. Not bo long ago it was a wretched fishing village inhabited chiefly by Persians and Tartars, who were too stupid to sell tlfelr land to prowling oil prospectors. So those same Persians and Tartars now roll in gold. And they TTrin’t whHt *n do <+ The consequence is that nobody but a millionaire can afford to live in Baku; But* what a fantastic hodgepodge of civilization and barbarism! What types! What costumes! What morals ! Above all, what motor cars —satin lined, emblazoned, gilded, jeweled, skithering there on the edge of Asia! It’s too good to be true, but I shan’t tell you about It. What I want to tell you about-is a parb ttreTltfssfans have made there on the shore of their Caspian.—They always do those well, you know. No green thing will grow for miles around Baku, but those Russians have coaxed a few trees to sprout in tubs in that tidy little park, and bands far better than I ever heard in Central park play you Tschaikowsky and Rimsky-Korsakof, not to say Wagner and Verdi and Bizet. And you should see the extraordinary crowds that listen —the Russians, the Persians, the Armenians, the Georgians, the Lesbians, the Tartars, the wild, the" swarthy, the fiery, the rainbow colored! My son, when in doubt, go to Baku. I sat there in the park one afternoou, smiting their Caspian, tapping my foot in time to their “Glinka,” when I suddenly made a discovery: That coon song we used to sing when we were young, “Lou, Lou, I Love You,” came out of “Life for the Czar.”