Crowded Out! and Other Sketches | Page 5

was exactly five years ago and though the comedy was not produced, I am still sanguine that it yet may be, and perhaps not in New York after all, but in a much more important creative centre.
I was at the time of my visit to New York perfectly unacquainted with the ways of a metropolis, and it was fortunate for me that I possessed one friend there who if not exactly a friend at court as we say, was in truth a much more useful person to me, as, having once been young and inexperienced himself, he knew the ropes well and handled them thoroughly to his own satisfaction and with an eye to my comfort and safety.
In the matter of cheap dives, for instance, he was invaluable. Left to myself I either drifted to the most expensive place, for a meal short perhaps of Delmonicos, or else to a shabby and altogether-to-be-repudiated den, where the meat would be rags as well as the pudding. But under his guidance we invariably turned up in some clean, bright, cheap and wholesome "oysterbar" or coffee room round the corner or up a lane, and were as happy as kings over our lager beer.
One day De Kock came to me (he is a grand-nephew or something, I believe, of the great Frenchman) and said, with his knowing air,
"You will please put on your best coat, your tall hat and a pair of gloves, for we are going to dine to-night."
"Have we not dined once to-day!"
"Pish! Pshaw! You have had a soup, a mutton-chop, a triangle of pie, a lager beer, but you have not dined. You are not starving, and yet you have, from my present point of view, eaten nothing the whole of this day. Mon cher, it is necessary that you should dine for once in your life. Allons! We go to Giuseppe, Giuseppe Martinetti with the pale wife and the pea-green parrot--_allons, allons_!" To Martinetti's accordingly we went. I don't know what the dinner cost. It was dearer, certainly, than it would have been in London, but it was quite as good. We sat at a table formed for holding four at an open window, which, filled with exotics, overlooked Union Square, lighted by hundreds of incandescent lamps. The room contained about twenty of these small tables, and was, I suppose, very much like other rooms of its kind to _habitués_ of such places, but it was all new to me, and I stared and wondered accordingly. The waiters seemed to be all foreigners, De Kock addressing them in a mythical but magical language of his own. The tables were all full, and the people at them were mostly foreigners as well.
"The Leicester Square of New York," remarked De Kock, as he helped me to the delicious Chiante wine out of a basket-covered bottle into a dainty glass. The soup was excellent, I remember. So was the macaroni, served in the best Italian method. I wondered to see De Kock manipulate it in finished style, winding yards of it around his fork, and swallowing it duly without any apparent effort. I cut mine at that time, although I have learned better now. I recollect the asparagus, too: served by itself on a great flat dish, and shining pale and green through the clear golden sauce that was poured over it. I was just finishing my first luscious, liquid stalk, and indulging in anticipations of my second, when the highest, the shrillest, the most piercing, and most unearthly voice I ever heard, shouted out--
"_And for goodness sake don't say I told you_!"
It was electrifying, at least to me. I dropped my half eaten asparagus stalk and fork at the same time, and looked up to see my companion quietly going on as before. One or two others had stopped eating too, but the majority appeared quite unruffled. I concluded that it was the parrot to which my friend had referred.
"The last comic song," said the imperturbable De Kock.
"But where is the beast!" I inquired. "It seemed to be over my head."
"Oh! Not so near as that. But take my advice and don't call it a beast, although it is a nuisance undoubtedly. Besides, its master is not very far away from your elbow."
"What of that?" said I, still injured, though in a lower tone.
"What of that? Ah! You shall see. Look now! This short, stout person with the diamond pin and the expansive shirt front is Giuseppe. Ah, he sees me! Good evening, Giuseppe!"
"Good evening, Monsieur, good evening, good evening! De friend not like de parrot, eh?"
The man was smiling at me with his hands crossed behind him. An Italian Jew I dubbed him immediately.
"On the contrary, he admires it very much," said De Kock.
Following their eyes presently I saw the