The Big Town | Page 5

wait till it's their turn again, as one Federal meal don't do nothing to your appetite only whet it, you might say.
Well, anyway, I was playing the old rules and by the time I and the two gals started for the diner we run up against the outskirts of a crowd pretty near as big as the ones that waits outside restaurant windows to watch a pancake turn turtle. About eight o'clock we got to where we could see the wealthy dining car conductor in the distance, but it was only about once every quarter of an hour that he raised a hand, and then he seemed to of had all but one of his fingers shot off.
I have often heard it said that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, but every time I ever seen men and women keep waiting?for their eats it was always the frail sex that give the first yelp, and personally I've often wondered what would of happened in the trenches Over There if ladies had of been occupying them when the rations failed to show up. I guess the bombs bursting round would of sounded like Sweet and Low sang by a quextette of deef mutes.
Anyway, my two charges was like wild animals, and when the con finally held up two fingers I didn't have no more chance or desire to stop them than as if they was the Center College Football Club right after opening prayer.
The pair of them was ushered to a table for four where they already was a couple of guys making the best of it, and it wasn't more than ten minutes later when one of these birds dipped his bill in the finger bowl and staggered out, but by the time I took his place the other gent and my two gals was talking like barbers.
The guy was Francis Griffin that's in the clipping. But when Ella introduced us all as she said was, "This is my husband," without mentioning his name, which she didn't know at that time, or mine, which had probably slipped her memory.
Griffin looked at me like I was a side dish that he hadn't ordered. Well, I don't mind snubs except when I get them, so I ast him if he wasn't from Sioux City--you could tell he was from New York by his blue collar.
"From Sioux City!" he says. "I should hope not!"
"I beg your pardon," I said. "You look just like a photographer I used to know out there."
"I'm a New Yorker," he said, "and I can't get home too soon."
"Not on this train, you can't," I said.
"I missed the Century," he says.
"Well," I says with a polite smile, "the Century's loss is our gain."
"You wife's been telling me," he says, "that you're moving to the Big Town. Have you ever been there?"
"Only for a few hours," I says.
"Well," he said, "when you've been there a few weeks you'll wonder?why you ever lived anywhere else. When I'm away from old Broadway I always feel like I'm only camping out."
Both the gals smiled their appreciation, so I says: "That certainly expresses it. You'd ought to remember that line and give it to Georgie Cohan."
"Old Georgie!" he says. "I'd give him anything I got and welcome. But listen! Your wife mentioned something about a good hotel to stop at wile you're looking for a home. Take my advice and pick out one that's near the center of things; you'll more than make up the difference in taxi bills. I lived up in the Hundreds one winter and it averaged me ten dollars a day in cab fares."
"You must of had a pleasant home life," I says.
"Me!" he said. "I'm an old bachelor."
"Old!" says Kate, and her and the Mrs. both giggled.
"But seriously," he says, "if I was you I would go right to the Baldwin, where you can get a room for twelve dollars a day for the three of you; and you're walking distance from the theaters or shops or cafés or anywheres you want to go."
"That sounds grand!" said Ella.
"As far as I'm concerned," I said, "I'd just as lief be overseas from any of the places you've mentioned. What I'm looking for is a home with a couple of beds and a cook-stove in the kitchen, and maybe a bath."
"But we want to see New York first," said Katie, "and we can do that better without no household cares."
"That's the idear!" says Griffin. "Eat, drink and be merry; to-morrow we may die."
"I guess we won't drink ourselves to death," I said, "not if the Big Town's like where we been living."
"Oh, say!" says our new friend. "Do you think little old New York is going to stand for prohibition? Why, listen! I can take you to